The Pataphysics of Railways : Ben Fisher

On 26th May 2010 the stretch of the Welsh Highland Railway to Pont Crosor was opened. This was timed to coincide with opening the new Nantmor Halt (above), which was built in memory of Ben Fisher, an enthusiast for the project and originator of the WHR website, who died in 2009. The halt was funded largely by money subscribed in his memory. An opening ceremony was performed by Dr Dafydd Gwyn who dedicated the station to Ben's memory and unveiled a plaque commemorating him. Dafydd Thomas, Chairman of the Welsh Highland Railway Society, read out a message from Roy Fisher, Ben's father who was prevented from attending the ceremony by illness.

His brother Dr Joe Fisher said Ben will be sadly missed.

“His death came completely out of the blue apart from what seemed to be flu symptoms, and he was off both family and university radar because he’d just gone on study leave to work on his new book.

He added: “Ben fell in love with North Wales and its railways on family holidays. I think he always knew it was where he was meant to be."

The son of Roy Fisher, the poet and musician, and the former Barbara Venables, Ben grew up on the university campus at Keele, where Roy was senior lecturer in American studies. After reading modern and medieval languages at Selwyn College, Cambridge, Ben moved to Bangor to do a PhD and stayed there for the rest of his life, becoming first a lecturer and then head of the French department. He happily admitted that the move had been influenced by the number of preserved narrow-gauge steam railways nearby.

Teaching for Ben did not consist of chalking up first-class degrees; the number of tributes from students who would not have finished degrees without his going the extra mile for them said far more. Rather reserved away from work, he was an idiosyncratic and funny teacher. His lateral thinking with technology made an immeasurable contribution at Bangor, notably as co-developer (with Adrian Ritchie) of the UK's first digital language laboratory, and director of the Multimedia Language Centre, which grew out of it. In the early 1990s he supervised the Estel project, which brought multilingual satellite TV into classrooms all over Wales.

Ben's doctoral thesis, on the complex, often irreverent, French avant-garde writer Alfred Jarry, was published by Liverpool University Press as The Pataphysician's Library (2000) and received a string of complimentary reviews.

This work is a study of aspects of 1890s French literature, with specific reference to the traditions of symbolism and decadence. Its main focus is Alfred Jarry, who has proved to be one of the more durable fin de siecle authors. This study uses the enigmatic list of books termed the "Livres pairs"which appears in Jarry’s 1898 novel Gestes et Opinions du docteur Faustroll, pataphysicien, his best-known prose work. The greatest interest of the livres pairs lies in a group of works by Jarry’s friends and contemporaries, primarily Leon Bloy, Georges Darien, Gustave Kahn, Catulle Mendes, Josephin Madan, Rachilde, and Henri de Regnier. Several of these authors feature as the lords of islands visited by the pataphysician Dr Faustroll in his curious voyage around Paris. In conjunction with Jarry’s own works, the contemporary livres pairs serve to illustrate the vibrant and experimental atmosphere in which these authors worked. The book received a string of highly complimentary reviews. Ben continued to work in this field with a series of articles in major journals covering a variety of often under-researched authors of the avant-garde. At the time of his death he was embarking on a new project – a French Symbolist Reader.

Bangor University’s Registrar Dr David Roberts added: “He was a dedicated teacher, a well respected colleague and a much liked lecturer.”

Carol Tully, head of the School of Modern Languages at Bangor, remembers Dr Fisher as "a very private man whose passion for absurdist literature was reflected in his quirkiness and offbeat sense of humour - it was always the slightly unexpected which got Ben enthused".

Ben's other publishing project, whr.bangor.ac.uk , has been a public work in progress for 10 years: the official website of the rebuilding of the Welsh Highland Railway, the 26-mile narrow gauge line connecting Caernarfon and Porthmadog, skirting Snowdon, which closed in 1937. Detailing every stage of this massive undertaking, Ben's now majestic site became and remains one of the most visited of its kind in the world, with literally millions of hits. He recorded every step forward in powerfully evocative photographs, describing the project as "one of the biggest and most exciting tasks that the railway preservation movement has ever tackled".

