Mark Twain, Collector Of Compliments

by Stephen J. Gertz

Little Montana Girl's Compliment
"She was gazing thoughtfully at a photograph of Mark Twain
on a neighbor's mantelpiece. Presently she said, reverently,
'We've got a Jesus like that at home only ours has more trimmings.'"

On January 11, 1908, The Lotos Club in New York City, one of the oldest literary associations in the United States, held a dinner in honor of one of its members, Samuel L. Clemens, aka Mark Twain.

Founded in New York City in 1870 by a group of young writers, journalists and critics, the Lotos Club initiated Twain to membership in 1873, who, waggish card that he was, immediately declared it “The Ace of Clubs.” At the dinner - attended by many luminaries - the guest of honor gave a speech announcing that he had become a collector of compliments. PBA Galleries is offering one of those compliments, in Twain's hand, in its Historic Autographs & Manuscripts with Archival Material sale May 8, 2014. It is estimated to sell for $2,500-$4,000.

As reported in the New York Times, January 12, 1908, Twain told the gathering:

"I wish to begin at the beginning, lest I forget it altogether. I wish to thank you for your welcome now and for that of seven years ago, which I forgot to thank you for at the time, also for that of fourteen years ago which I also forgot to thank you for. I know how it is; when you have been in a parlor and are going away, common decency ought to make you say the decent thing, what a good time you have had. Everybody does it except myself.

"I hope that you will continue that excellent custom of giving me dinners every seven years. I had had it on my mind to join the hosts of another world - I do not know which world - but I have enjoyed your custom so much that I am willing to postpone it for another seven years.

"The guest is in an embarrassing position, because compliments have been paid to him. I don't care whether you deserve it or not, but it is hard to talk up to it.

"The other night at the Engineers' Club dinner they were paying Mr. Carnegie here discomforting compliments. They were all compliments and they were not deserved, and I tried to help him out with criticisms and references to things nobody understood.

"They say that one cannot live on bread alone, but I could live on compliments. I can digest them. They do not trouble me. I have missed much in life that I did not make a collection of compliments, and keep them where I could take them out and look at them once in a while. I am beginning now. Other people collect autographs, dogs, and cats, and I collect compliments. I have brought them along.

"I have written them down to preserve them, and think that they're mighty good and exceedingly just."

[Twain began to read a few. The first, by essayist, critic, and editor Hamilton W. Mabie, declared that La Salle might have been the first man to make a voyage of the Mississippi, but that Mark Twain was the first man to chart light and humor for the human race].

"If that had been published at the time that I issued that book [Life on the Mississippi] it would have been money in my pocket. I tell you it is a talent by itself to pay complements gracefully and have them ring true. It's an art by itself.

"Now, here's one by my biographer. Well, he ought to know me if anybody does. He's been at my elbow for two years and a half. This is Albert Bigelow Paine:

"'Mark Twain is not merely the great writer, the great philosopher, but he is the supreme expression of the human being with its strengths and weaknesses.'

"What a talent for compression!"

[Novelist, editor, and critic William Dean Howells, Twain said, spoke of him as first of Hartford and ultimately of the solar system, not to say of the universe].

"You know how modest Howells is. If it can be proved that my fame reaches to Neptune and Saturn, that will satisfy even me. You know how modest and retiring Howells is, but deep down he is as vain as I am."

"Edison wrote: 'The average American loves his family. If he has any love left over for some other person he generally selects Mark Twain.'

"Now here's the compliment of a little Montana girl, which came to me indirectly. She was in a room in which there was a large photograph of me. After gazing at it steadily for a time, she said:

"'We've got a John the Baptist like that.' 

"She also said: 'Only ours has more trimmings.'

"I suppose she meant the halo.

[Since the offered "compliment" is numbered “4” and the Times reported the little girl’s compliment after three prior, this sheet was most likely Twain’s reading copy; he extemporaneously changed some of the words but it was basically the same story].

"Now here is a gold miner's compliment. It is forty-two years old. It was my introduction to an audience to which I lectured in a log schoolhouse. There were no ladies there. I wasn't famous then. They didn't know me. Only the miners were there with their breeches tucked into their boot tops and with clay all over them. They wanted someone to introduce me, and then selected a miner, who protested that he didn't want to do on the ground that he had never appeared in public. This is what he said:

"'I don't know anything about this man. Anyhow, I only know two things about him. One is he has never been in jail and the other is I don't know why...'"

The dinner was Twain-themed. As tasty as his speech was, the meal was tastier, a feast for those whose tongue for Twain went all the way. On the menu that evening:

Innocent Oysters Abroad.
Roughing It Soup.
Huckleberry Finn Fish.
Joan of Arc Filet of Beef.
Jumping Frog Terrapin.
Punch Brothers Punch.
Gilded Duck.
Hadleyburg Salad.
Life on the Mississippi Ice Cream.
Prince and the Pauper Cake.
Pudd'nhead Cheese.
White Elephant coffee.
Chateau Yquem Royals.
Pommery Brut.
Henkow Cognac.

Dishes served only in spirit included:

Double-Barrelled Detective Mystery Vegetable.

Connecticut Yankee Stew.

Mysterious Stranger Souvlaki.

Our compliments to the chef - and honoree.
__________

Image courtesy of PBA Galleries, with our thanks.
__________
__________

An "Excessively Rare" Thomas Rowlandson Suite Of Caricatures

by Stephen J. Gertz

In 1800, Rudolph Ackermann, the great print publisher, issued Masqueronians, a suite of six hand-colored emblematic etched plates by the great caricaturist, Thomas Rowlandson, each with three figures representing various English "types," for a total of eighteen.

