From Beowulf to Virginia Woolf

At first glance, Robert Manson Myers', From Beowulf to Virginia Woolf (Bobbs-Merrill, 1952), would appear to be a light survey of English literature for the period indicated in the title--a slim volume for such a lengthy range of years and a cartoonish illustration on the cover. But a second glance picks up on the subtitle (astounding and wholly unauthorized), which seems odd right away. Then you read the caption under the cover illustration, William the Conqueror. Light survey gives way to light-hearted and later to downright humorous survey. But just thumb through the pages to find out what kind of humor you are in for. Pretty wacked out and wickedly funny. And that back cover of the jacket... Take a look at the author and his write-up.

The author photo looks like some Dutch Masters painting, the photo credit goes to the unlikely name of Fabius Blackrock. A google search confirms unlikely. The author's bestselling The Case of the Missing Umlaut is referenced as having swept the nation as both a book and a movie. Googling that produces nothing. Further, his distinguished lineage includes a great-uncle Professor Dewberry Oldberry of the Newberry Library. There's more, but the write-up ends with the author's current occupation-- teaching Creative Listening at Pamunkey State College for Women. By now, I'm smiling at the humor revealed from peeling back pretentious, dry layers of my own making because of a title. And at how I was a bit duped. Time to thumb though the book and investigate the extent of the intended humor.

Facing the title page is a Literary Map of England, which includes Scotland and Ireland as well. Here you'll find Northanger Abbey as well as Rin-Tin-Tin's Abbey. You'll find Pepys' Dairy (not Diary), Drake's Bowling Alley, Sussex, Middlesx and Nossex, Wed Loch, Yale Loch and Rape Loch. And more nonsense like that.

The copyright page (does anyone ever read these?) indicates First Edition and has a long paragraph, titled Note that explains how the book was previously published in a literary journal and thanks are expressed for permission to reprint. More thanks are given to Viking for using material from their series of Boners books (very recently augmented by Bigger and Better Boners). What?!?! Back to google... Yes, Viking did publish a couple of books called Boners and More Boners in 1931. Guess who illustrated them? Theodor Geisel (his first illustrated books), better known years later as Dr. Seuss. And in 1952 there really was a Viking Press volume of Bigger and Better Boners, apparently lacking in the sexual connotation of today and the ubiquitous male enhancement ads. But Myers has me questioning everything now as he has deftly spliced the factual with fictional humor.

The first chapter sets the tone for the rest of the book, assuming the jacket write-up and frontispiece map didn't already do it for you. Here's the first paragraph from that chapter:

At the door of English literature stands Beowulf, the great Dane, who once upon a time inhabited the forest primeval with Ethelwulf, his wife, and is therefore known as The Noble Savage. It would, of course, be absurd to dwell on Beowulf's particulars in a brief survey such as this, especially since those details are recorded in Beowulf's autobiographical beast epic, first published in 1066 as The Doomsday Book. This famous first edition was printed on a cotton manuscript, destroyed by fire in 1731 and later purchased from descendants of the Beowulf family by Andrew Carnegie. The original duodecimo is totally ineligible. With the persistent efforts of scholars, however, it has emerged that Beowulf sailed forth boldly into the filth and froth of the Firth of Forth in the spring of 596. Following his slaughter of Grendel (a task as odious as Oedipus' cleansing of the Aegean stables), the epic hero retraced his footsteps across the sea. His spritely narrative abounds with sketches of such Cro-Magnon dignitaries as Half-Dane, High Shellac, and Wroth Child.

The illustrations are just as ludicrous with their meaningless captions. To wit:


First, this is just a strange looking scene to illustrate. What the heck is going on here? I know it has nothing to do with Myers' description of a Sunday in the country with Sir Roger de Coverlet, an old Anguische tradition (whatever that is), and chocolate being served afterward! It's so crazy, it's funny. I wanted to find out more about the illustration and put some kind of meaning to such a weird-looking scene. It is attributed to a print hanging in the Will Coffin House. There is no such place that I can find. I don't doubt there is such a print because Myers expresses gratitude, back on the copyright page, to Houghton Mifflin for their permission to reproduce illustrations from The History of the Novel in England, by Robert Morss Lovett and Helen Sard Hughes. And I can verify that this book is for real, published in 1932. But that's about all in this book anyone could vouch for.

But in researching Robert Manson Myers, I found a former student of his who wrote about him in one of her blog entries. From the sounds of it, he was no joke in the classroom. What a wonderful teacher he must have been.

