A few points on Kit Smart

Soon I shall write about Christopher Smart’s wonderful poem ‘Jubilate Agno’ but first I want to clear up some misconceptions as voiced in a goodreads review.

If you do not know who Kit Smart is, I will offer these teasers: 1. He was a good friend of Dr. Johnson, 2. He preached half naked on the streets of London, 3. He wrote much of his greatest poem on the walls of Bedlam.

Point 1: Smart and Johnson were not friends, more acquaintances, yes one of Johnson’s famous quotes is in defence of Smart (“He insisted on people praying with him; and I'd as lief pray with Kit Smart as any one else. Another charge was, that he did not love clean linen; and I have no passion for it.") But they were not friends and Johnson was not an admirer, saying that comparing Christopher Smart and Samuel Derrick were like comparing a louse and flea.

Point 2: There is some evidence in the poem Jubilate Agno that he may have taken his clothes off, but the exact reason for his incarceration in a madhouse are unknown. It was known, however that he started to act erratically and started to accost people to pray with them. There is also the suggestion in Jubilate Agno of him using violence to get people to pray.

Point 3: He didn’t. He wrote the poem in a cramped scribble on paper while incarcerated in Potter's private asylum in Bethnal Green.

Christopher Smart interested me before I read Jubilate Agno, a hack writer stabled to Jack Newberry (pioneer of children’s fiction) and married into the Newberry family, he wrote a great deal. He won prizes for religious poetry at college but earned his money in London as a wit, his most popular character being Mary Midnight, a Midwife who edited a magazine for women - he even took to the stage in drag as this character (I have a book collection of The Midwife and they are very funny, rather like Tom Brown’s Amusements). Something happened and he was incarcerated for madness, when he was released he found it hard to get work and later died in a debtor’s jail. Seems like the sad story of a man with talents who burned himself out, but there is something luminous in Jubilate Agno - and a lot of his other stuff is entertaining also.

THE LONG NOSED FAIR

Once on a time I fair Dorinda kiss'd, 

Whose nose was too distinguish'd to be miss'd; 

My dear, says I, I fain would kiss you closer, 

But tho' your lips say aye—your nose says, no, Sir.— 

The maid was equally to fun inclin'd, 

And plac'd her lovely lily-hand behind; 

Here, swain, she cry'd, may'st thou securely kiss, 

Where there's no nose to interrupt thy bliss.

ON MY WIFE’S BIRTHDAY

'Tis Nancy's birth-day—raise your strains, 

Ye nymphs of the Parnassian plains, 

And sing with more than usual glee 

To Nancy, who was born for me. 

Tell the blythe Graces as they bound, 

Luxuriant in the buxom round; 

They're not more elegantly free, 

Than Nancy, who was born for me. 

Tell royal Venus, tho' she rove, 

The queen of the immortal grove, 

That she must share her golden fee 

With Nancy, who was born for me. 

Tell Pallas, tho' th'Athenian school, 

And ev'ry trite pedantic fool, 

On her to place the palm agree, 

'Tis Nancy's, who was born for me. 

Tell spotless Dian, tho' she range, 

The regent of the up-land grange, 

In chastity she yields to thee, 

O Nancy, who was born for me. 

Tell Cupid, Hymen, and tell Jove, 

With all the pow'rs of life and love, 

That I'd disdain to breathe or be, 

If Nancy was not born for me.

A tribute to David Bowie

Just a silly little thing.

Sheneeka’s Hair

I know it’s rude to ogle and I know it’s bad to stare

but there was something really odd about Sheneeka’s hair.

Eight plaits sticking sideways, right-angled from her head

but those plaits weren’t plaits at all, but spider legs instead.

She used to bring a packed lunch and much to our surprise

there was nothing in her lunchbox but bumblebees and flies.

Our parents did not believe us, nor Miss Boniface

So she was quite shocked when the saucer came from outer space.