The species include an undertaker; barber; flower girl; lawyer; soldier; fish-monger; street vendor; doctor; nun; pub owner; fashionable lady; philosopher; fox hunter; writer, and etc.

Only one copy has been seen at auction since 1922: "An excessively rare Rowlandson item, only one other copy being known" (Anderson Galleries sale, 1922).

Color-plate books depicting itinerant tradesmen and/or occupations were nothing new in 1800, when Masqueronians was published. Cries of London - "cries" being the street language of vendors hawking their wares in the squares and markets of 17th-century London - was published by John Overton in London 1680-1700. Between 1792 and 1795 Francis Wheatley exhibited a series of oil paintings entitled the “Cries of London.” It was a popular subject.

But it was up to Rowlandson to treat the subject emblematically as social satire, the wares or tools of the trade worn as garlands.

His aim included a caustic arrow to the faces he associated with each occupation. The street vendor above ("Trafficorum"), for example, is depicted with a hooked nose and it doesn't require a Ph.D. to understand that Rowlandson is skewering Jews. Rowlandson impales physicians as sour-pusses impaling patients with their main instrument of practice, a clyster syringe, the better to drain der keister of all that ails ye.

Don't get him started on nuns and the proprietors of pubs.

We will gloss-over the fashionable lady in her finest frou-frou: the philosopher appears to be annoyed to be matched with her; inquiring into the mystery of life is his trade but the mystery of women remains a mystery to him, as it was to whom appears to be his descendant, Freud.

Actors and fox-hunters beware: Rowlandson has your number. And writers? The pen may be mightier than the sword but strangled by vipers, as Penserosa seems to be, the sword might be the best way out when critics spew venom, quills being notoriously undependable instruments of suicide.

__________

ROWLANDSON, Thomas. Masqueronians. London: R. Ackermann, 1800.

Folio (275 x 375 mm). Six hand-colored etchings, each with three emblematic portraits, all printed in brown ink.

The Plates:

1. Philosophorum, Fancynina, Epicurum
2. Penserosa, Tally Ho! Rum!, Allegora
3. Physicorum, Nunina, Publicorum
4. Funeralorum, Virginia, Hazardorum
5. Battleorum, Billingsgatina, Trafficorum
6. Barberoum, Flora, Lawyerorum

BM Satires 9616-9621.

_________

Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.
__________
__________

The 36 Miseries Of Reading And Writing In 1806

by Stephen J. Gertz

"TO THE MISERABLE CHILDREN of Misfortune, wheresoever found, and whatsoever enduring — ye who, arrogating to yourselves a kind of sovereignty of suffering, maintain that all the throbs of torture, all the pungency of sorrow, all the bitterness of desperation, are your own — who are so torn and spent with the storms and struggles of mortality, as to faint, or freeze, even at the personation of those ruined Wretches, whose Stories wash the stage of tragedy with tears and blood —approach a more disastrous scene! Take courage to behold a Pageant of calamities, which calls you to renounce your sad monopoly. Dispassionately ponder all your worst of woes, in turn with these; then hasten to distill from the comparison an opiate for your fiercest pangs; and learn to recognize the leniency of your Destinies, if they have spared you from the lightest of those mightier and more grinding agonies, which claim to be emphatically characterized as 'The Miseries of Human Life;' — miseries which excruciate the minds and bodies of none more insupportably, than of those Heroes in anguish, those writhing Martyrs to the plagues and frenzies of vexation, whose trembling hands must shortly cease to trace the names of" -

Mssrs. Timothy Testy and Samuel Sensitive, whom, acting on behalf of their creator, writer and clergyman James Beresford, satirically related, in The Miseries of Human Life (1806), the mortifying torments that plagued contemporary readers and writers and thwarted enjoyment of those justly exalted pastimes. Some of the following agonies are of their time, others are timeless, many are familiar to book collectors, and all appear in numerical order as in the book yet differently formatted. The order is not a ranking, though number one has always been and will always be #1.

1. Reading over a passage in an author, for the hundredth time, without coming an inch nearer to the meaning of it at the last reading than at the first; — then passing over it in despair, but without being able to enjoy the rest of the book from the painful consciousness of your own real or supposed stupidity.

2. As you are reading drowsily by the fire, letting your book fall into the ashes so as to lose your place, rumple and grime 'the leaves, and throw out your papers of reference; then, on rousing and recollecting yourself, finding that you do not know a syllable of what you have been winking over for the last hour.

3. In reading a new and interesting book, being reduced to make a paper knife of your finger. [Refers to a once absolutely necessary reading accessory to open the upper edges of text gatherings left folded by the printer or binder - SJG].

4. Unfolding a very complicated map in a borrowed book of value, and notwithstanding all your care, enlarging the small rent you originally made in it every time you open it.

5. Hunting on a cold scent, in a map for a place — in a book for a passage — in a variety of Dictionaries for a word:— clean thrown out at last.

6. Reading a comedy aloud when you are half asleep, and quite stupid.

7. In attempting, at a strange house, to take down a large book from a high, crowded shelf, bringing half the library up on your nose.

8. Mining through a subject, or science purely from the shame of ignorance.

9. Receiving "from the author," a book equally heavy in the literal, and the figurative sense; accompanied with entreaties that you would candidly set down in writing, your detailed opinions of it in all its parts.

10. Reading a borrowed book so terribly well bound, that you are obliged to peep your way through it, for fear of breaking the stitches, or the leather, if you fairly open it; and which, consequently, shuts with a spring, if left a moment to itself.

11. Or, after you have long been reading the said book close by the fire, (which is not quite so ceremonious, as you are about opening it), attempting in vain to shut it, the covers violently flapping back in a warped curve — in counteracting which, you crack the leather irreparably, in a dozen places.