Samuel Chamberlain's journal and illustrations of the Mexican War

Digging around in a book this morning about a young soldier's adventures in the American Southwest and Mexico during the Mexican War of the 1840s, I discovered some fascinating fragments of history, long-forgotten, which ultimately led to a place practically in my backyard.

From humble beginnings in Center Harbor, New Hampshire to battles in Mexico, Samuel Chamberlain left a legacy of his dramatic experiences in the form of an illustrated journal. Written accounts of the United States' War with Mexico are numerous, but first-hand artistic renderings are rare. Private Chamberlain of the First Regiment of the United States Dragoons carried a sketchbook with him throughout the war and made drawings of the people, places, events, and battles he witnessed. In later years, settled down in Boston, he recounted his experiences in a manuscript and enhanced his sketchbook drawings with watercolors to illustrate his journal.

The finished manuscript remained in the family for decades, brought occasionally for showing friends and family, but mostly kept hidden. After Chamberlain's death in 1908, his widow saw that it stayed in the family. But in the 1940s, nearly 100 years after Chamberlain's adventure, his manuscript had fallen out of family hands and was discovered in a Connecticut antique shop. A Baltimore collector purchased it and, recognizing the significance of his find, contacted Life Magazine about it. The manuscript was subsequently sold to Life Magazine, which published a condensed version of the story in three parts during 1955. Included were some of Chamberlain's paintings of his remembrance or the war.


The book I've been reading and researching, My Confession: The Recollections of a Rogue, Written and Illustrated by Samuel E. Chamberlain, Harper & Brothers, (1956), includes five times the text from the original manuscript and 55 of Chamberlain's paintings.

Laid in at the front of the book was a small brochure from the San Jacinto Museum of History, near Houston.This led to another interesting fact about Chamberlain's art work: One hundred forty-four of his paintings were purchased by the San Jacinto Museum in 1957, the first significant purchase of history by the museum. This brochure appears to be for the first exhibition of Chamberlain's watercolors anywhere. The brochure, limited to a print run of 5,000 copies, offers eight pages of information about Chamberlain, his exploits and his art, along with information about the museum and exhibit.

Now, more than 50 years later, as the San Jacinto museum and park prepare for their annual observance of the Battle of San Jacinto (April 21st, 1836), in which the fledgling Republic of Texas won its independence from Mexico, I'll have to wander over there and see if I can find any of the original watercolors I've been so engaged with this morning.

I am particularly drawn to Chamberlain's painting of an event he witnessed--the mass execution by hanging of U.S. Army deserters, mostly Irish who sympathized with the plight of their fellow Catholics in Mexico. They came mostly from deplorable conditions in the Northeast after immigrating from equally deplorable conditions in Ireland (Potato Famine). Seeking new opportunity in a new land, these immigrants did not find it in the Notheastern U.S. and likely joined the Army as a means of escape. In Texas, they came to know the Mexican culture and the similarities of the Catholic people in their struggles. Further, the Mexican government enticed sympathizers with free land in exchange for allegiance to Mexico in their war with the U.S. For some Irishmen, this proved too much temptation, as Army life had not been any better than civilian life. They came to be known in Mexico as the San Patricios (St. Patrick's Battalion), fought valiantly against their former comrades, and have been revered in Mexico as heroes to this day.



Ultimately, they were defeated and most executed for treason. Sam Chamberlain witnessed one of the mass executions and illustrated and wrote about what he witnessed.

As my research jumped over to the San Patricios in Mexico, I discovered a film made about them and their leader, John Riley, of County Galway. Tom Berenger stars in One Man's Hero (1999) and, by a few accounts I've read, this film is a cult classic in the making. It didn't get the theatrical release or promotion it needed to show how good it was. Nor has it gotten any promotion in the DVD market.

It's now next up in my Netflix queue and I can't wait to see a dramatic representation of what I've been reading about. And then I'll definitely have to go searching for that painting at the site of the 1836 battle, without which, Sam Chamberlain likely would not have ventured into Texas, nor would the San Patricios.

Poultry and poetry

What do poultry and poetry have in common? Seemingly nothing; I've never come across a chicken farmer who wrote and collected poetry. Until I learned of Wilbur Chapman Goodson, the author of a collection of poems titled, Dark Music (Falmouth Publishing House, Portland, Maine, 1940).


From the Preface, written by fellow New Englander, poet, and Goodson's former professor at Wesleyan, Wilbert Snow, I learned about an interesting bibliophile who collected autographed editions of books from all the leading American and English poets writing at that time (1930s). Not only that, but he also obtained from them holograph copies of his favorite lyrics and framed them. All while raising prize-winning roosters and pullets.

