Alexander Pope Dunciad

Lowry alludes to Alexander Pope's poem 'Dunciad' in Chapter 3 of his novel Ultramarine: "Thy hand, great Anarch! Evil ghost who must follow me wherever I go! Hear chaos!" (Pg. 92).

The line of the Pope's poem is:

Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall,
And universal darkness buries all

The Dunciad is a landmark literary satire by Alexander Pope published in three different versions at different times. The first version (the "three book" Dunciad) was published in 1728. The second version, in which Pope confirmed his authorship of the work, appeared in the Dunciad Variorum in 1735. The New Dunciad, in four books and with a different hero, appeared in 1743. The poem celebrates the goddess Dulness and the progress of her chosen agents as they bring decay, imbecility, and tastelessness to the kingdom of Great Britain. Read more on Wikipedia

Lola Ridge The Song of Iron

Lowry alludes to Lola Ridge's poem 'The Song of Iron' in his novel Ultramarine during Dana's drift around Dairen ; "The song of iron accompanied my footsteps infuriatingly until I realised I had gone the wrong side of the restaurant and was keeping too much to the line of the docks of the town." (Pg. 82).

Lola Ridge's poem was first published in a collection edited by Alfred Kreymborg entitled Others for 1919: An Anthology of the New Verse (1920). Both Ridge and Kreymborg were collaborators with Conrad Aiken hence Lowry's probable source for knowledge of the poem.

Oscar Wilde Salome

Gustave Moreau Salomé 1876

Lowry makes reference to Salome in his novel Ultramarine; "Herod, he looked like, Herod, watching Salome. Among them you will seem like a moon moving in a white cloud, but do not ask for the head of this man. Male Salome. Satsuma wares. Salome wears - what? And they pierced his hands his side his feet, and dey heard dat noise in the Jerusalem street...."  (Pg.116). Lowry's source for the story of Salome is possibly the Oscar Wilde play.

Salome is a tragedy by Oscar Wilde. The original 1891 version of the play was in French. Three years later an English translation was published. The play tells in one act the Biblical story of Salome, stepdaughter of the tetrarch Herod Antipas, who, to her stepfather's dismay but to the delight of her mother Herodias, requests the head of Jokanaan (John the Baptist) on a silver platter as a reward for dancing the dance of the seven veils. Scholars like Christopher Nassaar point out that Wilde employs a number of the images favored by Israel's kingly poets and that the moon is meant to suggest the pagan goddess Cybele, who, like Salomé, was obsessed with preserving her virginity and thus took pleasure in destroying male sexuality. Read more on Wikipedia

Lowry's  reference to the "white moon" may stem from Wilde's episodes within the play - following the prelude three demarcated episodes follow: the meeting between Salome and Iokanaan, the phase of the white moon; the major public central episode, the dance and the beheading, the phase of the red moon; and finally the conclusion, when the black cloud conceals the moon.

For Lowry's reference to a "Male Salome" - see I.S.R. Miles

Lowry also conducts a word-play with Salome and Satsuma wares, a type of pottery which feature elsewhere in Chapter 3. Lowry may use of the phrase "and dey heard dat noise in the Jerusalem street"  may relate to an unidentified spiritual relating to the story of Salome or possibly reference back to the crucifixion of Christ.

I.S.R. Miles

An unidentified teacher referred to by Lowry in the novel Ultramarine; "I.S.R. Miles, the mathematics master, sitting at the head of the hall, presiding over preparation, his eyes lecherous and rolling, the eyes of a ferret. One had always suspected homosexuality. Herod, he looked like, Herod, watching Salome." (Pg.116).

One of several gay references in Ultramarine in which the younger man is threatened by older authority figure. Lowry makes reference to the Dance of the Seven Veils suggesting the teacher's inflamed desire similar to King Herod's incestuous desire for Salome - in this case Lowry says a "Male Salome" (Pg. 116).

