BOB'S BITS

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"But alas! Misfortunes are too apt to wear out Friendship." Charlotte Cibber Clarke.

Throughout the centuries, the English theatre has had its dynasties, families that pass their talents through two, occasionally three, generations of actors, directors, theatre owners, and even (occasionally) critics. Parsed down, there’s usually just one ‘genius,’ such as Sir Henry Irving (1838-1905, the first English actor to be knighted), who passes on to children, nieces or nephews reflections (sometimes pale) of their magic. Perhaps the longest-lived was the Redgrave bunch, still kicking up their professional heels but originating with the silent movie star Roy Redgrave (1871-1922). The Dublin Cusacks are another, starting with Cyril (1910-1993), his wife Maureen, and their amazing trio of daughters, Sinéad, Sorcha, and Niamh. One of the first such families was the Cibber clan, founded by the actor-playwright Colley Cibber and his actress wife Catherine. Their most famous turn came with their daughter Charlotte Cibber, born on January 13, 1713, whose acting career began at age four. Charlotte was indeed unusual, notably her masculine side which surfaced first in her successful campaign to have a ‘gentleman’s education,’ ranging from the classics to foxhunting, which prepared her for a long career as actress, actor, and impresario, albeit with intervals of being imprisoned for debt. Along the way she acted as Charlotte Cibber, Charlotte Clarke, and Charlotte Sacheverell, and “Mr. Brown,” depending on her married state. Charlotte was a dominant figure in life as on the stage, whether playing as a man or as a woman, and gathering to her a number of fast friends whose generosity (and/or patience) kept her (mainly) out of prison, (mostly) in the theatre, and (occasionally) acting for her impresario brother, but also as a famous author, notably of an autobiography about her strange way(s) of life. When she or he died in 1760 the British Chronicle decided on “she” and called her “a gentlewoman remarkable for her adventures and misfortunes.” Indeed. ©.

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"Nobody needs a smile as much as those who have none to give." Hal Roach, 1988.

Mules, those sexless crosses of horses and donkeys, are notoriously difficult beasts, “mulish” so to speak. Perhaps that is why those who trained and sold (or drove) mules were called “muleskinners.” For years I thought the word indicated that some incorrigible mules were executed, as being so stubborn that they were worth nothing more than their hides. But it may have been his early experience as a muleskinner that Hal Roach was deemed one of the best producers to work for in all of Hollywood, his studios being “laff a minute” places where actors, directors, and perhaps the occasional mule enjoyed their work and got on together quite nicely. Indeed the Roach lots specialized in comedy. Harry Eugene “Hal” Roach was born in Elmira, New York on January 14, 1892, the son of immigrant parents (Irish and Swiss) and, it is said, was once entertained by Mark Twain (who had Elmira connections). Finding Elmira otherwise bereft of opportunity, young Roach, like Huck Finn before him, lit out for the territories, in his case Alaska. It was there that Roach played muleskinner, his hopes for a gold strike unfulfilled. At age 20, in 1912, Roach lit out for Hollywood, a different sort of territory, where he quickly graduated from “extra” to director to producer to executive at the Roach Studios in Culver City. There he specialized in comedy, getting together with the likes of Harold Lloyd, Will Rogers, ZaSu Pitts, that oddest of couples Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy and the kids of the “Our Gang” crew. Whether in silents or talkies, Roach specialized for a long time in “shorts,” but by the early 1930s he was producing feature films, most of them slapstick but occasionally (as in Topper, 1937) more sophisticated comedies. But he didn’t shy away from serious stuff, for instance Roach produced Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men in 1939. Come 1941, too old for active service, Roach volunteered himself and his studios to the war effort, and afterwards was never quite as dominant a figure. But he lived a very long while, and in his 92nd and 100th years received lifetime Academy Awards from, well, the Academy. At least as stubborn as a mule, Hal Roach died a few months past his 100th birthday, ©

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“Inasmuch as ye have done it to the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” Matthew 25:40.

“High Church” Anglicanism (Episcopalianism in the USA) has had various iterations over the centuries, but took clearer shape in the 19th century. The so-called Oxford Movement, beginning in the 1830s, made “high church” into a synonym for Anglo-Catholicism. Relatively few went so far as John Henry Newman, an Oxford don who came to view the Protestant Church of England as a “National Apostasy” and ended up a cardinal in the Roman communion. But there were other expressions, for instance the creation of sisterhoods within the Anglican church. In 1864, Dorothy Wyndlow Pattison (born on January 16, 1832), plighted her troth to Christ as “Sister Dora” and joined one of the first of these, the Christ Church Sisterhood (a nursing order now known as the Community of the Holy Rood.) In January 1865, Sister Dora was assigned to a cottage hospital in the coal-mining town of Walsall. Over the next 13 years her dedication to this calling made her locally famous, a heroic and faithful nurse to “her people” through mining disasters and a smallpox epidemic (in the latter defying an order of the sisterhood to flee). Like many in the 19th-century high church movement, Sister Dora preferred to serve the poor of the parish, taking her inspiration from Matthew 25:40. Sister Dora was no conservative in politics, nor in medicine. In her last year, ill with breast cancer, Dora visited Joseph Lister’s surgery in London and was inspired to bring his antiseptic disciplines to Walsall’s new hospital. Sister Dora “converted” few to her high church views, but when she died in December 1878 the “whole town” turned out for her funeral, and her pall was borne to the Queen Street Cemetery by eighteen railwaymen in their working uniforms. Sister Dora’s statue, paid for by popular subscription, sculpted by Francis Williamson and wearing her “Dora’s cap,” was erected in 1886 and still today stands guard in Walsall’s town center. ©

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"A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malemute Saloon . . ." First line of "The Shooting of Dan McGraw," by Robert Service.

