O'Pinions & O'Bservations O' O'Bscure O'Briania


Return to Main Page

The Slope of the High Mountain

Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 08:53:33 -0700
From: Susan Wenger

I am in partial agreement with all the short story participants who have not said anything about this story.

Just when I thought I was starting to understand O'Brian's short stories, which are totally unlike any other short stories I've ever read, here comes THIS one: this one has a bit of a plot, it has a beginning, an event, and an ending. We get to know the character, his feelings, his fear, his desperate hope. This should have been our favorite story, right? Yet this one was unsatisfying. So far.

So I'll cast the first stone.

Why "happier than Lazarus!!!?" I never thought of Lazarus as particularly happy. Why not "pleased as punch," or "happy as a clam," or "as happy as a pig in one of Toni Morrison's books?"

Back to the short story. I'll get back to Lazarus in a minute. Here are the words/phrases that stuck out to me:

Theme: this story opens with "Snow had fallen . . .showing BRAVE in the sun . . . it was a LIVING PLEASURE to look at it."

This story is about bravery, yes, the theme is set. O'Brian often uses the phrase "lively pleasure." Living pleasure? Yes, the themes for this story are set. Bravery, living. The story ends, "He kicked the LAST snow from under his boots and ran down the grassy INNOCENT slope . . . down to the thorn trees and down safe and HAPPIER THAN LAZARUS . . . the real knowledge of naked fear had left him again."

How many of you readers have described a slope as "innocent?" I didn't think so. The slope wasn't the villain in the story. The setting was a foxhunt, but the fox wasn't as endangered as the narrator. Was the danger real, or just in the narrator's head? Certainly he could have fallen to his death, he misjudged the situation a few times, but the really dangerous part went away all by itself, and he kicked the last snow from under his boots.

"Lazarus" - means "God has helped." Everyone in this story came out alive, laughing in the sunshine, including, I suppose, the fox, since he did not seem to be in any trouble the last time we saw him. Was the narrator "happier than Lazarus" because he was resurrected from his danger? If so, why not "happy as Lazarus," why happier? "Living pleasure." Narrator was happy he was still living. Do you suppose Lazarus was NOT happy about being resurrected, he didn't ask for eternal life, but THIS man was happier than Lazarus because he WANTED to live?

Thoughts, my friends?

- Susan, puzzling

=====

"Who wishes to be a meagre sailorman if he can be a learned and enter the government service? Why, in time you might be an official and never do anything for remainder of earthly existence. You could grow long fingernails, and become obese and dignified. " -
Patrick O'Brian


Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 12:43:00 -0000
From: sdwilson

Susan pondered.

I liked this story: its directness, its uplifting ending, its clear narrative line. Isn't Lazarus a premonition? And note that the word "pleasure" appears twice at the very start of the story.

This is one story I had in mind when I posted last summer about walking being a poor-man's yacht. The ceaseless, confused casting back and forth, the vagaries of the weather, the uncertainty of outcome are all shared by walkers and sailors (I imagine).

And though I have no basis by which to assess O'Brian's accuracy with regards to storms, ships and actions, I have scrambled up and down enough snowy foreboding slopes to know that he has this drawn very finely, and to give me confidence in the rest of his descriptions.

I think the danger was very real. Most falls kill after a long tumble down something steep, not a free-fall through space. The slipperiness of new wet snow over wet grass on a slope has to be experienced to be believed.

Scott


Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 17:06:34 PDT
From: "P. Richman"

Two points.

The narrator's name is Brown. Brown is the color of things dying. Dead leaves, dead grass.

Two ravens flew out above him. Ravens are scavengers. They fly over animals that are dead or dying.


Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 17:20:56 -0700
From: Susan Wenger

--- "P. Richman" wrote: Two points.

The narrator's name is Brown. Brown is the color of things dying. Dead leaves, dead grass.

Two ravens flew out above him. Ravens are scavengers. They fly over animals that are dead or dying.