Snow infers scholastic ability at Wesleyan and a desire on Goodson's part to follow his muse. But the country was steeped in the Great Depression and apparently Goodson was motivated to try his hand at a vocation that could actually support him. A career choice between poetry and poultry at least invoked the poetic devices of alliteration and rhyme. And so Goodson started a poultry farm in Tamworth, New Hampshire and became successful at it. But he never abandoned, it appears, his love for poetry. He became quite an accomplished collector and wrote and published his own verse.

I've only been able to find a copy of the Dark Music title, one of only 300 printed. If Goodson published subsequent volumes, I haven't found them yet. But I have found part of his collection. I recently purchased, from a bookseller in Massachusetts, two volumes of poetry that had belonged to Goodson: An April Song: New Poems, by Charles Hanson Towne (Farrar and Rinehart, NY 1937) and This Unquenched Thirst, by Minnie Markham Kerr (Dorrance & Company, Philadelphia, 1938). Each is autographed from the poet to W.C. Goodson and both copies have Goodson's bookplate (full name) affixed to the front pastedown endpaper.

While I feel fortunate to have made this connection and to have obtained pieces of what I presume to have been a remarkable collection, I am puzzled that any part of such a collection would have been lost, sold, or otherwise culled from the whole. The entire collection deserved to have been kept intact to give a full measure of the bibliophile's intent for such a collection in the first place.

But that's too idealistic, I'm afraid. There are many reasons why pieces of a collection might find their way elsewhere through the years. They could have been gifts to others by the collector. The collection's theme may have evolved into something quite different from its beginnings and these titles no longer fit in.

Those poets whom Goodson collected and that have now found their way into my collection are not household names. Nor do they have much literary significance or value in the history or second-hand markets for literature. But they now comprise 100 percent of another of my quirky little collections. And I'd love to see a list of poets that comprised Goodson's collection over the years. Some of the titans of American and English poetry were writing during Goodson's collecting years. If he was able to secure signed copies of their books and handwritten passages, his collection would have become one of the more enviable libraries on either side of the pond.














And to round out this little collection, I was able to locate and purchase a few copies of Pine Top Poultry Tales, a newsletter Goodson wrote about his poultry farming operation. Looks like a pretty nice marketing and promotional piece. His writing skills are put to good use here for his business.



I end this with a poem from Wilbur Chapman Goodson. It's the last poem in Dark Music and appears to be the poem from which the title of the book emerged. I hope it was not the last poem he wrote or published.

NIGHTPIECE

Here in the quiet woods the night creeps in--
Between the slowly falling flakes of snow--
And burrows down to soft and silent sleep.

Here in the quiet woods, the topmost boughs
Of tamarack reach up against the clouds
Too thick to let the light of stars shine through.

Here in a deep and never-ending peace
There is a silence thick and velvet black
That settles over hills and leafless trees
And brings dark music to my tired ears.

Here in the early hours of dawn the stars
Break though the clouds, and wrinkled moonlight smiles
Across the frozen pond and snow-filled fields.

It must have been like this once long ago.

National Poetry Month - April 2008

Today, April 1st, kicks off National Poetry Month, and that’s no April Fool’s joke. Wouldn't be much of a joke anyway.

Poets.org has all the scoop on National Poetry Month. I'll just use this space to share a few of my favorite poets and a poem from an old volume titled Book Lovers Verse, by Howard S. Ruddy (Bowen-Merrill Co., Indianapolis, 1899), an interesting volume of old poetry for the bibliophile (see Biblioverse).

First, links to several contemporary poets whose work I admire (in no particular order):

Ted Kooser
Donald Hall
Jane Hirshfield
Nan Cohen
Larry D. Thomas (I'd be remiss in my blogging duties today not to include the Poet Laureate of my home state of Texas)

There are many more, but these are poets whose work I have collected and read in recent years. Old favorites from another time are led by Robert Frost, e.e. cummings, Edward Arlington Robinson, William Butler Yeats, Dorothy Parker, Emily Dickinson, and way too many others to get into here. Maybe there are one or two I've listed for new readers out there to get acquainted with.

And now for a poem from Ruddy's, Book Lovers Verse, mentioned above. Appropriately, it is from one of America's most celebrated poets (and from my list above), Emily Dickinson, whose work I'm sure will find a place or two in this month's observances of poetry.

The Book, by Emily Dickinson

There is no frigate like a book
      To take us leagues away,
Nor any coursers like a page
      Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take
      Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
      That bears a human soul!

A unicorn in the peach tree

I found this book the other day at a resale shop, but it turned out not to have too much resale value for me: If I Found a Wistful Unicorn, by Ann Ashford, illustrated by Bill Drath; Peachtree Publishers, Ltd., Atlanta, 1978.

