Where Aunt Mabel Lived

WHEN OUR DAY WAS FAIR
~ ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS ~

Bertha Mabel Lindsey (1880 - 1968)

The Voice

Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,
Saying that now you are not as you were
When you had changed from the one who was all to me,
But as at first, when our day was fair.

Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then,
Standing as when I drew near to the town
Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then,
Even to the original air-blue gown!

Or is it only the breeze, in its listlessness
Travelling across the wet mead to me here,
You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness,
Heard no more again far or near?

Thus I; faltering forward,
Leaves around me falling,
Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward,
And the woman calling.

By Thomas Hardy

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now, try reading this beautiful poem again,
this time replacing the word woman
with the word house:

"House much missed, how you call to me, call to me . . .
And the house calling."

Based on addresses and return addresses from old letters and envelopes, my cousin Linda F. D. and I have been tracking down the various apartments and houses inhabited by our Great-Aunt Mabel throughout the years.

1.
This seems to be one of earliest:
2704 Peery Avenue, built 1912
(the right - hand side is 2704)

2.
This is the return address on a stack of letters
that Mabel has written to her younger brother Paul
(my grandfather) when he was stationed in China in 1923:
107 Altman Building
I'm not sure if this would have been Mabel's residence;
it could have been the location of her Beauty Salon.

The Altman is just around the corner
from the big National Fidelity Life Building
shown on the stationery of Mabel's husband:

All of the World War I corespondence
concerning the death of Mabel's brother Sam
was sent to 1005 Walnut Street:

3.
Great-Grandmother Sarah Elisabeth Hartman Lindsey
used this return address in the 1920s:
3426 E 62nd Street

Mabel's youngest sister, my Great-Aunt Gail
standing in front of #3426 -- early 1920s

#3426 Today

4.
At some point, possibly after Sarah's death in 1937,
Mabel & Jack moved to 4228 E 54th Street
Here is my Grandfather Paul Lindsey, Mabel's younger brother,
visiting them in 1944:

#4228 Today

5.

Based on a postmark, Mabel was living here in June 1967
— one year after my Grandpa Paul took me to visit her,
probably at this address:
4511 Independence Avenue, Apartment 1

Google Maps indicates that in the early 2000s the building was still all red brick (as shown above), which is how it must have looked when I visited. I wish I could remember being there, but the memory is just too hazy, beyond being on the train, riding an escalator for the first time when we got to Union Station, and getting on a bus to take us to Mabel’s. I was 9 years old.

Trying to piece it all together, Cousin Linda recalls "a narrow steep interior stair up to Aunt Mabel's apartment which was at the top to the right. She always had fudge for me. I can remember visiting her many times, and I know she lived with us for awhile."
#4511 Today

I have spent many hours pouring over the details, re-reading the letters, obsessing about all these old addresses, and wishing that we could travel back in time for a day or so! Independence Avenue seems an odd location for Mabel to end up for those last few years of her life, although Peery Avenue and even 1005 Walnut Street are not that far apart — and all on the north side; whereas the two big craftsman houses on 62nd and 54th were both far south, near Swope Park.

Trying to analyze Mabel's trajectory around the city, I hear the voice of Thomas Hardy's poem, the voice of the woman much missed -- so many women: Sarah, Mabel, Beatrice, Virginia, Gail. And the voice of the houses themselves, "Saying that now you are not as you were."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

One of the best old house poems ever:

To My Old Addresses

Help! Get out of here! Go walking!
Forty-six (I think) Commerce Street, New York City
The Quai des Brumes nine thousand four hundred twenty-six, Paris
Georgia Tech University Department of Analogues
Jesus Freak Avenue No. 2, in Clattery, Michigan
George Washington Model Airplane School, Bisbee, Arizona
Wonderland, the stone font, Grimm’s Fairy Tales
Forty-eight Greenwich Avenue the landlady has a dog
She lets run loose in the courtyard seven
Charles Street which Stefan Volpe sublet to me
Hotel Des Fleurus in Paris, Via Convincularia in Rome
Where the motorcycles speed
Twelve Hamley Road in Southwest London O
My old addresses! O my addresses! Are you addresses still?
Or has the hand of Time roughed over you
And buffered and stuffed you with peels of lemons, limes, and shells
From old institutes? If I address you
It is mostly to know if you are well.
I am all right but I think I will never find
Sustenance as I found in you, oh old addresses
Numbers that sink into my soul
Forty-eight, nineteen, twenty-three, O worlds in which I was alive!

