On exiting a hansom cab (in a hurry)
One of my favourite poems is Thomas Hardy’s A Thunderstorm in Town:
She wore a new ‘terra-cotta’ dress,
And we stayed, because of the pelting storm,
Within the hansom’s dry recess,
Though the horse had stopped; yea, motionless
We sat on, snug and warm.
Then the downpour ceased, to my sharp sad pain
And the glass that had screened our forms before
Flew up, and out she sprang to her door:
I should have kissed her if the rain
Had lasted a minute more.
I love it both for that ‘snug and warm’ sense of contentment and for the for the very different feelings of sadness and regret on seeing the moment irretrievably lost.
But whenever I reach that pivotal moment in the poem, when the storm abates and the woman springs into action, I find myself trying to picture exactly how the glass flew up and how this is linked to her departure. She can’t have jumped out of the window, surely?
It’s that up that is the problem. When the doors of vehicles have opening windows they normally slide down into some sort of concealed slot. In this case, we need to have it go up somewhere and not just go up but fly up. Clearly there would have to be some sort of spring or counterweight involved.
In desperation I decide to consult that well-known, artificially-intelligent know-it-all, chatGPT.
I have a question about a poem: Thomas Hardy’s, A Thunderstorm in Town. Are you familiar with it?
Yes, I’m familiar with Thomas Hardy’s poem “A Thunderstorm in Town.” This poem captures a moment of sudden intimacy and excitement between two people caught in a thunderstorm while riding in a cab.
Thank you, but a simple yes or no would have been enough for now. But fine – show off if you need to.
I have a specific question. The second and third lines of the second part go like this: ‘And the glass that had screened our forms before Flew up and out she sprang to her door.’ I am finding it difficult to picture how the ‘glass flew up’ as part of the procedure of exiting the cab. Can you explain this in a way that will help me visualize it more clearly?
In the context of Hardy’s time, the cab mentioned in the poem is likely a horse-drawn carriage, specifically a type called a “hansom cab,” which was popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Here’s how it worked:
My goodness ! OK so that’s the answer. Great. Thanks. I can get back to the poem now.
But wait a minute, there’s something bothering me: You said that he glass panel was part of a small window at the front of the passenger compartment and that it was used to communicate with the driver. As the driver sits behind the passengers, this would be difficult surely. Can you clarify?
You’re right, and I apologize for the confusion. Let’s clarify the layout and function of the glass panel in a hansom cab:
Now, hang on a minute. You said earlier that communication with the driver was via the glass panel. You didn’t say anything about speaking tubes and trapdoors.
While it has been clear for a long time that chatGPT is something of a know-it-all, it would appear to be capable of bullshit too.
And another thing: images of hansom cabs online shows passengers entering and exiting via a door at the front. You said earlier that there is a door on each side.
You’re right, and I apologize for the confusion. Passengers enter and exit the cab via a small door at the front of the compartment. This door opens onto a narrow platform, allowing passengers to step out.
So I imagine it sliding safely away into the roof structure along some sort of curved track. Is this correct ?
Not quite; the glass panel was designed to slide vertically into the roof or the upper frame of the front door without rotating.
But, for there to be room in the compartment for the glass panel to slide away vertically it would end up sticking up above the roof . I can’t quite see this.
The glass panel might have slid up into a curved track or channel that arcs into the roof, allowing it to move upward and then curve back slightly, which helps it fit snugly into the available space without requiring excessive vertical height.
And suddenly I get the feeling that chatGPT (along with most of my readers) has grown thoroughly bored with the conversation and, in order to bring the session to an end, has decided to agree with everything I say.
I remember hearing a comment from someone else that chatGPT is very suggestible. I am beginning to see what they meant.
The philosopher at the breakfast table
While having breakfast this morning I found myself trying to remove splodges of butter from a jar of marmalade using a buttery knife.
How very like life, I thought.