Robert William Service, the “Bard of the Yukon,” was born in Preston, Lancashire on January 16, 1874, the son of a not-very-successful bank clerk father and an heiress mother. In order to preserve his Scottishness, his parents sent Robert to Ayrshire to live with three maiden aunts, which may have had a profound effect on the boy. His very first poetry was written there, and he continued to scribble at a Glasgow high school after his parents had moved back to Scotland. Along the way Service developed a ‘thing’ for the narrative poetry and stories of Kipling and Stevenson and a taste for adventure which he carried with him to the far west of Canada—but as a bank clerk, a rather unkind fate for a young man who kept a Buffalo Bill costume in his closet. He also typically dressed formally for dinner (in this or that restaurant), played polo, and continued to dream of a more adventurous life. The Yukon called to him, and there he went (to Dawson) in 1908. By then Dawson was nearly a ghost town, the heroic age of the gold rush now replaced by industrial-scale mining, the population shrunk by 90% (to about 4,000), and Service living (mainly alone) in a tiny cabin in the woods. It was there that he wrote the poetry that made him rich: romantic verses about the old days which Service whipped into shape by reading at community gatherings. It’s now regarded as mere doggerel, but his books were best-sellers for a couple of decades and his poetry was recited in parlors and village halls by reluctant youngsters pushed to it by their doting parents (including my dad, who knew a couple of Service poems by heart). Probably the most frequently performed were Service’s “The Shooting of Dan McGraw” and “The Cremation of Sam McGee.” Both appeared in his Songs of a Sourdough, from whose several editions he copped royalties of about $100,000 (almost $3 million in today’s money). Other volumes sold almost as well and enabled this failed bank clerk to live well, in Paris and on the Riviera, until his death in 1958.

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"Let me pass quietly away." The last words of Paul Cuffe, Quaker merchant and shipbuilder, Westport, MA, 1817.

One of the most noteworthy of American free blacks of the revolutionary era was Paul Cuffe, born Paul Slocum on January 17, 1759. Paul was the youngest son in the large family of Kofi (“Cuffee”) Slocum, an Ashanti, and Ruth Moses, a Wampanoag. Kofi was freed (circa 1745) by his Quaker owner, John Slocum, set up on a farm in Westport, MA, but also developed seafaring interests. Paul Cuffe was born on Cuttyhunk Island, and would take to the sea, first (aged 16) as crew on a New Bedford whaler but eventually as merchant, shipbuilder, and sea captain. He chose the patriot side in the American Revolution and was active as a privateer and smuggler, known especially for his ability to evade the Royal Navy blockade of Nantucket Island. During the Revolution, in 1780, Paul and an elder brother sued Massachusetts for their rights as citizens or, failing that, for remission of taxes, arguing the familiar patriot line that they were taxed without representation. The case ended not in a judgment but in legislation (1783) that granted the vote to all freemen of color—at least those who paid taxes. But Paul Cuffe is more famous for his successes and failures as an active participant in settling freed Americans of color in West Africa, first in the British colony of Sierra Leone, and then investing heavily in ensuring their economic success. In this work he became well-known in England (notably in London, Liverpool, and Bristol) and America, and almost certainly was the first African-American to dine at the White House as a guest of the president (at the time, James Madison of Virginia). In these years (ca. 1785-1815) Paul Cuffe built up his shipyard (eventually building vessels of 250 tons burthen), expanded his farm near Westport, invested in Sierra Leone’s economic development, and still found the time (and the money) to be the principal donor for the new Quaker meeting house in Westport. The meeting house still stands. As for Cuffe himself, his birthdate is now noted in Massachusetts as “Paul Cuffe Day.” He died in 1817, leaving behind him a large estate which he willed to his Wampanoag widow, their six children, and his surviving siblings.. ©

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Liberating women through holistic medical care: Jane Elizabeth Waterston in Cape Town, 1880-1932.

