bill of pains and penalties

I've been reading Macaulay's History of England from the Accession of James II.

Approaching the end of its twenty five hundred pages I'm beginning to suffer withdrawal symptoms. It's no help that the last volume is both posthumous and incomplete. My affection for this work comes late. I enjoyed the bits of Macaulay I read when too young to know better, but the history professors of my college years had no trouble convincing me that the man and his writings were both uncool. I learned that he wrote an unacceptable version of popular history: presentist, triumphalist, progressivist, and fundamentally flawed by biases, prejudices, and, summing it all, whiggish.

There's some truth in these accusations, but, as Macaulay himself said, any history that possesses significance — that is not a meaningless assemblage of facts — is biased, though not necessarily in a bad way, and history that lacks narrative drive — with all the potential for whiggishness which that entails — will not find readers.[1] Each generation has its favorite approach to history and the historians we treasure are those we can read with pleasure long after successive generations of critics are done with them. For me, somewhat late in life, Macaulay is one such.

I've lifted some paragraphs from two early chapters the final volume to show some of the things I like about his work.[2] Their subject is an attempt to use legislation, a Bill of Pains and Penalties, to punish a wealthy and well-connected Londoner who had accused a prominent politician of corruption and who in turn had been accused of the same. The attempt is not an event that gets discussed in other histories and its obscurity is typical of Macaulay: he made a habit of deploying colorful snippets to reinforce the broad conclusions he wished to make.

He uses this one to let us see the potential of political infighting and politicians' opportunism to cause lasting harm. He also, by the way, shows that the whiggishness of which he's often accused hasn't led him to paper over cases of venality by actual Whigs. It's the Whig majority in Commons which comes close to perverting the constitution for petty and self-serving purposes and the aristocratical Lords who prevent it from doing so. The piece also thus shows a respect for the unelected Upper House by a man whose work is supposed to (somewhat crassly) celebrate the measured and inevitable evolution of representative democracy.

This is not to say that Macaulay's history was free of whiggism. Far from it. He set out to show how came to be the things of which a British subject of his time could boast — the wealth and power of his country, the liberties of its subjects and the strength of its political, religious, and economic institutions.[3] The gradual advances which led to this state of affairs were not to him inevitable nor achieved without great drama. His history is full of contingency and the clash of opposing personalities, none untainted by disabling and sometimes tragic flaws.

He believed history had no meaning unless it told a story and he tells this story compellingly and with typical verve, but he does not pretend that the end result could have been foretold or that it was in any way intentionally produced. The motivation of individual leaders, their strengths of character and moral flaws are as interesting to Macaulay, and thus to the reader, as are the decisions they make, whether for good or, as often or more so, for ill.

Charles Duncombe, the man who's the subject of the Bill of Pains was well known in his time for his wealth and position, his humble origin and impolite diction, and his willingness to spend money — both charitably and as bribes — in order to curry favor with electors and influential leaders. He has not attracted the notice of historians. His life is little known and he is not infrequently confused with other Duncombes, particularly his cousin who worked in the Exchequer.[4]

Like many, I should say most, of the characters Macaulay puts on display Charles Duncombe was greedy, self-serving, and corrupt. He stands out, however, as the only miscreant who confesses to his misdeeds. I believe the extracts I quote below give enough of the story to convey its interest to us and its importance to Macaulay as an instance of constitutional myopia.

In the extracts the "persecuted minister" is Charles Montagu, 1st Earl of Halifax. The "bill against Fenwick" refers to the bill of attainder against the Jacobite traitor ,Sir John Fenwick, 3rd Baronet, which resulted in his beheading in 1697. Fairfax and Buckingham are well known historical figures. Rochester, Nottingham, Leeds, and other persons mentioned were peers and political leaders of the time.



The extracts bring out some of Macaulay's skill of composition. He seizes on dramatic confrontation, exults in paradox, and takes obvious pleasure in exposing the meanness of politicians. He wrote slowly, corrected much, and retained a vast memory store of facts which he checked and double-checked. Yet his writing has an immediacy and displays an almost poetic feel for pace and rhythm.

You can take a paragraph almost at random to illustrate the vigor and charm of his writing style. This passage comes in a section on the ill-fated Darien scheme of the late 1690s. It concerns the survivors of a botched attempt to establish a Scottish colony on the Isthmus of Panama. After most of the colonists succumbed to Yellow Fever or other endemic diseases a relatively small number managed to escape to New York. Macaulay writes[5]:

The voyage was horrible. Scarcely any Guinea slave ship has ever had such a middle passage. Of two hundred and fifty persons who were on board of the Saint Andrew, one hundred and fifty fed the sharks of the Atlantic before Sandy Hook was in sight. The Unicorn lost almost all its officers, and about a hundred and forty men. The Caledonia, the healthiest ship of the three, threw overboard a hundred corpses. The squalid survivors, as if they were not sufficiently miserable, raged fiercely against one another. Charges of incapacity, cruelty, brutal insolence, were hurled backward and forward. The rigid Presbyterians attributed the calamities of the colony to the wickedness of Jacobites, Prelatists, Sabbath-breakers, Atheists, who hated in others that image of God which was wanting in themselves. The accused malignants, on the other hand, complained bitterly of the impertinence of meddling fanatics and hypocrites.

------

Some sources:

The history of England from the accession of James II. Thomas Babington Macaulay, (Philadelphia, Porter & Coates, 1888)

Thomas Babington Macaulay on nndb (Notable Names Database)

The History of England from the Accession of James the Second on wikipedia

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
on wikipedia

Introduction to Selections from the prose of Macaulay by Lucius Hudson Holt (Ginn and company, 1916)
Extract:

Macaulay was not only clear, but uniformly interesting. He was, in the first place, a natural-born story-teller, gifted with marvelous facility in the selection of the strikingly important facts in his narrative, and with the touch of genius in the selection of the phrases in which he presented these facts. And in the second place, he was a most careful artist in his writing, using all the devices of antithesis, balanced sentences, abrupt transitions, and climax to relieve the possible monotony of his prose. In a study of the English paragraph, Edwin H. Lewis writes: "The popular impression that Macaulay is the best of paragraphers is probably not far from the truth. ... He knows his principal point, and it is on this that he enlarges. ... He reveals very great variability in sentence-length, and drives home his main topic and his main conclusion in simple sentences. When he masses clauses it is to relieve each of emphasis and show the unity of the group as amplifying some previous terse generalization."

About Macaulay's Style, The Construction of His Sentences; How the Great Essayist Used the English Language — Some of His Homely Phrases by R.G.H. [i.e. Richard Grant White] (New York Times, August 17, 1879)
Note: The writer uses a stilted, overly-formal, and ungainly style in praising Macaulay's "simple, clear and impressive style." See the text of this article here.

Richard Grant White on wikipedia

Richard Grant White by Arnold Zwicky on Language Log

Whig history in wikipedia

Whig History Is Back by Michael Knox Beran on the GMU History News Network

"On History" by Thomas Babington Macaulay in Selections from the Edinburgh review, comprising the best articles in that journal, from its commencement to the present time. With a preliminary dissertation, and explanatory notes, edited by Maurice Cross (Baudry's European Library, 1835)

The Whig Interpretation of History by Herbert Butterfield (London, G. Bell and Sons, 1931)

A history of crime in England by Luke Owen Pike (Smith, Elder & co., 1876)

Studies in Administration and Finance 1558-1825 by Edward Hughes (Manchester University Press, 1934)

DUNCOMBE, Charles (1648-1711), of Lombard Street, London and Teddington, Mdx. on historyofparliamentonline

Duncombe, Charles in Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 16, on wikisource

Charles Duncombe (English banker) in wikipedia

John Duncombe in wikipedia

DUNCOMBE, Charles (1764-1841), of Duncombe Park, Helmsley, Yorks. in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1820-1832, ed. D.R. Fisher (Cambridge University Press, 2009)

A handbook of London bankers: with some account of their predecessors the early goldsmiths ; together with lists of bankers from 1670 (Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent, 1890)

April 17 The Death of the Duke of Buckingham by Alexander Pope (on Bartleby.com)

IN the worst inn’s room, with mat half-hung,
The floors of plaster, and the walls of dung,
On once a flock-bed, but repaired with straw,
With tape-tied curtains never meant to draw,
The George and Garter dangling from that bed
Where tawdry yellow strove with dirty red,
Great Villiers lies—alas! how changed from him,
That life of pleasure, and that soul of whim!
Gallant and gay, in Cliveden’s proud alcove,
The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love;
Or just as gay at council, in a ring
Of mimic statesmen and their merry King,
No wit to flatter left of all his store!
No fool to laugh at, which he valued more.
There, victor of his health, of fortune, friends,
And fame, this lord of useless thousands ends.