Yes! So maybe the story is about life and death? Most of these stories are, aren't they?

- Susan

=====

"Who wishes to be a meagre sailorman if he can be a learned and enter the government service? Why, in time you might be an official and never do anything for remainder of earthly existence. You could grow long fingernails, and become obese and dignified. " -
Patrick O'Brian


Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 22:03:12 -0400
From: Don Seltzer

Susan Wenger wrote:

Just when I thought I was starting to understand O'Brian's short stories, which are totally unlike any other short stories I've ever read, here comes THIS one: this one has a bit of a plot, it has a beginning, an event, and an ending. We get to know the character, his feelings, his fear, his desperate hope. This should have been our favorite story, right? Yet this one was unsatisfying. So far.

I think that I liked this one more than Susan did, partly for the reasons she gave. It was finally a straightforward story which I could accept and understand at face value. My major complaint was that it seemed overly long and tedious at times for the first reading. Somehow it improved upon a second reading.

There were parts of the story that invoked memories of a few months ago, when I went aloft on the Rose. The analogies are weak, and I don't pretend that either the dangers involved or my fears at the time were at all comparable to the "Slope", but there was just enough that I can extrapolate the experience to appreciate the emotions of Brown on the mountain.

The climb up the shrouds started out easily enough, but the higher I went, the more difficult the obstacles became. Squeezing past the futtock shrouds, I found that there were no more easy footholds. "They came to a wall... It was worse the other side." I can remember all of the voices talking inside my head. The youthful one, urging me on because it would be fun up there on the topsail yard. The other one, reminding me that I was a mature adult with responsibilities, and wouldn't I feel ridiculous if I fell and splattered myself on the deck below. And then the voice of pride asking how could I even consider shaming myself by backing down now that I had reached this far.

Next came the moment on the topmast shrouds, gauging the distance to the yard and the insubstantial footrope dangling beneath. A rational part of my mind said don't try it, but I made that leap of faith anyway. For awhile I was able to forget how high I was, but then came furling the sail, in which I had to lean way over the yard, trying not to allow my eyes to focus on the deck below. "He knew that he must not look down anymore, for his courage was beginning to go, and with it his freedom of the terror of the height."

When it came time to come down, I was concerned about having to repeat the prior obstacles in reverse. But stepping off the yard went easily, and then I was swinging off the shrouds onto the maintop, and confidently descending the lower shrouds. "... in minutes, he threw away the height that he had won with such pain."

Once on deck, I was jubilant with my triumph, quickly forgetting the anxious moments and doubts. "...laughing like a boy ... happier than Lazarus ... in ten minutes the real knowledge of naked fear had left him again."

Don Seltzer


Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 21:19:47 -0500
From: Philip Sellew

Thanks, Don, that's very nice - gets my verti-going. I haven't had time to read and contribute to the SS thread, but this reminds me of the photos posted of you Rose Topmen -- the hardest part for me might have been climbing back off the yard to the top (assuming I didn't fall over trying to furl the thang!).

Philip Sellew
an admiring if decidedly grass-combing lubber at or near 45 00 N 93 10 W

Don Seltzer* wrote in part:

There were parts of the story that invoked memories of a few months ago, when I went aloft on the Rose.

*which my fingers first typed 'Sweltzer,' which he ain't bad neither


Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 05:00:54 -0700
From: Susan Wenger

--- Don Seltzer wrote:

Somehow it improved upon a second reading.

Yes, they ALL do. That's how you know it's written by the same Patrick O'Brian : }

There were parts of the story that invoked memories of a few months ago, when I went aloft on the Rose. The analogies are weak, and I don't pretend that either the dangers involved or my fears at the time were at all comparable to the "Slope", but there was just enough that I can extrapolate the experience to appreciate the emotions of Brown on the mountain.

(snip)

Once on deck, I was jubilant with my triumph, quickly forgetting the anxious moments and doubts. "...laughing like a boy ... happier than Lazarus ... in ten minutes the real knowledge of naked fear had left him again."

