Adolphus, forgive our decay.” (ll. 14-15)

“A Carriage from Sweden,” The Nation 158 (March 11, 1944) 311.

Written in 1943, this complex, wartime poem salutes Sweden’s seventeenth-century king and America’s eighteenth-century founding president as

Gustavus Adolphus

a pair. While Americans readily recognize Washington’s deeds and qualities, (“father of his country,” “the American Cincinnatus,” “first in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen”) his parallel with Sweden’s king is less obvious. Gustavus Adolphus has been called “the founder of modern warfare,” “the protector of Protestantism,” “the lion of the north.” He came to the throne at seventeen in 1611 and died in battle in 1632. As ruler, he reformed Sweden’s government by establishing four estates (nobles, clergy, burghers, and peasants) in the Riksdag (Diet), thus promoting unity within the groups; he fostered secondary and university education; he promoted the Swedish economy through immigration and infusion of foreign capital. As a military leader, he reformed the conduct of wars through the use of light artillery and coordination of military branches during battle. As a Protestant king, he opposed the Catholic League and preserved German Protestantism from the ravages of the Counter-Reformation. In short, he brought Sweden into the modern era.

“[F]orgive our decay” contrasts the world of 1943 with that of 1632 and 1781. In 1632, Gustavus Adolphus refused to compromise his principles and died fighting in Battle of Lützen, a turning point in the Thirty Years’ War in favor of his side, a Protestant victory.  In 1781, George Washington, who refused to compromise or give up even during the long siege at Valley Forge, received the

George Washington

surrender of British General Cornwallis at Yorktown, the site of the final battle of the Revolutionary War.  But “our decay” in 1943 may refer to the tensions created by Sweden’s neutrality during World War II which led the country to provide aid to both Axis and Allied powers, a position maintained in 1943 although later revised to refuse contributions to the Axis cause and to support the Allies. And if this position represents Sweden’s “decay,” perhaps the thinking, in 1943, about post-war recriminations against Germany suggested to Moore the kind of compromises that followed World War I and set the stage for the next war.

Jacob Abbott

Jacob Abbott (1803-1879) graduated from Bowdoin College, pursued ministerial studies at Andover-Newton, taught mathematics at Amherst, and founded the Mount Vernon School for girls in Boston. He was the author of more than 180 books for young people. His many series included three from which copies survive in Moore’s library: the Rollo books about a young boy with a feisty personality and enough naughtiness to give his parents ample opportunity for correction; The Franconia Stories, about a brother and sister schooled by their mother; and Historical Biographies. Considered among the first serious books for children, Abbott’s works offered language adult enough to foster intellectual inquiry and development along with examples of stout moral rectitude.

Moore’s published comments on Abbott’s books suggest that she had internalized some of their elements. For example, in reviewing George Moore’s Conversations in Ebury Street she wrote: “[Moore’s writing recalls] some of Jacob Abbott’s most dramatically lifelike colloquies. . . .” (Complete Prose, 103); and when asked “What books did most to shape your vocational attitude and your philosophy of life?” she replied: “Beechnut, Grimkie, Florence and John and the Rollo books, by Jacob Abbott.” (Complete Prose, 670).

Rollo in Paris

The books that remain in her library at the Rosenbach Museum & Library are:

From the Rollo Series:

Rollo in Paris. NY: Mershon, 1858

From the Franconia Stories:

Beechnut. NY: Harper’s, 1878

Rudolphus. NY: Harper and Brothers, 1852

The entire series of the Florence Stories:

The English Channel.  NY: Sheldon, 1868

Excursion to the Orkney Islands.  NY: Sheldon, 1868

Florence and John.  NY: Sheldon, 1869

Florence’s return.  NY: Sheldon,1869

Grimkie. NY: Sheldon, 1868

Visit to the Isle of Wight. NY:  Sheldon, 1869

From the Historical Biographies Series:

History of Alexander the Great. NY: Harpers, 1870

History of Cyrus the Great. NY: Harper and Brothers, 1850

Histories of Xerxes the Great. NY: Harper and Brothers, 1854.

The texts of Abbott’s books are available online through googlebooks, archives.org, and Project Gutenberg.