John Keats Endymion

George Frederick Watts Endymion 1872

Lowry quotes from Keat's poem Endymion during Dana's drunken drift around Dairen in the novel Ultramarine; "Ah sorrow who dost borrow the lustrous passion from a falcon's eye," (Pg.116).

Endymion is a poem by John Keats first published in 1818. It begins with the line "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever". Endymion is written in rhyming couplets in iambic pentameter (also known as heroic couplets). Keats based the poem on the Greek myth of Endymion, the shepherd beloved by the moon goddess Selene. The poem elaborates on the original story and renames Selene "Cynthia" Read more on Wikipedia

Keat's poem may have appealed to Lowry as in the poem  Endymion ventures into the underworld in search of his love corresponding to Dana's search for love in Dairen. Lowry would also have been aware of the coincidence in the name Cynthia being both the name of Endymion's lover but also the name of the woman lusted after by Demerest in Aiken's novel Blue Voyage.

Francis Thompson An Anthem of Earth

Lowry quotes from Francis Thompson's poem 'An Anthem of Earth' during Dana Hilliot's drunken drift around Dairen in Chapter 3 of the novel Ultramarine; "Ay, Mother ! Mother ! What is this Man, thy darling kissed and cuffed, Thou lustingly engender'st, To sweat, and make his brag, and rot crowned with all honour and all shamefulness?" (Pg. 116)

Rejoice with all their joy. Ay, Mother! Mother!
What is this Man, thy darling kissed and cuffed,
Thou lustingly engender'st,
To sweat, and make his brag, and rot,
Crowned with all honour and all shamefulness?
From nightly towers
He dogs the secret footsteps of the heavens,
Sifts in his hands the stars, weighs them as gold-dust,
And yet is he successive unto nothing
But patrimony of a little mould,
And entail of four planks. Thou hast made his mouth
Avid of all dominion and all mightiness,
All sorrow, all delight, all topless grandeurs,
All beauty, and all starry majesties,
And dim transtellar things;--even that it may,
Filled in the ending with a puff of dust,
Confess--'It is enough.' The world left empty

Lowry may have been drawn to Thompson's poem on man's mortality to reinforce the sense of death and decay which surrounds Dana on his drift around Dairen.

Lowry also puts the quote into the context of his mother's feelings about the trip to the Far East; "I don't want my son coarsened by a lot of hooligans?" However, Lowry cannot resist joking about his mother's perhaps prudish attitude to his conception; "My son whom thou lustingly engenderest?" (Pg. 116)

New Brighton Palais de Danse

The New Brighton Palais de Danse was the name given sometime in 1926 to the ballroom located within New Brighton Tower:

The Ballroom was one of the largest in the world, with a sprung floor and dance band stage. The orchestra had as many as 60 players. Big bands played at the Tower, including Bert Yates, Bill Gregson and Victor Sylvester. Other well known artists appeared at the Ballroom including Mae West in November 1945. Well over 1,000 couples could dance without undue crowding. It was decorated in white and gold, with the emblems of various Lancashire towns. The Ballroom had a balcony, with seats to watch the dancers below. Behind this was an open space, where couples used to learn the dance without interfering with the more proficient ones. History of Wallasey

The phrase Palais De Danse was a popular name given to many dance halls in England during the early 20th Century conjuring up images of cosmopolitan Europe.

The above photograph is one of the most famous dance halls called Palais De Dansein Berlin before the First World War and maybe the precursor to the others. Read more on Malcolm Lowry @ 19th Hole

Lowry refers to the New Brighton Palais de Danse in his novel Ultramarine when Dana recalls dancing there with his girl friend Janet Travena; "I shut my eyes and imagined that this was indeed Janet and I dancing at the New Brighton Palais De Danse. (Pg 106) and later Dana and Janet see "the two saxophonists of the Palais de Danse, Zez and Mas..." (Pg. 130). These recollections are probably drawn from Lowry's visits to the ballroom with Tess Evans in 1927. Lowry may even have originally met Tess at one of the dances at the ballroom as she lived in nearby Liscard.

