BOB'S BITS

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DOYLE

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. Sherlock Holmes, in several instances, but first in The Sign of the Four(1890) by Arthur Conan Doyle.

One would not want to question Sherlock Holmes’s reputation as a paragon of deductive rationality, but this is surely dangerous advice. The more prudent course would be to say, ‘at this point, you need to conduct new experiments.’ And it’s worth pointing out, coincidentally, that by 1890 Arthur Conan Doyle was already taking great interest in ‘spiritualism,’ in that wondrous hybrid of Victorian hopes and fears that led many people to believe that could one get beyond the material world there would still be much to discover. Holmes’s fascination with that other universe of possibilities continued to intensify and became obsessive. By the time Holmes himself ‘passed’, in 1930, this eccentricity was one of the most remarkable things about him. Thus the New York Times’ 1930 obit on Doyle begins with and keeps returning to his deep interest in other-worldly phenomena. In the obit, Sherlock Holmes gets much less space and the infinitely amenable Dr. Watson and the supernaturally malevolent Moriarty rate no mention whatsoever. So much for obituarists, one might well conclude. Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of the world’s most famous detective (Holmes) and the world’s most consummate villain (Moriarty) was born on May 22, 1859, in Edinburgh. His father and grandfather encouraged him in artistic pursuits, which eventually won out although a passel of rich uncles tried to educate him into a medical career at Stonyhurst and the University of Edinburgh. And indeed Doyle did doctor, at first, but in the intervals between patients he sketched out mystery stories. His first big success (£25!!!) was published in 1888, and very shortly thereafter Holmes, Watson, and Moriarty (and speckled bands and silent hounds) started to disturb the slumbers of the reading public in Britain, America, and beyond. There are many interesting aspects to the Holmes-Doyle saga, but spiritualism and psychic research? These became obsessions after Doyle’s son, Kingsley, died in 1918. Doyle spent the rest of his life and much of his fortune promoting psychic research and psychic stories. It worked in the limited sense that after his death his family expected to hear from him momentarily. And they followed his spiritualist wish to be buried in a standing position, just in case. The local parish church wouldn’t have it (and, anyway, regarded Doyle as a non-believer), so he was buried upright in the garden of his mansion house. Given time, however, the Church of England can forgive almost anything. In 1955, Doyle vertical was disinterred and reburied as Doyle horizontal, next to his second wife, Jean, in All Saints churchyard, Minstead. Myself, I think it’s better to remember Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (MD Edinburgh) as a stout advocate of vaccination, indubitably a this-world medicine. ©

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INKJETS

Painting can represent all visible objects with three Colours, Yellow, Red, and Blue; for all other Colours can be comprised of these three, which I call Primitive . . . and a Mixture of these Three Original Colours makes a Black, and all other Colours whatsoever; as I have demonstrated by my invention of Printing Pictures and Figures with their natural Colour. Jakob Christoph le Blon, Coloritto (London and Paris, 1725.

And so, following a long history of technological innovation and the sweated labors of legions of patent lawyers, we have ended up with inkjet printers which, amazing as they may be, are really vehicles for selling small quantities of ink (Cyan, Yellow, and Magenta) at grossly inflated prices. In many cases, two sets of new ink cartridges will cost you more than the inkjet printer itself. Jakob Christoph le Blon understood the economic principle quite well, but living in the monarchical worlds of London and Paris he sought, instead, patent monopolies on the whole process, both in printing and in the dyeing of tapestries. It wasn’t a new idea, and le Blon gives handsome credit to Isaac Newton’s brilliant work with prisms, as well as to generations of painters and portraitists. And so he was duly granted royal patents (first by King George I, in Britain, and then by King Louis XV, in France). I am happy to say that all of le Blon’s London businesses went bust, the victims of patent pirates, plagiarism, and market competition. If he’d stuck only with his inks and dyes, le Blon might have become as rich as Croesus. Jakob Christoph le Blon was born on May 23, 1667, in Frankfurt, Hesse, where his Huguenot ancestors had fled the terrible religious wars and persecutions of 16th-century France. A literate lot, they’d become printers and engravers, specializing in books about travel and engraved printings of works of art. Young Jakob apprenticed in the same trades and moved to Rome where he worked with leading painters (and, indeed, began painting his own miniatures as well as printing the works of others). He also kept informed on the science of coloration, especially (as we know from Coloritto) with Isaac Newton’s famous work on Opticks (1704). He put experience and reading together to produce his scheme for three-color printing, his first real production coming in 1710, in Holland. Thus armed, le Blon moved to London in 1710 to begin angling for a royal patent and a monopoly on the process. Both came from King George I in 1719. There are, I am told, important theoretical differences between Newton’s science of color and Christoph le Blon’s technological adaptations, the former being ‘additive’ and the latter ‘subtractive.’ I don’t entirely understand the point, but that is basically why (if you want to blame anyone for the ridiculous price of inkjet cartridges) you should pick on Christoph le Blon and leave Isaac Newton unstained and unscathed. ©.