Kenneth Koch (1925 - 2002)

Next Fortnightly Post: Family History #1
Thursday, May 14th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blogs ~ The Great Aunts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com

A Soldier of the Legion

IN HONOR OF VETERANS DAY
ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Conquest of Algeria, 1830
by Jean Bainville

The French conquest of Algeria took place between 1830 and 1903.
The painting above depicts a battle at the onset;
the poem below, first published in 1867,
describes a battle from half-way through:

Bingen on the Rhine

A soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers —
There was lack of woman’s nursing, there was dearth of woman’s tears;
But a comrade stood beside him, while his life-blood ebbed away,
And bent, with pitying glances, to hear what he might say.
The dying soldier faltered, as he took that comrade’s hand,
And he said: “I never more shall see my own, my native land;
Take a message and a token to some distant friends of mine,
For I was born at Bingen — at Bingen on the Rhine!

“Tell my brothers and companions, when they meet and crowd around
To hear my mournful story, in the pleasant vineyard ground,
That we fought the battle bravely — and, when the day was done,
Full many a corse lay ghastly pale, beneath the setting sun.
And ’midst the dead and dying were some grown old in wars,—
The death-wound on their gallant breasts, the last of many scars;
But some were young,— and suddenly beheld life’s morn decline,—
And one had come from Bingen — fair Bingen on the Rhine!

“Tell my mother that her other sons shall comfort her old age,
And I was aye a truant bird, that thought his home a cage;
For my father was a soldier, and, even as a child,
My heart leaped forth to hear him tell of struggles fierce and wild;
I let them take whate’er they would—but kept my father’s sword;
And when he died, and left us to divide his scanty hoard,
And with boyish love I hung it where the bright light used to shine,
On the cottage wall at Bingen — calm Bingen on the Rhine!

“Tell my sister not to weep for me, and sob with drooping head,
When the troops are marching home again, with glad and gallant tread;
But to look upon them proudly, with a calm and steadfast eye,
For her brother was a soldier, too — and not afraid to die.
And, if a comrade seek her love, I ask her, in my name,
To listen to him kindly, without regret or shame;
And to hang the old sword in its place (my father’s sword and mine),
For the honour of old Bingen — dear Bingen on the Rhine!

“There’s another — not a sister, — in the happy days gone by,
You’d have known her by the merriment that sparkled in her eye:
Too innocent for coquetry! too fond for idle scorning; —
Oh friend! I fear the lightest heart makes sometimes heaviest mourning!
Tell her, the last night of my life (for, ere this moon be risen,
My body will be out of pain — my soul be out of prison),
I dreamed I stood with her, and saw the yellow sunlight shine
On the vine-clad hills of Bingen — fair Bingen on the Rhine!

“I saw the blue Rhine sweep along—I heard, or seemed to hear,
The German songs we used to sing, in chorus sweet and clear;
And down the pleasant river, and up the slanting hill,
That echoing chorus sounded, through the evening calm and still;
And her glad blue eyes were on me, as we passed with friendly talk,
Down many a path beloved of yore, and well-remembered walk;
And her little hand lay lightly, confidingly in mine …
But we’ll meet no more at Bingen — loved Bingen on the Rhine!”

His voice grew faint and hoarser,— his grasp was childish weak,—
His eyes put on a dying look,— he sighed and ceased to speak:
His comrade bent to lift him, but the spark of life had fled!
The soldier of the Legion, in a foreign land was dead!
And the soft moon rose up slowly, and calmly she looked down
On the red sand of the battle-field, with bloody corpses strown;
Yea, calmly on that dreadful scene her pale light seemed to shine,
As it shone on distant Bingen — fair Bingen on the Rhine!

By Caroline Sheridan Norton (1808–1877)

According to American author Stephen Crane (1871 - 1900) and Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874 – 1942), this poem almost immediately upon publication -- and for years afterward -- became a hugely popular choice for grade school memorization and declamation. Both authors recall hearing "Bingen on the Rhine" recited by dozens of their peers and repeated so often that the narrative began to bore its audience and nearly lost its tragic impact.

