Frankenstein Sundae, 352

And then son Percy found a woman he wanted to marry, Jane St. John.

Her biography fits right in with the Godwins and Shelleys. She was an illegitimate child; his first husband died just three years after their marriage in 1841. Her late husband, by the way, left behind an illegitimate son. Jane met Mary’s son, Percy Florence, in 1847, and they married on June 22, 1848.

From the beginning, Mary adored the woman who would become her daughter-in-law. Mary first mentions Jane in a letter in March 1848, calling her a prize indeed in the lottery (not as rich) being the best & sweetest thing in the world—[1] In that same letter, however, Mary makes another comment about Jane’s (lack of) wealth—so in some ways we see—don’t we?—that Mary has become someone quite distant from her own family history.

Unfortunately (for us), Percy Florence and Jane had no children. So today there is no one walking around carrying the genes of Godwin-Wollstonecraft-Shelley. Instead, all that genetic material lies in the ground—and in the pages of countless books, books by them, books about them.

On October 6, 1999, I drove to Bloomington, Indiana, where I planned to visit the Lilly Library, which houses the rare books and manuscripts for the University of Indiana. There, I’d found online, was a copy of Jane Shelley’s four-volume compilation of papers, Shelley and Mary (1882), an assortment of letters and other documents that she published in a limited edition. The Lilly had only the first two volumes. (I would read the others thanks to microfilm I acquired from the Hiram College Library on interlibrary loan, January 31, 1999.)

Here’s an excerpt from my journal later that day: I was the only patron for a while, and so they quickly brought me the two volumes of Shelley and Mary, and I was thankful I had this laptop: the books were, well, books, not microfilm, so I had to type the notes I took. Not a lot of stuff, but some golden stuff—especially the letters from Godwin to Mary (unpublished most other places). After about two ½ hours of typing, I was ready to leave for New Harmony, so off I went.

Today, as I look at the printout of the notes I took that day nearly twenty years ago, I find one extract that makes me smile even today—this excerpt from a letter that Mary’s father wrote to her in late November 1822 after reading the manuscript of her novel Valperga (1823). Here’s Godwin with his typical paternal bluntness: Frankenstein was a fine thing; it was compressed, muscular, and firm; nothing relaxed and weak; no proud flesh. … [Valperga] is a work of more genius; but it appears, in reading, that the first rule you prescribed to yourself was, I will let it be long.[2]

---

[1] Letters, vol. 3, 334.

[2] 904.

High School Doesn't Go Away

At the recent Hiram Schools* reunion (an annual July event in nearby Welshfield, Ohio) our Master of Ceremonies, Gary Bott (a couple of classes earlier than mine--and a former Hiram Fire Chief), performed one of his annual rituals: checking to see which HHS classes had attendees this year. He started with 1935. A woman's hand went up.

1935. Hmmm. If she was seventeen in 1935, that makes her ... [pause for Danny's slow computational skills] ... ninety-nine years old. (Did I mishear? Was it 1935?) And there she sat, eating pot-luck with the rest of us, sharing stories, occasionally feeling bad about the jerks we'd been Back in the Day (maybe I'm just speaking for myself here: Not everyone is a jerk in high school; I was).

Our class (1962) had only a handful present (see pic below)--though nearly twenty of us had met the day before at the home of our classmate Ron Etling, who owns a great place in Hiram Township--nine wooded acres across Asbury Road from Camp Asbury (where our sixth graders at the middle school in Aurora, where I taught most of my career, used to go for a week each spring)--Ron, also a middle school teacher (science) who has both geothermal and solar at his house. Scientists!

Twenty doesn't sound like all that many, but there were only about forty of us to begin with, and we are 72-ish now ... get real!

Well, I wrote earlier about that reunion day (yes, I know that I repeat myself!), but today I was thinking about how high school lingers with us. The relationships, the expectations we have of one another.

Certainly, those years are key in our development--basically ages fourteen through seventeen (plus or minus)--years when we begin to think we know a lot (and that our parents and other adults manifestly do not)--that the adolescent world we're inhabiting (and creating) is just far different from (and superior to) whatever it had been before (hah!), that we don't need anyone, except one another, of course, our shared wisdom equaling, well, all of what humanity had theretofore accumulated.