Robben Island, in Table Bay off Cape Town, SA, has achieved an infamy well beyond its small size because of its role as a hard-labor prison for Nelson Mandela and other ANC activists. It began its prison history at the end of the 17th century, serving as such for the Dutch (Boer) settlers and latterly as a British concentration camp for Boer women and children during the Second Boer War (1899-1902). Their terrifying experience produced much mental distress, and it was at this time that a British woman doctor achieved a measure of fame in treating—and studying—the inmates’ mental and physical illnesses. Jane Elizabeth Waterston was born in Inverness, Scotland, on January 18, 1843, about the time of the schism in the Presbyterian Church of Scotland that produced the Free Church. While most of her family, including her father, remained committed to orthodoxy, Jane—when she came of age—joined with the evangelicals and, in 1866, shipped out to South Africa as a mission teacher. Her aim was to raise the status and power of women, in which she enjoyed some success (including amongst Xhosa women). In order to have greater impact she returned to Britain to train as a doctor and, in 1874, became one of the first students in the London School of Medicine for Women. She also sought certification as a psychiatric doctor, which she thought necessary for truly effective work among the colony’s women. So in 1899 she was a natural choice for staffing the concentration camp hospital on Robben Island; during all these years Waterston built up a significant following amongst Cape Colony women whether Boer or British or Xhosa. A radical in some respects—not least in embracing the therapeutic potential of psychiatry—she was hidebound in others. But the care she lavished on all her patients won her a large following even among the Boers whose racial policies she despised. It is said that her funeral procession (1932) was one of the largest in the history of Cape Town. ©

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"One thing the Bible is not is a scientific textbook. Scripture , , , is not teaching science." George Coyne, SJ, 1994.

When the word “Jesuitical” first appeared in English in the later 16th century, it was not meant as a compliment, rather as an “attack word” that focused on the diabolical cleverness of priests and missionaries in the new (founded in 1534) Jesuit order. Jesuit casuists (another good word) could take up any argument, turn it on its head, make it into something never intended. There is some truth in this etymology; for much of the 18th century, the Jesuits were regarded as too clever by half even in the Roman church. On the whole, though, they’ve recovered their reputation and serve today as a respectable ginger group within their church. One such ginger Jesuit was George Vincent Coyne, born in Baltimore on January 19, 1933. After his almost wholly Jesuit education (pun intended) culminating in a Georgetown PhD in astronomy Coyne embarked on a distinguished professional career as an astrophysicist at the University of Arizona. He was also appointed director of the Vatican observatory (in 1978, by Pope John Paul I), and in both places made scientific headlines. At the same time, as a Jesuit, he wanted to clean up the church’s historical record on science, not least its condemnation of Galileo in 1633 and its purblind opposition to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. Father Coyne was successful in both efforts, getting successive popes to accept Darwinism as “more than a hypothesis” and—more remarkably—to acknowledge that the church’s condemnation of Galileo was in error. After these triumphs, Father Coyne continued his work as an astronomer at the Vatican Observatory outside Rome (and at its branch station near Flagstaff, Arizona) and as a philosopher at LeMoyne University. Theologically, he based his arguments on what he called God’s infinite power and freedom to create a universe that has evolved (freely) towards an ever-greater complexity. Thus George Coyne made “jesuitical” into a complimentary adjective. He died, much mourned, in 2018. ©

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"My buildings will be my legacy... they will speak for me long after I'm gone." Julia Morgan.

Julia Hunt Morgan was born in San Francisco on January 20, 1872 but baptized in New York at her mother’s family church. In this (although she had no say in the matter) the baby was following the money, for her father’s main success in life was to marry into money, in the shape of Eliza Woodland Parmalee, Julia’s mother. Julia and all her siblings were baptized in New York, just as soon as they could get there. Julia was one Morgan child who kept going back to New York to hobnob with her Parmalee grandparents and their friends, one of whom was an architect, who admired the bright child and urged her to educate herself for a career. That she did, in architecture, although her first degree (at the University of California, in 1894) was in civil engineering. She then applied for the architecture program at the École Nationale Supérior des Beaux Arts in Paris, being admitted (on her third attempt, for the school had a thing about women). She swept through the program in three years (rather than the usual five), and returned home to pursue her career. In this, her family connections and her money undoubtedly helped, but enough of her many (300+) buildings survive to make it clear that her main gift was talent. Undoubtedly her most famous buildings were commissioned by William Randolph Hearst, including (at the University of California) the Hearst Mining Building and the Hearst Greek Theater. After she established her own practice (in 1910) Morgan did a lot more for Hearst, and for a lot more money. Most notably, Morgan designed the Hearst castle (and other buildings) at Hearst’s San Simeon ranch and various houses at the Hearsts’ second estate at Mount Shasta. Her designs for the Hearsts are great, grandiose, derivative splashes. They long obscured Morgan’s more modest, more innovative, and more pleasingly designed buildings, institutions and private homes, that were the main basis for her 2014 (so of course posthumous) award of the AIA Gold Medal. ©

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"It all depends on one's self." Duncan Grant, on his ethical judgments--and perhaps on his art, as well.