Bill of attainder in wikipedia

The ROADS Family of Buckinghamshire, and 'One-Place-Studies' of Waddesdon, Grendon Underwood and Wotton Underwood on Charles Duncombe

"Defoe's True-Born Englishman" by A.C. Guthkelch in Essays and Studies by members of the English Association, Vol IV, collected by C.H. Herford (J. Murray, 1913)
This extract is from the first edition of the poem in which Duncombe is clearly identified. Subsequent editions treated the subject as a generalized grasping City banker.


Company of Scotland on wikipedia

Darien scheme on wikipedia

-------

Notes:

[1] On his attitude toward history and historians, see "On History" by Thomas Babington Macaulay in Selections from the Edinburgh review, comprising the best articles in that journal, from its commencement to the present time. With a preliminary dissertation, and explanatory notes, edited by Maurice Cross (Baudry's European Library, 1835)

[2] The paragraphs I've lifted come from Chapters XXI and XXIII.

[3] This is the first paragraph of the first chapter of the History:

I purpose to write the history of England from the accession of King James the Second down to a time which is within the memory of men still living. I shall recount the errors which, in a few months, alienated a loyal gentry and priesthood from the House of Stuart. I shall trace the course of that revolution which terminated the long struggle between our sovereigns and their parliaments, and bound up together the rights of the people and the title of the reigning dynasty. I shall relate how the new settlement was, during many troubled years, successfully defended against foreign and domestic enemies; how, under that settlement, the authority of law and the security of property were found to be compatible with a liberty of discussion and of individual action never before known; how, from the auspicious union of order and freedom, sprang a prosperity of which the annals of human affairs had furnished no example; how our country, from a state of ignominious vassalage, rapidly rose to the place of umpire among European powers; how her opulence and her martial glory grew together; how, by wise and resolute good faith, was gradually established a public credit fruitful of marvels which to the statesmen of any former age would have seemed incredible; how a gigantic commerce gave birth to a maritime power, compared with which every other maritime power, ancient or modern, sinks into insignificance; how Scotland, after ages of enmity, was at length united to England, not merely by legal bonds, but by indissoluble ties of interest and affection; how, in America, the British colonies rapidly became far mightier and wealthier than the realms which Cortes and Pizarro had added to the dominions of Charles the Fifth; how in Asia, British adventurers founded an empire not less splendid and more durable than that of Alexander.

[4] There are two good treatments of Duncombe's life and the parliamentary bill against him. The first is DUNCOMBE, Charles (1764-1841), of Duncombe Park, Helmsley, Yorks. in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1820-1832, ed. D.R. Fisher (Cambridge University Press, 2009) and the second is by a person named Heather: The ROADS Family of Buckinghamshire, and 'One-Place-Studies' of Waddesdon, Grendon Underwood and Wotton Underwood on rootsweb

[5] From the wikipedia article, Darien scheme:

The colonization project that became known as the Darien Scheme or Darien Disaster[1] was an unsuccessful attempt by the Kingdom of Scotland to become a world trading nation by establishing a colony called 'Caledonia' on the Isthmus of Panama in the late 1690s. From the outset, the undertaking was beset by poor planning and provision, weak leadership, lack of demand for trade goods, devastating epidemics of disease and increasing shortage of food; it was finally abandoned after a siege by Spanish forces in April, 1700. As the Darien company was backed by about a quarter of the money circulating in Scotland, its failure left the nobles and landowners – who had suffered a run of bad harvests – almost completely ruined and was an important factor in weakening their resistance to the Act of Union (finally consummated in 1707).

[8] The extract comes from Chapter XXIV of the History.

manners unfaulted

I recently finished reading Hilary Mantel's new book, Bring Up the Bodies, and I liked it, every page. She's a marvelous writer, so good that it's difficult to pin down what she's doing that's so much better than anyone else does. Putting her work into the "historical fiction" warehouse doesn't make sense; it isn't genre, it's simply literature.

My affection for the book comes partly from my interest in the lives of early modern Englishmen who did not receive a university education. I've been studying one of them, the mathematician John Collins, and Mantel's subject, Thomas Cromwell, is another. The lives of the two men were very different. Cromwell lived a full century and a half before Collins and achieved wealth and power as an able politician and chief minister to a king (Henry VIII). Collins attained neither wealth nor power. He was a clerk, teacher, author, accountant, and, on the side, an "Ingenious Obstetrix of the Press promoting the laudable Design of getting Learned Men to impart their Labours to be Printed; and exciting others to encourage the same, as being of singular Use and advantage to the Republick of Learning; through the want whereof many Learned Mens Works of much worth have been lost, suppressed or long delayed."[1]

Nonetheless they were in some ways similar. Both were born "of low estate," Cromwell as son of a blacksmith and small businessman and Collins as son of a poor clergyman who was barred from preaching in any church. Both left England while young and, while on the Continent, gained knowledge and skills that served them well on their return home. Both were largely self-taught, learning more by experience than education. On returning to England both attracted the notice of high-placed men and used these contacts to advance themselves. Both married only once and were devoted to their wives and families.

I don't mark up books I'm reading, or turn down corners -- none of that. But I do occasionally write out something -- a phrase, line, paragraph, or page -- that seems especially meaningful and this I chose to scribble into my Moleskine from Bring Up the Bodies. In it we see Cromwell's thoughts about his son:

Gregory is a good boy, though all the Latin he has learned, all the sonorous periods of the great authors, have rolled through his head and out again, like stones. Still, you think of Thomas More’s boy: offspring of a scholar all Europe admired, and poor young John can barely stumble through his Pater Noster. Gregory is a fine archer, a fine horseman, a shining star in the tilt yard, and his manners cannot be faulted. He speaks reverently to his superiors, not scuffling his feet or standing on one leg, and he is mild and polite with those below him. He knows how to bow to foreign diplomats in the manner of their own countries, sits at table without fidgeting or feeding spaniels, can neatly carve and joint any fowl if requested to serve his elders. He doesn't slouch around with his jacket off one shoulder, or look in windows to admire himself, or stare around in church, or interrupt old men, or finish their stories for them. If anyone sneezes, he says, “Christ help you!”

I was able to copy and paste this quote, rather than key it, because a reviewer chose to quote it as well. Writing in the New Yorker on May 7, James Wood uses the paragraph to show how Mantel uses a "cunning universalism" to link Cromwell with modern parents, indeed any parents, whose concern about their children leads them to catalog their strengths and weaknesses.

I did not see this aspect of the quote. For me it shows in glorious detail some of the main attributes of the "gently-" as against the "meanly-" born young men of early modern England. Cromwell and Collins were "of mean birth" and by their attainments came to be known as gentlemen. As adults they mastered the forms of address, techniques of polite conversation, and deportment sufficiently well to be accepted among the gently born. By contrast Cromwell's son Gregory, as Mantel presents him, was raised from childhood to be "courteous" in the original sense of the word.[2]

Spenser gives this sense of "courtesie" in the Faerie Queene.

Of Court, it seemes, men Courtesie doe call
For that it there most useth to abound :
And well beseemeth that in Prince's hall
That vertue should be plentifully found
Which of all goodly manners is the ground.
And roote of civill conversation.
-- Spenser, Faerie Queene, VI, i, i.

