Death’s Jest-Book: 'There is some secret stirring in the world, A thought that seeks impatiently its word''

By Thomas Lowell Beddoes

Thomas Lovell Beddoes was born in Clifton, Bristol on 30th June 1803, the son of Dr. Thomas and Anna Beddoes. He was a radical doctor, known for his pioneering use of nitrous oxide and a friend to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and she was the sister of the noted novelist Maria Edgeworth

Beddoes was five when his father died but had lived his early years surrounded by the tools and tables of his father’s trade.

The next chapter in his life was spent in the comfortable and literary circle of his mother’s family. The medical and the literary were the two big influences in his career and clashed in alarming ways causing him to develop a macabre and deep interest in death.

He was educated at Charterhouse school before proceeding to Pembroke College, Oxford, in 1820. It was during his time at Oxford that he wrote and published his poetry volume ‘The Improvisatore’ (1821), which he afterwards attempted to withdraw from the market.

In 1824 Beddoes moved to London and befriended the remainder of Shelley’s circle and others who would have a marked influence on his life.

He returned to Oxford for his B.A. examinations, but, hearing that his mother had been taken ill in Florence immediately left for Italy. Sadly, by the time he arrived his mother was dead.

All accounts of Beddoes attest that his fascination with the dead, with all its rituals and occult shadowing, was marked and pronounced. He continued to write but it now takes a darker, more macabre form. His attempts at writing plays quickly fall away, his poetry seems to reflect much of his inner fears and outlook in an intense and lyrical way with voluptuous horror that is uniquely expressed.

Beddoes again returned to Oxford for his exams in 1825 but seems to have taken the decision at this point to remove himself from sight.

He now spent the next four years at the medical school at the Hanoverian university of Göttingen, pursuing both academic excellence and personal behavior that was so appalling he was eventually asked to leave. Beddoes moved location to the medical school in the Bavarian university of Würzburg and received his doctorate in 1831. By now he had also developed a passion for liberationist politics resulting in his writing many anti-establishment pamphlets, the upshot of which was his expulsion from the country by the Bavarian government in 1832.

Switzerland now became his new home. Beddoes promoted liberal causes until the political winds changed in Zürich and he left in 1839 and was back in England by the following summer. But traction in any direction was proving difficult for him.

He was back in Basel, Switzerland by 1844 and the curtain was fast drawing on his life. Despite a return to England in 1846 his behavior was becoming both wild and uncontrollable. A relationship with Konrad Degen, a baker with designs on a career as a playwright, did nothing to persuade the opinions of others that he was descending into lunacy.

Accounts now suggest that his health began to fail after coming into contact with a diseased cadaver in Frankfurt. Beddoes attempted suicide but the botched attempt resulted in gangrene and a partial amputation of the leg in October 1848.

In January 1849, Beddoes wrote to his sister professing that his physical state was due to a riding accident. At some point he now obtained a measure of the poison curare.

Thomas Lovell Beddoes died in on 26th January 1849. He was 45. A note found here described him as “food for what I am good for—worms.”

For more than 20 years before his death he had worked on ‘Death's Jest Book’, which was published posthumously in 1850, it also included a memoir by T. F. Kelsall. This was very well received and is often regarded as a classic. His Collected Poems were published in 1851.

As a dramatist his later works received criticism but his poems were "full of thought and richness of diction", and as "masterpieces of intense feeling exquisitely expressed".

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stage Door
• Release date: Jul 19, 2019
• ISBN: 9781787807068

Book preview

Death’s Jest-Book by Thomas Lovell Beddoes

Thomas Lovell Beddoes was born in Clifton, Bristol on 30th June 1803, the son of Dr. Thomas and Anna Beddoes.  He was a radical doctor, known for his pioneering use of nitrous oxide and a friend to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and she was the sister of the noted novelist Maria Edgeworth

Beddoes was five when his father died but had lived his early years surrounded by the tools and tables of his father’s trade. 

The next chapter in his life was spent in the comfortable and literary circle of his mother’s family.  The medical and the literary were the two big influences in his career and clashed in alarming ways causing him to develop a macabre and deep interest in death.

He was educated at Charterhouse school before proceeding to Pembroke College, Oxford, in 1820.  It was during his time at Oxford that he wrote and published his poetry volume ‘The Improvisatore’ (1821), which he afterwards attempted to withdraw from the market.

