"Anyone who hates babies and dogs . . ."

Leo C. Rosten

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Ever since I was very young, I have been familiar with the witticisms of W. C. Fields, and I always found particularly funny the line he supposedly uttered in his movies or his real life (if he had a real life):

Anyone who hates babies and dogs can't be all bad.

Except I recently learned that Fields didn't say it. Rather, it was said about Fields by the humorist Leo Rosten in introductory remarks made as a tribute to Fields during a banquet. Authorship aside, the humorous remark suddenly struck a harmonic chord of convergence in my memory the other day, for it abruptly recalled to me a wonderful witticism by Oscar Wilde:

One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing.

Little Nell was a sugary-sweet child in the novel by Dickens titled The Old Curiosity Shop. She took a long time to die, and many tears were shed over her death, both in the novel and in real life (though she had no real life). Wilde, however, saw the ridiculous quality to her death -- that took genius and courage -- and coined an epigram that expressed the truth.

Both witticisms -- Rosten's and Wilde's -- depend on surprising us with the opposite of what we expect to hear. But I think Wilde's works better, for let's alter them to express what one would expect to hear:

Anyone who hates babies and dogs can't be all good.

One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without crying.

The first of the two -- an alteration of Rosten's witticism -- feels somehow awkward. A man who hates babies and dogs wouldn't give the impression of being good at all, let alone all good, so the statement doesn't quite make good sense. That, I think, detracts from the unaltered witticism.

The second of the two -- the alteration of Wilde's witticism -- feels entirely right. One should ordinarily cry over the death of a beloved child. Wilde's unaltered remark thus beautifully reminds of its more expected opposite, and that sharpens the witticism.

But I anticipate at least one objection, that I've altered the wrong word in Rosten's remark, that I ought to have substituted "can't" by "must":

Anyone who hates babies and dogs must be all bad.

That's superior to the other substitution (i.e., "bad" by "good"), I agree, but it still falls short of Wilde's witticism, for the beauty of his epigram -- indeed, its perfection -- lies in the unexpected, ultimate word where "crying" is expected, a shocking final word not of sympathy, but of ridicule, the last word that concentrates all of the wit and humor at the very end: "laughing."

And leaves us doing precisely that . . . if we have no heart of stone.

The Importance of Being Earnest in One's Proofreading

Recently, I assigned my students a short, five-paragraph essay on the issue of instinct versus intelligence in animals, and I learned various amazing facts about instinct, including a rather astonishing assertion about a particular instinct in newborn babies.

But first, a reminder about that "dark-colored, semi-aquatic, carnivorous mammal of the family Mustelidae," namely, the mink:

Outright Dangerous

Mink are, of course, aggressive creatures, though less aggressive in their domestic form:

Less Dangerous, but not Recommended

At any rate, here is what one student wrote on instinct:

All kinds of animals are originally instinctive. They live daily for survival and they fight each other voraciously to get their own profit.

Economic law of the jungle, no doubt, but it's a dog-eat-dog world . . .

For instance, a new born baby has not ever learned how to suck, but the baby sucks the mother's mink naturally.

I'm not entirely sure that a newborn baby will profit much from voraciously attacking a mink and attempting to suck it. And which mink are we referring to? The mother's mink stole, as depicted in the second photo above? Not recommended! Anything of sustenance has long been sucked out of that dry skin. As for the mink in the first photo, such a ferocious creature would be extremely dangerous for any newborn infant to attack, even if the animal is the mother's pet! I'd put my money on the mink. But who am I to argue with instinct? There must be some survival value to a baby's innate desire to suck a mother's mink, else there wouldn't be an instinctive desire of that sort.

Too bad, though, that close proofreading -- spending all morning taking out a comma and all afternoon putting it back in -- is not an instinct but rather a habit of mind, one of necessity being learned with care and, of great importance, being earnest in application, else a trivial comedy of error afflict a serious piece of prose, people.

All for the want of a horseshoe nail, and I mean that in earnest, Jack!

The Fallen Angels: "Implacable resentment was their crime"

Satan as Dorian Gray

(Image from Gypsy Scholar)

Some readers might recall the quoted line in today's heading as coming from 1756 tragedy Douglas, by John Home, for I cited it once before. The playwright Home wasn't describing Satan and his fallen compatriates, but 'twill serve, for it describes especially Satan's motive for rebellion, both his initial revolt and his continued opposition as depicted in John Milton's Paradise Lost.