Montgomery's heroine, Anne Shirley (of Green Gables!) declares:

"I can read pretty well and I know ever so many pieces of poetry off by heart—‘The Battle of Hohenlinden’ and ‘Edinburgh after Flodden,’ and ‘Bingen of the Rhine,’ and most of the ‘Lady of the Lake’ and most of ‘The Seasons’ by James Thompson. Don’t you just love poetry that gives you a crinkly feeling up and down your back? There is a piece in the Fifth Reader —‘The Downfall of Poland’— that is just full of thrills. Of course, I wasn’t in the Fifth Reader — I was only in the Fourth — but the big girls used to lend me theirs to read. . . . When Gilbert Blythe recited “Bingen on the Rhine” Anne picked up Rhoda Murray’s library book and read it until he had finished . . . ."

From Anne of Green Gables, Chapters 5 & 19

Montgomery wrote Anne of Green Gables in 1908 but set the story about thirty years ealier. In keeping with the novel's timeline, Gilbert is reciting the poem "Bingen on the Rhine" in 1877, a decade after its initial publication.

Stephen Crane wrote and published "The Open Boat" in 1897. He was twenty - six at the time, thinking back to the days when he -- like Gilbert and Anne -- had memorized "Bingen on the Rhine" in school:

"To chime the notes of his emotion, a verse mysteriously entered the correspondent's head. He had even forgotten that he had forgotten this verse, but it suddenly was in his mind.

'A soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers,
There was lack of woman's nursing, there was dearth of woman's tears;
But a comrade stood beside him, and he took that comrade's hand
And he said: I shall never see my own, my native land.'

"In his childhood, the correspondent had been made acquainted with the fact that a soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers, but he had never regarded the fact as important. Myriads of his school-fellows had informed him of the soldier's plight, but the dinning had naturally ended by making him perfectly indifferent. He had never considered it his affair that a soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers, nor had it appeared to him as a matter for sorrow. It was less to him than breaking of a pencil's point.

"Now, however, it quaintly came to him as a human, living thing. It was no longer merely a picture of a few throes in the breast of a poet, meanwhile drinking tea and warming his feet at the grate; it was an actuality --stern, mournful, and fine.

The correspondent plainly saw the soldier. He lay on the sand with his feet out straight and still. While his pale left hand was upon his chest in an attempt to thwart the going of his life, the blood came between his fingers. In the far Algerian distance, a city of low square forms was set against a sky that was faint with the last sunset hues. The correspondent, plying the oars and dreaming of the slow and slower movements of the lips of the soldier, was moved by a profound and perfectly impersonal comprehension. He was sorry for the soldier of the Legion who lay dying in Algiers."

From "The Open Boat"

When I was a student, in the 20th Century, Caroline Norton was no longer required reading, but Stephen Crane was, and that is how I learned of Norton's poem, not in grade school, but in a graduate seminar on "Style & Audience Interaction." We were given an assignment, by Professor Herman Wilson, to compare Crane's original 1897 New York Press account of surviving a tragic shipwreck with his subsequent literary narrative, "The Open Boat." And -- it goes without saying! -- we were compelled to look up every literary allusions along the way! From that day until now, I have always thought that one of the most memorable lines in all of American fiction is Crane's admission that up until his own near - death experience, the fate of the soldier in Algiers "was less to him than breaking of a pencil's point."

As Gerry so rightly observed, we cannot move on from "Bingen on the Rhine" without also paying our respects to Thomas Hardy's misplaced hero, Drummer Hodge, whose fate was similar to that of the Soldier of the Legion, not in Algiers but in South Africa. The theme is sadly similar -- a young man far from home, unknowing, unknown and unmourned. Hardy's poem was first published as "The Dead Drummer" in November 1899, shortly after the outbreak of the Second Boer War:

Drummer Hodge

They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest
Uncoffined — just as found:
His landmark is a kopje-crest
That breaks the veldt around:
And foreign constellations west
Each night above his mound.
Young Hodge the drummer never knew —
Fresh from his Wessex home —
The meaning of the broad Karoo,
The Bush, the dusty loam,
And why uprose to nightly view
Strange stars amid the gloam.
Yet portion of that unknown plain
Will Hodge for ever be;
His homely Northern breast and brain
Grow up some Southern tree,
And strange-eyed constellations reign
His stars eternally.