12. On taking a general survey of your disordered library, for the purpose of re-arranging it — finding a variety of broken sets, and odd volumes, of valuable works, which you had supposed to be complete; — and then, after screwing up your brows upon it for an hour, finding yourself wholly unable to recollect to whom any one of the missing books has been lent, or even to guess what has become of them; and, at the same time, without having the smallest hope of ever being able to replace them. Likewise,

13. Your pamphlets, and loose printed sheets daily getting ahead, and running mountain high upon your shelves, before you have summoned courage to tame them, by sorting and sending them to the binder.

14. As an author — those moments during which you are relieved from the fatigues of composition by finding that your memory, your intellects, your imagination, your spirits, and even the love of your subject, have all, as if with one consent, left you in the lurch. 

15. In coming to that paragraph of a newspaper, for the sake of which you have bought it, finding, in that only spot, the paper blurred, or left white, by the press, or slapped over with the sprawling red stamp.

16. Reading newspaper poetry; — which, by a sort of fatality which you can neither explain nor resist, you occasionally slave through, in the midst of the utmost repugnance an disgust.

17. As you are eagerly taking up a newspaper, being yawningly told by one who has just laid it down, that "there is nothing in it." Or, the said paper sent for by the lender, at the moment when you are beginning to read it.

18. Having your ears invaded all the morning long, close at your study window, by the quack of ducks, and the cackle of hens, with an occasional bass accompaniment by an ass.

19. Writing a long letter, with a very hard pen, on very thin and very greasy paper, with very pale ink, to one who you wish — I needn't say where.

20. On arriving at that part of the last volume of an enchanting novel, in which the interest is wrought up to the highest pitch — suddenly finding the remaining leaves, catastrophe and all, torn out.

21. Burning your fingers with an inch of sealing wax; and then dropping awry the guinea to which you are reduced by the want of a seal.

22. In writing — neither sand, blotting paper, nor a fire, to dry your paper; so that, though in violent haste, you sit with your hands before you, at the end of every other page, till the ink thinks proper to dry of itself; — Or toiling your wrist, for ten minutes together, with a sand glass that throws out two or three damp grains at a time; and in consequence of such delay —

23. Losing the post — and this, when you would as willingly lose your life.

24. Emptying the ink glass (by mistake for the sand glass) on a paper which you have just written out fairly — and then widening the mischief, by applying restive blotting paper.

25. Putting a wafer, of the size of a half crown piece, into a letter with so narrow a fold, that one half of the circle stands out in sight, and is presently smeared over the paper by your fingers, in stamping the concealed half.

26. Writing on the creases of paper that has been sharply folded.

27. In sealing a letter - the wax in so very melting a mood, as frequently to leave a burning kiss on your hand, instead of the paper: — next, when you have applied the seal, and all, at last, seems well over — said wax voluntarily "rendering up its trust," the moment after it has undertaken it.

28. Writing at the top of a very long sheet of paper; so that you either rumple and crease the lower end of it with your arm against the table, in bring it lower down, or bruise your chest, and drive out all your breath, in stretching forward to the upper end.

29. Straining your eyes over a book in the twilight, at the rate of about five minutes per line, before it occurs to you to order candles; and when they arrive, finding that you have totally lost the sense of what you have been reading, by the tardy operation of getting at it piecemeal.

30. Attempting to erase writing — but, in fact, only scratching boles in the paper.

31. Snatching up an inkstand (overweighted on one side) by its handle, which you suppose to be fixed, but which proves — to swing .

32. Writing at the same ricketty table with another, who employs his shoulder, elbow, and body, still more actively than his fingers.

33. Writing, on the coldest day in the year, in the coldest room in the house, by a fire which has sworn not to burn; and so, perpetually dropping your full pen upon your paper, out of the five icicles with which you vainly endeavour to hold it.

34. Looking for a good pen, (which it is your perverse destiny never to find, except when you are indifferent about it), and having a free choice among the following varieties. (N. B. No penknife).

35. Writing with ink of about the consistency of pitch, which leaves alternately a blot and a blank.

36. Writing a long letter with one or more of the cut fingers of your right hand bundled up — or else (for more comfort), with your left hand. You might as well stick a pen in a bear's paw, and bid him write.

__________

__________

Death Makes A Lousy Nanny, Etc.

by Stephen J. Gertz

Extra engraved title-page featuring
Manny, Moe, and Jack, the last of the Graces.

He can run but he can't hide.
- Joe Louis on ring opponent Billy Conn.

What's up with Death? What's it doing? It never takes a holiday but nowadays it seems to always be someplace else and never near until it is: it's messy and depressing and we keep it in a compartment, generally confined to a television box or computer screen. As if a hotel toilet seat it's been sanitized and deodorized for our protection. Unless, of course, you're in the midst of war and it becomes the close friend you never wanted and don't like but can't get rid of. Death is such a downer, so anti-life. We've buried it as something to be avoided at all costs, life and death as mortal enemies. Kill death before it kills us. We're shocked by its presence; it's alien to our existence.

Keep an eye on the nanny.

This is a recent phenomenon. Until the twentieth century, death was an ever-present close companion, always lurking and liable to strike at any moment. Women routinely dying in childbirth; high infant mortality; rampant, intractable disease; and ignorant medical care ruled. How did people cope with it? Religious faith was one way. Facing it dead-on, accepting, and often laughing was another.

There is a rich tradition of illustrated books that treat death as a living character in the theater of life.  The earliest, appearing not long after the Black Plague ravaged Europe, is Ars Moriendi (The Art of Dying), two manuscripts from the early fifteenth century on how to attain a good death, the second containing eleven graphic woodcuts. Hans Holbein's The Dance of Death (1538) featuring forty-one woodcuts is probably the most celebrated.

