One to Four Months My Ass

More like 6 to 8 months, but no matter: Amazon has finally coughed up String of Pearls: A Romance, the original story of Sweeney Todd, Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

In the long interim since I ordered it, the book underwent some kind of weird metamorphosis. The cover changed, "Sweeney Todd" was added to the title, the price almost doubled and the length was cut by about two-thirds.

A quick read of the introduction reveals some the reasons: this new edition is based on the original, 1847 serial, not the 1850 re-issue, which was padded grotesquely (probably by a different author) to cash in on the original's popularity: hence it's much much shorter than the book I thought I was ordering. The title was no doubt changed for the simple reason that the original title is really gay.

As for the cover and the price, well -- the great thing about Wordsworth editions has always been that they're crazy cheap, and they look, read and feel cheap to boot. But Wordsworth now appear to be upgrading -- investing a little more in design and scholarship -- which I appreciate as a reader, but lament as a cheapskate.

As for the book's disputed and uncertain authorship (usually ascribed to Thomas Peckett Prest but probably contributed to by several of Lloyd's hacks), this seems a decent brief intro to Edward Lloyd's fiction factory and the world of penny-dreadfuls.

I See Nipple!

My Dover edition of Best Ghost Stories of Sheridan LeFanu was compiled and published in 1964. The title's a little misleading; at least one of the stories has nothing to do with ghosts.

"Carmilla" was apparently a key influence on Bram Stoker, and almost every introduction to a LeFanu book I've read crows about how superior it is to Dracula. (Which it is, for one simple reason: it's waaaaay shorter.) Being thoroughly uninterested in vampires, I've always skipped it; but being fond of LeFanu -- and it being way too hot and muggy out to concentrate on anything really interesting -- I decided last night to give it a try.

I'm now not surprised that it has such a lofty reputation: as a horror story it's feeble at best, but as thinly-disguised schoolgirl lesbo-porn, it's superb. Our titular vampiress is a beautiful young woman who only eats (ho ho) other women, by preference other lovely young women, whom she "fascinates" and showers with affection during the day:

My strange and beautiful companion would take my hand and hold it with a fond pressure, renewed again and again; blushing softly, gazing in my face with languid and burning eyes, and breathing so fast that her breast rose and fell with the tumultuous respiration.... and with gloating eyes she drew me to her, and her hot lips travelled along my cheek in kisses.... she drew her arm closer around my waist, and let her pretty head sink about my shoulder...

The Dover edition's illustrations very accurately capture the story's raison d'etre: surreptitious titillation. Completely uncredited and unsourced, they're designed to look old-fashioned: sort of faux-Victorian woodcuts. The climactic (ho ho) illustration for "Carmilla" shows our lesbo-vampire leaning over one of her beautiful, um, victims, whose nightie is flung open to reveal implausibly firm, cantalope-like breasts. And sure enough, almost obscured by the shadows but definitely there if you look closely, nipple.

The damn thing oughtta come with a packet of kleenex.

Wise, Words to the

If you're starting a blog and hope to update it semi-regularly, don't launch it when you have a two-month old baby at home, at the beginning of a summer when you plan to spend almost every day you don't have to go in to work, up at the cabin.

Also: when starting a major outdoor project like, say, repairing, stripping and repainting your deck, check the weather forecast and make sure you aren't on the cusp of a record-breaking heatwave.

Live and don't learn, that's our motto, as Hobbes said. (The stuffed tiger, not the stuffy philosopher.)

That'll Learn Him

For eight bucks last winter, on one of my used-book store binges, I picked up a leather-bound, closely printed (in columns), 840 page book called World's Great Detective Stories, published in 1928 by Walter J Black, Inc (never heard of them).

It's about as odd a collection as you can imagine. My guess is that Mr Black, Inc paid for the bare minimum of copyright material by popular mystery-writers, in order to attract readers, and then just filled up the rest of the book with anything old, copyright-expired, and vaguely crime-related that he could get his hands on.

