Christmas mystery solved!

In my hometown of Poughkeepsie, New York, sits Locust Grove, the original estate of artist and inventor Samuel F. B. Morse. The estate was purchased in 1771 by Henry Livingston, Jr.

According to the Poughkeepsie  Journal, “Livingston began to write poetry following the death of his wife, Sarah, in 1783. Livingston, remarried in 1793 and continuing to live at Locust Grove, wrote primarily for his family’s and friends’ enjoyment, although some of his work was published in local newspapers and in New York Magazine.“

Family records show that Livingston had written a special poem in 1808 for his family and guests. On Christmas morning, Livingston read to them, A Visit from St. Nicholas which began ‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house …”

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

Livingston made a copy of the poem for a guest who was employed as a governess for Clement C. Moore, a wealthy scholar in New York City.

Then on Dec. 23, 1823, the poem was published anonymously in the Sentinel, a Troy, N.Y. newspaper.

Henry Livingston died in 1828 and 16 years later, Moore included A Visit from St. Nicholas in a published volume of his own poems.

Thus began a controversy that has existed for more than 165 years — much to the distress of Livingston’s descendants. But in 1999, Mary Van Deusen (Livingston’s seventh-generation descendant), sought help from Don Foster, an English professor at Vassar College and a scholar of authorial attribution.

In his book, Author Unknown, Foster accuses Moore of committing literary fraud with circumstantial evidence – the poem’s spirit and style are  at odds with  Moore’s other writings.

The New York Times published the entire case in its Arts section on Oct. 26, 2000 : Whose Jolly Old Elf Is That, Anyway? — Literary Sleuth Casts Doubt on Authorship of Iconic Christmas Poem

“It was determined that the style of ‘A Visit from St. Nicholas’ was completely consistent with Livingston’s work and really not typical for poetry written by Moore,” said Locust Grove Executive Director Kenneth Snodgrass [to the Poughkeepsie Journal].

“Having learned the great news about Henry Livingston and the poem, we launched our children’s holiday programming around it,” said Ursula Morgan, Locust Grove’s director of public programs.

A Visit from St. Nicholas by Henry Livingston, Jr.

Twas the night Before Christmas
When all through the house
Not a creature was stirring
Not even a mouse

Thomas Nast's most famous drawing, "Merry Old Santa Claus," from Harper's Weekly, January 1, 1881

The stockings all hung
By the chimney with care
In hopes
That St. Nicholas
Soon would be there

The children were nestled
All safe in their beds
While visions of sugarplums
Danced in their heads

And mom in her kerchief
And I in my cap,
Had just settled down
For a long winters nap

When out on the lawn
There arose such a clatter
I sprang from my bed
To see what was the matter

Away to the window
I flew like a flash
Tore open the shutters
And threw up the sash …

“HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO ALL, AND TO ALL A GOOD NIGHT!”

The African Game Trails

SCRIBNER’S MAGAZINE

VOL. XLVI  NOVEMBER, 1909    NO. 5

AFRICAN GAME TRAILS

AN ACCOUNT OF THE AFRICAN WANDERINGS OF AN AMERICAN          HUNTER-NATURALIST

By Theodore Roosevelt

II. — ON AN EAST AFRICAN RANCH — LION-HUNTING ON THE            KAPITI PLAINS

“The house at which we were staying stood on the beautiful Kitanga hills. They were so named after the Englishman, to whom the natives had given the name of Kitanga; some years ago, as we were told, he had been killed by a lion near where the ranch-house now stood; and we were shown his grave in the little Machakos graveyard. The house was one-story high, clean and comfortable, with a veranda running round three sides;  and on the veranda were lion skins and the skull of a rhinoceros. From the house we looked over the hills and wide lonely plains; the green valley below, with its flat-topped acacias, was very lovely; and in the evening we could see, scores of miles away, the snowy summit of mighty Kilimanjaro turn crimson in the setting sun.”

… And so begins the second installment of the African wanderings of Roosevelt, to which  Scribner’s alloted 27 pages including photographs. The African Game Trails were published monthly from October 1909 – through in September 1910, ending with the story of the “Great Rhinoceros of Lado.”  In total, the Smithsonian East Africa Expedition amassed a collection of 23,151 natural history specimens. Today, a little over one hundred years later, the rare white rhino of Lado is the sole exhibit  on public display at the National Museum of Natural History.