Duncan James Corrowr Grant was one of the most influential painters in 20th-century Britain, living (and painting) for long enough to go into and out of fashion at least twice. Even once should have been an unexpected fate for a Scots lad born deep in the Highlands on January 21, 1885. Unexpected but for two things. The Grants were an ancient Scottish family (the Grant estate, Rothiemurchas, near Aviemore, had been in the family forever—and still is), and through Duncan Grant’s aunt, Jane Maria Grant, Duncan was cousin to her dozen (or so) Strachey children, including the essayist and biographer Lytton Strachey. I believe Duncan was intended for the Rugby School, but his ties with the Stracheys sent him instead to St. Paul’s School as a day boy. There he learned to appreciate art, particularly painterly art, thanks largely to his Aunt Jane, and to have his first (of several) homosexual affairs with his cousin Lytton. Meanwhile, thanks to Jane’s urging, Duncan diverted from his intended path (to Cambridge) by attending the Westminster School of Art, helped along by several family connections with Paris, where he continued his art studies for a couple of years. Back in London, maturing as a painter, Grant became a central figure in the Bloomsbury Group, had several more love affairs (one with John Maynard Keynes) and found his true métier in post-impressionist painting. Many of his works from this period are found scattered through the best London museums. Round about 1916 Grant developed an on-again off-again relationship with Vanessa Bell (Virginia Woolf’s sister), produced at least one child with her, and lived with her and her husband Clive. This gave Grant another interest, in decorative art, in which he and/or Vanessa gained several famous commissions, some of which can still be seen, including Duncan Grant’s sensitive re-imaginings of two rural Sussex churches. Vanessa died in 1961, Duncan in 1978. They are buried together in Firle parish churchyard. ©.

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"My face has changed with the years and has enough history in it to give audiences something to work with." Jeanne Moreau

Several times before she died (in 2017, aged 89) I saw film reviews in which Jeanne Moreau was described as “ageless.” That’s usually meant as a compliment (at least, I think so) but in Moreau’s case it misses the point. She had this way of seeming older, perhaps wiser too; her characters were more ‘traveled’ than anyone else in the film. It’s also relevant that she didn’t become well known in English-language cinema until she was in her 30s, when it was OK to be complimented for being “ageless” especially since she so often played ‘the older (or wiser) woman.’ By then she had had a distinguished acting career on stage (at the Comédie-Française and the Thèâtre Nationale Populaire) in the 1940s and 1950s). Jeanne Moreau was born in Paris on January 23, 1928, her mother a Lancashire lass dancing at the Folies Bergères and her father a Paris restaurant owner. Moreau was inspired to take up acting after seeing a performance of Jean Anouilh’s Antigone, studied at the Paris Conservatoire, then joined the Comédie Française. She broke into film stardom with leading roles in The Lovers (1958, directed by Louis Malle) and Jules et Jim (1962, directed by Francis Truffaut). I first saw her in Jules et Jim, and began to understand how one might die for love, or because of it. Her cinema career continued through at least one film per year up to 1976 and then pretty steadily through her last performance in 2015. She had two early marriages, but is more famous for her affairs and/or deep friendships with Truffaut, Malle, Pierre Cardin, Tony Richardson, and Jean Genet. One interesting observation is that it was generally the men, and not Moreau, who spoke publicly of these relationships. At 40, she played an 18-year-old for director Orson Welles, who concluded that she was “the greatest actress in the world.” I haven’t seen that film (The Immortal Story) but may have to look it up, just to see whether Moreau’s 18-year-old seems wiser than anyone else, including Welles. ©

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"The path of civilization is paved with tin cans." Robert Hubbard.

Today we can celebrate (in the USA only if we are over 21) the 85th anniversary of the first successful manufacture, distribution, and sale of canned beer. And it wasn’t Anheuser-Busch, nor was it a flip-top aluminum can. For it was on January 24, 1935 that the Gottfried Krueger Brewing Company of Richmond, Virginia, working in partnership with the American Can Company delivered a test run of 2000 specially coated steel cans of Krueger’s Finest Beer and Krueger’s Cream Ale to customers in Richmond. Polled as to their views, these loyal drinkers gave the cans (or, rather, their contents) a 91% approval rating, and Krueger’s went into serious production. But why did it take so long?? After all, canned foods distributed on steel rails were consumed by the Union Army during the Civil War (some say that’s why the North won), and by the late 19th century “tinned cans” were common containers for food. Beer was first canned by the American Can Company in 1909, but not successfully (beer interacted badly with tin), and the idea was suspended because of war and then because of the “noble experiment” of prohibition. In 1935, Kruegers’ success was phenomenal and soon 80% of American distributors were featuring that firm’s canned beer and ale. The bigger brewers noticed, and Budweiser, Schlitz, and Pabst had by the end of 1935 produced and sold (and Americans had imbibed) 200,000,000 cans of beer. Thus was proven that even in the midst of the Great Depression American capitalism could shoot fish in a barrel. ©

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“Anything may happen when womanhood has ceased to be a protected occupation.” Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own, 1929.