It’s a nice little children’s book with a message about love, coaxed out of the gentle rhymes and soft watercolors that grace each page. But it has little resale value, even in first edition and jacket. A lot of these kids books are usually ex-library books, and I was about to toss it into the library donation pile, when I glanced upon the author’s photo on the front flap of the jacket. That started another angle of research that brought this book into a new dimension of interest for me. Maybe others as well.

The author’s photo looked like a child had written a children’s book. Very youthful looking, cute, pixie-ish. She had to be pretty young in 1978 when this was published. Maybe early to mid-20s. In the next 30 years, she must have written a bunch more books. But I couldn’t find any. What I did find was that this was her first book and she was near 40 when it was published. She would be about 70 now. I looked at the picture again and couldn’t imagine someone so youthful looking being 70!


Sadly, she never made it 70 or 60 or even 50. She died in 1988 at the age of 49. No details on her death. There's an abundance of youthful energy and optimism in that photo, though. She’s just published her first book and it has won the Award for Juvenile Literature from the Council of Authors and Journalists. She has a very bright future in the making as a writer. She had already been a group leader for migrant workers in Texas, a social worker, a teacher, an actress, and vice president of a fund-raising consulting firm. By all accounts, a full and rewarding life early on. I wonder if she only had one book in her? She lived another 10 years, but published nothing that I can find. Before 40, she had already worn a number of hats. Was "author" a case of been there, done that and she was off to new ventures?


A write-up about her book on amazon.com shared another interesting fact: Ashford’s book was the first book published by Peachtree. The very first book! I thought, ‘How many collectors or booksellers ever come across a book that they know to be the very first book of a publishing house?' Would you even know one if you saw it?

Peachtree is still here 30 years later. They've published hundreds of books during that time. But I have the very first title that rolled off the press. That lends a certain significance to it and makes it special and collectible. And then there’s something in the author’s personal story. The publisher’s first title is also the author’s first book, maybe her only book. Her death at a young age is certainly a tragedy, and in direct contrast to the sweet ending her book had.

I think I’ll hang onto this book for awhile. I find more than just trivia in the facts surrounding this book. I see the dreams and aspirations of both the writer and the publisher for their first book, which evolves into a collaboration between a unicorn and a peachtree.


Folklore throughout the ages has cast the unicorn as a both a wild, untamed animal and a peaceful bearer of good luck. Perhaps both versions came together out of necessity for the writer and the publisher to achieve their dreams together. And perhaps the wistful, bittersweet ending for Ms. Ashford a decade later is tempered somewhat by the creative spirit she shared in this story, which shall live on for future generations to enjoy.

Hydrogen bombs on the moon

With the space race on between America and the Soviet Union in the late 1950s, writers and publishers tapped into the space age reader market. I like books from that era when manned space exploration had not yet begun. With nearly 50 years of hindsight to work with, and having worked at NASA myself, it's interesting and fun to read about the visions and dreams along with the fears and reservations that characterized the cradle of space exploration.

Children's books were also included in the mix. One I found not long ago is Rockets into Space, by Alexander L. Crosby and Nancy Larrick, Random House, NY, 1959. It seems to be geared toward 8 to 12 year-olds. It's pretty much a primer on rockets, satellites, man's desire to explore space, and how all that might be accomplished. I particularly enjoyed the chapter on building a space station and using it as a platform for traveling to Mars. Wow! They were thinking it out that far before man had ever left earth?

Some 30 years later, President Bush (the elder) had proposed an initiative to build Space Station Freedom and then go back to the moon and on to Mars. I think his timetable had us there by now or not long from now. Point is, that serious talk and action about getting a space station into orbit took another 30 years from the time it was talked about in this kid's book in 1959.


One thing in the book that did not happen, thankfully, is outlined in Chapter 11, Why Do We Care? Essentially, it asks why should we spend all the money and effort to go into space and even to the moon (a few years before President Kennedy declared we would do it before the 1960s ended... and we did!). The answers are adventure, knowledge, wealth, and military. Adventure and knowledge are self-explanatory.


Wealth? Well, say the authors, we don't know what kind of metals and minerals we may find on the moon. Schoolgirls one day may be wearing engagement rings made from precious gems found on the moon.

But Military is the one that will make you roll your eyes and chuckle. The authors raise the possibility of the Soviets getting to the moon first and using it as a base to fire missiles at their enemies, meaning the Americans. Talk about your Cold War paranoia! Sounds like the payload getting ahead of the rocket booster, to update an old idiom about the cart and the horse. Scare the kids with lunar annihilation and scare the rest of us by putting the U.N. in charge of the moon!