I had this insight (undoubtedly unoriginal) in response to a recent remark by a friend who works at The Hague in a field that borders on the world of diplomacy:

"Recovering from a very hard week. Discovering that coworkers can be sabotaging ambitious jerks, even when there is nothing to gain. Universal, I guess."

I responded, albeit a bit belatedly:

I had intended to sympathize, but time got away from me. Sorry to hear of the "ambitious jerks" sabotaging you for no gain. That's the mystery of our fallen natures, Milton would say. Sabotage without gain is the quintessence of Satan's resistance throughout Paradise Lost. The Adversary continues his revolt against Heaven when he has nothing to show for it but his dissatisfied resentment and greater depths of fallenness.

Everyone should read Milton . . .

The depiction of Satan in Paradise Lost is our own Dorian Gray, for as he falls, his appearance falls, as depicted above in a famous image by Terrance Lindall, and that fallen and ever-falling cropped image, as Milton would agree, mirrors the appearance of our own cropped and fallen soul.

But we can at least take cold comfort in the fact that there's something angelic about us . . .

"high-embattled towers..."

The Palais des Papes in Avignon

Characteristic Battlements

(Towering over Wikipedia)

I keep thinking about Wilde's "high-embattled towers" and finally realized why ... but first a reminder by way of Wilde's poem:

To Milton (1881)
Oscar Wilde

Milton! I think thy spirit hath passed away
From these white cliffs and high-embattled towers;
This gorgeous fiery-coloured world of ours
Seems fallen into ashes dull and grey,
And the age changed unto a mimic play
Wherein we waste our else too-crowded hours:
For all our pomp and pageantry and powers
We are but fit to delve the common clay,
Seeing this little isle on which we stand,
This England, this sea-lion of the sea,
By ignorant demagogues is held in fee,
Who love her not: Dear God! is this the land
Which bare a triple empire in her hand
When Cromwell spake the word Democracy!

That was the poem, but what was my realization? That the towers are not "high, embattled towers" but "high-embattled towers." Isn't that rather obvious, you ask. Yes, and that's why I missed it. Too obvious.

Anyway, I realized that the towers are not high towers that happen to be embattled in the sense of being attacked but are towers that are high-embattled in the sense of having high battlements.

(Ah, the hype of a hyphen -- if I may dash this off parenthetically -- the punch of its punctuation, and the consideration of a comma.)

As we see from above, Wilde published this in 1881, ostensibly inspired by Milton, implicitly by Paradise Lost, but where did these "high-embattled towers" come from?

I find two possibilities. One possible source would be George Borrow's very popular book The Bible in Spain, first published in 1843, and which reportedly outsold the much-loved yuletide work by Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, also published in 1843. Here is the specific passage, from Borrow's Chapter 29:

[W]e shaped our course to the north-west, and by so doing doubled a mountain which rose majestically over our heads, its top crowned with bare and broken rocks, whilst on our right, on the other side of a spacious valley, was a high range, connected with the mountains to the northward of Saint James. On the summit of this range rose high embattled towers, which my guide informed me were those of Altamira, an ancient and ruined castle, formerly the principal residence in this province of the counts of that name.

Borrow's subtitle -- "or the Journey, Adventures, and Imprisonment of an Englishman in an Attempt to Circulate the Scriptures in the Peninsula" -- lets you know that this isn't some run-of-the-mill evangelist's spiritually uplifting potboiler but a picaresque story in which distributing the Bible is as much excuse as motivation for the 'mission' trip.

The other possible source for Wilde's expression would be The Veils, by a certain 'Miss Porden,' or more usefully known as Eleanor Anne Porden, daughter of the architect William Porden and first wife of the arctic explorer John Franklin. She died of consumption in 1825, a mere decade after publishing her poem (1815). Here is the relevant passage, which comes near the beginning of the poem (specifically, line 37):

Warned by approaching night, with slackened rein
They urge their steeds some friendly roof to gain,
At length they reached the confines of the wood
Where, on a hill, an ancient Castle stood;
With high embattled towers, and turrets crown'd,
By massy walls enclosed, and moated round.