 

The expedition traveled throughout what is now southern and western Kenya, the Congo, Uganda, and southern Sudan by train, horse, camel, and a steamboat on the Nile—stopping for weeks at each destination to collect specimens. They ended the expedition in Khartoum, Sudan, on March 14, 1910.

by Charles Scribner's Sons New York 1910.

The hunter who wanders through these lands sees sights which ever afterward remain fixed in his mind…. Apart from this, yet mingled with it, is the strong attraction of the silent places, of the large tropic moons, and the splendor of the new stars; where the wanderer sees the awful glory of sunrise and sunset in the wide waste spaces of the earth, unworn of man, and changed only by the slow change of the ages through time everlasting.

– Col. Theodore Roosevelt in Khartoum, March 15, 1910

The illustrated Scribner’s

Blog note: The Yellow Book was a tremendous find in terms of exploring the Art Nouveau genre  in a series of blog posts. And, like the concept of the illustrated quarterly – I was able to combine a sampling of writers and artists from that era.  As a transitional post from The Yellow Book (and Art Nouveau) was a nod to  Erte, a master of  the modernized Art Deco style.

Scribner's Magazine, October 1909

Somehow it seems that  in addition to an examination of arts history, this blog is becoming a media history blog. I don’t want to be limited to that aspect other than to say that in the late 19th – early 20th centuries, magazines were one of the only vehicles available in which to bring art and literature to a wide audience.

So anyway, in doing blog research I found Scribner’s Magazine. I was aware of the publication,  but not  to its breadth of content.  This post, though, is not going to delve into Scribner’s many facets.

In fact, this post is about the Smithsonian – Roosevelt African Expedition in which “Scribner’s Magazine paid Roosevelt $50,000 to write about the journey, funds that helped finance Roosevelt’s portion of the expedition costs.”

“For a year the magazine published a monthly account of his adventures. These articles were gathered together and published as a book, African Game Trails, in 1910.”

And so from the the Smithsonian National Museum of National History’s website we find that … Three weeks after the inauguration of his successor, William Howard Taft, Roosevelt set out for British East Africa to hunt big game. The Smithsonian Institution co-sponsored the expedition.

On the way to the Wapiti Plains

Roosevelt was accompanied on the trip by his son, Kermit, who served as official photographer …

and three representatives from the Smithsonian. On March 23, 1909, Roosevelt and the expedition team set sail from New York City and arrived in Mombasa on April 21st. Two days later Roosevelt’s outfit embarked on a 581-mile rail journey to Port Florence on Lake Victoria.

To be continued …

The immortal Erté

Erte, a Master of Fashion, Stage and Art Deco Design,

Is Dead at 97

The Queen of Sheba Mannikin, Folies Bergere, Paris, 1927

PARIS, April 21 — Erté, the Russian-born Art Deco designer whose prolific career in theater, sculpture and the graphic arts spanned most of the 20th century, died here today after a short illness. He was 97 years old.

Erté, whose name derived from the French pronunciation of the initials of his real name, Romain de Tirtoff, continued to work until just a few weeks ago. His recent designs included the set for the musical ”Stardust,” which recently ended a run in Washington, and the set and costumes for ”Easter Parade” at Radio City Music Hall.  …

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The New York Times published Erté’s obituary in their theatre section on April 22, 1990. He is considered one of  foremost costume and stage-set designer for film, theatre and opera in the 20th Century –  a master of the Art Deco style.

Harper's Bazaar, January 1915

His designs, especially dancers and “decadent,” luxurious and subtly erotic fashion images, became icons of the “Art Deco” style. In essence, Art Deco is a modern interpretation of the art movement that preceded it, Art Nouveau.

“Contrary to what many critics later maintained, it was this inspiration, rather than the work of Aubrey Beardsley, that profoundly influenced my ultimate style. I did not discover Beardsley until when I had already been in Paris for a year. “

Erté’s inspiration came from European Orientalist art, Russian icons, Byzantine mosaics, Greek vase paintings, images of Indian and Egyptian art.

