M. C. Higgins, the Great by Virginia Hamilton

Source of book: Audiobook from the library, but we also own this. 

 

While I haven’t yet finished any of my “official” Black History Month selections, I suppose this book could qualify. 

 

Virginia Hamilton was an African American author, primarily of books for children. She remains today one of the most award-winning American childrens’ author of all time. M. C. Higgins, the Great won the Newbery award in 1975. Unfortunately, with a handful of exceptions, her books are a bit hard to find 50 years later, which is a shame. The Library of America published a collection of her best known works a few years ago, which I purchased for our home library. I encourage others to do so as well - we preserve Black History (which is a key part of an accurate and complete American history) when we purchase and read books which tell it. 

 

You can find my complete list of Black History Month and works by black authors here. You can read my thoughts on Black History in this post. 

 

My youngest and I previously read Zeely by this author. I decided to take this one along as an audiobook for our recent trip to Death Valley. 

Like Zeely, M. C. Higgins, the Great is a coming of age story, which takes place primarily internally. The story takes place over a mere three days, and honestly, not that much happens. 

 

You can kind of summarize it as this: teen boy had an epiphany on the way to manhood as the result of two visits. One is an an ethnographer, James Lewis, who is recording folk singing in the rural Appalachian community M. C. lives in. The other is a mysterious girl, Lurhetta Outlaw, who camps near M. C.’s home. As the result of the meetings, M. C. changes. 

 

There is a lot more, though, internally and in the setting. The hills above where M. C. and his family live have been strip mined for coal, and the waste rock is slipping down, threatening their home. 

 

Their closest neighbors are the eccentric Killburn clan, vegetarian farmers of Irish descent who share polydactyly (12 fingers, 12 toes) and combined traditional healing and superstition in their ways, which give them the reputation of “witchy.” Despite this, M. C. plays with Ben, a Killburn his age, on the sly. 

 

Lewis helps M. C. appreciate his family for who they are, while warning them of the impending landslide. Luhretta is able to see things without the prejudice that plagues M. C.’s father, and deliberately breaches the separation imposed on the Killburns. 

 

M. C., in turn, takes Luhretta through a tunnel in the local lake, at peril to them both, and finally comes to see the Killburns as fellow humans. He also comes to a more constructive relationship to his father (who is a mix of good and bad traits) and to his remaining years living at home in the shadow of the mountains. 

 

As I noted above, the book isn’t about what happens in the outside world. It is very introspective, interior, thoughtful, emotional. It unfolds slowly one layer at a time. In this, it reminds me more of authors like Anthony Trollope and Henry James (two favorites), even as the books are aimed at children. 

 

Another thing that occurred to me while listening to this book is that Hamilton isn’t really writing for white readers, although her books are perfectly comprehensible by young readers with the patience for introspection. 

 

We know that M. C. and his family are black, but only because Hamilton describes certain physical features in the same way white authors might mention a character’s blue eyes, or blond hair. There are multiple words used to lovingly describe the various shades of skin color (particularly M. C.’s reaction to Luhretta, who he crushes on pretty hard.) 

 

In contrast, the Killburns are explicitly described as being of Irish descent in addition to their red hair and extra digits. It isn’t entirely clear what race Lewis is, but probably he is white given his profession, which he inherited from his father. 

 

As a story, while this book isn’t particularly exciting, it is very real. After all, most of us “formerly young men” can remember feeling like M. C. Those stirrings of puberty, when we have our first hard crush - oh man, I can remember that. Most of us likely had a crush on an older teen around that time, whether that was our first or not. 

 

And who hasn’t had complicated relationships with parents? The teen years are a time of separation and embrace of selfhood, and even with the best of parents, this is a fraught time. I remember being torn between the natural love children have for their parents and my frustration with their refusal to listen or see my point of view. 

 

For M. C., that his parents remain steadfastly in denial about the threat to their safety is thoroughly frustrating to him. And he is right, as confirmed by Lewis and others. 

 

By the end of the book, he has come to completely doubt his parents’ superstition about the Killburns, and in fact allows their skin to touch his, freaking his father out. M. C. is right about this, though. For all their own odd beliefs, the Killburns are just people, and right decent people too, as it turns out. Would that more of us would reject prejudice like M. C. does. 

 

The audiobook was narrated by Roscoe Lee Browne, who matches the languid speed of the text with an unhurried, warm reading. In particular, his singing of the folk songs that M. C.’s mother sings is evocative and moving. 

 

I believe that children are often more thoughtful than we give them credit for being. Books like this will resonate with children like that, and I would definitely give this book a shot. Not everything has to be exciting and fast paced. It is okay to sit with feelings sometimes, and this book does that very well. 

 

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

Source of book: I own this.

 

Let me start this post with a story about my childhood. Back when I was in early double digits, a family friend who worked at JPL at the time gave my brother and I some supplies and training in how to properly solder electronics. The project was these Radio Shack (remember them?) AM radios that needed to be built. 

 

This was a fun project, and the skills we learned have translated well to similar things in real life. Including knowing what trichloroethylene is, how to use it, why it is bad to have it contaminate your water supply. (Don’t worry: there isn’t a site in Los Angeles caused by my brother and I…) 

 

So, we now had a pair of AM radios, and our shared bedroom was on the other side of the house from where my parents slept. So, what kind of trouble did we get into? 

 

You guessed it! We stayed up past our bedtime listening to the Drama Hour on KNX 1070. 

 

Wait, you didn’t guess that? Well, maybe you didn’t grow up in Los Angeles. For those unfamiliar with that, back in the day, KNX would run replays of old fashioned radio shows from 9 to 10 every evening. It was different each night, and rotated through a whole host of different shows over the course of time. 

 

My brother and I had our favorites, usually mystery or detective shows. (Dragnet, set in LA and based on real cases, was so popular it eventually became a TV show.) We also freaked ourselves out one night when Lights Out came on - I mean, giant spiders and all.

