“I am sorry to hear you are going to publish a poem.”

While writing about Elizabeth Vassall Fox, Baroness Holland, over at Boston 1775, I came across anecdotes of her literary judgment and hosting in the Dictionary of National Biography that I had to share:

Lady Holland possessed a remarkable power of making her guests display themselves to the best advantage. Traits in her character that were by no means attractive rendered her power of fascination the more extraordinary.

[Thomas] Moore tells how on one occasion she asked him how he could write those ‘vulgar verses’ about Hunt, and on another occasion attacked his ‘Life of Sheridan’ as ‘quite a romance’ showing a ‘want of taste and judgment.’ To ‘Lalla Rookh’ she objected, ‘in the first place because it was eastern, and in the second place because it was in quarto.’ ‘Poets,’ says Moore, ‘inclined to a plethora of vanity would find a dose of Lady Holland now and then very good for their complaint.’

To Lord Porchester she once said: ‘I am sorry to hear you are going to publish a poem. Can’t you suppress it?’ ‘Your poetry,’ she said to [Samuel] Rogers, ‘is bad enough, so pray be sparing of your prose.’ To Matthew Gregory (better known as Monk) Lewis, complaining that in ‘Rejected Addresses’ he was made to write burlesque, which he never did, she replied, ‘You don’t know your own talent’ . . . .

In [George] Ticknor, the historian of Spanish literature, she met her match. Referring to New England she told him that she understood the colony had originally been a convict settlement, to which Ticknor answered that he was not aware of the fact, but that in the King’s Chapel, Boston, was a monument to one of the Vassalls, some of whom had been among the early settlers of Massachusetts.

She kept a tight rein on her guests when they seemed inclined to monopolise the conversation. [Thomas Babington] Macaulay once descanting at large on Sir Thomas Munro, she told him brusquely she had had enough of the subject and would have no more. The conversation then turned on the Christian Fathers, and Macaulay was copious on Chrysostom and Athanasius till Lady Holland abruptly turned to him with, ‘Pray, Macaulay, what was the origin of a doll? when were dolls first mentioned in history?’ This elicited a disquisition on the Roman doll, which in its turn was cut short by Lady Holland. On another occasion she sent a page to ask him to cease talking, as she wished to listen to Lord Aberdeen.

She…often overcrowded her table. ‘Make room,’ she said to Henry Luttrell on one of these occasions. ‘It must certainly be made,’ he observed, ‘for it does not exist.’ Lord Dudley declined her invitations, because ‘he did not choose to be tyrannised over while he was eating his dinner.’ Lord Melbourne, being required to change his place, got up with ‘I’ll be d—d if I dine with you at all,’ and walked out of the house.

Nevertheless her beauty, vivacity, and the unrivalled skill with which she managed the conversation so that there should never be either too much or too little of any one topic, atoned for everything. 

The Invention of Rewriting Revision?

I’m looking at successive drafts of the Declaration of Independence while considering Craig Fehrman’s Boston Globe essay on revision in writing.

Fehrman says that Hannah Sullivan’s The Work of Revision posits that “revision as we now understand it—where authors, before they publish anything, will spend weeks tearing it down and putting it back together again—is a creation of the 20th century.”

More specifically, she argues that approach to rewriting is a product of the typewriter, cheaper typesetting, and word-processing programs. In days when paper and printing were rarer resources, authors didn’t see so many versions of their work and therefore took fewer opportunities to rewrite.

Yet the article omits some counterexamples. It cites John Milton’s “Lycidas” as an example of a writer making “local tweaks instead of significantly recasting.” It doesn’t mention that Milton issued Paradise Lost in two forms, the first divided into ten books and the second into twelve, as he revised his work. Alexander Pope published three versions of The Rape of the Lock within a decade.

Fehrman says Sullivan cites the Romantics as a school that “made resisting revision a virtue. The best literature, they believed, flowed from spontaneous and organic creative acts.” Yet no great English poem was more fussed over and rewritten (not always to good effect) than William Wordsworth’s verse autobiography, posthumously published as The Prelude.