Aha! I've said earlier that the short stories are "interactive" - that the interpretation depends on the reader's individual experiences. I hadn't had the right experiences to "get" this story, but I think Don has nailed it with his Rose experiences.

Great post!

- Susan

=====

"Who wishes to be a meagre sailorman if he can be a learned and enter the government service? Why, in time you might be an official and never do anything for remainder of earthly existence. You could grow long fingernails, and become obese and dignified. " -
Patrick O'Brian


Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 23:54:52 -0400
From: John Finneran

"The Slope of the High Mountain" tells the seemingly straightforward story of a fox hunt gone awry, and a potential tragedy averted. The story begins with a description of snow: "Snow had fallen in the night and it lay on all the ground above five hundred feet," it begins, "showing brave in the sun and making the sky so blue that it was a pleasure to look at it." (p.38) (Susan has already commented on the unusual usages of some of the words in the opening sentence.)

Next we learn of two men "walking fast up the Nantmor road" to "a meet of foxhounds". Up ahead, they see "a dark figure, dressed in black, incongruous among the rocks, and he was singing passionately. It was a hymn in Welsh and he was a shepherd: presently he vanished at a turning in the road, and although they heard his singing high up among the stunted trees they did not see the man again." (p.38) This is the last we hear of the mysterious shepherd.

Five paragraphs into the story (p.39), we find out the (last) names of the two men: Gonville and Brown. (Note the order they're introduced.) From the shepherd singing in Welsh and the names of the mountains they pass, it's clear by this point they they are in the mountains of Wales. They come at last to Hafod Llan, where they see the Master ("He was of an ancient family, and his people had hunted this country above three hundred years. He had a falcon's nose and eye, and his moustache curled with a magnificent arrogance."), with hounds and other huntsmen lined up (p.40). They head "off towards the Gallt y Wenallt, the mountain behind the wood." (p.40).

They are hunting for a while, when there comes a significant phrase: "Brown talked to the huntsman, a young, tall Welshman who swore in English" (p.41), significant because this is the first indication, on the last paragraph of the fourth page of the 13 page story, that Brown (as opposed to Gonville and Brown) is the story's central character. Then they see the fox: "A dark brown fox was he, big and rangy, a long legged fox. He looked up at the men far above him, and plainly they could see him deliberate as he stood there, looking up and damning their eyes." (p.42) The fox runs away, up towards the mountain, and the huntsmen and hounds chase after him. They climb over a wall, up a "cruel slope" (p.43), through snow.

Brown decides to try a different way than the others. He sees Gonville about to go back and is "secretly rather pleased" (p.44). He goes over the snow-covered slope, at one point, slipping uncontrollably down, but, out of sheer luck, is able to stop his fall before it proves fatal (p.45). He continues to climb, at one point coming across the hounds coming down, who "looked momentarily at Brown and went on." (p.47) They've apparently had no luck catching the fox. Brown comes at last to "a platform with a sheltering slab over it" (p.48), where he stays for a while, exhausted and desparaging. At one point he sees Gonville walking quickly far below. Then he sees two ravens, which make some noise and then fly off. His spirits are somewhat revived by the warming sun. Then he makes his "great discovery" and feels like a fool: the sun has melted the snow, and now he can easily go down the slope. The story ends with him running "down the grassy innocent slope laughing like a boy, down to the thorn trees and down safe and happier than Lazarus to the lovely wood and the lake with the blue sky over them, and in ten minutes the real knowledge of naked fear had left him." (p.50)

There's several interesting things about this story. As with all of the earlier stories, a man (or boy, presumably, in "Not Liking to Pass the Road Again") takes a road into the woods, where he faces some sort of challenge or danger. As with "The Happy Despatch" and "Not Liking", the danger comes from going uphill. (Just as if you're an attractive young lady in a slasher movie, you should never go outside or down into the basement in your underwear, the lesson appears to be that, in an O'Brian short story, never go uphill.)