 

Later, my parents bought a couple sets of cassette tapes of old shows, and we would listen to those on road trips. 

 

These days, the Drama Hour is long gone, alas, as are readily available cassettes and CDs. You can stream some of them online here and there.  

 

So, what does this story have to do with this book?

 

Well, one of the shows was The Adventures of Philip Marlowe, based on Raymond Chandler’s detective character. It was generally a bit more “hard-boiled” than the other detective shows, and…well, I’ll talk about him when I get to the book. 

 

Another formative bit of culture in my childhood was Calvin and Hobbes. One of Calvin’s many imaginary alter-egos was “Tracer Bullet,” a (you guessed it) hard-boiled detective in a noir story. One that sure seems to be a lot like the stuff Chandler wrote, between its femme fatales, hard drinking, and memorable one-liners. 

 

Chandler didn’t originate the genre - that would be Dashiell Hammett with Sam Spade. (Trivia fact: Hammett was married to playwright Lillian Hellman.) But much of what we think of in terms of style is Chandler’s particular riff on the genre. 

 

Marlowe first appeared in a series of pulp short stories for magazines. Later, Chandler reworked elements of the plots from those stories into full length novels, of which The Big Sleep was the first.

 

As is my usual practice when writing about mysteries, I am not going to spoil the plot of the book. Rather, I will be quoting a bunch of the best lines, because I can. 

 

And also, I want to talk a bit about the different mystery genres, because I am a nerd that way. 

 

I grew up reading Agatha Christie, which is perhaps the most characteristic of the British tradition. Also in this tradition are G. K. Chesterton’s Father Brown stories, and Dorothy Sayers’ Lord Peter Whimsy novels. And, of course, the godfather of them all, Sherlock Holmes. 

 

The British tradition involves an amateur detective, who solves carefully plotted mysteries using powers of observation and deduction. The reader is encouraged to carefully read the story, looking for clues, and then try to beat the detective to the solution. 

 

In contrast, the American tradition has a professional sleuth, and the solution involves more legwork and investigation rather than deduction. These tend to also subdivide into two subgenres: the police procedural, and the noir private detective. 

 

The borders are blurred a bit, of course. Murder She Wrote is set in the US, and has a private detective, but leans more toward the British genre in other ways. 

 

Ironically, the first mystery story was written by an American: Edgar Alan Poe, and is rather in what would become the British tradition. 

 

So, with all that background, let’s talk about the book. 

 

To quote Tracer Bullet, “In walked trouble. Brunette, of course.” 

 

Well, this one doesn’t quite start with that, but our detective does end up running into the wayward daughters of his client on the way to see him. 

 

He’s an old guy, the wealthy General Sternwood. And he wants Marlowe to take a look at blackmail demands he is receiving. 

 

Marlowe recognizes the name of the blackmailer: he is a small-time bookstore owner. And black market distributor of pornography, in an era when that was illegal. (The book was written in 1939.) But before he can make contact, the pornographer turns up dead, in a house with a drugged and naked Carmen Sternwood. 

 

And that is only the first of many bodies in this book. In some cases, Marlowe witnesses the murder. In others, not so much. In one case, we never find out for sure who killed the person or exactly why - there is only speculation. 

 

Further than that, I won’t go. There are a lot of twists and surprises. The ending is both unexpected and yet predictable, as a good detective story should be. 

 

One of the very enjoyable things about the book for me was its Los Angeles setting. This is my hometown, and, while many of the buildings have been torn down 85 years later, a lot is still there, and the neighborhoods felt very familiar. I could follow a good bit of Marlowe’s route throughout the book. 

 

As a noir tends to be, this one is set during the rainy season. Although it must have been an El Nino year for this book, because that’s a LOT of rain. 

 

I will also note that the book is of its time. The main way this comes out is in a certain amount of casual racism and misogyny. It’s not particularly bad - it’s not even overt except for a bit by a corrupt police officer. And in that case, it’s realistic for our time as much as then, sadly. 

 

The misogyny is both an issue and key to the plot and genre. After all, the femme fatale is the driver of the plot - and indeed many noir plots. It wouldn’t work quite as well, for example, if the women weren’t trying to get Marlowe to sleep with them. 

 

What I would say is that you have to know what you are dealing with, and just go with it as part of the work of art the book is. Yes, Chandler and his hero look down on women. But yes, that’s part of the story too. 

 

Probably the best part of the book, though, is the writing. The deliciously cheesy and overwritten metaphors, the breezy yet snarky quips by Marlowe, the patter and rhythm that come through so well in the radio versions. It’s a fun, immersive experience. 

 

Let’s jump to some quotes. The opening, for example.

 

It was about eleven o’clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, black wool socks and dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, aid I didn’t care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.

 

Or this bit about Carmen Sternwood. 

 

Her eyes rounded. She was puzzled. She was thinking. I could see, even on that short acquaintance, that thinking was always going to be a bother to her. 

 

Or the bedridden General Sternwood. 

 

The General spoke again, slowly, using his strength as carefully as an out-of-work showgirl uses her last good pair of stockings. 

 

Come on, that’s so bad it’s good. 

 

And also this exchange between the butler, who clearly knows more than he is telling, and Marlowe. 

 

His blue eyes frosted. “Are you attempting to tell me my duties, sir?”

“No. But I’m having a lot of fun trying to guess what they are.” 

 

Marlowe, for his part, is puzzled at his task. It doesn’t seem to be the sort of thing one needs a detective for, after all. 

 

They were a couple of pretty smooth citizens, she and her father. He was probably just trying me out; the job he had given me was a lawyer’s job. Even if Mr. Arthur Gwynn Geiger, Rare Books and De Luxe Editions, turned out to be a blackmailer, it was still a lawyer’s job. Unless there was a lot more to it than met the eye. At a casual glance I thought I might have a lot of fun finding out. 

