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Mrs Hargreaves Remembers |
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a piece for soprano and instrumental ensemble
also available in a shortened version for soprano & piano
music by Martin Wesley-Smith |
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first performed Friday July 11 1997 at the Alliance Francaise Society, Sydney, by Miriam Gordon (soprano) and members of The Spring Ensemble conducted by Luke Dollman
most recent performances:
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| internal links: | |||
| program note | the script | footnotes | clippings |
| external links: | |||
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Martin Wesley-Smith |
Peter Wesley-Smith |
Lewis Carroll home page |
Boojum! home page |
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program note |
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In 1932, 79-year-old Mrs Reginald Hargreaves travelled to America from her native England to receive an honorary doctorate from Columbia University in New York. It was the centenary of Lewis Carroll's birth, and Mrs Hargreaves, before marriage to crack county cricketer Reggie, had been Alice Liddell, the real-life inspiration for Lewis Carroll's best-known nonsense classics Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass - and What Alice Found There. The doctorate was in recognition of her role in the creation of those masterpieces of English literature. This piece depicts (quite fancifully) Mrs Hargreaves, the night before the degree is to be conferred, having a massage while rehearsing her acceptance speech. She soon wanders from what she had prepared and reminisces, with great fondness, about her childhood friend the Rev'rend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll's real self). Her main focus is his depiction of himself as the White Knight in Through the Looking-Glass. |
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the script |
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| During a musical introduction, Mrs Hargreaves enters, wrapped in a towel fastened at the back, and lies face down on a massage table. A masseuse (a flautist, dressed in white) opens the towel at the back to reveal Mrs H's bare back, which she proceeds to massage. When Mrs H sings, the masseuse pummels her back so that the rhythms she plays are transmitted through the voice: |
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Ah ... ah ... ah ... ah ... |
| Mrs H lifts her head and faces the audience |
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It gives me great pleasure to be here today to accept this degree that you've bestowed upon me on this most auspicious occasion ... 1
Ah ... impenetrability ... 2 I remember Humpty there on the wall and the Unicorn, and the Bandersnatch, and the dear old White Knight |
| The masseuse fastens the towel; Mrs H sits on the table to sing the following song: |
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He sang 3
"I'll tell you ev'rything I can There's little to relate I saw an aged aged man A-sitting on a gate 'Who are you, aged man?' I said 'And how is it you live?' The answer trickled through my head Like water through a sieve. He said 'I look for butterflies That sleep among the wheat: I make them into mutton pies, And sell them in the street. I sell them unto men,' he said, 'Who sail on stormy seas; And that's the way I get my bread - A trifle, if you please.'" |
| Trumpet solo; Mrs H walks downstage |
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He would sing to me, this troubador He was quite extraordinary He would tell me cautionary Tales for me to dream about A genius there'd seem no doubt What would life have been without My Knight? 4 |
| Mrs H speaks, over music: |
| Of all the strange things that I saw in my journey Through The Looking-Glass, this is the one I've always remembered most clearly. I can bring the whole scene back again as if it were only yesterday. 5 |
| Mrs H sings: |
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For more than sixty years 6 Less than a hundred He lived in hopes and fears And often wondered If he should ever find Gentle and pure love A Dulcinea God designed A sweet mature love It gives me great pleasure to accept this award It's an honour I appreciate But it belongs to that aged aged man A-sitting on a gate |
| Mrs H returns to the massage table; the masseuse unfastens the towel, and massages Mrs H's bare back, again. Mrs H sings, while being pummelled: |
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Ah ... ah ... ah ... ah ... |
| Mrs H speaks, over music: |
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I remember the mild blues eyes and the kindly smile of the knight, the setting sun gleaming through his hair and shining on his armour in a blaze of light ... and his horse quietly cropping the grass at my feet ... |
| Mrs H falls asleep on the massage table. |
| The instrumentalists chant as well as play: |
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word, ford, food, fool, foul, soul, sour, dour, doub game, gale, pale, pane, pans, pens, lens, less, lets! 7 white knight, while, whine, shine, shins, chins, chink, clink, clank, clack, black [k]night!
Alice, slice, slick, slack, snack, snark! |
| Mrs H wakes up! She sings: |
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I dreamt of Uncle Dodgson Dreaming of me dreaming of him I was back in his drawing-room at Oxford Listening to the music boxes play "And now, if e'er by chance I put 9 My fingers into glue, Or madly squeeze a right-hand foot Into a left-hand shoe, Or if I drop upon my toe A very heavy weight, I weep, for it reminds me so Of that old man I used to know - Whose look was mild, whose speech was slow. Whose hair was whiter than the snow, Whose face was very like a crow, With eyes, like cinders, all aglow, Who seemed distracted with his woe, Who rocked his body to and fro, And muttered mumblingly and low, As if his mouth were full of dough, Who snorted like a buffalo - That summer evening long ago A-sitting on a gate." It's this old man This aged aged man Uncle Dodgson and his life I celebrate |
| (c) 1997 | ||
| Martin Wesley-Smith | Peter Wesley-Smith | |
| e-mail: mwsmith@shoalhaven.net.au | e-mail: peterws@shoalhaven.net.au |
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footnotes |
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1
The film Dream Child is about Alice Hargreaves receiving an honorary degree from Columbia University 2 A quote from Humpty Dumpty (Carroll, Lewis, Through the Looking-Glass - and What Alice Found There, chapter 6) 3 The first two verses of the song that follows are the first two verses of the White Knight's poem A-sitting On a Gate (Through the Looking-Glass, chapter 8). The music here is reminiscent of Dixieland jazz (which Mrs Hargreaves might have heard during her trip to New York). 4 The White Knight is Lewis Carroll himself - or, more appropriately, the Rev'rend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Carroll's real self). In fact it's more complicated than that: Carroll portrayed himself, autobiographically, as the White Knight, who, arguably, portrayed himself as the aged, aged man a-sitting on a gate. 5 A quote, edited, from Through the Looking-Glass, chapter 8 6 First verse of For More Than Sixty Years (from Boojum!; text by Peter Wesley-Smith). The lyric was developed from a snippet Carroll wrote as a young boy in which he imagined himself as an old man. 7 An illustration of a word-game Carroll invented called Doublets 8 Words from Jabberwocky (Looking-Glass, chapter 1) 9 Last verse of A-sitting On a Gate * The instrumental ensemble consists of eleven players: fl/picc/bass fl, fl (masseuse), cl/bcl, tpt, trom, bass trom, pno, perc (mar, tb), vln1, vln2 & vlc |
| internal links: | |||
| program note | the script | footnotes | clippings |
| more external links: | ||
| Quito |
Sydney Conservatorium |
mw-s discography |
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clippings |
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Columbia University in the City of New York,
for finding these clippings, photocopying them, and sending them to me [MW-S])
from the New York Times, Mon May 2 1932:
