“The Prison Poet’s Farewell”

‘John Carter,’ the young English convict whose poems brought him pardon, left a farewell message to his friends within the walls of his Minnesota prison. This ‘last will and testament,’ first printed in the weekly Prison Mirror, published in the penitentiary, was reproduced in The St. Paul Dispatch:

‘This is the last will and testament of me, Anglicus. I hereby give and bequeath my collection of books (amounting to some 6,000 volumes) to Mr. Van D., in memory of the not altogether unpleasant hours we spent together, hours marked by no shadow of animosity at any time. We could not be happy, but we were as happy as we could be. To Dr. Van D. I leave my mantle of originality, and what remains of the veuve cliquot, in memory of encouragement when I most needed it.

‘To the editor I leave my space on this journal and the best of good wishes in memory of his unfailing courtesy and forbearance.

‘To Uncle John and to Sinbad go my heartiest wishes that we may meet soon in some brighter clime.

‘To Mr. Helgrams, my best dhudeen and the light of hope.

‘To young Steady and to Mr. D. M., my poetic laurels, which they are to share in equal measure.

‘To the boys in the printing office, the consolation of not being obliged to set up my excruciating copy.

‘To the tailors (and to the boss tailor in particular, ‘Little Italy,’) my very best pair of pants.

‘To Jim of the laundry, — but nothing seems good enough for Jim, the best soul that ever walked.

‘To Porfiro Alexio Gonzolio, a grip of the hand.

‘To Davie, pie, pie again, and yet more pie.

‘To the band boys — why, here’s to ’em! May they blow loose.

‘To my fellow pedagogues, “More light,” as Goethe put it, more fellowship; it would be impossible to wise them. They know where I stand and I know where they stand.

‘Lawdy! lawdy! If I hadn’t forgotten Otto and his assistant. Here’s all kinds of luck to ’em, and no mistake about it.

‘Finally to all those not included hereinbefore (for various reasons), here’s to our next merry meeting. To those in authority, thanks for a square deal. To mine enemy — but I mustn’t bul-con him.

‘Gentlemen, I go, but I leave, I hope I leave my reputation behind me.

‘Anglicus.’

— New York Times, July 9, 1910

| Crime · Literature

In a Word

chartaceous
adj. made of paper

admarginate
v. to add or note in the margin

subdititious
adj. fraudulently substituted for a person or thing

prepense
n. malice aforethought

Alexander Pope made use of every scrap of paper that offered a clean surface — nearly the entire first draft of his translation of the Iliad was written on the backs of envelopes, bills, miscellaneous letters, and stray bits of paper. Jonathan Swift suggested that other writers might turn this to their advantage: They could print their own works in editions with wide margins, lend these to “paper-sparing Pope,” wait for him to fill in the spaces with poetry — and then sell this as their own.

| Language · Literature

First Steps

Tennessee Williams wrote for Weird Tales! The 16-year-old author, writing under his given name, Thomas Lanier Williams, published “The Vengeance of Nitocris” in the magazine’s August 1928 issue. An Egyptian queen invites her enemies to a banquet, where she opens sluice gates to drown them in the waters of the Nile:

[T]he black water plunged in. Furiously it surged over the floor of the run, sweeping tables before it and sending its victims, now face to face with their harrowing doom, into a hysteria of terror. In a moment that icy, black water had risen to their knees, although the room was vast. Some fell instantly dead from the shock, or were trampled upon by the desperate rushing of the mob. Tables ware clambered upon. Lamps and candles were extinguished. Brilliant light rapidly faded to twilight, and a ghastly dimness fell over the room as only the suspended lanterns remained lit. And what a scene of chaotic and hideous horror might a spectator have beheld!

He received $35 for the story, his first published work. “[I]f you’re well acquainted with my writings since then,” he wrote later, “I don’t have to tell you that it set the keynote for most of the work that has followed.”

The full text is here.

| Literature

“The Universe and the Philosopher”

The Universe and the Philosopher sat and looked at each other satirically. …

‘You know so many things about me that aren’t true!’ said the Universe to the Philosopher.

‘There are so many things about you that you seem to be unconscious of,’ said the Philosopher to the Universe.