S.S. Leeway

The S.S. Leeway was launched on 03/03/1897 originally named SS Sahara built by Alexander Stephen & Sons Glasgow; Ship Type: Cargo Vessel, Tonnage: 4089 grt, Length: 370.1 feet (BP), Breadth: 48 feet. Propulsion: Steam, triple expansion, single screw. The ship was renamed several times; 1920 Marshal French, 1922 Leeway, 1925 Charterhurst and finally Bianca Bianchi in 1927. The ship had several owners: Glasgow Nav. Co. (Maclay & McIntyre), Glasgow, 1915 Houlder, Middleton & Co., London, 1919 Saint David's SN Co., Cardiff, 1922 St. Mary SS Co., Cardiff, 1925 Charter Shipping Co., Cardiff 1927 G.R.Bianchi, Genoa. The ship was scrapped on 17/07/1928.

Lowry refers to the ship in his novel Ultramarine; "One of those bloody St Mary Axe Boats; the Leeway is knocking around here. Only its wings aren't clipped." (Pg. 33), "Then we were standing on the wharf, looking up at the soaring stern of the S.S. Leeway from Swansea which had docked forward of the Martensen." (Pg. 101); "He spat; the spittle landed on the "Y" of Leeway and dribbled down slowly into the harbour." (Pg. 102).

Lowry's reference to the ship is probably due to members of the crew of Pyrrhus, on which Lowry sailed to the Far East, being familiar with South Wales where the Leeway had been based and the fact that the former owners St. Mary SS Co. were being investigated by the authorities for the loss of one of their ships the SS Eastway co-owned with Mr. Watkin James Williams. (See St Mary Axe Boats).

Drei Segelmann

Lowry refers to the song in his novel Ultramarine when Dana and Popplereuter are on their drunken drift around Dairen sing several songs including Drei Segelmann; We sang. We sang Drei Segelmann, which I don't know, but I joined in the chorus. We sang Mademoiselle from Armentières, Deutschland uber Alles, and Lisa; For He's A Jolly Good Fellow, and God Save The King; Lisa again, and The Bastard King of England, with which Popplereuter was unfamiliar..." (Pg. 89). Lowry later refers to the song in the 1940 Under The Volcano; "He began to sing: "Drei Segelmann, drei Segelmann ( Pg 368).

Lowry's memory of the song probably relates to his visit to Germany in 1928 which he recall in letter to Clemens ten Holder dated 23rd April 1951:"were celebrating the defeat of Essen Verein at hockey, I having played inside left for Bonn Verein, a refrain that went, every now and then: Zwei null! we having defeated them 2-0. Also there was another song to the refrain Drei Segelmann (Collected Letters Vol 2 Pg 375).

To date, no German song has been identified called Drei Segelmann. The title of the song translates in Lowry's poor German as 'sail man' which is probably incorrect. Lowry could have possibly Germanicised a sea shanty called We be Sailors Three by Thomas D'Urfey (1653-1723):


Chorus:
We be sailors three,
Pardonnez moi je vous au prie
Lately come forth of the Low Country
With never a penny of money

Here good fellows, I drink to thee,
Pardonnez moi je vous au prie
To all good fellows where-ever they be
With never a penny of money.   (Chorus)
And he that will not pledge me this,
Pardonnez moi je vous au prie
Pays for the shot, whatever it is,
With never a penny of money.  (Chorus)

Charge it again, boys, charge it again,
Pardonnez moi je vous au prie
As long as you've got any ink in your pen
With never a penny of money (Chorus)


Further sea shanties/songs relating to three sailors are discussed here.

Kristian IV's Gate, Olso

Kristian IVs gate (1-15, 4-12) is a street in Oslo city centre. It was named after King Christian IV ( 1577 - 1648 ) in 1852.

Lowry refers to the street in his novel Ultramarine when Dana is telling Popplereuter about his life; "I was born in Christiania, in the Christian den 4 des gade (sic gate), dangerous names for me. Pg. 93).

