Dancing Young Men and Octopii

posted & written by Caroline Picard

Last week we released the North Georgia Gazette. As part of that release, we had two readings–one at The Whistler, the other at 57th Street Books in Hyde Park. At The Whistler, Basia Kapolka read on behalf of the Gazette, reciting a poem about the setting of the sun for three months. John Huston followed with a lecture about his recent expedition to the Arctic and after that Lily Robert-Foley read some passages from her end notes. We were lucky enough to see Devin King read as well–he had prepared a response to the Gazette (it’s awesome: it involves ghosts and villianized octupii and Victor Hugo) and I will post part of that response below, encouraging all of you to follow it up to his blog, Dancing Young Men From High Windows. After that, Nick Butcher from Sonnenzimmer played with Jason Stein. The whole thing was fantastic (I thought) and while an awkward MC, I had a great time.

Devin also read this piece at 57th Street Books–a nice gathering, slightly more intimate, there was an old couple in the corner who chuckled periodically. Another girl eating a sandwich. Anyway. Many thanks to our hosts for letting us have the reading, both were exceedingly gracious (Paul (the bartender and mastermind drink gourmet), for instance, would shake his cocktails in the basement stairwell to avoid making noise–I couldn’t believe how considerate)….and of course to all participants, helpers, proofreaders and contributors: here’s to a job well done and thank you thank you thank you.

Victor Hugo’s Last Musical

The musical’s grand opener is called, “We belong to the night,” and then there’s the famous actor Hooper, done up in a pelt but looking like a bat, bounding on all fours, giggling, his back to the curtain, trying to find a dark, circular, puzzle image. There is a detachment in his gambol, a kind of stoicism of the present; the alternately accusing and mutely questioning face of a dead man is all that describes his strange twisting associative dance. All features belong to the actor, Hooper, himself: a force utterly deployed in the world at any given moment, entirely characterized by its full set of features.
§
Ever since the philosophers distinguished the living from the non-living children have seemed to display an extensive capacity for awe and wonder along with their horror, a horror that remains distinctly consistent, arising from an experience of cognitive dread which cannot be escaped or evaded. At times Hooper’s actions on the stage suggest that all humans takes things “as” what they are, the actor claims that even blindly using a hammer takes it “as” a hammer. It was such an unusual and unlikely event, this musical; like when the centaur is mated with the cheetah, and their off-spring is not some hellish monstrosity, but a thoroughbred colt able to carry us for half a century and more.
§
In the autumn of 1853 Victor Hugo’s family began talking to ghosts. The American habit of table-tapping had reached Europe a few months earlier and the Hugos, bored and in exile, began by contacting their child Leopoldine, who had drowned in a boating accident ten years earlier. At first a sarcastic patriarch, Victor became enthralled by the practice and eventually would talk to Dante, Shakespeare, Moliere, Aeschylus, Galileo, Moses, Jesus Christ, St. Augustine, Voltaire, and Death itself.

Please go here to continue reading.

William Henry Ireland

posted by Caroline Picard

I’ve been trying to collect a variety of instances in which people have disguised themselves in literature–through pennames, or whatever else. At any rate, a friend of mine told me about this guy: William Henry Ireland,(1777-1835), a young boy who forged Shakespeare manuscripts; where it not for the later-discovered-hoax, Ireland might have (and should have, I think) garnered much respect for his literary accomplishments….

“Forger of Shakespearian manuscripts, born in London in 1777. His father, Samuel Ireland, was an engraver and author, and dealer in rare books and curios. In 1794 young Ireland, with his father, visited Stratford, where he met John Jordan, a local poet who had published a deal of gossipy matter about William Shakespeare and had even forged the will of the poet’s father. Seeing his own father’s credulous interest, Ireland conceived the idea of doing a little forgery on his own account. He copied, in ink which had all the signs of age, Shakespeare’s style and handwriting, and produced leases, contracts with actors, notes, receipts, a profession of faith, and even a love letter to Anne Hathaway with an enclosed lock of hair, to the delight of his unsuspecting father, and the deception of many scholars who attested their belief in the genuineness of his finds. These he accounted for by inventing an ancestor “William Henrye Irelaunde”, to whom they had been bequeathed by Shakespeare in gratitude for rescue from drowning. At last the discovery of a whole new play named Vortigern was announced. Sheridan purchased it for Drury Lane Theatre, and an overflowing house assembled on the 2nd of April 1796 to sit in judgment upon it. But away from the glamor of crabbed handwriting and yellow paper, the feeble dialogue and crude conceptions of the tragedy could not stand the test, and its one representation was greeted with shouts of laughter. Its fate prevented the composition of a series of historical plays, of which Henry II had already been produced by this audacious forger.” To read the rest of this article, go here.