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CAMEOS

ƛ

That is the Greek ‘lambda’, lower case, and (in miniature) it’s the trademark a young Italian apprentice used to identify his cameos when he learned that his work was so fine that it was being pirated by his masters. His name was Benedetto Pistrucci, and he was born in Rome on May 24, 1783 into a distinguished family (his father would become a civil servant of the papacy). Benedetto was a second son who displayed considerable talent at drawing and sculpture and was soon placed with a master cameo cutter, Nicola Morelli. Cameo cutting was an ancient art, or craft, and its finest examples come to us from classical antiquity. The most famous of them are found at The Hermitage, in St. Petersburg, and the British Museum, in London. Cameo cutting fell into disuse, to be revived in the late Renaissance, and at its center (which is probably where Benedetto Pistrucci apprenticed) at Torre del Greco, near Naples. Cameos are carved from coral or sea shells, and by Pistrucci’s time the Neapolitan coral fleet (the boats were called correlini) numbered over 1,600 vessels. So cameos were again a big business, and buying an Italian cameo became a near requirement for European aristocrats on their “Grand Tours.” (I believe we get the term ‘knickery-knackery’ from these small but expensive purchases.) So many of these customers were English that in 1814, Benedetto Pistrucci decided to go where the money was. His journey (overland, to London) was interrupted by Napoléon Bonaparte’s unscheduled return from Elba, but the emperor and the craftsman made use of that time, and a Pistrucci Napoléon still resides in London’s Victoria and Albert museum. Once settled in London, Pistrucci prospered mightily, patronized by the royal family (the coronation medals of both George IV and Victoria are Petrucci’s) and, as importantly, the Royal Mint. As an ‘alien,’ he never did get an official patent, and this is said to have contributed to his somewhat prickly temper. But he did important work in cameos (the raw materials presumably shipped from the Mediterranean) and in coinage. The famed Waterloo Medal, for instance, is a Pistrucci. So we can say that he profited twice from Napoléon’s brief return in 1814-1815. His cameos were so exquisite, and he was so fashionable, that he could charge top prices for his work. Pistrucci’s commission income for 1817 was £1,322 (£150,000) today, and that doesn’t include his fees for ‘official’ work done in that year. Today, you can find 48 documented Pistrucci cameos, most of them in museums. And this July a Pistrucci cameo goes on sale at Sotheby’s, for £10,000. But then it is only “attributed” to Pistrucci. Were it inscribed with a miniature ‘ƛ’ the price would inflate well beyond your bank balance. ©

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BOJANGLES

I knew a man Bojangles and he’d dance for you,

In worn-out shoes,

With silver hair, a ragged shirt, and baggy pants,

The old soft shoe.

From the song “Mr. Bojangles,” by Jerry Jeff Walker (1968).

This most evocative of modern folk songs (‘modern folk’ is no oxymoron) was recorded by all sorts, even Frankie Laine. I best remember Bob Dylan’s version, but would like to hear the recording done by Harry Belafonte. Plaintive and sad, the lyric was notabout the man best known as Mr. Bojangles, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson. Born poor and black in Richmond, VA, on May 25, 1878, Robinson was orphaned at 6 and then raised by his grandmother, Bedelia, a formerly enslaved woman freed by Northern victory in the Civil War. Robinson’s long career as a performer began at about the same time he was orphaned, appearing as a “pickaninny” in local minstrel shows. After that, not much is known (or too much embellished by Robinson himself), but after some service in the US Army at the time of the Spanish-American War, he hit the big time in New York vaudeville and was soon one of the most highly-paid black performers in the USA, pulling down $3,500 weekly ‘in season’ (that’s well over $100,000 today). If you look for him today you won’t find much, but in New York City he was the cat’s whiskers, several times honorary mayor of Harlem, an investor in baseball’s Negro League, and from those eminences a major fundraiser for various charities and patriotic crusades (for instance for War Bonds during WWI). Perhaps the best place to see him in action is to watch an old Fred Astaire movie in which Astaire does the stair dance, a tap routine made famous by Mr. Bojangles. Indeed, Robinson had a special stair made for his stage performances in which each riser was ‘tuned’ to a particular note. In an era where black performers were restricted to black audiences or to racially-demeaning ‘character’ roles, Robinson did well for himself. He headlined on Broadway in several shows, including a jazz version of The Mikado. But his most successful tole in otherwise “white” entertainment was to star with Shirley Temple in two films, The Little Colonel and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. After the fact, Robinson has been criticized for accepting what look like ‘minstrel’ roles, but Temple herself remembered him as a master of his art and of his person. Sadly, Robinson died penniless in 1949. His funeral was arranged, and paid for, by his friend Ed Sullivan, and was a day of mourning in Harlem. As for the “Mr. Bojangles” of the Jerry Walker song, that was a down-and-outer in New Orleans, a poor white man who’d taken on the name as a local street performer, one who’d dance at the drop of a coin, then drink off the profits. That “Mr. Bojangles” remains otherwise nameless. ©.