 

The description of the bookstore, complete with snarky asides, is fun. 

 

The entrance door was set far back in the middle and there was a copper trim on the windows, which were backed with Chinese screens, so I couldn’t see into the store. There was a lot of oriental junk in the windows. I didn’t know whether it was any good, not being a collector of antiques, except unpaid bills. 

 

The older sister, Vivian, may not be quite as openly wild, but she has a thing for gambling. And her own snarky way of talking. 

 

“Yes. I like roulette. All the Sternwoods like losing games, like roulette and marrying men that walk out on them and riding steeplechases at fifty-eight years old and being rolled on by a jumper and crippled for life. The Sternwoods have money. All it has bought them is a rain check.” 

 

That could be said about a lot of rich people, honestly. Vivian later gets a cutting remark in at Marlowe. 

 

“That makes you just a killer at heart, like all cops.”

 

In another scene, Marlowe ends up with a young man who has just killed another character, in revenge for the killing of his lover. (It’s…a long story, and I’m not spoiling it.) This quip is pretty good. 

 

“Go ------ yourself.”

“That’s how people get false teeth.” 

 

Here’s another great description, of a police bureaucrat. 

 

He swung around slowly and heavily in his swivel chair and put his large flat feet on the bare linoleum that covered his floor. His office had the musty smell of years of routine.

 

And this exchange between the two of them. 

 

“It’s goddamned funny in this police racket how an old woman can look out of a window and see a guy running and pick him out of a line-up six months later, but we can show hotel help a clear photo and they just can’t be sure.”

“That’s one of the qualifications for good hotel help,” I said. 

 

In a later scene comes this line from the cop. 

 

“I’m a copper,” he said. “Just a plain ordinary copper. Reasonably honest. As honest as you could expect a man to be in a world where it’s out of style. That’s mainly why I asked you to come in this morning. I’d like you to believe that. Being a copper I like to see the law win. I’d like to see the flashy well-dressed mugs like Eddie Mars spoiling their manicures in the rock quarry at Folsom, alongside of the poor little slum-bred hard guys that got knocked over on their first caper and never had a break since. That’s what I’d like. You and me both lived too long to think I’m likely to see it happen. Not in this town, not in any town half this size, in any part of this wide, green and beautiful U.S.A. We just don’t run our country that way.”

 

Yikes, that’s a bit too true and definitely subversive. 

 

As is mandatory in the genre, there is the scene where Carmen gets into Marlowe’s apartment and waits for him. Naked of course. He turns her down. 

 

“Neat,” I said. “Managers are like that. Now I know how you got in tell me how you’re going to go out.” 

 

Another great over-the-top description, to finish things off. 

 

He wore a blue uniform coat that fitted him the way a stall fits a horse. 

 

So, it’s a classic noir, a good bit of fun even when dated, and a good escape from reality for a bit. In these troubled times, even as we fight for what is good and decent in the world, we are going to need our refuges where we can get them. And literature is a good place to look. 

 

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen - Play adapted by Kate Hamill (Empty Space 2025)

Ah, Pride and Prejudice, the timeless story of the intersection of money, class, and love. Written by the legendary Jane Austen over 200 years ago, it still holds fascination today for its exploration of human vanity, cultural snobbery, and social climbing. 

 

To try to list all of the various adaptations would take far too much space - that’s what Wikipedia is for anyway. However, I do want to note that I have seen two screen versions: the 1940 version starring Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson, which inexplicably won an Oscar despite its butchery of the plot and generic characters; and the gold standard, the 1995 A&E series starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth, among others. 

 

No, I haven’t seen the new Kiera Knightly one. The A&E version will always be the gold standard for its faithfulness to the book, its attention to period detail, its understated vibe, and of course the fact that the musicians are actually playing their instruments! Including a serpent, which is super cool. (Also brilliant is that the gauche country folk are still playing last generation’s music, while the cosmopolitan Bingleys and Darcys are up with the latest from Mozart.) 

 

That said, while I generally believe the book will always be better than the movie or other adaptation, I am not such a snob that I cannot enjoy what is essentially a different work of art. 

 

A great example of this is the Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman book, Good Omens, and its television series. Both are good, but very different works of art. 

 

This play also falls into that category. Because it needs to fit into about two hours of stage time, it of necessity will need to make decisions about what to omit and what to keep. In addition, any modern adaptation needs to decide how much of Austen’s lovely and witty, but archaic language to keep. It will always be a compromise of some sort. 

 

As long as you go into the play without expecting it to duplicate Austen, it is enjoyable. It keeps the bones of the story without adding extra plots (all too common, unfortunately), preserves many of the best lines, even if it was impossible to preserve all of them, and largely keeps the feel of the characters the same. 

 

There are some definite changes. Unsurprisingly, characters had to be cut. The most unexpected here was the paring down of the daughters to four. Poor Kitty. Nobody ever respected her anyway. Also gone are Mrs. Bennett’s brother and his family, the other soldiers, and several of the local neighbors. All of the cuts are defensible, given the time limits. 

 

The one character which felt most changed was Mary, who became far more dramatic while also becoming more of the butt of the family jokes. I think this was a bit much, and I felt sorry for Mary. In the book, she gets to be more of an asexual nerd and dour religious fanatic - in other words, Mr. Collins should have married her. It would have been a perfect match. 

 

It feels a bit unnecessary to recount the plot, as it should by now be familiar to anyone who has seen any other version. I suspect Austen fans are likely the core audience anyway. But if not, well, go see the play if you can, and definitely read the book. Trust me, it’s very much worth it. 

 

The vibe of this play, particularly as performed, was definitely less restrained and more over-the-top. The updated script contains a certain amount of mild innuendo, which Austen would never have stated outright. (Her era certainly had plenty of bawdy talk, but not among genteel women. And before her, Shakespeare was…well, you know.) Your mileage may vary on this. Some will hate it, others will find it hilarious. 

