A HAIRCUT AND A HANGING

We are are rather looking forward to the opening of the shiny new Blackfriars station. The platforms will actually be on the bridge so you will be able to look up or down the Thames whilst you wait for your train as the bankers and the bohos come and go. Very nice. 

I was in the old, cute and rather wonkily shaped The Blackfriar pub just nearby the other day mulling on this and various other things about the area.  The name Blackfriars comes from the outfits of the Dominicans who built a monastery here long ago. Opposite is the rather grand art deco-ish white curve of the Unilever Building.  This used to be crowned by a row of classical statues.  They mysteriously disappeared when the building was re-furbished a couple of years back.  I know they weren't original but it was quite an unpleasant shock when the scaffolding came down - a bit like looking up to see an elegant friend who has just had a very bad haircut.

Curious as to what had happened, I investigated and, despite being fobbed off several times, was eventually told by a little bird that the statues been secretly spirited away to a private garden in Surrey. (A bit naughty this considering they were attached to a listed building).  Mind you, the area has a history of dodgy dealings.  Once called Alsatia and home to the Blackfriars' cousins the Whitefriars, until the18th century this was one of those extraordinary places with the privilege of 'Sanctuary' - that is an area officially beyond the law. Basically it was full of scumbags - some of the religious persuasion, some not. Next door the district known as The Temple remains the home of those other stretchers of justice, London's lawyers.

Near here too, the hidden river Fleet exits into the Thames in a giant chamber way below the surface.  Almost ten years ago, I visited it as part of my psychedelic studies (more on that here if you like). It is quite a gloomy place and the path under the bridge, now part building site / part wee-smelling concrete canyon, is rather melancholy too. 

Psycho-geographically, the desolate atmosphere may be the result (or perhaps the cause) of a macabre incident in the early 1980s when Roberto Calvi, a powerful Italian banker was found hanging under the bridge as dead as a defecit reduction plan. Just another London suicide?  Perhaps.  A few years ago, it was revealed that his neck showed no sign of hanging and his hands had never touched the bricks in his pockets that weighed him down.  In keeping with the historical tradition of Alsatia Mr Calvi was found to be rather beyond the law.  Fresh from one conviction, he was about to be put on trial again for his role at the heart of a massive international fraud ring. In another uncanny correspondence with the religious character of the district, he had fled Venice to take sanctuary here and was known as 'God's banker' because of his association with the Pope's bodyguard Archbishop Paul Marcinkus.  As a Vatican employee with the benefit of his own sanctuary from the law, the Archbishop was never questioned about the death (well not at least until he left this mortal coil for his own personal judgement day a couple of years back).

Currently of course there is something rather significant about the the image of a dead banker - as is evident on posters at the anti-capitalist protest a few hundred metres uphill by St Pauls.  And down here at the edge of the financial city of London, despite the shiny new glass and silver rising up above, I couldn't help but wonder as I finished my drink and wandered home, if the place of Mr Calvi's end was not in fact holding on to its old character.

THE LONDON BOX

For the collector of London arcana, esoterica or ephemera there can surely be no greater prize than the box of Joanna Southcott. I've been on several wild goose chases following a lead or alerted by an informant as to its potential whereabouts.  It was last definitively seen sometime early last century and although several boxes have subsequently been claimed to be it, most of us who take an interest in such things believe it has long vanished. 

Most lately, the strange object shown in the photo oposite was suggested as a possible contendor.  It was uncovered recently in Bermondsey - one of Ms Southcott's places of residence during her time in London - and it is indeed a strange thing.  But by the time I got down there to check,  the contents, if there had ever been any, had been plundered.  I recognised a couple of other treasure hunters lurking suspiciously in the vicinity so obviously I wasn't the only one to take an interest in this particular suspect.  They are curious bunch these treasure hunters: secretive; competitive; suspicious; devious; pretending to be helpful whilst covertly putting others off the trail and guarding their clues with the paranoia  of cold war spies .  The only one I can respect, never mind stand to be with, is the unofficial City of London archivist Leonard Wise.