It landed in the playground with a whir and with a hum

and a great big voice came booming and all it said was, ‘come’.

Then Sheneeka’s hair wriggled, and started to flex and quiver.

We felt prickles down our backs and we began to shiver.

Sheneeka’s head popped off her neck and her hair began to carry it

over the playground, past the bench, off to her space chariot.

Sheneeka called out ‘goodbye my friends, been fun, you will be missed’.

Then one plait went to her lips and blew a farewell kiss.

Her head and hair were sucked up, by a beam of bright blue light

The saucer shot up in the sky and was soon out of sight.

So remember when you gaze out, far beyond the stars

Sheneeka’s hair is waving: She’s a Spider from Mars.

Reading Casanova: Volume Two.

The bad boy is back. Volume Two and Casanova is more shocking than before. I took my time reading this, finding it harder to pick up as I did to put down, the sheer unstoppable nature of it made it a difficult read. 

It starts in good form, with Casanova falling in love with a castrato called Belino and sleeping with Belino’s twelve year old sister to get to him (much to the girl’s mum who decides Casanova’s money is a gift from God). After some unfortunate bedroom to-ing and fro-ing, Casanova feels he spies a penis but knows that the fact that he still feels horny convinces him that Belino must be a girl. A second try reveals that Belino is in fact a girl with a complicated glue on penis and not a castrato. He helps her set herself up as a singer and she goes to Mantua, which he will not because he still feels fate is leading him to Constantinople.

Along the way he loses his passport, is imprisoned and ‘accidentally’ escapes by deciding to sit on a horse that bolts. I’m not sure I believe that accidentally even a little. Then he goes to a city where the doctor thanks him for giving everyone a venereal disease that has kept him in business. Eventually, he arrives in Constantinople where he declines an offer of gay sex and also a rich marriage which comes at the price of becoming a Muslim. Then he joins the army, hangs around in Crete where he tries to defrost an ice-maiden by being very annoying and clingy and making special sweets out of her ground up hair.

Later he goes back to Venice as a tramp, gets up to some ‘hilarious’ unsavoury escapades and then saves a rich man of nobility from dying, becoming his adopted son and the inheritor of a rich estate in the process. Then he wanders about a bit playing pranks (including giving a girl some fart sweets) before starting some elaborate charade as a magician...

...and so it goes on. Casanova, still not twenty-five, lurches in and out of bed, prison and adventure. He also really has caught the gambling bug and gains and loses money all over the shop. All of this youthful extravagance lovingly captured and recreated by old Casanova who really knows how to tell a story. The last part where he is pretending to be a Magician is slowly built up to a climax when the volume ends with the words.

   ‘It was night...’  and no more, pulling you into the next volume.

Casanova’s very fluid set of morals came into play. At one point he spends a page arguing how it was only morally right to lie as telling the truth would have been impolite and a let down. Another time he recounts that he ‘... told them the whole story exactly as it happened, omitting only what it was not prudent to tell them.’ We wonder whether he is doing us the same disservice.

Again there is the dark side, along with all the humour, the shock and the gasps of disbelief that came out my mouth as a read his adventures, there is something unpleasant lurking. There is the time he beat up a prostitute because she took the money but held back on the goods. Also disturbing is the lengths he goes to for a joke. Digging up a dead body, cutting an arm off and leaving it in a bed to scare a man - all in revenge for making his suit dirty. 

So, again it’s hard to completely like Casanova but at the same time you can’t help fall for his charm and vivaciousness. 

I look forward to volume three, but not yet.

Review: A History of John Bull by John Arbuthnot

As I had read something from the other Scriblerans it seemed right to read something from Dr Arbuthnot.

He was an interesting man, the royal physician and later a thriving doctor. The running joke among the Scriblerans was about the fact that he always had plenty of interesting and outlandish ideas to write about and was more than willing to give those ideas away. All accounts paint him as a funny, witty man, generous and good company. It seems clear that he didn't think of himself heavily as a literary man and it is sometimes hard to know which parts of the Scribleran body of work are his or not.