There's a few of the names you'd expect (Poe, Doyle, Sax Rohmer, Edgar Wallace) but there's also excerpts pulled as if at random from writers like Boccaccio, Balzac, Tolstoy, Cervantes and the Thousand and One Nights -- even one excerpt from the Koran. No translators are credited anywhere, 90% of the stories are given no source at all nor even a date, and typos abound.

But the real glory of the book (and I didn't realize this until after I'd bought it and brought it home) are a host of anonymous stories taken out of the penny-dreadfuls of the early Victorian period, which tended to be true crime digests (as opposed to the mid- and late-Victorian penny-dreadfuls, which went more for serial fiction). They're given by-lines like Robber Tales, Prison Chronicles and French Court Records and they range from the merely curious ("Ghosts in Court") to the infamously bizarre ("Sawney Beane").

I was reading a couple of the stories last night, as kind of a palate-cleanser amid all this piracy, mainsprit-jibbing and Madagascarity, and came upon this sweet little proclamation of justice, courtesy of Parisian Criminal Records:

"Jean-Baptiste -- guilty of murder and parricide -- condemned to have both hands cut off; his arms, legs, and thighs and body to be bruised and broken; afterwards to be fixed upon the wheel, there to linger so long as God shall please; after which, his body to be burned and scattered to the winds. A fine of ten livres to the king."

I know, I know, it's an old joke, but it made me laugh out loud. Since his whole family is executed along with him (they having all participated in either killing the old man or covering up the crime), I wonder who they levied the fine from?

Your Own Private Pirate

So, you're Daniel Defoe, writing volume two of a bestselling compilation of pirate biographies. Needless to say, you're going to slip in your own private pirate, entirely fictional, and pretend it's a true story (Fuck you, Oprah!) -- you'll even pull the old "a private manuscript has come into my hands" gag. You cleverly dovetail your fictional pirate's story with actual, historical events and people, in order to give your man's story an air of veracity -- and then you so cavalierly ignore chronology that a careful reading of the dates given elsewhere in your own book prove that the story can't be true. Why? Because that's just the kind of dude you are.

Unfortunately, I have to report that -- apart from the fun-and-games with fact & fiction aspect -- Capt Mission is a bit of a dud. The good captain is a ridiculously idealistic figure, who together with his trusty lieutenant (a lapsed priest given to long, Thomas Paine-esque speeches about the equality of man and the iniquity of churches and states) founds a Utopian colony in -- wait for it -- Madagascar. The colony is done in by bad luck and some poor planning (fortifying heavily against attacks from sea, but underestimating the danger of attacks by land), but there's every implication that, with a little luck, it could have flourished -- a thoroughly workable model of church-free democracy and racial equality.

The "racial equality" bit is the most interesting part, here. Mission and his men all marry native women, and there's none of that nonsense about christianizing or civilizing them, nor a trace of racial anxiety in their attitude; they also make a habit of raiding slave ships, rescuing the would-be slaves, and then integrating them as equal citizens in the newly founded nation of (I shit you not) Libertalia.

This goes some ways towards atoning for the truly atrocious, cringe-inducing middle section of Colonel Jack, which devolves into little more than a pamphlet on why slave-owners should treat their negroes kindly (ie, because it will maximize your profits in the long run). But it doesn't make this section of the General History of Pyrates any more entertaining.


(Since I already mentioned Col Jack, I can't resist the urge to quote its full title, which is my favourite book-title ever:

The History and Remarkable Life Of the truly Honourable Col. Jacque, commonly call'd Col. Jack, who was Born a Gentleman, put 'Prentice to a Pick-Pocket, was Six and Twenty Years a Thief, and then Kidnapp'd to Virginia, Came back a Merchant; was Five times married to Four Whores; went into the Wars, behav'd bravely, got Preferment, was made Colonel of a Regiment, came over, and fled with the Chevalier, is still abroad compleating a Life of Wonders, and resolves to dye a General.