Dr Wise doubts the Bermondsey box was Joanna Southcott's and disputes the claims of The Panacea Society who say that they are in possession of the genuine article.  He thinks it either remains hidden or was possibly opened by Churchill shortly before the Battle of Britain in the second world war. He remains reluctant to be drawn on whether it might have influenced the outcome of that particularly decisive incident.  

Joanna Southcott, 'the Bride of Christ', was either an outrageous fraud or the holiest of women depending on who you believe.  She proclaimed herself the cekestial woman spoken of in Revelations chapter 12 and amassed a huge band of followers including many men of letters and influence such as Byron who believed fervently in her prophecies and powers.  Dying shortly after a phantom pregnancy of which she was supposed to give birth to 'Shiloh' the new Messiah, her legacy lived on in the continued faith of her followers and in the box she sealed and left to posterity.  She was undoubtedly a very strange, charismatic person and like many such,  I believe both a genuine seer and an inveterate imposter:

"While all through thy wondrous days,
Heaven and Earth enraptur'd gaz'd..."

So what is the treasure her box was reputed to contain?  Well no one actually knows but it is claimed that amongst the contents were prophecies sufficient to save England in a time of grave peril. From the early twentieth century through to the 1970s, various campaigns have been mounted by Joanna Southcott's followers including The Panacea Society to have it opened, and understandably so, England has probably been in its gravest peril to date during that period.   But the box is only supposed to be opened in the presence of 24 bishops: not an easy thing to arrange and the reason often cited by The Panacea Society as to why they have not opened the box in their possession.

Whether you believe in such stuff or not, the genuine box would be a very interesting ad valuable curiosity.  I have gathered some fairly reliable descriptive details of it over the last few years and have occasionally felt myself to be fairly close on its trail.  I will of course keep you informed should it turn up.  And I would request that you would let me know if you ever come across any clues to its whereabouts yourself.

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In the meantime, here apropos of nothing in particular is The Real Tuesday Weld's cover version of Malvina Reynold's  Little Boxes

THE GREAT MYTHOGRAPHER

I enjoyed listening to Peter Ackroyd read and be interviewed last night.  He is a neighbour psycho-geographically speaking and an undoubtedly impressive personage, The event was to mark the publication of the first volume of his "History of England".  An eccentric workaholic loner, a legendary storyteller, a lover of London and England's cultural heritage, he is a bulky man and is starting to remind me somewhat of Winston Churchill.   He is very funny in a dry sort of way and whilst a popular (and populist) writer remains seemingly indifferent to the great affection in which he is held.  In contract to his slim and enthusiastic interviewer, his demeanour oscillated between that of an impatient headmaster and a cornered badger about to bolt.  Throughout, he appeared keen to leave and get back to his writing - as well he might, having another FIVE volumes of the history to get through before its putative completion in 2024. 

He generally responded to questions with an economy bordering on irascibility.  One audience member asked one of those long, self important questions which was really a lengthy assertion of their own cleverness followed by the preposterous enquiry "Of the tens of thousands of facts in your book, how many would you stand up for in court and attest were definately true?"

"None." barked Peter and turned to the next questioner.

The interviewer had a bit more luck teasing information out and asked what we were all dying to know: "How on earth do you manage it?".  (His output is prodigious and beginning to rival that of his literary hero Dickens: novels; biographies; the histories; poems; essays - he just keeps pouring them out).  His response managed to be both simultaneously indignant and poignant:  

"I haven't got anything else to do." he said and left it that.

He evidently has a taste for the macabre.  His reading had all been about the gruesome crimes and punishments of the mediaeval period and he left us with some very entertaining and insightful thoughts on the recent London riots, slavery and celebrity TV historians.  I thought at one point he almost came out as a potential cross-dresser.

A final question from the floor asked what sort of person London would be like if it had a being of its own  - as seems to be implied by the title of his seminal work "London: a Biography".  Whilst he was mulling this over, I looked around and guessed that a few of audience were probably thinking what I was thinking.

It would be like Peter Ackroyd.