It takes years--well, it took me years--to figure out what a dolt I was.

And I think now about what a moron I was not to consult my parents about more things (or to listen to them with one ear--or fewer), not to consult, say, Mr. Brunelle, our amazing high school English teacher (Latin, German, too), who lived only eleven miles away from where I was beginning my own career as an English teacher. Hell, I didn't need him: I mean, all of this--all of what I was doing--was different, right?

Wrong.

I should have picked his brain like an apple tree. But didn't. And so had to learn the Hard Way many of the things he could have spared me.

But it just amazes me how--fifty-five years after we graduated--I can see a familiar name from Back Then pop up on a Facebook "Like" or comment or a post, and I feel ... something. Something unique. Something I do not really feel for any other "friends" (except Joyce, of course!)--no matter how long I've known them.

And I believe I feel this way because we shared it all--the classes, the teachers, the madness, the excitement, the cruelty, kindness, love, error, cruelty (yes, I know I already said it once), success, failure, study halls, gym class, Y-Teen hot dog day, sock-hops, games, bus rides, sorry lunches (we had no cafeteria: bag-it or starve!), field trips, fights, applause, cruelty (yep, third time) ... and now ... memory.

The other day I had coffee with Ron (whose home and property we'd enjoyed for our 55th) because we hadn't talked much that day--needed to catch up. A swift hour-and-a-half ensued. And names I hadn't thought of--deeds I'd forgotten (sometimes happily so)--regrets and pleasures--all of it swirled around us there in the Aurora Starbucks, where Time himself simply sipped his latte and waited for us to finish.

*The Hiram Schools are gone. The high school consolidated with nearby Crestwood (in Mantua, Ohio) at the beginning of the 1964-65 school year; the building was razed a little later; the elementary grades hung around awhile, then merged, too, and now ... nothing but grass remains. Here's a picture of my younger brother and me at the site--just last year.

Frankenstein Sundae, 351

Percy and Mary were able to afford the new place at 24 Chester Square because in late November 1845 they sold Castle Goring, a property which Bysshe’s paternal grandfather—also named Bysshe—had built in Sussex by the sea.[1]

Erected in the 1790s, the structure features some odd architecture: One face looks Gothic—a traditional “castle”; the opposite face resembles an Italian villa. (Ah, Sir Bysshe—getting it both ways!) (Pix from the Internet.)

I did not see the place when I was in England in the spring of 1999. I’m not sure why, but I’ve read lately that although it still stands, its current owners do not welcome visitors. So I probably couldn’t have gotten close anyway.

At any rate, Mary and Percy sold it for £11,250—quite a fortune in 1845, some £1.5 million today.[2] And in US dollars in July of 2017 (as I write this): nearly $2 million. That would suffice. She would move in to 24 Chester Square in March 1846. And she and her son would live comfortably the rest of their lives—financially, anyway.

It must have been astonishing for Mary, to live like this. She’d grown up in the always struggling Godwin household, had lived somewhat meanly with husband Bysshe, and had continued a very modest lifestyle after she, now a widow, returned to England in 1824. Her income came from writing (not much) and from the limited largesse of Sir Timothy Shelley, who, as we have seen, was bitter, bitter, bitter about her and what he viewed as the corruption of his late son.

Mary’s letters during her last few years show us that she was still reading, still writing occasional short pieces, still making brief journeys here and there, visiting.

And then son Percy found a woman he wanted to marry, Jane St John.

---

[1] Holmes, Shelley: The Pursuit, 10.

[2] https://www.uwyo.edu/numimage/currency.htm

"Call Me Mr. Blue"

Last night--driving home with Joyce from Aurora--we saw some blue sky opening in the west (it had been overcast much of the day), and I said something about Mr. Blue glowing up there ahead of us.

And then, of course, that song came back ... and it has remained in my head, off and on, ever since. That song, "Mr. Blue."

Written by DeWayne Blackwell and recorded by the Fleetwoods and released in 1959, it reached #1 on the charts in November that year, the month I turned 15 and was, of course, astonishingly vulnerable to issues of the heart. I heard it over and over again on the radio; it was a standard at our sock-hops and dances (at which we very rarely had live music). Friends owned the 45rpm of it, and we listened at their houses, over and over.

