About the events faithfully and accurately reproduced in LONDON DIARY, speculations may upon occasion and in retrospect be hazarded which suggest a belief in metempsychosis substantially firmer than that which ought to be assumed.

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LONDON DIARY

2002-03-09

 Sir Humphrey Gilbert
B. c. 1539 Greenway / D. 9.9.1583 The Azores
Drowned

It is monstrous that the feet should direct the head—
the head directs the feet Be Still!—
the head would fly.
 Oh Jesus.
I was looking around. The anaesthetized guy next to me was already lapsing into unconsciousness over a flight magazine.
Terror?
Across the aisle other magazine readers, people breaking in neck pillows with casual shrugs.
Terrified? Panic-stricken?
British youth modeling life vests paced the aisles, snapping latches; and I sat no less impassively as the blue-gray final runway drive commenced. I held a finger to my place in Bleak House.
Any BODY—terrified!
I gave thanks for everything and made sure to mention I'd been given enough.

Ralegh's half-brother Gilbert claimed New Found Land for the crown; Queen Elizabeth I tired of New World ventures. . .There was no more to be got from her for Virginia. She had given her name to an 'undiscovered country. . .from whose bourne no traveler returns.' It was a wild goose chase on which too many men had died. Ralegh, Gilbert, Grenville, they had laid their eggs in moonshine and, to her, they were all addled. Her token or 'toy' that she had told Ralegh to send Gilbert, of an anchor guided by a Lady, had brought him 'no good hap at sea'; his next voyage had been his last. The quiet heroism of his death in a desperate storm, as he sat reading a book on the deck of his tiny frigate, to calm his mariners' spirits, has given his name a tragic glory for ever. 'We are as near heaven at sea as on land,' he told them. His turbulent spirit then at last knew rest. (?) Presently his comrades on the consort ship saw the lantern on his deck extinguished, and 'in a moment the Frigate was devoured and swallowed up by the Sea.'

And it must have been this ordinary moment
 —abracadabra!—
that my spirit seized to shake its way out of my core. What looked through my eyes at Brooklyn's sequined midnight pelt receding—
 and waved back?

Quotation from That Great Lucifer: A Portrait of Sir Walter Ralegh, Margaret Irwin (1960)

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