Erté lived with Prince Nicholas Ourousoff, a distant cousin and his business manager in Monte Carlo from 1914 to 1923 It was Nicholas  who first suggested a relationship with Harper’s Bazaar in New York – which lasted from January 1915 until December 1936 – 2,500 pen-and-ink drawings and  designs in the inner pages and 240 covers . (The pictured cover, January 1915, was Erté’s first cover.)  His work would also appear in Vogue, the Illustrated London News, Cosmopolitan and Ladies’ Home Journal.

Between the two World Wars, his elaborate stage and costume designs were

La Nouvelle Revue De Helene Martini, 1970s

in much demand for operas, theater and ballets in Paris, Monte Carlo, New York, Chicago and Glyndebourne -but perhaps most memorably for music hall productions, which were enormously popular at the time.

A change in Erté’s career came in 1965 when he was 73: he met Eric and Salome Estorick of the Grosvenor Galleries in London and New York.

They persuaded Erté to uncover thousands of perfectly preserved drawings from huge trunks in his cellar. They caused a mild sensation, a resurgence of Art Deco in the late 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, a nostalgia craze.

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This post is a work in progress as there are many more mediums  influenced by Erte’s design genius.

The Arctic Sea, 1989, bronze

— The New York Times: Making Erte’s Furniture

Harper’s Bazaar: 140 years of Bazaar’s archives

1918: Erté often used his signature blue for impact

The incomparable Max

A review of Max Beerbohm’s 60-year career is a subject better suited for an  Art History thesis  than a blog post.  (For example)  on Brown University’s The Victorian Web:  literature, history and culture in the age of Victoria, there is a five-part series devoted to The Divinity and the Disciple: Oscar Wilde in the Letters of Max Beerbohm, 1892-1895.

Max Beerbohm as depicted by Walter Sickert for Vanity Fair in 1897

I found the Britannica Concise Encyclopedia to offer the best concise introduction to Sir Henry Maximilian Beerbohm (who was knighted by George VI in 1939; belatedly, it was widely believed, because of Beerbohm’s mockery in 1911 of the king’s parents, about whom he had written a satiric verse.)

Max Beerbohm: English caricaturist, writer, and dandy. His sophisticated drawings and parodies were unique in capturing, usually without malice, whatever was pretentious, affected, or absurd in his famous and fashionable contemporaries. His first literary collection, The Works of Max Beerbohm (1896), and his first book of drawings, Caricatures of Twenty-five Gentlemen (1896), were followed by the charming fable The Happy Hypocrite (1897) and his only novel, Zuleika Dobson (1911), a burlesque of Oxford life. His story collection Seven Men (1919) is considered a masterpiece.

“I was a modest, good-humoured boy. It is Oxford that has made me insufferable.” — Beerbohm

Beerbohm was a well-known socialite at Oxford … “Wildean style was fashionable among Beerbohm’s circle of friends, and he cultivated their flippancy, their taste for the precious and artificial and nonsensical, their pose of amused self-admiration, and their impish pleasure in shocking.” [from Letters]

An overweight Oscar Wilde complained about this Beerbohm caricature

He also  began his writing career at Oxford – his  articles and caricature submissions were well-received by London publications including The Strand.

And then he met Oscar Wilde through his half-brother, renowned stage actor Herbert Beerbohm Tree.  This began the odd relationship between he and Wilde –  “from 1892 to 1895, Beerbohm became an increasingly deft satirist. Having mastered Wilde’s style through imitation, Beerbohm parodied it. Having enumerated Wilde’s faults with a critical eye, Beerbohm satirised them.”

Beerbohm was friendly with Aubrey Beardsley and his parody, In Defence of Cosmetics, appeared in The Yellow Book’s first issue and was followed  several years later by The Happy Hypocrite. The story was also produced as a stage show in 1900 at the Royalty Theatre in London,

The plot is the inverse of The Picture of Dorian Grey‘s good vs evil theme. The  protagonist is one Lord George Hell, who has led a dandified life of  gambling and ill-got gains. He falls in love with Jenny, a beautiful and innocent dancer, but she will only marry a man with the face of a saint. Hell purchases a perfect mask  to woo Jenny and proposes marriage to her – she accepts and he signs the marriage registry as George Heaven. He then makes a total moral conversion, but an old adversary confronts him. After a scuffle, the mask falls off and George is revealed – but his face  now has the contours of the perfect mask. The story ends with a passionate kiss between the newlyweds as the mask melts in the sun.