Since Ben didn't live to see the line's re-opening, now due in 2011, the plan is that his ashes will travel on the first through train from Caernarfon to Porthmadog instead and be consigned to the sea at Fairbourne, where he first formed his love of railways: his site and photographs are also to be published in book form under the title Welsh Highland Adventure

An inquest returned an open verdict after hearing that inquiries had revealed that Dr Fisher was last known to have been shopping at a local supermarket in July. Coroner's officer PC Dafydd Williams said: "Because of his lifestyle and the fact he was a private person, for people not to see him for any length of time wasn't unusual."

Dr Fisher, 45, of Bangor, Gwynedd, who was single, was found dead on 13 August at his home.

Pathologist Dr Susan Andrew told coroner Dewi Pritchard-Jones the cause of death was unknown because Dr Fisher's body was decomposed.



Benjamin James Valentine Fisher, lecturer in French and railway historian: born Birmingham 3 September 1963; died Bangor, Gwynedd 20 July 2009.

Sources : Obituaries - Carol Tully The Guardian 26 October 2009, The Independent 10 November 2009
http://www.whrsoc.org.uk/WHRProject/whlatest.htm
North Wales Daily Post 26 August 2009
BBC News
The Times Higher Education Supplement 8 October 2009
Amazon.co.uk

Margaret Gelling

At Wivenhoe, in Essex, the low line of the hills has the shape of the heels of a person lying face-down. The name contains the shape: a hoh is a ridge that rises to a point and has a concave end. At Wooller in Northumberland, however, the hilltop is level, with a convex sloping shoulder. The hidden word here is ofer, “a flat-topped ridge”. Early Anglo-Saxon settlers in England, observing, walking and working the landscape, defined its ups and downs with a subtlety largely missing from modern, motorised English. Dozens of words, none of them synonymous, described the look of a hill, the angle of slope and the way trees grew upon it. And after the Anglo-Saxons, no one looked at the landscape in quite that way until Margaret Gelling. (The Economist)

"The Anglo-Saxons had about 40 words, for instance, that can be translated as hill, but there are no synonyms. All of the words refer to a different shape or size of hill. It is a vast and subtle code; but Sir Frank Stenton, bless him, described these names as 'trivial and accidental'. If you go out and use your eyes, you see that that is the most appalling mistake."

Margaret Gelling's work offered an insight into the Anglo-Saxon imagination, and provided an invaluable reference tool for archaeologists looking for previously unknown sites indicated by place-name references to, say, farming or ancient routes. She also showed how a study of place-names can help historians gain a more accurate picture of early history.

For example, she challenged the view – based largely on the writings of the sixth-century historian St Gildas – that the ancient Britons were forced out to the "Celtic fringe" by the Anglo-Saxon invaders. If that were true, she asked, why do so many place names in southern England have Celtic origins? "If you believe Gildas, the Anglo-Saxons would have been chasing the ancient Britons, catching up with one who wasn't fast enough and saying, 'Look here, before I cut off your head, just tell me the name of this place'."

In 2001 new genetic research confirmed that the majority of Britons living in the south of England share the same DNA as their "Celtic" counterparts, suggesting that, far from being purged when the Anglo-Saxons arrived in the fifth century, many ancient Britons remained in England. (Daily Telegraph)

Margaret Joy Midgley was born in Manchester on November 29 1924. "Manchester lower-middle class", as she described it. Her father worked in insurance, and the family moved to Sidcup when she was a child.

From Chislehurst Grammar School, she became the first member of her family to win a place at university and went on to read English at St Hilda's College, Oxford.

"I thought of it as a seat of learning, in my prissy schoolgirl way. I would have been regarded as a swot." However, she believed she "wasted her youth" at Oxford. She found English literature "dreadfully boring" and "a waste of time". Even into her 70s, she claimed no interest in poetry, or theatre, or cultural matters generally. Nevertheless, it was at Oxford that Dorothy Whitelock steered her linguistic interests towards place-name study.

In 1946, Sir Frank Stenton was succeeded as Director of the English Place-Name Society by Bruce Dickins, who had moved from Leeds to become Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Cambridge University. The offices of the Society moved to his Cambridge family home. "At this stage Miss Margaret Midgley, later Dr Margaret Gelling, joined the Society as Research Assistant", says the summary of their history.