Thomas Hardy (1840 – 1928)

An English Drummer Boy (1902)
by George W. Joy (1844 - 1925)

May they rest in peace,
both Drummer Hodge and The Soldier of the Legion

"Let us remember . . . all those who have served
upon another shore and in a greater light,
that multitude which no one can number . . . ”
Next Fortnightly Post
Tuesday, November 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT ~ "RIP Drummer Hodge"
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com

Time Does Not Assuage

THE BUDDING MOON
ACCUSTOMED, CERMONIOUS

"Well, I'll be damned
Here comes your ghost again
But that's not unusual
It's just that the moon is full . . ."
Joan Baez

Reading Duo Dickinson's Lenten Meditations is good way to discover poems by Emily Dickinson that you may have never before encountered. For the past few springs, it has been Duo's Lenten discipline to feature 40 of Emily's poems in 40 days. That's how I came across this one -- Emily's elegant response to the ancient idiom "Time heals all wounds":

They say that ‘time assuages,’–
Time never did assuage;
An actual suffering strengthens,
As sinews do, with age.

Time is a test of trouble,
But not a remedy.
If such it prove, it prove too
There was no malady.

Emily Dickinson

You might not think of Emily Dickinson (1830 – 1886) and Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900), as contemporaries, but in fact their lives overlapped by 42 years. In 1888, Nietzsche wrote: "What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger," an aphorism that stands in interesting contrast to the second line of Dickinson's poem: "An acutual suffering strengthens." Unlike Nietzsche, Dickinson does not say that suffering provides a source of personal growth. Rather, she implies that suffering strengthens itself -- not that it lends any fortitude to the sufferer. Instead, the actual wound itself grows stronger as time passes.

As I observed awhile back on my book blog, perhaps various hurtful incidents actually feel not less but more egregious as you gain the clarity to look back and realize that circumstances were actually way worse than you were able to acknowledge at the time because your emotional survival depended on pushing the reality out of your mind and rationalizing that all was well.

If "it prove" that an ache or pain should dissipate, has it has been healed by Time? No, says Dickinson, it just wasn't all that bad in the first place. On the other hand, if the wound was profound, it is with you for life. Time is not a remedy; time does not assuage.

Writing over a century later, Anne Lamott (b 1954) concurs with Dickinson. Rather than alleviating old unresolved wrongs, Time brings a sharper focus. I appreciate Dickinson's generalities: suffering, trouble, malady; and Lamott's specifics: moving her mother's ashes from the back of the closet and going as "deeply, as I could into the mystery of our relationship":

"I've been angry at her most of my life, even after she died. I put the ashes in the closet as soon as they came back from the funeral home, two years ago, thinking I could finally give up all hope that a wafting white-robed figure would rise up from the ashes and say, 'Oh, Little One, my darling daughter, I am here now, finally.' I prayed and prayed for my heart to soften, to forgive her, and love her for what she did give me -- life, great values, a lot of tennis lessons, and the best she could do. Unfortunately, the best she could do was terrible, like the Minister of Silly Walks trying to raise a girl, and my heart remained hardened towards her. . . . she was like someone who had broken my leg, and my leg had healed badly, and I would limp forever.

"I couldn't pretend she hadn't done extensive damage -- that's called denial. But I wanted to dance anyway, even with a limp. I know forgiveness is a component of freedom, but I couldn't, even after she died, grant her amnesty. Forgiveness means it finally becomes unimportant that you hit back. You're done. It doesn't necessarily mean you want to be with the person again; but if you keep hitting back, you stay trapped in the nightmare . . . My life has actually been much better since she died, and it was liberating to be so angry, after having been such a good and loyal girl. But 18 months after her death, I still thought of her . . . with bewilderment that this person could ever be in charge, and dismay, and something like hatred."

from Lamott's essay O Noraht, Noraht
[See also: Mother's Day]

Just as Lamott is able to claim hatred as one of her residual emotions after her mother's death, poet W. S. Merwin, looking back on his childhood, admits: "I did not know at the time that the names for much of my feeling about [my father] were really dread and anger” (emphasis added). Children, having neither the vocabulary nor the autonomy, don't know these things until later.

If only we could skip all the bewildering memories and have just the good ones. Sometimes I play a game inside my head, going through the years and picking out a series of happy highlights: a fun picnic, a special holiday, a surprise present, and so forth. I think to myself, what if I focused only on these things and let myself forget all the rest? Sadly though, that starts to feel unbearably artificial -- Lamott has already named it: "that's called denial." More truthfully, all the negative counterparts are hovering at the edge of my memory, awaiting validation. Does Time assuage? No it doesn't.