Image courtesy of Oslobilder

Westcott House, Cambridge

Westcott House is a Church of England theological college based in Jesus Lane located in the centre of the university city of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.  Its main activity is training people for ordained ministry in Anglican churches. Westcott House is a founder member of the Cambridge Theological Federation.

Lowry refers to the college in his novel Ultramarine; "Cambridge, Eng. where I remained ten years as a fellow of Westcott House." Pg. 93. This is part of Dana's fantasy of his life story which he is telling Popplereuter on their drunken drift around Tsjang-tsjang (Dairen). Lowry did not attend the college which he mentions probably as an ironic joke given his own drunken time at college in Cambridge.

Judah Baker Windmill, Yarmouth

Lowry refers to a windmill in Cape Cod in his novel Ultramarine when Dana tells Popplereuter; " At Cape Cod...... I committed my first murder, in a windmill." This is part of Dana's fantasy of his life story which he is telling Popplereuter in their drunken drift around Tsjang-tsjang (Dairen).

Lowry spent several weeks in Cape Cod in the summer of 1929 during his visit to meet Conrad Aiken. Aiken owned a house in Yarmouth on Cape Cod. The windmill most likely Lowry is recalling is the Judah Baker mill.

This windmill takes its name from its original builder, Judah Baker, who had the mill constructed in 1791.  Like many early windmills on Cape Cod, this mill experienced several moves before it came to its current location.  Originating in South Dennis, it was moved to Kelley's Pond, in Dennis, and later to the Yarmouth side of Bass River.   By 1866, it rested near its current location and was used by Braddock Matthews for milling grain.  As large commercial mills appeared in the Midwest, local mills, including this one, fell into disuse.  In 1953, the mill was donated to the town of Yarmouth along with the surrounding Windmill Park, which includes a small swimming beach on Bass River.  In 1999, the windmill underwent an extensive renovation and now appears in its original condition. Historical Society of Yarmouth

Lowry's fantasy may have something to do with his drunken brawl with Aiken in Boston when Lowry managed to fracture Aiken's skull. (Bowker Pursued By Furies Pg. 84)

Edgar Lee Masters Petit, the Poet 1915

In 1914, Edgar Lee Masters began a series of poems (this time under the pseudonym Webster Ford) about his childhood experiences in Western Illinois, which appeared in Reedy's Mirror, a St. Louis publication. In 1915 the series was bound into a volume and re-titled Spoon River Anthology. Petit, the Poet is one of the poems in the anthology.

"Petit, the Poet" (1915), one of the best of Masters' nonjudgmental epitaphs, speaks the poet's after-death faith in the lines, "Life all around me here in the village." A repetitious craftsman (tick, tick, tick), Petit, named for the smallness of his vision, regrets the "little iambics" of his life's work. To characterize spiritual poverty and poetic tedium, Masters imprisons elegant verse style in a confining "dry pod." To further minimize the "triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus, / Ballades by the score," the simile "like mites in a quarrel" reduces them to ridicule. When his spirit is freed from the outworn snows and roses of Horace and François Villon, Petit is at last able to hear "Homer and Whitman" roaring in the pines. Cliff's Notes

Petit, the Poet

Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick,
Tick, tick, tick, like mites in a quarrel—
Faint iambics that the full breeze wakens—
But the pine tree makes a symphony thereof.
Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus,        
Ballades by the score with the same old thought:
The snows and the roses of yesterday are vanished;
And what is love but a rose that fades?
Life all around me here in the village:
Tragedy, comedy, valor and truth,
Courage, constancy, heroism, failure—
All in the loom, and oh what patterns!
Woodlands, meadows, streams and rivers—
Blind to all of it all my life long.
Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus,
Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick,
Tick, tick, tick, what little iambics,
While Homer and Whitman roared in the pines?

Lowry alludes to Master's poem in Chapter 3 of his first novel Ultramarine when Dana say to Popplereuter ; "Consequently I have in me an inborn craving for the unrest of the sea....Oh, but this craving was not, is not conscious enough, as Petit the poet said, intellectually diluted into a vague, intangible wanderlust" Pg. 96.

