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Ferdinand Magellan, Master Mariner by Seymour Gates Pond

Feb6

Ferdinand Magellan, the man who led the first expedition to circumnavigate the globe, was born on February 3, 1480. So, happy belated birthday to Captain Magellan!

I read this *Landmark history book in honor of Magellan’s birthday. It was a somewhat hagiographic volume on the life and work of this Portuguese explorer who took a fleet of Spanish ships and pushed, prodded, and bullied the sailors and officers under his command until they reached the Pacific Ocean, through what are now called the Straits of Magellan. In fact, what most people know about Magellan, that he was the first to sail around the world, is wrong. Magellan only made it to the south Pacific island of Mactan where he was killed in a battle to invade the island, subjugate it to the King of Spain, and convert the natives, by force, to Christianity.

Magellan, at least the way Mr. Pond presents him, was a very forceful and stubborn man. Pond uses adjectives such as “resolute”, “heroic”, “bold”, “brave”, and “perhaps overzealous” to describe Magellan and his actions. In his impatient and overbearing desire to see the islanders convert to Christianity and bow to the sovereign power of Spain, Magellan rushed in to land on the island of Mactan, where the people were hostile to his overtures, and he invaded with only forty-nine armed sailors to support him. The islanders numbered in the thousands, again according to Pond, and Magellan was killed almost immediately. But one of his five ships made it back to Spain with nineteen survivors, out of two hundred sixty seven seamen who set set sail with Magellan three years before.

So, Magellan gets the credit as the first to circumnavigate the globe in 1519-1522. And more than four hundred years later Mr. Seymour Gates Pond writes a book about Magellan and his “heroic courage, the ideal to serve unselfishly a great cause for mankind.” I read recently that courage is the median virtue between cowardice and recklessness, and I would tend to think that Magellan, courageous to a fault, erred on the side of recklessness. Nevertheless, his story was a fascinating look at the perils of exploration in the sixteenth century and the values of a biographer in the mmid-twentieth century. In this time of deconstruction of all heroes, I’m not sure anyone could write such an adulatory biography of Ferdinand Magellan, but I’m glad it exists. The biography is certainly informative and well-written, and as a history read-aloud it could certainly provoke an interesting discussion on leadership and courage and the value of wisdom to temper reckless bravery.

*The Landmark series of history books, published by Random House in the 1950’s and 1960’s, were a series of history books written by such famous and talented authors as John Gunther (best-selling author and journalist), Mackinlay Kantor (Pulitzer Prize winner), Sterling North (Newbery honor), Armstrong Sperry (Newbery Award winner), Robert Penn Warren (Pulitzer Prize winner), Pearl S. Buck (Nobel Prize for Literature), Jim Kjelgaard, Quentin Reynolds (World War II reporter), Van Wyck Mason (historian and best-selling novelist) and C.S. Forrester. There were 122 titles in all. For any upper elementary or middle school age student trying to get a handle on World or American history, these books are the gold standard.

To learn more about the Landmark series of biographies and history books for young people, check out this podcast episode, Parts 1 and 2, of Plumfield Moms, What Are Landmark Books? Why Do They Matter?

The Little Giant: Stephen A. Douglas by Jeanette Covert Nolan

Jan25

Stephen Douglas is known now mostly for the debates he had with another famous fellow, Abraham Lincoln. I took a break from my reading of Doris Kearn Goodwin’s massive tome, Team of Rivals, to read a few other books, including this much more brief biography of Stephen Douglas, who was Abraham Lincoln’s rival indeed, but not a member of what Goodwin calls Lincoln’s “team of rivals”.

Douglas was unlike Lincoln in many ways: middle class background, a compromiser, supporter of popular sovereignty, indifferent to the evils of slavery, a judge and a lawyer, and a promoter of the growth and expansion of the United States at all costs. Douglas was short and stocky and sensitive about his height. Lincoln came from poverty and from a frontier background. He was tall and lanky and athletic. He believed that the Union could not grow or even endure half-slave and half-free. He wanted slavery to be contained until it eventually died of its own accord. Lincoln was a country lawyer, never became a judge, but he did become president—over a broken and un-United States.