The Work of Revision doesn’t appear to go deep into English literary history, or to find the same trends in the literature of other languages where the same typesetting technologies applied. The catalog copy names only Modernist authors, contrasted with a nameless swarm of “Romantics,” and the earliest name in the table of contents is Henry James.

It might be more accurate to say that the Modernists, in contrast to their immediate literary predecessors, talked a lot more about revision, and about what hard work it was. And that would be significant in how they, and we, think about art. But are writers really driven more to revise now, or do we just see and hear about it more often?

Kipling’s Law

The Telegraph just ran a story headlined “Rudyard Kipling letter admits plagiarising parts of the Law of the Jungle”. That’s simply untrue.

The actual news hook is that an 1895 letter in which Kipling discusses his inspiration for The Jungle Book is up for auction. In that letter Kipling was replying to someone who evidently wanted to know the source of the novel’s “Law of the Jungle.”

Kipling had to tell his correspondent that he had made most of it up for the purpose of the story. In other words, he hadn’t plagiarised it. He said only, “a little of it is bodily taken from (Southern) Esquimaux rules for the division of spoils,” and politely acknowledged that he might have been inspired by other sources he “at present cannot remember.”

Given, however, that the “Law of the Jungle” is written in the voice of a wolf pack, I heartily doubt anyone could find sources that Kipling directly cribbed from.

Now this is the Law of the Jungle—as old and as true as the sky;
And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die.
As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk the Law runneth forward and back—
For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.

Wash daily from nose-tip to tail-tip; drink deeply, but never too deep;
And remember the night is for hunting, and forget not the day is for sleep.
The Jackal may follow the Tiger, but, Cub, when thy whiskers are grown,
Remember the Wolf is a Hunter—go forth and get food of thine own. . . .

Read the rest here.

It should go without saying, but there’s no plagiarism in writing an original story or poem that explores the ramifications of an ethical rule long in the public domain. The Telegraph’s characterization of what Kipling did and admitted is either sensationalist or a sign that its editors no longer understand the fair use and exchange of ideas.

Less Than Noble Nobel Considerations

Earlier this year, the Guardian reported on disclosures from the Swedish Academy about the discussion behind the awarding of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962. They show how many considerations there were besides literary quality.

For example, Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen) might well have had the inside track as a Scandinavian—but then she died, and the prize can’t be awarded posthumously. (A person can die between the announcement and the awards ceremony.)

The academy was evidently waiting for Ezra Pound to die as well. Its members considered him the greatest poet then working in English, but also politically unacceptable. That meant they wouldn’t give him the prize, but equally they wouldn’t give it to another English-language poet until he died—and that scotched the chances of Robert Graves (shown here).

So eventually the academy awarded that year’s prize to…John Steinbeck. Even at the time, he was considered not up to the standard of other literature laureates. But Steinbeck’s stature has obviously been raised by the Nobel. I wonder whether, if those other considerations hadn’t intervened, he would have had been such a presence on my junior-high reading list?

The Little Man with a Little Gun

L. Frank Baum’s first book for children was Mother Goose in Prose, a collection of stories inspired by nursery rhymes. One of the rhymes has fallen in popularity. It starts, “There was a little man, and he had a little gun…”

The little man, named Jimson, suffers from feelings of inadequacy: “This little man was very sorry he was not bigger, and if you wanted to make him angry you had but to call attention to his size.” So he gets a gun and goes off duck-hunting.

When Jimson shoots only one duck, however, his wife Joan pooh-poohs the feat and the evening newspaper prints a verse poking fun at him. Jimson consoles himself that “Mr. Brayer, the editor, is probably jealous because he himself cannot shoot a gun.” And eventually:

After a time the little man woke up, and in looking around for the drake he saw Johnny’s red wig sticking out of the top of the bushes.

“That is surely the drake,” he thought, “for I can see a curl and something red;” and the next minute “bang!” went the gun, and Johnny Sprigg gave a great yell and jumped out of the bushes. As for his beautiful wig, it was shot right off his head, and fell into the water of the brook a good ten yards away!

“What are you trying to do?” he cried, shaking his fist at the little man.

“Why, I was only shooting at the drake,” replied Jimson; “and I hit it, too, for there it is in the water.

“That’s my wig, sir!” said Johnny Sprigg, “and you shall pay for it, or I’ll have the law on you. Are you the man who shot the duck here yesterday morning?”