The rest of the chapter is too good not to include so here are the last several paragraphs:

The moon looks beautiful to us now. We would feel differently if it were loaded with hydrogen bombs that could be aimed at the earth.

Of course that need not happen. Mr. Pendray and other thoughtful people say the moon should be ruled by the United Nations. No one country should control the moon.

If the United Nations had charge of the moon, all countries could use it for scientific experiments.

Yeah right.

Iraan, Texas

If you’ve ever driven through West Texas on I-10, you’ve probably seen exit signs for a town named Iraan. And you’ve probably wondered if there were any kind of connection with that other Iran (different spelling). I remember hearing the story from my father about how the town acquired its name. It’s an old oil town and he was knowledgeable about such places as he was in the business.

I had forgotten about that place for a number of years until I recently came across Ozona Country, by Alan R. Bosworth, Harper & Row, 1964. In a chapter titled Annointed with Fresh Oil, he describes the oil boom that came to Crockett County, where Ozona resides, and made comparisons to other counties and fields in West Texas that were much more prolific. He offered this anecdote about the Yates field in West Texas:

Crockett County was the fourth county in West Texas to produce oil, and it was not one of the major oil counties. Across the Pecos, to the westward, the Yates field was running wild, and people told all kinds of stories about old man Yates, who had just barely managed to make a living off his ranch until the oil wells came. They said he told his wife that now she could just have anything she wanted, and that she said, 'Well, I’ve been needin’ a new ax to cut kindlin’ wood with, for a long time.'

A little town sprang up around that big oilfield and it was named for that rancher and his wife, who could finally get a new ax from all that oil revenue. Their names were Ira and Ann Yates and the town name of Iraan paid tribute to the owners of the land where all that oil was found.

For more about Iraan, Texas and its founding, see the Handbook of Texas Online entry.

Fishing ex-libris catch seeks death penalty

I fished this book out of storage the other day and found within its leaves egregious offenses I have committed, which, if the author and pending legislation of the day had its way, would have put me on death row.

Game Fish of the Northern States of America and the British Provinces, by Barnwell; Carleton, Publisher; NY; 1862.



Here’s a case of “you can’t judge a book by its cover.” Scarred with library markings, a piece of the upper spine missing, dingy and dark looking with worn spots. The most interesting aspect of the outside of the book is the thin paper cover and its fish-scale texture. A clever and appropriate design to complement the subject matter inside.


But inside… First, you’re greeted with a vintage bookplate from the Houston Public Library, circa early 1900s. Bookplates are increasingly working their way into my bibliophemera collection. This one has a nice design. I'm a collector of local history in this region, and this bookplate dovetails nicely with the other artifacts I have related to that period.


The previous owner wrote his name and date, 1882, on the title page. The name matched with the name on the bookplate, which indicates the last owner of the book was indeed the man whose name is written on the title page. A slight discrepancy to ponder: The publication date is 1862 and the previous owner indicates his ownership began in 1882. Likely, he bought the book used, unless it sat new on a shelf for 20 years. More probable is that he bought the book second-hand in a used bookshop, probably in one of the Northern states profiled in the book. Houston was a sleepy little bayou town in the 1880s, completely unconscious of the oil-boom winds of change blowing its way in the upcoming new century. So it is unlikely that there were many second-hand bookshops, and any bookstore with the latest titles would not likely have stocked a book about game fish of the Northern states and Canadian provinces.

But I spent time in a particular Northeastern state every summer growing up—New Hampshire—and I learned about the native game fish, the Brook Trout, at an early age and developed a passion for it. So upon scanning the contents of the book, I took a biased interest in Chapter 2, The American Trout. And first up in the lineup of American Trout is the Brook Trout. Reading the first few pages of Civil War-era technical prose, I felt like I was reading an early scientific treatise on the species. About what I expected—dusty old writing in a dusty old book. But the last paragraph of that second page became much more interesting, dramatically so, with an unexpected twist of humor. At least I think the author had his tongue firmly implanted in his cheek. Or was that a barbed hook aimed at a segment of the fishing population he vehemently despised?

After a statement about the fishing seasons for Brook Trout in the north and northeastern regions, the author asserts that there is but one way, and you know he means one way only, to catch a Brook Trout. And that is with a fly. But he allows that there is a class of fishermen who resort to worms, minnows, nets, and even their own roe. I had to look that last one up. Roe is the fully-ripe egg mass of fish. I've never done that--seems a little weird. But first on the list of bait violations, worms, I did not have to look up. My grandfather taught me to fish the mountain streams with worms we dug up in his vegetable garden (my old bait box, circa 1940s-50s, pictured below). I knew he had fly fished some, but he preferred worms. So I bristled a bit at the author’s condescending tone toward something so indelibly imprinted upon my fondest memories. But his next sentence was the killer:

These villanies are not at present punished with death nor even imprisonment for life; but our legislature is looking into the matter, and there is no telling how soon such statutes may be passed.

