"A Sprig of Rosemary"

You probably wouldn't know it by the way I write when I am on my high horse over something that has really rankled me, but I am basically a sentimental softy.  What causes my rancor to turn to mush are the words of an accomplished master in the use of the English language. 

Charles McCabe was a columnist with the San Francisco Chronicle when I was a student at UC Berkeley in the 1960's.  I rarely missed savoring his daily columns.  He played on a panoply of thoughts and feelings within me.  Although emotionally fragile after I finished, I always felt better about my own humanity when I did.  He was one of a kind. 

He died in 1983 in San Francisco.  In his memory, the restaurant he frequented every day reserved his table for one full year, dutifully adorned with a martini and a single red rose.  A fitting tribute to an honest man whose emotions ran deep but which he openly and freely shared with his devotees. 

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A Sprig of Rosemary
by
Charles McCabe
The Fearless Spectator


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How would you like to be remembered? Or is the thought really too awful to think? Is saying good-by to life one of those things that strikes you with terror, as the word cancer affects some people?

When the time comes for me to say good-by (and I would have it delayed as long as possible, thank you) I should like to be able to summon the grace of that civilized Englishman, Horace Walpole. “I shall be quite content,” he said, “with a sprig of rosemary thrown after me, when the parson commits my dust to dust.”

I am perfectly willing to be remembered for what I am, which means what I think I am. That is not all as admirable as you might think if you do not know me well. My value, in the end, is no greater than any other collection of flesh and blood below the earth or on it.

One of the nice things about living, though, is that you can savor, in memory, the vanished presence of those you have loved or liked. While it is no longer fashionable to memorialize the dead with rosemary, as it was in Shakespeare and Walpole’s day, one can still throw a sprig of the stuff in the direction of those who graced life while we were around.

I think of a special girl who is buried in Golder’s Green, on the far side of London. She was perhaps the most beautiful woman I ever met -- coal black and snow white, of hair and skin. For a while we meant everything to each other, which means there were no words we did not say to each other, from the ugliest to the loveliest, and no things we did not do to each other, in that spectrum of action which we command.

We parted with the bitterness of those who know they have failed, failed in that marvelous adventure which can be the discovery of a soul.

Yet the memory of that girl, when she was alive and now that she has gone, was never bitter. When she was away from me I could do what was not possible for me when we were together: I could accept her for herself. What she was, was too much for me to handle when she was mine. She was too beautiful, and loved by too many men, and too various and bright in her spirits to belong to anyone, even herself.

I did not know the beauty of her spirit, or what it meant to me, until we were parted. Then I knew, and it hurt like hell for a long time. The fire finally burned out. It became beautiful.

I think of her today, and often, with a delight which is tinged with sadness, which is I suppose the appropriate combination of feelings for those we have loved. I can hardly remember a word she said, though she said many witty and memorable things, but the vivid dancing of her face comes to me as strongly as the colors of the garden I am now looking at.

She would never know that she would give me this richness, in a place so far away and a time so remote. She could not know, when I said I loved her, how the words would become tinged with truth as the years passed by. The blessing she dispensed may have been, to her, as casual as the affection she bestowed on a horse. These things we can never know.

I do not believe I will ever be remembered the way I remember this half-Irish, half-Spanish elf. It was her quality to bring out, in one particular man, from time to time, the best part of his nature. That a life can do this is surely a quite beautiful thing.

If one had the faith that one had touched another in this way, at any time, that surely would be an affirmation of the value of life. As I said, one can never know about these things. One can only guess. But it can be a lovely guess. Rosemary is for remembrance, and for constancy. Today would be that girl’s birthday.

Charles McCabe
Tall Girls are Grateful
Chronicle Books, 1973
54 Mint Street
San Francisco, California 94103