Though I remember this, too: It was the kind of song that a guy--a teen guy in the 50s, an aspiring jock (like me)--had to pretend not to like. Sentimental. Romantic. Mushy. Definitely not a guy thing in 1959.

Though--privately, privately--it was my thing in 1959. I had no real idea then, of course, about heartbreak or loss or betrayal or regret--lessons I would learn a little farther down the road--lessons that (to my deep, deep shame) I also taught some others.

It was a great song to slow-dance to, and by the time I was in tenth grade (the year the song came out), I had become very fond of slow-dancing (for obvious carnal reasons). Although "The Twist" would come out in 1960, in 1959, as I recall, we were still doing the Jitterbug to the fast songs. Caught, we were, between the 50s and 60s.

DeWayne Blackwell, the songwriter, born in 1936 (and apparently still with us), wrote for a number of singers--including (says trusty Wikipedia) Garth Brooks--remember "Friends in Low Places"? That is a Blackwell song. (Link to "Low Places.")

The Fleetwoods: Gary Troxel, Gretchen Christopher, Barbara Ellis. Recently, I've read, they're still doing occasional oldies concerts.

Here's a link to "Mr. Blue," the Fleetwoods performing it on YouTube ... Joyce found it on her iPhone as I was driving us home last night, and as it started up, Hiram High School came surging toward me on the raft of memory--though I have to say that I had totally forgotten the opening: "Our guardian star has lost its glow ..." (See complete lyrics at the bottom of the page.)

Now, of course, all I worry about is that--for the rest of my life!--every time I see a blue sky, "Mr. Blue" will come whirling back into my memory. Good thing I live in northeastern Ohio: not all that many blue-sky days!

Our guardian star lost all his glow

The day that I lost you

He lost all his glitter the day you said, no

And his silver turned to blue

Like him, I am doubtful that your love is true

But if you decide to call on me

Ask for Mr. Blue

I'm Mr. Blue (wah-a-wah-ooh)

When you say you love me (ah, Mr. Blue)

Then prove it by goin' out on the sly

Provin' your love isn't true

Call me Mr. Blue

I'm Mr. Blue (wah-a-wah-ooh)

When you say you're sorry (ah, Mr. Blue)

Then turn around, head for the lights of town

Hurtin' me through and through

Call me Mr. Blue

I stay at home at night (I stay at home)

Right by the phone at night (right by the phone)

But you won't call

And I-I won't hu-urt my pride (call me Mr)

I won't tell you (wah-a-wah-ooh)

Why you paint the town (ah, Mr. Blue)

A bright red to turn it upside down

I'm paintin' it too

But I'm paintin' it blue

Call me Mr. Blue (wah-a-wah-ooh)

Call me Mr. Blue (wah-a-wah-ooh)

Call me Mr. Blue

Frankenstein Sundae, 350

Last time, I wrote about my experiences in London in April 1999 when I saw and photographed (from the outside only ... sigh) the house at 24 Chester Square, the final house Mary Shelley occupied, the house where she died. In that post I noted that I realized, doing the post, that I'd not yet scanned the 35mm slides I took that day (oops), but over the weekend I managed to do so, and below are a few that show the neighborhood, the house, the historical marker ...

PS--The blue plaque at the bottom was not installed until 2003, four years after I was there ... progress!  Link to info about plaque.

Here's an image of a Google map that shows you the location in London.

And now ... some pix ... Don't you love the sign? "Wife of the Poet"--nothing about Frankenstein or her many other writings!

you can see "24" at the far right

Sunday Sundries, 151

1. AOTW: i think the word has gone out, and people are now competing for this now-coveted award. I had two great contenders on a trip home from the health club the other day: (1) two different cars behaved as if they had the right-of-way as their lane was merging in to mine--gunning it, aggressive as warthogs; (2) as I turned onto Church St. (our street), one-way at this point, two women were standing in the middle of the narrow single lane having what must have been a fascinating conversation; I had to edge by, thinking HERE ARE THE WINNERS! But then this morning, about to exit the Acme parking lot (turning right), I saw a car coming along SR 303 on my left--a little close--so I waited; not so the AOTW, who turned left into the parking lot, right in front of the oncoming car I was waiting for. As the AOTW passed us, I saw she was in a merry smart-phone conversation with someone. Pretty bad when your phone's smarter than you are!