* * *

‘I contain a number of things that I am trying to forget,’ said the Universe.

‘Such as what?’ asked the Philosopher.

‘Such as Philosophers,’ said the Universe.

‘You are wrong,’ said the Philosopher to the Universe, ‘for it is only by working up the most important part of yourself into the form of Philosophers that you get a product capable of understanding you at all.’

‘Suppose,’ said the Universe, ‘that I don’t care about being understood. Suppose that I care more about being?’

‘You are wrong again, then,’ said the Philosopher. ‘For being that is not conscious being can scarcely be called being at all.’

***

‘You Philosophers always were able to get the better of me in argument,’ smiled the Universe, ‘and I think that is one thing that is the matter with you.’

‘If you object to our intellects,’ said the Philosopher, ‘we can only reply that we got them, as well as everything else, from you.’

‘That should make you more humble,’ said the Universe. ‘If I quit letting you have intellect, where would you be then?’

‘Where would you be,’ asked the Philosopher, ‘if you quit letting me have intellect? If I quit thinking you out as you are, and must be, you would cease to exist as you are; for I am a part of you; and if I were to change, your total effect would be changed also.’ … Then the Philosopher reflected a long moment, and, warming to his work, put over this one: ‘The greater part of you, for all I know, exists in my brain anyhow; and if I should cease to think of that part, that part would cease to be.’

* * *

‘You make me feel so helpless, somehow!’ complained the Universe, hypocritically. ‘I beg your pardon for asking you to be humble a moment ago. … I see now, very plainly, that it is I who should be more humble in your presence.’

‘I am glad,’ said the Philosopher, ‘that we have been able to arrive at something like an understanding.’

‘Understanding!’ echoed the Universe. ‘It’s so important, isn’t it?’ … And then: ‘Come! We have argued enough for one day! There is something terribly fatiguing to me about Profound Thought. Can’t we just lie down in the shade the rest of the afternoon and watch the wheels go round?’

‘Watch the wheels go round?’ puzzled the Philosopher.

‘Uh-huh ! … the planets and solar systems, and stuff like that. The nicest thing in life, as I have lived it, is just to lie about and drowse and watch the wheels go round. … I made nearly everything spherical in the beginning so it would roll when I kicked it. I’d rather play than think.’

‘You are a Low Brow!’ said the Philosopher.

‘Uh-huh,’ said the Universe. ‘At times. … I suppose that’s the reason some of the children neglect the old parent these days.’

* * *

And then, after a nap, during which the Philosopher contemplated the Universe with a tinge of superiority, the Universe rumbled sleepily: ‘I know what I am going to do with this Intellect Stuff. I’m going to take it away from you Philosophers and give it to fish or trees or something of that sort!’

‘How frightfully grotesque!’ said the Philosopher, turning pale.

‘Or to giraffes,’ continued the Universe. ‘Giraffes are naturally dignified. And they aren’t meddlesome. I’d like to see a whole thousand of giraffes walking along in a row, with their heads in the air, thinking, thinking, thinking … with tail coats and horn-rimmed goggles.’

* * *

‘You are absurd!’ cried the Philosopher.

‘Uh-huh,’ said the Universe. And reaching over, the Universe picked up the Philosopher, not ungently, by the scruff of the neck, tossed him into the air, caught him tenderly as he came down, spun him around, and set him right side up on the ground.

‘You,’ said the Universe, grinning at the breathless Philosopher pleasantly, ‘are sort of funny yourself, sometimes!’

— Don Marquis

| Literature

Memories

Excerpts from Mark Twain’s boyhood journal:

Monday — Got up, washed, went to bed.
Tuesday — Got up, washed, went to bed.
Wednesday — Got up, washed, went to bed.
Thursday — Got up, washed, went to bed.
Friday — Got up, washed, went to bed.
Next Friday — Got up, washed, went to bed.
Friday fortnight — Got up, washed, went to bed.
Following month — Got up, washed, went to bed.

“I stopped, then, discouraged. Startling events appeared to be too rare, in my career, to render a diary necessary.”