The subtitle -- "or The Triumph of Constancy. A Poem, in Six Books" -- forewarns you that this poem bears a message. Or does it? In her prefatory remarks, Miss Porden tells us of her inspiration: "A YOUNG lady, one of the members of a small society which meets periodically for literary amusement, lost her veil (by a gust of wind) as she was gathering shells on the coast of Norfolk. This incident gave rise to the following Poem...." This sounds almost like the inspiration for Pope's mock heroic Rape of the Lock, a title suggesting an odd image if one takes it too literally and misunderstands the term "lock." Is The Veil a mock romantic poem? The mocking Gnome of lines 25-26 who appears waving the "ravished veil" and mocking the tears of the "YOUNG lady" who lost it would seem to suggest parody. Anybody know?

Anyway, as for Wilde's source, I suppose that it could be either of these, or both, but I'm inclined to suggest The Veil since its "high embattled towers" occurs so early in the poem and is thus more likely to be noticed and remembered.

Shades of Milton...

John Milton

Artist not Identified

(As Depicted on Wikipedia)

Dr. Timothy J. Burbery, a professor of English literature at Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia, has posted a request on the Milton Listserve that I belong to, asking for poems that refer to John Milton or his works.

In reflecting upon his request, I realized that Oscar Wilde's 1881 poem "To Milton" was modeled upon William Wordsworth's "London, 1802."

Oscar Wilde

In his Favourite Coat

Photographer not Identified

(As Depicted on Wikipedia)

To Milton (1881)
Oscar Wilde

Milton! I think thy spirit hath passed away
From these white cliffs and high-embattled towers;
This gorgeous fiery-coloured world of ours
Seems fallen into ashes dull and grey,
And the age changed unto a mimic play
Wherein we waste our else too-crowded hours:
For all our pomp and pageantry and powers
We are but fit to delve the common clay,
Seeing this little isle on which we stand,
This England, this sea-lion of the sea,
By ignorant demagogues is held in fee,
Who love her not: Dear God! is this the land
Which bare a triple empire in her hand
When Cromwell spake the word Democracy!

I note in passing that in the lines "This England, this sea-lion of the sea, / By ignorant demagogues is held in fee," there might be an echo of the prophecy of the dying John of Gaunt in Shakespeare's 1594 play Richard II, Act 2, Scene 1, "This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England," for the theme is similar: "That England, that was wont to conquer others, / Hath made a shameful conquest of itself." But I digress, so let us return to my point and look at Wordsworth's poem.

William Wordsworth

Reproduced from Margaret Gillies's 1839 Original

(As Depicted on Wikipedia)

Here it is:

London, 1802
William Wordsworth

Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters; altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men:
O raise us up, return to us again;
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart;
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea,
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free.
So didst thou travel on life's common way,
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on herself did lay.

As in Wilde's, this sonnet begins by invoking Milton. Indeed both do so by calling out to him forcefully: "Milton!"

There's probably no allusion, but I'm reminded of another famous call to awaken the dead:

With great voice, he cried out: "Lazarus, come out!"

That was John 11.43. Was Milton thinking of this in Paradise Lost, Book 1.314ff, where he has Satan call out to awaken the dead: "He call'd so loud, that all the hollow Deep / Of Hell resounded. Princes...." The 'dead' angels, fallen into Hell, from off the burning lake arise, although abashed.

Away from fallen angels and back to our Wilde man, I suggest that his lines 2-4, "From these white cliffs and high-embattled towers; / This gorgeous fiery-coloured world of ours / Seems fallen into ashes dull and grey," imply the mind-made hell of heaven that Milton's Satan exclaims in Paradise Lost, Book 1.254-255: "The mind is its own place, and in it self / Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n."

Perhaps Wordsworth had a similar thought in telling Milton that "England hath need of thee: she is a fen / Of stagnant waters," implying that England had become a type of Hell, for a stagnant, or dead fen, might recall the "Fens, Bogs, Dens, and shades of death" in Paradise Lost, Book 2.621. But I'm probably stretching my point.

There's a lot more to be said about these two poems, but other scholars have doubtless already said it, and I have promises to keep...