A Few More Connections
1. Additional Emily Dickinson poems
featured in essays by Duo Dickinson

A beautiful poem about both carpentry & parenting:

The Props assist the House
Until the House is built
And then the Props withdraw
And adequate, erect,
The House support itself
And cease to recollect
The Augur and the Carpenter –
Just such a retrospect
Hath the perfected Life –
A Past of Plank and Nail
And slowness – then the scaffolds drop
Affirming it a Soul –

Facing reality:
The Things that never can come back, are several —
Childhood — some forms of Hope — the Dead . . . ~ on facebook

Honoring the child:
Caught Between Two Worlds ~ on facebook

"Every parent comes to know that you have nothing to do with the beauty of your children and every responsibility not to betray it."

2. Ursula Nordstrom: “I am a former child, and I haven't forgotten a thing.”

3. Francine Tolf offers a forgive and forget [or better yet, remember and forgive] scenario, in the poem "Across Time and Death." Recalling a long ago evening of patience and tenderness, she writes:

"Let me dwell on this scene when I am tempted to finger
some distant hurt they caused, for even in middle age,
pain fom childhood thrives greedily if given nourishment.
Let me cradle the seed of this long - ago night to remember
the goodness of these two people, and to tell them out loud
across time and death and the imperfect understanding
that stains every human relationship:
I thank you, I honor you, I love you."

4. Nadia Bolz-Weber: "Perseverating negatively about the past, especially in terms of our resentments about what other people did to us, keeps us stuck in a maze. And being in that maze keeps us from moving forward. And it is difficult to leave the maze because our ego demands fairness. And since it is the PAST, usually there is no real resolution to be had. There is no adjudicatory process available to us . . . ." [previously on FN & QK]

5. Life can feel so unfair but is, in fact, so neutral:
Thomas Hardy's poem, "Going and Staying"

6. Another example of adults foisting weirdly interpreted religion onto kids; but thank goodness they don't always fall for it:

Actor ~ Steven Yeun's recent discussion of his religious upbringing on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert:

" 'I do have a favorite verse,' he said. 'I was taught this in sixth grade. It’s Romans 12:2: "Do not conform to the patterns of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you’ll be able to test God’s good and perfect will." '

"Yeun then explained his confusion on leaders who interpreted that to mean 'Don’t do secular things, just do Christian things.'

" 'I was like, "That’s doesn’t seem at all like what the verse said," he said. 'And I’ve been unpacking it ever since.' "

Next Fortnightly Post
Sunday, May 14th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com

Irish Village Christmas

A VILLAGE WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

I haven't read this novel yet, but I love the cover:
An Irish Country Christmas by Patrick Taylor
Irish - Canadian professor and novelist
Last year around this time a literary friend and neighbor wrote from Ireland to share this poem for the season, observing that Patrick Kavanagh "is a generally wonderful poet and not as well recognized in the States as he should be." Now is the perfect time to rectify that literary gap with Kavanagh's Christmas reverie, reminiscent of Thomas Hardy's "The Oxen" and Dylan Thomas's A Child's Christmas in Wales (Firetrucks, Christmas Cakes, Ghost Stories). All three writers capture the magic of Christmas night through the hopeful vision of a six - year - old. As Kavanagh says, "I was six Christmases of age":

A Christmas Childhood
I
One side of the potato-pits was white with frost –
How wonderful that was, how wonderful!
And when we put our ears to the paling-post
The music that came out was magical.

The light between the ricks of hay and straw
Was a hole in Heaven’s gable. An apple tree
With its December-glinting fruit we saw –
O you, Eve, were the world that tempted me

To eat the knowledge that grew in clay
And death the germ within it! Now and then
I can remember something of the gay
Garden that was childhood’s. Again

The tracks of cattle to a drinking-place,
A green stone lying sideways in a ditch,
Or any common sight, the transfigured face
Of a beauty that the world did not touch.

II
My father played the melodion
Outside at our gate;
There were stars in the morning east
And they danced to his music.

Across the wild bogs his melodion called
To Lennons and Callans.
As I pulled on my trousers in a hurry
I knew some strange thing had happened.

Outside in the cow-house my mother
Made the music of milking;
The light of her stable-lamp was a star
And the frost of Bethlehem made it twinkle.

A water-hen screeched in the bog,
Mass-going feet
Crunched the wafer-ice on the pot-holes,
Somebody wistfully twisted the bellows wheel.

My child poet picked out the letters
On the grey stone,
In silver the wonder of a Christmas townland,
The winking glitter of a frosty dawn.

Cassiopeia was over
Cassidy’s hanging hill,
I looked and three whin bushes rode across
The horizon — the Three Wise Kings.