It's implied that Gregory knows how to behave in Court, that is the chambers where royals and nobles gather. He knows how to restrain any of his impulses which might be considered impolite, he shows deference to his betters, and possesses a confident demeanor which frees him from distasteful arrogance. His manners are easy and graceful. This ease and grace is the basis of what Spenser calls "civill conversation."[3]

Mantel puts most of Gregory's courtly achievements as negative virtues — bad habits he has had to overcome — and this is typical of the many books of polite manners that appeared in the centuries after the invention of the printing press. She and they take it as given that people are born with unsocial impulses which must be restrained if they are to get along well with each other. It's also implicit that those belonging to the courtly classes have advantages which others lack — chiefly wealth (or at least credit) and leisure. To them being industrious is not a virtue, and, although many of the gently born do work hard, they are encouraged not to make a show of it. Their leisure is not one of idleness, ideally, but their energy should be expended in sport (tilting or hunting) and social engagements (such as riding and dancing) rather than any effort that would appear busy.

Gregory is not literally "gently born." Writers of courtesy books divided pretty much evenly over those who equated gentility with good breeding and those who said it could be acquired as well as bred, but they all acknowledged that people were accepted as gentles either way. They also implicitly or explicitly accepted that this characterization — gently born — applied pretty much equally to all those who belonged in the upper classes, from the lowest of gentry through to the highest of nobles and royals. The gap between people of mean birth and those of gentle birth was, in this instance at any rate, more significant than the gap between a poor but well mannered landowner and a duke or earl. Men like Cromwell and Collins breached the first sort of gap, but they did not do so easily and their hold on their new status was tenuous. I suspect they hoped their sons would, as men, be able to accept gentility with unselfconscious ease.

{Cromwell by Holbein from the Frick Collection; source: wikipedia}

-----

Some sources:

The ideal of a gentleman; or, A mirror for gentlefolks, a portrayal in literature from the earliest times by Abram Smythe Palmer (Routledge; New York, Dutton)

"The English Gentleman," by Sir George Sitwell in The Ancestor, No. I (Westminster, April 1902)

Peacham's Comple'at Gentleman (1634), with an introduction by G. S. Gordon (Oxford, 1906)

Rhetoric and Courtliness in Early Modern Literature by Jennifer Richards (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003)

From Civilitas to Civility: Codes of Manners in Medieval and Early Modern England by John Gillingham, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Sixth Series, Vol. 12 (2002), pp. 267-289. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3679348.

Invitation to a Beheading, The Thomas Cromwell novels of Hilary Mantel, a review by James Wood in The New Yorker, May 7, 2012.

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Notes:

[1] ... -- The sphere of Marcus Manilius [by Marcus Manilius], made an English poem with annotations and an astronomical appendix by Edward Sherburne, squire (1675).

Sherburne says:
We should be injurious to him, if we did not farther inlarge, by telling the World how much it is obliged for his Pains in exciting the Learned to publish their Works, and in acting the Part of an Ingenious Obstetrix at the Press, in correcting and in drawing of Schemes; So that he hath been Instrumental in furnishing the World with the many learned Mathematical Books here lately published (for which, his chief Reward hitherto hath been to obtain from the Learned the Title of Mersennus Anglicanus) and many more may be expected, if moderate Encouragements towards Printing such Works, and Leisure for such an Affair be not impeded through the necessary Avocations for a livelyhood, and though it be besides my Design, yet I cannot but digress in giving him and others like minded (which are very rare to be found) their due commendations, in promoting the laudable Design of getting Learned Men to impart their Labours to be Printed; and exciting others to encourage the same, as being of singular Use and advantage to the Republick of Learning; through the want whereof many Learned Mens Works of much worth have been lost, suppressed or long delayed.

a Barnabas among those mathematical apostles, his tact and
devotion in calming the headstrong and drawing out the reticent
being above all praise.

[2] "Courteous" comes from the 14th-century French word curteis and it then meant "having courtly bearing or manners." The phrases I put in quotes were common in early modern England. In the 16th and 17th centuries a literature, quite a large literature, grew up giving instructions on courtesy.

[3] As one source says, Spenser took the term "civill conversation" from an Italian work of 1574 in which gentles are shown as harmoniously intermingling with an unselfconscious grace. (The Spenser Encyclopedia by Albert Charles Hamilton (Taylor & Francis, 1990)).

a phrase

I've been reading Peter Matthiessen's Under the Mountain Wall: A Chronicle of Two Seasons in Stone Age New Guinea. It's an excellent book. You can find it used in the usual places and it can be had for free at Internet Archive. He writes gracefully and some of his descriptive paragraphs are startlingly beautiful.

As are some of his phrases. Here's one that caused me to pause and reflect during my lunchtime reading. Two small children he said were "caught in the grave immobility of time". Here's the passage with some context:


I wondered if Matthiessen used the phrase in homage to a piece of writing he admired, but I could find nothing among authors who wrote in English. Some further searching turned up one possibility in another language. This was the phrase "immobilité du temps" in Le lys rouge by Anatole France. Matthiessen pairs well with France. Both crafted elegant prose, both attacked the narrow-minded prejudices of their day, and both found success in fiction and non-fiction, literary writing and journalism, short works and long. (I write of Matthiessen in the past tense, but at 81 he's still going strong.)

Their similarities make it possible that Matthiessen was consciously alluding to France's novel in using his arresting phrase. The phrase is not uncommon in French. I suspect, however, (though I'm not at all sure) that in ordinary usage its meaning is generally closer to "stillness of time" than "immobility of time." If I'm right, and France is unusual in employing the latter, then it's possible (barely so I guess) that Matthiessen consciously echoed France in choosing his words.

Here's a bit of the context in Le Lys rouge: "Elle n’osait pas regarder sa montre, de peur d’y voir l’accablante immobilité du temps. Elle se leva, alla à la fenêtre et souleva les rideaux. Une lueur pâle était répandue dans le ciel nuageux. Elle crut que c’était le jour qui commençait à poindre. Elle regarda sa montre. Il était trois heures et demie." -- Le lys rouge by Anatole France (Lévy, 1896).

I'm not sure which I'd prefer — that Matthiessen graciously alluded to the great French author or that the words came to him with no whisper of their heritage.

Matthiessen

{Source: Hilldale Lecture in the Arts and Humanities, September 12, 2006, University of Wisconsin}

France

{Posté par Baschus, mercredi 18 janvier 2012, on Scolies}

you who know nothing of the works of God

I'm reading a book called How to live, or, a life of Montaigne: in one question and twenty attempts at an answer. Its author, Sarah Bakewell, does a good job of showing the man's life through his written works. She writes about the tower chamber where he thought and wrote and describes the ceiling joists on which he inscribed Biblical and classical quotations that he wanted to keep in mind.

As it happens, there's currently another well-reviewed book that covers much the same ground — When I Am Playing with My Cat, How Do I Know That She Is Not Playing with Me? — and its author, Saul Frampton, quotes a few of these Sentences de la «librairie», as the French call them. One of them Frampton renders as "You who do not know how the mind is joined to the body know nothing of the works of God."

This, in its aphoristic certitude, reminds me of the ersatz Carl Jung quote I wrote about the other day ("Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate"). However, unlike the one credited to Jung, the quote Frampton gives us has an exact source. Frampton's comes from Montaigne's Latin: "SICVT IGNORAS QVOMODO ANIMA CONIVNGATVR CORPORI SIC NESCIS OPERA DEI" which in turn comes from a statement in Ecclesiastes.[1] Others have rendered Montaigne's Latin into English somewhat differently than Frampton does, but all the translations have the same sense: if you don't know how the mind (or soul) is joined to (or united with) the body, you know nothing of God's works.[2]

Montaigne, it emerges, was paraphrasing his source. The text he drew upon — eleventh verse, fifth line of Ecclesiastes — is all about fate intervening in the affairs of humankind, of one's inability to read the future, and, specifically in this line, what is present but not visible. It reads, in the Vulgate, "quomodo ignoras quae sit via spiritus et qua ratione conpingantur ossa in ventre praegnatis sic nescis opera Dei qui fabricator est omnium." Even not knowing Latin you can tell this is quite different from Montaigne's joist inscription. We've "spritus" instead of "anima" and a whole extra clause about "ossa" and "ventre praegnais" not to mention a replacement of "sicut" with "quomodo" as the intro word.

As with all Biblical texts, there are plenty of English versions of this passage. The New American Standard Bible gives: "Just as you do not know the path of the wind and how bones are formed in the womb of the pregnant woman, so you do not know the activity of God who makes all things." This is somewhat clunky but also pretty close to Young's Literal Translation: "As thou knowest not what is the way of the spirit, How -- bones in the womb of the full one, So thou knowest not the work of God who maketh the whole." In contrast, the KJV has "As thou knowest not what is the way of the spirit, nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child: even so thou knowest not the works of God who maketh all." Word for word, the Hebrew text reads: "who not know how long the path of the wind bones the womb of the pregnant so not know the activity of God who makes all."[3]

We do not know why Montaigne made the change or what it meant to him. Frampton says there was an earlier inscription beneath the one he paraphrased from Ecclesiastes. The earlier one came from Lucretius: "There is no new pleasure to be gained by living longer."[4] Frampton believes that in overwriting Lucretius with Ecclesiastes Montaigne "shifted from the philosophy of death to the philosophy of life; from being not afraid to die to being not afraid to live." Whether literally factual or not, this statement is consistent with Montaigne's shifting viewpoints as viewed through his writings.

I can't find that Frampton or the (very many) other students of Montaigne's writings take up his paraphrasing Ecclesiastes as he does, but I am nonetheless interested in what he's done. I like the way Montaigne has taken a fairly routine statement of God's unknowable majesty (much like the one that God forced on Job about which I've previously written) and twisted it into a somewhat more profound philosophic challenge. The end result is a surprisingly concise statement of religious certitude: there are things, like the interaction of mind and body, about which we know practically nothing and about which, quite likely, we never will know very much. These areas of ignorance are the space occupied by religion in human societies. Using many more words, Spinoza in the 17th century and more than a few thinkers in succeeding centuries have said much the same thing.[5]

So, again, side by side: the Jungian challenge that Jung seems not to have uttered: "Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate" and the Biblical challenge as poetically reinterpreted by Montaigne: "You who do not know how the mind is joined to the body know nothing of the works of God."

Portrait of Michel de Montaigne, date and artist unknown

{source: wikipedia}

Le Château de Montaigne (ca. 1890). The château burned in 1885 and later restored. The library was damaged by the fire but not destroyed.

{source: wikipedia}

A closer view of the tower.

{source: firstknownwhenlost blog}

Diagram of the ceiling beams.

{source: philo5 blog}

A closer view of part of the beams

{source: citations-latines-et-grecques-gravées-au-plafond-de-la-librairie-de-montaigne-source-cliquez-sur-l-imagepersonae.jimdo.com}

----------------

Some sources:

A Catalog of Montaigne’s Beam Inscriptions

Montaigne avait fait peindre sur les poutres du plafond de sa tour des sentences grecques et latines.

As Sentenças pintadas nas vigas da “librairie” de Montaigne publicadas em 1861 e 1894 (pdf)

The Man Within, Why Montaigne is worth knowing, a review by Liam Julian, in the Weekly Standard, May 30, 2011, Vol. 16, No. 35. The book reviewed is When I Am Playing with My Cat, How Do I Know That
She Is Not Playing with Me? Montaigne and Being in Touch with Life by Saul Frampton (Pantheon, 2011)

Two Books on Montaigne: review by Nicholas Shakespeare in the Telegraph (UK) February 14 2011, reviewing Frampton and What Do I Know? by Paul Kent (Beautiful Books, 2011)

Biblos.com: Search, Read, Study the Bible in Many Languages also known as ScriptureText.com Multilingual Bible

Montaigne les sentences de sa librairie

When I Am Playing with My Cat, How Do I Know That She Is Not Playing with Me?
Saul Frampton (Random House Digital, Inc., 2011)

Montaigne avait fait peindre sur les poutres du plafond de sa tour des sentences grecques et latines.

Studies in Montaigne by Grace Norton (The Macmillan company, 1904)

Ecclesiastes 11:5 on the biblegateway web site

LES SENTENCES - DE MONTAIGNE

Montaigne les sentences de sa librairie

Sentences de la «librairie» par Michel de Montaigne

De rerum natura Titus Lucretius Carus, 97 - 55 a. Chr. n.

Mezentius the Epicurean by Leah Kronenberg (Transactions of the American Philological Association, Volume 135, Number 2, Autumn 2005)

-----

Notes:

[1] Others render this differently. An earlier author, Grace Norton, tells us that the inscription is much obliterated and thus the exact text is thus somewhat in doubt. She renders it as "Quare ignoras quomodo anima conjungitur corpori, nescis opera Dei." -- Studies in Montaigne by Grace Norton (The Macmillan company, 1904)

[2] Here are four other renderings of the Latin into English:

• "You who do not know how the soul embraces the body, you know nothing of God's works." -- Montaigne les sentences de sa librairie
• "You who know nothing of how the soul marries the body, you therefore know nothing of God's works."
• "Since you do not know how the soul is united to the body, you do not know God's work." -- LES SENTENCES
• "You who know nothing of how the soul marries the body, you therefore know nothing of God's works."

[3] I like the comparative texts given on the Biblos site, but there are quite a few others to choose from (see ScriptureText.com Multilingual Bible).

[4] Lucretius wrote: "nec nova vivendo procuditur ulla voluptas" which is probably closer to "nor is any new pleasure forged by living" than the translation Frampton gives, but the sense is the same: there's no assured pleasure in prolonging life merely for the sake of living. (See Mezentius the Epicurean by Leah Kronenberg (Transactions of the American Philological Association, Volume 135, Number 2, Autumn 2005)

[5] For Spinoza, the mind is "a certain modification of the divine intelligence" companion to and not separate from the body. He says mind and body are made up of the same elemental substance. They are different aspects of the same being and that being is God. (See for example descartes and spinoza, mind and body: the problem of interaction by Daniel Siksay

high on the Hurrum Hills

I like verse anthologies. I generally read them through, skimming over entries that don't grab my attention, but also trying to read with fresh eyes ones that have painful familarity. It's surprising how often these books contain things both new and admirable. A couple years back I reproduced some poems of this latter sort from Minorities, a notebook of verse which T.E. Lawrence wrote for himself and carried about in the Arabian deserts. The anthology that's currently on my nightstand is Seven ages : poetry for a lifetime, edited by David Owen (London: Michael Joseph, 1992). It's done in sections after the Shakespeare poem.* I've just begun the fourth, the soldier, and was pleased there to find Kipling's "A Code of Morals".

"A Code of Morals"

Lest you should think this story true
I merely mention I
Evolved it lately. 'Tis a most
Unmitigated misstatement.

Now Jones had left his new-wed bride to keep his house in order,
And hied away to the Hurrum Hills above the Afghan border,
To sit on a rock with a heliograph; but ere he left he taught
His wife the working of the Code that sets the miles at naught.

And Love had made him very sage, as Nature made her fair;
So Cupid and Apollo linked , per heliograph, the pair.
At dawn, across the Hurrum Hills, he flashed her counsel wise -
At e'en, the dying sunset bore her husband's homilies.

He warned her 'gainst seductive youths in scarlet clad and gold,
As much as 'gainst the blandishments paternal of the old;
But kept his gravest warnings for (hereby the ditty hangs)
That snowy-haired Lothario, Lieutenant-General Bangs.

'T'was General Bangs, with Aide and Staff, who tittupped on the way,
When they beheld a heliograph tempestuously at play.
They thought of Border risings, and of stations sacked and burnt -
So stopped to take the message down - and this is what they learnt -

"Dash dot dot, dot, dot dash, dot dash dot" twice. The General swore.
"Was ever General Officer addressed as 'dear' before?
"'My Love,' i' faith! 'My Duck,' Gadzooks! 'My darling popsy-wop!'
"Spirit of great Lord Wolseley, who is on that mountain top?"

The artless Aide-de-camp was mute, the gilded Staff were still,
As, dumb with pent-up mirth, they booked that message from the hill;
For clear as summer lightning-flare, the husband's warning ran: -
"Don't dance or ride with General Bangs -- a most immoral man."

[At dawn, across the Hurrum Hills, he flashed her counsel wise -
But, howsoever Love be blind, the world at large hath eyes.]
With damnatory dot and dash he heliographed his wife
Some interesting details of the General's private life.

The artless Aide-de-camp was mute, the shining Staff were still,
And red and ever redder grew the General's shaven gill.
And this is what he said at last (his feelings matter not): -
"I think we've tapped a private line. Hi! Threes about there! Trot!"

All honour unto Bangs, for ne'er did Jones thereafter know
By word or act official who read off that helio.
But the tale is on the Frontier, and from Michni to Mooltan
They know the worthy General as "that most immoral man."

About which you might wish to know:

First printed in Civil and Military Gazette, April 6th, 1886, the poem appeared in the New York Tribune on July 6th, 1890. We do not know whether this light-hearted piece was based on a true story, or whether Kipling, intrigued by the possibilities of intercepting heliograph messages, simply made up the incident. The heading suggests the latter, but his readers in Simla or Lahore may have known otherwise. The original heading ('...‘Tis my nineth...') implies that most of his verses were his own inventions, but in fact much of their appeal was that they echoed the scandals and rumours of the day. -- "A Code of Morals" (notes edited by Roberta Baldi)

{Heliograph being used by British soldiers during the Boer War, from the Illustrated London News, 1879; source: storeysltd.co.uk}

{William Mulready, The Seven Ages of Man (1838); source: shakespeare.emory.edu}

--------

Some sources:

Heliograph, article in wikipedia

notes on "A Code of Morals" by Roberta Baldi

What Are The "Seven Ages Of Man"?

William Mulready. The Seven Ages of Man. 1838.

-----------

Note:

* Here's what Shakespeare wrote:

At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
Then, the whining schoolboy with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden, and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice
In fair round belly, with good capon lin'd,
With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws, and modern instances,
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose, and pouch on side,
His youthful hose well sav'd, a world too wide,
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again towards childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
-- The Seven Ages of Man, William Shakespeare

Meander, fourth post

William Walsh was surely right when he said Napier's famous dispatch ('peccavi') has often been treated as authentic though it was really just a "typical joke of Punch".[1] There were many who thought Napier had actually written the dispatch and others who gave credit to wits who weren't connected with Punch. Among those who wrongly ascribed it to Napier were an MP (speaking on the floor of the House of Commons in 1881), a compiler of famous puns in 1890, two noted scholars of English history (both writing in 1903), and, in our time, William Safire, author of the column, "On Language," in the New York Times (in 1982, in 1987, and again in 1993).[2]

Surprisingly, the author of the History of Punch (1895) was ignorant of its first appearance in that magazine. He wrongly ascribed a misquoted version of the quip to the man who edited the magazine in 1857.[3]

What seems to be the first correct attribution in print appeared in the endlessly diverting journal Notes and Queries. In 1853 two of its frequent contributors wrote — in the pleasant and somewhat quaint style of that journal — to supply information lacking to another. As you see, the first is correct, the second mistaken.

{Notes and queries, a Medium of Inter-Communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, Etc. Vol 8, issue for December 10, 1853 (George Bell, Fleet Street, 1853)}

In 1881 a person going by the name of Bubbles also pointed out that Mr. Punch was responsible for the pun, but, like the author of the History of Punch, Bubbles gave an inaccurate version of the quip. This item appeared in the "Notices to Correspondents" section of Monthly Packet of Evening Readings for Members of the English Church

{Monthly packet of Evening Readings for Members of the English Church, 3rd Series, Vol 2, edited by Charlotte Mary Yonge, Christabel Rose Coleridge, and Arthur Innes (J. and C. Mozley, 1881)}

In 1889 the New York Times correctly cited "Napier's famous dispatch" as a joke, but mistakenly says it was committed not by Mr. Punch but by General Napier himself.[4]


In 1904 a frequent contributor to the correspondents' columns of the Times' Book Review, wrote to say "It was Punch's idea that Sir Charles Napier.., the conqueror of Scinde, should so have announced his conquest."


In 1907 a correspondent to a journal devoted to the study of missions credited not Mr. Punch but an actual person with the pun.

{"Editorial Notes" in the October-December issue of The East and the West, a Quarterly Review for the Study of Missions, Vol 5 (Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, Great Britain, 1907)}

Although this attribution has the ring of truth, it's odd that either Mrs. Macintosh or the editor got the punster's name wrong. It was not Catherine Wentworth but Catherine Winkworth, a translator and leader in the struggle for women's rights. Before the year was out the lexicographer, A.L. Mayhew, gave Notes and Queries readers the information that appeared in The East and the West and said he saw nothing to contradict the claim.[4]

In 1913, Walter Woollcott (father of the famous Alexander) wrote a long piece on the peccavi joke in the "News for Bibliophiles" column of the Nation. In it he listed some of those who got their facts wrong. He also listed people who had been named as author and found no credible evidence for any but Catherine Winkworth.

The most interesting and extended investigation of the pun appears in the Presidential Address which the Indologist, Wendy Doniger, gave to the Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies in March 1999.[5] She quoted the joke as it appeared in Punch, gave full explanation and context, and listed a few who got the attribution wrong (the authors of a 1990 biography of Napier and of an article in the online Encyclopedia Britannica as well as paleontologist and historian, Stephen Jay Gould). She also gave her opinion that an editor of Punch was the inventor. However, she did not refer to, and apparently did not know of Mrs. Macintosh's letter to The East and the West or A.L. Mayhew's reference to it in Notes and Queries. Had she seen it, I believe she might have agreed that evidence supports Catherine Winkworth as the originating wit.

I believe also that she would have been pleased that Winkworth was the most-likely source since her thesis was that we should not be too quick to condemn the Victorians for their writings about India, but rather recognize the complex response of Britons to their imperial expansion in the sub-continent, and it's an indicator of this complexity that Winkworth was no typical Victorian John Bull. She was known in her time not just as a translator of German hymns but also as a fierce proponent of university education for women and women's suffrage.

As I say, I think Wendy Doniger would have appreciated learning about this unexpected source of the joke and appreciated, as well, the irony of its source in an untypical Victorian, since her main thesis concerns a natural tendency among people of our generation to condemn the 19th-century's dead white males, who — as "Dead White Male Orientalists" — wrote about India. By Orientalists, she meant the academic, cultural, and literary authors who wrote about the Indian sub-continent. She quoted the cultural critic, Lee Siegel, on the contributions that these men made: "Those hegemonic, imperialist, Euro-centric colonialists were such amazing writers and they knew so much more about India than all of us. They could ride horses, too."

Having begun with the Napier-pun and its interplay of Scinde and sin, she developed her main theme as an extended riff on the complex aspects of the Horse as cultural icon and "contradictory symbol of human political power." She said "horses offer a paradigm for us to use in our struggle to come to terms with the blotted copybook bequeathed to us by British Orientalism" and, having led her hearers (and us readers) through an extensive exploration of Indic horsiness her final thoughts were these: "The Hindu villagers' ability to appreciate the beauty and power of a creature that was the instrument of great political injury to them might inspire us to try once again to appreciate the tarnished but precious gift bequeathed to us by British Orientalists. Sometimes we cannot help looking a gift horse in the mouthpiece, or even in the ideology, but we can still accept the gift. Flawed as they are, the Orientalists are our ancestors, and, as Hamlet wisely cautioned, 'Use each man after his own deserts, and who shall 'scape whipping?'"

Catherine Winkworth

{source: wikipedia}

----------

Some sources:

Monthly packet of Evening Readings for Members of the English Church, 3rd Series, Vol 2, edited by Charlotte Mary Yonge, Christabel Rose Coleridge, and Arthur Innes (J. and C. Mozley, 1881)

Musing about Peccavi and Twitter and accessibility

The American historical reviewVolume 9 (American Historical Association, 1904) Extract: 'An occasional good story is told in the volumes, as one of Soyer, the great French chef, who put on his irascible wife's tombstone "Soyez tranquille". India developed some bon mots, as after the relief of beleaguered Lucknow, one of Clyde's officers telegraphed home "Nunc fortunatus sum", i.e., "I am in luck now." Was it Napier in 1843 who sent the despatch "Peccavi", i.e., "I have Sindh"?' (From a review of Wolseley, The Story of a Soldier's Life by Theodore Avrault Dodge).

