BOB'S BITS

[Stanley]

In case you were wondering.... I haven't heard anything from Bob since Sunday.....

[Stanley]

THUNDER

Damn them! They will not let my play run, but they will steal my thunder. John Dennis, 1709.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, this is the first recorded use of the idiomatic expression ‘to steal one’s thunder.’ Some scholars regard the attribution as doubtful, but a good—and apparently true—story lies behind it. John Dennis, a playwright of modest talent, had staged a rewrite of John Webster’s Appius and Virginia. As a play it was a flop, but for it Dennis had invented a new way of sounding thunder on stage, banging sheet metal, an improvement on the traditional method of torturing a large wooden bowl with a wooden bat. The theater owner soon (after only three performances) scrapped Dennis’s Appius and, looking for a surer-fire revival, put on Shakespeare’s Macbeth. That play has two scenes (both of them involving the three witches) calling for thunder, and Dennis’s new device was used—and praised. So his thunder was stolen, and he did react badly. Whether or not he actually coined the phrase, John Dennis was a pugnacious sort. Perhaps he had to be, for he was born a saddler’s son in Holborn, London, on September 16, 1658. He had a prosperous uncle, though, a London alderman, who sent the boy to Harrow School and then on to Cambridge where he graduated BA at the then relatively advanced age of 21. In both places he found he had a way with words, which won him an award at Harrow but trouble at Cambridge. There one of his verbal quarrels escalated to violence and resulted in a termination of his fellowship. A little later, in London, John Dennis sued his own mother for allegedly stealing money bequeathed him by that uncle. Settling out of court, Dennis moved on to establish himself as a literary man in what was becoming a very competitive environment. London was filling up with literary men. In this environment, Dennis made his name with patriotic bombast and political invective. He hated France and popery, no doubt sincerely, but it helped to sell his writings. Dennis’s celebration of the great victory at Blenheim, Britannia triumphans (1704) brought him a cash reward from Blenheim’s hero, John Churchill, duke of Marlborough, and a minor post under Queen Anne, at £52 per year. Neither the sinecure, nor his plays or poems, proved enough to keep Dennis out of debtors’ prison. He certainly lived too extravagantly and offended too many people, but his way with words survived, and so did his aggressiveness. Having generally failed as a playwright, Dennis soon emerged as a leading critic and essayist, taking sides in English politics (generally with the Whigs) and sniping at other writers. Such scribblers were, at the time, a dime per dozen, and were also infamous for changing sides on the proverbial dime, but Dennis made his reputation (and enough to live on) with interesting reflections on the old masters, including Shakespeare, combative rhetoric about the French and any Briton who might ally with them, and scathing attacks on other leading essayists of the time, notably Alexander Pope. Their battles won Dennis a minor place in Pope’s Dunciad, itself a landmark in satirical invective, but it was not enough. Blind, aging, and ill, Dennis survived on small gifts from old allies and former patrons, At his death in 1734 he had retained enough friends to be buried in a churchyard and enough money to avoid a pauper’s grave. John Dennis has since been recognized as a pioneer in Shakespeare scholarship, but this came far too late to ease the miseries of his old age. ©.

[Stanley]

"The Queen of Crime" is a registered trademark.

By inclination as well as breeding she belonged to the English upper middle class. She wrote about, and for, people like herself. From the London Times, January 1976.