(From The Innocents Abroad.)

| Literature · Society

“History Talks Too Little About Animals”

“Jottings” from the notebooks of Bulgarian novelist Elias Canetti, published as The Human Province (1978):

  • The days are distinct, but the night has only one name.
  • A war always proceeds as if humanity had never hit upon the notion of justice.
  • The lowest man: he whose wishes have all come true.
  • The dead are nourished by judgments, the living by love.
  • If you have seen a person sleeping, you can never hate him again.
  • I really only know what a tiger is since Blake’s poem.
  • A nice trick: throwing something into the world without being pulled in by it.
  • The future, which changes every instant.
  • I’m fed up with seeing through people; it’s so easy, and it gets you nowhere.
  • In love, assurances are practically an announcement of their opposite.
  • In eternity, everything is at the beginning, a fragrant morning.
  • Praying as a rehearsal of wishes.
  • Why aren’t more people good out of spite?
  • The best person ought not to have a name.
  • To keep thoughts apart by force. They all too easily become matted, like hair.
  • Each war contains all earlier wars.
  • One may have known three or four thousand people, one speaks about only six or seven.
  • You notice some things only because they’re not connected to anything.
  • Everyone ought to watch himself eating.
  • Nothing is more boring than to be worshiped. How can God stand it?

“Square tables: the self-assurance they give you, as though one were alone in an alliance of four.”

| Literature · Quotations

Misc

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Carl_D%C3%B8rnberger_-_By_the_Easel_-_Ved_staffeliet_-_Nasjonalmuseet_-_NG.M.04348.jpg

  • Émile Zola described a work of art as “a corner of nature seen through a temperament.”
  • Early printings of Webster’s New International Dictionary defined RAFTMAN as “a raftman.”
  • Horace’s motto was Nihil admirari, “Be surprised at nothing.”
  • In the 1960s the Bureau of Land Management renamed Whorehouse Meadow, Oregon, to Naughty Girl Meadow on its maps. In 1981, after a public outcry, it changed it back.
  • “Never read a pop-up book about giraffes.” — Sean Lock

Robert Runcie, Archbishop of Canterbury, cooperated as Humphrey Carpenter prepared his biography, believing that the book wouldn’t be published until after his passing. Eventually he was forced to write,

My dear Humphrey

I have done my best to die before this book is published. It now seems possible that I may not succeed. Since you know that I am not enthusiastic about it you are generous to give me space for a postscript.

| Art · Language · Literature · Quotations · Trivia

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Excerpts from the index of Together, Norman Douglas’ 1923 account of his travels in Calabria:

Anna, the old nurse, her passion for idiots and corpses, 39-40, for wolf-stories, 210; gets it hot, 91; shakes chocolate from a tree, 209; not old at all, 210
Ants, unreliable workmen, 120
Beds, local, their discomforts, 3; double, their uses, 218
Brunnenmacher (father) mountaineer, presumably hirsute, 25; (son) mountaineer, indubitably hirsute, 25; his smile and his blasphemies, 25, 26; takes author in hand, 28, 124
Cement, an abomination, 75, 128, 225
Cocoa, an abomination, 10
Cows, explode from over-eating, 204
Dachshund, lady-dog, sets a bad example, 4
Elephant-trap, a disused, 113
Erratic blocks, 176, 185, 186, 230
Falling in love, with a mountain, 30
Grand-aunts, the delight of childhood, 41, 47, 92, 214
Grandfather, maternal, a feudal monster, always spick-and-span, 196; excavates in imagination the Akropolis of Athens, 197; tells Prince Consort how to handle Queen Victoria, 198; sometimes mistaken for an angel, 199; dominates his harem, 200; vicious to the last, 201
Hare, how to shoot, 123; how not to cook, 203
Moralists, their limitations, 84
Ovid, blunders in botany, 83
Poets, should avoid towns, 82; generally born naked, 165; talk nonsense about pomegranates, 202
Theocritus, seldom caught napping, 83
Weisses Kreuz, hotel, its manager worth making love to, 203

Douglas had a penchant for droll indexes. His index for Some Limericks (1928) contains the entry “Spain, project for fertilizing arid tracts of, its ruler disinclined for tête-à-tête diversions”.

| Humor · Literature