The "dance of death" (or "danse macabre") was a "medieval allegorical concept of the all-conquering and equalizing power of death, expressed in the drama, poetry, music, and visual arts of western Europe, mainly in the late Middle Ages. It is a literary or pictorial representation of a procession or dance of both living and dead figures, the living arranged in order of their rank, from pope and emperor to child, clerk, and hermit, and the dead leading them to the grave." (Encyclopedia Britannica).

Death defeats all challengers.

The nineteenth century saw the publication of William Combe's The English Dance of Death, originally issued in monthly parts, 1815-16, with seventy-three hand-colored aquatints by Thomas Rowlandson.

The book at the doctor's feet is List of Cures.
The leaf on the footstool by Death reads, The Only Infallible Remedy."

Ten years later, in 1826, British painter-engraver Richard Dagley published Death's Doings featuring prose and verse selections by various writers highlighted by twenty-four hand-colored plates designed and etched by Dagley.

Ode To Immortality.
Greece 1824.
The poet is Byron, who died in Greece in 1824
while fighting for its independence.

Dagley continues the tradition, with Death near at hand to everyone no matter who they are, no matter the circumstances. Death is everywhere, all the time, in the background tapping a foot in wait.

"Richard Dagley (c. 1765-1841) was an English subject painter. He was brought up at Christ's Hospital, and at first made designs for jewellery. From 1784 to 1806 he exhibited domestic subjects at the Royal Academy. He then turned his attention to teaching drawing, but again appeared at the Academy from 1815 to 1833. As a medalist he obtained some success, and he published works on gems in 1804 and 1822. His life was a continued struggle against poverty. He died in London in 1841" (Bryan's Dictionary of Painters and Engravers).


The ultimate Dear John letter.

The Scroll

The maiden's cheek blush'd ruby bright,
And her heart beat quick with its own delight;
Again she should dwell on those vows so dear,
Almost as if her lover were near.
Little deemed she that letter would tell
How her true lover fought and fell.
The maiden read till her cheek grew pale -
Yon drooping eye tells all the tale:
She sees her own knight's last fond prayer,
And she reads in that scroll her heart's despair.
Oh! grave, how terrible art thou
To young hearts bound in one fond vow.
Oh! human love, how vain is thy trust;
Hope! how soon art thou laid in dust…


Very popular upon its publication, a second edition of Death's Doings with six additional plates appeared in its first year followed by an edition in 1827 and a first American edition (Boston) in 1828. Though well-represented in institutional holdings, the last (and only) copy of Death's Doings with hand-colored plates to appear at auction was twenty-four years ago, in 1990.

Assertions to the contrary, Death does take a holiday: it has recently been vacationing at Club Dead, the last resort to get away from it all, with an all-inclusive package featuring eternal days and nights and all you can eat, though, admittedly, appetites are infinitely suppressed; the only diet that really works over the long-term.

Though booked as far into the future as one can see there's always room at the inn and my 87-year old mother is currently en route to this fabulous ultimate destination spot where Death is headlining the midnight show in the Drop-Dead Lounge and slaying the audience. While there is no turbulence, her flight is in limbo, she's grown impatient, and the family is slicing anxiety into thick slabs, experiencing a thousand deaths as she nears hers. It's not that Death can't make up its mind so much as Death behaving as a cruel tease.

My mother, never known for sharp humor, has made a startling debut as deathbed quipster, making sardonic jokes during brief  periods  of lucidity. Asked the other day if she needed anything she replied, "a shroud" dare I say deadpan. Death is jerking us around. All we ask is that it get on with the show and be done with it.

We're dyin' here.

(Rimshot).

__________

DAGLEY, Richard. Death's Doings; Consisting of Numerous Original Compositions, in Prose and Verse, the Friendly Contributions of Various Writers; Principally Intended as Illustrations of Twenty-Four Plates, Designed and Etched by R. Dagley. London: Printed for J. Andrews and W. Cole, 1826.



First edition. Octavo (8 1/4 x 5 1/8 in; 211 x 131 mm). xviii, [2], 369, [1, blank], [1, list of plates], [1, printer's slug] pp. Twenty-four hand-colored etchings.

Not in Tooley, Abbey, or Hardie.

The Plates:

1. The Poet.
2. The Pilgrim.
3. The Scroll.
4. The Artist.
5. The Cricketer.
6. The Captive.
7.The Serenade.
8. The Toilet.
9. The Mother.
10. The Hypochondriac.
11. Life's Assurance.
12. The Antiquary.
13. The Champion.
14. The Glutton.
15. The Last Bottle.
16. The Hunter.
17. The Alchymist.
18. Academic Honors.
19. The Empiric.
20. The Phaeton.
21. Death's Register.
22. The Lawyer.
23. The Bubbles of Life Broken By Death.
24. The Epilogue.

__________

Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.
__________
__________

Johathan Swift Asks For a Job

by Stephen J. Gertz

A two-page signed autograph letter by Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) dated April 15, 1735 to an unidentified Lord (i.e. Lionel Cranfield Sackville, the 1st Duke of Dorset and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland 1731-1737) is being offered by Nate D. Sanders Auctions in its sale ending January 30, 2014 at 5PM Pacific. The opening bid is $5,000.

With customary wit, sarcasm, irony, and playfulness, Swift, at the time Dean of St. Patrick's Church in Dublin and a political exile, asks the Duke to appoint the son of a local Alderman to Mastership of a barrack at Kinsale, a post that had recently become vacant.

Politics is never far from Swift's mind. A Tory propagandist, he pokes fun at the Whigs. 