Eugene O'Neill Beyond The Horizon

Eugene O’Neill’s seminal, Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Beyond the Horizon, was written in 1918 but not produced or published until 1920, when it made its debut in New York. Beyond the Horizon was O’Neill’s first successful full-length play, and it signaled a change in American drama. Critics and audiences responded favorably to O’Neill’s dark, tragic vision, which contrasted sharply with the unrealistic, melodramatic plays of the day. The play drew heavily on O’Neill’s own experiences, including his tuberculosis and his sea voyages. During one of these sea trips, he met a Norwegian sailor who criticized his choice of going to sea as opposed to staying on his family’s farm. Taking this idea as a starting point, O’Neill crafted a tale of missed opportunities and failed dreams, involving two brothers. Robert, a poetic but sickly dreamer, wants to go to sea to strengthen his health and see the world. His brother, Andrew, is a born farmer who wants nothing more than to work on his family’s farm. Because they love the same woman, both brothers choose to go against their natures. Robert stays on the farm, and Andrew goes to sea. Enotes

In an article published in the New York Times April 11th 1920, O'Neill talks about the sources for his play Beyond The Horizon . 

O'Neill had got the idea for it from a Norwegian shipmate on the voyage from Buenos Aires to New York:

The sailor habitually cursed the day when he left his farm and went to sea twenty years before. This was a familiar lament among seamen, and O'Neill realized that this man was too much "a creature of the God of Things as They Are" to have stayed at home. But the playwright began to speculate about "a more intellectual, civilized type" in a comparable situation. In such a man, the "inborn craving for the sea's unrest" would be "intellectually diluted into a vague, intangible wanderlust. His powers of resistance, both moral and physical, would also be correspondingly watered." Electronic Eugene O'Neill Archive

Lowry alludes to the New York Times article in Chapter 3 of his first novel Ultramarine when Dana say to Popplereuter ; "Consequently I have in me an inborn craving for the unrest of the sea....Oh, but this craving was not, is not conscious enough, as Petit the poet said, intellectually diluted into a vague, intangible wanderlust" Pg. 96.

Blow the Man Down

Lowry refers to a refrain from the sea shanty ‘Blow the Man Down’ being sung in his novel Ultramarine while Dana is in the red light district of Dairen; ‘As I was a-walking down Paradise Street’ (Pg. 113).

The lyric ‘Blow the man down’ refers to the act of knocking a man to the ground in a fight. A traditional explanation of its origins is that the Black Ballers were fast packet ships of the American Black Ball Line that sailed between New York and Liverpool towards the end of the nineteenth century. Lowry may have known the shanty from his time on Pyrrhus as the shanty was popular on Merseyside due to the local references in the lyrics. Lowry has introduced the refrain to draw attention to the similarities which he is creating between the ‘sailortown’ of Dairen and the ‘sailortown’ of Liverpool, whose epicentre was around Paradise Street, referred to in the shanty. Lowry was drawing here upon a mythology of Paradise Street, which was both imagined and real. The imagined temptations of drink and prostitutes were alluded to by Melville in his novel Redburn, which – narrating as it does the first voyage of an ‘innocent abroad’ – has many resonances with Ultramarine. Lowry knew Paradise Street as a youth, having visited the pubs in the area as well as the notorious Anatomy Museum, excerpts from whose catalogue he ‘borrowed’ for Ultramarine.

Chorus:

Oh, blow the man down, bullies, blow the man down
Way aye blow the man down
Oh, blow the man down, bullies, blow him away
Give me some time to blow the man down!

As I was a-walking down Paradise Street
Way aye blow the man dow
A pretty young damsel I chanced for to meet.
Give me some time to blow the man down!

Chorus

She was round in the counter and bluff in the bow,
Way aye blow the man down
So I took in all sail and cried, ‘Way enough now’.
Give me some time to blow the man down!

