45. Henry James (1843-1916) - American-born writer, regarded as a central figure of 19th-century literary realism.
45. William Dean Howells (1837-1920) - American realist author and literary critic; nicknamed “The Dean of American Letters.”
45. “Goo-Goo Eyes” - Ref. to song “Just Because She Made Dem Goo-Goo Eyes” (1900), lyr. John Queen, mus. Hughey Cannon.
45. Maria Louise Pool (1841-1898) - American author, pub. by M’s publisher Herbert S. Stone’s predecessor company, Stone & Kimball; M was unaware that Pool had died several years earlier; para. was del. in published ver.
46. Eugene Field, Sr. (1850-1895) - American writer best known for his children’s poetry and humorous essays.
52. plungers - Gamblers.
52. box rustlers - Prostitutes who worked the curtained upper boxes of theatres.
52. impossible women - Prostitutes; there may also be some Lesbian signaling to the term.
52. beer-jerkers - Poss. bartenders, but perhaps loose women or prostitutes.
52. biscuit-shooters - Prob. waitresses, specifically Harvey Girls, who worked in the respectable railside dining establishments of Fred Harvey.
53. four-in-hands - Ref. to carriage with four horses and a single driver.
54. grass widow - Euph. for a not-respectably-single woman: e.g. divorced, separated, an ex-mistress, mother of an illegitimate child, or parted from husband for a protracted time.
54. of sprouts - Difficult, prolonged course of instruction or treatment.
56. stalled ox - From Proverbs 15:17: Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith. (King James)
56. among thieves - From Luke 10:30, but M reverses gender: And Jesus answering said, A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead. (King James)
58. little folding - From Proverbs 6:10: Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep (King James)
60. Nora Perry (1831-1896) - American journalist, poet, writer of children’s stories.
60. with reluctant - From Longfellow’s poem “Maidenhood” (pub. 1842): Standing, with reluctant feet, / Where the brook and river meet, / Womanhood and childhood fleet!
60. Hildegarde Graham - Ref. to popular series of girls’ novels (1889-1897) by Laura E. Richards (1850-1943) known as The Hildegarde Series; neither the series nor any volume in it bears the title that M gives.
60. What Katy Did - Girls’ book by Susan Coolidge (1835-1905, pseud. of Sarah Chauncey Woolsey).
67. are heavy - From Matthew 10:28: Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. (King James)
67. the waters - From the first stanza of Charles Wesley’s influential hymn “Jesus, Lover of My Soul” (pub. 1740): Let me to Thy bosom fly, / While the waters near me roll, / While the tempest still is high. / Hide me, O my Saviour, hide, / Till the storms of life be past; / Safe into the haven guide; / Oh receive my soul at last!
69. little more - From stanza 39 of Browning’s “By the Fireside” (written 1853): Oh, the little more, and how much it is! / And the little less, and what worlds away! / How a sound shall quicken content to bliss, / Or a breath suspend the blood’s best play, / And life be a proof of this!
69. the people - From Job 12:2: No doubt but ye are the people, and wisdom shall die with you. (King James)
72. Cashmere - Common archaic term for Kashmir. M poss. read in Byron’s friend Moore (cf. n. 27 p 551): Who has not heard of the Vale of Cashmere, / With its roses the brightest that earth ever gave, / Its temples, and grottos, and fountains as clear / As the love-lighted eyes that hang over their wave (from “Lalla Rookh”, pub. 1817) or the New England poet George Bancroft Griffith (1841-?): With its cincture of snows lies the wonderful plain / That the paladin formed when the dragons were slain; / ‘Tis the Hindoo’s delight; and the poets endear / By their songs of its beauty, the Vale of Cashmere (from “The Vale of Cashmere,” apparent 1st pub. Granite State Monthly, Oct. 1881, p 17).
72. Lethe - In Greek mythology, Lethe was one of Hades’ five rivers; those who drank its waters forgot all.
72. Charles Kingsley (1819-1875) - English university professor, priest, historian, novelist; poem has variant texts - ver. given here is that in the orig. printing.
75. Archibald C[lavering] Gunter (1847-1907) - Popular American playwright and widely-read self-published author and magaziner.
75. Albert Ross (1851-1916, pseud. of Linn Boyd Porter) - American novelist.
76. mere vile clay - Not, evidently, a literary quotation.
78. two thieves - Poss. ref. to a set of Rembrandt drypoints of the subject in various stages of finish.
80. deferred and - From Proverbs 13:12: Hope deferred maketh the heart sick: but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life. (King James)
81. servant a - From 2 Kings 8:13: And Hazael said, But what, is thy servant a dog, that he should do this great thing? M may also have had the echo at 2 Samuel 9:8 in mind: And he bowed himself, and said, What is thy servant, that thou shouldest look upon such a dead dog as I am? (King James)
81. song of - Poss. from A Modern Ideal: A Dramatic Poem - an early work (1886) by Sidney Royse Lysaght (1860-1941), an Irish writer who also worked in the iron industry: The kind and wonderful voices, / They speak the truth of existence, / Truth, the wonder of wonders, / They show us the soul of all things, / They touch the shadow and semblance, / And set the reality free; / They sing the song of the world that is / To the music of what might be.