Every January 25th, my thoughts are likely to turn to Robert Burns, owing at least partly to pleasant memories of several Burns Night suppers, first in Lancaster and then in St. Louis. But surely Virginia Woolf (born Adeline Virginia Stephen on January 25, 1882) is at least as deserving of “Woolf Night” dinners. Recognized today as one of the most gifted modernists in Anglophone literature (ranking with Faulkner and Joyce) she was more productive than either of them especially taking into account her critical essays. But perhaps such evenings could never rise (or sink?) to the revelry of a Burns Night. Woolf was born into Victorian England’s high middle class, and although there were many other ways for such girls to make their mark, her kinship networks (maternal and paternal) pointed her towards an intellectual life. Step-granddaughter to William Makepeace Thackeray, related to the Darwins and the Stracheys, and with James Russell Lowell as her godfather, Virginia was educated at home by her father, an eminent critic and founding editor of the Dictionary of National Biography, and by her mother, a pre-Raphaelite. A parade of intellectual house guests, (some of whom almost outstayed their welcome) reinforced her aesthetic thoughtfulness. But there was a darker theme. Her father’s death in 1904 provoked the first signs of serious depression, but she married—very happily—Leonard Woolf, and he and the “Bloomsbury Group” that gathered around them provided emotional and from time to time sexual sustenance, whether in Bloomsbury itself or in country retreats. Meanwhile, she had begun to write (first published at 18), and that, too, kept her going. Virginia Woolf would become one of the 20th-century’s leading novelists, experimental in plot and prose, a thoroughgoing modernist and perceptive critic. She’s most famous for Mrs. Dalloway (1926), To the Lighthouse (1927), A Room of One’s Own (1929) and perhaps Orlando (1928) which taken together provide a kind of (auto) biography, too. Virginia Woolf’s depression finally got the worst of her in 1941, when she died a suicide. In its obituary, the New York Times called her “one of the most subtle, original and modern of moderns.” And so she remains. ©

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'I was so fortunate to have achieved everything while I was young. I have recorded the full repertoire … I have no regrets.' Jacqueline Du Pré.

In the large stringed instrument family, the modern cello seems to be of mixed parentage. But it has always seemed to me to have a more dramatic voice, a broader range than any other. That may be why it has produced fewer but greater star soloists than the violin. It may also explain why one of the great modern cello pieces is entitled “A whole distant world,” Henri Dutilleux’s Tout un monde lointain (1967-1970). That work was commissioned by, or for, Msitislav Rostroprovich (1927-2007), not only a great performer but also a great teacher. One of Rostroprovich’s finest students, and arguably the greatest cellist of the 20th century, was Jacqueline Mary Du Pré, born in Oxford, England, on January 26, 1945. After several triumphs as a child prodigy, including a ‘masterclass’ performance with Pablo Casals when she was only 15, Du Pré went to Moscow to study with Rostroprovich. She had been dangerously close to playing herself out, but with her new tutor she found “a new freshness” in her instrument and in herself. This may have primed her for her next conquest, of the pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim (1942- ), whom she married, in Israel, in 1967. Together they became the headline couple of classical music, performing as a pair (Barenboim at the piano) or in concert (Barenboim conducting). These years (1966-1970) would be the high point of Du Pré’s career, for at the end of it she began to suffer symptoms of multiple sclerosis which, even before it was formally diagnosed (in 1973), sent her into cycles of depression and exhaustion, marked by cancellations of concerts and of concert tours and by an unhappy affair with her brother-in-law. After years of successfully coping with MS, Du Pré’s condition deteriorated badly in the 1980s. She died, at least some of her vast promise still unfulfilled, in London in October 1987. ©

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"The racial divides in the United States will not be overcome . . . until each of us become guardians of the sufferings history has bequeathed us.” Julius Lester,"Guardian," 2008.

St. Louis is a city that likes to keep its fame to itself, and that unbecoming modesty extends to a reluctance to acknowledge its distinguished natives. University City’s “St. Louis Walk of Fame” is, please pardon the pun, a step in the right direction, but nowhere among its 150 or so brass stars can you find the prolific singer, writer, photographer and scholar Julius Lester, born here on January 27, 1939. True, Lester left St. Louis when he was only two, but there are others embedded in the Walk whose town ties were shorter or even more superficial. Julius Lester left at age 2 when his father answered the ministerial call to an AME church in Kansas City and moved again to Nashville (for the same reason) in 1952. Julius Lester himself, very well educated, fetched up in New York City in 1961, where he married, converted to Judaism, became an SNCC activist, and began his multi-colored professional career, hosting a local TV show, getting deeply involved in the blues and folk scene, learning photography, and beginning his wide reading in Afro-American history and literature. Lester’s first book, co-authored with Leadbelly and Pete Seeger, was about how to play the 12-string guitar. That came out in ’65 and may have won him a faculty post at UMass Amherst, where he taught African-American Studies and then Judaica from 1971 to 2003 (and won several university and state teaching awards), Overall, he’s published 48 books (nine of them award winners or nominees); and he’s put on photography exhibitions at the Forbes Library and the Smithsonian Institution. What intrigues me most is that 31 of those books are children’s stories, mostly on African-American themes, including three volumes that revise Joel Chandler Harris’s Uncle Remus stories (of which we might say they were urgently in need of revision). You should read at least one of them before Julius Lester finally gets his star in our St. Louis Walk of Fame. ©

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Lucy Mair, pioneer anthropologist.