Chorus

So I tailed her my flipper and took her in tow
Way aye blow the man down
And yardarm to yardarm away we did go.
Give me some time to blow the man down!

Chorus

But as we were going she said unto me

Way aye blow the man down

There’s a spanking full-rigger just ready for sea.

Give me some time to blow the man down!

Chorus

But as soon as that packet was clear of the bar

Way aye blow the man down

The mate knocked me down with the end of a spar.

Give me some time to blow the man down!

Chorus

Its starboard and larboard on deck you will sprawl

Way aye blow the man down

For Kicking Jack Williams commands the Black Ball.

Give me some time to blow the man down!

Bollocky Bill

Lowry refers to Bollocky Bill in his novel Ultramarine; "Bollocky Bill, aspiring writer, drawn magically from the groves of the Muses by Poseidon." (Pg. 92).

The mythical Bollocky Bill – reputed to have been most generously testicled – was commemorated in the bawdy ballad ‘Bollocky Bill the Sailor’, a traditional folk song originally titled ‘Abraham Brown’. ‘Bollocky’ is pronounced and occasionally spelt ‘bollicky’, and may also be a reference to being left-handed or clumsy.

There are several versions of the bawdy song in the Gordon ‘Inferno’ Collection in the US Library of Congress. The first printed version of the song is in the public domain book Immortalia (1927). Later versions feature the eponymous ‘Barnacle Bill’, a fictional character very loosely based on a nineteenth-century San Francisco sailor and Gold Rush miner, William Bernard. There are also known versions in England and Scotland from the early twentieth century.

Again it is impossible to determine when Lowry first heard the song. The earliest known recording is an expurgated adaptation written by Frank Luther and Carson Robison, performed and recorded on 21 May 1930 by one of Lowry’s heroes, Bix Beiderbecke, featuring the vocal of Hoagy Carmichael, with another Lowry jazz hero Joe Venuti on the session. This recording, made during the writing of Ultramarine, may have prompted Lowry to adapt the persona of the mythical seaman.

One version of ‘Barnacle Bill’ refers to an exchange between Bill and a ‘fair young maiden’. Each verse opens with inquiries by the maiden, sung by women, or by men in falsetto, and continues with Bill’s profane responses, sung by men:

‘Who’s that knocking at my door? Who’s that knocking at my door?
Who’s that knocking at my door?’ said the fair Young Maiden…
‘It’s me and my crew and we’ve come for a screw!’ said Barnacle Bill the Sailor.
‘It’s me and my crew and we’ve come for a screw!’ said Barnacle Bill the Sailor.

Alternative responses:
‘It’s only me from over the sea’ said Barnacle Bill the Sailor.
‘It’s only me from over the sea’ said Barnacle Bill the Sailor.

‘Open the door, you pox-ridden whore!’ said Barnacle Bill the Sailor.
‘Open the door, you pox-ridden whore!’ said Barnacle Bill the Sailor.

‘Open the door, you dirty whore!’ said Barnacle Bill the Sailor.
‘Open the door, you dirty whore!’ said Barnacle Bill the Sailor.

This version of the song would suit the character of Dana at the point in Ultramarine at which he prepares to lose his virginity in the brothels of Dairen. Dana’s obsession, besides his guilt at the prospect of being unfaithful to his love Janet, is that he will catch syphilis from a prostitute. Another dimension to the introduction of the Bollocky Bill persona is that Lowry considered himself to be clumsy. Lowry endows Dana with the same clumsiness, which is constantly being reinforced by the crew of the ship.

Derby Castle Theatre, Isle of Man

Derby Castle Theatre once stood at the North end of Douglas Bay. The original buildings were 2 houses masquerading as one larger one. Originally built for Major Pollock by J. Skillicorn of Onchan probably to a design of John Robinson.