As an obituary ‘summing up,’ that’s a fair comment, even a nicely-turned compliment, but it cannot explain why the deceased author, Agatha Christie, had by the time of her death sold over 100,000,000 books. Her prose (in English, of course) was simple, straightforward, perhaps suggestive of the constrained rhetoric of her class. But by the same token it was easily translated, into about 100 languages, (apparently) easily read by people who were clearly not of “the English upper middle class.” And then there were Christie’s plays, notably The Mousetrap, which is still running in London over 70 years after its opening night. It has had to change theaters, and it took a break during the Covid crisis, but by now it qualifies as an institution in itself. So Christie’s has been an astounding success: unbounded, indeed, by its social class origins. And that’s not to mention the long running popularity of television and film adaptations which have brought worldwide fame to her leading creations, Hercule Poirot and (Miss) Jane Marple. Paulette and I have just finished another marathon run through David Suchet’s dozen seasons as “Poirot,” and we have on DVD all of Joan Hickson’s “Marple” performances. And we still keep about 40 (more than half) of Christie’s novels, most of them featuring Poirot or Marple. And still we are apologetic about it. Christie cannot qualify as a great writer. Her pedestrian prose and impossible plots disqualify her from any such accolade. Agatha Christie was born Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller on September 15, 1890, her father a “gentleman of substance” and her mother sired out of the British army officer class. There was an American connection but Agatha was born in the excessively English town of Torquay. Agatha claimed a happy childhood, though her portraits from that period suggest a stylish sadness. Her first marriage (to “Archie” Christie) didn’t work out well, either, ending spectacularly in her 12-day disappearance (like a bad plot, but maybe genuine)/. Then came a second and happier marriage to an archaeologist, Max Mallowan. Her first books had made a splash, so she retained “Agatha Christie” as her pen name. It became a guarantee of a few hours’ restful reading. And well before she died (of natural causes, I assure you) she’d made it into a brand, a trademark, indeed a company. Agatha Christie Limited continued so, after her death, superintended first by her daughter Rosalind and now by her grandson Mathew. Christie Ltd has, lately, bleached out some of Agatha’s racial prejudices, and it continues to oversee all Agatha adaptations. So what was intended as easy reading remains easy to this day. If you want to enjoy a murder, read a Christie. ©.

[Stanley]

SEX TRAFFICKING

Elizabeth Canning is a poor, honest, innocent, simple soul, and the most unhappy and most injured of all human beings. Henry Fielding, 1753.

Henry Fielding was a writer, even the father of the English novel. HisThe History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749) has come down to us most notably the film Tom Jones (1963), a rollicking and bawdy romp which introduced Albert Finney to the world (as the eponymous hero) and employed the writing talents of England’s trademark ‘angry young man’, John Osborne. Fielding (1707-1754) was interested in the fate of young down and outs; indeed the down-and-out character was a near obsession in his fictions. Fielding was occasionally a down and outer himself, falling prey to his bad habits and then, occasionally, enjoying redemption. He was also a hack for hire, a scribbler-participant in London’s satiric battles. It’s less well known that Fielding was a law and order guy who founded one of London’s earliest police forces and who served as a magistrate. It was Fielding the magistrate-writer who got involved in the case of Elizabeth Canning, a cause célèbre that set 1750s London on its ear and then echoed down the ages. Elizabeth Canning was born in London on September 17, 1734. The family was poor, but respectable, and at 15 Elizabeth hired out as a maidservant. This “obscure damsel, of low degree” set out to another job on New Year’s Day, 1753, and disappeared. Four weeks later she staggered home, emaciated, raggedly dressed, with a story to tell. She’d been kidnapped, held in durance vile, tempted to take up prostitution, and escaped. Fielding examined her story. The ensuing trial issued in a death penalty for her alleged tormenter, Mary Squires, an old, ugly gypsy woman, and mob action against one of the neighborhood’s more notorious houses of ill repute. But her story was not believed by all, and eventually King George II commuted Squire’s death sentence. Elizabeth Canning was put on trial for “willful and corrupt perjury” and found guilty. But even the jurymen didn’t like the “corrupt” part of the charge, and the case continued to roil London between the “Canningites” and the “Egyptians” (so called because they believed the gypsy woman to be innocent). As for Elizabeth, she was transported to Connecticut as punishment, but there found redemption in the house of a minister, Elisha Williams, and then respectability as the wife of the colonial governor’s nephew, John Treat, and the mother of his four children. Elizabeth died suddenly on the eve of the American Revolution. Foul play was not suspected. But her case continues to fascinate legal scholars, psychologists, and not a few scribblers. A recent (2019) article on the Canning affair cites over forty books on the case. ©