From the names, it appears that Brown is English and Gonville French, as such they are outsiders in Wales. There may be some significance to Gonville's name (gone back to the ville? a hint of his early retreat), but Brown is obviously the more significant character. As an Englishman in a Celtic country, he much in common with Woolen from "Happy Despatch", and even more in common with Joseph Aubrey Pugh from Testimonies. There are two other significant meanings to Brown's name, which I'll get to in a moment.

First, let's look at the fox. Some of you may know the old Irish song "Maderine Rue" ("The Little Red Fox"), in which the red fox eats a fine fat goose. The fox in the song represents England and the goose Ireland, so if we take the fox in "The Slope" as also representing England, we can see that he has much in common with Brown: both Englishman in danger in a foreign land. But of course the fox in "Slope" is not a red fox at all; he's a BROWN fox. (Thus the second significance of Brown's name.) There is thus an identification of Brown with the fox, and we can see that their stories are much the same: both go up the mountain into danger, and, just as the fox ultimately escapes, so too does Brown. The identification goes further: the fox is personified: he is referred to as "he" (unlike the hound referred to as "it" (p.41); although "her" is used for a female hound, "an English bitch with a noble, judicious head" (p.40)). As for Brown, recall the scene where the hounds see him as they are coming down. They stop for a minute and stare before going on. Why are they looking? Do they see something of the fox in him? (Remember in Post Captain, the dogs weren't fooled at all by Jack's bear costume.)

Now we come to the third significance of Brown's name, and this is the most intriguing of all: if his name is Brown, what are his initials? B is the end, of course, but what are the complete initials? Could it be -- JSB (the protaganist from "The Return")? I've already speculated that JSB is the unnamed man from "The Dawn Flighting", so there's a possibility that the same character has appeared in all three stories. Consider: JSB from "The Return" is "[g]rinning like a boy" (p. 11) when he kills his fish; the man from "Dawn Flighting" stares at the bird he's killed "with an unconcious grin of pleasure" (p.32); and now Brown is "laughing like a boy" (p.50) as he comes down the mountain.

There were two more interesting things I noticed. First, there's a lot of religious words in the final sentence ("innocent", "thorn", "Lazarus"), as well as possibly in the scene with the mysterious shepherd, who is singing a hymn. Finally, O'Brian uses alliternation of the "s" sound in the final paragraph ("slid", "scrambled", "second", "slope", etc.), hearkening back to the sound of "snow", the story's opening word.

John Finneran


Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 10:04:44 -0400
From: Don Seltzer

John Finneran wrote:

Now we come to the third significance of Brown's name, and this is the most intriguing of all: if his name is Brown, what are his initials? B is the end, of course, but what are the complete initials? Could it be -- JSB (the protaganist from "The Return")? I've already speculated that JSB is the unnamed man from "The Dawn Flighting", so there's a possibility that the same character has appeared in all three stories.

Could it be the same JB whose initials are scratched into the wall of the nunnery, where Jack Aubrey and the crew of the Ariel are held prisoner? :-)

What confuses me a bit is the nature of this fox hunt. Men on foot instead of horseback? Do the men just chase after the dogs who chase the fox? What do they do they do when they catch up to it? I would think that if the dogs caught the fox on the open treeless slope of the mountain, there would not be much left when the men arrived. And what is the role of the Master, who seems to be travelling separately from the larger group of men? Is everyone a "Huntsman" or just certain individuals?

Don Seltzer


Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 13:31:11 EDT
From: Charles Munoz

In a message dated 10/21/99 11:55:18 PM, jfinnera@CONCENTRIC.NET wrote:

It was a hymn in Welsh and he was a shepherd: presently he vanished at a turning in the road, and although they heard his singing high up among the stunted trees they did not see the man again." (p.38) This is the last we hear of the mysterious shepherd.

John's analysis is lovely, dark and deep. Vy convincing. Everything posted so far about this story is well-taken.