 

I would also call the vibe a bit irreverent. Not only does the play retain the social satire of the original, it also pokes a good bit of fun at period dramas themselves. 

 

As usual, The Empty Space found a way to put their own twist on the production, from the “put a flower on it” aesthetic - Portlandia would approve - to the particular twists on the personalities of the characters. 

 

And the costumes. Particularly that pink and plaid ensemble on Mr. Collins and the unique suit on Mr. Bennett. 

 

As with so many local productions, I had friends in this one, including both of the Gradowitz girls. Or, well, women these days. They are all grown up and killing it on stage. 

 

Let me mention some specific actors. First up, Alex Mitts as Mr. Darcy, which is a truly difficult part to pull off, particularly in this version, where he has to be the straight man in the chaos all around him. I always love seeing Alex on stage - he’s versatile and believable and likeable. Well, mostly. Darcy isn’t supposed to be likeable at first. And, well, he does come off as appropriately snobbish and proud. 

 

Andrea Vega, a young up-and-coming actor, shined in the role of Lizzie, and had good chemistry with Darcy. 

 Lizzie (Andrea Vega) and Darcy (Alex Mitts)

The secondary couple, Jane and Bingley, were played by Ruth Luna and Chayce Perlis, respectively. Luna was appropriately shy yet smitten, while Perlis was a kind of overeager puppy dog. Which, well, that actually is Bingley, after all. (In the book, Lizzie predicts that they will be mercilessly cheated by their servants, yet be absurdly happy with each other.) 

 

Mary was played by Grace Piercy, who has been ensemble on a few plays I have seen, but never this major of a part. As I noted, I thought the character was a bit over-the-top, but given the part, Piercy did a good job of acting it. 

 

The fourth daughter, Lydia, was given the full ditz treatment by our friend Marina. And, well, she stole every scene. Which we knew she would. Her seducer and eventual husband, Wickham, was played with appropriate lugubriousness by Josh Carruthers, who has been killing it on stage lately, from Agatha Christie to Tennessee Williams. 

 Lydia (Marina Gradowitz)

Mr. and Mrs. Bennett were portrayed by local stage veterans Ronnie Warren and Kayleigh Peaker. Again, excellent chemistry between the feuding couple, who respond to the unjust entailment of their estate with denial and avoidance on the one hand, and panic and scheming on the other. 

 Mr. Bennett (Ronnie Warren)

Outside the family are a few other characters. Charlotte Lucas, played by Clarianne Righetti, daughter of family friends, had the other straight man character. The always-excellent Petra Carter played the snobbish Miss Bingley to perfection. 

 

Mr. Collins has long been one of my favorite characters, because he is so devoid of sense or likeability. Jesus Fidel just nailed this part. It’s a bit different than other versions, but he made it his own, and made it work. And that pink suit. 

 

Finally, the eminent, respectable, and thoroughly condescending Lady Catherine de Bourgh. If you have seen the A&E version you know. 

 Lizzie (Andrea Vega), Mr. Collins (Jesus Fidel), and Lady Catherine (Selah Gradowitz)

So, when I heard that Selah would be playing the part - she’s all of 20 years old, and like Marina, rather more “fun-size” than imposing, I was curious to see how she pulled it off. 

 

I was pleasantly surprised in every way. She had serious gravitas, and a sneer you could feel all the way to the back row. (After the show, she said her face hurt from having to hold that sneer the whole time.) 

 

Also fun here is that Selah, the younger sibling, played the old lady, while Marina, the older one, played the 14 year old Lydia. And both totally worked. 

 

In fact, I think the strength of this production was in the full ensemble. Top to bottom, everyone brought themselves to the characters, and the chemistry was solid throughout. Every part was sold well, and felt real. Our local theater people really bring it to every stage. 

 

Pride and Prejudice runs the next two weekends, and I recommend getting tickets in advance, as it has been selling out. 

 

esonline.org

Mauve by Simon Garfield

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

 

This is the sort of nerdy book I might have read randomly, but I probably wouldn’t have found it if I hadn’t already read and enjoyed Simon Garfield. You can read my posts about Just My Type, On the Map, and Timekeepers if you like. 

 

While each of the other books is different from each other, they are more alike than they are like this book. Published in 2000, it belongs to his earlier period, when he wrote more standard non-fiction, rather than his later collections of interesting stories related to the topic. In this book, therefore, he tells a pretty straightforward story of William Perkin, the chemist who discovered (or better yet created) the first artificial dye. 

This means that this book was informative, interesting, and full of relevant facts. But it wasn’t quite as much fun as the other three, which were more freewheeling and random. No diss to Garfield, whose writing is good, but just a bit different than the other books. 

 

Perkin is, unfortunately, not much celebrated or even remembered by the general public these days. Perhaps this is because dyes are everywhere to the degree that we don’t even remember when color was a luxury in clothing and printing. 

 

He also didn’t have an outsized personality or a portfolio of pithy quotes. He was mostly a meticulous chemist, who took an accidentally creation and followed it to its development into a commercial success.

 

Perkin originally set out to create an artificial version of quinine. His goal was humanitarian: malaria was still costing millions of lives, but the biological source of its treatment was limited and slow growing. If he could create it in a lab, its cost would go down and its availability go up. 

 

Instead, one of his experiments led to a brilliantly purplish substance that stained his fingers. He decided to see if he could turn it into a functional dye, which he called “mauve.” That was the first color created in a laboratory, but soon Perkin and others were creating new colors one after the other. 

 

An industry was born, but more than that, the lessons learned led to even greater discoveries. Within a century after his death, his chemicals had led to “enormous advances in medicine, perfumery, food, explosives, and photography.” 

 

And yet he remains relatively unknown. 