“I am, sir,” answered the little man, proud that he had shot something besides a wig.

“Well, you shall pay for that also,” said Mr. Sprigg; “for it belonged to me, and I’ll have the money or I’ll put you in jail!”

The little man did not want to go to jail, so with a heavy heart he paid for the wig and the duck, and then took his way sorrowfully homeward.

He did not tell Joan of his meeting with Mr. Sprigg; he only said he could not find a drake. But she knew all about it when the paper came out, for this is what it said on the front page:

There was a little man and he had a little gun,
And the bullets were made of lead, lead, lead.
He shot Johnny Sprigg through the middle of his wig,
And knocked it right off from his head, head, head.

The little man was so angry at this, and at the laughter of all the men he met, that he traded his gun off for a lawn-mower, and resolved never to go hunting again.

Maxfield Parrish illustrated Mother Goose in Prose, and his portrait of the little man appears above.

Another Look at the Sawhorse and the Guardian of the Gates

The secret of yesterday’s little Oz tale is that it’s also a Petrarchan sonnet.

The Sawhorse clattered to a halt beside
The city gate. “Unlock the doors!” he called.

The Guardian of the Gates around the walled
Metropolis regretfully replied,
“Believe me, all this afternoon I’ve tried.
The iron bar that holds the doors is stalled,
And nobody can leave the Emerald—”

“Who let this happen?”

                    “I,” the Guardian sighed.
“I took a wishing pill to be a bard,
Completing verses for my tunes. But fate
Has barred me from the post I was assigned.”

The Sawhorse pawed the ground and pondered hard.
“What tune?” he asked.

                    The Guardian sang. The gate
Swung free. “But how?”

                    “You sang your opening line.”

Looking back, I recall being dissatisfied with this item as a story, even a slight one, so I recycled the final pun in different form into a tale titled “Dearest Mother” later printed in an issue of Oziana. But the original stayed on my hard drive, awaiting a day when I needed a blog entry.

Above is the Sawhorse as depicted by Bill Campbell of The Oz Enthusiast.

Swell in Possibility

From the Boston Globe and Jeannine Atkins come descriptions of the “Little White House Project: Dwell in Possibility,” an art installation at the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst, Massachusetts.

It consists of 34 white sheds displayed on five contiguous acres.

Each house is made from sustainably harvested wood and features a line from a Dickinson poem; a word or two is stenciled on each of its four outer walls and the roof panels.

The black serif type on the white boards reminds me of pages from a book. (Or those refrigerator magnets.)

The artist is Peter Krasznekewicz, a junior at Deerfield Academy. His original installation was on the grounds of that school, but a flood meant the athletic teams needed more land. (Stop me when this sounds too much like a YA novel.) The museum and its neighbors offered a wider canvas.

For fundraising, publicity, and archiving the project, Krasznekewicz launched the Action Art website, which shows the little houses in Deerfield over the New England winter.

“The Little White House Project” will be up at the Dickinson Museum through the end of June.

The Nine

L. Frank Baum created the Nine Tiny Piglets in Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, and they’re now hopping about in the Marvel Comics adaptation of that book by Eric Shanower and Skottie Young. The picture above is Young’s cover for one of those comic books.

Yesterday I stumbled across this verse about the piglets on my hard drive:

We piglets do not all agree.
Now three of us are saying, “No,”
While “Yes” declare another three,
And three aren’t sure which way to go.

We therefore caucus and discuss
The very best thing to be done,
What holds the most rewards for us,
And tally: four to four to one.

The argument turns fierce and hot
Until the vote is five to four.
At last we’re done! But we forgot
Exactly what we voted for.

Or maybe that’s in honor of the new Supreme Court session.

W. W. Denslow Goes Digital

This spring the developers ustwo and AtomicAntelope released an iPad/iPhone app of nursery rhymes by W. W. Denslow, as reviewed here by Kirkus. Apparently it hit #1 in Britain’s iTunes store.

Denslow’s illustrations lend themselves to this format because, besides being free to anyone, they have thick outlines and bright colors, allowing for easy animation—“plenty of swiping and swinging action,” the review says.