And old man passing said:
‘Can’t he make it talk –
The melodion.’ I hid in the doorway
And tightened the belt of my box-pleated coat.

I nicked six nicks on the door-post
With my penknife’s big blade –
There was a little one for cutting tobacco.
And I was six Christmases of age.

My father played the melodion,
My mother milked the cows,
And I had a prayer like a white rose pinned
On the Virgin Mary’s blouse.

Patrick Kavanagh (1904 - 67)
Irish poet and novelist

My own Irish Christmas story is not one of childhood, but goes back to another magical time in 1989, when Gerry and I visited the university town of Maynooth where he had lived for nine years before coming to the U.S. I had never been to Ireland before, and Gerry had not been back since his relocation to Indiana, over two years previously. Gerry likes to tell the old joke that whenever a plane lands in Ireland, things are so backward and behind the times that the pilot advises the passengers to set their watches back a couple of decades -- or even centuries, Brigadoon style. Haha. For me, however, this turned out to be a good thing, not regressive but nostalgic, just like the movies. You know, that cinematic nostalgia for a time that has never actually been.

We had driven straight from the Dublin airport in our rental car, parked at the curb on Main Street (yes, just like in America), and the moment Gerry stepped out of the car, someone dragging a Christmas tree down the sidewalk (purchased moments before from the local lot), called out "Hey, Gerry me lad" (or something like that; not that I know how to write -- or speak! -- with an Irish accent, but you get the idea)! It was exactly like a scene from any all - American Christmas movie that you might care to name.

We had shared our plans with only one family -- the friends with whom we were staying; so it's not as if the entire campus was expecting us, yet several other people came right over to greet us or waved and called out as they passed by. I could hardly believe it! Was it a set - up? We went in the pub -- The Roost, where Gerry had been a regular -- for some cheese sandwiches, and it was the same thing all over again: "Oh, have a seat here mate." Truly it was as if Gerry had never been away. You would have thought the last time he'd been there was maybe for lunch the day before. I couldn't help thinking of Cheers: everybody knew his name; they were glad we came! For one brief shining moment, the hazy scene on a glittery Christmas card came to life before my eyes, so quaint and true and unforgettable.

Happy Irish Christmas!
[See also Dublin & Dubliners]

Maynooth University in Wintertime

The Roost in Summertime

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS ON MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Saturday, January 14th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com

Titanic

A HOUSE WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Molly Brown House Dining Room by Barbara Froula

Margaret / Molly Brown, and Family, At Home


Titanic Survivor

I delayed this Fortnightly post until the 15th (instead of the usual 14th) in honor of the RMS Titanic, which foundered 104 years ago today in the early hours of Monday, April 15, 1912. Thomas Hardy's 1915 poem "Convergence of the Twain" commemorates the tragedy by offering the perspective of a coincidence so vast in scope that mere mortals could not have anticipated the cosmic irony that would bring together Titanic and Iceberg:

The Convergence of the Twain
(Lines on the loss of the "Titanic")
I
In a solitude of the sea
Deep from human vanity,
And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.

II
Steel chambers, late the pyres
Of her salamandrine fires,
Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.

III
Over the mirrors meant
To glass the opulent
The sea-worm crawls — grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.

IV
Jewels in joy designed
To ravish the sensuous mind
Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind.

V
Dim moon-eyed fishes near
Gaze at the gilded gear
And query: "What does this vaingloriousness down here?" ...

VI
Well: while was fashioning
This creature of cleaving wing,
The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything

VII
Prepared a sinister mate
For her — so gaily great —
A Shape of Ice, for the time far and dissociate.

VIII
And as the smart ship grew
In stature, grace, and hue,
In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.

IX
Alien they seemed to be;
No mortal eye could see
The intimate welding of their later history,

X
Or sign that they were bent
By paths coincident
On being anon twin halves of one august event,

XI
Till the Spinner of the Years
Said "Now!" And each one hears,
And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.

by Thomas Hardy, 1840 - 1928
English poet, novelist, and Victorian realist


Hardy expressed a similar determinism in 1902:

The Subalterns
I
“Poor wanderer," said the leaden sky,
“I fain would lighten thee,
But there are laws in force on high
Which say it must not be.”

II
--“I would not freeze thee, shorn one," cried
The North, “knew I but how
To warm my breath, to slack my stride;
But I am ruled as thou.”

III
--“To-morrow I attack thee, wight,"
Said Sickness. “Yet I swear
I bear thy little ark no spite,
But am bid enter there.”