Published 1897, The Yellow Book

“The younger generation is knocking at the door; and as I open it there steps spritely in the incomparable Max” — George Bernard Shaw

So said  Shaw upon interviewing Beerbohm in 1898 to succeed him as  drama critic for the Saturday Review, on whose staff Beerbohm remained until 1910. From 1935 onwards, he was  popular radio broadcaster with an eclectic show for the BBC. In 1942 the Maximilian Society was created in Beerbohm’s honour.

He died in 1956 at the Villa Chiara, a private hospital in Rapallo, Italy aged 83, shortly after marrying his former secretary and companion, Elisabeth Jungmann.

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UPDATE: Here’s ends this blog’s exploration of the illustrated- quarterly, The Yellow Book.  I next want to take a look at the artist Erté because I love his work ~ and, I had no idea that he illustrated over 200 covers for Harper’s Bazaar magazine (first published in 1897.)

The forgotten Arthur Symons

The Yellow Book ~~

Arthur Symons was a poet, critic and later the literary editor of The Savoy. His essay, ‘The Decadent Movement in Literature’ essentially introduced the French Fin de siècle emerging  literary style to England.

“It is the poetry of sensation, of evocation; poetry which paints as well as sings.”

Symons poem ‘Stella Maris’ is published in The Yellow Book’s first edition:

Philip Wilson Steer, A Girl at her Toilet, Tate Musuem

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stella Maris ~ 1894

Why is it I remember yet
You, of all women one has met
In random wayfare, as one meets
The chance romances of the streets,
The Juliet of a night? I know
Your heart holds many a Romeo.
And I, who call to mind your face
In so serene a pausing-place,
Where the bright pure expanse of sea,
The shadowy shore’s austerity,
Seems a reproach to you and me,
I too have sought on many a breast
The ecstasy of love’s unrest,
I too have had my dreams, and met
(Ah me!) how many a Juliet. …

Why is it, then, that I recall …

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Not surprisingly, the poem is the cause of much of the moralizing  disapproval  of critics for The Yellow Book’s literary content. After the trial  of Oscar Wilde (whom Symons will later visit in prison), he as literary editor,  Aubrey Beardsley as art director and  Leonard Smithers as publisher form a rival publication – The Savoy. The publication is popular, yet closes in a year’s time because of distribution problems.

“But thanks to Arthur Symons, some of the richest and strangest fin de siecle art and writing was published, and is preserved.  … The Savoy preserves and presents perfectly representative samples of the variety of literary forms–aesthetic, symbolist, decadent, realistic, and naturalistic–experimented with in English literature during the 1890s.”

 

The Savoy, January - December 1896

 

“His book, The Symbolist Movement in Literature (1900), has become known as Symons’s most valuable work. A collection of essays on French writers from Balzac to Verlaine, Rimbaud and Huysmans, with Symons’s translations of selected poems appended, the book would be accorded great influence in the 1920s by many of the “high Modern” writers in English, like T.S. Eliot and Symons’s old friend W.B. Yeats. However, Symons’s far greater, but far less noted, contribution to literature was as an editor, not as an author”

— Anne Margaret Daniel, Literary Imagination

Update: I’ve added the link to Anne Margaret Daniel’s extensive piece on Symons and The Savoy.

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And then tragedy.

Symons suffers a mental breakdown and in 1908 is committed to a lunatic asylum with delirious hallucinations. His condition improves over the next few years and he continues to write into the 1930s – but is never again the vibrant work of his early years. He died in 1945 of pneumonia.

 

Arthur Symon. 1865 - 1945

Born under the influence of passionate and perverse stars, my life has been utterly unlike that of any man I have ever known. — Arthur Symons

 

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On a lighter note, before I put The Yellow Book to bed, so to speak, I may want to add a post on essayist, parodist and caricaturist Max Beerbohm.