The following year he published his well-reviewed blank-verse drama called ‘The Bride's Tragedy’ (1822).

In 1824 Beddoes moved to London and befriended the remainder of Shelley’s circle and others who would have a marked influence on his life.

He returned to Oxford for his B.A. examinations, but, hearing that his mother had been taken ill in Florence immediately left for Italy. Sadly, by the time he arrived his mother was dead.

All accounts of Beddoes attest that his fascination with the dead, with all its rituals and occult shadowing, was marked and pronounced.  He continued to write but it now takes a darker, more macabre form.  His attempts at writing plays quickly fall away, his poetry seems to reflect much of his inner fears and outlook in an intense and lyrical way with voluptuous horror that is uniquely expressed.

Beddoes again returned to Oxford for his exams in 1825 but seems to have taken the decision at this point to remove himself from sight.

He now spent the next four years at the medical school at the Hanoverian university of Göttingen, pursuing both academic excellence and personal behavior that was so appalling he was eventually asked to leave.  Beddoes moved location to the medical school in the Bavarian university of Würzburg and received his doctorate in 1831.  By now he had also developed a passion for liberationist politics resulting in his writing many anti-establishment pamphlets, the upshot of which was his expulsion from the country by the Bavarian government in 1832. 

Switzerland now became his new home. Beddoes promoted liberal causes until the political winds changed in Zürich and he left in 1839 and was back in England by the following summer.  But traction in any direction was proving difficult for him.

He was back in Basel, Switzerland by 1844 and the curtain was fast drawing on his life. Despite a return to England in 1846 his behavior was becoming both wild and uncontrollable. A relationship with Konrad Degen, a baker with designs on a career as a playwright, did nothing to persuade the opinions of others that he was descending into lunacy.

Accounts now suggest that his health began to fail after coming into contact with a diseased cadaver in Frankfurt. Beddoes attempted suicide but the botched attempt resulted in gangrene and a partial amputation of the leg in October 1848. 

In January 1849, Beddoes wrote to his sister professing that his physical state was due to a riding accident.  At some point he now obtained a measure of the poison curare.

Thomas Lovell Beddoes died in on 26th January 1849. He was 45. A note found here described him as food for what I am good for—worms. 

For more than 20 years before his death he had worked on ‘Death's Jest Book’, which was published posthumously in 1850, it also included a memoir by T. F. Kelsall. This was very well received and is often regarded as a classic.  His Collected Poems were published in 1851.

As a dramatist his later works received criticism but his poems were full of thought and richness of diction, and as masterpieces of intense feeling exquisitely expressed.

Index of Contents

PERSONS REPRESENTED

SCENE

TIME

DEATH’S JEST-BOOK; or THE FOOL’S TRAGEDY

ACT I

SCENE I - Port of Ancona

SCENE II - The African Coast: A Woody Solitude Near the Sea

SCENE III - A Tent on the Sea-Shore: Sun-Set

SCENE IV - A Forest: The Moonlit Sea Glistens Between the Trees

ACT II

SCENE I - The Interior of a Church at Ancona

SCENE II - A Hall in the Ducal Castle of Munsterberg in the Town of Grüssau in Silesia

SCENE III - A Retired Gallery in the Ducal Castle

ACT III

SCENE I - An Apartment in the Ducal Castle

SCENE II - Another Room in the Same

SCENE III - A Church-Yard with the Ruins of a Spacious Gothic Cathedral

ACT IV

SCENE I - An Apartment in the Governor’s Palace

SCENE II - A Garden

SCENE III - A Garden, Under the Windows of Amala’s Apartment

SCENE IV - A Large Hall in the Ducal Castle

ACT V

SCENE I - An Apartment in the Ducal Castle

SCENE II - Another Apartment

SCENE III - A Meadow

SCENE IV - The Ruined Cathedral

L’ENVOI

THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES – A CONCISE BIBLIOGRAPHY

PERSONS REPRESENTED

MELVERIC; Duke of MUNSTERBERG.

ADALMAR }

ATHULF  } His sons

WOLFRAM; a knight  }

ISBRAND; the court-fool  }Brothers

THORWALD; Governor in the Duke’s absence

MARIO; a Roman

SIEGFRIED; a courtier

ZIBA; an Egyptian slave

HOMUNCULUS MANDRAKE; Zany to a mountebank

SIBYLLA

AMALA; Thorwald’s daughter.

JOAN.