Just a couple of additions to some of the comments already made:

There's vy little question as to the identity of a Good, Hymn-Singing Shepherd in a story of death averted by a writer raised in the Christian tradition.

"Happy as Lazarus": There are two Lazarii in the bible: the beggar who sits amid his sores outside a rich man's door but ends up happy in Abraham's bosom; and the dead man raised by that same Shepherd. We might consider Brown (and of course his doppelganger the fox) as coming close to being raised from the dead. Wch shd make them both happy.

The ravens--symbols of death--Twa Corbies--fly away.

All that snow, and its importance. Consider the use of snow one of the great short stories: Joyce's "The Dead," wch ends...

"...as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."

Joyce is the master of symbolism (unless Melville wants to fight him for the honor) and in these stories we see POB working in that same symbolic direction, as so many writers of that time did: nowadays he's far subtler, far more mature, in his use of symbols in the canon.

Charlezzzz, noting that there's even a minor character named Browne in "The Dead." It's the short story of the world, so it is.


Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 12:39:06 -0000
From: sdwilson

Charles Munoz wrote:

"...as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."

Sheesh. And here was I thinking that snow was just snow. Right, Two Sheds?

Scott


Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 12:39:17 -0000
From: sdwilson

Don Seltzer wrote:

What confuses me a bit is the nature of this fox hunt. Men on foot instead of horseback? Do the men just chase after the dogs who chase the fox? What do they do they do when they catch up to it?

There are some other walking fox hunts in the stories that will answer some of your questions. With regards to foot, I don't imagine the majority of hunting in Wales in the 50s was done by resplendent mounted squires: most of us have to walk.

Reminds me of an old Punch cartoon about the enjoyment of the hunt. First come the mounted gentry, frowning and severe. Then a jolly but lower class who had got hold of bicycles and asses and nags. Then the hoy-polloy, running in their brogues, suits and trilbies, joy bursting from their grinning faces.

Scott


Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 19:49:01 +0100
From: "Anthony D. Clover"

John Finneran wrote:

From the names, it appears that Brown is English and Gonville French, as such they are outsiders in Wales. There may be some significance to Gonville's name (gone back to the ville? a hint of his early retreat) ...

On a point of pure fact, both names are absolutely English, but whereas Brown is the most common after Smith, Gonville is very rare. Maybe that is the sole significance in a binary exercise.

Probably the only connotation of "Gonville" is as part of the name of a quite large and famous college at Cambridge University, Gonville & Caius. As a Hall of the university, this was founded by Edmund Gonville, rector of Thelnetham in Suffolk in 1348, but it was John Caius (1510-1573), an English physician and scholar, who studied to become M.D. at Padua, taught anatomy in London and then practised in both Shrewsbury and Norwich, who elevated it to the status of a college. He was physician to Edward VI, Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth I, and the spelling "Caius", pronounced "keez", is a Latinised form of the name Kayes or Keys. The latter was a Roman Catholic, who remained one amidst the political confusion of the Reformation.

English names ending in -ville are traps and may well conceal the word "field". For example, Enville is also Enfield, the place in Middlesex; (de) Glanville may represent the Anglo-Saxon "Clanefeld" and derive from Clanfield in Hampshire, Wiltshire or Dorset, but it also indicates Glanville in Calvados (Normandy). The name Gonville, however, while properly Norman in deriving from Gondouville in the Seine-et-Marne départment, is paradoxically not a French surname at all and must be regarded as completely English.

I leave it to others to make what they can of this exegesis. I confess that while I very much like POB's "Testimonies" for its evocation of the mountain country of Wales and believe that more generally he was trying out his poetic voice in prose as an English gentleman through his love of English country pursuits in Celtic settings, I find it difficult to relate to his short stories with sympathy and I have been deterred by their coldness and suppressed cruelty from taking part in this exercise.