It was in Cambridge, that Margaret met and, in 1952, married the young archaeologist Peter Gelling, who came from the Isle of Man and possessed a polymathic range of interests and enthusiasms.

When Peter was appointed as a lecturer in archaeology in the University of Birmingham, she left the EPNS and he and Margaret set up their home in Harborne, where she was to live for the rest of her life. She accompanied him on many expeditions, including, in the 1960s, to the Alto Plano in Peru to investigate the history of potato use, including freeze-drying at altitude. As a result she became experienced at cooking over a fire of dried llama dung in a cave.

In July 1974 she was in Cyprus sorting finds in the castle at Kyrenia when the Turks invaded – she and her colleagues were forced to spend several uncomfortable hours cowering in the castle's lavatories.

Margaret Gelling's formal job with the English Place-Name Society lasted until 1953. She also lectured on place-names at Birmingham University and at an annual summer school at Oxford (she became a fellow of St Hilda's in 1993) and at symposia around the world. She was president of the English Place-Name Society from 1986 to 1998.

Her decision to join the Communist Party ensured that she was able to indulge her lifelong enjoyment of political argument. Though she eventually left the party, she was glad to have lived to have seen at least some of Marx's prognostications about capitalism come true.

Margaret Gelling was appointed OBE in 1995 and elected a fellow of the British Academy in 1998.

Her husband predeceased her in 1983. She and Peter had no children of their own, but brought up her nephew, Adrian Midgley, from the age of six. She is survived by Adrian and his family and he was the author of the obituary in The Economist quoted above.

Margaret Gelling, OBE, president of the English Place-Name Society, 1986-98. Born November 29, 1924. Died April 24, 2009, aged 84

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/5297337/Margaret-Gelling.html
http://www.economist.com/obituary/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13642362
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/may/04/obituary-margaret-gelling#history-
byline
Interview by Simon Dennison in British Archaeology, April 1995.


The Institute for Name-Studies http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/english/ins

Dead Men's Love : Rupert Brooke

Dead Men's Love

There was a damned successful Poet;
There was a Woman like the Sun.
And they were dead. They did not know it.
They did not know their time was done.
They did not know his hymns
Were silence; and her limbs,
That had served Love so well,
Dust, and a filthy smell.

And so one day, as ever of old,
Hands out, they hurried, knee to knee;
On fire to cling and kiss and hold
And, in the other's eyes, to see
Each his own tiny face,
And in that long embrace
Feel lip and breast grow warm
To breast and lip and arm.

So knee to knee they sped again,
And laugh to laugh they ran, I'm told,
Across the streets of Hell . . .
And then
They suddenly felt the wind blow cold,
And knew, so closely pressed,
Chill air on lip and breast,
And, with a sick surprise,
The emptiness of eyes.

Rupert Brooke died 23 April 1915, from sepsis following a mosquito bite on the lip.

23 April was never a very auspicious day for poets.

Would that it were that simple : Robert Creeley

The Poet of Death

To the Editor, NY Times :

William H. Pritchard's review of Andrew Motion's biography "Philip Larkin: A Writer's Life" (Aug. 1) is characteristic of his wit and ability to compress usefully an engaging range of details. His summary provokes all the old questions about Larkin's hermetic defensiveness and reminds his fellow poets that he certainly earned the hard way all he seemingly got.

But the last two paragraphs of Mr. Pritchard's piece are truly something else. Consider this rhetorical flourish, for example: "Why, some might ask, would one want to read all this when the matchless poems are there, still fresh and glittering as creation itself?" But it is finally the old canonizing flourish Mr. Pritchard then moves to that does us all in: "Say that more than any of them [ Hardy, Yeats, Eliot, Auden, Stevens and "perhaps Robert Lowell" ] , excepting Hardy, Larkin is the poet of death who, since death is the mother of beauty, brings us most vividly to life." Would that it were that simple.

ROBERT CREELEY Buffalo

A version of this letter appeared in print on Sunday, September 5, 1993, on section 7page 23 of the New York edition.

The poet Robert Creeley died of pneumonia 30 March 2005, aged 78.
Larkin died of oesophageal cancer on 2 December 1985, aged 63.