Knights, Ladies, Arabs, Priests, Sailors, Guards, and other attendants.

The Dance of Death.

SCENE; In the first act at Ancona, and afterwards in Egypt: in the latter acts at the town of Grüssau, residence of the Duke of Munsterberg, in Silesia.

TIME; The end of the thirteenth century.

DEATH’s JEST-BOOK; OR THE FOOL’S TRAGEDY

ACT I

SCENE I

Port of Ancona

Enter MANDRAKE and JOAN.

MANDRAKE

Am I a man of gingerbread that you should mould me to your liking? To have my way, in spite of your tongue and reason’s teeth, tastes better than Hungary wine; and my heart beats in a honey-pot now I reject you and all sober sense: so tell my master, the doctor, he must seek another zany for his booth, a new wise merry Andrew. My jests are cracked, my coxcomb fallen, my bauble confiscated, my cap decapitated. Toll the bell; for oh! for oh! Jack Pudding is no more!

JOAN

Wilt thou away from me then, sweet Mandrake? Wilt thou not marry me?

MANDRAKE

Child, my studies must first be ended. Thou knowest I hunger after wisdom, as the red sea after ghosts: therefore will I travel awhile.

JOAN

Whither, dainty Homunculus?

MANDRAKE

Whither should a student in the black arts, a journeyman magician, a Rosicrucian? Where is our country? You heard the herald this morning thrice invite all christian folk to follow the brave knight, Sir Wolfram, to the shores of Egypt, and there help to free from bondage his noble fellow in arms, Duke Melveric, whom, on a pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre, wild pagans captured. There, Joan, in that Sphynx land found Raimund Lully those splinters of the philosopher’s stone with which he made English Edward’s gold. There dwell hoary magicians, who have given up their trade and live sociably as crocodiles on the banks of the Nile. There can one chat with mummies in a pyramid, and breakfast on basilisk’s eggs. Thither then, Homunculus Mandrake, son of the great Paracelsus; languish no more in the ignorance of these climes, but aboard with alembic and crucible, and weigh anchor for Egypt.

[Enter ISBRAND.

ISBRAND

Good morrow, brother Vanity! How? soul of a pickle-herring, body of a spagirical toss-pot, doublet of motley, and mantle of pilgrim, how art thou transmuted! Wilt thou desert our brotherhood, fool sublimate? Shall the motley chapter no longer boast thee? Wilt thou forswear the order of the bell, and break thy vows to Momus? Have mercy on Wisdom and relent.

MANDRAKE

Respect the grave and sober, I pray thee. To-morrow I know thee not. In truth, I mark that our noble faculty is in its last leaf. The dry rot of prudence hath eaten the ship of fools to dust; she is no more sea worthy. The world will see its ears in a glass no longer; So we are laid aside and shall soon be forgotten; for why should the feast of asses come but once a year, when all the days are foaled of one mother? O world, world! The gods and fairies left thee, for thou wert too wise; and now, thou Socratic star, thy demon, the great Pan, Folly, is parting from thee. The oracles still talked in their sleep, shall our grand-children say, till Master Merriman’s kingdom was broken up: now is every man his own fool, and the world’s sign is taken down.

[He sings]

Folly hath now turned out of door

Mankind and Fate, who were before

   Jove’s harlequin and clown:

For goosegrass-harvest now is o’er;

The world’s no stage, no tavern more,

   Its sign, the Fool’s ta’en down.

ISBRAND

Farewell, thou great-eared mind: I mark, by thy talk, that thou commencest philosopher, and then thou art only a fellow-servant out of livery. But lo! here come the uninitiated—

[Enter THORWALD, AMALA, WOLFRAM, KNIGHTS and LADIES.

THORWALD

The turning tide; the sea’s wide leafless wind,

Wherein no birds inhabit and few traffic,

Making his cave within your sunny sails;

The eager waves, whose golden, silent kisses

Seal an alliance with your bubbling oars;

And our still-working wishes, that impress

Their meaning on the conscience of the world,

And prompt the unready Future,—all invite you

Unto your voyage. Prosperous be the issue,

As is the promise, and the purpose good!

Are all the rest aboard?

WOLFRAM

All. ‘Tis a band

Of knights, whose bosoms pant with one desire,

Reviews for Death’s Jest-Book

[John Sandbach · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Marvelous, idiosyncratic poetry. This is high Gothic literature. The author takes risks and creates magical atmospheres.