Choir at Cologne Cathedral singing the anthem “Now God Be Praised in Heav’n Above” in German

Moore attended the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church while she lived in Brooklyn. She made notes from a Sunday church bulletin for June 30, 1957 which contained an anthem by Melchior Vulpius, a German composer (c. 1560?-1615). She copied the text of the anthem into a notebook, placing the second verse first, followed by the first and third, thus:

Now God be praised for conquering faith,

Which feareth neither pain nor death,

But trusting God, rejoicing saith,

Hallelujah!

Now God be praised in heaven above

Praised be He for His great love,

Wherein all creatures live and move,

Hallelujah!

His grace defends us from all ill;

His Christ shall be our leader still

Till heaven and earth shall do His will,

Hallelujah!

According to a notebook (for which she used a 1956 calendar), Moore also consulted Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, probably the fourth edition (New York: G. Schirmer, 1940) which contains an entry on Melchior Vulpius on page 1144, giving several elements she noted: born in Wasungen, died at Weimar where he was a cantor from 1596, published two books of Cantiones sacrae as well as Lateinische Hochzeitstücke or the “wedding-hymns to Latin words” of the poem.

For an interpretation of the poem, please see Kirby Olson’s website:

http://lutheransurrealism.blogspot.com/2009/09/melchior-vulpius-by-marianne-moore.html

Kirby Flower Smith

adds that she had been a bit “scared” to be introduced to him but that he was “a pansy—looked expectant” (pansy, here, a term of approval).  Smith (1862-1918) was a professor of Latin and Greek at Johns Hopkins, a specialist in the work of Tibullus. According to an obituary by Gordon J. Laing (The Classical Journal , Vol. 14, No. 9 [Jun., 1919], pp. 567-569). Smith was as good a philologist as the best of them but he never lost sight of the “summum bonum of classical studies, the life and literature of Greece and Rome.”

In 1908, Smith had delivered the annual address at the meeting of the Classical Association of Middle States and Maryland on “The Legend of Sappho and Phaon” (Records of the Past Exploration Society, 1908, Vol. 7, p. 164). It is highly likely that he spoke on the same topic at Bryn Mawr ten months later. In his lecture, Smith detailed the various stories attached to Sappho and Phaon, ending with his own version. He probably made reference to Alexander Pope’s rendering of Ovid on Sappho and Phaon, as evidenced from his take on Ovid’s Heroides:

As the name indicates, the Heroides are a collection of letters supposedly written by famous women of poetry or mythology to their husbands or lovers. In three cases (Paris to Helen, Leander to Hero, Acontius to Cydippe) we have the man’s letter to the woman and her reply.

The Heroides fully deserved the enthusiasm with which they were greeted. Here for the first time we meet with one of the most striking features of Ovid’s maturer genius. This is his marvellous ability to analyze, understand, and sympathize with all the subtler phases and cross-currents of feminine character and impulse, and his consummate skill in bringing them home to the reader through the woman herself.

The Heroides have always been popular, and to this day have lost but little of their intrinsic interest. They were a favorite with Boccaccio, the main source of Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women, the model of Drayton’s Heroical Epistles. The much disputed letter of Sappho to Phaon, which lives for us in the translation of Pope, is—perhaps for that very reason—the best known.

—Kirby Flower Smith. “The Poet Ovid,” in Martial, the Epigrammatist and Other Essays. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1920, pp 60-61.

To what poetic use did Moore put this experience? Hard to tell, except to note that in May, she requested for a graduation present “Wharton’s Sappho” (SL 71). In full, that is  Sappho, Memoir, Text, Selected Renderings, and a Literal Translation by Henry Thornton Wharton (New York; London : J. Lane, 1907).

“Pedantic Literalist,” line 1.