The fact that the title as a whole is not particularly accurate as a description of the book's contents is pure bonus. If I'm not mistaken, the first edition title-page had the visionary and beautiful mistake "Four Times Married to Five Whores", which he should have known better than to correct. )

Sorry, Ladies

I was shewn the Bark of one [tree] (whose name I do not know) gravely affirmed to have a peculiar Property of enlarging the Virile Member; I am not fond of such Conceits, nor believe it in the Power of any Vegetables, but must acknowledge, I have seen Sights of this kind among the Negroes very extraordinary; yet, that there may be no Wishes among the Ladies for the Importation of this Bark, I must acquaint them, that they are found to grow less vigorous, as they increase in Bulk.

John Atkins, naval surgeon, as quoted in Defoe's Pyrates
(St Thome, Del Principe and Annabono)

I love the idea of Dr Atkins wandering around coastal Africa, stealing surreptitious glances at the local cocks and assuring himself (and the Ladies back home) that hey, it's okay, I hear those really big ones have a hard time keeping it up anyway. Better small and energetic than big and flabby, right?

Just for the record, my Virile Member is both Bulky and Vigorous, thank you very much. And he called himself a doctor.

Defoe or Not Defoe?

There's a famous bit in Robinson Crusoe, chapter 4, when Crusoe has gone back out to the wrecked ship to see what he can salvage. He finds a stash of money in one cabin, and delivers a very pretty little soliloquy:

I smiled to myself at the sight of this money: "O drug!" said I, aloud, "what art thou good for? Thou art not worth to me - no, not the taking off the ground; one of those knives is worth all this heap; I have no manner of use for thee - e'en remain where thou art, and go to the bottom as a creature whose life is not worth saving." However, upon second thoughts I took it away...

This is ultra-typical Defoe, not just the dry humour of it, but also the basic theme or idea. Again and again, Defoe's characters complain about what a burden money is, but they can never actually bring themselves to leave it alone -- a conundrum that Defoe is obviously amused by but thoroughly understands.

In the Plague Year, the narrator lets himself linger too long in the city because of his business interests; in Colonel Jack the young hero -- a homeless orphan who has to beg for food -- gets money for the first time in his life (as a share of a pickpocketing racket) and spends the night alone, awake, crying and terrified -- he can't really spend it without creating suspicion, and he's afraid that if he spends the night in his usual haunts he'll get his throat cut for it, but he can't bear the idea of just stashing it somewhere and hoping no one will find it. And his short novel the King of Pirates is pretty much all one parable on the theme. The narrator (based on the legendary Capt Avery) is so successful as a pirate, that he and his men are trapped by the wealth they've accumulated, stuck in Madagascar together, bound by mutual distrust, chained to money they can't actually spend.

...

The first chapter in Defoe's Pirate book is on that same Captain Avery. Avery was probably the most famous pirate of the time (he and Kidd were the only two pirates excluded from the General Amnesty proclaimed by England at one point), and a number of legends grew up around him -- most importantly (to Defoe), the legend that he founded and ruled a colony in Madagascar.

So in King of the Pirates, Defoe debunks the legend and suggests the colony was little better than a makeshift, self-imposed prison, where the pirates bided their time until they could figure out how to get back to Europe and enjoy their wealth. But in the chapter on Avery in the General History of the Pyrates, he goes much much further: he treats Avery as a complete sham, who had one lucky prize in his first and only expedition, never went to Madagascar at all, and eventually died in poverty after returning to England and unsuccessfully trying to fence the load of diamonds he stole from his companions. (There's apparently no documentary evidence for Defoe's version of Avery's latter years -- he probably just made it up.)

This is funny stuff, and it's an hilariously cynical way to start the book. (Happily, the second chapter -- on William Teach (Blackbeard) -- is much more what you'd expect: classic piratey stuff, with lots of fire and brimstone and drunken recklessness. No "Arrrrr, matey"s, though.)

So based on just a couple chapters so far, I'm leaning towards "yes" on the Defoe authorship question. I should say that 1) there's apparently no documentary or other definite evidence one way or another, the most anyone can say is he definitely could have written it, and the rest is just basically arguing from similarities to his other work, style, subject matter, etc; and 2) I'm far from a scholar (or expert on Defoe) so my opinion is worth precisely squat, but I'm enjoying forming it.