82. Charlotte Corday (1768-1793) - French patriot, assassinated revolutionary leader Marat while he bathed; was executed.
82. If to do - From Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice I:2: If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, / Chapels had been churches, and poor men’s cottages / Princes’ palaces.
86. gall and - Wormwood and gall are paired at numerous points in the Bible, but in the King James the phrase appears only in Deuteronomy 29:18: lest there should be among you a root that beareth gall and wormwood.
87. and Haidee - Beautiful Moorish-Greek girl who found Don Juan cast ashore, restored him to animation, and became his lover.
88. timothy-grass - Phleum pratense; European perennial grass that has spread through the US since Colonial times; important in some nutritious animal feeds, e.g. for horses and rabbits.
88-89. health and - From the hymn “Sweet the Moments, Rich in Blessing” (orig. James Allen, 1757, ed. Walter Shirley, 1770): Sweet the moments, rich in blessing, / Which before the cross we spend, / Life and health and peace possessing / From the sinner’s dying Friend.
89. winds with - From Milton’s “Ode on the Nativity” (1629): The winds, with wonder whist, Smoothly the waters kiss’d; “whist” is an archaic form of “quiet” or “silent.”
89. blew, and - From Matthew 7:25: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock. (King James)
90. nearer my - From the hymn “Nearer, My God, to Thee” (1841) by the English poet Sarah Fuller Flower Adams (1805-1848); based on Genesis 28:11-19.
91. air was over - From second stanza of the poem “Great, Wide, Beautiful, Wonderful World” by the English author, reporter, preacher, and renowned nursery-poet William Brighty Rands (1823-1882): Great, wide, beautiful, wonderful World, / With the wonderful water round you curled, / And the wonderful grass upon your breast - / World, you are beautifully drest. // The wonderful air is over me, / And the wonderful wind is shaking the tree, / It walks on the water, and whirls the mills, / And talks to itself on the tops of the hills.
93. Dr. Johnson - Samuel Johnson.
93. Our Young - Prominent children’s maga
zine; it merged with St. Nicholas in 1874, so the volume M was reading was decades-old.
93. J[ohn] T[ownsend] Trowbridge (1827-1916) - American author and editor; his Jack Hazard novels (1870s) were a popular boys’ series; one was Doing His Best (c. 1873)
94. Lucy - From Wordsworth’s “Lucy Gray - Or, Solitude” (1888): You yet may spy the fawn at play, / The hare upon the green; / But the sweet face of Lucy Gray / Will never more be seen.
94. are old - Seventh stanza of Lewis Carroll’s nonsense poem “You Are Old, Father William” in Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland (1865): “You are old,” said the youth, “one would hardly suppose / That your eye was as steady as ever; / Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose - / What made you so awfully clever?”
102. the other - From the refrain in the hymn “Rest for the Weary” by the Irish-born American professor and minister William Hunter (1811-1877): There is rest for the weary, / There is rest for you. / On the other side of Jordan, / In the sweet fields of Eden, / Where the tree of life is blooming, / There is rest for you.
102. thorns - From Matthew 7:16: Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? (King James)
105. the beasts - From Psalms 49:12: Nevertheless man being in honour abideth not: he is like the beasts that perish. (King James)
105. brave thing - As the ed. has located no earlier appearances, this phrase appears to be from A Practical Grammar of the English Language (1878) by Ohioan educator, schools commissioner, and writer Thomas Wadleigh Harvey (1821-?).
106. cometh not - A refrain in Tennyson’s poem “Mariana” (1830) about the char. in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure.
106. The Mill on the Floss - 1860 novel by George Eliot.
108. sweet-fern - Deciduous flowering shrub, Comptonia peregrina (monotyp.); leaves give pleasing odor when crushed; tends to grow in dry, sandy areas, esp. amid pines; native to eastern North America, extending west to Minnesota.
111. for bread - From Luke 11:11: If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent? (King James)
115. sweet-flags - Acorus calamus, also known as “calamus”; lofty wetland perennial, used in fragrance-making and archaic medicine; native to areas in various continents, incl. the northern US and southern Canada.
116. eats its - Poss. from article “James Russell Lowell,” Southern Review, Oct 1875 (no author given but employs editorial “we”): It may be as a cause, or it may be as an effect; but falseness of expression, and falseness in principle, are indissolubly associated. Like sentimentality in feeling, cant in religion, affectation in manner, it is sure to be a superficial malady, which is either a sure indication of the unsoundness within, or else, after a time, it eats its way inward, poisoning, finally, the very springs of life. All previous uses the ed. has located relate literally to fungi, larvae, etc.
117. L’Envoi - From older French poetry, in which a brief separate line or verse at the end states the theme or dedicates the piece to a specific person.