The distinguished career of the anthropologist Lucy Mair (born near London on January 28, 1901) sheds light also on the phenomenon of English middle-class radicalism, personified for her by William Beveridge and her mother Jessy Mair. Lucy’s First Class degree (Classics) at Newnham, Cambridge in 1922 left her rather at loose ends, a situation from which she was rescued by Beveridge’s idea that she should take up a lectureship (in international relations!!) at the London School of Economics (LSE). It worked out pretty well, for in 1919 Beveridge had become director at the LSE with Jessy Mair as his private secretary (and his partner in a platonic affair that lasted longer than most marriages, from about 1906 until Beveridge’s death in 1963). Lucy’s connection to the director (and his secretary, her mother) brought her into contact with Bronislaw Malinowski, pioneer anthropologist, and set Lucy on her career, academically in anthropology and politically as a trainer of colonial administrators. It was a circle of acquaintance, influence, and/or friendship that took in all sorts, including Winston Churchill, Beatrice and Sidney Webb, Veronica Wedgwood, even elements of the Bloomsbury Group. Within it, while Beveridge himself (almost) sold Winston Churchill on the idea of the Welfare State, Lucy Mair herself took on Anthropology at a crucial stage in the discipline’s development, published widely, and bought into the idea of Europeans (for ‘Europeans’ read ‘Britons’) holding African and Asian colonies in “trusteeship” for black and brown people who, once they had developed their very own, ‘native’ middle-class elites, could be safely entrusted with self-government. Lucy Mair lived on at LSE until long after Jessy and William had left, then in ‘retirement’ continued to publish, taught at Durham and Kent, and never abandoned her elitist views of how colonies might best take on the challenges of nationhood. ©.

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"Sour melodramas and rancid comedies. I’m sick of them . . . a picture should be an adventure." Ernst Lubitsch.

Hollywood, AKA Tinseltown, is not a wholly American creation. Among its greatest foreigners were donated to us by the German cultural reaction that was Naziism. So it was that several, like Billy Wilder, were Jews. Wilder would lose his whole family to the Holocaust, but not the sense of humor that animates several of his best American films. Fritz Lang, on the other hand, was “born Catholic and very Puritan”; Weimar and then Hitler made him into a pessimist, as we can see in The Big Heat (1953) and While the City Sleeps (1956). Perhaps the most successful of them all was Ernst Lubitsch, born in Berlin on January 29, 1892, who rose to the top in Germany first as an actor and then as director. He came to America for the money and the glamor. Indeed, he was ‘imported’ in 1922 by the leading actress Mary Pickford, who thought she needed better direction. She got it, but not for long, for Lubitsch’s talent for sophisticated comedy (perhaps especially when it came to sex) made him a hot property, the more so after the advent of talkies. Today, perhaps his most famous film is Ninotchka (1939), starring one foreigner, Greta Garbo, and written by another, Billy Wilder, but there are several others you might find via streaming or on DVD, including The Shop Around the Corner (1940) a comedic love story of happy accidents set in Budapest and starring Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullavan. Another Lubitsch film that should be among the classiest of reruns was Heaven Can Wait (1943) in which a happy sinner (Alan Ameche) tries to convince a skeptical Lucifer that he really does belong in Hell. He also took deadly aim at Hitler and the Nazis was To Be or Not To Be (1942), a black comedy which begins in Warsaw on the eve of the German invasion. Lubitsch, already suffering from heart disease, wound down his directing career and died in 1947, but not before receiving a “lifetime” Academy Award for bringing the “Lubitsch Touch” to the American cinema. ©.

[Stanley]

"Never believe what a patient tells you his doctor said." William Jenner.

William Jenner, later Sir William, first baronet, was born in Chatham, England, on January 30, 1815, and went to school at Rochester where he may have known Charles Dickens, three years his senior. Jenner was not, however, known for his literary connections, certainly not for his literary accomplishments. He received his baronetcy in recognition of his medical services to the royal family, for years (from 1861) as physician in ordinary to Queen Victoria but also to her Prince Consort, Albert of Saxe-Coburg and then, for a time, to their eldest son the Prince of Wales. In the history of medicine, Jenner is noted as a distinguished pathologist who confirmed (in 1850) the differences and distinctions between typhoid and typhus. This important discovery led Jenner to diagnose Prince Albert’s final and fatal illness as typhoid fever. That may have been a misdiagnosis, for modern medicine thinks the more likely culprit was Crohn’s Disease or, possibly, an intestinal cancer. But those diagnoses were not available to Jenner, nor of course to the queen, who in any case did not blame Jenner for Albert’s death but rather, when the Prince of Wales fell ill with typhoid (in 1863) assigned Jenner to care for the Prince. Jenner’s treatments were successful, at least in regard to the typhoid, but had little effect on the Prince’s womanizing ways. We may therefore guess that it was in gratitude for Jenner’s medical care that in 1868 Victoria made him a baronet, and in a turn of gratitude Jenner probably named his fifth (and youngest) son (born in 1869) Leopold, after the Leopold of Belgium who had done so much to bring Victoria and Albert together. William Jenner’s career as consultant physician flourished, partly no doubt because of his medical genius, and he became excessively rich, or rich enough to make young Leopold Jenner one of England’s greatest polo players. Incidentally, in the 1860s Jenner supervised the medical studies of Emily Blackwell, Elizabeth Blackwell’s younger sister. After all, if a woman could be Queen-Empress, a woman could also be a medical doctor. ©

[Stanley]

"American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come . . . He now wills to remove [the offence, and] He gives to North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came." Abraham Linco...

