Pluck and Luck Read online

  And with them open windows to the sea

  Lycurgus from his moss-bedowered tree

  Brings asphodel to deck the starry sky.

  The winter-scarred olympids homeward fly

  And softly spread their golden heraldry

  Yet Lacedemon does not wake in fantasy

  Nor Thetis sing her songs to such as I.

  So, Laura, how shall Eros take his due

  Or crafty Xerxes leave his tent at night

  If, dropping down from his cerulean blue,

  He brings not gold with him wherewith to fight?

  The ploughman homeward plods his weary way

  And, what is more, you’ll be a man, my son.

  * * *

  The boy in Bodney is fading and giving place to the man. This sonnet, while not perfect, shows what was going on in the youth’s mind. Of course, “moss-bedowered tree” is bad, and Lacedemon was the name of a country, not a person, but “winter-scarred olympids” makes up for a great deal, and the picture of decking “the starry sky” with asphodel comes doubtless from Bodney’s vacation days in Polpero where there are a lot of rocks and seaweed. Henry Willers, in a most interesting paper on Bodney’s Relation to Open Windows, points out that the “open windows to the sea” probably refers to an old window of his aunt’s which she kept upstairs in the house at Ragley. Mr. Willers is probably right also in believing that in line six, the word “their” comes from a remark made by Remson to Bodney concerning some plovers sent him (Remson) after a hunting trip. “I am using their feathers,” Remson is reported to have said, “to make a watch fob with.”

  These are fascinating speculations, but we must not linger too long with them. Even as we speculate, the boy Bodney is turning into the man Bodney, and is looking searchingly at the life about him. Poor Bodney! We know now that he looked once too often.

  IV

  SHOPPING IN LONDON

  The first big adventure in William Bodney’s life was a trip up to London to buy shoes. The shoes which he had been wearing in Suffix, we learn from the Town Clerk’s record, were “good enough,” but “good enough” was never a thing to satisfy William Bodney. The fashion at the time was to wear shoes only to parties and coronations, but Bodney was never one to stick to the fashion.

  So bright and early on the morning of April 9, 1855, the young man set out for the city, full of the vigor of living. Did he go by coach or by foot? We do not know. On the coach records of April there is a passenger listed as “Enoch Reese,” but this was probably not William Bodney. There is no reason why he should have traveled under the name of “Enoch Reese.” But whether he went by coach or over the road, we do know that he must have passed through Weeming-on-Downs, as there was no way of getting to London from Suffix without passing through Weeming-on-Downs. And as Bodney went through this little town, probably bright in the sunlight of the early April morning, is it not possible that he stopped at the pump in the square to wet his wrists against the long, hot journey ahead? It is not only possible. It is more than likely. And, stopping at the pump, did he know that in the third house on the left as you leave the pump London-wards, was Mary Wassermann? Or, did Mary Wassermann know that Bodney was just outside her door? The speculation is futile, for Mary Wassermann moved from Weeming-on-Downs the next week and was never heard from again. But I anticipate.

  Of Bodney’s stay in London we know but little. We know that he reached London, for he sent a postcard to his mother from there saying that he had arrived “safe and sound.” We know that he left London, because he died fifteen years later in Suffix. What happened in between we can only conjecture at, but we may be sure that he was very sensitive to whatever beauty there may have been in London at that time. In the sonnet On Looking Into a Stereoscope for the First Time, written when he had grown into full manhood, we find reference to this visit to the city:

  And, with its regicidal note in tune,

  Brings succor to the waiting stream.

  If this isn’t a reference to the London trip, what is it a reference to?

  V

  PROGRESS AND REGRESS

  We have seen Bodney standing on the threshold of the Great Experience. How did he meet it? Very well indeed.

  For the first time we find him definitely determined to create. “I am definitely determined to create,” he wrote to the Tax Collector of Suffix (Author’s Collection). And with the spring of i860 came, in succession, To Some Ladies Who Have Been Very Nice To Me, Ode to Hester, Rumpty: A Fragment, and To Arthur Hosstetter MacMonigal. Later in the same year came I wonder when, if I should go, there’d be.