 

His life was a bit mundane, I suppose, which is why the book isn’t as exciting as some stories. Perkin got together some partners and started a dye works. Later, when he needed to either invest a lot more in it, or find investors, in order to expand, he chose to sell and go back to research. 

 

So, while some “pure” chemists considered him a sellout for going commercial, he never really cashed in. He lacked the full capitalist instinct. 

 

While he and his staff did create more dyes, he never did get his medical breakthrough. 

 

He married and had kids, and bought a nice place with his profits. He taught and lectured and did typical scientist stuff. He was a devout evangelical (in the good, British, way, not the toxic American way) and spent a portion of his profits bettering the lives of factory workers and other low wage workers in his town. 

 

Amusingly, the main source of friction appeared to be that Perkin was a teetotaler, while the workers liked their pint after work. But this was mild, and Perkin was generally liked by all. 

 

The second half of the book is less about Perkin’s life than the subsequent history of dyes and the industry he founded. Most of the production moved to Germany in the late 1800s, leading to a crisis when World War One broke out. Now, China and India dominate production. 

 

Dyes also came to be used extensively in medicine, both as a diagnostic - selective staining is discussed at length - and as a treatment - it appears that some dyes have significant therapeutic effect against certain diseases. 

 

One of the coolest things in this section was that methyl violet and methyl violet literally stain different things different colors. The chemical reaction changes the color. (I got to see some of this in action decades ago when my wife took me along on a school field trip to the VA microbiology lab.) 

 

So, interesting stuff. I learned a lot I didn’t know before. 

 

One of those is the name. The color itself had been named previously, but it didn’t really make it into the vernacular until Perkin marketed his dye. The name itself comes from the French name for the common mallow, whose flower can be mauve (and similar shades.) Chances are, you have a member of the mallow family growing as a weed near your house - they are not native to the Americas, and are considered an invasive pest. 

 

There are a lot of other interesting plants - and animals - in the book. Garfield explores the topic of natural dyes, and their competition with the synthetic ones. For example, woad, which is a relative of mustard, with similar brilliant yellow flowers. It is used, however, to make indigo dye. Who knew?

 

Each chapter starts with a quote from somewhere, about something related to mauve. These are pretty cool, and also sometimes unexpected. 

 

For example, this 1999 memo from Buckingham Palace which the Evening Standard got a hold of. The queen was apparently a bit picky about her hotel accomodations, which the rag got to snark on about a bit. 

 

“She doesn’t want the management to think she’s fussy, you understand, but could they please make sure that any flower arrangements do not contain anything mauve (or carnations of any color)...”

 

I’m rather fond of carnations myself, although I have found them more difficult to grow than roses. 

 

And, naturally, we get a snarky Oscar Wilde quote, from The Picture of Dorian Gray. 

 

“Ordinary women always console themselves. Some of them do it by going in for sentimental colours. Never trust a woman who wears mauve, whatever her age may be, or a woman over thirty-five who is fond of pink ribbons. It always means they have a history.” 

 

The chapter about World War One was interesting. For example, did you know that one military advantage Germany had was that its extensive dye works could quickly switch to producing explosives, because many of the raw materials were the same? 

 

But it wasn’t just materials and factories the British lacked: they also lacked trained chemists. Why? Because their school system failed to produce them. And a significant reason for that was that the government didn’t encourage the study, and the universities saw industry as the enemy, while industry didn’t build ties to the universities. 

 

Some of this sounds familiar today. The US lost its edge in producing scientists, in significant part because after desegregation, public schools have been starved of funds (in many states) and targeted as supposed factories for “wokeness.” Also, the inequality and racist systems in the US have made it more difficult for potential scientists from lower income and minority communities to aspire to that career. (And ditto for women - and Trump is not helping that.) When you limit your field, you miss out on candidates. 

 

(That’s literally what DEI is about, by the way: making sure we do not overlook brilliant people because they have the “wrong” color or gender.) 

 

Garfield also notes another reason for the lack of nourishment of the sciences: a belief in the “great genius” theory of how science progresses. This is a problem here in the US too - the reason people think Elon Musk actually invented anything rather than buying it. 

 

In reality, discovery is the result of many hours of work - increasingly collaborative, industrialized work. And that goes for all sciences. 

 

This was a root problem in Britain’s surrender of its dye industry to Germany. As Garfield puts it, the reasoning of the Secretary of War was that institutional support wasn’t needed, because genius will find its way without need for assistance. 

 

This too is a factor in the decline of the sciences in the US. And why we end up having to hire immigrant engineers to fill the gaps. (Not that immigration is a bad thing. Far from it! But we could also have more native-born scientists and STEM workers generally with more consistent institutional support.)

 

I’ll end with a couple of humorous bits. 

 

An early plastic, Lactoid, was discovered by accident when the chemist’s cat knocked a beaker of formaldehyde over into its own milk saucer. Cats gonna cat, I tell you. 

 

The other is in a passage in the Author’s Note at the end. Garfield lists a bunch of modern authors of an era of British literature (including Julian Barnes), who all seemed to have some sort of a dare, a bet perhaps, where they all worked “mauve” into the first chapter of their books. There are quotes, too. Including this one from John Lanchester’s The Debt to Pleasure. 

 

“[S]uggested that either the artis was a tragicomically inept doctrinaire cubist, or that Mr. R. B. Fenner-Crossway, MA was in reality a dyspeptic pattern of mauve rhomboids.” 

 

That’s great stuff. It also is just a glimpse of how Garfield would later write, focusing more on the crazy stories like that, and less on serious biography. But don’t miss out on this book. The history of synthetic chemicals literally starts with dyes, and the early days are important to a full understanding of how we got to our modern chemical world. 

Poems 1787-1794 by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Source of book: I own this

 

First of all, do not confuse this poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, with the Afro-British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. Both are luminaries in their own way. I do recommend listening to Coleridge-Taylor’s music - for example, The Bamboula, which I got to play with the Tehachapi Symphony Orchestra a few years ago. The composer was named after the poet. 

