Thank You, Fog

There’s the fog of war and there’s the poetry of fog. A recent heavy mist  in my patch of the mid-Hudson valley brought fog and poetry to mind. Not the yellow fog of an old-time London peasouper particular but rather the mysterious wreathing whiteness of an English mist in a damp December countryside – the unsullied sister of smog. And specifically it reminded me of ‘Thank You, Fog’ by W.H. Auden.

It’s one of his last poems and the title of his last book. Published after his death, it concerns a Christmas spent with his friends James and Tania Stern at their home – Hatch House, in Tisbury, Wiltshire. Auden traveled there with another friend Sonia Orwell who was also a guest.

It’s 1972 and the first Christmas Auden has spent in England since 1937. He is at Oxford and not very happy.  In September, he had left his New York apartment on St Mark’s Place and in November taken up residence at a C16th cottage – the former college brewhouse – on the grounds of Christ Church College, Oxford. He paid a modest rent and was free to join in the life of the college. 

According to Peter Conrad “he scandalized the sanctimonious diners at High Table in Christ Church by asking when they started masturbating or whether they peed in their bathroom sinks.” 

So, unhappy at Oxford, Auden asked the Sterns – friends since 1937 – to invite him for Christmas.

Thank You, Fog 

Grown used to New York weather,
all too familiar with Smog,
You, Her unsullied Sister,
I’d quite forgotten and what
You bring to British winters:
now native knowledge returns.

Sworn foe to festination,
daunter of drivers and planes,
volants, of course, will cause You,

but how delighted I am
that You’ve been lured to visit
Wiltshire’s witching countryside
for a whole week at Christmas,
that no one can scurry where
my cosmos is contracted
to an ancient manor-house
and four Selves, joined in friendship,
Jimmy, Tania, Sonia, Me.

Outdoors a shapeless silence,
for even then birds whose blood
is brisk enough to bid them
abide here all the year round,
like the merle and the mavis,
at Your cajoling refrain
their jocund interjections,
no cock considers a scream,
vaguely visible, tree-tops
rustle not but stay there, so
efficiently condensing
Your damp to definite drops.

Indoors specific spaces,
cosy, accommodate to
reminiscence and reading,
crosswords, affinities, fun:
refected by a sapid
supper and regaled by wine,
we sit in a glad circle,
each unaware of our own
nose but alert to the others,
making the most of it, for
how soon we must re-enter,
when lenient days are done,
the world of work and money
and minding our p’s and q’s.

No summer sun will ever
dismantle the global gloom
cast by the Daily Papers,
vomiting in slip-shod prose
the facts of filth and violence
that we’re too dumb to prevent:
our earth’s a sorry spot, but
for this special interim,
so restful yet so festive,
Thank You, Thank You, Thank You, Fog

         – W.H. Auden

Auden thanks the fog for the permission to stay indoors, do nothing and sit in cosy companionship in a glad circle of friends. He is grateful for the time away and grouses about the “global gloom” of the world where the Daily Papers vomit “in slip-shod prose/ the facts of filth and violence.”

Auden loved words and his poems often send me to the dictionary. Why is it I am not annoyed by this extra chore even while I find some of the choices here strained and awkward? (Festination? To festinate – from Latin – means to hasten. Festination is the type of gait often exhibited by patients suffering from Parkinson’s disease.)

And sapid – alliterative with supper – means agreeable and flavorful but sounds like vapid. It’s an archaism that doesn’t really work. And using an adjective for a noun – volants – to name the cause of the fog?  Well … ok it’s airy, flying, air-venty and spread and sounds right.

He had a habit of turning nouns into verbs – a common practice often decried by the language purists. Here we have refect – presumably from refectory – suggesting they ate themselves silly and enjoyed the wine.

Merle and mavis – not girls with rather old-fashioned names – but garden birds, blackbird and thrush.

The poem captures something quite wonderful – a time away, a welcome respite. Closed in by the fog there is the wonderful release from necessity to do –  an enforced intimate idleness of “reminiscence and reading, crosswords, affinities, fun” and cosy companionable silence. A restful, festive special interim away from earth’s “sorry spot” and the fret of the “world of the work and money/ and minding our p’s and q’s.”

The reality was not quite so magical

Sonia Orwell stayed for three days and the Sterns had expected Auden would also. He stayed for a week and they realized he had no desire to return to Oxford.

It was not a happy time. Auden sat in front of the fire all day, doing crosswords and reading a book by Hannah Arendt that he had found in his bedroom ….(The Sterns) found it impossible to engage him in real conversation. He spurned the freshly-ground coffee that they had bought specially for him, insisting on the instant variety; he also made them order for him The Daily Telegraph rather than their usual Times, explaining” ‘One gets more right-wing as one gets older.’ And, though James Stern dropped hints about the price of drink, he made it clear he wanted plenty of vodka to be provided for him (he did not offer to pay). He took the vodka upstairs with him at night, and by the morning had often consumed the greater part of the bottle. He would not go further than the front door – ‘A walk? What on earth for?’ – and when a planned visit by car to the writer Christopher Sykes, who lived forty miles away, had to be cancelled because a blanket of fog had come down, he was visibly pleased, turning delightedly to the fire and his crossword. – Humphrey Carpenter

Auden returned to Oxford for the remainder of the academic year and escaped to his house in Kirschstetten, Austria for the summer. Before his planned return to Oxford in the autumn of 1973, he gave a poetry reading in Vienna on September 29th. That night he suffered a fatal heart attack in his hotel bedroom.

References: 

“Theological America: W. H. Auden in New York” from Imagining America Peter Conrad, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980
 W.H.Auden, A Biography  by Humphrey Carpenter, Faber and Faber 1981.