The buildings were acquired in 1877 by Douglas advocate Mr. A.N.Laughton who built a dance hall in its grounds. The dancehall, designed by W.J. Rennison was some 194 feet by 71 ft and capable of accommodating 2000 dancers. Laughton financed the project by forming the Derby Castle Company in 1878 with initially £15,000 in shares (by 1889 £20,000) subscribed to by six Douglas businessmen, including J.A. Brown of the IoM Times who was soon to start his own rival Palace complex and who ultimately became the controlling power behind the Palace and Derby Castle Company.

By the 1960's the complex was outdated and run down - it was bought by Douglas corporation in the late 1960's, demolished and the ill-fated Summerland complex built on the site. Read more

Lowry refers to theatre in his novel Ultramarine; "My missus’s tightly bound, she’s all tightly bound. Harry Weldon in 1925 singing that at the Derby Castle, Douglas, his audience bringing him back for his curtain over and over again." (Pg. 116). This reference probably relates to a Lowry family holiday made in 1923 to the island.

Harry Weldon

Lowry refers to Harry Weldon in his novel Ultramarine; "My missus’s tightly bound, she’s all tightly bound. Harry Weldon in 1925 singing that at the Derby Castle, Douglas, his audience bringing him back for his curtain over and over again." (Pg. 116).

The above song is an unidentified one performed by Harry Weldon at the Derby Castle theatre in Douglas on the Isle of Man. This reference probably relates to a Lowry family holiday made in 1923 to the island.

Harry Weldon was a big star in music hall and variety, and first appeared in London in 1900, coining the catchphrase ‘S’No Use!’ and creating a popular song from it. Weldon initially rose to fame as a member of Fred Karno’s company when he played opposite Charlie Chaplin in the sketch ‘The Football Match’. Weldon then used the character of Stiffy, the goalkeeper, as the mainstay of his solo act, and developed other characters, including his boxing skit ‘The White Hope’ Apparently he cut a very strange figure with his centre-parted wig, eccentric clothes, eyes that always seemed to be shut and a voice of whistling sibilance. He had a unique style, and frequently used the conductor of the orchestra as an extra part in his performance. Harry Weldon’s conversational style and his use of the absurd may have appealed to the young Lowry. He worked until he died in 1930 aged 49. Read more

Lowry’s early letters have several references to music hall stars such as Stanley Lupino and Milton Hayes. We can only presume from the detail of the letters that Lowry was aware of these stars because he had seen them either on trips to local theatres or when he was on holiday on the Isle of Man or in Devon. He mentions in his works several local theatres with music hall traditions, including the Argyle and Hippodrome theatres in Birkenhead and the Olympia in Liverpool.

The use of these popular musical references demonstrates Lowry’s awareness of the music hall tradition. He uses them to underpin the authenticity of the ‘working-class’ roots of the sailors’ language in the Ultramarine, though they are often based on his own experiences. Commentators on Lowry have often overstated his middle-class origins, forgetting that his parents’ and brothers’ tastes were ‘lowbrow’, an indication of the family’s working-class roots on Merseyside. Lowry may have been an ‘outsider’ on board the Pyrrhus, undergoing an awkward transition from public schoolboy to university student. However, on his nights out with Janet to the cinema and the theatre he had enjoyed the same forms of popular entertainment familiar to the rest of the crew.

Gerald de Nerval Aurélia

Lithograph by Pearl Binder for Aurélia  1932

Gerard de Nerval's Aurélia is a fantasy-ridden interior autobiography— "Our dreams are a second life," he wrote — which influenced the Surrealists. Lowry makes no direct reference to Richard Aldington's 1932 translation of Gerald de Nerval's Aurélia. However, Lowry uses a line in his novel Ultramarine taken from Aldington's introduction to the translation. Compare:

"When I was fourteen I was under the delusion for a year I was Thomas Chatterton.....mad? No ...not even that. But a kind of semi-madman, pernicious and irritating and apathetic in the extreme, for whom in madness, as in death to the impotent, exists the only dignified escape." (Ultramarine Pg. 95).

"Literature, especially of the Romantic and Pre-Romantic period contains numerous semi-madmen who, upon the whole, are rather pernicious and irritating." (Introduction to Aurelia Pg. xvii)

Lowry's work contains other references to Aldington's work whom he may have known through Conrad Aiken. If they didn't actually meet then Lowry appears to have been familiar with Aldington's work.

