Watching the spring lizards appear on my condo fence to show off their rosy neck flaps, I kept hearing my internal narrator announce, "Annals of the King by Alfred, Lord Tennyson".
Yes, I played the Whitman card game of Authors with my younger siblings, crouched under the high brass bedframe in the "pink bedroom" at Grandma's house. I can see her chenille bedspread hanging down all around our hiding place.
Alas, Alfred, Lord did not write "Annals of the King", or even "Anoles of the King". Tennyson wrote something called "Idylls of the King". To collect all the Tennysons in the game of Authors you had to get:
- The Brook
- The Crossing
- The Charge of the Light Brigade
- Idylls of the King
I'm pretty sure Tennyson's work had something to do with King Arthur, but my education never filled in the blanks. Everything I know about the Light Brigade's charge in the Crimean War comes from George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman novels. No patio lizards in those, but plenty of reptilian characters...
Doing the NY Times crossword puzzle this morning, I knew that Thackery was born in Calcutta. "My head is full of such trivia", I told Alfred, Lord, as I sent his card into my scanner.
Next time:
Louisa May Alcott's Little Anoles--(small lizard sisters eating apples in the attic).
Robert Louis Stevenson's A Condo Patio of Verses
© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder
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