On falling down stairs
It is only in the last year or two that the thought of falling down stairs has begun to bother me.
As a child I recall my mother’s hushed tones as she shared the news with one of her chapel-going friends that ‘Elsie has had a little fall’.
In view of the fact that falls, both little and big, were part of my daily routine, I found myself thinking: ‘So?’
More recently however I have begun to accept that falls can be quite unpleasant and are probably best avoided. This change of heart was brought about by a sudden trip on a projecting paving stone that laid me flat on my face. How much worse – I found myself thinking – would it have been if I had been coming down stairs. And so I set about compiling a dreadful collection of imagined falls, all vividly visualised and justified on the grounds that ‘forewarned is forearmed’.
One of the more dramatic examples is the one I would bring into play when descending a steep mountain path, especially whilst carrying a full rucksack. It starts with a sudden stumble, followed by the forward lurch, hands grasping hopelessly at thin air, as I plunge down ten feet onto jagged rocks. I’ll spare you the rest of the story. Suffice it to say that it doesn’t bear thinking about. Yet think about it you must, if you don’t actually want it to happen – or so the theory goes.
A momentary misstep whilst descending a steep flight of steps in a Cornish fishing village was the source of the latest addition to my repertoire. It can happen when you are swinging your trailing leg past your standing leg in order to plant it on the next step down. If you catch the heel of your shoe on the edge of the step above, believe me, you can find yourself being catapulted forward in a particularly alarming way. Thankfully, I have that one covered now.
‘For goodness sake’, I hear you say. ‘Why not be sensible and stay at home?’
All good, sound advice. But, admit it, an ordinary flight of stairs can be a bit scary too – and not just when going down. Picture this one. You’re going up to bed and are halfway up when you suddenly remember that you’ve left your hot water bottle in the kitchen. The moment you turn around and decide to go down again introduces a degree of disorientation that is fraught with danger. This is one of those moments when it is wise to interrupt the autopilot and encourage the conscious mind to take over the controls.
Of course, once you start thinking about this stuff, you risk forgetting how to go up and down stairs altogether
And let’s not forget about ladders. One of the worst mistakes with ladders is stepping off what you believe to be the lowest rung – only to find you are still five rungs up. Horrifying.
This post office business
My mother left school at 16 and worked for most of her life as a Post Office counter clerk – always in small sub-post offices – firstly in central Manchester and later in Reddish, on the outskirts of the city. She was immensely proud of the Post Office and of her own mastery of its workings and frequently stood in for the postmaster when he took his annual holiday. This involved the production of a weekly balance in which the various incomings and outgoings were totted up and compared. The sums were all done using nothing more than a pencil and paper and involved thousands of items. I clearly remember my mother sitting up late a night, at the dining table painstakingly chasing down a discrepancy that might amount to no more than a few pence. I am so glad she was spared the recent Horizon scandal; it would have destroyed her.
My superpower
The idea that one might be in possession of some kind of superpower is very popular with young children. Nevertheless, by the time we’re grown up most of us have abandoned any hope that we might be able to fly or melt steel with beams coming out of our eyes.
All the same, I am beginning to suspect that there are minor, less-sensational superpowers that are much more common and which we’re inclined to overlook for the simple reason that, for the person blessed with a superpower, nothing seems out of the ordinary.
My own particular superpower is associated with reading books – real, printed books, that is – not books read on screens. I am reading a book and, like most people, I get to a point where I think something like:
“Now what was that Danish astronomer called again?”.
I remember noting it earlier but it was several chapters back. There’s nothing else for it: I will have to scan back through all the pages until I find the answer.
But this where my superpower comes into play, for I can remember where on the page the information is to be found. So now, restricting my search to (say) the last few lines on the right-hand side, I can leaf through the pages much more quickly and it isn’t long before I find what I am looking for. Amazing eh?
I have even known it to work with books that I read some time ago.
“Oh that – ” you say “everyone can do that!”
Or can they?