 

Most of us know Samuel Taylor Coleridge for two poems: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and Kubla Khan. And, even those who don’t remember or didn’t read these, undoubtedly know some version of the most famous line from the former:

 

Water, water everywhere

And all the boards did shrink

Water, water everywhere

Nor any drop to drink

 

Both poems are true masterpieces, and are rightly well known and loved. But Coleridge wrote a lot more than just those - I own his complete poems and it clocks in at over 600 pages. 

 

Coleridge is also known for his mental health struggles. While retroactive diagnoses are difficult, there is some evidence that he suffered from bipolar disorder. This was compounded by his becoming addicted to opium after an injury. Much like our own opioid issues today, actually. Hey, I blogged a few years ago about a book that talks all about that. 

 

He also once attempted, along with fellow British poets Robert Southey and Robert Lovell, to found a utopian socialist community to be located in the United States - the “Pantisocracy.” Oh, and the three poets married three sisters. It’s…a story. 

 

For what it is worth, Southey and Edith appear to have had a happy marriage, until her death more than 40 years later. (His second marriage ended in a breakup, mostly due to Southey’s dementia.) 

 

Lovell created a scandal in his devout Quaker family by marrying Mary, who had gone on stage at one point. Lovell died a mere year after the marriage, and with his family rejecting Mary, she took refuge with Southey and her sister Edith. She lived to age 90, finally living with Southey’s daughter. 

 

Coleridge and Sara, though. Well, that was a total disaster. They very inharmoniously separated less than 10 years later, with each blaming the other in a very public feud. 

 

Just some interesting background for the collection. 

 

My book is a Wordsworth Poetry Library paperback - one of several used books my wife has found for me over the years. These are, in my opinion, good for being complete, but often frustrating in layout - a layout that isn’t even consistent across the series. This isn’t helped by the fact that, in contrast to today’s practice of releasing poetry in successive volumes, back in the day, collections were issued every few years, but containing some or all of the previous poems. 

 

This makes it difficult to read a portion in a coherent manner. What I have decided to do in these cases is to pick an arbitrary amount to read, based on some criterion that will enable me to systematically go through my book. 

 

In this case, since the poems are arranged chronologically, and indexed by year, I decided to read a time framework of about the number of pages I wished to read. In this case, that meant I would start at the beginning, and read through 80 or so pages, and find a reasonable stopping point. 

 

In this case, I decided not to stop exactly at the end of 1794, but read an additional four poems to complete a cycle that spanned both years. 

 

Because I started at the beginning, there are a number of juvenile works, from Coleridge’s days at a charity boarding school, Christ’s Hospital, where he was sent after his father died. Later, he would attend Jesus College at Cambridge. 

 

During this time, he wrote works that were published in the school newspaper, but also poems that were just for fun, or for particular people. These are really all over the place, from formal odes to silly doggerel for friends. He also wrote under a pseudonym in some cases, so reconstructing this era was a bit of a job for later editors. 

 

The poems often seem very much of their era. The Romantic period in English poetry was even more flowery and emotional that the Victorian Era to follow, and that is saying something. 

 

On the other hand, however, the poetry is a great reminder that our current narrow view of stoic masculinity isn’t really masculine at all, just a current cultural affectation driven in part by a backlash to feminism. 

 

Back in the day, a man could express extremes of grief and pain and fear and joy and rapture - not just anger. It was a far more full spectrum of human emotions, and whatever the very genuine faults of the era, it was a lot easier to be a man with emotions than now. Coleridge makes me jealous about that, I will admit. 

 

I won’t quote them here, but there are several poems that are either about or refer to the death of Coleridge’s beloved sister. They are heart-rending of course, but they also allowed him to publicly express his grief in a healthy way. 

 

As I noted, early poetry is often varied and uneven. There were definitely a few “meh” poems. But also some really good ones. So, I have picked a few that I think are best to feature here. Enjoy. 

 

As regular readers will know, I am very fond of the Sonnet form. Here is an early one from 1788, written when Coleridge would have been 15 or 16 years old. It’s a heck of a lot better than the sonnets I wrote for school at that age…

 

Sonnet: To The Autumnal Moon

 

Mild Splendor of the various-vested Night!

Mother of wildly-working visions! hail!

I watch thy gliding, while with watery light

Thy weak eye glimmers through a fleecy veil;

And when thou lovest thy pale orb to shroud

Behind the gather'd blackness lost on high;

And when thou dartest from the wind-rent cloud

Thy placid lightning o'er th' awakened sky.

Ah, such is Hope! As changeful and as fair!

Now dimly peering on the wistful sight;

Now hid behind the dragon-wing'd Despair:

But soon emerging in her radiant might

She o'er the sorrow-clouded breast of Care

Sails, like a meteor kindling in its flight.

 

From the next year comes this occasional poem, on the destruction of the Bastille, the spark of the French Revolution. It is a fragment, clearly missing stanzas two and three. It seems a bit apropos to our own time, when the obscenely rich are attempting to take control of the United States Federal Government. 

 

Destruction of the Bastille

 

I

Heard'st thou yon universal cry,

And dost thou linger still on Gallia's shore?

Go, Tyranny! beneath some barbarous sky

Thy terrors lost and ruin'd power deplore!

What tho' through many a groaning age 

Was felt thy keen suspicious rage,

Yet Freedom rous'd by fierce Disdain

Has wildly broke thy triple chain,

And like the storm which Earth's deep entrails hide,

 

* * * * *

 

IV

In sighs their sickly breath was spent; each gleam

Of Hope had ceas'd the long long day to cheer;

Or if delusive, in some flitting dream,

It gave them to their friends and children dear—

Awaked by lordly Insult's sound

To all the doubled horrors round,

Oft shrunk they from Oppression's band

While Anguish rais'd the desperate hand

For silent death; or lost the mind's controll,

Thro' every burning vein would tides of Frenzy roll.