The Nursery Rhymes with StoryTime app doesn’t replicate Denslow’s edition of Mother Goose, but it pays due respect to how his book designs integrated text and art. It’s Nice that… had the ustwo developers talk about the look they wanted:

We wanted Nursery Rhymes with StoryTime to look as if it had been hand-built. To do that we literally hand-built it first out of natural media using card, paper, pencils and our hearts. Nursery Rhymes merges the illustrations of Denslow, created over a century ago, with the very latest in physics simulations. We love the fact the app appears to have been built out of a torn-up and rearranged copy of Denslow’s original book Mother Goose. That was what this project was all about – blending the old school with the new school! 

I’m also struck by how Kirkus’s review comes with screenshots and video. Review outlets have to keep up with the digital world as well, of course.

There Once Was a Verse Form Called Limerick

At World Wide Words this week, Michael Quinion puzzled over the term “limerick.” That type of poem started to appear in print in the 1820s, but it took decades before the label came along.

Among the earliest examples is this, from the picture book Anecdotes and Adventures of Fifteen Young Ladies:

There was a young lady named Ryder,
She shrunk at the sight of a spider;
She once gave a scream,
And leaped into the stream,
When she saw one crawling beside her.

Edward Lear adopted the five-line form for his little-noted-at-the-time Book of Nonsense (1846).

Several Gaelic examples appeared in James Clarence Mangan and John O’Daly’s The Poets and Poems of Munster (1850), tagged to a melody called “The Growling Old Woman.” In his 1904 Pulse of the Bards, after the limerick was a recognized form, P. J. McCall translated “The Growling Old Woman” from the Gaelic like so:

Woman of the House—
I’ve no one to help with the churnin’,
Or bake a slim cake without burnin’,
Or get a bit ready for Nickeen an’ Neddy,
When hay in the meadow they’re turnin’;

That pig never stops with his squallin’;
The boneens go rootin’ an’ bawlin’;
The ducks an’ the hens lay away in the glens,
An' the roof of the cowhouse is fallin’.

The Household—
O, you growlin’ old woman!—
Be aisy—the neighbours are comin’!
Tobacco full ripe we will put in your pipe
To make your heart happy an’ human!

Woman of the House—
Our cow gives her milk to the fairies;
Our calf’s not as handsome as Mary’s;
My bonnet an’ bo are a shame an’ a show,
An’ my gown in the clauber conthraries!

My man takes his time fair an’ aisy;
The boys are light-headed an’ lazy,
The girls ever singin’, when washin’ or wringin’—
Enough to drive anyone crazy!

The Household—
Whisht! you growlin’ old woman!
Be aisy—the neighbours are comin’,
Tobacco full ripe we’ll put in your pipe
To make your heart happy an’ human!

A Neighbour—
Ould woman, I’m thinkin’ you’re jokin’!
You lie by the fire always pokin’,
An’, if any use, you give tons of abuse—
An’ the Ould Boy can’t bate you at smokin’!

Your man works the hardest in Erin;
Your boys are both brave an’ unfearin’;
Your girls are the sweetest, the quickest an’ neatest;
’Tis you are the pig by the mearin’!

The Neighbours—
Whisht, you growlin’ old woman!
Your conduct is most unbecomin’,
Tobacco full ripe—twice the full o’ your pipe,
Wouldn’t make your heart happy an’ human!

(The emphasis on tobacco suggests the Gaelic verse doesn’t go back earlier than the 1600s.)

Early last year scholar Stephen Goranson found a limerick published in the St. John [New Brunswick] Daily News in 1880 with the label: “Tune, wont you come to Limerick.” That’s seems to be the earliest link of the Irish city of Limerick, in the province of Munster, to the poetic form. But it comes with a musical mystery: that tune is a jig, and it’s hard to sing limericks to it. Goranson also documented many examples of “come to Limerick” to mean to surrender or settle differences, which may be totally unrelated.

There are also appearances of the phrase “Limerick rhyme” as early as 1880, without examples to show exactly what the writers meant. By the mid-1890s, however, a “limerick” was clearly the form we expect today.

Weekly Robin Christmas Story

This weekly Robin is appearing one day early, and perhaps a few hours late, because it points to a fanfiction short story set on Christmas Eve.