Anthony
[a-hermeneutically]


Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 18:21:57 -0700
From: Greg Henrikson

I'm still trying to figure out if there's really a dozen words for it in Yupik, but I have some of my own:

Cold snow
Wet snow
Icy snow
Crunchy snow
God damned breakup snow

Greg "Two Sheds" Henrikson
61:18:77 N, 149:88:90 W.

-----Original Message-----

Sheesh. And here was I thinking that snow was just snow. Right, Two Sheds?

Scott


Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 22:10:21 -0400
From: Adam Quinan

Don Seltzer wrote:

What confuses me a bit is the nature of this fox hunt. Men on foot instead of horseback? Do the men just chase after the dogs who chase the fox? What do they do they do when they catch up to it? I would think that if the dogs caught the fox on the open treeless slope of the mountain, there would not be much left when the men arrived. And what is the role of the Master, who seems to be travelling separately from the larger group of men? Is everyone a "Huntsman" or just certain individuals?

In hill country such as North Wales or the Lake District fox hunting was usually carried out on foot. The famous John Peel of the song "D'ye ken John Peel" hunted on foot.

As in fox hunting on horseback, the hounds chase the fox and if they catch it, they kill it by tearing it to pieces, often before the hunt catches up. This is one of the reasons why the banning of fox hunting is being urged by Tony Blair.

The Master was usually the gentleman who sponsored the pack and was in charge of the social arrangements, the Huntsman (or men) were paid Hunt servants who looked after the pack and controlled it during the hunt.

There are other field sports such as beagling where the dogs are followed on foot rather than horseback. Sometimes its the problem of riding a horse in the topography in the Welsh mountains, sometimes its the size of the followers' purse which dictates the use of feet!

--
Adam Quinan
'Grab a chance and you won't be sorry for a might-have-been'
Commander Ted Walker R.N.
Somewhere around 43° 39' 0"N, 79° 22' 48"W


Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 18:33:21 -0700
From: Greg Henrikson

The ravens--symbols of death--Twa Corbies--fly away.

This recurrent linkage between ravens and death makes me wonder if the European variety or corvus corvu is different from the kind we have here. Does anyone know if the ravens in that neck of the woods talk? Ours will get in major conversations, gibbering away in a strange language to each other. I can see crows as an image of death, but ravens deserve better.

Greg "Two Sheds" Henrikson
61:18:77 N, 149:88:90 W.


Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 18:40:26 -0700
From: Greg Henrikson

Sorry. Corvus corax. I knew that was wrong, but being wrong rarely stays my hand.

Greg "Two Sheds" Henrikson
61:18:77 N, 149:88:90 W.


Date: Sat, 23 Oct 1999 02:12:43 -0400
From: John Finneran

Anthony Clover wrote:

On a point of pure fact, both names are absolutely English, but whereas Brown is the most common after Smith, Gonville is very rare. Maybe that is the sole significance in a binary exercise.

Anthony,

Thanks for the additional information on Gonville. Re: my thought that the name was French: looks like I was wrongville!

John F.

P.S. Perhaps you can explain what a-hermeneutically means?


Date: Sat, 23 Oct 1999 08:32:49 EDT

From: PLeenhouts@AOL.COM

In a message dated 10/22/99 9:21:26 PM EST, ghenrikson@CUSTOMCPU.COM writes:

but I have some of my own:

Cold snow
Wet snow
Icy snow
Crunchy snow

To which I'd add - "boilerplate", that which results from rain on top of snow ( makes skiing quite interesting). And "poweder", of course. I like Greg's g-d snow tho.

Pete


Date: Sat, 23 Oct 1999 14:24:41 +0100
From: "Anthony D. Clover"

Don Seltzer quoted me and wrote:

their coldness and suppressed cruelty...

I like that description.

I much appreciated the review quoted.

I have qualms of conscience! I feel I was harsh about POB's short stories, which really I ought to try and read with the attention to detail that you others are giving, and that is the great benefit you are conferring on the wilfully benighted such as me. Keep it up.

They are sharply observed and the language is honed down with a power of concentration to which many readers would not be prepared to give a corresponding attention.