Nerval's Aurélia may have appealed to Lowry for several reasons. The fantasy-ridden interior autobiography Aurelia can be compared to parts of Ultramarine especially in the more dream like sequences. Lowry was also drawn to references to suicide following Paul Fitte's suicide - Nerval hung himself. Nerval travelled to the Far East documenting it in his work Voyage to the Orient -  published during 1851, resulting from his voyage of 1842 to Cairo and Beirut. In addition to a travel account it retells Oriental tales, like Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, in terms of the artist and the act of creation. Lowry's construction of Ultramarine is in part a complex montage of a voyage to the East, in which the artist plays with forms to create a novel, using a variety of techniques including allusion and plagarism. Nerval added a series of appendices to Voyage to the Orient, the majority of the material taken directly from Lane's Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians - a technique not unlike Lowry's later use of travel brochures in La Mordida. Lowry also appears to have been drawn to writers who are accused of plagarism or manipulate other's work such as Herman Melville, Thomas Chatterton etc. The linking of Nerval and Chatterton may also have to do with both committing suicide and also the possibility that venereal disease may have been the reason for both writer's "madness" which was a fear for Lowry reflected in Dana's fears in Ultramarine.

Lowry's nickname was 'Lobs' and he may have known about the story of the lobster and Nerval. Nerval is quoted as having said "Why should a lobster be any more ridiculous than a dog? ...or a cat, or a gazelle, or a lion, or any other animal that one chooses to take for a walk? I have a liking for lobsters. They are peaceful, serious creatures. They know the secrets of the sea, they don't bark, and they don't gnaw upon one's monadic privacy like dogs do. And Goethe had an aversion to dogs, and he wasn't mad." (Gautier, Théophile. Portraits et Souvenirs Littéraires (Paris: Charpentier, 1875), Richard Holmes trans.).

Nerval's suicide by Gustave Doré.

In the same paragraph from which Lowry took the words "a kind of semi-madman, pernicious and irritating";  he could have easily have seen the rest of  the paragraph pertaining to the kind of creation he may have wanted to aspire to and which he later achieved in Under The Volcano:

Nerval was a real madman, and so far as I know he is one madman who has recovered and attempted to give some account of his sensations and experience while lost in the dreadful gulf of insanity. I confess I cannot read Aurélia without a shudder. Its incoherences, its repetitions, its formlessness, its deformation of reality, its wanderings among old memories, its pitiful attempts at sincerity and still more pitiful attempt at concealment or justification, produce a more genuine feeling of horror than the most horrific tale of Poe. (Introduction to Aurélia Pg. xvii)

Liza

September 2nd, 1929 playbill for "SHOW GIRL"

"Liza (All the Clouds'll Roll Away)" is a song composed by George Gershwin with lyrics by Ira Gershwin and Gus Kahn. It was introduced in 1929 by Ruby Keeler (as Dixie Dugan) in Florenz Ziegfeld's musical Show Girl. The stage performances were accompanied by the Duke Ellington Orchestra. On the show's opening night, Keeler's husband and popular singer Al Jolson suddenly stood up from his seat in the third row and sang a chorus of the song, much to the surprise of the audience and Gershwin himself.

Lowry perhaps is referring to the above song in his novel Ultramarine when Dana and Popplereuter on their drunken drift around Dairen sing several songs including God Save The King; "We sang. We sang Drei Segelmann, which I don't know, but I joined in the chorus. We sang Mademoiselle from Armentières, Deutschland uber Alles, and Lisa; For He's A Jolly Good Fellow, and God Save The King; Lisa again, and The Bastard King of England, with which Popplereuter was unfamiliar..." (Pg. 89). However, the song is not contemporaneous to the setting of the novel - 1927 having been introduced in 1929. Lowry did use other material which was not contemporaneous to the setting of the novel e.g. Love's Crucifixion