Last word by Ben Macintyre, Times (of London), March 4, 2006

Notes and queries, Volume 116, edited by William White (London, John C. Francis, 1907)

The East and the West, Volume 5 (Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, Great Britain, 1907)

Memorials of two sisters:
Susanna and Catherine Winkworth, edited by Margaret J. Shaen (Longmans, Green, 1908)

Catherine and Susanna Winkworth From: Dictionary of National Biography

Charles James Napier in wikipedia

Rambles in books edited by Charles Francis Blackburn (S. Low, Marston & Company, 1893)

The history of "Punch" by Marion Harry Spielmann, Volume 1 (Cassell and company, limited, 1895)


ON LANGUAGE; EXIT FOR HAIGSPEAK by William Safire, The New York Times, July 11, 1982

Democritus in London, with the mad pranks and comical conceits of Motley and Robin Good-fellow, to which are added notes festivous, etc. by George Daniel (W. Pickering, 1852)

"INDIA AND AFGHANISTAN (1815-1869) by William Lee-Warner in "The Cambridge modern history, Vol 11, Baron Acton, Ernest Alfred Benians (Cambridge University Press, 1909)

"Notes for Bibliophiles" by Walter Woollcott in The Nation Vol 96 (The Nation Company, 1913)

A history of modern England, Vol 1, by Herbert Woodfield Paul (The Macmillan company, 1904)

"Peccavi", Letter to the Editor of the New York Times Book Review by E.A. Hart, October 15, 1904

American notes and queries Vol 4, edited by William Shepard Walsh, and others (W.S. and H.C. Walsh, 1890)

"'I Have Scinde': Flogging a Dead (White Male Orientalist) Horse" and it appears in The Journal of Asian Studies (Vol. 58, No. 4, Nov., 1999 — JSTOR URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2658491)

----------

Notes:

[1] Handy-book of literary curiosities by William Shephard Walsh (London, Gibbings, 1894)

[2] The reference to the MP appears in Monthly packet of Evening Readings for Members of the English Church, 3rd Series, Vol 2, edited by Charlotte Mary Yonge, Christabel Rose Coleridge, and Arthur Innes (J. and C. Mozley, 1881). The compiler of puns was none other than William Walsh: American notes and queries Vol 4, edited by William Shepard Walsh, and others (W.S. and H.C. Walsh, 1890). The two historians were William Lee-Warner and Herbert Woodfield Paul ("INDIA AND AFGHANISTAN (1815-1869) by William Lee-Warner in "The Cambridge modern history, Vol 11, Baron Acton, Ernest Alfred Benians (Cambridge University Press, 1909) and A history of modern England, Vol 1, by Herbert Woodfield Paul (The Macmillan company, 1904) respectively). Safire's three mistakes appeared in his column "On Language" in the New York Times on July 11, 1982, August 30, 1987, and November 21, 1993.

[3] The history of "Punch" by Marion Harry Spielmann, Volume 1 (Cassell and company, limited, 1895)

[4] Notes and queries, Volume 116, edited by William White (London, John C. Francis, 1907)

[5] The address is entitled "'I Have Scinde': Flogging a Dead (White Male Orientalist) Horse" and it appears in The Journal of Asian Studies (Vol. 58, No. 4, Nov., 1999 — JSTOR URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2658491).

what's at risk?

Are people reading books as they used to? Looking back a century or so it's easy to see changes that would cause people to read more. Higher levels of educational attainment (more children and adults in school, increases in numbers of high school and college graduates), advent and increase in numbers of inexpensive publications (cheaper production techniques — rotary press, pulp paper, perfect binding, — and cheap publications — dime novels and other pulp literature, mass market paperbacks — much of it in newspapers and magazines — more and better illustrations, increasingly in color, more — and more effective — advertising to help pay production costs), even some changes within the home (less sharing of bedrooms, smaller families with less need for older children to mind younger ones, gas and then electric light to read by, labor-saving devices — the vacuum cleaner, washing machines, gas and electric cookstoves) that increased people's free time, growth in the number of free libraries and growth in their circ stats, and availability and widespread use of audio books and e-books. And alongside these pressures that would be expected to cause increased reading it's easy think of devices that offered competition for the free time that people might otherwise devote to book reading (magic lanterns, phonographs, movies, telephones, radio, TV, and web-connected personal computers) and not just fixtures but increasingly portable devices for entertainment and communication (45rpm records & players, portable radios, Walkmen, iPods, tablets and the rest).

It's pretty easy to imagine that over the long haul the latter group would have increasing impact, the former less. The number of books being read, per person, is probably lower now than it used to be.

A few years back the National Endowment for the Arts tried to use survey data to show that a certain type of reading, which they called literary reading had fallen off dramatically. They produced some press releases, and, a few years later, when the same survey set showed increases in that type of reading, took some credit for waking up the nation to an unfolding "national crisis" which had demanded its attention.

So, the NEA was well-meaning in its scare-mongering and the effort may have been at least a little bit helpful. Nonetheless, there's a problem. The data NEA used really did not show a consistent decline, the NEA releases made claims that couldn't be supported even by the data they did use, and there's no way to tell if the turnaround occurred as a result of their work (if there was a turnaround at all). The press releases show a deplorable tendency to make unwarranted generalizations from the cherry-picked data on which they're based. They say literary reading has declined (without adequately demonstrating that it has) and, a few sentences later, they're saying that reading itself has declined (not just the literary subset). They jump then to unsupported assertions that literacy itself is at risk and that "advanced literacy" is required to nurture cultural and civic life (which may be true, but probably shouldn't be assumed to be so).

What this advanced literacy is we're left to guess. The phrase reminds me of a time when there was a virtual requirement that men (always men) who wrote and spoke publicly must parade their leaning by sprinkling their utterances with quotes from and allusions to writings in the canons of ancient Greece and Rome, as will as the honored greats in English Lit.

The NEA releases don't indulge in that parroting of authorities, but they do give what purport to be quotes from NEA's chairman of the time, Dana Gioia. In them he tells us "This report documents a national crisis." "Reading, he says, "develops a capacity for focused attention and imaginative growth that enriches both private and public life. The decline in reading among every segment of the adult population reflects a general collapse in advanced literacy. To lose this human capacity - and all the diverse benefits it fosters - impoverishes both cultural and civic life." (Notice that he says "reading" not "literary reading" in this quote.) There's more: "America can no longer take active and engaged literacy for granted. As more Americans lose this capability, our nation becomes less informed, active, and independent minded. These are not qualities that a free, innovative, or productive society can afford to lose." I need not say that there's no indication of what "active and engaged literacy" is made of or how is it associated with "literary reading."

To me it seems active and engaged literacy is a growth commodity. Whether people do or do not engage in as much literary reading as they once did, they certainly do engage in a whole lot of verbal expression and much of this is active, engaged, and literary in nature. People, lots of people — a growing number of people I should think — take advantage of easy and cheap opportunities for self-publication, they write vast quantities of fan fiction, and their outpourings in Facebook statuses, tweets, and the like is quite often literary in character.

NEA's press releases were accepted at face value and simply regurgitated in much of the mainstream press. The only exceptions I recall were in the Guardian's internet column and the Arts section of the New York Times. The Guardian's Steven Johnson wrote: "NEA chair Dana Gioia states boldly in his introduction: 'The story the data tell is simple, consistent and alarming.' But then the data turns out to be complex, inconsistent and not really that alarming at all." — Dawn of the digital natives Steven Johnson in The Guardian, February 7, 2008. In the Times, Motoko Rich spent more than a dozen grafs paraphrasing a release but then did close with this: "Timothy Shanahan, past president of the International Reading Association and a professor of urban education and reading at the University of Illinois at Chicago, suggested that the endowment’s report was not nuanced enough. 'I don’t disagree with the N.E.A.’s notion that reading is important, but I’m not as quick to discount the reading that I think young people are really doing,' he said, referring to reading on the Internet. He added, 'I don’t think the solutions are as simple as a report like this might be encouraging folks to think they might be.'" — National Endowment for the Arts - Reading - NYTimes.com by Motoko Rich, November 19, 2007.

