Competitions nos. 148A and 148B: results

Elizabeth Bibesco quotes a play called Passé by Porto-Riche from memory. (Georges Porto-Riche was a French playwright born in 1849, but who had died only three years before this, in 1930.)In the play, the heroine says, if EB remembers correctly, ‘Dire que l’année prochaine je regretterai ce visage là’ (Sad to think that next year I will regret that face). She wants (yes, again) a sonnet on this theme, in English.

In her report Bibesco notes that this competition has not attracted the usual number, and she singles out, very curiously, the following four as being missing: Pibwob, Non Omnia, Issachar – and Gordon Daviot. The first three are regulars, but Gordon Daviot – the pen-name of Josephine Tey, the novelist – has not been mentioned since 1930 and then only on one occasion in the tenth competition. Does this mean she has been entering, under a pseudonym for her pseudonym, for all the intervening competitions? It’s a curious remark.

By a really curious coincidence, on the same day that I wrote this blog entry, an article on one of the runners-up, Dorothy Bowers, was published in The Independent. It’s here. Bowers was the author of well-received crime fiction, but her reputation is a casualty of early death. This is her most famous:

But she isn’t a winner, and Bibesco prefers the serious to the many facetious face-lifting sonnets. The winner is W. Leslie Nicholls (his first win, and the first appearance of a competitor who was to do exceptionally well), and the runner up is William Bliss. Commended – and also printed, unusually, but described as ‘smoothly derivative’ is Black Gnat. As I’ve said, I’m still pretty sure this is Seacape.

For once, the B competition is a hit (and would play well today). An English cricket captain, asked who his successor should be, has remarked that ‘I cannot comment; that would not be cricket.’ Brilliant. Bibesco asks for similarly dunder-headed observations on a prime minister, president-elect, bishop (or archbishop), restaurateur, actor, or novelist . She commends a lot of individuals, including T.D.Tremlett (the heraldic expert who has come close before) on a president-elect (‘a charming man in private life’) and Mariamne on a prime minister (‘We owe him a debt that we can never repay’). The winners are Hutch and B. Gibbs, who I assume is the B.R. Gibbs who won the previous week.

Competitions nos. 147A and 147B: results

Clennell Wilkinson suggests an ode to the Christmas Stilton, begging it not to grow over-ripe too soon, and in the manner of Herrick’s ‘Fair Daffodils’:

Fair Daffodils, we weep to see

         You haste away so soon;

As yet the early-rising sun

         Has not attain’d his noon.

                        Stay, stay,

                Until the hasting day

                        Has run

                But to the even-song;

And, having pray’d together, we

Will go with you along.

 

We have short time to stay, as you,

         We have as short a spring;

As quick a growth to meet decay,

         As you, or anything.

                        We die

                As your hours do, and dry

                        Away,

                Like to the summer’s rain;

Or as the pearls of morning’s dew,

Ne’er to be found again.

Wilkinson is surprised to find that there are many WR readers who don’t actually like Stilton, but thinks the standard of entry – a compliment for the competitors at last! – is very high. He gives out three prizes to Lester Ralph, to B.R. Gibbs, and to William Bliss, because, wouldn’t you know it, the B competition is in trouble again. But Wilkinson is right: these are good (Herrick is a hard poet to parody).

The B competition was for an epigram on the following three rulers: Charles II, Henry VIII and Oliver Cromwell. (There seems no reason why this should be set.) A George Robey effort is offered as an example:

Music hall star Robey (1869-1854) was still very much alive, by the way

But he wouldn’t have thought a lot of the sole winning entry, which comes from Eremita, and which runs as follows: