three country homes

I've been writing about the country homes in the village of Woodside, Queens, that were owned by three New York merchants — John A. Kelly, Gustav Sussdorf, and my great-grandfather, Louis Windmuller.[1] The village was an unnamed section of Newtown when the first and second bought their properties and it was just coming into existence when the last bought in. The area was rural and land comparatively cheap. Queens existed as a county from the late seventeenth century but would not become a borough of the City of New York until the end of the nineteenth and residents often gave their address as "Woodside, Long Island" rather than "Woodside, Queens, New York." Most of these residents grew things which they sold in City markets: vegetables, fruits, grains, dairy products, and — Woodside specialties — flowers and cider.[2]

The area's first settlers were Indian tribes. Willingly or not they made room first for the Dutch, then English. Others joined the mix including, particularly, German and Irish immigrants, both seeking to escape hardships at home and both succeeding in influencing the character of the area. Broad generalizations can be invidious, but it's probably accurate to say the Irish endured a longer and more difficult transition from extreme poverty to a relative degree of prosperity than did the Germans. Historians account for this by saying that agricultural conditions at home, mainly the potato famine, resulted in a high proportion of subsistence peasants among Irish immigrants while the conditions that induced Germans to emigrate included not just poverty but also political turmoil and the Prussian policy of forced military service. Germans in consequence tended to be considerably better educated and to possess skills in useful occupations.[3]

As I said, John A. Kelly was the first of the three to buy property in the hamlet that would later become Woodside. In 1826 he and his sister-in-law bought a mansion located at a central cross road of the community along with 155 acres of land and two roads.[4] In 1859 Gustav Sussdorf moved to New York and soon thereafter bought his land and built his house. Windmuller built his place in 1867.

Despite his Celtic surname, John A. Kelly was, like Windmuller and Sussdorf, a German-American citizen.[5] Kelly and Sussdorf probably knew each other: before coming to New York both had been successful dry goods merchants in Charleston, South Carolina. Kelly died in 1833, before Windmuller was born.[6]. Because they were neighbors, Windmuller would have known Sussdorf, but the difference in their ages probably insured that they did not have an intimate friendship. Windmuller did definitely know the sons and daughters of both men.[7] In fact the Kelly, Sussdorf, and Windmuller families were not just neighbors but were closely linked with each other by their association with the local Episcopal church. The church grew out of gatherings that had been held at the Sussdorf home beginning in 1870 when the wife and daughters of Gustav Sussdorf's son, William, held Sunday school classes for local children. John A. Kelly's son, John A.F. Kelly, and Louis Windmuller joined with other locals to found the church and construct a building to house it. When it opened in 1874 there were 20 parishioners and 50 Sunday-school pupils.[8]

I've marked this property map of 1852 to give the approximate locations of the Kelly (green), Sussdorf (red), and Windmuller (blue) estates in the part of Newtown that would later become Woodside. Windmuller originally owned the small area closest to the Kelly Mansion, but it was taken for a public school after Woodside had grown too large for the one it had been using.[9]

{Detail from: Map of Newtown, Long Island, designed to exhibit the localities referred to in the "Annals of Newtown"; compiled by J. Riker, Jr., 1852, from The annals of Newtown, in Queens County, New York, by James Riker, Jr.; source: NYPL Digital Gallery}

As you can see from this atlas sheet of 1912, land use changed a great deal over the next half century. On it I've shown the Windmuller (blue) and Sussdorf (red) estates. The Kellys had sold their land to a developer and moved out of the mansion at the head of Betts Road. The house was torn down to make way for St. Sebastian Catholic Church (green).

{Queens, Vol. 2, Double Page Plate No. 15; Part of Ward Two Woodside; (1908 updated to 1912) Map bounded by Kelly Ave., Woodside Ave., Greenpoint Ave., Thomson Ave.; Including Astoria Road (Highway to Calvary Cemetery) (Celtic Ave.), Middleburg Ave., Jackson Ave., Solon St., Mecke St.; Atlases of New York city. / Atlas of the borough of Queens, city of New York: based upon official plans and maps on file in the various city offices; supplemented by careful field measurements and personal observations / by and under the supervision of Hugo Ullitz. / First and second wards: Long Island City and Newtown; source: NYPL Digital Gallery}

Here is the key to this atlas.



The atlas sheet is quite detailed. You can see that the Windmuller mansion faces north and has a small wing on its west side. A drive encircles it and goes on to the stable. These observations accord with the tintype in my earlier blog post.

You can see that the Sussdorf Estate, like the Windmuller, has a two and a half story frame house. Both properties have outlying stables, but the Sussdorf one is brick while Windmuller's is frame construction. Sussdorf also has a barn located right on the property line. The buildings of both estates are accessed via drives from the street which runs on their western boundaries. It was called the Calvary Cemetery Road in the late 19th century and Astoria Road in the 1900s. It was replaced by Skillman Avenue in the 1920s.

You can see that Windmuller's property included one lot of 9 acres and two of 1.5 acres each for a total of 12. Sussdorf's was ten and a third acres. If you look at property maps of the 1870s and before you see that Windmuller's land originally included the lot where Public School No. 11 sits on the map of 1812. Apparently, the land was taken under eminent domain to build the school sometime late in the century. A atlas of 1891 shows the school while at atlas of 1873 does not.

Note that Greenpoint Avenue, which makes the eastern boundary of the Sussdorf property, did not exist in 1852.

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{"From the Old to the New World" shows German emigrants boarding a steamer in Hamburg, Germany, to come to America. published in Harper’s Weekly, (New York) November 7, 1874}

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Some sources:

What Apple Variety is Native to NYC?

LOCAL INTELLIGENCE.; QUEENS COUNTY AGRICULTURAL FAIR, New York Times, September 21, 1862

The annals of Newtown, in Queens county, New-York, containing its history from its first settlement, together with many interesting facts concerning the adjacent towns ; also, a particular account of numerous Long island families now spread over this and various other states of the union by James Riker (D. Fanshaw, 1852)

HISTORY OF QUEENS COUNTY, with illustrations, Portraits & Sketches of Prominent Families and Individuals (New York: W.W. Munsell & Co.; 1882)

"Woodside" by William O'Gorman in HISTORY OF QUEENS COUNTY, with illustrations, Portraits & Sketches of Prominent Families and Individuals (New York: W.W. Munsell & Co.; 1882)

Little Germany, Manhattan in wikipedia

Irish and German Immigration

Irish - The Peopling of New York City

Germans - The Peopling of New York City

Demographics of New York City in wikipedia

Woodside, Queens in wikipedia

The History of the Sackett/Kelly/Howell Estate

About the Susdorf surname

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Notes:

[1] The other two blog posts are Hillside Manor, Clara at Hillside Manor, and Kellys, Sussdorfs, and Windmullers in Woodside.

[2] See HISTORY OF QUEENS COUNTY, with illustrations, Portraits & Sketches of Prominent Families and Individuals (New York: W.W. Munsell & Co.; 1882), The History of the Sackett/Kelly/Howell Estate and The annals of Newtown, in Queens county, New-York, containing its history from its first settlement, together with many interesting facts concerning the adjacent towns ; also, a particular account of numerous Long island families now spread over this and various other states of the union by James Riker (D. Fanshaw, 1852)

[3] "Beginning in the 1840s, large numbers of German immigrants entering the United States provided a constant population influx for Little Germany. In the 1850s alone, 800,000 Germans passed through New York. New York City would by 1855 become one of the three cities in the world with the largest population of German speakers, outranked only by Berlin and Vienna.[2] The German immigrants differed from others in that they usually were educated and had marketable skills in crafts. More than half of the era's bakers and cabinet makers were Germans or of German origin, and many Germans also worked in the construction business." -- Little Germany, Manhattan.

[4] The estate dated back to the end of the seventeenth century and its story is an interesting one. See The History of the Sackett/Kelly/Howell Estate by Owen Clough.

[5] In Germany, the family name had been rendered as variations of Köllen, Köllin, and Kölle. When Johann Jakob Kölle emigrated to South Carolina in 1752, the name was given as Khele and then Kelly. See
THE KÖLLE FAMILY OF BLAUBEUREN GERMANY.

[5] Gustav Sussdorf was listed in a Charleston directory for 1851: "Fancy Goods, 141 Meeting St". He owned more than one property because his name is in the Historic American Buildings Survey against this structure:

{Samuel Seyle Building, also known as the Shroeder/Sussdorf Building, 213 Meeting Street Charleston, SC; Historic American Buildings Survey}

For more on this building see: The buildings of Charleston by Jonathan H. Poston (Historic Charleston Foundation, Univ of South Carolina Press, 1997). This photo shows the 200 block of Meeting Street, near where Kelly had his dry goods business, in the early 1880s:

{source: flickr}

This one shows a restored building in the 100 block today.

{source: flickr}

I've written about the connections between Windmullers and Sussdorfs on another occasion. See helpful neighbors.

[7] The dates of John A. Kelly, Sr., are October 6, 1792, to January 6, 1833. Here is Kelly's obit from the Newtown Register, May 13, 1897:

[8] Despite a fire in 2007 the church still stands. It's St. Paul's Protestant Episcopal Church and it looks like this

{St. Paul's, Woodside, Queens, NY; source: lostnewyorkcity.blogspot.com}

See "CHURCHES AT WOODSIDE" in HISTORY OF QUEENS COUNTY with illustrations, Portraits & Sketches of Prominent Families and Individuals (New York: W.W. Munsell & Co.; 1882)

[9] Here is the full map from which my marked detail is taken:

Kellys, Sussdorfs, and Windmullers in Woodside

The other day I showed a tintype of my great-grandfather's home in Woodside, Queens. When he moved his family there in 1867 the village had only two other homes large enough to be considered mansions. One belonged to John A. Kelly, the other to Gustav Sussdorf.

Kelly had bought the house and adjoining 115 acre farm of the Sackett family in 1825 or '26 and thereafter split his time between that place and a residence in Manhattan.[1] In about 1859 Sussdorf had bought a much smaller property nearby and he also split his time between city and country residences.[2] I don't have a photo of Sussdorf's place, but this is was what the Kelly Mansion looked like.

{Kelly Mansion at the foot of Betts Ave.; source: Queens Borough Hall via longislandgenealogy.com}

Woodside's other houses were ancient farmsteads or new small-lot single-family homes. This photo shows one of the old houses. Built about 1732, it belonged to the Leverich family whose ancestors had settled in Newtown in 1662.[3]

{source: Rev. William Leverich - (1603-1677) Progenitor of the Leverich Family in the United States Of America, an Historical Biography}

This photo shows the newer homes. It was taken in 1923 but depicts nonetheless the mixture of open land, woods, and "development" that began to characterize Woodside in the late 1860s and later. It shows the area north of the Kelly Mansion, to the east of Windmuller's and Sussdorf's estates.

{General view - Queens - Roosevelt Avenue - Woodside Avenue. "A general view N.W. from Roosevelt Ave., at its intersection with Woodside Ave., showing a section of Newtown known as Woodside, as seen from the elevated structure of the I.R.T. and B.M.T. subway lines; same running on Roosevelt Ave. at this point. About 1923. Creator: Armbruster, Eugene L., 1865-1943 -- Photographer; source: NYPL Digital Gallery}

This detail lets you see a type of frame house that was common in the area. It also shows that there was much that was "unimproved" about Woodside even in 1923: unpaved roads and in general a rural feeling.



In this detail you can see Hell Gate Bridge (indistinctly) on the horizon at right. The dark horizontal line just below it is the New York Connecting Railroad. The Windmuller and Sussdorf properties are too far off to the left (west) to be in view.


This 1922 map shows the rough location of the Windmuller and Sussdorf properties, the location of the photographer, and the direction the camera lens was pointing.

{source: Library of Congress}

Here's a satellite view covering a smaller area but showing much the same. The Lawrence Virgilio Playground and Doughboy Plaza are both within the City's Windmuller Park. Louis Windmuller had died in 1913 and his wife Annie lived until 1929. When hew will cleared probate after her death, her two children owned the old estate outright. Late in the 1930s they gave some of the land to the City for this park. A few years later they sold the remaining land for construction of apartment buildings. (The Sussdorf property had been sold for apartment buildings in the late teens of the century.)




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Some sources:

The annals of Newtown, in Queens County, New York; containing its history from its first settlement, together with many interesting facts concerning the adjacent towns by James Riker (Fanshaw, 1852)

"Old Newtown – Selections for the scrapbook originally written by the town clerk, William O’Gorman" in The History of the Sackett/Kelly/Howell Estate by Owen Clough (taken from the pages of the Newtown Register, 1887, in Queens Borough Public Library, from Woodside Queens; NY a Historical Perspective 1652 – 1994, Catherine Gregory; and from Woodside of Long Ago, The Woodsider, March 1983)

The Founding Families of Woodside, Queens, New York by Owen Clough: Excerpt: "The Kelly surname started out as Kollen, and future generations changed to Kollin, Kolle, and finally to Kelly/Kelley. The family of Johann Jakob Kölle migrated to S.C. in 1752 arriving about the first of December on the Brigantine John and Mary (SC Gazette, issue of 4 Dec 1752)."

REV. WILLIAM LEVERICH - (1603-1677) PROGENITOR OF THE LEVERICH FAMILY IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AN HISTORICAL BIOGRAPHY

Newtown Frauds--Over a Million Dollars Worth of Property Not on the Assessment Roll, New York Times, December 22, 1870

Old Queens, N.Y., in early photographs by Vincent F. Seyfried and William Asadorian (Courier Dover Publications, 1991)

HISTORY OF QUEENS COUNTY with illustrations, Portraits & Sketches of Prominent Families and Individuals (New York: W.W. Munsell & Co.; 1882)

The buildings of Charleston by Jonathan H. Poston (Historic Charleston Foundation, Univ of South Carolina Press, 1997)

Sohncke Square, New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. Excerpt: "The surrounding neighborhood of Woodside, called 'Suicide’s Paradise' by the colonials for its harsh environment, was settled in the late 17th century by Joseph Sackett. Between 1830 and 1860, the area grew and became home to mansions owned by John Kelly, William Schroeder, Gustav Sussdorf, and Louis Windmuller, all men from Charleston, South Carolina. Woodside’s moniker comes from a correspondence written by John Andrew Kelly to his son, John A. F. Kelly, entitled 'Letters from Woodside,' inspired by the unending run of trees visible from his writing desk. The younger Kelly, publisher of The Brooklyn Times, printed the letters for the enjoyment of the paper’s readers. Laid out in 1869, Woodside exists today as a patchwork of industrial, commercial and residential areas."

JOHANNES WERNER FAMILY contributed by Carl W. Nichols, Siegbert Frick & Ann Corum

Trow's New York city directory (J. F. Trow., 1859)

If You're Thinking of Living In/Woodside, Queens; A Polyglot Enclave, At First, 'Irishtown', New York Times, 1999

Reside in Woodside Historically rich microcosm of city by Ruth Bashinsky, New York Daily News, October 27, 2002

Directory of the city of Charleston (J.H. Bagget., 1851)

Herman Gustaf Leiding. Excerpt: "Herman Gustaf Leiding was born August 06, 1828 in Germany, and died December 06, 1896 in Charleston, Charleston Co., SC. He married Catherine Jenkins Prentiss on April 06, 1874 in Charleston, Charleston Co., SC, daughter of Rev. William Otis Prentiss and Maria C. Jenkins. Marriage: April 06, 1874, Charleston, Charleston Co., SC."

Directories for the city of Charleston, South Carolina: for the years 1849 (Genealogical Publishing Com, 1998)

The buildings of Charleston: a guide to the city's architecture

The New York Connecting Railroad

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Notes:

[1] Having arrived in Dutch times, the Sacketts were one of the oldest families of Newtown, the place out of which Woodside was carved in the middle of the 19th century. It's irrelevant to my story, but still interesting, that the Sacketts were thus neighbors of Thornes and Kissams, both of them members of my family's ancestral line. You can trace the associations in Riker's Annals of Newtown. Regarding John A. Kelly, see The Founding Families of Woodside, Queens, New York by Owen Clough.

[2] In 1859 Sussdorf sold his fancy goods business and the building that housed it and moved to New York (see The buildings of Charleston by Jonathan H. Poston (Historic Charleston Foundation, Univ of South Carolina Press, 1997)). I don't have the exact date he built his mansion in Woodside, but it was probably within a year or two of then. His second home in Manhattan is listed in an 1859 city directory: (Trow's New York city directory (J. F. Trow., 1859)).

[3] The first Leverich in Newtown was the Rev. William Leverich, an Anglican priest — born 1603, died 1677 — who had emigrated from England in 1633. I've written about the Leverich family before. See Windmuller sits for a portrait, flourishing, ranting quakers, and Newtown families.

Clara at Hillside Manor

This photo shows my grandmother in the garden of her father's estate, Hillside Manor, in Woodside, Queens, NY. She was Clara Louise Windmuller; he Louis Windmuller. I've written quite a bit about him, but little of her. In the photo her age seems to be between 18 and 28. If she were 25 at the time, then the photo was taken in 1895. Supposing that the dress she's wearing was fashionable — meaning that she didn't wear any old dress for the photo — then the date is probably somewhere in the second half of the 1890s.[1]

{Clara Louise Windmuller with dog in garden, Woodside; source: personal collection}

The photo was cut from a larger one using scissors and then pasted onto a gray sheet of card stock. It is quite small — only 3" x 3.5" — and has deteriorated with age. Enlarging the part that shows Clara reveals few additional details.


Someone wrote on the back of the photo that the dog was named Perry. Clara loved dogs all her life, evidently including this one. Photos with animals were still quite unusual at this time since even in bright light conditions the exposure times had to be a quarter of a second or more and animals could not be counted on to hold still for that long. The photographer evidently relied on a third person to attract Perry's attention in hopes he would poise alertly, as evidently he did, long enough for the exposure.[2]


The photo doesn't show much of the grounds of the Windmuller estate. You can see that Clara stands in a garden surrounded by trees and other plants.

Both "Hillside" and "Woodside" are descriptive names. The Windmuller estate was located on a wooded hill in an area where marshy lowlands alternated with wooded uplands. Woodside was part of Newtown and "Newtown" is not in the normal sense descriptive, having been "new" in 1665 when the Dutch still ruled in New Amsterdam.[3] I've written about Woodside before; see in particular Woodside, Newtown families, and Bragaws.

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Notes:

[1] Wikipedia' article on fashions of the 1890s says that dresses like Clara's began to appear in 1892. They had low waists and high necklines and their sleeves had a high, gathered head and were fitted to the lower arm.
These two images show daytime dresses that young misses might wear in the summer.


Of the one on the right, a web site called Victorian 1890s Misses' Summer Dress says: "This young misses' dress dates to the late 1890s and features a fitted bodice with ruching at the neckline and fitted, ruched sleeves with a ruffled cap at the shoulders." (Ruching is another name for gathering or bunching. It was used to make ruffles and flower petals as well as simple gathers.)

Here's an example of a more elaborate garden dress.

{source: sensibility.com}

[2] Compare this formal portrait of Clara which was taken at about the same time as the photo of Clara with Perry. I took the one to its right in 1954 when she was 84 years old. In the latter you can see she's holding a leash. She doted on dogs then as, apparently, she did when young.


[3] HISTORY OF QUEENS COUNTY, with illustrations, Portraits & Sketches of Prominent Families and Individuals (New York: W.W. Munsell & Co.; 1882)

Hillside Manor

I've written before about my great-grandmother, Hannah Eliza Lefman Windmuller, whom people called Annie. During the warm months of the year, she presided over this large house in Woodside, Queens, NY.

{Tintype of Hillside Manor, home of Louis Windmuller and family; source: personal collection}

My father said this tintype was taken about 1870. He wasn't always accurate in assigning dates to photos, but internal evidence also suggests 1870 as the date. My great-grandfather, Louis Windmuller, moved into this house in 1867. As I've written before, the family had been living on Dean Street in Brooklyn, but moved to Queens at least partly to see whether the country air would improve the health of his second child, Bertha, born in 1866.[1]

The tintype was therefore made no earlier than 1867. Tintypes were supplanted by silver gelatin prints in 1880 so that's (probably) the latest it could have been made. The plantings around the house — which look newly added — suggest an earlier rather than a later date. So does the youthful appearance of Annie, seated on the porch, who was born in 1836 and was thus 34 in 1870.

From the clothes of Annie and the two servants you can tell it's a warm day. The upstairs windows may have been shuttered against the heat, but then you'd expect the downstairs windows to be open, which they're not. Since the downstairs ones are closed with shades mostly drawn, this tintype could be a record of the reopening of the house for the summer season. (The family spent the colder months in an apartment in Manhattan.[2]) The broom in the hands of the woman I take to be the housekeeper might be intended to signify that the house is being prepared for re-occupancy, but it's hard to say; it might be just another late spring day. The lawn has recently been cut. There are flowers growing in large ornamental urns. A trellis has vines in leaf growing up it. It's odd that there are no porch railings nor any chairs, couches, or swings, just one bench.

Annie has something on her lap, maybe a shawl and jacket or other garments? I can't tell. Here's a detail view of her.


The maid standing next to the housekeeper looks small enough to be a child.


You can tell that the ground floor ceilings are high, maybe 18 feet judging by the housekeeper's height. The chimneys indicate that house did not have central heating, as you'd expect. The site seems to be gently sloped and, indeed, the family called the place Hillside Manor.[3]

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Notes:

[1] The change of scene didn't help Bertha who died soon after they moved. See my earlier posts: an obituary and 19 w. 46th St..

[2] Residents of Queens were then dependent on ferry service to cross the East River and that service became unreliable in the cold months. I've previously written about the skinny building at 19 West 46th St. in which the family spent most winters. See 19 w. 46th St. and 19 w. 46th, again.

[3] Quite a few news clippings give Hillside Manor as the name of the estate. For example this one on the celebration of Louis and Annie's Golden Wedding Anniversary:

{New York Sun, November 24, 1909}

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}

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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)

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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

of those who do not toil in blindness

A Facebook friend recently put this in his status box:

"Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate." -Carl Jung

Search the internet and you'll find that the quote appears many places, but nowhere — that I see — with a citation to source. Search jung, consciousness, fate and you'll probably fare no better (as was my experience).[1] If he did make this statement, where and when did he do so?[2]

Looking through his published works I find a transcript from a seminar he gave in 1931. It's participants expressed the sense of the quote without actually voicing it. The subject is a vision (a meditation or self-hypnotic trance) as reported by a woman who had undergone psychological analysis with Jung. Here's an extract. The text gives the vision first, then discussion.

Dr Jung: She sees an old man. She says:

I looked into his eyes and saw therein a great river full of writhing bodies. A few men stood upon the bank and called with a loud voice to the struggling masses in the rushing water. The water cast a few souls upon the bank. Then the men who stood there lifted them up and showed them a star and a sun. This I saw in the eyes of the old man. The old man said: "You have perceived" and he sank into the earth.

What is this intermezzo? Who would the old man be?

Mrs. Crowley: The wise old man.

Dr: Jung: Yes, in this case the animus, but in the disguise of the old man. She looks into his eyes — here is the eye again — meaning that she sees what he sees. This man is of legendary age, I don't know how many centuries old, he is the personification of the collective unconscious which is of immense age and in his eyes she sees with the vision of the collective unconscious: And what is the view the old man has in his eye? What·is this great river full of bodies?

Prof Eaton: The river of time.

Dr Jung: Do you remember the dream of the river of time in one of the former seminars? The bodies are the individual lives, twisting and turning and writhing themselves into a sort of pattern that dissolves and reforms again and again. It is the river of time, of life, in other words. Now why are those men standing on the bank? Why are they not all in that chaotic river?

Mrs Schlegel: Perhaps they are conscious.

Remark: The are individuated.

Dr Jung: Yes, these are the people of detached consciousness, people who are conscious of themselves and of life. And that they call to the struggling masses in the rushing water produces the effect that a few souls are cast upon the bank — they wake up and leave the great river. Then the men who stand there lift them up and show them a star and a sun. What does that mean?

Remark: Consciousness and individual fate.

Dr Jung: Exactly. The star is the individual fate, and the sun means the light of day, and it is also the symbol of the deity. Consciousness of the individual life and of the deity is the idea. Then the old man said, "You have perceived." and disappeared. What has he perceived?

Miss Sergent: The necessity of consciousness, I should say the difference between the people in the water and the people on the bank.

Dr Jung: The interesting fact is that what one gets from that wise old man has always a universal sense — if he is really a positive figure.

Prof Eaton: The old man said "you have perceived," without qualification, which to my mind means that he has perceived all.

Dr Jung: Exactly. What she sees is really a point of view, a Weltanschauung. It is a very simple thought, but of tremendous consequences. She sees the chaos of life, an interminable river of life that rolls on to eternity, making no sense whatever because everything is merely chaotic. Only a few are standing on the bank and are aware of it. And so in our world only a few are standing upon the bank and really understand, see with their eyes what is happening; all the others are just toiling on as blind as ever. The unconscious emphasizes here the extraordinary importance of consciousness, consciousness as a sort of redemption from the eternal wheel of death and rebirth. Like the wheel in Buddhistic philosophy, death and rebirth. the curse of that eternal illusory meaningless existence. In this vision we find the same principle as in Buddhism, the consciousness of what is happening as a redeeming principle. The people standing on the bank are aware of the individual fate, and the relation to the deity, or the star and the sun. Those are the two important principles. Now of what is this vision making our patient aware?

Mrs Crowley: That she is one of those people who are on the bank.

Dr Jung: But he tells her something more important, at least in my humble opinion, it is more important.

Prof Demos: That everything must perish is a very pessimistic fact; but to realize this fact in one's consciousness is somehow to rise above it, to conquer it. To accept the fact that you perish in time is a sort of victory over time, which is perhaps the meaning of tragedy in the drama. This vision is a presentation of the meaning of knowledge — a conquest of fate by accepting fate.

Dr: Jung: Exactly, and that is again the Buddhist idea. So this vision is a sort of reconciliation of herself, or of her point of view, with the great nonsense of the world. It gives her a philosophical explanation; it points out that that river only make sense if a few escape and become conscious, that the purpose of existence is that one should become conscious. Consciousness redeems one from the curse of that eternal flowing on in the river of unconsciousness. This is an exceedingly important idea and is the next parallel to the central Buddhist teaching. Now, mind you, our patient has had no particular education in this respect. This really comes directly out of the kitchen of the unconscious; she is shown in a most impressive way the meaning of human existence.

The seminar took place in Zurich on March 25, 1931. It's reported in Visions: notes of the seminar given in 1930-1934 by C.G. Jung by Carl Gustav Jung, edited by Mary Foote and Claire Douglas (Princeton University Press, 1997).[3] Apart from Jung himself, the speakers are identified on page xxxiv of this book. The book's introduction tells how the seminar came about. Jung did not intend that its transcript be published, and the editor tells us that it was an informal affair, conducted in English (of which Jung was not a native speaker) with participants from varying walks of life who came from England, the U.S., Germany, and Switzerland.

The woman whose vision is being discussed was Christiana Morgan. A book review in the New York Times says she "was a talented, passionate and exceptionally beautiful woman who made a significant contribution to the early development of psychoanalysis. But she died unrecognized and, in the end, unloved." -- A Woman of Visions, a book review by By Ben Macintyre, New York Times, August 22, 1993; the book is Translate This Darkness, the Life of Christiana Morgan. By Claire Douglas (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993)

Once, back in the seventies, a person I consulted said it's helpful to watch yourself being yourself. I accepted this as wisdom then and still do. I like the way Jung and the seminar participants run with the version of this idea which emerges from the vision.

I also like the way the transcript reminds me of the psychoanalytic excesses of the 1930s and '40s. In that time many people credited Freud's writings with scientific validity, and, with some reservations, Jung's as well. Although now giving us no evidence of what we accept as science, the writings emerge as the works of art that they truly are and, when good, can, as good literature does, allow us to respond to them with deep and rewarding pleasure.

{Christiana Morgan (source: Dalum Hjallese Debatklub) and Carl Jung (source: wikipedia)}

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Some sources:

Visions: notes of the seminar given in 1930-1934 by C.G. Jung by Carl Gustav Jung, edited by Mary Foote and Claire Douglas (Princeton University Press, 1997)

Christiana Morgan on wikipedia

Christina D. Morgan

A Woman of Visions, a book review by By Ben Macintyre, New York Times, August 22, 1993; the book is Translate This Darkness, the Life of Christiana Morgan. By Claire Douglas (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993)

"Christiana Morgan's Visions Reconsidered: A Look Behind The Visions Seminars" by Claire Douglas, in Library Journal, Vol. 8, No. 4 (Summer 1989), pp. 5-27

"Vying Visions" by Eugene Taylor, reviewing Love's Story Told; A Life of Henry A. Murray by Forrest G. Robinson, and Translate This Darkness: A Life of Christiana Morgan, the Veiled Woman in Jung's Circle by Claire Douglas in
Library Journal, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Summer 1994), pp. 43-46

Review by Paul Hannigan of Love's Story Told by Forrest G. Robinson in Harvard Review, No. 4 (Spring, 1993), pp. 214-215

'Whatever is not conscious will be experienced as fate' - Carl Jung

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Note:

[1] The search turns up some variants, such as this: 'Whatever is not conscious will be experienced as fate' - Carl Jung, and a few reports of failure to find sources.

[2] It's reasonably likely that he was never recorded as having used these exact words. The internet is riddled with inexact, distorted, and non-existent "quotes."

[3] I've quoted from this work under fair use provisions of U.S. Copyright Law.

color printing

In the 1890s, American printers produced some excellent color advertising. This ad for Newsboy Cigars was printed in 1894 by the Calvert Lithographic Co.

{Newsboy cigars. Manufactured by Brown Brothers, Detroit, 1894, Calvert Lithographic Co.; source: Library of Congress}

This one dates from about the same time.

{Drink Coca-Cola 5 cents, 189- , print: chromolithograph; summary: Print shows a well dressed young woman, wearing hat, white gloves, and pearls, holding up a glass of Coca-Cola, seated at a table on which is a vase of roses, the "Drink Coca-Cola" sign, and a paper giving the location of the "Home Office [of the] Coca-Cola Co." as well as branch locations; source: Library of Congress[1]}

Although digital imaging can be somewhat flakey, I imagine you can tell that these two make good use of a wide range of color tones.

Impressed on newsprint using high-speed, multi-cylinder rotary presses, advertisements in the local press couldn't attain such high quality. But, even in 1909, they looked pretty good, as this page from the New York Herald of 1909 attests. You can assume it looked a lot better on the day it came out. The highly-acidic wood-pulp paper on which it was printed will have deteriorated much more during the past century than the heavier stock on which the cigar and Coke ads appeared, and as the paper aged the colors will have grow dim.

{This comes from the Herald of 1909; source: NYPL Digital Gallery}

Newspaper color work from earlier in the 19th century is also surprisingly good. This example comes from a New York weekly, Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, in 1883.

{"North Carolina &mdash An Illicit Whisky Still in the Mountains Surprised by Revenue Officers," from a sketch by J.S. Hodgson, a page in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper for the week ending September 1, 1883; source: Shirley Stipp Ephemera Collection, D.H. Ramsey Library, Special Collections, UNC}

This one comes from more than a decade before.

{Grant at the capture of the city of Mexico by E. Leutze, made between 1860 and 1870; source: Library of Congress}

Many newspaper illustrations were what we call political cartoons. This patriotic example appeared in the New York Herald on January 9, 1898. It isn't usually identified as typical of the era's yellow journalism, but this cartoon does fit the mold pretty well. When it appeared the high-circulation dailies, such as Hearst's New York Journal were flaming American jingoism and the Spanish American War was just about to break out.[2]

{"Uncle Sam -- Now Let Some of the Other Fellows Invent Something" by Charles Nelan, New York Herald, January 9, 1898; source: Cartoon Research Library, Ohio State University}

This 1895 drawing shows a multi-cylinder color press. These presses printed multiple colors in one operation at high speed.

{source: flickr}

These presses were enormous and immensely complicated. Containing about 50,000 separate pieces, they were something like thirty-five feet long, seventeen feet high and twelve feet wide. Although they used only four colors, they'd have some 64 sources of ink, called fountains. Fed by huge rolls of paper, they build up a color illustration by overlaying first yellow, then red, then blue, one after the other. The paper wound its way through the press much too fast for the different impressions to be visible, but if they were you would be able to see what the following images show. Note that the fourth color, black, is not part of this somewhat simplistic demonstration of the overlay process.

{source:
Modern industrial progress by Charles Henry Cochrane (J.B. Lippincott company, 1904) }

Although the process was highly automated, a great deal of skill was required in creating the plates from which each impression would be drawn and setting up the press to insure that the plates and unrolling paper were precisely aligned.[3] In most cases the artist would create the original color work using pen and ink or brush and paint. The work would be photographed three or more times using color filters to isolate, respectively, the yellow, red, and blue tones, and their variants. By a process called photoengraving, the photographic negatives (all of them black and white) would be used to make at least three printing plates and these, in turn, would be used to make the stereotype plates that were attached to the rollers of the giant presses. Each stereotype printing plate would be inked with a separate color to impress the paper as it wound its way through the press.[4]

The cigar and Coke ads were not made on one of these presses. They were poster-sized placards meant for display in shop windows, on advertising kiosks, and the like. The Coke ad was made by a process called chromolithography. In the late 19th century, chromolithographs were called "chromos." They were color lithographs and their quality varied greatly, depending on the skill of the printers and the size of the project's budget. The best were costly and could be extremely faithful to the original. They were made either by repeated impressions of a flat sheet of paper against inked lithographic stones or by a rotary method called offset lithography. A book published in 1875 describes this process clearly and in some detail.[5]

This enlargement from the Coke ad shows the tonal gradations that could be achieved in a relatively high quality chromo print.



The Newsboys Cigars ad has more abrupt tonal gradations. Although the curator identified the ad as a lithograph, the enlargement I've put below shows that it has been reproduced via halftone process. While chromolithography was done on lithographic flatbed or offset presses, halftone printing could be done on letterpress printing equipment, the same type of presses that were used to publish daily newspapers. In halftone work, tonal gradations are conveyed by dots of pigment. When the dots are close together the eye sees relatively intense tones; as they're increasingly separated, the eye sees lighter tones of the pigment. Making high quality halftones is difficult and time-consuming, requiring exact registration of the paper through multiple impressions, but the process is nonetheless cheaper and faster than is high quality chromolithography. Half-tone illustrations could be inserted along with text on the pages of daily newspapers, but this would normally be done for black and white photographs rather than color pictures.[6]

Here is an enlargement from the cigar ad that's comparable to the one of the Coke ad.



Compare this detail from a halftone reproduction of a painting of Chief Joseph made in 1897.



Here's the painting from which I've taken the Chief Joseph detail. Note that in this case the Library of Congress curator has identified the print as a halftone.

{Halftone reproduction of a painting by E.A. Burbank of Chief Joseph, Nez Percé chief, head-and-shoulders portrait, facing front, published by the Chicago Colortype Co., 1897; source: Library of Congress}

The New York Public Library has an excellent set of web pages describing and demonstrating chromolithography. Note in particular its sets of progressive proofs of a print called Prang's Prize Babies.

The two small crosses that you may have noticed on the Coke ad show it to be a type of proof. The crosses helped the printer determine that the registration was accurate as each successive color overlay was made. Once exact registration was assured, the crosses would, of course, be removed so as not to appear in the production prints.

-----------

Some sources:

The New Journalism 1865-1919

The Penny Press

Six thousand years of history see other blog post

The Daily Newspaper in America see other blog post

"Printing Presses" in The Encyclopedia Americana Encyclopedia Americana Corp., 1919

"The Development of the Rotary Web Press" in The American manual of presswork Oswald publishing company, 1916

Modern industrial progress by Charles Henry Cochrane (J.B. Lippincott company, 1904)

Color printing in wikipedia

History and present condition of the newspaper and periodical press of the United States by Simon Newton Dexter North (Govt. print. off., 1884)

American dictionary of printing and bookmaking by Wesley Washington Pasko (H. Lockwood, 1894)

History of Color Printing

COLOR PRINTING IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY An Exhibition at the Hugh M. Morris Library, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware, August 27 - December 19, 1996,curated by Iris Snyder

The wonders of modern mechanism, a résumé of progress in mechanical, physical, and engineering science at the dawn of the twentieth century by Charles Henry Cochrane (J.B. Lippincott company, 1900)

Chromolithography on wikipedia

"How Chromos are Made" in The living age, Vol 95 (Littell, Son and Co., 1867)

"Chromo-Lithography" in House documents, otherwise publ. as Executive documents, 13th congress, 2d session-49th congress, 1st session (Gov't Printing Office, 1876)

The half-tone process: A practical manual of photo-engraving in half-tone on zinc, copper, and brass by Julius Verfasser (Iliffe & sons, limited, 1904)

The chemistry of light and photography: in its application to art, science, and industry by Hermann Wilhelm Vogel (London, Henry S. King & Co., 1875)

Commercial engraving and printing, a manual of practical instruction and reference covering commercial illustrating and printing by all processes, for advertising managers, printers, engravers, lithographers, paper men, photographers, commercial artists, salesmen, instructors, students and all others interested in these and allied trades by Charles William Hackleman (Commercial Engraving Publishing Company, 1921)

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Notes:

[1] Wikipedia gives a bit more detail: '"Drink Coca-Cola 5¢", an 1890s advertising poster showing a woman in fancy clothes (partially vaguely influenced by 16th- and 17th-century styles) drinking Coke. The card on the table says "Home Office, The Coca-Cola Co. Atlanta Ga. Branches: Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Dallas". Notice the cross-shaped color registration marks near the bottom center and top center (which presumably would have been removed for a production print run). Someone has crudely written on it at lower left (with an apparent leaking fountain pen) "Our Faovrite" [sic].'

[2] Contemporaries news readers didn't use the term yellow journalism at that time. To them it was yellow kid journalism, after Outcault's Yellow Kid comic strips, about which I've previously written (see New York Sunday comics in the 90s & aughts).

[3] A contemporary account describes the whole process in considerable detail: Modern industrial progress by Charles Henry Cochrane (J.B. Lippincott company, 1904). I've outlined the method of making newspaper text in a previous blog post: Newspaper Story.

[4] In practice, more than three printing plates could be used. There might be one for black and grey tones and another for brown. Where faithfulness to the original picture was important, such as with high quality fine art reproductions, more plates would be added for different prominent tones in the original.

[5] "Photo-Lithography" in The chemistry of light and photography: in its application to art, science, and industry by Hermann Wilhelm Vogel (London, Henry S. King & Co., 1875

[6] See "Halftones" in the same source, and:

HALF-TONE ILLUSTRATION OVERLAYING

By "half-tone," in so far as this relates to printing plates made by the photo-mechanical process, is meant all engravings, pictorial and otherwise, which have their grays or lighter tones produced or enhanced by mesh formations over the face of the engraving, whether these be conveyed through a "dotted" or "lined" glass screen — the usual mechanical manner of producing half-tone effects on this character of printing plate.
-- The Inland and American printer and lithographer (Maclean-Hunter Pub. Co., 1895)

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}

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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