The Highwayman
Alfred Noyes/Murray Kimber (illustrator)
KCP Poetry, 2005
ISBN: 1553374258
Classic English poetry meets art deco in illustrator Murray Kimber's interpretation of Alfred Noyes's "The Highwayman." The poem is a romantic ballad that, though once required reading for most students, has lately fallen somewhat out of favour. Being "traditional" and "conservative," it seems an offbeat choice for the second volume of KCP Press's "Visions in Poetry" series, but Kimber's moody paintings work well with Noyes's eerie poem.
Despite its old-fashioned romanticism, "The Highwayman" remains a compelling work. It was made into a film in 1951 and Loreena McKennitt set it to music (she recorded many classic poems, including "The Lady of Shalott" and "The Bonny Swans"). Central to its narrative are the unnamed highwayman and his beloved Bess, the inn-keeper's daughter. One night, Tim the ostler--who also loves Bess--hears the lovers plan a tryst after the highwayman steals a "bonny prize" of gold. Tim betrays the highwayman to King George's men, catalyzing an enduring story of sacrifice and immortal love.
The romantic 17th-century English highwayman is reinvented in Kimber's paintings as an American biker, circa 1930s. Kimber updates the poem by illustrating classic imagery in jazz age trappings. Tim the ostler, who in Noyes's narrative hides in a stable, is a sly valet. The highwayman's "French cocked-hat" is now a beret, and the "bunch of lace" at his throat becomes a white scarf. Instead of a horse, he rides a motorcycle emblazoned with a stallion insignia. The ribbon imagery that permeates the poem ("The road was a ribbon of moonlight," "the road was a gypsy's ribbon,") is too ethereal for Kimber's setting. Instead, his highwayman's motorcycle headlight cuts a harsh swath in the urban night. Kimber represents the "ribbon of moonlight" with a moonlit image of the Brooklyn Bridge.
King George's men ambush the highwayman on the evening he is to meet his love at the inn:
"They said no word to the landlord, they drank his ale instead,
But they gagged his daughter and bound her to the foot of her narrow bed;
Two of them knelt at her casement, with muskets at their side!"
Kimber updates the King's men with policemen who, clad in trenchcoats and fedoras and armed with rifles and machine guns, are the very picture of 1930s-era government men. Bess knows that her lover is a "dead man" already, but she warns him of the treachery by shooting herself with a musket. Hearing the shot, the highwayman flees, unaware that the blast signalled his lover's death.