Moore published “Pedantic Literalist” in The Egoist for June 1, 1916 (See Schulze 211) and Bryher and H. D. placed it first in Poems, 1921. Paper muslin is a glazed cotton fabric said by most online dictionaries to be “used for linings, etc.” There is a reference to a ballet skirt made of “pink paper muslin” as well as an article in St. Nicholas Magazine on how to make a cabana for bathing-suit-changing  out of it and an umbrella (tie  9-foot strips of paper muslin to the edges and hang it from a tree).  But “paper muslin ghost” occurs in a popular verse found, among other sources, in the Yale University College Courant for January 28, 1871, p. 43. Perhaps unsavory by today’s standard, the verse had a long life among favorites for children.

The Unlucky Lovers

Fanny Foo-Foo was a Japanese girl,

A child of the great Tycoon;

She wore her head bald, and her clothes were made

Half petticoat, half pantaloon;

Her face was the color of lemon peel,

And the shape of a table spoon.

A handsome young chap was Johnny Hi-Hi,

And he wore paper muslin clothes;

His glossy black hair on the top of his head

In the form of a shoe brush rose,

His eyes slanted downward, as if some chap

Had savagely pulled his nose.

Fanny Foo-Foo loved Johnny Hi-Hi,

And when, in the usual style,

He popped, she blushed such a deep orange tinge,

You’d have thought she’d too much bile,

If it hadn’t been for her slant-eyed glance

And her charming wide mouth smile.

And oft in the bliss of their new born love,

Did these little pagans stray

All around in spots, enjoying themselves

In a strictly Japanese way:

She howling a song to a one string lute,

On which she thought she could play.

Often he’d climb to a high ladder’s top,

And quietly there repose,

As he stood on his head and fanned himself

While she balanced him on her nose,

Or else she would get in a pickle tub,

And be kicked round on his toes.

The course of true love, even in Japan,

Often runs extremely rough,

And the fierce Tycoon, when he heard of this,

Used Japanese oaths so tough

That his courtiers’ hair would have stood on end

If only they’d had enough.

So the Tycoon buckled on both his swords,

In his pistol placed a wad,

And went out to hunt for the truant pair,

With his nerves braced by a “tod,”

He found them enjoying their guileless selves

On top of a lightning rod.

Sternly he ordered the gentle Foo-Foo

To “come down out of that there!”

And he told Hi-Hi to go to a place—

I won’t say precisely where.

Then he dragged off his child, whose spasms evinced

Unusually wild despair.

But the Tycoon, alas! was badly fooled,

Despite his paternal pains,

For John, with a toothpick, let all the blood

Out of his jugular veins;

While with a back somersault on to the floor

Foo-Foo battered out her brains.

They buried them both in the Tycoon’s lot,

Right under a dogwood tree,

Where they could list to the nightingale and

The buzz of the bumble-bee;

And where the mosquito’s sorrowful chant

Maddens the restless flea.

And often at night, when the Tycoon’s wife

Slumbered as sound as a post,

His almond shaped eyeballs looked on a sight

That scared him to death almost—

‘Twas a bald headed spectre flitting about

With a paper muslin ghost.

NEW FEATURE: Page on right-hand column contains “Recent Articles on Moore.”   Kirby Olson leads off with a piece on “The Camperdown Elm” and Prospect Park.

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Shaw’s Last

JUST as there are tricks in all trades, so there are prides that go with all predicaments. This is one of Nature’s compensations. We could not get along otherwise. And the peculiar and persistent pride that belongs to people who find themselves in the predicament of having children to bring up, is that they arrogantly believe themselves to be better posted on the proper methods of parental procedure than are the only people who have the least chance of knowing anything about the matter—namely, the childless.

Of course to all unbiased observers the fallacy of their position is obvious. Those who marry young and have large families are so busy learning the practical lesson of how children treat parents, that they have neither leisure nor strength left for considering the more abstract question of their own ideal attitude as the supposed controllers of the situation. Whereas any observant celibate with a decently widespread and reasonably intimate acquaintance among the married must have a singularly non-deductive mental make-up if he docs not end by becoming something of an expert on hypothetical parenthood.