Ha! After lulling his readers into the beginnings of a mind-wandering state with a dose of mundane text, the author craftily floated a fly downstream into my placid reading pool and hooked me sharply with a device that snapped me to attention immediately. Well done! I never saw it coming. His humor was the device, used in a way, I’ll bet, to see if his readers were still with him after a few pages of dry descriptors about fin characteristics and scale observations. Catching Brook Trout with worms should be punishable by death or life imprisonment? Ye gods and little fishes! How do you really feel about it, Mr. Barnwell?


And Barnwell is used somewhat pseudonymously. The real name of this author is Robert Barnwell Roosevelt. A little googling produced this biographical information: Uncle to President Theodore Roosevelt, great-uncle to Eleanor Roosevelt, who married her fifth cousin, President Franklin Roosevelt, who himself was a fifth cousin to President Theodore Roosevelt, who was an uncle to Eleanor Roosevelt... Wait, I think I said that already. Sheesh! What a tangled-up crow's nest of fishing line that genealogy is! Not that that has anything to do with the radical Barnwell. But after advocating the death penalty for bait fishermen of Brook Trout, Barnwell reverts back to serious writing, extolling the virtues of fishing with the fly. Without reading any further, I'm sure a few more barbs are floating along the currents toward the unsuspecting reader.

The Laughing Muse: Frontispiece Frivolity

I purchased this book recently, purely for the frontispiece illustration. Something about this muse that resonated with me, or with my own muse perhaps. Actually, anyone who has acknowledged a visit from their own muse will probably recognize this humorous trait that likely inhabits all muses. The book: The Laughing Muse, by Arthur Guiterman, Harper & Brothers, NY (1915). This is a collection of humorous, whimsical verse, most, if not all, of which appears to be pretty boring drivel. But there was that laughing muse holding the world in his hands, smiling down on us. It doesn't appear to be condescending. More of a laughing with us, not at us kind of look. Maybe he's employing a smile and the whole world smiles with you kind of posture. Maybe he's noticed that, as a planet, we have a few situations that could use a smile.

I'm curious about the artist, but can't quite make out his name. Looks like Hunter Clay, but not quite. Hopefully, I can pick up the trail on this illustrator and see where it leads. Right now, the trail is cold--nothing to smile about.

Habent sua fata libelli

I am intrigued at times by the coincidences of discoveries I make and the interesting paths they sometimes take me down. The Latin phrase, Habent sua fata libelli, is the latest example and unites a theme in two books I'm currently reading: A Rare Book Saga: The Autobiography of H.P. Kraus, by H.P. Kraus; G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1978. and On Borrowed Words: A Memoir of Language, by Ilan Stavans, Viking, 2001. Kraus' book I'm about done with and had just started Stavans' book a few nights ago when I found a bond that needed exploring.


Anyone with a passion for books, particularly rare antiquarian books, would enjoy Kraus' tale of a rising bookman in pre-War Vienna, Nazi concentration camp survivor, immigrant to America, and the most prolific bookseller of the latter half of the twentieth century. His autobiography is a Who's Who of bibliophiles over the last century, as well as a valuable reference for the provenance of certain incunabula and illuminated manuscripts (his specialty).

In one of the later chapters, A Constitution Bought, a Declaration Lost, Kraus muses on the recent prices paid by he and others for choice Americana documents, which were outside his specialty. Specifically, the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. The inconsistent nature of what fetches how much at which auctions and what can be recouped through private collectors gave Krause pause to invoke the Latin Habent sua fata libelli. I liked the sound of that, and although Kraus parenthetically inserted a definition (Every book has its own price), I still wanted to research the idiom for further clarification.

That led me to Lorcan Dempsey's Weblog: On libraries, services and networks, and an entry dealing with the aura of a book and its copies in the age of digitization and mechanical reproduction. The Latin quote pops up here and is attributed to Walter Benjamin in his essay, Unpacking My Library, from Illuminations. Of course, I had to go research Benjamin, whom I'll likely write about later, but a quick Wikipedia moment produced this:

A German-Jewish Marxist literary critic, essayist, translator, and philosopher, who died either by suicide or murder while fleeing the Nazis in an attempt to emigrate to the United States. 

And now a copy of his Illuminations is going to meet its fate with me.

