The above downloadable Word document contains an inventory of books by and about Henry Miller in my personal library.
Henry Miller (1891-1980) was an American writer who wrote several of his best known works as an expatriate in Paris in the 1930’s . He was the author of works in various formats, including novels, essays, and travel memoirs, and works about writers whom he admired.
— Roger W. Smith
August 2018
The above downloadable Word document contains an inventory of books by and about the poet and artist William Blake in my personal home library.
— Roger W. Smith
May 2023
The above downloadable Word document contains an inventory of books by and about the Russian-American sociologist and social philosopher Pitirim A. Sorokin (1889-1968) in my personal home library.
— Roger W. Smith
October 2022
From Little Pictures of Japan (1925) edited by Olive Beaupré Miller, a treasured children’s book inherited from my mother.
— posted by Roger W. Smith
… if sleeplessness
or passiveness keeps you from the usual
go-round of night and day : take this message
and imagine it was sent to you alone
with these words: I don’t have to be afraid
of you now, since you no longer listen.
I’m tired of thinking about going on
with it all. I will never understand
why you ever needed me for anything.
These are the last words I will ever send you.
— Charles Pierre, “The Dark Muse” (excerpt), Green Vistas: Poems 1969-1979 (New York: Northpoint Press, 1981)
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“Мне отмщение, и Аз воздам” (Vengeance is mine, I will repay)
“Vengeance is mine, I will repay,” Romans 12:19 (quoting from Deuteronomy 32:35); used as epigraph on title page of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina
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Alexey Alexandrovitch went into her boudoir.
At the table, sitting sideways in a low chair, was Vronsky, his face hidden in his hands, weeping. He jumped up at the doctor’s voice, took his hands from his face, and saw Alexey Alexandrovitch. Seeing the husband, he was so overwhelmed that he sat down again, drawing his head down to his shoulders, as if he wanted to disappear; but he made an effort over himself, got up and said:
“She is dying. The doctors say there is no hope. I am entirely in your power, only let me be here … though I am at your disposal. I…”
Alexey Alexandrovitch, seeing Vronsky’s tears, felt a rush of that nervous emotion always produced in him by the sight of other people’s suffering, and turning away his face, he moved hurriedly to the door, without hearing the rest of his words. From the bedroom came the sound of Anna’s voice saying something. Her voice was lively, eager, with exceedingly distinct intonations. Alexey Alexandrovitch went into the bedroom, and went up to the bed. She was lying turned with her face towards him. Her cheeks were flushed crimson, her eyes glittered, her little white hands thrust out from the sleeves of her dressing gown were playing with the quilt, twisting it about. It seemed as though she were not only well and blooming, but in the happiest frame of mind. She was talking rapidly, musically, and with exceptionally correct articulation and expressive intonation.
“For Alexey–I am speaking of Alexey Alexandrovitch (what a strange and awful thing that both are Alexey, isn’t it?)–Alexey would not refuse me. I should forget, he would forgive…. But why doesn’t he come? He’s so good he doesn’t know himself how good he is. Ah, my God, what agony! Give me some water, quick! Oh, that will be bad for her, my little girl! Oh, very well then, give her to a nurse. Yes, I agree, it’s better in fact. He’ll be coming; it will hurt him to see her. Give her /to the nurse.”
“Anna Arkadyevna, he has come. Here he is!” said the midwife, trying to attract her attention to Alexey Alexandrovitch.
“Oh, what nonsense!” Anna went on, not seeing her husband. “No, give her to me; give me my little one! He has not come yet. You say he won’t forgive me, because you don’t know him. No one knows him. I’m the only one, and it was hard for me even. His eyes I ought to know–Seryozha has just the same eyes–and I can’t bear to see them because of it. Has Seryozha had his dinner? I know everyone will forget him. He would not forget. Seryozha must be moved into the corner room, and Mariette must be asked to sleep with him.”
All of a sudden she shrank back, was silent; and in terror, as though expecting a blow, as though to defend herself, she raised her hands to her face. She had seen her husband.
“No, no!” she began. “I am not afraid of him; I am afraid of death. Alexey, come here. I am in a hurry, because I’ve no time, I’ve not long left to live; the fever will begin directly and I shall understand nothing more. Now I understand, I understand it all, I see it all!”
Alexey Alexandrovitch’s wrinkled face wore an expression of agony; he took her by the hand and tried to say something, but he could not utter it; his lower lip quivered, but he still went on struggling with his emotion, and only now and then glanced at her. And each time he glanced at her, he saw her eyes gazing at him with such passionate and triumphant tenderness as he had never seen in them.
“Wait a minute, you don’t know … stay a little, stay!…” She stopped, as though collecting her ideas. “Yes,” she began; “yes, yes, yes. This is what I wanted to say. Don’t be surprised at me. I’m still the same…. But there is another woman in me, I’m afraid of her: she loved that man, and I tried to hate you, and could not forget about her that used to be. I’m not that woman. Now I’m my real self, all myself. I’m dying now, I know I shall die, ask him. Even now I feel–see here, the weights on my feet, on my hands, on my fingers. My fingers–see how huge they are! But this will soon all be over…. Only one thing I want: forgive me, forgive me quite. I’m terrible, but my nurse used to tell me; the holy martyr–what was her name? She was worse. And I’ll go to Rome; there’s a wilderness, and there I shall be no trouble to any one, only I’ll take Seryozha and the little one…. No, you can’t forgive me! I know, it can’t be forgiven! No, no, go away, you’re too good!” She held his hand in one burning hand, while she pushed him away with the other.
The nervous agitation of Alexey Alexandrovitch kept increasing, and had by now reached such a point that he ceased to struggle with it. He suddenly felt that what he had regarded as nervous agitation was on the contrary a blissful spiritual condition that gave him all at once a new happiness he had never known. He did not think that the Christian law that he had been all his life trying to follow, enjoined on him to forgive and love his enemies; but a glad feeling of love and forgiveness for his enemies filled his heart. He knelt down, and laying his head in the curve of her arm, which burned him as with fire through the sleeve, he sobbed like a little child. She put her arm around his head, moved towards him, and with defiant pride lifted up her eyes.
“That is he. I knew him! Now, forgive me, everyone, forgive me!… They’ve come again; why don’t they go away?… Oh, take these cloaks off me!”
The doctor unloosed her hands, carefully laying her on the pillow, and covered her up to the shoulders. She lay back submissively, and looked before her with beaming eyes.
“Remember one thing, that I needed nothing but forgiveness, and I want nothing more…. Why doesn’t he come?” she said, turning to the door towards Vronsky. “Do come, do come! Give him your hand.”
Vronsky came to the side of the bed, and seeing Anna, again hid his face in his hands.