Some day, no doubt, matters will be so arranged that all children will be eugenically born of intellectually celibate couples and will be properly trained by married bachelors and old-maid mothers who are conscious of no relation to them. But for the present we are unfortunately faced by a complete deadlock wherein parents continue to furnish terrible examples to leisured lookers-on, but are estopped by that very pride which saves them from despair from profiting by the wisdom they induce in the unwed. And this being the case, one can not conscientiously recommend George Bernard Shaw’s latest volume—” Misalliance, the Dark Lady of the Sonnets, and Fanny’s First Play; with a Treatise on Parents and Children” (Brentano’s, $1.-25)—except to such readers as have ceased to be children without becoming fathers or mothers, and to those others who have ceased to be, engrossedly, fathers and mothers without as yet becoming children for the second time.

The present volume contains a typical variety of prefaces and plays. And, as with the chicken and the egg, so, as between the Shaw play and the Shaw preface, the matter of critical precedence has never been satisfactorily settled. Is the preface an exegesis of the play? Or is the play an exemplification of the preface? We can not tell. But—again as with the chicken and the egg—it doesn’t matter, since both, just as they are, lend themselves to so many uses. Beginners generally scramble Shaw’s prefaces. Many professionals poach them. And Americans are only gradually learning that they are delicious just eaten from the shell with a little salt. As for the plays, they are usually roasted. But smothering makes them succulent, and they are sometimes served “supreme”. In the new volume, “Misalliance” deals with “the family” and rings the changes in the familiar Shavian comedy manner upon the unmasking of the hypocrisies and apparent mutual ignorances so carefully maintained between the generations. It was written in 1910 and has never been produced. In other words, it is in process of being “smothered” and will doubtless come out tender and spring-chicken-like some time during the next decade. “Fanny’s First Play” we all know. The treatise on “Parents and Children” is a commentary that runs amusingly amuck through the themes dealt with in both of these. As for “The Dark Lady of the Sonnets”, it is a skit written for and produced at a National Theatre project benefit in 1910, and beyond the pleasing conceit of showing us Shakespeare in the act of gleaning some of his most celebrated phrases from the unconscious lips of those around him, is here little more than a hook from which is hung a delightful Shakespearean essay.

Certain disqualifications for enjoying this book have already been hinted at, but a further word of warning is possibly needed. Shaw is ptomaine to the literal-minded. To the intellectual eclectic his writings are caviar—incidentally a food, but primarily an appetizer. One heralds the publication of a new book of his, therefore, not so much with general urgings to partake as by way of a special notification that he is in season.  

–J. B. Kerfoot.  Life, Vol. 64, No. 1660, August 29, 1914, p. 308.

John Barrett Kerfoot, 1865-1920, was born in Chicago, attended Columbia University, and became Life’s literary editor in 1900. He was close to his contemporary, Alfred Stieglitz, and spent his career in NewYork. At left is a caricature of Kerfoot by Marius de Zayas made in 1910 from the collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Filed under: Marianne Moore, Poem Sources Tagged: "To a Prize Bird", Alfred Stieglitz, George Bernard Shaw, J B Kerfoot ]]> http://moore123.wordpress.com/2011/11/09/george-bernard-shaw-prize-bird-j-b-kerfoot/feed/ 0 moore123 Kerfoot by Marius de Zayas, 191o, met http://moore123.wordpress.com/2011/09/07/daniel-boon-in-virginia-britannica/ http://moore123.wordpress.com/2011/09/07/daniel-boon-in-virginia-britannica/#comments Wed, 07 Sep 2011 15:59:01 +0000 moore123 http://moore123.wordpress.com/?p=1612 ]]> “[a rose stem] As thick as Daniel Boone’s grape / vine”

“Virginia Britannica”

Life and Letters Today (December 1935) 66-70, ll. 44-45.

The legends that grew up around Daniel Boone include one about his escape from Indians by means of a grapevine swing. Moore could have encountered this tale in many books, but one published for American children when she was eight is as likely as any:

From the book

     He made long journeys alone in the woods. One day he looked back through the trees and saw four Indians. They were fol-low-ing Boone’s tracks. They did not see him. He turned this way and that. But the Indians still fol-lowed his tracks.

     He went over a little hill. Here he found a wild grape-vine. It was a very long vine, reaching to the top of a high tree. There are many such vines in the Southern woods. Children cut such vines off near the roots. Then they use them for swings.