  It is in I wonder when, if I should go, there’d be. that Bodney for the first time strikes the intimate note.

  I sometimes think that open fires are best,

  Before drab autumn swings its postern shut . . .

  “Open fires” is a delightful thought, carrying with it the picture of a large house, situated on a hill with poplars, the sun sinking charmingly behind the town in the distance and, inside, the big hall, hung with banners, red and gold, and a long table laden with rich food, nuts, raisins, salt (plenty of salt, for Bodney was a great hand to put salt on his food and undoubtedly had salt in mind), and over all the presence of the king and his knights, tall, vigorous blond knights swearing allegiance to their lord. Or perhaps in the phrase Bodney had in mind, a small room with nobody in it. Who can tell? At any rate, we have the words “open fires” and we are able to reconstruct what went on in the poet’s mind if we have a liking for that sort of thing. And, although he does not say so in so many words, there is little doubt but that in using “fires” in conjunction with the word “open” he meant Lillian Walf and what was to come later.

  VI

  MIRAGE

  From I wonder when, if I should go, there’d be to On Meeting Roger H. Clafflin for the Second Time is a far cry – and a merry one. On Meeting Roger H. Clafflin for the Second Time is heptasyllabic and, not only that, but trochaic. Here, after years of suffering and disillusion, after discovering false friends and vain loves, we find Bodney resorting to the trochee. His letter to his sister at the time shows the state of mind the young poet was in (Rast Collection):

  Somehow today I feel that things are closing in on me. Life is closing in on me. I have a good mind to employ the trochee and see what that will do. I have no fault to find with the spondee. Some of my best work is spondaic. But I guess there just comes a time in everyone’s life when the spondee falls away of its own accord and the trochee takes its place. It is Nature’s way. Ah, Nature! How I love Nature! I love the birds and the flowers and Beauty of all kinds. I don’t see how anyone can hate Beauty, it is so beautiful. . . . Well, there goes the bell, so I must close now and employ a spondee.

  Seven days later Bodney met Lillian Walf.

  VII

  FINIS ORIGINE PENDET

  We do not know whether it was at four o’clock or a quarter past four on October 17, 1874, that Henry Ryan said to Bodney: “Bodney, I want that you should meet my friend Miss Walf. . . . Miss Walf, Mr. Bodney.” The British War Office has no record of the exact hour and Mr. Ryan was blotto at the time and so does not remember. However, it was in or around four o’clock.

  Lillian Walf was three years older than Bodney, but had the mind of a child of eight. This she retained all her life. Commentators have referred to her as feeble minded, but she was not feeble minded. Her mind was vigorous. It was the mind of a vigorous child of eight. The fact that she was actually in her thirties has no bearing on the question that I can see. Writing to Remson three years after her marriage to Bodney, Lillian says:

  We have a canary which sings something terrible all day. I think I’ll shoot it Tuesday.

  If that is the product of a feeble mind, then who of us can lay claim to a sound mentality?

  The wedding of Bodney to Lillian Walf took place quietly except for the banging of the church radiator. The parson, Rev. Dr. Padderson, estimated that the temperature of the room was about 78°
at the time, too hot for comfort. However, the young couple were soon on their way to Bayswater where they settled down and lived a most uneventful life from then on. Bodney must have been quite happy in his new existence, for he gave up writing poetry and took to collecting pewter. We have no record of his ever writing anything after his marriage, except a sonnet for the yearbook of the Bayswater School for Girls. This sonnet (On Looking into William Ewart Gladstone) beginning:

  O Lesbos! When thy feted songs shall ring . . .

  is too well known to quote here in full, but we cannot help calling attention to the reference to Bayswater. For it was in Bayswater that Bodney really belonged and it was there that he died in 1876. His funeral was a Masonic one and lasted three hours and twenty minutes (Author’s Collection).