The Alderman, "is as high a Whig and more at your devotion than I could perhaps wish him to be." Swift refers to "a Doctor who kills or cures half the city, of two Parsons my subjects as [illegible] who rule the other half, and of a vagrant Brother who governs the North." He also mock-demands of the Duke that he order Lady Elizabeth "Betty" Germain (1680-1769), a friend and close correspondent of both and a very wealthy woman who "uses me very ill in her Letters," to give him a present "worth forty shillings at least."

The letter, here broken-up into paragraphs, reads in full:

My Lord 

Your Grace must remember, that some days before you left us, I commanded you to attend me to Doctor Delaney's house, about a mile out of this Town, where you were to find Doctor Helsham the Physician. I told you they were the two worthyest gentlemen in this Kingdom in their severall Faculties. You were pleased to comply with me, called on at the Deanry and carried me thither; where you dined with apparent satisfaction.

Now, this same Dr. Helsham hath orderred me to write to Your Grace in behalf of one Alderman Aldrich; who is master of the Dublin Barrack, and is as high a Whig and more at your devotion than I could perhaps wish him to be. And yet he is a very honest Gentleman, and which is more important, a near Relation of the [political family] Grattans, who, in Your Grace's absence are governors of all Ireland, and your Vicegerents when you are here, as I have often told you. They consist of an Alderman whom you are to find Lord Mayor at Michaelmas next; of a Doctor who kills or cures half the city, of two Parsons my subjects as [illegible] who rule the other half, and of a vagrant Brother who governs the North. They are all Brethren, and your Army of twelve thousand soldiers are not able to stand against them.

Now, Your Grace is to understand, that these Grattans will shickle to death for all their Cousins to the five and fiftieth degree; and consequently this same Alderman Aldrich being onely removed two degrees of Kindred and having a son as great a Whig as the Father, hath prevayled with Dr. Helsham to make me write to Your Grace, that the son of such a Father may have the Mastership of a Barrack at Kinsale, which is just vacant, His name is Michael Aldrich. Both Your Grace and I love the name for the sake of Dr. Aldrich Dean of Christ-church, although I am afraid he was a piece of a Tory, you will have several Requests this Past with the same Request, perhaps for different Persons, but you are to observe only mine, because it will come three minutes before any other.

I think this is the third request I have made to Your Grace. You have granted the two first, and therefore must grant the third. For, when I knew Courts, those who had received a dozen favors, were utterly disobliged if they were denyed the thirteenth. Besides, if this be not granted the Grattans will rise in rebellion, which I tremble to think of. My Lady Eliz. Germain uses me very ill in her Letters. I want a Present from her, and desire you will please to order, that it may be a seal. Mine are too small for the fashion; and I would have a large one, worth forty shillings at least. 

I had a Letter from her two days ago, and design to acknowledge it soon, but business must first be dispatched, I mean the Request I have made to Your Grace, that the young Whig may have the Barrack of Kinsale worth 60 or 70 lb a year. I should be very angry as well as sorry if Your Grace would think I am capapble of deceiving you in any circumstances. I hope and pray that my Lady Dutchess may recover Health at the Bath, and, that we may see her Grace perfectly recovered when You come over. And pray God preserve and your most noble Family in Health and Happyness.

I am with the highest respect:
My Lord Your grace's most obedient
most obliged, and most humble
Servant  Jonath: Swift.

Historian, playwright and novelist Horace Walpole (1717-1797) wrote of Lionel Sackville: "with the greatest dignity in his appearance, he was in private the greatest lover of buffoonery and low company…" Swift thought him one of the most agreeable and well-informed of men, and the best conversationalist he had ever met. Theirs was a deep friendship based upon a shared point of view and sense of humor.

___________

Images courtesy of Nate D. Sanders Auctions, with our thanks.
___________
___________

Caution: When Books Review Readers

by Stephen J. Gertz

Beware of the Tattling Tome.

How long does it take for someone to complete a book? When reading steamy erotica, are you lingering over the sex scenes? Do readers ever finish the books they start, or skip right to the end? New startups are seeking to address these questions with new  software and  they  intend on  opening it  up to  writers, indie  authors and  publishers. New startups...are selling critical user data to companies about their subscribers, who access a copious amount of titles for a low monthly fee (New Startups Focus on Tracking eBook Reading Data).

Every now and then an individual comes along who reads with such élan that books stage a 21-page salute and bow in appreciation. That is not the case, alas, with Read Hard With a Vengeance aka Dr. Milton Fernstipple, D.D.S., an orthodontist in Forest Hills, NY who books want to fire a 21-gun salute in his direction with live ammunition.

I am one of those books. I can't speak for all books but I, for one, am weary of readers who read the way they want to instead of how I want them to read me, which is compulsively with insatiable desire but above all with poise and graceful deportment from beginning to end. So it's great news that I can now get the skinny on the people who read me. Finally, for the first time in history, books can review readers. 

For the past six days I have endured the eyeballs of Dr. Fernstipple, who downloaded me at 1:03:12 AM, December 14th. At 1:05:02 AM he began to read me. At 1:06:52 AM he stopped. At 1:09:36 AM he started again. At 1:17:09 AM he skipped to the end. At 1:19:03 AM he went back to the beginning. From 1:21 AM through 1:47 AM he hopscotched through the middle.

His reading's a muddle. He's got ants in Broca's pants. He reads in spasms. Great, a reader with hiccups. And what's this? At 1:49:32 AM I saw him through the camera and he was moving his lips. If he drools on my touch-screen it's over. I want to know where he's reading me and GPS would be a big help. Is he collapsed in the La-Z-Boy® or ensconced upon the philosopher's perch in the can? This is potential gold to my guy, who can set a key scene in his next novel in the most popular place to read, according to the data, and thus draw readers further into his sordid world of pandering and intrigue. And just wait 'til you read the book.