“Uncover your face–look at him! He’s a saint,” she said. “Oh! uncover your face, do uncover it!” she said angrily. “Alexey Alexandrovitch, do uncover his face! I want to see him.”
Alexey Alexandrovitch took Vronsky’s hands and drew them away from his face, which was awful with the expression of agony and shame upon it.
“Give him your hand. Forgive him.”
Alexey Alexandrovitch gave him his hand, not attempting to restrain the tears that streamed from his eyes.
“Thank God, thank God!” she said, “now everything is ready. Only to stretch my legs a little. There, that’s capital. How badly these flowers are done–not a bit like a violet,” she said, pointing to the hangings. “My God, my God! when will it end? Give me some morphine. Doctor, give me some morphine! Oh, my God, my God!”
And she tossed about on the bed.
The doctors said that it was puerperal fever, and that it was ninety-nine chances in a hundred it would end in death. The whole day long there was fever, delirium, and unconsciousness. At midnight the patient lay without consciousness, and almost without pulse.
The end was expected every minute.
Vronsky had gone home, but in the morning he came to inquire, and Alexey Alexandrovitch meeting him in the hall, said: “Better stay, she might ask for you,” and himself led him to his wife’s boudoir. Towards morning, there was a return again of excitement, rapid thought and talk, and again it ended in unconsciousness. On the third day it was the same thing, and the doctors said there was hope. That day Alexey Alexandrovitch went into the boudoir where Vronsky was sitting, and closing the door sat down opposite him.
“Alexey Alexandrovitch,” said Vronsky, feeling that a statement of the position was coming, “I can’t speak, I can’t understand. Spare me! However hard it is for you, believe me, it is more terrible for me.”
He would have risen; but Alexey Alexandrovitch took him by the hand and said:
“I beg you to hear me out; it is necessary. I must explain my feelings, the feelings that have guided me and will guide me, so that you may not be in error regarding me. You know I had resolved on a divorce, and had even begun to take proceedings. I won’t conceal from you that in beginning this I was in uncertainty, I was in misery; I will confess that I was pursued by a desire to revenge myself on you and on her. When I got the telegram, I came here with the same feelings; I will say more, I longed for her death. But….” He paused, pondering whether to disclose or not to disclose his feeling to him. “But I saw her and forgave her. And the happiness of forgiveness has revealed to me my duty. I forgive completely. I would offer the other cheek, I would give my cloak if my coat be taken. I pray to God only not to take from me the bliss of forgiveness!”
Tears stood in his eyes, and the luminous, serene look in them impressed Vronsky.
“This is my position: you can trample me in the mud, make me the laughing-stock of the world, I will not abandon her, and I will never utter a word of reproach to you,” Alexey Alexandrovitch went on. “My duty is clearly marked for me; I ought to be with her, and I will be. If she wishes to see you, I will let you know, but now I suppose it would be better for you to go away.”
He got up, and sobs cut short his words. Vronsky too was getting up, and in a stooping, not yet erect posture, looked up at him from under his brows. He did not understand Alexey Alexandrovitch’s feeling, but he felt that it was something higher and even unattainable for him with his view of life.
— Anna Karenina, Part Four, Chapter 17
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The mistake made by Alexey Alexandrovitch in that, when preparing for seeing his wife, he had overlooked the possibility that her repentance might be sincere, and he might forgive her, and she might not die–this mistake was two months after his return from Moscow brought home to him in all its significance. But the mistake made by him had arisen not simply from his having overlooked that contingency, but also from the fact that until that day of his interview with his dying wife, he had not known his own heart. At his sick wife’s bedside he had for the first time in his life given way to that feeling of sympathetic suffering always roused in him by the sufferings of others, and hitherto looked on by him with shame as a harmful weakness. And pity for her, and remorse for having desired her death, and most of all, the joy of forgiveness, made him at once conscious, not simply of the relief of his own sufferings, but of a spiritual peace he had never experienced before. He suddenly felt that the very thing that was the source of his sufferings had become the source of his spiritual joy; that what had seemed insoluble while he was judging, blaming, and hating, had become clear and simple when he forgave and loved.
He forgave his wife and pitied her for her sufferings and her remorse. He forgave Vronsky, and pitied him, especially after reports reached him of his despairing action. He felt more for his son than before. And he blamed himself now for having taken too little interest in him. But for the little newborn baby he felt a quite peculiar sentiment, not of pity, only, but of tenderness. At first, from a feeling of compassion alone, he had been interested in the delicate little creature, who was not his child, and who was cast on one side during her mother’s illness, and would certainly have died if he had not troubled about her, and he did not himself observe how fond he became of her. He would go into the nursery several times a day, and sit there for a long while, so that the nurses, who were at first afraid of him, got quite used to his presence. Sometimes for half an hour at a stretch he would sit silently gazing at the saffron-red, downy, wrinkled face of the sleeping baby, watching the movements of the frowning brows, and the fat little hands, with clenched fingers, that rubbed the little eyes and nose. At such moments particularly, Alexey Alexandrovitch had a sense of perfect peace and inward harmony, and saw nothing extraordinary in his position, nothing that ought to be changed.
But as time went on, he saw more and more distinctly that however natural the position now seemed to him, he would not long be allowed to remain in it. He felt that besides the blessed spiritual force controlling his soul, there was another, a brutal force, as powerful, or more powerful, which controlled his life, and that this force would not allow him that humble peace he longed for. He felt that everyone was looking at him with inquiring wonder, that he was not understood, and that something was expected of him. Above all, he felt the instability and unnaturalness of his relations with his wife.
When the softening effect of the near approach of death had passed away, Alexey Alexandrovitch began to notice that Anna was afraid of him, ill at ease with him, and could not look him straight in the face. She seemed to be wanting, and not daring, to tell him something; and as though foreseeing their present relations could not continue, she seemed to be expecting something from him.
Towards the end of February it happened that Anna’s baby daughter, who had been named Anna too, fell ill. Alexey Alexandrovitch was in the nursery in the morning, and leaving orders for the doctor to be sent for, he went to his office. On finishing his work, he returned home at four. Going into the hall he saw a handsome groom, in a braided livery and a bear fur cape, holding a white fur cloak.
“Who is here?” asked Alexey Alexandrovitch.
“Princess Elizaveta Federovna Tverskaya,” the groom answered, and it seemed to Alexey Alexandrovitch that he grinned.