In other ways the men were much alike. Both made their reputation on the law circuit in Illinois, traveling from place to place, representing their frontier clients in land disputes and other frontier matters, sometimes sleeping two to a bed in crowded inns before moving on to the next court session in the next town. Both believed in the Union, and both claimed to oppose slavery. And both men were known for their public speaking skills which they used to become politicians, U.S. representatives, and eventually presidential candidates.

The book is more about Douglas than Lincoln, but the comparisons are inevitable and run throughout the book. In fact, this same book was originally published in 1942 as The Little Giant: The Story of Stephen A. Douglas and Abraham Lincoln, but retitled and republished in 1964 with this title, Lincoln’s name left off. The two books are the same as far as I can tell.

There is an appendix in the back of the book with excerpts from the Lincoln-Douglas debates, a fascinating primary source document. Just as the abortion debate in our time is actually more nuanced than just pro-abortion versus anti-abortion and yet it comes down to that in the end, the debate in the 1850’s was more complicated than just anti-slavery versus pro-slavery. This look at the man, Stephen Douglas, and the debates which defined his times is a good discussion starter, and a way to look at our times and the debates and issues that will be remembered from our politics and culture. Stephen Douglas was personally opposed to slavery, but he did not want to impose his views on others. And now he is remembered as the pro-slavery candidate.

Old Friends by Tracy Kidder

Sep11

I like Tracy Kidder’s books. His Soul of a New Machine is a classic nonfiction introduction to the culture of the high-tech computer industry. Among Schoolchildren gives an in-depth look at the community of a fifth grade classroom. House shows the joys and challenges of building one’s own home. And in Kidder’s Strength in What Remains the protagonist of the book, also nonfiction, is a young man from war-torn Burundi who finds friends and sustenance in the United States. Mountains Beyond Mountains is about American philanthropist and doctor, Paul Farmer, who works through the medical and international aid communities to help tuberculosis patients in poverty-stricken places.

I guess one thing that draws me to Kidder’s books is their emphasis on community, on looking deeply into a community of people who are pursuing a goal or forming a group to mutually support one another in life. Old Friends is about the forced community of a nursing home. Lou Freed, a 90-something Jewish man, and Joe Torchio, a 70-something stroke victim, are assigned to each other as roommates. Lou, nearly blind but otherwise healthy, has recently lost his beloved wife. Joe has re-taught himself to walk and talk, but he still warns others that he is only working with half a brain. The two men live in a New Jersey nursing home, Linda Manor, where they interact with other residents, staff, and visitors in a “home” that will most likely be their final place, their last experience of community.

It’s a gentle story, somewhat tragic, but ultimately hopeful. The residents of Linda Manor are a mixed bag. Some are cognizant of their surroundings, intelligent and aware, and others are overcome by dementia or Alzheimer’s or some combination. Joe calls the former, the mentally alert residents, those who got-all-their-buttons. Some Linda Manor residents spend their days in bed or watching television; other roam the halls. One picks imaginary flowers from the carpet as she walks through the home. Joe and Lous participate in exercise classes, bingo games, and other planned, and sometimes unplanned, activities. They deal with visitors and phone calls and health alarms and staff cuts. They talk about how to maintain or improve their health and how to relate to or help the other residents and the staff at Linda Manor. They make jokes, act in a play directed by one of the residents, Eleanor, and monitor each other’s mental state and physical ailments.

The ending for this book was always going to be a problem because we all know how it ends. These men are not going to recover their health, go home, and start over. As it is written, the book covers a year of life at Linda Manor, and the two old friends are still old and still friends at the end of the year. Of course, I wanted to know what exactly happened to Lou and Joe and when, but a part of me is content to leave it there. I guess I know generally what happened since it’s been over twenty-five years since the events in the book took place. And that’s enough. From the introduction to the book:

There is an ancient proverb:
Don’t judge a life good or bad before it ends.
~Sophocles, Women of Trachis

