NoJo
Happily Marred
- Joined
- May 19, 2002
- Posts
- 15,398
Last night I dreamt about Pixie Smith, a woman whose life I researched a few months ago, for a (non-Literotica, non-erotic) story.
Pamela Colman Smith was an American born illustrator, friend of the poet Yeats and center of a bohemian crowd in the 1920’s. She spent her childhood in Jamaica and was related to the author of the Brer Rabbit stories. She published a book of the Jamaican “Spider Anansee” folk tales.
Through her illustrations of the extraordinary Rider Waite Tarot deck, she should by rights be almost as famous as Tolkein, her images being iconic for a whole mystically inclined generation. But she died penniless in 1951, in the small flat she shared with her long-time female companion.
The author Arthur Ransome describes a visit to one of her poetry gatherings.
As soon as the shaking of hands was all over, some one asked Gypsy for a song. “Got very little voice to-night,” she coughed, “and everybody wants something to drink first. But I’ll sing you a song afterwards.” She went through to the table with the glasses in the inner room. “Who is for opal hush?” she cried, and all, except the American girl and the picture dealer, who preferred whisky, declared their throats were dry for nothing else. Wondering what the strange-named drink might be, I too asked for opal hush, and she read the puzzlement on my face. “You make it like this,” she said, and squirted lemonade from a siphon into a glass of red claret, so that a beautiful amethystine foam rose shimmering to the brim. “The Irish poets over in Dublin called it so; and once, so they say, they went all round the town, and asked at every public-house for two tall cymbals and an opal hush. They did not get what they wanted very easily, and I do not know what a tall cymbal may be. But this is the opal hush.” It was very good, and as I drank I thought of those Irish poets, whose verses had meant much to me, and sipped the stuff with reverence as if it had been nectar from Olympus.
When everyone had their glasses, Gypsy came back into the front part of the room, and, sitting in a high-backed chair that was covered with gold and purple embroideries, she cleared her throat, leant forward so that the lamplight fell on her weird little face, and sang, to my surprise, the old melody:
“O the googoo bird is a giddy bird,
No other is zo gay.
O the googoo bird is a merry bird,
Her zingeth all day.
Her zooketh zweet flowers
To make her voice clear,
And when her cryeth googoo, googoo,
The zummer draweth near.”
Somehow I had expected something else. It seemed odd to hear that simple song drop word by word in the incense-laden atmosphere of that fantastic room.
Here's a picture of this funny little witch.
http://pcs2051.tripod.com/PCS_as_Young_Woman.jpg
Pamela Colman Smith was an American born illustrator, friend of the poet Yeats and center of a bohemian crowd in the 1920’s. She spent her childhood in Jamaica and was related to the author of the Brer Rabbit stories. She published a book of the Jamaican “Spider Anansee” folk tales.
Through her illustrations of the extraordinary Rider Waite Tarot deck, she should by rights be almost as famous as Tolkein, her images being iconic for a whole mystically inclined generation. But she died penniless in 1951, in the small flat she shared with her long-time female companion.
The author Arthur Ransome describes a visit to one of her poetry gatherings.
As soon as the shaking of hands was all over, some one asked Gypsy for a song. “Got very little voice to-night,” she coughed, “and everybody wants something to drink first. But I’ll sing you a song afterwards.” She went through to the table with the glasses in the inner room. “Who is for opal hush?” she cried, and all, except the American girl and the picture dealer, who preferred whisky, declared their throats were dry for nothing else. Wondering what the strange-named drink might be, I too asked for opal hush, and she read the puzzlement on my face. “You make it like this,” she said, and squirted lemonade from a siphon into a glass of red claret, so that a beautiful amethystine foam rose shimmering to the brim. “The Irish poets over in Dublin called it so; and once, so they say, they went all round the town, and asked at every public-house for two tall cymbals and an opal hush. They did not get what they wanted very easily, and I do not know what a tall cymbal may be. But this is the opal hush.” It was very good, and as I drank I thought of those Irish poets, whose verses had meant much to me, and sipped the stuff with reverence as if it had been nectar from Olympus.
When everyone had their glasses, Gypsy came back into the front part of the room, and, sitting in a high-backed chair that was covered with gold and purple embroideries, she cleared her throat, leant forward so that the lamplight fell on her weird little face, and sang, to my surprise, the old melody:
“O the googoo bird is a giddy bird,
No other is zo gay.
O the googoo bird is a merry bird,
Her zingeth all day.
Her zooketh zweet flowers
To make her voice clear,
And when her cryeth googoo, googoo,
The zummer draweth near.”
Somehow I had expected something else. It seemed odd to hear that simple song drop word by word in the incense-laden atmosphere of that fantastic room.
Here's a picture of this funny little witch.
http://pcs2051.tripod.com/PCS_as_Young_Woman.jpg
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