During all this difficult time Alexey Alexandrovitch had noticed that his worldly acquaintances, especially women, took a peculiar interest in him and his wife. All these acquaintances he observed with difficulty concealing their mirth at something; the same mirth that he had perceived in the lawyer’s eyes, and just now in the eyes of this groom. Everyone seemed, somehow, hugely delighted, as though they had just been at a wedding. When they met him, with ill-disguised enjoyment they inquired after his wife’s health. The presence of Princess Tverskaya was unpleasant to Alexey Alexandrovitch from the memories associated with her, and also because he disliked her, and he went straight to the nursery. In the day nursery Seryozha, leaning on the table with his legs on a chair, was drawing and chatting away merrily. The English governess, who had during Anna’s illness replaced the French one, was sitting near the boy knitting a shawl. She hurriedly got up, curtseyed, and pulled Seryozha.
Alexey Alexandrovitch stroked his son’s hair, answered the governess’s inquiries about his wife, and asked what the doctor had said of the baby.
“The doctor said it was nothing serious, and he ordered a bath, sir.”
“But she is still in pain,” said Alexey Alexandrovitch, listening to the baby’s screaming in the next room.
“I think it’s the wet-nurse, sir,” the Englishwoman said firmly.
“What makes you think so?” he asked, stopping short.
“It’s just as it was at Countess Paul’s, sir. They gave the baby medicine, and it turned out that the baby was simply hungry: the nurse had no milk, sir.”
Alexey Alexandrovitch pondered, and after standing still a few seconds he went in at the other door. The baby was lying with its head thrown back, stiffening itself in the nurse’s arms, and would not take the plump breast offered it; and it never ceased screaming in spite of the double hushing of the wet-nurse and the other nurse, who was bending over her.
“Still no better?” said Alexey Alexandrovitch.
“She’s very restless,” answered the nurse in a whisper.
“Miss Edwarde says that perhaps the wet-nurse has no milk,” he said.
“I think so too, Alexey Alexandrovitch.”
“Then why didn’t you say so?”
“Who’s one to say it to? Anna Arkadyevna still ill…” said the nurse discontentedly.
The nurse was an old servant of the family. And in her simple words there seemed to Alexey Alexandrovitch an allusion to his position.
The baby screamed louder than ever, struggling and sobbing. The nurse, with a gesture of despair, went to it, took it from the wet-nurse’s arms, and began walking up and down, rocking it.
“You must ask the doctor to examine the wet-nurse,” said Alexey Alexandrovitch. The smartly dressed and healthy-looking nurse, frightened at the idea of losing her place, muttered something to herself, and covering her bosom, smiled contemptuously at the idea of doubts being cast on her abundance of milk. In that smile, too, Alexey Alexandrovitch saw a sneer at his position.
“Luckless child!” said the nurse, hushing the baby, and still walking up and down with it.
Alexey Alexandrovitch sat down, and with a despondent and suffering face watched the nurse walking to and fro.
When the child at last was still, and had been put in a deep bed, and the nurse, after smoothing the little pillow, had left her, Alexey Alexandrovitch got up, and walking awkwardly on tiptoe, approached the baby. For a minute he was still, and with the same despondent face gazed at the baby; but all at once a smile, that moved his hair and the skin of his forehead, came out on his face, and he went as softly out of the room.
In the dining room he rang the bell, and told the servant who came in to send again for the doctor. He felt vexed with his wife for not being anxious about this exquisite baby, and in this vexed humor he had no wish to go to her; he had no wish, either, to see Princess Betsy. But his wife might wonder why he did not go to her as usual; and so, overcoming his disinclination, he went towards the bedroom. As he walked over the soft rug towards the door, he could not help overhearing a conversation he did not want to hear.
“If he hadn’t been going away, I could have understood your answer and his too. But your husband ought to be above that,” Betsy was saying.
“It’s not for my husband; for myself I don’t wish it. Don’t say that!” answered Anna’s excited voice.
“Yes, but you must care to say good-bye to a man who has shot himself on your account….”
“That’s just why I don’t want to.”
With a dismayed and guilty expression, Alexey Alexandrovitch stopped and would have gone back unobserved. But reflecting that this would be undignified, he turned back again, and clearing his throat, he went up to the bedroom. The voices were silent, and he went in.
Anna, in a gray dressing gown, with a crop of short clustering black curls on her round head, was sitting on a settee. The eagerness died out of her face, as it always did, at the sight of her husband; she dropped her head and looked round uneasily at Betsy. Betsy, dressed in the height of the latest fashion, in a hat that towered somewhere over her head like a shade on a lamp, in a blue dress with violet crossway stripes slanting one way on the bodice and the other way on the skirt, was sitting beside Anna, her tall flat figure held erect. Bowing her head, she greeted Alexey Alexandrovitch with an ironical smile.
“Ah!” she said, as though surprised. “I’m very glad you’re at home. You never put in an appearance anywhere, and I haven’t seen you ever since Anna has been ill. I have heard all about it–your anxiety. Yes, you’re a wonderful husband!” she said, with a meaning and affable air, as though she were bestowing an order of magnanimity on him for his conduct to his wife.
Alexey Alexandrovitch bowed frigidly, and kissing his wife’s hand, asked how she was.
“Better, I think,” she said, avoiding his eyes.
“But you’ve rather a feverish-looking color,” he said, laying stress on the word “feverish.”
“We’ve been talking too much,” said Betsy. “I feel it’s selfishness on my part, and I am going away.”
She got up, but Anna, suddenly flushing, quickly caught at her hand.
“No, wait a minute, please. I must tell you … no, you.” she turned to Alexey Alexandrovitch, and her neck and brow were suffused with crimson. “I won’t and can’t keep anything secret from you,” she said.
Alexey Alexandrovitch cracked his fingers and bowed his head.
“Betsy’s been telling me that Count Vronsky wants to come here to say good-bye before his departure for Tashkend.” She did not look at her husband, and was evidently in haste to have everything out, however hard it might be for her. “I told her I could not receive him.”
“You said, my dear, that it would depend on Alexey Alexandrovitch,” Betsy corrected her.
“Oh, no, I can’t receive him; and what object would there….” She stopped suddenly, and glanced inquiringly at her husband (he did not look at her). “In short, I don’t wish it….”
Alexey Alexandrovitch advanced and would have taken her hand.
Her first impulse was to jerk back her hand from the damp hand with big swollen veins that sought hers, but with an obvious effort to control herself she pressed his hand.
“I am very grateful to you for your confidence, but…” he said, feeling with confusion and annoyance that what he could decide easily and clearly by himself, he could not discuss before Princess Tverskaya, who to him stood for the incarnation of that brute force which would inevitably control him in the life he led in the eyes of the world, and hinder him from giving way to his feeling of love and forgiveness. He stopped short, looking at Princess Tverskaya.
“Well, good-bye, my darling,” said Betsy, getting up. She kissed Anna, and went out. Alexey Alexandrovitch escorted her out.