I also found the following timeline, as well as some additional information about the young rake here. (the timeline is fleshed out on the original page)

Accredited Publications & Dramas

written by W.H. Ireland

(& published by father and fellow-forger, who nonetheless believed in the authenticity of his son’s manuscript,

Samuel Ireland)

1796: Miscellaneous Papers and Legal Instruments under the Hand and Seal of William Shakespeare: including the Tragedy of King Lear, and a Small Fragment of Hamlet: from the Original Mss. in the Possession of Samuel Ireland, of Norfolk Street. London: Printed by Cooper and Graham; this included the infamous play Vortigern and Rowena.

1796: In which Walley Chamberlain Oulton defends the authenticity of the Vortigern and Rowena : Vortigern under Consideration: with General Remarks on Mr. James Boaden’s Letter to George Steevens, Esq., Relative to the Manuscripts, Drawings, Seals, &c. Ascribed to Shakespeare, and in the Possession of Samuel Ireland, Esq. London: Printed for H. Lowndes

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1796: Edmond Malone, 1741-1812.
An Inquiry into the Authenticity of Certain Miscellaneous Papers and Legal Instruments: Published Dec. 24, MDCCXCV. and Attributed to Shakspeare, Queen Elizabeth, and Henry, Earl of Southampton: Illustrated by Fac-similes of the Genuine Hand-writing of that Nobleman, and of Her Majesty: a New Fac-simile of the Hand-writing of Shakspeare, Never Before Exhibited: and Other Authentick Documents: in a Letter Addressed to the Right Hon. James, Earl of Charlemont…. London: Printed by H. Baldwin, for T. Cadell, jun. and W. Davies (successors to Mr. Cadell).

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1796: W. H. (William Henry) Ireland, 1777-1835.
An Authentic Account of the Shaksperian Manuscripts, &c. London: Printed for J. Debrett.

William Henry Ireland wrote his Authentic Account shortly after the disastrous production of Vortigern and Rowena in an attempt to restore his father’s damaged reputation. Although William Henry Ireland accepted full responsibility for producing the Shakespeare forgeries, many critics still believed he was incapable of producing such sophisticated work and that the forgeries must have been written by Samuel Ireland or his associates.

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1796: Samuel Ireland replied, in print, upon his son’s confession.
Mr. Ireland’s Vindication of His Conduct Respecting the Publication of the Supposed Shakspeare Mss. Being a Preface or Introduction to a Reply to the Critical Labors of Mr. Malone, in His “Enquiry into the Authenticity of Certain Papers, &c., &c.” London: Published by Mr. Faulder and Mr. Robson.

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1805: This is like the Oprah version, where the crook goes on a talk-show; except in this case he writes another book. W. H. (William Henry) Ireland, 1777-1835.
The Confessions of William Henry Ireland: Containing the Particulars of His Fabrication of the Shakspeare Manuscripts: together with Anecdotes and Opinions (Hitherto Unpublished) of Many Distinguished Persons in the Literary, Political, and Theatrical World. London: Printed by Ellerton and Byworth … for Thomas Goddard .., .

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W. H. (William Henry) Ireland, 1777-1835.
Vortigern: an Historical Play, with an Original Preface. London: Joseph Thomas, 1832.

1805: W. H. Ireland wrote and publishes: Gondez the Monk,  a gothic novel (it appears that he wrote gothic novels for the rest of his life?)

Avinzo had scarcely turned his eyes to gaze upon the hag, when her outstretched finger pointed towards the entrance of the aperture; but, as he bent his regard in that direction, what were the feelings of the youth, on beholding a gigantic figure, white as the mountain snow, whose lanky beard hung low upon his breast, while in the sockets of his eyes, two pallid flames emitted a deadly glare, freezing with horror the soul of the observer. (Ireland, 190)

On the Judge that would be a Poet

A continuation on the theme of the literary quality in political documents…

Justice Carlin perhaps should have been a poet. Or maybe a dramatist. In 1941, he found himself the judge of the obscure case of Cordas v. Peerless Transp. Co. Here is what he decided to write:

CARLIN, Justice.
This case presents the ordinary man-that problem child of the law-in a most bizarre setting. As a lowly chauffeur in defendant’s employ he became in a trice the protagonist in a breach-bating drama with a denouement almost tragic. It appears that a man, whose identity it would be indelicate to divulge was feloniously relieved of his portable goods by two nondescript highwaymen in an alley near 26th Street and Third Avenue, Manhattan; they induced him to relinquish his possessions by a strong argument ad hominem couched in the convincing cant of the criminal and pressed at the point of a most persuasive pistol. Laden with their loot, but not thereby impeded, they took an abrupt departure and he, shuffling off the coil of that discretion which enmeshed him in the alley, quickly gave chase through 26th Street toward 2d Avenue, whither they were resorting ‘with expedition swift as thought’ for most obvious reasons. Somewhere on that thoroughfare of escape they indulged the stratagem of separation ostensibly to disconcert their pursuer and allay the ardor of his pursuit. He then centered on for capture the man with the pistol whom he saw board defendant’s taxicab, which quickly veered south toward 25th Street on 2d Avenue where he saw the chauffeur jump out while the cab, still in motion, continued toward 24th Street; after the chauffeur relieved himself of the cumbersome burden of his fare the latter also is said to have similarly departed from the cab before it reached 24th Street. The chauffeur’s story is substantially the same except that he states that his uninvited guest boarded the cab at 25th Street while it was at a standstill waiting for a less colorful fare; that his ‘passenger’ immediately advised him ‘to stand not upon the order of his going but to go at once’ and added finality to his command by an appropriate gesture with a pistol addressed to his sacro iliac. The chauffeur in reluctant acquiescence proceeded about fifteen feet, when his hair, like unto the quills of the fretful porcupine, was made to stand on end by the hue and cry of the man despoiled accompanied by a clamourous concourse of the law-abiding which paced him as he ran; the concatenation of ‘stop thief’, to which the patter of persistent feet did maddingly beat time, rang in his ears as the pursuing posse all the while gained on the receding cab with its quarry therein contained. The hold-up man sensing his insecurity suggested to the chauffeur that in the event there was the slightest lapse in obedience to his curt command that he, the chauffeur, would suffer the loss of his brains, a prospect as horrible to an humble chauffeur as it undoubtedly would be to one of the intelligentsia. The chauffeur apprehensive of certain dissolution from either Scylla, the pursuers, or Charybdis, the pursued, quickly threw his car out of first speed in which he was proceeding, pulled on the emergency, jammed on his brakes and, although he thinks the motor was still running, swung open the door to his left and jumped out of his car. He confesses that the only act that smacked of intelligence was that by which he jammed the brakes in order to throw off balance the hold-up man who was half-standing and half-sitting with his pistol menacingly poised. Thus abandoning his car and passenger the chauffeur sped toward 26th Street and then turned to look; he saw the cab proceeding south toward 24th Street where it mounted the sidewalk. The plaintiff-mother and her two infant children were there injured by the cab which, at the time, appeared to be also minus its passenger who, it appears, was apprehended in the cellar of a local hospital where he was pointed out to a police officer by a remnant of the posse, hereinbefore mentioned. He did not appear at the trial. The three aforesaid plaintiffs and the husband-father sue the defendant for damages predicating their respective causes of action upon the contention that the chauffeur was negligent in abandoning the cab under the aforesaid circumstances. Fortunately the injuries sustained were comparatively slight. Negligence has been variously defined but the common legal acceptation is the failure to exercise that care and caution which a reasonable and prudent person ordinarily would exercise under like conditions or circumstances. It has been most authoritatively held that ‘negligence in the abstract, apart from things related, is surely not a tort, if indeed it is understandable at all.’Cardozo, C. J., in Palsgraf v. Long Island Railroad Co., 248 N.Y. 339, 345, 162 N.E. 99, 101, 59 A.L.R. 1253. In Steinbrenner v. M. W. Forney Co., 143 App.Div. 73, 127 N.Y.S. 620, 622 it is said, ‘The test of actionable negligence is what reasonably prudent men would have done under the same circumstances’; Connell v. New York Central & Hudson River Railroad Co., 144 App.Div. 664, 129 N.Y.S. 666, 669, holds that actionable negligence must be predicated upon ‘a breach of duty to the plaintiff. Negligence is ‘not absolute or intrinsic,’ but ‘is always relevant to some circumstances of time, place or person.’’ In slight paraphrase of the world’s first bard it may be truly observed that the expedition of the chauffeur’s violent love of his own security outran the pauser, reason, when he was suddenly confronted with unusual emergency which ‘took his reason prisoner’. The learned attorney for the plaintiffs concedes that the chauffeur acted in an emergency but claims a right to recovery upon the following proposition taken verbatim from his brief: ‘It is respectfully submitted that the value of the interests of the public at large to be immune from being injured by a dangerous instrumentality such as a car unattended while in motion is very superior to the right of a driver of a motor vehicle to abandon same while it is in motion even when acting under the belief that his life is in danger and by abandoning same he will save his life’. To hold thus under the facts adduced herein would be tantamount to a repeal by implication of the primal law of nature written in indelible characters upon the fleshy tablets of sentient creation by the Almighty Law-giver, ‘the supernal Judge who sits on high’. There are those who stem the turbulent current for bubble fame, or who bridge the yawning chasm with a leap for the leap’s sake or who ‘outstare the sternest eyes that look outbrave the heart most daring on the earth, pluck the young sucking cubs from the she-bear, yea, mock the lion when he roars for prey’ to win a fair lady and these are the admiration of the generality of men; but they are made of sterner stuff than the ordinary man upon whom the law places no duty of emulation. The law would indeed be fond if it imposed upon the ordinary man the obligation to so demean himself when suddenly confronted with a danger, not of his creation, disregarding the likelihood that such a contingency may darken the intellect and palsy the will of the common legion of the earth, the fraternity of ordinary men,-whose acts or omissions under certain conditions or circumstances make the yardstick by which the law measures culpability or innocense, negligence or care. If a person is placed in a sudden peril from which death might ensue, the law does not impel another to the rescue of the person endangered nor does it condemn him for his unmoral failure to rescue when he can; this is in recognition of the immutable law written in frail flesh. Returning to our chauffeur. If the philosophic Horatio and the martial companions of his watch were ‘distilled almost to jelly with the act of fear’ when they beheld ‘in the dead vast and middle of the night’ the disembodied spirit of Hamlet’s father stalk majestically by ‘with a countenance more in sorrow than in anger’ was not the chauffeur, though unacquainted with the example of these eminent men-at-arms, more amply justified in his fearsome reactions when he was more palpably confronted by a thing of flesh and blood bearing in its hand an engine of destruction which depended for its lethal purpose upon the quiver of a hair? When Macbeth was cross-examined by Macduff as to any reason he could advance for his sudden despatch of Duncan’s grooms he said in plausible answer ‘Who can be wise, amazed, temperate and furious, loyal and neutral, in a moment? No man’. Macbeth did not by a ‘tricksy word’ thereby stand justified as he criminally created the emergency from which he sought escape by indulgence in added felonies to divert suspicion to the innocent. However, his words may be wrested to the advantage of the defendant’s chauffeur whose acts cannot be legally construed as the proximate cause of plaintiff’s injuries, however regrettable, unless nature’s first law is arbitrarily disregarded. Plaintiff’s attorney in his brief cites the cases of Grunfelder v. Brooklyn Heights Railroad Co., 143 App.Div. 89, 127 N.Y.S. 1085, and Savage v. Joseph H. Bauland Co., 42 App.Div. 285, 58 N.Y.S. 1014, as authorities for a contrary holding. Neither case is apposite in fact nor principle. In the classic case of Laidlaw v. Sage, 158 N.Y. 73, 89, 90, 52 N.E. 679, 685, 44 L.R.A. 216, is found a statement of the law peculiarly apropos: ‘That the duties and responsibilities of a person confronted with such a danger are different and unlike those which follow his actions in performing the ordinary duties of life under other conditions is a well-established principle of law. ‘The law presumes that an act or omission done or neglected under the influence of pressing danger was done or neglected involuntarily.’It is there said that this rule seems to be founded upon the maxim that self-preservation is the first law of nature, and that, where it is a question whether one of two men shall suffer, each is justified in doing the best he can for himself’.   (Italics ours.)   Kolanka v. Erie Railroad Co., 215 App.Div. 82, 86, 212 N.Y.S. 714, 717, says: ‘The law in this state does not hold one in an emergency to the exercise of that mature judgment required of him under circumstances where he has an opportunity for deliberate action. He is not required to exercise unerring judgment, which would be expected of him, were he not confronted with an emergency requiring prompt action’. The circumstances provide the foil by which the act is brought into relief to determine whether it is or is not negligent. If under normal circumstances an act is done which might be considered negligent it does not follow as a corollary that a similar act is negligent if performed by a person acting under an emergency, not of his own making, in which he suddenly is faced with a patent danger with a moment left to adopt a means of extrication. The chauffeur-the ordinary man in this case-acted in a split second in a most harrowing experience. To call him negligent would be to brand him coward; the court does not do so in spite of what those swaggering heroes, ‘whose valor plucks dead lions by the beard’, may bluster to the contrary. The court is loathe to see the plaintiffs go without recovery even though their damages were slight, but cannot hold the defendant liable upon the facts adduced at the trial. Motions, upon which decision was reserved, to dismiss the complaint are granted with exceptions to plaintiffs. Judgment for defendant against plaintiffs dismissing their complaint upon the merits. Ten days’ stay and thirty days to make a case.

N.Y.City Ct. 1941
Cordas v. Peerless Transp. Co.
27 N.Y.S.2d 198