     Boone had swung on grape-vines when he was a boy. He now thought of a way to break his tracks. He cut the wild grape-vine off near the root. Then he took hold of it. He sprang out into the air with all his might. The great swing carried him far out as it swung. Then he let go. He fell to the ground, and then he ran away in a different di-rec-tion from that in which he had been going.

     When the Indians came to the place, they could not find his tracks. They could not tell which way he had gone. He got to his cabin in safety. [Hyphenation in the original]

–Edward Eggleston, Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans, New York: American Book Company, 1895, p. 78.

Homans

Many an interpretation of “Silence” has pointed to Moore’s father as the source of the quotation at the beginning of the poem—despite the note that has accompanied the poem since Observations (1924).  In the note, “Miss A. M. Homans” is the author, quoting her father. Not falling into the “father” trap, Jeanne Heuving (Omissions Are Not Accidents, 1992, p. 118) and others point to the original note which describes Homans as “Professor Emeritus of Hygiene” at Wellesley College.

Moore must have encountered Homans about 1917 when she wrote in her reading diary for July 17: “Miss Homans” and went on to transcribe what she said about her father, superior people, Longfellow’s grave, and the “wax” flowers—close to what Moore publishes as the note in Observations.  In any case, Moore knew enough about Homans to call her “Professor Emeritus” when she published the poem in 1924, since

Glass Flowers, Harvard

Homans retired in 1918 after a distinguished career. She had co-founded the Boston Normal School of Gymnastics in 1889, at a time when strenuous physical activities, let alone team sports, for women were considered possibly dangerous to their well-being.  The BNSG strove “to supply the best opportunities in America for men and women who desire to prepare themselves to conduct gymnasia, or to direct physical training, according to the most approved modern methods. To this end thorough and scientific instruction is provided, not only in the Ling, or Swedish, system of gymnastics, but also in those general principles of physiology, psychology, and the hygiene of the human body, upon which sound physical training must always depend “(BNSG Annual Catalogue, 1895).”

In 1909, Wellesley College imported the BNSG, making it the Department of Hygiene and Physical Education with Homans as its chair. By the time Homans retired, the department offered 34 courses, including gymnastics, kinesiology, history of physical education, folk dancing, and organized sports to undergraduates and to special students who, post-bachelors’ degrees, pursued a two year certificate that qualified them to teach such subjects and to direct athletic programs. In 1967, the National Association for the Physical Education of Women established the Amy Morris Homans Commemorative Lecture, today hosted by the National Association for Kinesiology and Physical Education in Higher Education.

“Tell Me, Tell Me,” The New Yorker (April 30, 1960) 44.

Sir Horatio Nelson, Admiral of the British Fleet, led his ships to victory in August, 1798 against the French Fleet in Aboukir Bay on

Guzzardi's Nelson

the Nile, near Alexandria, Egypt. Among the many diplomatic gifts Nelson received afterwards was a diamond

Abbott's Nelson

aigrette sent by Selin III, Sultan of Turkey, from an imperial turban along with a petition to the King of England to allow Nelson to wear it.  The broach, or chelengk, represented the highest Turkish reward for valor (Nelson suffered a head wound during the battle). It consisted of a spray of Brazilian diamonds; at its base was a rosette or star whose center revolved due to a watch mechanism wound from behind.

It is uncertain whether Moore actually saw the aigrette. Her note to the poem says that it was “In the museum at Whitehall.” In a letter of 16 June 1911 to her brother, she writes from London that she visited Whitehall but that the broach was out on loan (see Marianne Moore Newsletter,  2, 2 (Spring, 1989), pp. 5-7). However, she reports what the keeper said about it and how it revolved.  More likely is that she saw a portrait of Nelson with the aigrette pinned to his tricorne hat, either that by Lemuel Abbott, 1798, or the one by Leonardo Guzzardi, 1898, both now in the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London. At the time of Moore’s visit, the latter was probably in an admiralty building in Whitehall.

For more about the Chelengk, see the website for the Ottoman Bank Archives and Research Center. Moore would have appreciated its discussion of the “bird feather” worn in the turban as a sign of bravery. Selim III is pictured wearing one of his aigrettes.