“Alexey Alexandrovitch! I know you are a truly magnanimous man,” said Betsy, stopping in the little drawing-room, and with special warmth shaking hands with him once more. “I am an outsider, but I so love her and respect you that I venture to advise. Receive him. Alexey Vronsky is the soul of honor, and he is going away to Tashkend.”
“Thank you, princess, for your sympathy and advice. But the question of whether my wife can or cannot see anyone she must decide herself.”
He said this from habit, lifting his brows with dignity, and reflected immediately that whatever his words might be, there could be no dignity in his position. And he saw this by the suppressed, malicious, and ironical smile with which Betsy glanced at him after this phrase.
— Anna Karenina, Part Four, Chapter 19
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“A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!” cried a cheerful voice. It was the voice of Scrooge’s nephew, who came upon him so quickly that this was the first intimation he had of his approach.
“Bah!” said Scrooge, “Humbug!”
He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog and frost, this nephew of Scrooge’s, that he was all in a glow; his face was ruddy and handsome; his eyes sparkled, and his breath smoked again.
“Christmas a humbug, uncle!” said Scrooge’s nephew. “You don’t mean that, I am sure?”
“I do,” said Scrooge. “Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You’re poor enough.”
“Come, then,” returned the nephew gaily. “What right have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You’re rich enough.”
Scrooge having no better answer ready on the spur of the moment, said, “Bah!” again; and followed it up with “Humbug.”
“Don’t be cross, uncle!” said the nephew.
“What else can I be,” returned the uncle, “when I live in such a world of fools as this? Merry Christmas! Out upon merry Christmas! What’s Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books and having every item in ’em through a round dozen of months presented dead against you? If I could work my will,” said Scrooge indignantly, “every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!”
“Uncle!” pleaded the nephew.
“Nephew!” returned the uncle sternly, “keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine.”
“Keep it!” repeated Scrooge’s nephew. “But you don’t keep it.”
“Let me leave it alone, then,” said Scrooge. “Much good may it do you! Much good it has ever done you!”
“There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,” returned the nephew. “Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round—apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that—as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!”
The clerk in the Tank involuntarily applauded. Becoming immediately sensible of the impropriety, he poked the fire, and extinguished the last frail spark for ever.
“Let me hear another sound from you,” said Scrooge, “and you’ll keep your Christmas by losing your situation! You’re quite a powerful speaker, sir,” he added, turning to his nephew. “I wonder you don’t go into Parliament.”
“Don’t be angry, uncle. Come! Dine with us to-morrow.”
Scrooge said that he would see him—yes, indeed he did. He went the whole length of the expression, and said that he would see him in that extremity first.
“But why?” cried Scrooge’s nephew. “Why?”
“Why did you get married?” said Scrooge.
“Because I fell in love.”
“Because you fell in love!” growled Scrooge, as if that were the only one thing in the world more ridiculous than a merry Christmas. “Good afternoon!”
“Nay, uncle, but you never came to see me before that happened. Why give it as a reason for not coming now?”
“Good afternoon,” said Scrooge.
“I want nothing from you; I ask nothing of you; why cannot we be friends?”
“Good afternoon,” said Scrooge.
“I am sorry, with all my heart, to find you so resolute. We have never had any quarrel, to which I have been a party. But I have made the trial in homage to Christmas, and I’ll keep my Christmas humour to the last. So A Merry Christmas, uncle!”
“Good afternoon!” said Scrooge.
“And A Happy New Year!”
“Good afternoon!” said Scrooge.
His nephew left the room without an angry word, notwithstanding. He stopped at the outer door to bestow the greetings of the season on the clerk, who, cold as he was, was warmer than Scrooge; for he returned them cordially.
— Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas, Stave One
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He went to church, and walked about the streets, and watched the people hurrying to and fro, and patted children on the head, and questioned beggars, and looked down into the kitchens of houses, and up to the windows, and found that everything could yield him pleasure. He had never dreamed that any walk—that anything—could give him so much happiness. In the afternoon he turned his steps towards his nephew’s house.
He passed the door a dozen times, before he had the courage to go up and knock. But he made a dash, and did it:
“Is your master at home, my dear?” said Scrooge to the girl. Nice girl! Very.
“Yes, sir.”
“Where is he, my love?” said Scrooge.
“He’s in the dining-room, sir, along with mistress. I’ll show you up-stairs, if you please.”
“Thank’ee. He knows me,” said Scrooge, with his hand already on the dining-room lock. “I’ll go in here, my dear.”
He turned it gently, and sidled his face in, round the door. They were looking at the table (which was spread out in great array); for these young housekeepers are always nervous on such points, and like to see that everything is right.
“Fred!” said Scrooge.
Dear heart alive, how his niece by marriage started! Scrooge had forgotten, for the moment, about her sitting in the corner with the footstool, or he wouldn’t have done it, on any account.
“Why bless my soul!” cried Fred, “who’s that?”
“It’s I. Your uncle Scrooge. I have come to dinner. Will you let me in, Fred?”
Let him in! It is a mercy he didn’t shake his arm off. He was at home in five minutes. Nothing could be heartier. His niece looked just the same. So did Topper when he came. So did the plump sister when she came. So did every one when they came. Wonderful party, wonderful games, wonderful unanimity, won-der-ful happiness!
— A Christmas Carol, Stave Five
— posted by Roger W. Smith
June 2017
“Some things that happened never happened” is an oxymoron. I made it up. An oxymoron known as a Yogi Berra-ism (or, yogism), that is. The American neologism yogism (which I would spell with two i’s) is defined as follows:
a malapropism stating truth in a humorous manner, attributed to famous New York Yankee catcher, Yogi Berra. (“Deja vu all over again” or “it ain’t over til it’s over” are classic yogisms.) [Yogi Berra, for readers of this blog who are not American, was a professional baseball player who became an American folk hero based upon his inimitable personality and wit as well as his athletic accomplishments. (He was elected to The National Baseball Hall of Fame.)]
Shouldn’t it be spelled yogiism, or Yogi-ism?
I’m not entirely happy with this definition, which I found on the internet. Malapropism? Humorous? I don’t think Yogi Berra ever saw himself as a wit or jokester. True, he did often misspeak, but he did so to make a point in in his characteristic fashion. Yogisms, I would say, are closest to oxymorons. Saying what something is by stating what it is not.
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People often assert that stories are true when they are not, when they did not actually happen. I think this occurs because of vanity. It seems practically irresistible to be able to tell a good story that will hold others spellbound and perhaps impress them with the teller’s appeal as a raconteur.
Then, there’s the desire to make someone conform to a preconceived image: a noble person above reproach, someone easily made fun of. The teller is betting that his or her story will convince you of this. The story is their way of making someone look perhaps saintly or admirable or, on the contrary, ridiculous, at no “cost,” so to speak, to the teller, who is not likely to be held to account for a fabrication.