2. I should note that this week was the first time I've been able to ride my bike since April 25, when, after I rode home from Starbucks that afternoon, I drove out to the health club, exercised, passed out in the shower. This led to a Grand Adventure: a ride with EMS (later in the week), the ER overnight, scans and blood draws, and meetings with specialists about my persistent and serious dizziness. But we changed my BP med, and I've been getting better--not perfect, but better. And this week, I added air to the tires, rode off, had a grand old ride. Here's hoping there will be many more to follow ...

3. I finished two books this week.

     a. The first was The Burgess Boys (2013) by Elizabeth Strout, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist whose books I'm slowly reading my way through. I love her work. This one has a frame story (at the beginning only--not sure why she didn't return to it at the end? oh well, Shakespeare didn't either in The Taming of the Shrew). In the Prologue a first-person narrator is talking with her mother, remembering the Burgess family from their hometown in Maine.

Then we begin Book One in the 3rd person (and we stay in that person) and hear about a grim auto accident years before when one of the little Burgess boys released the brake in the car, which rolled over Dad, killing him. Bob Burgess supposedly did it (though this grows more complicated later in the novel). His older brother, Jim, is an all-star lawyer who has won an OJ-like case and is a celebrity. Sister Susan, still in Maine, is now a single mom with an odd late-teen boy, Zack, who one day hurls a pig's head into a mosque in town, a mosque attended by the many Somali refugees who have moved into the little Maine town of Shirley Falls (fictional).

Well, Bob and Jim get involved in his case; things grow complicated; a Somali becomes sort of a major minor character, and Strout explores the issues of immigration, of Muslims in America, of celebrity, of family--issues that have hardly, uh, disappeared since 2013, eh?

I'm a StroutFan now, and I marvel at how she's able to integrate multiple points of view in her fiction (as she does here). The Burgess Boys does not employ exactly the same technique of some of her other fiction (like Olive Kitteridge)--i.e., interconnected stories. But the POV shifts often here, and it's a thrilling way for readers to see the relativity of "truth."

     b. The second is the new novel (Grief Cottage, 2017) by Gail Godwin, whom I've been reading since the 1970s. I actually met her, back in the early 1970s, when she and my older brother, Richard, were teaching colleagues at the University of Iowa. Richard was taking Joyce and me on a little tour of his office, etc., and Gail Godwin was sitting in hers, too, grading papers. Nice chat--though I don't recall a single sentence of it! I reviewed her for the Plain Dealer once or twice, and I've read all of her novels.

Grief Cottage is not one of my favorites, I'm sad to say. It's told in the first person by a man (now a shrink) recalling the summer when he was eleven years old. His dad is gone (and uncertain in identity); his mom has recently died in a car accident; he has gone to a South Carolina island to live in a beach cottage with his great-aunt, an eccentric soul who makes her meager living by painting local scenes for tourists and others. "Grief Cottage" is the name locals have given to a near-ruin way down the beach from where Marcus (our narrator) is staying, but he becomes obsessed with the place, where, supposedly, an out-of-town family died in Hurricane Hazel years before.

Marcus begins to notice a ... presence ... there when he (surreptitiously) visits--and he even sees what he believes is the ghost of the young boy who died there.

Well, there are complications: his aunt sustains a wrist injury (yes, her painting hand) and drinks a lot; Marcus befriends an elderly local who is kind to him and his aunt; we get flashbacks to Marcus' earlier boyhood and a friend he calls Wheezer; a local realtor is trying to sell Grief Cottage; oh, and some turtles are about to hatch in a nearby dune and make their race for the surf. Etc.

We eventually learn most of the secrets, but the whole thing just seemed a little too pat and predictable for me. Also, having spent thirty years of my career working with middle-school youngsters, I didn't really see much verisimilitude in Marcus--although we must remember that he's looking back on all of this from years later.

And Grief Cottage itself? It's a good symbol of what we all carry around in us--our own dwellings for the grief that we all carry, the places we all dwell now and then, from which we sometimes have a difficult time escaping as the hurricanes rage outside ...