This tale takes place in the DC Comics continuity as it existed in the mid- to late 1990s, I believe. Tim Drake is living with his dad in a Gotham suburb and serving as Batman’s Robin. Dick Grayson, the narrator, has moved to an apartment building in Blüdhaven, which is like Gotham City’s Newark, and tends bar nearby when not patrolling as Nightwing.

There are pretty obvious influences from New Titans, #65, when Tim visits Dick in New York for training before becoming Robin, and Nightwing, #6, when he drops in on Dick in Blüdhaven. The story even shares the title of that latter issue: “The Visitor.” And there’s another, seasonal influence floating behind the prose:

On the night before Christmas, across all Blüdhaven, not a siren was wailing, not a babe needed saving. No crimelords or mooks had abruptly reformed. It was twenty degrees out! They were home, staying warm.

I was in my apartment, atop all those steps, preparing to shower after doing some reps, when all of a sudden came a noise overhead—not a clatter, or thumping, but a single foot-tread.

My visitor might not have meant any harm, but whoever it was had sidestepped the alarms. I threw on a bathrobe and killed all the lights to see out the windows and scan that dark night.

With a glance to the north side, I froze like the weather: whoever was up there had let down a tether and was clambering hand under hand to my floor. I crept to my balcony, opened the door, and blasted him with an extinguisher hose.

It took me a sec to distinguish the clothes: my caller was costumed in red and green tights, and wearing short sleeves on this blustery night.

“Cut it out, Dick! It’s me!” shouted Tim with a sputter as he slammed back and forth on the wall like a shutter. . . .

The little story continues here. Best wishes of the solstice season to all readers.

Alphabet Ahoy!

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz wasn't the only book that L. Frank Baum published in 1900. In addition to A New Wonderland, a collection of stories now better known as The Magical Monarch of Mo, he published two alphabet books on the themes of the army and the navy. (Which should have given pause to critics who described Baum as a pacifist with a lifelong resentment of his brief time in military school.)

The Army Alphabet and The Navy Alphabet had four-color pictures by Harry Kennedy. Charles Costello hand-lettered Baum's verses, using two colors and a q that looks like a g. These books are closer in shape and style to Baum's first best-seller with W. W. Denslow, Father Goose, than to the novels that we remember him for.

The color art made Baum's alphabet books prohibitively expensive to reprint until recently, when Applewood Books reissued the naval volume. That firm hasn't tried the army volume, but here's a look at the Oz Enthusiast's copy, scans at nocloo.com, and scans at the University of Florida's library.

I spoke at the Charlestown Navy Yard on Sunday night, and took the opportunity to buy my first copy of The Navy Alphabet. Here's Baum's topical verse for the letter P:

The naughty PIRATE, fierce and bold,
Oft sailed the seas in times of old
To seize our ships, and climb aboard
With marlin-spike and knife and sword.
And then he whacked, and cut and hacked
Until the helpless ship was sacked.
But now no Pirates over-run
Our seas, we've conquered every one.

Finally, the X question, the bane of all alphabet books. What can start with X? In The Navy Alphabet X is for xebec. In the army book, it's xalatin.

Go to the Groggery’s Cell

For Poetry Friday, here's some of the deathless verse of Dr. Charles Jewett, as published in the Almanac of the American Temperance Union, for 1842, recently acquired by the Boston Athenaeum.

Ye who have felt the joy
Of childhood's guiltless life,
Pity the drunkard's boy,
And the drunkard's wretched wife.

For through the winter day
He leaves them cold and ill;
The night comes on his way,
But he returns not still.

The fire is getting low,
And o'er the dreary plain
That barefoot boy must go,
To seek for wood again.

He weeps when he is told
That he again must go;
It makes his feet so cold
To tread upon the snow.

But where's the father, where?
Go to the groggery's cell,
And ask the question there:--
The rum-seller could tell.

Jewett died in 1879 at the age of 72 after a lifetime of crusading against alcohol. He was also known for his Holmesian powers of observation. (He's not to be confused with his contemporary Charles Coffin Jewett, one of the founders of American library cataloguing.)

