David Prashker's Book Of Days: November 28

1628, 1757

I wrote, on November 26, about the amazing coincidence that more than one coincidence often takes place, quite by chance though also and quite clearly arranged by the powers that be in the Palace of Random Coincidence, at completely different places which if you try hard enough you can connect, on days that happen to be the same one, albeit centuries apart. And no sooner did I do so than, amazingly, three people whose last name just happens to be Fate (Suzanne, Marianne and Nancy as it turns out, though I notice that they are all significant names in the life and work of Leonard Cohen, and a Nancy, by further coincidence, is about to take her own place, on this very page of this very blog - see below) all emailed me to say, in exactly the same words: "wait till you get to November 28th".

And here I am, and here, obstinate but pliable beside me on the page, is that worldly wiseman John Bunyan, English cleric and author (it occurs to me that the same was true of Laurence Sterne a couple of days ago - how many British writers of the Georgian-Victorian period, and earlier thinking of John Donne, were clerics - Swift of course, and Harvard, on November 27th, was one too: how strange! what a coincidence! And why is it so, and not really a coincidence at all? Because all they studied in the universities back then was Classics and Theology, minimal science, nothing else, so if you wanted an intellectual life you did Divinity - think George Eliot's Casaubon as well...), where was I... yes, Mr Legality John Bunyan with his watchful shining ones and his prudence and his piety, born today in 1628; and where is he now, but buried in the graveyard of John Wesley's Church on Old Street, Bunhill Fields to name it correctly, the "dissenters' graveyard" just outside the Barbican of the city wall.

And then, a hundred and twenty-nine years later, today in 1757, another of England's great penmen, William Blake, was born. And where is he now, but buried in the graveyard of John Wesley's Church on Old Street, in Bone Hill Fields to name it absolutely correctly...

Daniel Defoe (the De was his addition, to make the name sound more posh) is also buried there, as is George Fox, who founded the Quaker Society of Friends.

Amber pages:

Jean Baptiste Lully, musician and composer, born today in 1632 (and buried in the Basilica of Notre-Dame-des-Victoires, Paris)

Ferdinand Magellan entered the Pacific Ocean, today in 1520 (he is buried in the Philippines, and you can read about that on September 20, which by divine will and planning was also the date on which George Fox's Quakers sailed for America on board the Mayflower...)

Friedrich Engels, communist theoretician, was born today in 1820 ... and there I was, just finished the Magellan paragraph above, enjoying a slow stroll across Primrose Hill from St John's Wood to meet my daughter for lunch in her flat in Chalk Farm, when high up on a wall there was a plaque... 122 Regents Park Road to be absolutely precise...

And finally, and it seems so long ago since I first mentioned her, today in 1919, the first female member, ever, of the British Parliament, Lady Nancy Astor, upset the alpha males terribly by taking her seat. I haven't looked up where she is buried, but she had the most gorgeous house in London, in St James' Square, now used by the In & Out Club, an élite private club for naval and military people; and I mention it only because this blog-page seems to have become a burial-ground, and it just so happens that there is a little park in St James' Square, and on the railing, right in front of the Astor house, there is a permanent memorial, and people are always putting flowers there, a tribute to Yvonne Fletcher, the policewoman who was murdered for no obvious reason, by a shot fired from the Libyan embassy, by a gunman who it should have been dead easy to identify, but never was.