Literary Party

Having just studied a little work of Thomas Warton and Oliver Goldsmith, I thought it fitting to include this print (above), titled, A Literary Party at Sir Joshua Reynolds's, by Owen Bailey (1851). I love this print because of David Garrick's expression (and the recognizable likeness). Seated from left to right: biographer James Boswell (1740-1795), Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), portraitist and painter Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792), theatre manager and actor David Garrick (1717-1779), philosopher and statesman Edmund Burke (1729-1797), Corsican patriot Pasquale Paoli (1725-1807), hoarder and music historian Charles Burney (1726-1814), Thomas Warton (1728-1790), and finally, novelist and poet Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774).

I think that Garrick's likeness was reproduced from the 1770 portrait by Thomas Gainsborough. By no means is this painting a masterpiece, but it is definitely one of the coolest renditions of "The Age of Johnson," and is emblematic of his intimate literary culture.

An image of the original print can be viewed here.

Paris, 1800

And here, the best book I own: a gem from Paris, 1800, printed by the Didot famille. It is in excellent condition with gilted pages, (fittingly) marble pastedowns, and raised bands. I really love this edition of A Sentimental Journey, especially how the French punctuation is a bit different. Rather than Sterne's em-dashes (--), the text makes use of the equals sign (=). Does it alter the meaning? A modernists wet-dream...

9 March 1796

Napoléon Bonaparte and Joséphine de Beauharnais were married today in Paris.

Portrait of the empress,
by François Pascal Simon Gérard (1808)

December 1795

I awake full of you. Your image and the memory of last night’s intoxicating pleasures has left no rest to my senses.

Sweet, incomparable Josephine, what a strange effect you have on my heart. Are you angry? Do I see you sad? Are you worried? My soul breaks with grief, and there is no rest for your lover; but how much the more when I yield to this passion that rules me and drink a burning flame from your lips and your heart? Oh! This night has shown me that your portrait is not you!

Meanwhile, my sweet love, a thousand kisses; but do not give me any, for they set my blood on fire.

Bonaparte.

The Starling and The Mouse

In 1773, Anna Laetitia Barbauld wrote, "The Mouse's Petition," and addressed it to Dr. Joseph Priestley, the renowned English chemist who had used mice for his scientific experimentations. It is a poem that, as Mary Ellen Bellanca suggests, embodies tensions "between the desire for knowledge and misgivings about its ethical costs" (Eighteenth Century Studies 37.1.2003). The figure of the mouse, part metaphorical and part literal, reflects two features of later eighteenth-century fiction: the attenuation of sentimental sensibilities, and the use of anthropomorphic language to represent human oppression on a political scale. Barbaud's poem (I am surpised it has not yet been claimed by PETA &c.) centres on the sufferings of a little mouse in a trap, but quickly unravels as a call against oppression in any form, "Let nature's commoner's enjoy / The common gifts of heaven," in a way that allows its meaning to be easily transfered to popular feelings at this time about, oh, I don't know, slavery, for instance.

The ideas of natural freedom that Barbauld presents in her versed rhyme through the figure of the little trapped mouse, whose "guiltless blood" stains the "hospitable earth," was earlier presented by Laurence Sterne in A Sentimental Journey (1768). In the chapter, "The Hotel at Paris - The Passport," Yorick hears a little voice, which he took to be a child, crying:

... and looking up, I saw it was a starling hung in a little cage,
--'I can't get out--I can't get out'-- said the starling. I stood
looking at the bird: and to every person who came through
the passage it ran fluttering ... --'I can't get out,' said the starling.
--God, help thee! said I--but I'll let out, cost what it will.

The bird flew to the place where I was attempting his deliverance,
and thrusting his head through the trellis, pressed his breast
against it, as if impatient -- I fear, poor creature! said I,
I cannot set thee at liberty--'No,' said the starling,
--'I can't get out--I can't get out,' said the starling.

Disguise thyself as thou wilt, Slavery! said I--still thou art a bitter drought.

This episode of the starling, a bird coincedentally found on the Sterne coat of arms (above), needs little explanation, except I will point to the fact that Yorick was unable to open the cage. In 2007, Shandy Hall held an exhibit on Sterne's starling to commemorate the 200th year since the beginning of the end of slavery in the British Empire. The passage in ASJ got praise from "the extraordinary negro" Ignatius Sancho (who you can read more about here, written by specialist Brycchan Carey, who is very nice), and is alluded to in Volume I, Chapter X of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park (elaborated upon here). While there are plenty of arguments around the starling, and what it means in a Shandean context, I find that it is both an emblem of oppression and a catalyst for Yorick's sensibility, which takes the reader into a tormented and painful representation of feeling, Sterne, and his reader, almost bursting into tears of anguish, even though I still think Sterne is ribbing us, to some extent... but anyway, don't forget Barbauld's poor little mouse.

The Kite Runner

I just watched the 1995 Emma Thompson/Hugh Grant Sense and Sensibility (and cried my stupid eyes off); anyway, there is a scene in which Margaret Dashwood plays with a kite, which made me think about kites in the eighteenth century for a moment. I was reminded of Francisco Goya's "Le cometa" (or, "The Kite") from 1778 (seen below). And then I found this poem by John Newton from 1770 titled, "The Kite, or the Fall of Pride" (also below). Other than that, however, not much surfaced on the history of kites (in a non-aeronautical way) before the mid-1800s. I will continue this investigation until I find the great kite archive...

"Unable its own course to guide,
The winds soon plunged it in the tide.
Ah! foolish kite; thou hadst no wing;
How couldt thou fly without a string?

My heart replied, 'Oh Lord, I see,
How much this kite resembles me!'"

British Broadcasting System

As we all know, the BBC is reigning champ of nerd information. The first of my two most used links access the BBC British History Timeline, which (interactively) allows users to scroll through historical eras, in what looks like some sort of radio-wave, Geiger-counter set-up. It's pretty neat, but the facts are limited in terms of what is provided as "History." For each "moment," however, there is a bubble that goes into further explanation, and usually links to articles and BBC programming related to that moment.
Good for quick updates on a historical period.

My other top link accesses the BBC Radio 4 program, In Our Time. Melvyn Bragg (above) and friends discuss the history of ideas, and each episode features discussion on a new topic, usually of great interest in some way to the nerd, with various professional nerds as guests and authorities.

Some of my favourites are: The Aeneid (21 April 2005), Epistolary Literature (15 March 2007), and Swift's A Modest Proposal (29 January 2009). Luckily, there is an archive sorted by genre, title, and era.

Could Melvyn Bragg be any more English? Doubtful, but what a babe.