The same imagery survives in an urban setting in Hal Standish's Fred Fearnot series, as published in "an interesting weekly" in 1906. We just don't see children's literature like this anymore.

Is Our Children Reading E-books?

The Los Angeles Times is one of a number of news outlets reporting how the sales of electronic books grew by a large percentage in 2008. Of course, sales had been so low that nearly any market penetration would have produced a large percentage rise. But between the Sony Reader, the Amazon Kindle, and other devices, the format seems to have caught on.

Some people fret predictably that this new technology will change reading habits (of course it will) in fundamental ways (not really). Good fiction makes readers so mentally involved in the fictional world that they stop noticing their real surroundings--including whether they're turning pages, clicking a button, or listening to a recorded voice.

In the LA Times article, the opening case study (shown above, photo by Stefano Paltera) is an eight-year-old named Skye Vaughn-Perling, who likes Dr. Seuss's Horton Hears a Who in both printed and digital forms. Well, with a name like Skye Vaughn-Perling, he'd have to like Dr. Seuss, wouldn't he?

I always seem to feel rhymy toward the end of the calendar year, so I found myself summing up the LA Times article this way:

Skye Vaughn-Perling isn't heeding
Questions swirling over reading.
He has seen both printed matter
And a screen--so which is better?
Skye seems glad for either version
Since what matters is immersion.
What he looks for, he's surmised,
Can come in books or digitized.

I feel unseemly pride in the internal rhymes.

How Old May You Be?

Early this month the Telegraph and other British newspapers declared that a tortoise named Jonathan was the world's oldest living animal.

Jonathan had arrived on the island of St. Helena in 1882 as a mature tortoise (i.e., at least fifty years old), making him at least 176 today.

But now some high-school students in Banbury, Oxfordshire, have interviewed a visitor from St. Helena and raised doubts about that conclusion. As they reported to the BBC:

• big tortoises look a lot alike.
• islanders might well have given the name Jonathan to more than one tortoise.

It's not that the current Jonathan can't be 176 years old, or even older. It's just that the evidence about his longevity on St. Helena isn't so clear as when the photograph above (from the Boer War) was first noted in the media.

According to Tortoise, by Peter Young, the Jonathan alive today inspired the Rev. L. P. Walcott to write these lines in 1924:

Said I to the Tortoise, ‘How old may you be?’
‘Two hundred or so,’ said the Tortoise to me.
‘That’s a very long time,’ to the Tortoise I said.
‘Not so long,’ he replied, ‘for most was in bed.’

Nodelman on the Picture Book Form

In a recent discussion on Child_Lit, Winnipeg professor Perry Nodelman, author of The Hidden Adult: Defining Children's Literature as well as middle-grade novels, discoursed on the intricacies of the picture book form, particularly in comparison to formal poetry:

A picture book text is indeed something like a poem, I think--like a sonnet or a villanelle, maybe, because the constrictions of the form are so firm and so complicated.

There are very few words--usually 300 to 600 or so?--to tell a story in. They have to be spread out fairly evenly throughout the book--you don't usually have 500 words on one page and then one each on the rest of the pages. . . . the story itself occupies about ten double-paged spreads. Typically, each one of those spreads contains one discrete section of the text--or possibly two sections, one for each page, dependent upon the shape of the story.

Each of these sections must be discrete and separate enough to stand at least momentarily on its own (as readers stop to look at the picture). But also, each must be incomplete enough to drive a reader onwards--create the suspense that makes someone want to turn the page to find out what happens next.

Furthermore, each must be illustratable--describe something, an action or a person, that a reader might want to see or gain pleasure or information from seeing. And each must be separately visualizable, so that the pictures don’t all look exactly alike. . . .

But--and here’s the key thing that, I suspect, most distinguishes picture books texts from poetry despite their constraints and intricacies--while each section of the text must be visualizable, they must not obviously convey visual info themselves. If they did, they'd render the pictures that are going to accompany them pointless.

So the writer needs to leave space for visuals which are nevertheless going to be a necessary part of the story. And, since in conventional publishing practice illustrators and writers don’t usually work together, it’s the text itself that must convey to the illustrator what the illustrations need to show.