Predictably, I suppose, it's much easier to find careful criticisms in blog posts than in news articles. Here are a few extracts from an exceptionally good one: "Despite the numerous charts, graphs and tables in To Read or Not to Read, a careful and responsible reading of the complete data provided by the NAEP and the NAAL undermine the conclusions the NEA draws... Data may be one kind of thing but polemic is another. The heart of the NEA's case appears not in the report proper but in preface provided by the Endowment's Chairman, Dana Gioia. There he explicitly asserts that reading books, preferably every day, produces more prosperous and more virtuous citizens... Yet there is little evidence of an actual decline in literacy rates or proficiency. As a result, the NEA's core argument breaks down... Reading well, doing well, and doing good may exhibit strong correlations but the underlying dynamics producing each of the three effects may have little to do with what Americans choose to do in their leisure time. Read responsibly, the data underlying the NEA's latest report simply do not support Mr. Gioia's assertions." — nancy kaplan on the NEA's data distortion by Ben Vershbow on If:book, a project of the Institute for the Future of the Book, November 30, 2007.

Here are some other blog-based critiques:

"The report didn’t highlight one intriguing fact: that writing for pleasure was on the increase. It also reported sales of books were down, but didn’t account for the enormous growth in used book sales or in library circulations. It also bemoaned the lowering of standardized reading scores among high-schoolers without celebrating the fact that scores were up in earlier grades. It only looked at reading of fiction and equated that with “literary reading” – and only counted reading that had nothing to do with school or work. It didn’t look at data from years before 1982, which yields a very different picture. Nor did it consider the fact that what “counts” as valuable reading has changed vastly over time. In short, the analysis seemed determined to find bad news." — Is Reading at Risk?

"The predictable villains of the visual media, the electronic media and the Internet all came in for blame... I go online. Here I find a complicated world filled with the good, the bad, and the ugly. Alive and constantly changing, engaged and engaging, requiring my constant decisions about what is worth reading or seeing and what is not. From the lowest pornography to tours of the treasures of the Library of Congress, from the stupidest blogs of the radical fringes, to the most sophisticated discussions of the decline of America's reading habits, everything is there." — Students Read Less. Should We Care? By John V. Lombardi in Inside Higher Ed, August 23, 2005.

"It is not at all clear that reading has declined in the US. The "decline" in reading literature was reported by Reading at Risk, published by the National Endowment for the Arts (Bradshaw and Nichols, 2002a). Reading at Risk only counted novels (in book form), poetry, and plays as literature, excluding magazines, on-line reading, and graphic novels. Also, data from earlier surveys suggests that the "decline" may not be stable: In 1945, 41% said they read literature, substantially less than the 1982 and 1992 results, and nearly identical to the Reading at Risk results (Link and Hopf, 1946). In addition, NEA reported, in another publication, that intellectual life in the US remains vigorous. There has been no change since 1982 in the percentage of people who do creative writing, attend plays, art, museums, and operas, and who use public libraries (Bradshaw and Nichols, 2002b)." — The "Decline" of Reading in America, Poverty and Access to Books, and the use of Comics in Encouraging Reading Stephen Krashen, Teachers College Record, February, 2005.

"the screen as well as the page is a natural venue for literature and imaginative writing." — READING AT RISK: A RESPONSE by Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, July 21, 2004.

"There is indeed a crisis in reading. Few people, it seems, have read the NEA report, and the authors of the report did not do their reading homework. A close examination of the report reveals very little cause for concern. In fact, some of the data suggests that things are just fine.
          Since 1984 there has, of course, been increased use of the internet, as well as other forms of reading (e.g. Graphic Novels), and other forms of input of literate texts (audiobooks). We need to know if these kinds of reading were considered worth mentioning by respondents in 1992 and 2004 before we conclude that young people are reading less today.
          Libraries: The research is overwhelming. It tells us that those with more access to books read more, and that children of poverty have very little access to books, at home, in their communities, or in school (reviewed in Krashen, 2004, Power of Reading). And of course, as noted earlier, the NEA report confirms that more reading leads to better literacy development and more knowledge.
          Research done by Keith Curry Lance, Jeff McQuillan and others also shows that students in schools in higher quality school libraries staffed with credentialed librarians do better on tests of reading, and some of this research specifically shows that library quality (public and school) has a strong relationship with scores on the fourth grade NAEP reading examination: McQuillan (The Literacy Crisis: False Claims and Real Solutions, 1998) reported that children in states with better school and public libraries do better on the NAEP, even when the effect of poverty is controlled.
          No single factor? How about improving school and public libraries, especially in high poverty areas? The real problem is not a decline but the fact that children of poverty have less access to books and read more poorly than others. This is something we can do something about." — The 'Decline' in reading in America: Another case of the "Shock Doctrine"? Stephen Krashen in his own blog, January, 2008.

"The conclusions [of the 2007 report] reflected more bias than they should. The report assumes the primacy of text as a medium of communication." — Critique of NEA Reading at Risk follow-up report by jwa in TheoLib, December 3, 2007.

——————

Some NEA releases:

• [PDF] Reading at Risk, June 2004
• [PDF] Reading At Risk Executive Summary, 2004
• NEA News Room: Literary Reading in Dramatic Decline, According to National Endowment for the Arts Survey; Fewer Than Half of American Adults Now Read Literature, July 8, 2004



• [PDF] To Read or Not To Read, A Question of National Consequence, November 2007
• National Endowment for the Arts Announces New Reading Study; Follow-up to Reading at Risk links declines in reading with poorer academic and social outcomes, November 19, 2007



• More American Adults Read Literature According To New NEA Study; Literary reading on the rise for first time in history of Arts Endowment survey, January 12, 2009
• [PDF] Reading on the Rise, January 2009

——————-

'edited in content'

I like to keep an eye open for books that someone may recommend, and, if I like what I see, I generally skim a review or two, and maybe then open my public library web site to see whether I can borrow a copy. If the library holds the work, chances are it's not at my local branch and, maybe also, someone's already got it out. In either case I invoke the hold function and wait for email saying come get.

I did this recently and braved the melting ice and snow on a bike trip to retrieve my book.

It's on Ernest Shackleton's attempt to cross the Antarctic in 1915. There are many accounts of this adventure and many editions of the book which, duly charged, I clunked into the backpack and took off for the next leg of my trip (for some groceries).

The version of the book that the library coughed up was
Endurance: Shackleton's incredible voyage, Alfred Lansing (Wheaton, Ill., Tyndale House Publishers, 1999). Here's the cover.


On returning home I turned this over and began to read. A few pages in my eye caught the data on the back of the title page. This is where publishers generally put credits, rights information, the copyright statement, and various standard numbers. It's also where they put Cataloging in Publication data, if they happen to be registered with the Library of Congress and participate in that program.

CIP, as it's called, enables publishers to have their book given electronic cataloging prior to publication. This free service gives book jobbers, merchants like Amazon, libraries, and others an online bibliographic record for their use before the actual book comes to hand. Most publishers think this is a good idea because it increases their sales and costs them little effort or expenditure. All they have to do in return is print the data on the back of the title page. It looks like this (from a book I'm currently reading).


I've a professional interest in this process, since I used to be a cataloging manager at LOC and many of these CIP statements came from people who worked under my (easy-going) oversight. The records aren't signed but I can sometimes tell which of the 100 or so people who worked in my division created a given one.

I was a little nonplussed to see that the Shackleton book lacked CIP data. This rarely happens and almost never with a book you'd get from a public library, and, in fact, my library took its cataloging data not from the edition they let me have but rather from the McGraw Hill edition of 2006. Here's the relevant page from the edition I borrowed.


I couldn't fail to notice that it was not only CIP data that were absent. This edition, the publisher wanted me to know, had apparently been censored to remove unseemly statements, or, as they put it, "this work has been edited in content for a Christian audience."


I've never encountered this before. It must be unusual because a Google search turns up no instances of it or any discussion (that I noticed) of the practice of bowdlerizing books for Christian readers.