Today we celebrate the abolition of slavery, for it was on January 31, 1865, that congress gave its final approval to what would become the XIII Amendment to the Constitution. As the New York Times reported the matter: At 3 o'clock, by general consent, all discussion having ceased, the preliminary votes to reconsider and second the demand for the previous question were agreed to by a vote of 113 yeas, to 58 nays; and amid profound silence the Speaker announced that the yeas and nays would be taken directly upon the pending proposition. During the call, when prominent Democrats voted aye, there was suppressed evidence of applause and gratification exhibited in the galleries, but it was evident that the great interest centered entirely upon the final result, and when the presiding officer announced that the resolution was agreed to by yeas 119, nays 56, the enthusiasm of all present, save a few disappointed politicians, knew no bounds, and for several moments the scene was grand and impressive beyond description. No attempt was made to suppress the applause which came from all sides, every one feeling that the occasion justified the fullest expression of approbation and joy. Stephen Spielberg’s film, Lincoln (2012), brilliantly captures the jubilation of the moment. Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural, delivered five weeks later, helps us to understand its ironies and to accept that slavery was a national problem, not a regional one, a national sin as Lincoln put it in this finest of all his speeches. The war that ended slavery began as a war to save it, and as we now know, after the events of January 6th, it will take more than an old war to wash away slavery’s bitter heritage. ©

[Tripps]

"Never believe what a patient tells you his doctor said." William Jenner.

"Don't always believe what a doctor tells you his patient said" Dave Tripps

[Stanley]

That thought did cross my mind as well David.....

[Stanley]

"The DeWitt Research Awards commemorate Lydia Adams DeWitt (1859-1928), a pathologist and research scientist known for her pioneering work in the chemotherapy of tuberculosis." 2003 announcement from the office of Mary Sue Coleman, Professor of Chemi...

Among our female pioneers of science we should find a place for Lydia DeWitt, born Lydia Adams in Flint, Michigan, on February 1, 1859. Her childhood seems (to me) unusual, for after her mother died in 1864, she and a younger sister were mothered by their eldest sister, who not very much later married her father, Oscar Adams, an attorney. Educated in Flint schools and then at Michigan Normal, Lydia became a schoolteacher, wife (she married a fellow teacher, Alton DeWitt), and mother of two children. At about this point, Lydia DeWitt left her husband and set out to construct her own life and career, starting medical studies at the University of Michigan in 1895 and within four years graduating MD (1898) and BSc (Biology, 1899). Thereafter her medical research career flourished, mainly at Michigan but with intervals spent at the University of Berlin, Washington University in St. Louis, the St. Louis city department of health, and Chicago University. This was not easy work for a woman, let alone one who was a divorcee with two children, and one result was that DeWitt never found a secure berth where she could pursue her own research agenda. Despite these ‘blockages’ DeWitt made important discoveries basic to the later development of effective chemotherapies for diabetes and tuberculosis. Some sense of the problems facing a woman in medical science may be gleaned from the fact that, barred by her sex from membership in various faculty organizations at Ann Arbor, Lydia DeWitt founded her own “Women’s Research Club” in 1902. Then, at Chicago, DeWitt successfully assimilated younger females into her own research projects. Suffering from poor heart health, she retired in 1925 and died in 1928 at her daughter’s house in Texas. Today she is remembered through the Lydia DeWitt research fellowship at Michigan, open only to female scientists. ©.

[Stanley]

"At last Sir Horace took the field, A batter of great might, Moved like a lion, he a while Put Surrey in a fright." 1773 doggerel on Mann's 1773 innings for Kent (against Surrey)

Ask an educated American to identify ‘Horace Mann,’ and chances are that Mann (1796-1859) will be remembered as a pioneer of free and universal public education, even perhaps as the intrepid soul who married one of the formidable Peabody sisters of Salem. Ask the same question in England, and there’s a possibility that Horatio Mann will be remembered as one of the greatest patrons of cricket. That Horace Mann (at school, he let it be known that he preferred ‘Horace’ to ‘Horatio’) was born into the upper reaches of Kent society on February 2, 1744. There is no evidence that he gave any thought to universal public education; though part of his father’s great fortune was invested in Horace’s schooling (at Charterhouse) and then his finishing (at Peterhouse, Cambridge). Horace, thus already very wealthy, became richer still when (in 1775) his childless uncle (also Horatio Mann) made over his estate to his namesake nephew. From that came also Horace’s baronetcy (only fitting, for in 1765 he had married the daughter of an earl) and what little he knew of public life as an MP (Maidstone, 1772-84 and then Sandwich, 1790-1807). Only three of his speeches survive, for his real fame rests on his role as a great patron of cricket, both at the village and county levels. The cricket ground he built at his uncle’s estate (at Bishopsbourne, Maidstone) no longer exists but there is a cricket ground still in use near Horace’s father’s great house at Linton. Moreover, Horace actually played the game, apparently creditably, and records still exist of two of his innings. As he grew older, he batted less and betted more, and some of his wagers became infamous. When he hosted a match he entertained lavishly (with dinner and dancing), and once he devised a match played on horseback, which drew some criticism. But to give him credit he also saw something of cricket’s future and was, in 1787, one of the founders of Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), where he doubtless contributed to the formalization of the rules of the game (and not the one played on horseback). ©.