So the text has to suggest to someone prepared to receive it in that way what kind of picture might need to go with it. . . . But on its own, a picture book text is not completely anything yet, any more than a playscript is complete before its performance.

I'd say, then, that a picture book text is more like a playscript than like a poem. Like a poem, a good text is deceptively simple, but complex, intricate, exact and exacting. But unlike a poem, it's not complete without its accompanying pictures. It's an incomplete part of a collaboration.

Feel free to pass this on to any celebrities or new parents who mention they really should take an afternoon and write a picture book for kids.

(Thanks to Chicken Spaghetti for preserving this posting and saving me the trouble of digging into the Child_Lit archives when I found myself thinking about these ideas again a week later.)

Poetry Friday: The Original Dark Knights

Marc Tyler Nobleman, author of the recent Boys of Steel, wrote about his disappointment that the new movie The Dark Knight didn’t credit Bill Finger with having first applied that title phrase to the Batman in Detective Comics, #40. Finger had created the character with artist Bob Kane a few months before, and wrote many Batman scripts from the 1930s through the 1960s, almost always uncredited.

Marc’s posting made me curious about where the phrase “dark knight” originally came from. Finger was obviously trying to evoke our cultural memories of the Middle Ages, just as one of the supposed inspirations for Robin was Robin Hood. A little searching for “dark knight” in Google Books’s “Full Texts” database led me to the British literary scene of the early 1800s, a time of medieval revivalism. So for Poetry Friday here are the two earliest examples of the “dark knight” that I could find.

The Anglo-Irish writer Charles Maturin (1782-1824) used the phrase in his play Bertram; or The Castle of St. Aldobrand (1816). A prior describes an off-stage character this way:

The dark knight of the forest,
So from his armour named and sable helm,
Whose unbarred vizor mortal never saw.
He dwells alone; no earthly thing lives near him,
Save the hoarse raven croaking o’er his towers,
And the dank weeds muffling his stagnant moat.

It turns out this dark knight is a personification of the devil, who corrupts Bertram. Walter Scott, Byron, and other top writers of the day admired Maturin's play. (In fact, it’s easier to find Scott’s review quoting this scene than to find a copy of the play itself.) Maturin knew that he had a good thing because he also used the phrase “dark knight” in his 1824 novel The Albigenses.

Maturin was never able to match the quality of Bertram, however. He overspent his income, got into quarrels with critics, and died (possibly a suicide) after a literary career of less than a decade.

Later, a Scottish poet named Henry Glassford Bell (1803-1874) wrote a ballad named “The Dark Knight” in pseudo-medieval style. It was first published in 1830 in The Edinburgh Literary Review, which Bell happened to edit. The poem is more easily read here in Bell’s collection Summer and Winter Hours.

Here’s the story in a nutshell:

There came a dark knight from a far countrie,
And no one ever saw his face, for he
Wore his black vizor down continuallie.

He came to a gay bridal, where the bride
Stood, in rich robes, her destined lord beside,
Who gazed upon her with a joyful pride.
...
Yet ever and anon her look would fall
On the dark knight who stood apart from all,
Dark as his shadow, moveless on the wall.
...
The hour grows late, and one by one depart
The guests, with bounding step and merry heart,--
Methought I saw that new wed ladie start.

None in her father’s hall are left but she
And her young bridegroom, who, as none may see,
Hath twined his arm around her lovinglie.

Yes, there is still a third,--the vizor’d knight,--
...
A shriek was heard at midnight, such as broke
On every ear, like the first pealing stroke
Of the alarm bell, and the sleepers woke!

In the old hall, where fitful moonlight shone,
There lay the bridegroom and the bride alone,
Pale, dead, and cold as monumental stone,--
A vizor’d helm was near, but the dark knight was gone.

Obviously, both Maturin’s and Bell’s dark knights are villains. Finger and Kane created the Batman as either a hero or an anti-hero, depending on the editorial direction. Nonetheless, Bell’s poem provides interesting commentary on the new movie’s love triangle among Bruce Wayne, his childhood friend Rachel Dawes (who has no equivalent in the comics), and district attorney Harvey Dent.

(The thumbnail above shows the determined Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, as rendered in “plush with removeable limbs,” courtesy of Geek Venue's Monty Python Toys collection.)