- COMING SOON -
Mary MacLane - a 19-year-old diarist from the early 20th century, still influential today - was the first of the modern media personalities. Now, her whole story is being told in a series of books from a California publisher.
A Quite Unusual Intensity of Life: The Lives, Times, and Influence of Mary MacLane, to be released in late 2014, is the first complete study of MacLane’s life, career, and influence. It tells the inside story of how she went from a 19-year-old girl in Butte, Montana writing in her diary - to a media personality heatedly discussed in London, Paris, and Sydney. Co-author Chiara di Benedetto, linguist and historian, says: “Mary MacLane’s impact is not just historical. Though she became famous (or infamous) in her day, she was not well-understood by her own society. Her writing anticipated the sophisticated self-knowledge and wry brand of social criticism that would emerge only after the First World War and the rise of modernism. Her forays into surrealism and metaphysical imagery, free expressions of unconventional sexuality, and many subtle layers of play and self-mockery put her beyond the understanding of her contemporaries - and make her fascinating and fresh to those newly discovering her today. We still feel a sense of shock and recognition at a young woman exposing herself at the deepest levels, with such uncanny insight into herself and into human nature. Mary MacLane’s work feels current and relevant to today’s readers.”
Though never collected until recent Petrarca Press anthology Human Days: A Mary MacLane Reader, her work is quoted across the Internet and in popular and academic books and is being used in plays and video projects in Germany, New York, and Australia. During her lifetime she was puzzled over by Mark Twain, inspired F. Scott Fitzgerald, and influenced Gertrude Stein. Her controversial self-written, self-starring silent movie was banned in some US states - and was playing a year and half later in Tasmania. On her death, the N.Y. Times wrote “Mary MacLane’s first book was the first of the confessional diaries in this country” and called it “a sensation,” and The Chicagoan, one of the Jazz Age’s leading magazines, called her “the first of the self-expressionists, and also the first of the Flappers.”
A Quite Unusual Intensity of Life: The Lives, Times, and Influence of Mary MacLane tells her whole, extraordinary story for the first time. It will be released in late 2014 by Petrarca Press.
Join us on Facebook and Twitter for news and exclusive previews, and rediscover classic literature’s great performance artist, the last century’s first blogger - at the Mary MacLane website: www.marymaclane.com
- PRAISE FOR PREVIOUS EDITION -
“From now on it must take a prominent place in any discussions of American women’s writing and the literature of the West.” - Dr. Peter Donahue, Oklahoma State University
“A Girl Wonder” - Harper’s (two page-exclusive spread)
“A pioneering newswoman and later a silent-screen star, considered the veritable spirit of the iconoclastic Twenties, ‘the Joan of Arc of the Red-Hot Mamas.’ ‘How did it happen,’ declared one of her eulogists, ‘that a revolution in manners started, or seemed to start, with an unruly young woman who couldn’t bear the sight of the toothbrushes hanging up in the family bathroom at Butte, Montana?’” - Robert Taylor, Chief Critic, Boston Globe
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- PRAISE FOR MARY MACLANE -
“She comes off the page quivering with life. Moving.” - London Times (1981 retrospect)
“Mary MacLane, 1902’s Racy, Angsty Teenage Diarist, wrote long before provocative, confessional writing was a genre of its own. Her diaries ignited a national uproar, ushering in a new era for women’s voices. Her elegant, ambitious embrace of full-disclosure had opened a door to what was possible for women.” - The Atlantic, March 2013
“Mary MacLane’s first book was the first of the confessional diaries ever written in this country, and it was a sensation.” - N.Y. Times (editorial)
“She had a short but fiery life of writing and misadventure, and her writing was a template for the confessional memoirs that have become ubiquitous.” - The New Yorker, March 2013
“One of the most fascinatingly self-involved personalities of the 20th century.” - The Age (Nov. 2011 feature article)
“Miss MacLane stands as the greatest sensationalist of a sensational day … She dares to tell to all the world what most people try to keep profoundly guarded … She stands for truth and dares the courage of her convictions.” - From hundreds of letters-to-the-editor on her first book
“In a pre-soundbite age she already knew how to draw blood in one direct sentence. Mary MacLane - who openly resisted the idea that she was like everyone else, of her time or any other - lived the dream, as we say nowadays, and the sun of the wide, bright world has come to shine on her again.” - The Awl, March 2013
*
Michael R. Bro
wn is the foremost MacLane researcher in the world today. He published the acclaimed MacLane anthology Tender Darkness and more recently authored the well-reviewed experimental memoir She and I: A Fugue. He is completing the first book ever on MacLane’s life, career, and influence for publication in late 2014. He lives in Northern California.
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By the Editor:
Tender Darkness: A Mary MacLane Anthology (with Elisabeth Pruitt)
She and I: A Fugue (Petrarca Press)
His website: http://www.fuguewriter.com
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Coming in late 2014:
A Quite Unusual Intensity of Life: The Lives, Works and Influence of Mary MacLane (with Chiara di Benedetto)
*
http://www.marymaclane.com
I Await the Devil's Coming - Unexpurgated and Annotated Page 16