And, there is also a factor, often, of plain carelessness, forgetfulness, inattention to detail.
Many such stories are invented out of whole cloth. Or believed because someone else has averred them to be true.
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Some examples.
Baseball player Pee Wee Reese’s supposedly hugging Jackie Robinson before a hostile crowd in Cincinnati during Robinson’s first season in the Major Leagues has become the stuff of legend:
In 2005, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg helped unveil a monument outside the Brooklyn Cyclones’ home field depicting Hall of Famers (and former Brooklyn Dodgers) Pee Wee Reese and Jackie Robinson with Reese’s arm around Robinson.
It was designed to commemorate a moment that occurred in Cincinnati, Ohio, on May 13, 1947, the first game of just the second road series during Robinson’s inaugural season, which saw him break the color barrier to become the first African-American major leaguer.
In the new Robinson biopic, 42, the scene is also prominently given the Hollywood treatment.
As the story goes, Cincinnati fans were giving Robinson a particularly tough time as the Dodgers took the field in the bottom of the first. In a show of support, Reese temporarily left his position at shortstop and traveled over to Robinson at first base and put his arm around the rookie, silencing the crowd, which was awed by the act of racial empathy by Reese, a popular All-Star from nearby Kentucky.
— “Did Reese really embrace Robinson in ’47?” (ESPN)
http://www.espn.com/blog/playbook/fandom/post/_/id/20917/did-reese-really-embrace-robinson-in-47
A heartwarming story, but, as writer Jonathan Eig has shown, convincingly, the incident didn’t happen (Jonathan Eig, Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson’s First Season, pp. 127-129).
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Babe Ruth’s “called shot” (a home run which was preceded by the batter, Ruth, pointing to the place in the stands where he would hit the next pitch) in the fifth inning of Game 3 of the 1932 World Series at Wrigley Field in Chicago. It probably didn’t happen as it was supposed to have. The best guess is that Ruth held up his fingers to show players on the opposing team, the Chicago Cubs, who were subjecting Ruth to taunts from the dugout, that the count was two strikes and that he had another strike coming. But to assert this is to be in danger oneself of making things up.
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There are similarities with another story that has become the stuff of American legend, George Washington chopping down a cherry tree in his boyhood.
Mason Locke Weems (1759-1825), usually referred to as Parson Weems, was an American book agent and author who wrote the first biography of George Washington immediately after his death. He was the source of some of the apocryphal stories about Washington. The tale of the cherry tree (“I cannot tell a lie, I did it with my little hatchet”) is included in the fifth edition of The Life of Washington (1809 imprint, originally published 1800), a bestseller that depicted Washington’s virtues and was intended to provide a morally instructive tale for the youth of the young nation.
Weems’s A History of the Life and Death, Virtues and Exploits of General George Washington was a biography written in this spirit, amplified by the florid, rollicksome style which was Weems’s trademark. According to this account, his subject was “… Washington, the hero, and the Demigod …” and at a level above that “… what he really was, ‘’the Jupiter Conservator,’ the friend and benefactor of men.” With this hyperbole, Weems elevated Washington to the Augustan level of the god Jupiter.
Among the exaggerated or invented anecdotes is that of the cherry tree, attributed by Weems to “… an aged lady, who was a distant relative, and, when a girl, spent much of her time in the family …” who referred to young George as “cousin.”
The following anecdote is a case in point. It is too valuable to be lost, and too true to be doubted; for it was communicated to me by the same excellent lady to whom I am indebted for the last.
“When George,” said she, “was about six years old, he was made the wealthy master of a hatchet! Of which, like most little boys, he was immoderately fond, and was constantly going about chopping everything that came in his way. One day, in the garden, where he often amused himself hacking his mother’s pea-sticks, he unluckily tried the edge of his hatchet on the body of a beautiful young English cherry-tree, which he barked so terribly, that I don’t believe the tree ever got the better of it. The next morning the old gentleman, finding out what had befallen his tree, which, by the by, was a great favourite, came into the house; and with much warmth asked for the mischievous author, declaring at the same time, that he would not have taken five guineas for his tree. Nobody could tell him anything about it. Presently George and his hatchet made their appearance. “George,” said his father, “do you know who killed that beautiful little cherry tree yonder in the garden? ” This was a tough question; and George staggered under it for a moment; but quickly recovered himself: and looking at his father, with the sweet face of youth brightened with the inexpressible charm of all-conquering truth, he bravely cried out, “I can’t tell a lie, Pa; you know I can’t tell a lie. I did cut it with my hatchet.” “Run to my arms, you dearest boy,” cried his father in transports, “run to my arms; glad am I, George, that you killed my tree; for you have paid me for it a thousand fold. Such an act of heroism in my son is more worth than a thousand trees, though blossomed with silver, and their fruits of purest gold.”
It went on to be reprinted in the popular McGuffey Reader used by schoolchildren, making it part of the culture, causing Washington’s birthday to be celebrated with cherry dishes, with the cherry often claimed to be a favorite of his.
In 1896 Woodrow Wilson’s biography George Washington was published, calling it a fabrication, after which almost all historians of the period followed suit, even though the story was never denied by Washington’s relatives, notably Eleanor Parke Custis Lewis (1779-1852), whom Washington raised as his own daughter, and who spent her life preserving his memory and debunking false stories.
In spite of the speculation offered by some historians the story remains plausible and has not been proven or disproven.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mason_Locke_Weems
Note that most scholars regard the story as pure invention, but we will never know for sure.
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Myths about the circumstances surrounding the composition of Mozart’s Requiem in D minor, K. 626. The myths were propagated by the play Amadeus and the film based upon the play, but they started long before that. (Nevertheless, the way the play and film play fast and loose with the facts and create stock characters, often nefarious or ludicrous, can be quite annoying.)
The myths include that Mozart and his wife Constanze were facing financial ruin when he was composing the requiem, down to their last ducat; that the composer Antonio Salieri played a role in commissioning and completing the Requiem (and perhaps in Mozart’s death generally); and so on.
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A story which has been accepted as true ever since the first biography of William Blake by Alexander Gilchrist is that Blake, the mystic poet and artist, was called upon by a friend one day at his home in London and that the friend found Blake and his wife sitting together in their summer house entirely naked, like Adam and Eve. This story fit the popular conception of Blake as an eccentric who flouted convention and as an early proponent of free love (untrue and not in accord with the actual person and his times). The story has been shown to be apocryphal by Blake scholar G. E. Bentley, Jr.
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Here’s a story from my own family lore that is suspect. But, again, I’m not sure.
My mother’s brother enjoyed telling charming stories. He told one about my grandfather, Ralph E. Handy, and the family grocer, Mr. Wheeler.
