[Heath] Ledger’s ex-fiancée Michelle Williams and their two year old daughter Matilda flew from a film set in Sweden to their home in Brooklyn following the tragedy. . . .
Her father Larry Williams said: “It has just broken everybody’s heart in my family. I think Tennyson got it right in the poem he described someone as having died at a young age but burning the candles at both ends. And oh what a beautiful flame he made. That was Heath.
“The saddest thing is his daughter whom he just loved dearly. The Tennyson poem is just so true. His years were few but he left a beautiful legacy.”
Okay . . . Tennyson?!
Tennyson did write In Memoriam A.H.H. about a friend who died young, but the candle poem was written by Edna St. Vincent Millay:
My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends –
It gives a lovely light!
He mentions Tennyson twice, in case you missed it the first time. I’m quotin’ Tennyson here! The first and last time anyone will be interested in anything this man has to say and instead of going down in history as a Tennyson scholar, he’ll be remembered as a puffed-up phony . . .
I read and enjoyed your first few blog bits: thought you’d got it about right, i.e. were content to spin out a fragment a day, which is about as much as any sensible writer should attempt, that is if he wants a life, too: and they had a nicely laid back/ quirky feel: until I came to this piece.
To call Larry Williams ‘a puffed up phony’ in a public forum, simply because, in the fuss and flurry of the moment, and whilst he is dealing with the death of his daughter’s fiance, he misattributes a quote, is unfeeling at best and callous at worst. You seem to be putting petty concerns about literary correctness above simple human compassion.
I guess in a world where style matters more than substance, such comments are inevitable: but I’m tellin’ ya sunshine, tain’t my world.
And yes I know I just made up the word ‘misattribute’. So what?
Hi Hamish –
Thanks for your comment. I get your point but I have to disagree with you. Why does he have to bring Tennyson into it? Why not say something from the heart in his own words? Because he wants to puff himself up into something he’s not. You don’t need Sigmund Freud to figure out why his daughter makes a living pretending to be other people…
I have to agree with my friend PE.
In the event of my untimely demise, I hope my loved ones will take the opportunity to say something sincere about me rather than trying to position themselves as poetry-spouting intellectuals, which they’re not.