4. On Saturday night we saw (over in Kent) the new film Dunkirk by Christopher Nolan. Though we don't very often go to war films, we did want to see this one because of two cast members: Kenneth Branagh and Mark Rylance, two of the great Shakespearean actors of our lifetimes. And Rylance, in particular, was a wonder here as the owner of a small boat that crosses the Channel to help rescue the tens of thousands of British soldiers stranded on the beach at Dunkirk.

Nolan gives us four points-of-view: a British fighter pilot, the leadership on the beach (Branagh), a couple of soldiers trying to survive, the Mark Rylance boat captain. Shifting easily (and effectively) back and forth, here and there, Nolan shows us the horrors of war from the bottom of the sea to the top of the sky. And the horrors are most grim--though Nolan often allows us to use only our imaginations to, well, imagine what's happening, what the men and women are going through. With an amazing soundtrack pulsing through us ...

A first-rate film that is very difficult to watch--and impossible not to watch.

Link to film trailer.

5. We've once again started watching episodes of the fine Brit series Suspects, which we'd stopped some months ago when a favorite character got murdered in a season-opening episode. Too much for an Old Man to tolerate.

But we're back at it now, enjoying ourselves.

6. Final Word: A word I liked this week from one of my various online word-of-the-day providers.

     - niveous  (NIV-ee-uhs)

MEANING: adjective: Snowy or resembling snow.

ETYMOLOGY: From Latin niveus, from nix (snow). Earliest documented use: 1623.

USAGE: “Here, wooded hills rolled gently away to a horizon wrapped in a niveous haze.”

Cecilia Dart-Thornton; The Ill-Made Mute; Warner Books; 2015.

Tobacco Juice from Grasshoppers?

The other day--walking down the sidewalk on the way to a local restaurant (to celebrate Joyce's birthday)--I saw a grasshopper, hanging out (was he waiting for grass to grow?). And for some reason I flashed back (again!) to my Oklahoma boyhood and thought about how, back then, we thought grasshoppers spit tobacco juice.

I asked Joyce if she'd heard that story, too, as a girl growing up in Akron, Ohio. She had. She did a little quick iPhone research for me, and she found this reference in the New York Times (it has a weekly "Science" section on Tuesdays). Here's what the Times said (it's in a Q&A format from December 1, 1982--a Wednesday, by the way):

Grasshopper Tobacco

Q. When I was young, we used to hold a grasshopper to make it spit "tobacco." What is it?

A. The brownish liquid, which does resemble tobacco juice, is a substance the grasshopper secretes as a defense mechanism against some possible predators, said Dr. Stuart Green, an entomologist at Cambridge University.

"You were stressing it, and it was not happy at being seized," he said. "The stuff it spits out is not very pleasant, and is harmful or at least offensive to birds and spiders."

The secretion is not made from tobacco but comes from a special gland, Dr. Green said.

The liquid is probably not effective against something as large as a human being, he said, though "if you drank a cup of it, it probably wouldn't do you any good."

Against bird-sized predators, however, the substance might act as a repellent, he said.

So ... it's a defense mechanism. Not tobacco juice.  (Duh.) Yet another childhood fantasy destroyed!

Well, that was thirty-five years ago, that Times info. What's been going on since? The picture at the top of this post is one thing on the web--and there are many pix you can find of this phenomenon. And here's a link to a YouTube video showing someone getting a grasshopper to "spit" (the video didn't look too good on my machine--maybe better on yours?).

And here's some more detailed information about the phenomenon from a Purdue site. LINK

I think--years ago--I tried tobacco-chewing once. Hated it. But I had some Oregon/Washington relatives (all male) who did it--and one college friend (later on). Can't say I ever saw the appeal of it.

But I remember the ubiquity of grasshoppers in the summer back in Oklahoma; I remember the thud when they hit the windshield of our moving car, sometimes leaving legs and wings behind for us to remove at our next stop. (I know: gross.)

And--shame, shame--I remember ... some years ago ... eating a chocolate-covered grasshopper in a package of chocolate-covered insects. It wasn't all that bad. Crunchy. Chocolatey.

Lesson: Wrapped in chocolate, even a grasshopper tastes great!

Image below is from a website where you can buy them ...