My uncle’s family, it is known, had difficulty making ends meet during the Great Depression. My uncle told me that Mr. Wheeler, a local grocer, helped them to get by by giving them credit.
My grandfather died in 1947 in middle age. When his will was read, as the story, told by my uncle with relish, goes, the first item in it was (quoting roughly from my uncle’s recollection), “Before all other debts are paid, I want to make sure Mr. Wheeler is made whole.”
According to my uncle, Mr. Wheeler, when informed of this, said, rubbing his forehead, “My gosh. Imagine that. This restores my faith in humanity.”
From what I have heard about the character of my maternal grandfather, who died when I was an infant, my uncle’s story seemed credible. What a charming story, I thought. One of which our family can be proud. When the opportunity presented itself, I went to the probate court in Essex County, Massachusetts and looked up the will of my grandfather, which is on file there. I wanted to be able to quote his exact words.
I was surprised to find that there was nothing in the will about paying off debts to a Mr. Wheeler or any grocer. The will is short and perfunctory. It leaves his estate to his wife.
(My uncle also insisted that his uncle, the noted educator Anson B. Handy, was present at the funeral of his father, my maternal grandfather. There is a problem with the story: Anson B. Handy predeceased his brother Ralph Handy, my uncle’s father, by more than a year. I verified this through genealogical research, consulting death records, obituaries, and gravestones. When I pointed this out to my uncle, he vehemently insisted Anson had been at Ralph’s funeral. My uncle was in his late teens at the time.)
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Another story which has been told many times with relish by a relative of mine is that my two grandmothers used to argue over the dinner table during family gatherings (such as during holidays) over who had the most distinguished colonial ancestry.
In the story, the two grandmothers, who are portrayed as battle axes, would practically come to blows over which of them was a Mayflower descendant or had more Mayflower ancestors.
There are problems with the story, which I noticed right away. I came to disbelieve it even more after doing my own genealogical research.
One of my grandmothers was indeed very proud of her colonial heritage. Her ancestors on her father’s side went far back; her original ancestor came in 1635.
However, there was no Mayflower ancestry on her side. I doubt she would have claimed this. She may have had some knowledge of her genealogy. She probably knew that her early Colonial ancestors settled in Essex County, Massachussets, and it would have extremely unlikely that she would have claimed descent from Cape Cod settlers. The Mayflower passengers and their children settled on the Cape. The Massachusetts Bay Colony, where my paternal grandmother’s ancestors settled, was totally different.
My other grandmother, my mother’s mother, did not tend to be disputatious in the sense of acting haughty or boastful in general, and was never this way, to my knowledge, in claiming to be a blueblood. She did have Mayflower ancestry, but she may not have even been aware of it. Her great-great grandmother on her father’s side was a Mayflower descendant. Her husband, my mother’s father, did have several Mayflower ancestors, but while my grandmother may have been proud of this, they were not her ancestors. And, I never head her brag about her ancestry, let alone talk about it.
Also making the story unlikely, in view of my relative’s basing it upon personal recollections of family gatherings at which the relative was present, is the fact that my two grandmothers were rarely, hardly ever, in attendance at family functions at the same time.
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Apocryphal stories always have stock figures: the great composer harassed to death by a jealous rival who demanded he complete his own requiem mass; the dutiful little boy and future paragon of civic virtue who can’t tell his father a lie; the ballplayer raised in the South who shows brotherly love to a black teammate in pre Civil Rights days; the upright Yankee to whom a small debt he could easily overlook is forever binding, even beyond the grave; the proud, warring battle axes fighting over their claims to Mayflower ancestry.
They are all based upon real people made into stock figures — sometimes larger than life, sometimes ridiculous — into characters who are distortions of their actual selves and who do not conform to actuality.
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Apocryphal stories, Embellishment. Hard to resist.
Blame it on human nature.
— Roger W. Smith
June 2017
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Addendum:
See “The Hug That Jackie Robinson Never Received.” By Jonathan Eig, The Wall Street Journal, August 20, 2022
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-hug-that-jackie-robinson-never-received-11660968060
while we are asked to disbelieve our own eyes
and dismiss common sense
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I said, “there was a society of men among us, bred up youth in the art of proving, by words multiplied for the purpose, that white is black, and black is white, according as they are paid. To this society all the rest of the people are slaves.
— Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels
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The New York Times
June 16, 2017
re acquittal of a Minnesota police officer, Jeronimo Yanez, of all charges in the shooting of Philander Castile
The case against Officer Yanez … hinged on one central question: Did the officer have reason to fear that Mr. Castile was reaching for a gun that he had acknowledged having with him when he was pulled over by the officer?
Officer Yanez testified that he feared Mr. Castile was grabbing for the gun, but Mr. Castile’s girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, said he had merely been reaching for his identification to give the officer. …
Earl Gray, a lawyer for Officer Yanez, said he was gratified with the outcome, but frustrated that charges were ever brought.
“The state didn’t have a case in the first place,” Mr. Gray said in an interview on Friday evening after the acquittal. “But because of the protests and the political pressure, I suppose you’d call it, he was charged and he had to go into court and defend himself.”
… the case had centered chiefly on the conflicting accounts of what Mr. Castile, a longtime school cafeteria worker whom Officer Yanez had pulled over for a broken taillight at twilight on a summer evening, was doing before he was shot.
Prosecutors said Officer Yanez had created a dangerous situation, perceived a threat where none existed and, in addition to killing Mr. Castile, almost wounded Ms. Reynolds and her young daughter [the couple’s child] in the back seat.
“He was making assumptions and jumping to conclusions without engaging in the dialogue he was trained to have in a citizen encounter like this,” Jeffrey Paulsen, a prosecutor, said in closing arguments. “And that’s his fault, not the fault of Philando Castile.”
Mr. Castile was licensed to carry a gun and was recorded on a dashboard camera video calmly telling Officer Yanez that he had a weapon in the car. Officer Yanez told him not to reach for the weapon, and Mr. Castile and Ms. Reynolds both tried to assure the officer that he was not doing so. Within seconds, Officer Yanez fired seven shots.
Prosecutors said Mr. Castile had mentioned his gun to allay concerns, not to threaten the officer or escalate the situation. “If someone were just about to reach in their pocket and pull out a gun and shoot an officer, that’s the last thing they would say,” Mr. Paulsen said.
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Mr. Gray, the defense lawyer, said Officer Yanez had to react quickly to what he believed was an imminent threat. He said Officer Yanez smelled marijuana, believed that Mr. Castile matched the description of a recent robbery suspect and saw him grabbing a gun.
“We have him ignoring his commands. He’s got a gun. He might be the robber. He’s got marijuana in his car,” Mr. Gray told jurors. “Those are the things in Officer Yanez’s head.”