But a few variants of Kraus' Latin interpretation are presented here on Lorcan Dempsey's weblog: Every book has its fate and, with a collector's twist, books and their copies have their fates. Is it Benjamin's style or reputation (unfamiliar to me) behind the quote or the actual quote itself that render the collective words so malleable as to cause these variations in definition? Perhaps the phrase itself, with a strategic word substitution, would have its own fate (relative to its user, of course).

Now to Ilan Stavans memoir, a book I bought while out scouting the other day. The title caught my eye and the jacket write-up made the sale. This one will go into my personal collection, at least for awhile (Habent sua fata libelli). Briefly, the author's family were Eastern European Jews who emigrated to the Jewish ghetto of Mexico City. That in itself produced a double-take from me. Mexico City has/had a Jewish ghetto? Stavans later moved to the United States (NY) and Israel. He has claimed Yiddish, Spanish, Hebrew, and English as his primary language at one time or another. Hence, the title of his memoir. This book will warrant a separate blog entry at some point, but suffice it to say that the opening paragraph created for me something to think about with respect to my collection of books and how it has evolved.



In Chapter One, Mexico Lindo, Stavans packs his library, preparing to move from his New York City apartment to somewhere outside the city. He contemplates his collection and how it has evolved from the few books he brought with him from Mexico ten years earlier. This informal analysis summons comparisons with how his life has evolved during that same period of time--everything from the books he acquired to the nuances of how those books shared his living space. Then he invokes the biblio-essayist Benjamin:

Walter Benjamin was right when he claimed that a real library is always impenetrable and at the same time unique. My success in America would come when I would once again have a plentiful library, personal in the complete sense of the word, i.e., built on caprice.

With this reference to Benjamin, I recognized a bridge back to Kraus. Scanning the last few chapters of A Rare Book Saga, I found the quote again and smiled at Kraus' interpretation that "every book has its price." Of course a bookseller would put that spin on it!

So several themes threaded their way into my reading and opened a few more windows of discovery into bibliophily and philosphy. From Jewish immigrants to bookish immigrants to migrating libraries and collections of books, anything and everyone, it appears, all have their fates.

Save the books!

Support your local independent bookstore. The little guys keep going down the toilet in alarming numbers. Don't let THIS be on your conscience!

The Cowboy Christmas Ball

This time of year found me revisiting a favorite old antiquarian volume on the shelf: Ranch Verses, by "Larry" Chittenden, "Poet-Ranchman;" 1893, G.P. Putnam's Sons, NY. My volume is a Fourth Edition from 1897, Revised and Enlarged. It's also illustrated with drawings and photographs. Perhaps the First Edition was as well--I'm not sure about that. I'm sure I read through it when I bought it circa mid-1980s, but it would be another ten years before I would discover the seasonal gem in its collection: The Cowboy Christmas Ball.

Michael Martin Murphey popularized this poem in song on his concept album, Cowboy Christmas: Cowboy Songs II, released in May of 1991. He was not the first to put the poem to music; that had been done in Chittenden's day and collected by John Lomax in 1922 in Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads. Murphey may have been the first singer to record the song.

Chittenden's poem commemorates the first Cowboy Christmas Ball, held in Anson, Texas in 1885. Chittended, a reporter for the New York Times, was staying at the hotel while visiting his uncle who owned a ranch nearby. The dance that evening for all the area cowboys inspired his lighthearted verse an it eventually found its way to publication in 1890 in the local paper. Chittenden later inherited his uncle's ranch, moved to Texas, and in 1893 published his first book, Ranch Verse, which included The Cowboy Christmas Ball.


Incidentally, the soiree that Chittenden witnessed that night was not the first dance of that kind in Anson. The ball had been organized each Christmas for several years before that. And it continued somewhat irregularly afterward, with little regard for Chittenden's poem until Leona Barrett, an Anson teacher and folklorist, revived it under the title of The Cowboy Christmas Ball. She sought to preserve the old dance customs in such a way that her group was invited to the National Folk Fetivals, including the 1938 event held in Washington, D.C. There, her Anson, Texas Cowboy Christmas Ball dancers danced on the White House lawn.


By the 1940s, the interest and attendance had increased to the point that the event was copyrighted and a Board of Directors was created. There was even a new venue, Pioneer Hall, built as a permanent home for the three-day event. 1946 appears to have been the first year that Chittenden's ballad was put to music and sang at the ball. What John Lomax collected several decades earlier may or may not have resembled the 1946 composition by Gordon Graham, a cowboy folklorist from Colorado. Graham's rendition started a tradition of having a soloist sing the ballad before the ball. The music from that early 1885 ball consisted of a bass viol, a tambourine, and two fiddles. As the music and vocals evolved over the years, they were always held to a certain standard, which itself has been clarified over the years.