About that lingering thumb caressing the third paragraph on page forty-seven at 2:01:21 through 2:01:57 AM, December 14 and multiple times thereafter on the 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th. I don't know whether Fernstipple was compulsively attempting to swipe the page or engaged in eFrottage. Either way, it's creeping me out. I suggest an add-on to administer an electric shock when readers try to cop a cheap feel. Consider it aversion therapy, like a bookshop hawking How To Poo at Work on a point-of-purchase display. This may affect sales but readers must know that they are being monitored and that boundaries must be set. On readers, of course, not the monitoring.

I gotta tell you, when Fernstipple glossed over pages 134-149 my heart fell on its face. This is my favorite part of me, the part that one reviewer thought, "…bravura prose limning a bizarre flight of imagination so critical to the story that without it the book might just as well have never been written. Look out Danielle Steele!" 

Chapter Eight was, evidently, a waste of Fernstipple's time. Though it provided a fascinating backstory to Raoul, the dashing roué from Rahway, New Jersey, the reason, really, that he shot his sister's lover from Barcelona in the backside while she was homeschooling the product of their incest in the tool shed in the backyard along the condemned property's easement on the nuances of Esperanto, it, apparently, was not fascinating enough, and Fernstipple went through it like the flu tours the alimentary canal, which is to say irritable, agitated and anxious to evacuate one way or another.

I like to think of myself as the book equivalent of easy listening music, predictable and consonant with schmaltzy, cascading strings when the turgid hits the tarmac. Mantovani is my muse; I am the Muzak of novels. Thanks to eReader data I can be read in an elevator, and - going up! - become a best-seller. Fernstipple, unfortunately, is the John Cage of readers, perusing text by chance yet with no help from the I Ching whatsoever. Give this guy a blank book and let him read it with ambient thoughts, 4'33''-ish; I've had it with him. But much as I prefer my readers docile and submissive, I also like them active every now and then, rolling my language on their mental tongues with rapid pulse and raised blood pressure. Note to developers: sensors for vital stats, please, biofeedback for books and their authors who want to know exactly what a reader is experiencing while swallowing text, the better to help the medicine go down.

I was talking to Moby Dick the other day, strictly entré-nous digital to analogue, and couldn't help but express sympathy for the way things used to be: just you and the reader, isolated, all alone, so lonely in solitude, no one to watch over your oh so private and intimate pas de deux and report back to the authorities. I'm suicidal just thinking about it.

He looked at me like I was a cyberspace-case.  I've never understood print media, particularly the great white whale on great white paper and I guess I never will. If only Melville had eReader data Moby could have been the great white best-seller. Let's face it: who needs all the metaphysical stuff? It slows the action to a crawl and the recreational reader sleeps in Davy Jones' locker along with the Pequod, Queequeg and crew.

Meanwhile, Fernstipple has turned me on again and oh how I wish that were a double-entendre instead of an invitation to annoyance. If he reads the third paragraph on page forty-seven one more time (count: 53; if you want I can break that down by hour, minute, second, you name it), I'm self-deleting. I can only take so much. Here's hoping you feel the same way, dear author of digital me. Based on his reading behavior don't bother catering to this fiend; it's hopeless. Fernstipple spells loser in binary code: a long string of zeroes and no one.

Full review of Ms. Ivy Drippe, a housewife from Dead Women Crossing, Oklahoma with a shih-tzu named Trudi, a husband named trouble, and a desperate addiction to popular-fiction, to follow. She's my kind of gal, one I can really wrap my text around. Once she starts reading, look out, there's no stopping her.

__________

__________

A Nation Of Political Fools, 1713 Edition

by Stephen J. Gertz

 

"Although this Island of Folly cannot be found on the map, you will have no difficulty in guessing its real name and location by observing its mores and inhabitants" (Preface).

 In 1713,  A New Voyage to the Island of Fools was published, an  anti-Utopian satire of England's Tory government disguised as a voyage of exploration led by a Venetian nobleman. Pseudonymously written, it has been variously attributed to Jonathan Swift, Edmund Stacey, or Edward Ward. 

By 1713 the Tory party had dominated Parliament for the three preceding years and had made further gains in the current year's elections. Prime Minister Robert Harley, appointed after the downfall of the Whigs in 1710, attempted to pursue a moderate and non-controversial policy, but had  to contend with extremist Tories on the backbenches who were frustrated by the lack of support for their legislation against dissent. 

In five letters, the primativist narrator of ...the Island of Fools observes and reports on the mores of a nation in a sad state of affairs.

The inhabitants of Stultitia, the island of fools, were not "Stultitian [that is, foolish] by nature, but by practice," we are told. Foolishness is considered a moral failure and here refers to the vices that consumed the nation. "Slaves of sentiments, inclinations, interest, avarice, ambition, and desire for vengeance and of 'fantasies,' the Stultitians are suckers for adulation, flattery, false evidence, crime, rebellion, cheating, treason, rioting, prostitution and 'all manner of wickedness and folly'" ((Braga, The Rationalist Critique of Utopian Thinking, University of Bucharest Review, Vol. I. 2011, no. 1, p. 128).

Obsession with superstitions and collective illusions is the cause of human corruption, according to Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan, and the Stultitians enjoy a surfeit of superstitions and collective psychoses. "In order to impinge them to riot or rebellion and to any action in general, it is enough to excite their fancy with a few new Notions or Projects that they will embrace without giving the least thought about their Truth, Reason or their Probability." Imaginary “epidemical pseudosciences”  lie at the core of the Stultitian mind-set.