I suspect that my own unease is due to the fact that I tried writing like this once upon a time and sense that they are principally the output of a young man, who is both translating his early experiences to the page and experimenting with language as much as he was testing his courage, stamina, nerve, even ruthlessness in many of these stories through practising traditional English field sports. Thus, at about the age of eighteen I wrote a description of the death of a wasp truncated at the waist; it was what might be called "finely observed" but in reality more akin to the dispassionate dissection of a surgeon. There was another about climbing Tryfan (3,010 feet, which is mentioned in POB's "The Slope of the High Mountain") and running down the mountain afterwards towards the deep, black tarn which adjoins the A5, the old Roman road to Anglesey. In it I compared the sensations with what I imagined it must be like to be running semi-weightless on the moon, but nauseous and sick with fatigue after an over-strenuous day of climbing.

In those days, I did a great deal of winter fell-walking and rock-climbing, including the 1,000 foot of Lliwedd, which POB also mentions here: this is near vertical, it has to be done roped up in about half a dozen pitches, and the whole was then classed as severe. The entire area he describes is about one square on the Ordnance Survey 1:250,000 scale maps or (say) 25 square miles, and it includes the Snowdon Horseshoe and the crags of Glydr Fawr and Glydr Fach. Although by Alpine standards these are not high - the highest, Snowdon itself, is no more than 3,560 feet - these are all compressed into a small compass, through which the Llanberis, Nant Ffrancon, Nant Gwynant and Aberglaslyn passes carved out by tumbling streams, the last two of which he mentions. Thus he does not exaggerate when at one point he talks of a slope of 55 degrees - if anything, this is the norm - and I can also relate to the stone slabs because, more than once, taking the best one and using it as a toboggan was the tireless way of climbing down quickly for the seductive reward of a spine-chilling swim in one of the bottomless lakes or tarns that dot the landscape.

There is absolutely no question of using horses to hunt the fox in this area: the limit I know of is the girdle of mountains west of Pretoria through which de Wet took his commando to escape from the British in the Boer War or some of the hills north west of Stirling on the Highland Line through which Robert the Bruce fled using his clever garrons (from the Gaelic "gearran", which the OED nastily explains as a small and inferior kind of Irish or Scotch horse) - there must be similar American stories from the West. But what you can do is otter-hunting, splashing around in the ice-cold rivers with hounds very similar to those POB names in this story. This, I believe, with the march of PC progress in Britain has been "phased out".

Anthony


Date: Sat, 23 Oct 1999 15:05:11 +0100
From: "Anthony D. Clover"

John F. quizzed:

Perhaps you can explain what a-hermeneutically means?

It was a nonce word I made up with a certain irony. I suppose it ought to have been an(h)ermeneutically, or non-hermeneutically - to be (only marginally) less pedantic.

Anyhow, I had wryly or self-mockingly used the word "exegesis" or practical explanation earlier on, when I gave you my spiel on the name Gonville. I was only saying that I was not going to take the extra step of indulging in hermeneutics i.e. interpretation of the text or scripture, because I was leaving that to you, out of pure cowardice.

Such "discourse" leads to ghastly jargon, don't it? It's a bad thing to have to explain one's bad jokes.

Anthony


Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2000 05:40:35 -0800
From: Susan Wenger

Here's new info on "The Slope of the High Mountain"

In Dean King's biography of O'Brian, he states that in an author's note accompanying the story in Harper's Bazaar, O'Brian informed his American readers that there were two types of hunting in Britain: the familiar sport of "pink coats on high horses," which were very different from the hunt on foot as practiced in Wales. The latter was a purer sport, "ancient and magnificent . . . strenuous beyond belief," and beyond reproach for snobbery, for while a fool might dress up in a coat and buy an expensive horse to make his social statement, "even English snobbery will not induce him to scramble over twenty or thirty miles of wild, perpendicular country on foot, dressed in old gardening clothes and hobnailed boots."


Return to Main Page