 

V

But cease, ye pitying bosoms, cease to bleed!

Such scenes no more demand the tear humane;

I see, I see! glad Liberty succeed

With every patriot virtue in her train!

And mark yon peasant's raptur'd eyes;

Secure he views his harvests rise;

No fetter vile the mind shall know,

And Eloquence shall fearless glow.

Yes! Liberty the soul of Life shall reign,

Shall throb in every pulse, shall flow thro' every vein!

 

VI

Shall France alone a Despot spurn?

Shall she alone, O Freedom, boast thy care?

Lo, round thy standard Belgia's heroes burn,

Tho' Power's blood-stain'd streamers fire the air,

And wider yet thy influence spread, 

Nor e'er recline thy weary head,

Till every land from pole to pole

Shall boast one independent soul!

And still, as erst, let favour'd Britain be

First ever of the first and freest of the free!

 

The non-standard spellings are in the original, by the way. For all the drilling we all got as kids, it is easy to forget that barely 200 years ago, before the great dictionaries were first created, spelling was a lot more hit and miss. 

 

Next up is a fun occasional poem from 1793. A “monody” is a poem written as a lament on a person’s death. Or, perhaps, the death of beloved pot. 

 

Monody on a Tea Kettle 

 

O Muse who sangest late another’s pain,

To griefs domestic turn thy coal-black steed!

With slowest steps thy funeral steed must go,

Nodding his head in all the pomp of woe:

Wide scatter round each dark and deadly weed,

And let the melancholy dirge complain,

(Whilst Bats shall shriek and Dogs shall howling run)

The tea-kettle is spoilt and Coleridge is undone!

 

Your cheerful songs, ye unseen crickets, cease!

Let songs of grief your alter’d minds engage!  

For he who sang responsive to your lay,

What time the joyous bubbles ’gan to play,

The sooty swain has felt the fire’s fierce rage; —

Yes, he is gone, and all my woes increase;

I heard the water issuing from the wound —

No more the Tea shall pour its fragrant steams around!

 

O Goddess best belov’d! Delightful Tea!

With thee compar’d what yields the madd’ning Vine?

Sweet power! who know’st to spread the calm delight,

And the pure joy prolong to midmost night!  

Ah! must I all thy varied sweets resign?

Enfolded close in grief thy form I see;

No more wilt thou extend thy willing arms,

Receive the fervent Jove, and yield him all thy charms!

 

How sink the mighty low by Fate opprest! —

Perhaps, O Kettle! thou by scornful toe

Rude urg’d t’ ignoble place with plaintive din,

May’st rust obscure midst heaps of vulgar tin; —

As if no joy had ever seiz’d my breast

When from thy spout the streams did arching fly, —  

As if, infus’d, thou ne’er hadst known t’ inspire

All the warm raptures of poetic fire!

 

But hark! or do I fancy the glad voice —

"What tho’ the swain did wondrous charms disclose —

(Not such did Memnon’s sister sable drest)

Take these bright arms with royal face imprest,

A better Kettle shall thy soul rejoice,

And with Oblivion’s wings o’erspread thy woes!"

Thus Fairy Hope can soothe distress and toil;

On empty Trivets she bids fancied Kettles boil! 

 

I love the high-flown language. The tea kettle gets every bit as much metaphor and literary allusion as the greatest dead poet. And really, since Jove (aka Zeus) seemingly wants to bonk anything that moves (hence 90% of all myths start with “and then Zeus got horny…”), why not have a tea kettle yield her charms? 

 

This next poem, one of several fine nature-themed verses, was written in Jesus Wood in 1792.

 

A Wish

 

Lo! thro' the dusky silence of the groves,

Thro' vales irriguous, and thro' green retreats,

With languid murmur creeps the placid stream,

And works its secret way!

 

Awhile meand'ring round its native fields

It rolls the playful wave, and winds its flight:

Then downward flowing with awaken'd speed

Embosoms in the Deep!

 

Thus thro' its silent tenor may my Life

Smooth its meek stream, by sordid Wealth unclogg'd,

Alike unconscious of forensic storms,

And Glory's blood-stain'd palm!

 

And when dark Age shall close Life's little day,

Satiate of sport, and weary of its toils,

E'en thus may slumbrous Death my decent limbs

Compose with icy hand!

 

I find it interesting in part because although it has a regular meter and stanza - quatrains in iambic pentameter - it is unrhymed. Not exactly blank verse, because the stanzas are in a form rather than free, it also has the line of trimeter at the end of each stanza. It’s a bit different, and it drew my eye. 

 

One of the ways the young Coleridge wrote was to take poems from the past - often translated - and re-tell them in “modern” language. In this case, the poem is a double copy, sort of. Scottish poet James Macpherson wrote poems purported to be by “Ossian,” the son of the legendary hero Finn McCool. Macpherson claimed that he collected oral tradition, translated it from the Gaelic, and published it. Whether this was true or whether he simply wrote the poems himself is debated. 

 

In any case, Coleridge took one of these, and made his own version.

 

Imitated from Ossian

 

The stream with languid murmur creeps,

In Lumin's flowery vale:

Beneath the dew the Lily weeps

Slow-waving to the gale.

 

'Cease, restless gale!  'it seems to say,

'Nor wake me with thy sighing!

The honours of my vernal day

On rapid wing are flying.

 

Tomorrow shall the Traveller come

Who late beheld me blooming:

His searching eye shall vainly roam

The dreary vale of Lumin.'

 

With eager gaze and wetted cheek

My wonted haunts along,

Thus, faithful Maiden!  thou shalt seek

The Youth of simplest song.

 

But I along the breeze shall roll

The voice of feeble power;

And dwell, the Moon-beam of thy soul,

In Slumber's nightly hour.