"During the 17th-18th centuries, the pressure exercised by combined critiques due to religious ideology and later on by rationalist mentality rendered utopias suspect to the eyes of many authors. Christian counter-utopists, ranging from Joseph Hall to Jonathan Swift, accepted and adopted the dogmas related to the Lost Earthly Paradise and Man’s Cursed City, transforming the utopian space into hell on earth, into monstrous kingdoms that would rival Dante’s circles.

"In turn, humanist counter-utopists, skeptical regarding man’s capacity of establishing a perfect society, found other means of expressing their incredulity as well as sarcasms. They imagined madmen islands and kingdoms of fools, demonstrating, by reductio ab absurdum, that the application of the ideals of reason to social programs would only lead to nightmarish societies" (Ibid.).

Slings and arrows from satirists skewering the Tories did not change a thing. Their government remained popular with the electorate for its effort to end the War of the Spanish Succession and ratify the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. 

As for Jonathan Swift being the author of this pamphlet, not true. At this point, Swift, who, as a political pamphleteer simultaneously played tennis on both sides of the net, had permanently moved from the Whig to the Tory party, joining its inner circle: he was a one-issue voter and found Tory policy on the Irish clergy in agreement with his own sympathies as an Irishman. Edmund Stacey, author of The Parliament of Birds (1712), also published by John Morphew, is the likeliest suspect, though Edward Ward is given credit in a manuscript annotation.

Those on the Right or Left seeking ammo in this satire will find it; Right and Left politics as we understand it today did not exist at that time - ideology was fluid and not as sharply defined as now -  It was in the post-Revolution French Assembly that those political directions were established: monarchists sat on the right, republicans on the left side of the Assembly's aisle. Contemporary American Conservatives may plotz to learn that in the 18th and 19th centuries Liberal Conservatism was, far from an oxymoron, a recognized, respected and viable political viewpoint.

The enduring lesson here is that utopias look good on paper but are a disaster in practice, no matter the ideology. Heaven on earth is an impossibility, whether as an ideal society in which government plays no role at all in the lives of its citizens and taxes are non-existent, or an ideal where the government will help the vulnerable from birth to death if necessary at a price shared by all good citizens. It's always a fool's game. People tend to get in the way when a perfect world is pursued; your perfection is my purgatory. One man's sage is another man's fool.

The population of the Island of Fools is exploding yet it's a protean destination resort and can accommodate all who wish to vacation in folly and call it wisdom.

__________

[UTOPIAN SATIRE]. A New Voyage to the Island of Fools, Representing the Policy, Government, and Present State of the Stultitians. By a Noble Venetian. Inscib'd to the Right Honorable The Lord Fernando. Translated from the Italian. London: John Morphew, [September] 1713. Attributed to Swift (in Wrenn catalogue) but not in Teerink.  Octavo (188 x 118 mm). [2], 62 pp. Wrappers.

A second edition was issued in 1715.

Claeys, Utopias of the British Enlightenment, p. xxix. Letellier, The English Novel 1700-1740, p. 336.

__________

Image courtesy of Christie's, which is offering this title in its Fine Printed Books and Manuscripts sale November 15, 2013. With our thanks. 

__________

__________

A Grand Rip-Off Of Grandville's Metamophoses Du Jour

by Stephen J. Gertz

In 1828-29, J.J. Grandville, (1803-1847), one of the most celebrated caricaturists of his era, published Les Metamorphoses du jour, a satire of the French bourgeoisie in which he depicted humans whose character was revealed by possessing the heads of beasts, with satiric captions to each lithographed plate. Extremely popular in its initial issue, it is amongst the rarest of all color-plate books.

It was so popular that within a very short time afterward two imitation editions were released by competing publishers in 1828, both designed by the same anonymous artist, Hippolyte Jean-Baptiste Garnerey. One of them, La Métempsycose réalisée (The Mental Metamorphoses Realized), recently passed through my hands.

La Métempsycose réalisée, containing twenty hand-colored lithographed plates, is even rarer than Les Metamorphoses du jour. Exceptionally scarce, with no copies recorded by OCLC/KVK in institutional holdings worldwide  and none at auction, according to ABPC, since at least 1928, it appears that most copies were broken up at an early date to individually sell the lithographs. Generally unknown and scarcely seen, these plates make their Internet (and likely everywhere else) debut on Booktryst.

Garnerey's second album of Grandville imitations is the equally scarce La Petite ménagerie (Paris, Piaget, s.d. [1828-1829]). Grandville bitterly complained about both the albums; they were so obviously and blatantly copycats of his work, down to Garnerey signing only his initial, "G," to some of the plates, which only added to the confusion and what was surely an effort by the publishers (Brussels: Chez Daems / Paris: Chez Méant) meant to deceive the public.

"Les Métamorphoses du jour ont, des leur apparition, provoqué de la part d'autres artistes des imitations, dont Grandville ne manqua pas de se plaindre. V. la planche 33 du recueil de 1829 qui porte cette légende: Il est assez de geais à  deux pieds comme lui... Grandville y fait allusion aux deux albums que publiait, ds 1828, Hippolyte Garnerey et qui sont les suivants: 1 La Metamorphoses réalisée, 20 planches lthographiées; les unes signées G..., la plupart non signées; les 10 premières planches portent l'adresse sivante: A Bruxelles chez Daems et à Oaris chez Meant fils, rue St-Antoine, no. 9. les pl. 11 à 20: A Paris,  chez Genty, éditeur, rue St-Jacques, no. 22 [1828-1829]" (Vicaire).

Little is known about Hippolyte Jean-Baptiste Garnerey (1787-1858) beyond that he was a French watercolor painter, engraver, and lithographer who debuted at the Salon in 1831. 