Officer Yanez did not tell Mr. Castile about the robbery suspicions, only that his brake light was out. But Mr. Gray said that this approach made sense, and that Officer Yanez had acted reasonably given his training and what he knew that night.
“He did what he had to do,” Mr. Gray said, adding that the situation was “tragic.” …
“We’re not saying that Philando Castile was going to shoot Officer Yanez,” Mr. Gray said. “What we’re saying is that he did not follow orders. He was stoned.”
But Mr. Paulsen, the prosecutor, said that version of events was contradicted by video. He said footage showed that Mr. Castile was driving normally, pulled over quickly and was alert and courteous when talking to Officer Yanez. He accused the defense of blaming the victim.
“He offered no resistance,” Mr. Paulsen said of Mr. Castile. “He made no threats. He didn’t even complain about being stopped for such a minor offense.”
— Roger W. Smith
June 2017
Once upon a time, there was a little red hen who lived on a farm. She was friends with a lazy dog, a sleepy cat, and a noisy yellow duck.
One day the little red hen found some seeds on the ground. The little red hen had an idea. She would plant the seeds.
The little red hen asked her friends, “Who will help me plant the seeds?”
“Not I,” barked the lazy dog.
“Not I,” purred the sleepy cat.
“Not I,” quacked the noisy yellow duck.
“Then I will,” said the little red hen. So the little red hen planted the seeds all by herself.
When the seeds had grown, the little red hen asked her friends, “Who will help me cut the wheat?”
“Not I,” barked the lazy dog.
“Not I,” purred the sleepy cat.
“Not I,” quacked the noisy yellow duck.
“Then I will,” said the little red hen. So the little red hen cut the wheat all by herself.
When all the wheat was cut, the little red hen asked her friends, “Who will help me take the wheat to the mill to be ground into flour?”
“Not I,” barked the lazy dog.
“Not I,” purred the sleepy cat.
“Not I,” quacked the noisy yellow duck.
“Then I will,” said the little red hen. So the little red hen brought the wheat to the mill all by herself, ground the wheat into flour, and carried the heavy sack of flour back to the farm.
The tired little red hen asked her friends, “Who will help me bake the bread?”
“Not I,” barked the lazy dog.
“Not I,” purred the sleepy cat.
“Not I,” quacked the noisy yellow duck.
“Then I will,” said the little red hen. So the little red hen baked the bread all by herself.
When the bread was finished, the tired little red hen asked her friends, “Who will help me eat the bread?”
“I will,” barked the lazy dog.
“I will,” purred the sleepy cat.
“I will,” quacked the noisy yellow duck.
“No!” said the little red hen. “I will.” And the little red hen ate the bread all by herself.
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“… people seem to take things for granted. The last thing they would ever do is look up such stuff themselves. When it is handed to them on a silver platter, they don’t appreciate it but instead complain, vent, and find cause for fault.”
— Roger W. Smith, “a trip to Massachusetts (and its disappointing aftermath),” blog post, June 2017
In which the author, Lemuel Gulliver, converses with his Houyhnhnm master and, “at his master’s command, informs him of the state of England.”
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I said, “there was a society of men among us, bred up from their youth in the art of proving, by words multiplied for the purpose, that white is black, and black is white, according as they are paid. To this society all the rest of the people are slaves. For example, if my neighbour has a mind to my cow, he has a lawyer to prove that he ought to have my cow from me. I must then hire another to defend my right, it being against all rules of law that any man should be allowed to speak for himself. Now, in this case, I, who am the right owner, lie under two great disadvantages: first, my lawyer, being practised almost from his cradle in defending falsehood, is quite out of his element when he would be an advocate for justice, which is an unnatural office he always attempts with great awkwardness, if not with ill-will. The second disadvantage is, that my lawyer must proceed with great caution, or else he will be reprimanded by the judges, and abhorred by his brethren, as one that would lessen the practice of the law. And therefore I have but two methods to preserve my cow. The first is, to gain over my adversary’s lawyer with a double fee, who will then betray his client by insinuating that he hath justice on his side. The second way is for my lawyer to make my cause appear as unjust as he can, by allowing the cow to belong to my adversary: and this, if it be skilfully done, will certainly bespeak the favour of the bench. Now your honour is to know, that these judges are persons appointed to decide all controversies of property, as well as for the trial of criminals, and picked out from the most dexterous lawyers, who are grown old or lazy; and having been biassed all their lives against truth and equity, lie under such a fatal necessity of favouring fraud, perjury, and oppression, that I have known some of them refuse a large bribe from the side where justice lay, rather than injure the faculty, by doing any thing unbecoming their nature or their office.
“It is a maxim among these lawyers that whatever has been done before, may legally be done again: and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice, and the general reason of mankind. These, under the name of precedents, they produce as authorities to justify the most iniquitous opinions; and the judges never fail of directing accordingly.
“In pleading, they studiously avoid entering into the merits of the cause; but are loud, violent, and tedious, in dwelling upon all circumstances which are not to the purpose. For instance, in the case already mentioned; they never desire to know what claim or title my adversary has to my cow; but whether the said cow were red or black; her horns long or short; whether the field I graze her in be round or square; whether she was milked at home or abroad; what diseases she is subject to, and the like; after which they consult precedents, adjourn the cause from time to time, and in ten, twenty, or thirty years, come to an issue.
“It is likewise to be observed, that this society has a peculiar cant and jargon of their own, that no other mortal can understand, and wherein all their laws are written, which they take special care to multiply; whereby they have wholly confounded the very essence of truth and falsehood, of right and wrong; so that it will take thirty years to decide, whether the field left me by my ancestors for six generations belongs to me, or to a stranger three hundred miles off.
“In the trial of persons accused for crimes against the state, the method is much more short and commendable: the judge first sends to sound the disposition of those in power, after which he can easily hang or save a criminal, strictly preserving all due forms of law.”
Here my master interposing, said, “it was a pity, that creatures endowed with such prodigious abilities of mind, as these lawyers, by the description I gave of them, must certainly be, were not rather encouraged to be instructors of others in wisdom and knowledge.” In answer to which I assured his honour, “that in all points out of their own trade, they were usually the most ignorant and stupid generation among us, the most despicable in common conversation, avowed enemies to all knowledge and learning, and equally disposed to pervert the general reason of mankind in every other subject of discourse as in that of their own profession.”
— Gulliver’s Travels Into Several Remote Nations Of The World, Part IV, ” A Voyage To The Country Of The Houyhnhnms,” Chapter V
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Accords with the opinion of yours truly.
plus ça change …
— Roger W. Smith
June 2017
Jonathan Swift is the one of the greatest satirists English literature has ever seen. (Juvenal an ancient rival.) How many times can one read Gulliver’s Travels and not be bored or not fail to be entertained? The answer: an infinite number of times.
