Nell: A Tale of the Thames

by Heather Bigg, Henry Robert Heather Bigg

.

286 pages, Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1901

Reviews

[Osiris Oliphant · Rating 3 out of 5]

[[ Heather Bigg was in fact Henry Robert Heather Bigg, who also wrote "Artificial Limbs, and the Amputations which Afford the Most Appropriate Stumps in Civil and Military Surgery" and "On the Mechanical Appliances Necessary for the Treatment of Deformities}}

From a contemporary review. (1901)

The Longest Poem of the 20th Century
Nell: a Tale of the Thames. By Heather Bigg.

We are occasionally staggered by the works that are dropped upon our table. This volume prostrated us. Thinking to dip into a novel, we found ourselves plunged into a poem; not one of your minor poet's shallow outpourings, but a sea of Alexandrines. The poem approaches in length Paradise Lost. It has other curious similarities to that epic. For example, the arguments that head the sections, of which there are thirty-six. Thus, “How Robert boils over at the iniquitous looseness of the laws on robbery-a matter that is only a digression." Miss Heather Bigg has certainly caught the Miltonic method of digression. Chapter I. describes Robert and Alfred at the outset of their journey down the Thames in quest of a quiet village:

"And near them, on the water, lightly lay
Their bass canoe, which by Ontario's shore
The colonist had deftly fashioned out
On the design that long years since he reft
From the defenceless savage.
Here it was First stripped the ready birch..."

and so on for seventy-one lines till we come to “the two to whom this craft belonged.” Milton himself could not have withheld longer the information that the two young men had hired "a Canader."

"In fact for you I sound this solemn note
Beware the dangers of the petticoat.
So spoke Alfred."

Alas ! it is seldom that our poetess lets us by so soon and introduces us to the solid fact. Before Nell comes on the scene Robert and Alfred converse quite in the Miltonic style as they paddle the craft reft by the colonist from the defenceless savage. Robert remarks

"All that is round us now is but “I Am"
Perhaps, (said Alfred) and he said no more.
It was enough."

Indeed, you could hardly expect more from a young man who took velvet slippers—monogrammed, up the river. In the village churchyard Robert meets Nell, and, as you may say, he is done for at once. Next morning:

“his hand-poised razor ran Almost to skinny, (that phrase will nick our chin at our next shaving)
Gay was he in pronounced pyjamas, shod
In velvet slippers, golden monogrammed,
Some girl's gift, and half his face besmeared
With lathered white, whilst his right hand upheld
An out of all proportion shaving-brush,
Also some girl's gift,- indeed the all
To which his dressing-case was continent
Was gift on gift from girls, who being of course
Of a man's use profoundly innocent....

....Meddled in some monstrous breakfast
Until he was done and hurried off
To the churchyard, But not a soul was there."

That is a common feature of churchyards. Meanwhile Alfred picked up Carrie in the rain.

These four are the protagonists of the story such as it is. There is a nebulous mother of Nell, and an Uncle, of whom Nell says:

"Oh! but he was so kind !
Though quite a different man from Grandpape."

Had they only been the same man it would have brought a welcome complication into a somewhat simple story. It drags on from Part I. to Part II., from one river season to the next.

"Whilst you are here let us meet as you will
So that I keep my reputation still"

says Nell; but as Nell's escutcheon is not up to Robert's standard the end is inevitable. It seems to occur—we skip fifty thousand lines or so of no special importance until on page 311, in a moonlit wood when Robert and Nell sit together upon a fallen STUMP-

Nell's shoe tumbles off:

"He from the STUMP,
slipped down upon his knees
feeling around he found the shoe
And took her tiny ankle in his hand
To place it on. .... An ankle!
Heavens above us !
And a cloud
Veiling the chaste, chill aspect of the moon
Left them in darkness. Haply none too soon-"

Here all description ends and words must fail. Miss Heather Bigg may be congratulated on having written the longest poem of the Twentieth Century. But at the end, as at the beginning, we wonder why she took the trouble to design epic dress for a novelette.

========================================================
in the preface to the 2nd edition the author says -

The favourable reception accorded by the Press to the first edition of this book has made it incumbent that I should, in a second issue, endeavour to amend certain defects that kindly criticism has made obvious.

The present volume, I should explain, is only the middle one of a Trilogy. The scenes of the first volume (not yet published) are laid in Magdala at the time of Christ... It grew piecemeal into shape, and was for some time rather a collection of passages than a continuous tale-a fact which perhaps accounted for some stray discursiveness to which critical attention was drawn in the first edition.

In this new edition I have therefore cut boldly away such digressive passages as seemed irrelevant to the flow of the story, and in doing this I have received the generous and blue-pencil advice of several well-known writers and critics. Some chapters have been excised in their entirety, others have been largely curtailed or merged with their fellows. One chapter (that on the opening of Spring) has been shelved into an Interlude.

In conclusion, I may be permitted to express my sincere obligations, both to those who have given me entirely appreciative notices, as well as to those whose critical monitions have helped me in my endeavour to make this new edition still more worthy of perusal.

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