If 'John Bull' is anything to go by, then I would suggest that any part of Scribleran literature that involves long lists of things must be an Arbuthnot one. He really does love his lists. There was one chapter that consisted only of a list of various legal services. I imagine the last chapter of the 'Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus' was probably one of his too, as he seems to be an ideas person and likes the format of lots of silly little ideas that have not been completely developed.

John Bull itself came out as three pamphlets before being collected in book form. They tell of the trouble that occurred to John Bull when he set out to sue Louis Baboon for his tailoring contracts and got greatly in debt while his lawyer, Henry Hocus and his business partner, Nicholas Frog do well. This storyline is a thinly told story of the War of Spanish Succession, with Nicholas Frog as Holland (confusing I know), Louis Baboon (AKA Bourbon) as France and Henry Hocus as the Duke of Marlborough.

Later episodes include the harsh treatment of John's sister Peg (Scotland) and her love of a young man (representing Presbyterianism) who starts pious but then tries to make Peg's Mum (Anglicanism) ill. The story also talks about the death of John's skittish former wife and his remarriage to a more sensible one - this being an analogy for changing parliaments.

Much of the humour of the book has evaporated. A topical political allegory loses much of its laughs and punches when the things it is satirising are so fixed to their time. All we are left with is a mildly entertaining story about a foolish but loveable man who nearly bankrupts himself in suing someone else.

Of course the main legacy of the book is the character of John Bull, the stoic, no-nonsense, hard-living representation of England. You don't hear so much about John Bull anymore and I imagine he is not how the English would like to represent themselves - however, some of his qualities have been invested in that icon of steadfast Britishness, the bulldog.

So, not all that recommended, although I am interested in reading a biography of John Arbuthnot some time, he's an interesting fella.

Gulliver's Travels in a One Minute Nutshell

Here are the Rudiments of Genteel Behaviour

Pictures from a facsimile of 'Rudiments of Genteel Behaviour' by F. Nivelon.

Expect a review of 'A History of John Bull' by John Arbuthnot soon. 

Review of Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift

I thought I knew Gulliver, I had been brought up on the cartoon version of Gulliver in Lilliput (and can still sing most of the the ‘All’s Well’ song) as well as being aware from my reading around eighteenth century literature that it also included travels to a place he was very small, a land of boffins and some horse-people. What I was not expecting was the full on satirical thrust of the piece, the deep misanthropy of the conclusion and the genuine character journey Gulliver takes to get there. In terms of this character journey, Gulliver ended up being a far more readable and involving book than I was expecting.

We begin with a rather self satisfied man being shipwrecked on a beach. He wakes up, tied to the ground and being crawled on by small people, he is in Lilliput and they are the Lilliputians. At first he is feared by the people but they eventually come to respect him, trust him and then use him as there saviour against the mighty fleet of Blefescu. Shortly after this he is then not trusted anymore and has to find a way back home or he will be blinded and used as an animal of labour by the minuscule people.

Yes there are the scale jokes, he puts out a fire by pissing on it and there is an awful lot of discussion of where a man as big as he can defecate. Swift lives up to his reputation for toilet gags and Gulliver’s Travels makes up a whole chapter in Norman Inkpen’s authoritative, ‘Shit Jokes - A Study of Scatological Humour’. 

What I wasn’t expecting was the bite, the people of Lilliput believe they are the undisputed masters of the world and that war and torture are proper responses to the question of which end to open an egg. The turning of the king against Gulliver and his plan to humiliate and subject him because of how he is represented by the King’s ministers, is shocking. They are small people and their concerns are petty but so are ours

Next Gulliver goes to Brobdingnab, where he is as small to those people as he was large to the people of Lulliput. Although there are satirical scenes where he tries to explain the affairs of Britain to the king, the focus is less on jabs and politics and more the effect being so very small has on Gulliver - especially considering that he was the ‘big man’ in the last land.