 

Poetry nerds will instantly recognize that this is in ballad stanza, presumably as a nod to the original sung poetry Macpherson was allegedly translating. 

 

Coleridge wrote quote a number of sonnets, including one about a river otter - and lost youth - that is actually one I had read before - I had forgotten that it was Coleridge. 

 

Sonnet: To the River Otter

 

Dear native brook! wild streamlet of the West!

How many various-fated years have passed,

What happy and what mournful hours, since last

I skimmed the smooth thin stone along thy breast,

Numbering its light leaps! Yet so deep impressed

Sink the sweet scenes of childhood, that mine eyes

I never shut amid the sunny ray,

But straight with all their tints thy waters rise,

Thy crossing plank, thy marge with willows grey,

And bedded sand that, veined with various dyes,

Gleamed through thy bright transparence! 

On my way,Visions of childhood! oft have ye beguiled

Lone manhood’s cares, yet waking fondest sighs:

Ah! that once more I were a careless child!

 

I would be remiss if I didn’t share at least one of the poems written about the Pantisocracy plan. While the idea never was carried out, it remains one of the many utopian experiments of its time, which have created both inspiration and some really great humor. For example, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s take, The Blithedale Romance; or Bayard Taylor’s hilarious short story, “The Experiences of the A. C.” In this case, enjoy the idealism of youth. 

 

Pantisocracy

 

No more my Visionary Soul shall dwell

On Joys that were! No more endure to weigh

The Shame and Anguish of the evil Day,

Wisely forgetful! O'er the Ocean swell

Sublime of Hope I seek the cottag'd Dell,

Where Virtue calm with careless step may stray,

And dancing to the moonlight Roundelay

The Wizard Passions weave an holy Spell.

Eyes that have ach'd with Sorrow! Ye shall weep

Tears of doubt-mingled Joy, like theirs who start

From Precipices of distemper'd Sleep,

On which the fierce-eyed Fiends their Revels keep,

And see the rising Sun, & feel it dart

New Rays of Pleasance trembling to the Heart. 

 

I’ll end with a pair of sonnets. These are part of the collection (which straddles the year) “Sonnets on Eminent Characters.” 

 

The collection was interesting for who was included. Some, of course, are well known, including the ones I am going to quote. Others are…not so much these days. They also include politicians of the era (Gladstone and Burke) and philosophers (Godwin) and scientists (Priestley) and playwrights (Sheridan) and more. Here are the two I decided to feature.

 

I chose Priestley because I am a fan of science and scientists, and Priestley gave some really badass lectures and demonstrations back in the day. He also had rather progressive political views, which Coleridge shared. 

 

Priestley

 

Though rous'd by that dark Vizir Riot rude

    Have driven our Priestly o'er the Ocean swell;

    Though Superstition and her wolfish brood

Bay his mild radiance, impotent and fell;

 

Calm in his halls of brightness he shall dwell!

    For lo! Religion at his strong behest

    Starts with mild anger from the Papal spell,

And flings to Earth her tinsel-glittering vest,

 

Her mitred State and cumbrous Pomp unholy;

    And Justice wakes to bid th' Oppressor wail

    Insulting aye the wrongs of patient Folly;

And from her dark retreat by Wisdom won

 

Meek Nature slowly lifts her matron veil

To smile with fondness on her gazing Son!

 

The other one I chose was William Godwin. He may not be quite as familiar these days as the women in his life, but he was one of the original Utilitarians, along with Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. A discussion of Utilitarianism is beyond the scope of this post, but I recommend The Happiness Philosophers by Bart Schultz for a detailed look at their lives and ideas. 

 

But, Godwin is perhaps better known today because he married Mary Wollstonecraft, the legendary first wave feminist and author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. 

 

Wollstonecraft would, alas, die giving birth to the other famous woman in Godwin’s life, his daughter Mary Godwin - the future Mary Shelley. Shelley, of course, would invent the genre of Science Fiction with Frankenstein, and also write the first post-apocalyptic novel, The Last Man. 

 

I find it amusing that in contrast to the usual situation - where worthy women are overshadowed by mediocre men - in this case, Godwin (who was far from mediocre) has gotten lost in the shadows of his brilliant wife and daughter. 

 

In any case, he did get a sonnet out of it. 

 

William Godwin

 

O! form'd t' illume a sunless world forlorn,

    As o'er the chill and dusky brow of Night,

    In Finland's wintry skies, the Mimic Morn

Electric pours a stream of rosy light,

 

Pleas'd I have mark'd Oppression, terror-pale,

    Since, thro' the windings of her dark machine,

    Thy steady eye has shot its glances keen—

And bade th' All-lovely "scenes at distance hail".

 

Nor will I not thy holy guidance bless,

    And hymn thee, Godwin! with an arden lay;

    For that thy voice, in Passion's stormy day,

When wild I roam'd the bleak Heath of Distress,

 

Bade the bright form of Justice meet my way—

And told me that her name was Happiness.

 

That last couplet is really good. It sums up the goals of Utilitarianism pretty well. Justice and happiness go hand in hand. The best goal is to maximize happiness (and even more so, minimize misery) for as many as possible. It actually fits with a line attributed to the preacher and theologian John Wesley. 

 

“Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as you ever can.”

 

And indeed, this is good advice for our own troubled times. 

 

As I have stated so many times on this blog, my goal in reading is to expand my field of experience. This includes reading broadly, not just in one genre or style. I have nothing against the modern poets - check out my index and the increasing number of 20th and 21st century works I write about. 

 

But I also believe the past has wisdom for us as well, and that wisdom is often “truth told slant” as Emily Dickinson (one of my very first poetic loves as a child) put it so well. While these juvenile poems haven’t quite gotten to the profundity that Coleridge would attain in his prime, they do wear his heart on the sleeve, and express a beauty of fragile youth that I wish we could see more in our culture. Maybe we have to look beyond the surface and find the poets.