  * * *

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  Editha’s

  Christmas Burglar

  * * *

  It was the night before Christmas, and Editha was all agog. It was all so exciting, so exciting! From her little bed up in the nursery she could hear Mumsey and Daddy down-stairs putting the things on the tree and jamming her stocking full of broken candy and oranges.

  “Hush!” Daddy was speaking. “Eva,” he was saying to Mumsey, “it seems kind of silly to put this ten-dollar gold-piece that Aunt Issac sent to Editha into her stocking. She is too young to know the value of money. It would just be a bauble to her. How about putting it in with the household money for this month? Editha would then get some of the food that was bought with it and we would be ten dollars in.”

  Dear old Daddy! Always thinking of someone else! Editha wanted to jump out of bed right then and there and run down and throw her arms about his neck, perhaps shutting off his wind.

  “You are right, as usual, Hal,” said Mumsey. “Give me the gold-piece and I will put it in with the house funds.”

  “In a pig’s eye I will give you the gold-piece,” replied Daddy. “You would nest it away somewhere until after Christmas and then go out and buy yourself a muff with it. I know you, you old grafter.” And from the sound which followed, Editha knew that Mumsey was kissing Daddy. Did ever a little girl have two such darling parents? And, hugging her Teddy-bear close to her, Editha rolled over and went to sleep.

  * * *

  She awoke suddenly with the feeling that someone was downstairs. It was quite dark and the radiolite traveling-clock which stood by her bedside said eight o’clock, but, as the radiolite traveling-clock hadn’t been running since Easter, she knew that that couldn’t be the right time. She knew that it must be somewhere between three and four in the morning, however, because the blanket had slipped off her bed, and the blanket always slipped off her bed between three and four in the morning.

  And now to take up the question of who it was downstairs. At first she thought it might be Daddy. Often Daddy sat up very late working on a case of Scotch and at such times she would hear him downstairs counting to himself. But whoever was there now was being very quiet. It was only when he jammed against the china-cabinet or joggled the dinner-gong that she could tell that anyone was there at all. It was evidently a stranger. Of course, it might be that the old folks had been right all along and that there really was a Santa Claus after all, but Editha dismissed this supposition at once. The old folks had never been right before and what chance was there of their starting in to be right now, at their age? None at all. It couldn’t be Santa, the jolly old soul!

  It must be a burglar then! Why, to be sure! Burglars always come around on Christmas Eve and little yellow-haired girls always get up and go down in their nighties and convert them. Of course! How silly of Editha not to have thought of it before!

  With a bound the child was out on the cold floor, and with another bound she was back in bed again. It was too cold to be fooling around without slippers on. Reaching down by the bedside, she pulled in her little fur foot-pieces which Cousin Mabel had left behind by mistake the last time she visited Editha, and drew them on her tiny feet. Then out she got and started on tip-toe for the stairway.

  She did hope that he would be a good-looking burglar and easily converted, because it was pretty gosh-darned cold, even with slippers on, and she wished to save time.

  As she reached the head of the stairs, she could look down into the living-room where the shadow of the tree stood out black against the gray light outside. In the doorway leading into the dining room stood a man’s figure, silhouetted against the glare of an old-fashioned burglar’s lantern which was on the floor. He was rattling silverware. Very quietly, Editha descended the stairs until she stood quite close to him.

  “Hello, Mr. Man!” she said.

  The burglar looked up quickly and reached for his gun.

  “Who the hell do you think you are?” he asked.

  “I’se Editha,” replied the little girl in the sweetest voice she could summon, which wasn’t particularly sweet at that as Editha hadn’t a very pretty voice.

  “You’s Editha, is youse?” replied the burglar. “Well, come on down here. Grandpa wants to speak to you.”

  “Youse is not my Drandpa,” said the tot, getting her baby and tough talk slightly mixed. “Youse is a dreat, bid burglar.”

  “All right, kiddy,” replied the man. “Have it your own way. But come on down. I want ter show yer how yer kin make smoke come outer yer eyes. It’s a Christmas game.”