In his prose, Swift has a genius for irony, for stating earnestly one thing when the intended meaning is just the opposite, and where the absurdity of what is being said proves the opposite (intended) point. He delights in making something as plain as day by asserting the ridiculous (such as in his “A Modest Proposal”). He is a consummate stylist and prose writer who can perfectly feign ignorance and appear to make the ridiculous — or the fact of his stating the ridiculous — plausible, as if he were merely sitting down at his writing desk with no hidden intentions. It’s equivalent to what a comic actor who deadpans and plays it straight can achieve.
If the censure of the Yahoos could any way affect me, I should have great reason to complain, that some of them are so bold as to think my book of travels a mere fiction out of mine own brain, and have gone so far as to drop hints, that the Houyhnhnms and Yahoos have no more existence than the inhabitants of Utopia.
— “A Letter from Captain Gulliver to his Cousin Sympson” (prefatory to Gulliver’s Travels)
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Swift was also a great poet, as I learned once from a friend of mine who was reading his poetry and knew much about poetry in general then I have ever, then or since.
I have tried to get into Swift the poet. I appreciate his genius. Yet, upon reading a poem such as “A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed,” with its scatological content, Swift the misogynist repels me. His wit and genius are still on display, but the content is hard to stomach.
But then, “Verses on the Death of Dr Swift, D.S.P.D.,” a satirical poem the subject of which is the author himself, is brilliant. Every line, every rhyme tells. Strikes home.
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The following are two of my favorite Swift poems, written in 1709 and 1710, respectively, when Swift was in his forties.
.
A Description of the Morning
Now hardly here and there a hackney-coach
Appearing, show’d the ruddy morn’s approach.
Now Betty from her master’s bed had flown,
And softly stole to discompose her own.
The slip-shod ‘prentice from his master’s door
Had par’d the dirt, and sprinkled round the floor.
Now Moll had whirl’d her mop with dext’rous airs,
Prepar’d to scrub the entry and the stairs.
The youth with broomy stumps began to trace
The kennel-edge, where wheels had worn the place.
The small-coal man was heard with cadence deep;
Till drown’d in shriller notes of “chimney-sweep.”
Duns at his lordship’s gate began to meet;
And brickdust Moll had scream’d through half a street.
The turnkey now his flock returning sees,
Duly let out a-nights to steal for fees.
The watchful bailiffs take their silent stands;
And schoolboys lag with satchels in their hands.
Notes
1) The poem is introduced as follows: “the town has, this half age, been tormented with insects called easy writers …. Such jaunty scribblers are so justly laughed at for their sonnets on Phillis and Chloris, and fantastical descriptions in ’em, that an ingenious kinsman of mine, of the family of the Staffs, Mr. Humphrey Wagstaff by name, has, to avoid their strain, run into a way perfectly new, and described things exactly as they happen: he never forms trees, or nymphs, or groves, where they are not, but makes the incidents just as they really appear. For an example of it: I stole out of his manuscript the following lines: they are a description of the morning, but of the morning in town; nay, of the morning at this end of the town, where my kinsman at present lodges.”
9) broomy stumps: worn-out broom.
9-10) to trace/The kennel-edge: to sweep down the gutter.
14) brickdust Moll: painted prostitute.
16) In return for privileges, jailers demanded fees from their prisoners.
A Description of a City Shower
Careful observers may foretell the hour
(By sure prognostics) when to dread a shower:
While rain depends, the pensive cat gives o’er
Her frolics, and pursues her tail no more.
Returning home at night, you’ll find the sink
Strike your offended sense with double stink.
If you be wise, then go not far to dine;
You’ll spend in coach hire more than save in wine.
A coming shower your shooting corns presage,
Old achès throb, your hollow tooth will rage.
Sauntering in coffeehouse is Dulman seen;
He damns the climate and complains of spleen.
Meanwhile the South, rising with dabbled wings,
A sable cloud athwart the welkin flings,
That swilled more liquor than it could contain,
And, like a drunkard, gives it up again.
Brisk Susan whips her linen from the rope,
While the first drizzling shower is born aslope:
Such is that sprinkling which some careless quean
Flirts on you from her mop, but not so clean:
You fly, invoke the gods; then turning, stop
To rail; she singing, still whirls on her mop.
Not yet the dust had shunned the unequal strife,
But, aided by the wind, fought still for life,
And wafted with its foe by violent gust,
’Twas doubtful which was rain and which was dust.
Ah! where must needy poet seek for aid,
When dust and rain at once his coat invade?
Sole coat, where dust cemented by the rain
Erects the nap, and leaves a mingled stain.
Now in contiguous drops the flood comes down,
Threatening with deluge this devoted town.
To shops in crowds the daggled females fly,
Pretend to cheapen goods, but nothing buy.
The Templar spruce, while every spout’s abroach,
Stays till ’tis fair, yet seems to call a coach.
The tucked-up sempstress walks with hasty strides,
While seams run down her oiled umbrella’s sides.
Here various kinds, by various fortunes led,
Commence acquaintance underneath a shed.
Triumphant Tories and desponding Whigs
Forget their feuds, and join to save their wigs.
Boxed in a chair the beau impatient sits,
While spouts run clattering o’er the roof by fits,
And ever and anon with frightful din
The leather sounds; he trembles from within.
So when Troy chairmen bore the wooden steed,
Pregnant with Greeks impatient to be freed
(Those bully Greeks, who, as the moderns do,
Instead of paying chairmen, run them through),
Laocoön struck the outside with his spear,
And each imprisoned hero quaked for fear.
Now from all parts the swelling kennels flow,
And bear their trophies with them as they go:
Filth of all hues and odors seem to tell
What street they sailed from, by their sight and smell.
They, as each torrent drives with rapid force,
From Smithfield or St. Pulchre’s shape their course,
And in huge confluence joined at Snow Hill ridge,
Fall from the conduit prone to Holborn Bridge.
Sweepings from butchers’ stalls, dung, guts, and blood,
Drowned puppies, stinking sprats, all drenched in mud.
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There is a quality about these poems, their accessibility and realism, that delights me. It is a quality one sees in certain paintings. One feels as if he or she can walk into the frame, so to speak. One can totally imagine the scene and the time of day and that it could be the here and now.
— Roger W. Smith
June 2017
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Addendum: The full title of Gulliver’s Travels, published in 1726, was Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships.
The full title of “A Modest Proposal,” published in 1729, was “A Modest Proposal For preventing the Children of Poor People From being a Burthen to Their Parents or Country, and For making them Beneficial to the Publick.”