Denslow and the Civilized Boy

Leonard S. Marcus's new history of American children's books, Minders of Make-Believe, features cover art that W. W. Denslow created in 1899 for Father Goose, his first collaboration with L. Frank Baum.

The image is licensed from Corbis (also known as "your chance to give Bill Gates even more money"). I don't see Denslow's name on online images of the jacket or copyright page, but his signature's there in the lower left corner, and Corbis credits him.

The illustration adorned Baum's poem "Civilized Boy," which I now offer for Poetry Friday:

Pray, what can a civilized boy do now,
When all the Dragons all are dead,
And the Giants stout, that we have read about,
Have never one a head?

Now, wasn't it mean that Jack o' the Bean
Should slay these monsters fast,
And the other Jack should cut and hack
When there weren't enough to last?

The boys today are as bold as they say,
As ever they were of yore;
And they'd spill a flood of Dragon's Blood
If Dragons lived any more.

As in many of his later fantasy stories, Baum was playing with the theme of traditional fairy tales in opposition to the modern world.

Poetry Friday: All Hail to the Rev. George Gilfillan

My English teacher during junior year in high school, David Outerbridge, assigned everyone to memorize and recite a poem in class. Cheeky bastard that I was, I chose "An Address to the Rev. George Gilfillan," by William Topaz McGonagall. I still remember most of it, which is probably Mr. Outerbridge's revenge.

And so, for Poetry Friday:

All hail to the Rev. George Gilfillan of Dundee,
He is the greatest preacher I did ever hear or see.
He is a man of genius bright,
And in him his congregation does delight,
Because they find him to be honest and plain,
Affable in temper, and seldom known to complain.
He preaches in a plain straightforward way,
The people flock to hear him night and day,
And hundreds from the doors are often turn'd away,
Because he is the greatest preacher of the present day.
He has written the life of Sir Walter Scott,
And while he lives he will never be forgot,
Nor when he is dead,
Because by his admirers it will be often read;
And fill their minds with wonder and delight,
And wile away the tedious hours on a cold winter's night.
He has also written about the Bards of the Bible,
Which occupied nearly three years in which he was not idle,
Because when he sits down to write he does it with might and main,
And to get an interview with him it would be almost vain,
And in that he is always right,
For the Bible tells us whatever your hands findeth to do,
Do it with all your might.

I think that last couplet's daring use of metre is the high point of the poem, but you can find the concluding four lines at McGonagall Online.

That site's front page quotes a note from the Rev. Mr. Gilfillan himself, which was probably how he earned this encomium. The minister had this to say about McGonagall's poetry:

Dundee, 30th May 1865

I certify that William McGonagall has for some time been known to me. I have heard him speak, he has a strong proclivity for the elocutionary department, a strong voice, and great enthusiasm. He has had a great deal of experience too, having addressed audiences and enacted parts here and elsewhere.

George Gilfillan

I'm in Scotland right now, so this posting is doubly timely.

Sonnet to My Lady’s Eye

Since it's Friday, and Poetry Friday eases the need for blogging inspiration, I'm sharing one of the verses from L. Frank Baum's By the Candelabra’s Glare, recently reissued by Pumpernickel Pickle Press.

A SONNET TO MY LADY’S EYE

If inspiration comes, I’ll try
A sonnet to my lady’s eye--
Her black eye.

And yet, there seems a woeful lack
Of proper words to rhyme with “black,”
And black eyes savor of attack--
I’d best abandon black.

I’ll start again, and this time try
A sonnet to my lady’s eye--
Her gray eye.

And yet, what color does convey
So passionless a sense as gray?
And tigers’ eyes are gray, they say–
My lady’s can’t be gray.

Ah, now the idea comes! I’ll try
A sonnet to my lady’s eye--
Her violet eye.

And yet, unless I much forget,
No lady’s eye was violet
Since time began; so, with regret,
Adieu to violet!

And so at last I’m forced to try
A sonnet to my lady’s eye--
Her blue eye.

And yet, what can I say that’s new?
The whole world knows blue eyes are true;
Besides, I must confess to you
My lady's eyes are blue.

Technically, this isn't a sonnet. But then the difficulty of writing a poem is what this poem is all about.