  “This guy is as good as converted already,” thought Editha to herself. “Right away he starts wanting to teach me games. Next he’ll be telling me I remind him of his little girl at home.”

  So with a light heart she came the rest of the way downstairs, and stood facing the burly stranger.

  “Sit down, Editha,” he said, and gave her a hearty push which sent her down heavily on the floor. “And stay there, or I’ll mash you one on that baby nose of yours.”

  This was not in the schedule as Editha had read it in the books, but it doubtless was this particular burglar’s way of having a little fun. He did have nice eyes, too.

  “Dat’s naughty to do,” she said, scoldingly.

  “Yeah?” said the burglar, and sent her spinning against the wall. “I guess you need attention, kid. You can’t be trusted.” Whereupon he slapped the little girl. Then he took a piece of rope out of his bag and tied her up good and tight, with a nice bright bandana handkerchief around her mouth, and trussed her up on the chandelier.

  “Now hang there,” he said, “and make believe you’re a Christmas present, and if you open yer yap, I’ll set fire to yer.”

  Then, filling his bag with the silverware and Daddy’s imitation sherry, Editha’s burglar tip-toed out by the door. As he left, he turned and smiled. “A Merry Christmas to all and to all a Good Night,” he whispered, and was gone.

  And when Mumsey and Daddy came down in the morning, there was Editha upon the chandelier, sore as a crab. So they took her down and spanked her for getting out of bed without permission.

  * * *

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  The Lost Language

  * * *

  At the meeting of the International Philologists’ Association in Lucerne last April (1923-1925), something in the nature of a bombshell was thrown by Professor Eric Nunsen of the University of Ulholm. Professor Nunsen, in a paper entitled, “Aryan Languages: The Funny Old Things,” declared that in between the Hamitic group of languages and the Ural-Altaic group there should by rights come another and hitherto uncharted group, to be known as the Semi-Huinty group. Professor Nunsen’s paper followed a number on the program called “Al Holtz and His Six Musical Skaters.”

  According to this eminent philologist, too much attention has been paid in the past to root words. By “root words” we mean those words which look like roots of some kind or other when you draw pictures of them. These words recur in similar form in all the languages which comprise a certain group. Thus, in the Aryan group, compare, for example, the English dish-towel, Gothic dersk-terl, German tish-dol, Latin dec-tola, French dis-toil, Armeni
an dash-taller, Sanskrit dit-toll and Dutch dosh~toller. In all of these words you will note the same absurdity.

  In the same manner it is easy to trace the similarity between languages of the same group by noting, as in the Semitic group, that the fundamental j in Arabic becomes w in Assyrian, and the capital G in Phoenician becomes a small g in Abyssinian. This makes it hard for Assyrian traveling salesmen, as they have no place to leave their grips.

  In his interesting work, “The Mutations of the Syllable Bib Between 2000 and 500 B.C,” Landoc Downs traces the use of the letter h down through Western Asia with the Caucasian migration into Central Europe, and there loses it. For perhaps two thousand years we have no record of the letter h being used by Nordics. This is perhaps not strange, as the Nordics at that time didn’t use much of anything. And then suddenly, in about 1200 B.C, the letter h shows up again in Northern Ohio, this time under the alias of m and clean-shaven. There is no question, however, but that it is the old Bantu h in disguise, and we are thus able to tell that the two peoples (the Swiss and that other one) are really of the same basic stock. Any one could tell that; so don’t be silly.

  Now, says Professor Nunsen, it is quite probable that this change in root words, effected by the passage of the Aryan-speaking peoples north of the Danube, Dnieper and Don (the “D” in Danube is silent, making the word pronounced “Anube”), so irritated the Hamitic group (which included ancient Egyptian, Coptic, Berber and Otto H. Kahn) that they began dropping the final g just out of spite. This, in the course of several centuries, resulted in the formation of a quite distinct group, the one which Professor Nunsen calls the “Semi-Huinty.” It is not entirely Huinty, for there still remain traces of the old Hamitic. Just semi-Huinty. Even semi is quite a lot.