Currently, Michael Martin Murphey carries the torch for this American "old west" classic event that started with a bunch of cowboys in search of a good time, a New York reporter's creative writing, and an emerging interest in a fading way of life to preserve the old ways in song and dance. You can see Murphey's rendition via music video for however long it lasts on youtube.com. Which reminds me...

Having listened to the Murphy recording hundreds of times before picking the book Ranch Verses back up one day and learning that the song was in the book as a poem, and then learning the history, I had thought the characters in the song were fictitiously penned by Murphey or another songwriter. Characters like Windy Bill and Z Bar Dick and Cross P Charley seemed like old cowboy folk characters. But here in Chittenden's book is a photograph of one of the dancers in the song: the leader from Swensen's Ranch, Windy Bill from little Deadman's Branch. This is an old west character if ever there was one. Merry Christmas from the ghosts of Windy Bill, Z Bar Dick, Cross P Charley, old Chittenden himself and the other cowpokes and their ladies!

Breakfast served any time all day... but no trout

I think I like Donald Hall's essays more than his poetry, especially essays on poetry. Until I find a poem of his that blows me away. But right now I'm getting caught up on a collection of essays: Breakfast Served Any Time All Day: Essays on Poetry New and Selected, by Donald Hall; The University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 2003. Mr. Hall, a recent poet laureate of the U.S., offered the following quote at the beginning of his book:

Whatever we think we write, with good fortune we write something else: The Muse is the Angel of Accident.

By William Trout, from Early Notebooks.

Interesting! But who is William Trout. Sorry to say I don’t have a clue. A writer, of course. Essayist? Poet? Diarist? If Donald Hall quoted him, he must be a writer of some merit. I'm curious enough about the quotation to do some research. But I get no results from book search engines (bookfinder.com, abebooks.com, etc.). I try with just the author name and with just the title of the piece quoted by Donald Hall. Nothing. I google various combinations of spellings and key words. Nothing again. No Trout. The elusive trout. I shall continue fishing, though.


Woodcut from Dame Juliana Berners’
A Treatyse of Fysshynge wyth an Angle
(1496)

from the Milne Angling Collections
University of New Hampshire Library

A road less traveled... led to Robert Frost's home

"Because it was grassy and wanted wear..."
The walking path to the Frost Place from the parking lot down the hill.

I had the extreme pleasure a few weeks ago, October 5th, of driving around the White Mountains of New Hampshire and visiting Robert Frost's home in Franconia. What a beautiful setting, which has been credited with providing the inspiration for some of his most beloved poems, including Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. And before stopping by the Frost Place, we lunched in the nearby village of Franconia and I wondered if it were the village of the owner of the woods in the poem. And later, while viewing the woods around Frost's home... were they the woods Frost viewed from his front porch? I sat in an old chair on Frost's porch and viewed the White Mountains and the woods, the same view he likely had a hundred years ago. On a quiet autumn afternoon, and I imagine it's always quiet there, you could almost hear a horse in the distance giving his harness bells a shake... Had a few snowflakes begun to fall, I think I would have even seen the horse and buggy!




This visit provided an enjoyable connection to a writer I have long admired and identified with because of our respective connections to the Granite State. My family history runs deep in smaller mountains about 60 miles southeast of Franconia.

In 1923, my great-grandmother bought a copy of Frost's new book of poems titled New Hampshire, published by Henry Holt & Company, New York, in 1923. It has passed down to me and is one of my most prized possessions--a first edition Robert Frost, a Pulitzer Prize winning book no less. And speaking of first editions, the Frost Place museum had a collection of signed, or inscribed, first editions of many of Frost's works. Seeing such a venerable collection, inscribed in Frost's hand, was quite a thrill for me, as both a bookseller and collector.


And in the middle of them was a familiar cover--the book I admired many years in my grandmother's library (her mother's copy) and for many years now in my home. The museum copy bore a nice inscription from Frost.


My copy is not inscribed by Frost (and of course I wish it were!), but it does bear my great-grandmother's bookplate, which is a nice reminder of my family connection across the generations to New Hampshire--both the state and the words of Robert Frost. Seeing the museum copy of that book I own, I was reminded of the title poem, New Hampshire, and how it ended:

Well, if I have to choose one or the other,
I choose to be a plain New Hampshire farmer
With an income in cash of say a thousand
(From say a publisher in New York City).
It's restful to arrive at a decision,
And restful just to think about New Hampshire.
At present I am living in Vermont.