These scenes not only describe the physical discomforts of being a man in a place where a monkey can be a strange and deadly threat and a wasp utterly terrifying, but also the psychological effect on being so insignificant. For a start, he finds the people of Brobdingnab hideous as he can see all the flaws in their skin, the lice in their hair and the dirt about their personages. Worse still, as a man with a certain amount of self-pride; he is now a small curiosity, nothing more than a plaything for the queen and her court, looked after by the nine-year-old girl, Glumdalclitch. He finds this extremely demeaning and the necessity of being constantly on his guard against the over-sized animals also gives him a certain spiritual exhaustion.

These two lands fit so well together, inflating his ego and then crushing it and the scenes where he returns home, first to find himself speaking down to everybody and then speaking upwards. If the book had ended here it would have been an amusing book but although these are the best known elements of the story, I don’t think they are what makes the book a classic.

Nor do I think the third travel to be the key to the book’s longevity. The chapters on Laputa, the flying island and the parts set in the ‘Academy of Projects’ in Balnibarni are pretty standard bits of Scribleran writing against false learning. It was interestingly done but certainly not anything I haven’t read before. Similarly the land of Glubbdubdrib, where ghosts of the near and ancient past are compared doesn’t add much to the ancients verses moderns debate in The Battle of the Books. It is only the land of Luggnagg where Gulliver hears of the struldbrugs, immortal people, that we get something new. Gulliver hears of these people and rhapsodises on how wonderful it must be to have hundreds of years of culture and wisdom contained in people, his audience laughs before painting a terrible picture of eternal life without youth, the poor struldbrugs codgering further and further without ever having the release of death.

I think it is the third book that really cements Gulliver’s Travels into the state of a classic and I am going to extract some of the elements that make it so by comparing it to another classic, the 1968 film ‘Planet of the Apes’.

Taylor, the hero of Planet of the Apes is a misanthrope who has gone on a faster-than-light space mission to find ‘something in the universe better than man’. Like Gulliver, he is stranded somewhere rocky and wanders before finding a herd of wild human-like people. In Planet of the Apes, these are mute vegetarians, semi naked and rather attractive and decorus - they are then hunted by the savage apes riding horses. On seeing these people, Taylor remarks ‘if this is the best they’ve got, we’ll be ruling this country in six months’.

Gulliver is presented with an uglier vision, hairy, human-like creatures who chatter and squabble and fill him with revulsion. These creatures then attack him and pelt with with shit (more stuff in Inkpen’s book about that). These creatures are not men but Yahoos. Gulliver is then saved by a horse, who he starts to suspect is talking. Over time he begins to learn the language of the horse who are called the Houyhnhnms. He comes to love them, believing them to be the most perfect rational being. The horse asks a lot of human culture and the more Gulliver describes it, the harder he finds presenting it in a good light. He and the horse eventually realise that humans are nothing more than the odious Yahoos with a little reason. There are chapters comparing the brutish Yahoos and humans and finding them to be extremely similar. This realisation is gradual and by the end, he is a pompous misanthrope who cannot stand anything human.

Unfortunately for him, the Houyhnhnms throw him out and he has to go back home, where he cannot stand being near other people, seeing them as complete Yahoos. He however sees himself as better, as he has seen the example of the Houyhnhnms and will try to emulate their ways.

Taylor on the other hand finds no-one better than humans, he just finds other animals equally bad. It's interesting to reflect that to Taylor, the apes are Yahoos - whilst to the apes, Taylor is one. As Zira the ape scientist says to Taylor, 'you're just so ugly'.

Nothing will ever make me a raging misanthrope, I remain a believer in the fact that human potential is huge and we manage to do pretty well with what we have, but it did leave me with a little niggle - is there something better in the universe than humanity?