Reading, Short And Deep 549 - Bad Company by Walter de la Mare

Reading: Short and Deep [music]

Hi, I'm Jesse.

And I'm Eric.

And today we're reading Short and Deep: Bad Company by L- uh, Walter de la Mare.

This is from a magazine called The Listener from April 1st, 1954.

And, uh, The Listener is the, or was the official organ or official magazine of the BBC, uh, Radio Service.

So we used to have this in Canada as well.

Um, there was a magazine, uh, I guess that you would get in the mail.

My grandmother would get it, and it would tell you what all the upcoming shows for the next week would be.

Um, and it would also have, um, sort of accompanying articles, illustrations, and in this case, a full printing of what was performed on the radio by Walter de la Mare.

So we're getting the, I guess, the bones of this, um, archeological dig, uh, rather than the full flesh of his voice.

We, as far as I know, the recording of, by Walter de la Mare, uh, is, is gone, and he, he was gone soon thereafter as well.

He died in 1956, um, born in 1873.

I've read, uh, several of his stories.

Uh, we've done a, a poem by him called The Listeners, in- interestingly enough, right? This is from a magazine-

[laughs]

... called The Listener.

Um, uh, the one I think of as sort of the one that I, introduced him to me was a story called Seaton's Aunt, uh, from 1922.

So this is l- quite late in his career.

Um, The Listeners, the poem, was from 1911, and this is, uh, from right near the end, and you kinda get the sense of, uh, that.

But this story is, uh, very enigmatic, um, and for some reason, even though it doesn't really appear in the story, uh, in between readings of it, I was reading The City and the Sea by Edgar Allan Poe, which I'm sure you're familiar with, and, um, I, it, I suddenly wrote down the phrase here, uh, and I think it's in the story itself, "See like a mirror." Now, I'm not sure that that's in the story proper, but I, it struck me.

"See like a mirror."

Mm-hmm.

And I've written it down as S-E-E like a mirror.

[laughs]

But, um, when you've got in, in that poem by Edgar Allan Poe, uh, The City and the Sea, it's pretty interesting way of looking at it, and I think that is my appreciation of what's going on in here, but it's very mysterious.

Hmm.

I, I'm not able to make inferences from what you just said about how you read the story.

Hmm.

And I'd like to know.

Um, I have my own way, which doesn't accord with what I think you're implying, so my guess is that, uh, we'd best ha- have the story before us, and then we can, uh, chew on-

Hmm

... ways of reading it.

Mm-hmm.

Okay? So this is, uh, Bad Company.