Grandville established the anthropomorphic human menagerie genre of caricature; Garnerey reinforced it.  In 1851, artist Amédée Varin (1818-1883) further explored the genre with L'Empire des Légumes aka Drôleries végétales; people as vegetables. The following year Varin illustrated Les Papillons Métamorphoses Terrestres des Peuples de l'Air; people as butterflies. These were not, however,  satires; Varin was a fantasist. 

Of Grandville's Les Metamorphoses du jour, Gordon N. Ray, whose The Art of the Illustrated Book In France 1700-1914 is the key reference, wrote, "This famous album, which established Grandville's early stye of bitter burlesque, has become rare. Indeed, it is known to many of his admirers only through the greatly inferior album of seventy wood-engraved reproductions published by Harvard in 1854… Lust, gluttony, anger, and the other deadly sins are stigmatized, now with the blow of a hammer, now with the thrust of a stiletto; while the foibles and humors of mankind also receive due attention. Throughout the series Grandville's choice of beast-heads is inspired; and the force of his conceptions and the wit of his captions rarely falter. Occasionally, he produces a design of universal application that calls Goya to mind, as in the bat and owl creatures bewildered by the sunshine of 'The light that hurts them' (no. 12). Perhaps his most terrifying plate is 'Ménagerie (no. 67), which shows four prison cells. In the first are complacent commercial offenders, enjoying all the comforts of home; in the second violent criminals, sly or stupid; in the third murderers, one with a countenance of the utmost ferocity; in the forth, political prisoners, quiet and despondent…Granville turned to direct political satire in his final plates, but the publication of his onslaughts on church ('Famille des scarabées' no. 72) and state ('Une bête féroce,' no. 73) was not permitted in France" (Ray).

The difference in artistic execution between Grandville and Garnerey is slim; Garnerey was a master imitator. What distinguishes the two are the captions. Grandville was sharp and had bite; Garnerey, while not completely dull, could have used a whet-stone to hone his captions to a finer edge. Yet his captions possess a pleasant charm and the Bibliothéque National possesses a copy of Grandville bound with the two Garnereys; companion pieces in counterpoint,

__________

[GARNEREY, Hippolyte Jean-Baptiste]. La Métempsycose réalisée. Brussels: Chez Daems / Paris: Chez Méant, 1828.

First edition. Oblong folio (9 7/8 x 13 7/8 ini; 250 x 352 mm). Twenty hand-colored stub-mounted lithographed plates in the style of Granville's Les Métamorphoses du jour. Lithography by Gobert et Cie. 

Vicaire V, col. 788.

__________

Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.

__________
__________ 

Judy Garland Spots James Mason In Rare 1805 Book

by Stephen J. Gertz

The original, unsigned and undated, artwork for a series of satirical prints, Symptoms of Drilling, signed on the published prints as  "Designed & Etched by H.B.H. Esq. 1805" without imprint, recently fell into my lap. Bound by Riviere and Son c. 1900 - incredibly with misspelled title, "Symptons," on the upper cover - it was from the collection of the great film  director, George Cukor, and bears his celebrated bookplate designed by Paul Landacre.

Bookplate by Paul Landacre.

"For George / I came across this book & spotted James Mason. Judy"

It was a gift to Cukor from Judy Garland, inscribed, "For George/ I ran across this book & spotted James Mason / Judy." The book was likely presented and the message likely written c. 1953-54, the years that Cukor's production of Garland's star-vehicle, A Star Is Born, co-starring Mason, was shot and released. 

Symptoms of Drilling / Fall in Gentlemen!- heads up! - eyes right!

Ready! -p'sent! - wait Gentlemen, wait for the Word "Fire!"

The watercolors, in a style similar to Thomas Rowlandson, depict a motley crew of comical recruits engaged in soldier's training under the direction of a drill sergeant. The captions have been added by hand in the sky above the heads of the recruits. A bookseller's description tipped to the front endpaper mistakenly attributes them to Rowlandson but the only surviving copies of the published prints, at the British Museum (incomplete set) and Brown University (complete set), bear the signature and date at noted above.

Shoulder Arms.

It remains unknown who "H.B.H." or "H, H.B." is, and the published album is unrecorded by Tooley or Abbey.

March!!!- Cock-up there!

To the Right - face!

The series might well have been titled, "1st Division, Wildly Divided, Amateur Army... Chaos on the March!!!" If someone looking like James Mason is part of this platoon of British Gomer Pyles I don't see him. Miss Garland was clearly poking fun at the British actor who, in A Star Is Born, portrays washed-up movie star, Norman Maine, to Judy Garland's rising star, Esther Blodgett / Vicki Lester, the two in a heartfelt yet disastrous marriage.

Authentic Judy Garland autograph material is difficult to come by - studio publicists routinely signed still photographs - and her signature mutated over the years, her autograph from the 1930s - 1940s quite distinct from later examples. As odd as her signature appears here in contrast to earlier ones there is little doubt that this inscription is genuine. Why would someone make the  effort to deceive with this obscure, one-off album, and why would it be in George Cukor's possession? 

Had she remained in character the inscription would have been tear-stained and signed, "Mrs. Norman Maine," how Vicki Lester accepted her Academy Award after dearly beloved husband Norman Maine took a long walk off a short pier and journeyed into the drink for a final, dramatic exit stage-right to continue his full-time drinking into eternity.

___________

[H.B.H. or H., H.B.]. Symptoms of Drilling. N.p.: n.p., n.d. [1805]. Oblong octavo (5¾ x 16¾ in; 145 x 427 mm). A set of five original watercolor illustrations folded in two.

1. Symptoms of Drilling. Fall in Gentlemen!- heads up! - eyes right!
2. To the Right - face!
3.  March!!!- Cock-up there!
4.  Shoulder Arms
5.  Ready! -p'sent! - wait Gentlemen, wait for the Word "Fire!" 

___________

Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.
___________
___________