It would be interesting to see what's been changed from the original edition. I've no way of doing that, however, and, feeling a little put out by the notice, have put aside the library copy for return next time I'm out that way and have spent four bucks to order a used copy of the Carroll & Graf version from Better World Books. I'll have to wait a week or so, but it seems worth it so as (eventually) to be reading all the author's words as the original publisher printed them.

The cover of the book I've ordered looks like this.


There are some excellent photos from the expedition, including this one.

{source: Royal Geographical Society}

the bear that wasn't

My recent recollection of a children's book from my preschool years reminded me of another book. The first was a wartime fantasy and the second a fable for the postwar years. It's The Bear That Wasn't and, always succinct, wikipedia sums it up thus: "a 1946 children's book by film director and Looney Tunes alumnus Frank Tashlin." It tells of a bear who wakes up one spring morning to find that an enormous factory has been built over the cave in which he has been hibernating all winter. He emerges from the cave directly into a factory room where he is accosted by a foreman who mistakes him for a man:

"I must be dreaming," he said. "Of course, I’m dreaming." But it wasn’t a dream. It was real. Just then the Foreman came out of the factory. "Hey, you get back to work," he said.

The Bear replied, "I don’t work here. I’m a Bear."

The Foreman laughed, "That’s a fine excuse for a man to keep from doing any work. Saying he’s a Bear."

The Bear said, "But, I am a Bear."

The Foreman stopped laughing. He was very mad.

"Don’t try to fool me," he said. "You’re not a Bear. You’re a silly man who needs a shave and wears a fur coat."

The foreman is the first of many humans who insist that he is one of them, and, after hearing from bears in zoo and circus that he can't be a bear because he's not behind bars or performing like them, he thinks it must be true. Only much later, years apparently, he comes to his senses and his bearly nature happily reasserts itself. Here are some pages of Tashlin's work from a set on flickr.[1] You can read the text on this web page.























The publisher calls the book a hilarious satire, but I don't recall feeling that way when it was first read to me. As a child I felt the sadness of the bear and though I was reassured by the happy ending, I can vaguely recall a latent sense of fear. Why were the humans so insistently wrong-headed and why did it matter so much to them that he was a silly man and not a bear? I felt there was something wrong in that. I can also remember being awed by the pictures of the factory and the fancy offices of its managers, and I did laugh at the antics of the animals in the zoo and circus.

As a grown up I think the moral lesson of the fable is a little too glib. It seems to say things will go well for you if you only know yourself well enough to resist improper social pressures, but how do you obtain that level of self-knowledge and confidence, how do you recognize which social pressures are OK and which not? I could not hope reliably to accomplish those things in my childhood.[3]

There are questions one doesn't ask of fables. If one did, one might ask why the bear can speak English yet isn't very much able to cope with human culture; why the factory construction takes place in the winter rather than summer months; why the bear goes on two rather than the more usual four feet; what does bear do with his free time -- when not in factory -- evenings, weekend -- how he feeds himself; how he's able to hibernate, at end, without having stored up resources of fat to tide him over?

Here's the author.



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Some sources:

Frank "Tish Tash" Tashlin - Cartoon-y Director. The author of this blog post says "The story beautifully touches the problems of urbanization, mass production, human alienation, workaholism and of course, the environment’s. It sounds over-ambitious for a cartoon, I know, but it’s amazing to see how easily these ideas are presented while keeping the cartoon entertaining even for small children."

The Bear That Wasn't, article in wikipedia. Extract:

The story is about a bear that sees that Autumn is here and Winter will soon arrive. It is time for the bear to get ready to hibernate. He goes into sleep, and then wakes up and is thrilled for Spring to have arrived. Unfortunately for the poor bear, a very large factory has been built right on top of his cave and he stumbles in the middle of one of the rooms of the factory and is extremely shocked. He is soon spotted by a foreman, who thinks he is an employee and orders him to get back to work. As the bear explains that he doesn't really work there and it is impossible for him to work in a factory because he is a bear. The foreman does not believe him and dismisses his appearance as "a silly man who needs a shave and is wearing a fur coat". The foreman's superiors also think the same thing. He is persistent that he is a bear. Nobody believes him and he is accidentally hired and forced to work in the factory. After about a year of working there (or the next time that he is able to notice the next Arctic Cold Front and the migrating animals and the leaves falling to the ground), he wants to hibernate, and then doesn't go into a cave. Almost frozen, he gives up the fact that everybody thinks he is a bear and goes into a cave to hibernate anyways.

The Bear That Wasn't, a blog post about a cartoon feature made some years later.

The Bear That Wasn’t Frank Tashlin, from the New York Review of Books, which reprinted the title.

'The Bear That Wasn't' A Laugh-Aloud Read For Kids, on NPR: "Weekend Edition's ambassador to the world of kiddie literature, Daniel Pinkwater, reviews a classic book for children, The Bear That Wasn't by Frank Tashlin. Pinkwater and Host Scott Simon read from the book together and get a couple of good laughs. The Bear That Wasn't will be re-issued next month (MARCH 9th) by the New York Review of Books Children's Collection."

The bear that wasnt, citation on Worldcat with links to library holdings.

Frank Tashlin An Interview by Michael Barrier

The Bear That Wasn't, a web page that gives the story's text.

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Notes:

[1] I'm reproducing the images under fair use provisions of copyright law and will take them down if I'm shown to have erred.

[2] There are quite a few web sites that tell the meaning of the book. Here's one: "No two people are exactly alike. Each is an individual with unique talents, interests, and values. At the same time, each also belongs to many different groups. Everywhere, to be human means to live with others. In groups, we meet our most basic needs. In groups, we learn a language, customs, and values. We also satisfy our yearning to belong, receive comfort in times of trouble, and find companions who share our dreams and beliefs. Even as we struggle to define our unique identity, those groups attach labels to us that may differ from those we would choose for ourselves." -- From Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior, Chapter 1

All the teacher-help pages boil the book's meaning down to a few questions and learning goals, as in this example:

The story will help us to think about:

- How much of who we are is determined at our birth?
- How much of it is something we decide?
- How does our identity change over time, within certain conditions?
- How much of it something that is determined by your experiences with others?
- How do these perceptions affect the relationships we have in society?

Learning goals
• Students will be able to recognize how their own identity has been defined by others.
• Students will begin to recognize the relationship between the individual and society.

These do not strike me as wrong so much as superficial and it's pretty obvious, to me anyway, that the education system itself can be abused in attempting to mold students in ways they shouldn't be molded.

The reviews on Amazon are not dissimilar, as in this example: "The book shows the importance of the sense of self, an important lesson for young people." But there's a bit more in these reviews than in the lesson plans, as here: "The story addresses the beauty of nature, the destructiveness of industrialization, conformity, the hierarchy of capitalism, sadness, despair, joy and - finally - redemption."

While researching this post I stumbled upon a blog run as a resource tool for students taking the senior elective "FACING HISTORY AND OURSELVES" at
Westborough High School in Massachusetts. Here are some extracts from student reactions to the book:

Friday, January 29, 2010.

Rachel A. "I thought the story sent a message about people believing an idea just because it was repeated over and over not because it was actually true. In the story people are constantly saying the bear is a man and eventually the bear believe he must be a man because everyone is saying that he is. Just because everyone says its true doesn’t mean that it is."

Allison S. "I feel that the eventual point of the story was to show that only you know who you really are and you can choose not to fit in. The bear kept trying to tell people he was in fact a bear. They did not believe him. He alone was able to realize, for himself that he did not have to fit into the stereotypes to be happy. He was content to be who he was, a different kind of bear. He knew he was a bear and that was enough for him."

Rachel S. "Before being swayed by other's opinions, the bear should've realized how vulnerable he was and should've stood up for himself at the start (much like Rachel A. said)."

Haemin B. "It all narrows down to advertisement and how they imply towards a person to have an identity that is 'cool'."

-- PERIOD 7 - "THE BEAR THAT WASN'T"

[3] It's way off topic, but this business of social pressures reminds me of the debate between those who think immigrants should acculturate themselves and those who think it's right to keep native identity (even language). I've written about this, in a way, in considering Dagger John and Abraham Sutro, two champions.