[Stanley]

"My leading idea was the establishment of a journal removed alike from servile partisanship on the one hand and from gagged, mincing neutrality on the other." Horace Greeley, 1868.

In his famed address, “Self-Reliance” (1841), Ralph Waldo Emerson proclaimed his American hero to be “A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont, who in turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township . . . in successive years, and always, like a cat, falls on his feet” he could have been talking about young America’s favorite gadfly, Horace Greeley, who in the same year, 1841, founded the New York Tribune, a campaigning paper that—in the form of its weekly edition—soon became America’s favorite newspaper—at least north of the Mason-Dixon line. Greeley was certainly no “city doll;” he had been born poor (in New Hampshire, on February 3, 1811), grew up moving west with his family, and tried several professions before settling on journalism. His Tribune became famous for its enthusiasms, for utopian socialism, for dietary reform, for universal salvation, even for women’s rights and the Italian revolution (a connection made when Greeley hired Margaret Fuller as his European correspondent). He even made it into Congress (briefly, as a Whig) in 1848, then swiftly changed over to the Republican party in 1854, reluctantly backing Lincoln in 1860. Throughout the Civil War and beyond, Greeley’s temperamental enthusiasms for new, radical ideas exasperated Lincoln. His perfectionism could not, he then claimed, coexist with the corruptions of the party under Grant. So Greeley’s last and most spectacular fling in politics was to stand for president in 1872 as a ‘Liberal Republican.’ The Democrats also nominated him, but the time was not ripe. Greeley lost, announced his retirement back to journalism, and died, all in pretty short order. So many people, of such different views, attended his funeral that we can say, like Emerson’s cat, Horace Greeley fell on his feet. ©

[Stanley]

"Insects are my darling pursuit; any you send under that denomination either large or small will meet a hearty reception." Dru Drury, letter to a Virginia correspondent, Dec.18, 1770.

Historians of science have, in recent decades, made almost a ‘type’ of the clergyman-naturalist, men for whom the cure of souls was not quite a full-time occupation and who (in the rural parishes of the Church of England) found and studied miracles of design in animate creation. Perhaps the most famous of these was William Paley (1743-1805), for whom the mere existence of apparently well-designed but distinctive species was presumptive proof of God’s wisdom and witness. But what might one make of a silversmith-naturalist? There was at least one such, Dru Drury, born in London on February 4, 1725. After the requisite training, he became a member of the Goldsmith’s Company in 1751. He was generally very successful, and through much of the 1760s and 1770s, was making about £2000 annually from his business, a stupendous sum, never mind rents from his urban properties. Only when Drury retired, circa 1789, was he able to indulge fully in his passion for insects, collecting them, classifying them, drawing them, and producing beautifully illustrated books about them. While he was still silversmithing, Drury paid others for specimens (at 6d per specimen “whatever the size”) but after his retirement he did some freelance collecting on his own. He became modestly famous, for instance counting the great Linnaeus among his regular correspondents, and in 1780 becoming president of the London Society of Entomologists. Drury spent his retirement (at a country home in Hertfordshire) gardening, angling, experimenting in winemaking and distilling brandies (using several different fruits)—and, of course, collecting local bugs. He died in 1804. His bug collections (and the cases in which he displayed them) were sold in a 3-day auction for about £1,000. Perhaps not incidentally his particular branch of the Drury family had for generations (starting in 1532) named one male child ‘Drew’ or ‘Dru’, a. practice that continued into the 20th century. Perhaps it’s true, then, that one indulgent eccentricity can indeed generate another. ©

[Stanley]

"So as long as there's a chance that maybe I can hammer out a little justice now and then, or a little opportunity here and there, I intend to do as I always have — keep swinging." Hank Aaron, 1990.

February 5, 2013 is the 79th birthday of Henry “Hank” Aaron, who in terms of all-round talent, impact on the game, and identity with a particular team ranks with Willie Mays, Stan Musial, and Ted Williams (and a very few others) as the greatest baseball player of all time. Born to a poor family (he had seven siblings) in Mobile, Alabama, on this day in 1934, young Hank picked cotton to help make ends meet, but he wanted to play baseball, making bats and balls out of the materials to hand. He was an all around star in the black school he attended, and had a tryout with the Brooklyn Dodgers when he was aged only 15. But his first pro contract was with the Indianapolis Clowns, and he led them to the Negro League Championship in his first year. This produced contract offers from the New York Giants and the Boston Braves. Boston offered $50 a month more than the Giants, and so there was never an outfield partnership between Willie Mays and Hank Aaron. What a pair THAT would have been! The rest is baseball history. Hank got to the majors in 1954 and hit his 715th home run (breaking Babe Ruth’s record) on April 8, 1974. He had to endure death threats all the previous season from people who did not want a black man to seize the crown, but as the radio announcer yelled above the crowd’s cheers, it was “a marvelous moment” for Aaron and for the country. Happy Birthday, Hank Aaron, 79 today.