IV
--“Come hither, Son," I heard Death say;
“I did not will a grave
Should end thy pilgrimage to-day,
But I, too, am a slave!”

V
We smiled upon each other then,
And life to me had less
Of that fell look it wore ere when
They owned their passiveness.


As did American poet Stephen Crane in 1899:

XXXVIII
The ocean said to me once,
"Look!
Yonder on the shore
Is a woman, weeping.
I have watched her.
Go you and tell her this --
Her lover I have laid
In cool green hall.
There is wealth of golden sand
And pillars, coral-red;
Two white fish stand guard at his bier.

"Tell her this
And more --
That the king of the seas
Weeps too, old, helpless man.
The bustling fates
Heap his hands with corpses
Until he stands like a child
With a surplus of toys."

Stephen Crane, 1871 - 1900
American poet, journalist, novelist, short story writer

from The Black Rider and Other Lines
in War is Kind and Other Poems

In Hardy's poetry, "the Spinner of the Years" and "the Immanent Will," orchestrate human destiny and the course of nature; the Sky, the North Wind, Sickness, and even Death bear humanity no ill will and never act from malice but are themselves subject to "laws in force on high." Likewise for Crane, the "bustling fates" exercise power over "The ocean" and "the king of the seas" who, despite their watery palaces, are mere figureheads, helpless to stop shipwrecks and drownings. One slight tremor -- "at a fateful time - a wrong called" (see poem #VI) -- and chaos reigns.

With great sadness, Crane likens the many lost at sea to an overabundance of playthings, piling up unused, lost forever to their loved ones yet meaningless to the gods. Hardy notes the vanity and opulence of the wasted underwater treasure, envisioning the material wealth of the Titanic -- "jewels . . . sparkles . . . gilded gear" -- lying muddy and marred on the floor of the Atlantic.

Heroic shipbuilder Thomas Andrews, as portrayed by Victor Garber in the epic film, attributes the disaster -- somewhat differently than the poets do -- to "mathematical certainty." Some crew and passengers may incredulously insist that the ship can never sink; but Andrews responds with honesty and humility. Named by many viewers as "Best Scene in Titanic," his moment of truth stands out amidst all the sweeping drama and special effects:

"She's made of Iron . . . I assure you she can [sink]!
And she will. It is a mathematical certainty."

Titanic

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Thursday, April 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT ~ Belive It Or Not
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST ~
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com

Dolls in Literature

A HOUSE WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

I like the American Express ad, where Tina Fey says that her "Most interesting souvenir" is "an Amish baby doll with no face." I wonder where she purchased hers? I found this pair at Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia, and my neighbor John Woodin photographed them for my book jacket:

"Why shouldn't we, so generally addicted to the gigantic,
at last have some small works of art,
some short poems, short pieces of music
[. . .] some intimate, low-voiced, and delicate things
in our mostly huge and roaring, glaring world?"
~ Elizabeth Bishop ~

"For our very humanity is in our urge
to make magic with images [& miniatures]."
~ Erica Jong ~
A few months ago, I had the good fortune to reconnect on facebook with one of my former professors, Dr. Herman P. Wilson. Back in the 70s, I was enrolled in several of Herman's classes, such as History of the English Language and Structural English Grammar, as well as some graduate reading seminars in Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, and D. H. Lawrence.

Upon learning what I had been doing since my days as his student, Herman did me the great honor of going out of his way to purchase my book and read it from cover to cover, a feat -- let me tell you! -- undertaken by very few. He was then kind enough to send me his response, as follows:

Hello, Kitti--

Throughout all my teaching career, as I've watched some of my students working on graduate degrees, I've always wanted those students to "go beyond me." I wanted them to pursue studies of writers / materials about which I have little or no knowledge.

You have fulfilled my desires. For that reason I am grateful for the opportunity to read your work. The "doll" as a literary topic had never occurred to me. I like to explore such new topics as I see references to them. So you have given me both personal and professional pleasure.

You have produced a scholarly study, for which you have done extensive research to support the theories and ideas which you develop. I'll take a guess: is the work your PhD dissertation? Had I been on your PhD faculty, had you invited me to be one of your readers and explained your research plans, I would have responded, "Yes, I'll be happy to be one of your readers, but you will need to educate me as we work together on your research. I have limited knowledge of your topic." You have provided me some education on the "doll" in literature. I now have beginner's knowledge of your subject matter.

I've worked with many of your sources--Swift, Hawthorne, Lawrence, Hoffman, Mansfield, Yeats, Atwood, French, Hardy, and Atwood. I'm aware of and have limited knowledge of the "psychiatric, psychological, theoretical linguistic" writers--Rank, Freud, Eco, and Lacan. You have enhanced my knowledge of both familiar and non-familiar writers.

Your prose is well written, with ideas carefully supported, and has a pleasant mixture of serious academic topics and delightful human interest stories of the "doll" in our world and in literature. A beautiful bit of irony: yesterday I went to the grocery store. While waiting for my driver, I noticed a woman, holding one hand of a little girl, whose other hand clutched a little doll to her childish breast. Simple? Yes, but that scene made me think of you and the work I was reading.

Thank you for a new, pleasant, delightful experience. I remember you as a careful writer; my reading of your work has strengthened that memory.

Peace, joy, and happiness ~

Herman

Needless to say, I was overwhelmed by the generosity of Herman's praise and the time he invested both in reading my entire book and in writing to share his thoughts. I will let his letter to me and my reply serve as today's blog post:

Dear Herman,

Thank you so much for reading my book! You have given me by far the kindest words, the highest praise, the most encouragement that I have ever received on that project, along with the support of my dissertation advisor, Dr. Leonard Orr. I was lucky to have him on my side; and you are so right -- if you and I had still been at the same institution, you too surely would have been on my committee and seen me through the long process!

At the first "guidelines for dissertations" meeting I attended at Notre Dame (Fall 1984), a rather uncheerful professor discouraged everyone in the room from attempting a "theme" study, such as "ships in literature" -- yes, that was the example he gave -- I have never forgotten! So I kept quiet about my "dolls in literature" idea, even though I had been longing to write a book on that topic, and slowly but surely amassing good examples, ever since reading The Women's Room back in 1978: Marilyn French's revealing image of the little Barbie serving as mother to the giant Baby doll had never left my mind.

I felt sure that doll imagery was powerful and important, but I began to doubt myself and fear that it was perhaps not a weighty enough topic for a dissertation, so I put the idea on hold and began casting about for a "single author" focus -- maybe Virginia Woolf? But nothing felt right and the time for submitting my proposal was drawing near (by now it was 1988).

Then, in a totally unrelated conversation, Leonard was describing his ideas for an article on animation, and I mentioned that one day -- in the distant future, after my dissertation -- I was going to write a book on dolls. He was astonished that I had never told him this before, for he had already been my advisor for several years. He asked me why I was struggling with research that didn't speak to my heart when all along I knew exactly what I wanted to do? I said, well, I thought maybe it wasn't important enough or academic enough, so I was hiding it under a bushel. He said, Nonsense! and loaned me Susan Stewart's amazing theoretical study, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection and Jane Gallop's fascinating collection of autobiographical criticism, Thinking Through the Body .

Although I wanted to focus primarily on "the miniature," Stewart's inclusion of "the gigantic" reminded me of a long essay that I had written several years before on Victor Frankenstein's urge to create in his own image. At the time, it had been well received by a couple of my professors; so I pulled this old paper out of my "saved" file and it became a chapter in my dissertation.

I had also written a shorter paper called "Gulliver in the Dollhouse" for an 18th Century class that I took at Notre Dame. I received only a "B" on that paper because the professor felt that the idea needed a "larger theoretical context." Well, perfect! I now had that "larger context" -- so the Gulliver paper became another chapter. I had studied Yeats' poem ("The Dolls") in Irish Literature, and the D. H. Lawrence story ("The Captain's Doll") undoubtedly came from one of your classes, Herman. So I had a solid rough draft almost instantly, thanks to all those earlier inspiring courses and paper topics.

I finished the dissertation in 1990 and then in 1998 did the editing (not too much really) to repackage it as a book. Thanks for listening to this saga, Herman. And most of all, thanks for reading my study of the doll with so much patience, for responding to it so thoroughly, and for always encouraging me in the seriousness of my work.

Yours,

Kitti

**************************************************

PREVIOUS POSTS IN REFERENCE TO
THE MINIATURE & THE GIGANTIC:

The Mystery of the Matryoshka: Within Within Within

Fun Fall Food!

The Miniature & the Gigantic

Memoirs to Read in the Summertime

My LIST: "Dolls in Literature"

And lastly, the voice of a skeptic in this recent article
concerning the value (or not) of dissertations.

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com