Other books about growing old or about nursing home residents:
The Song of Sadie Sparrow by Kitty Foth-Regner. Sadie Sparrow is an eighty-six year old widow who has come to live at The Hickories because her daughter is too busy to care for her at home. Meg Vogel is freelance writer who has been hired to write the residents’ biographies, to take down their stories. Their friendship seems unlikely, but as they get to know each other and the other residents and visitors, their questions and the answers they find lead them to consider eternal truth and ultimate answers.
A Song I Knew By Heart by Bret Lott. This novel is based on the book of Ruth, and the characters even share (or come close to) the Biblical names: Naomi, Ruth, Mahlon, Eli, and Beau. However, this book is the story of an elderly Southern woman who has been living in the Northeast. After the deaths of both her husband and her only son, Naomi decides to return to her childhood home in South Carolina.
Winter Birds by Jamie Langston Turner.
A Severed Wasp by Madeleine L’Engle. Katherine Forrester Vigneras is an elderly, and quite famous, pianist, musician, and grande dame. She moves to lives in New York City and finds community in the people who live near and in relation to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.
Summer of the Great-Grandmother by Madeleine L’Engle. Nonfiction. Reflections on family life, death, and dying in a Connecticut farmhouse.
Being Mortal: Illness, Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande. A doctor writes about his own experiences with aging parents and the issues surrounding terminal illness, hospice, nursing home care, and death and dying.

This Dear-Bought Land by Jean Latham

Aug23

“This dear bought land with so much blood and cost, hath only made some few rich, and all the rest losers.” ~John Smith, Virginia Colony, 1624

In 1607 fifteen year old Davy Warren joins the sailors “before the mast” as the expedition sails to found a colony in Virginia. As Davy’s father says, Davy’s participation in the expedition is inevitable since “every ship that ever sailed for the glory of England has carried a Warren.”

However, when young David meets the bold and bellowing Captain John Smith, and when Davy finds out what a sailor’s life is really like, he has a choice: grow up and face danger and hardship like a man or give up and go home. In fact, the choice presents itself over and over again as the founding of Jamestown becomes an exercise in survival punctuated by Indian attacks, starvation, disease, and violence and thievery among the settlers themselves. David goes back and forth from hero-worship to hatred for the man who manages, by hook or by crook, to hold the colony together, Captain John Smith.

John Smith was an enigmatic character: was he a born leader or a blustering liar? Or both? Many of the stories that he wrote down about his own life seem a little too big and heroic to be true, but some of those seemingly inflated stories turn out to have been very little, if at all, embellished. As a young man, John Smith was a mercenary, captured by the Ottoman Turks, sold into slavery, and somehow escaped. He became a leader among the Jamestown settlers who trusted him enough to elect him “president” of the colony in 1608. Smith did require all of the settlers, even the gentlemen, to work, saying “He that will not work, shall not eat.”

This work of historical fiction by Newbery award winning author Jean Latham takes a charitable and admiring view of Captain John Smith and a mostly disparaging view of the other leaders of the Jamestown colony. Davy learns to be a man who can be depended upon. And the Jamestown colony itself survives in spite of sword, sickness, and famine. It’s a heroic, violent, tragic, and inspiring story, and this fictionalized version of true events is well worth reading for adults and for children ages ten and up.

“We called it a free land, didn’t we? It was not free. It was dear-bought. But we have paid the price.” ~Captain John Smith, This Dear-Bought Land.

Oh, by the way, this book is selling for $40.00 or $50.00, used, on Amazon and other used book selling sites. I am told that BJU Press is currently working to obtain the rights to reprint the book, so the price may go down. In the meantime, it is well worth the time and effort to at least borrow the book from your local library, if they have a copy, or via interlibrary loan. You can also borrow a digital copy at Internet Archive.

Walking to Listen by Andrew Forsthoefel

Aug10

Walking to Listen: 4000 Miles Across America, One Story at a Time by Andrew Forsthoefel.

I’m a sucker for books like this one: reading projects, walking projects, Humans of New York, year-long projects. In fact, I once wrote a post about projects and “project books” that I have read and would like to read. It seems to me as if a BIG PROJECT like Mr. Forsthoefel’s must bring with it wisdom and clarity in some way.

And I guess Andrew Forsthoefel felt the same way. After graduating from Middlebury College, he didn’t know what to do with the rest of his life. So he sought counsel by walking across the country, carrying a sign that said “Walking to Listen.”

“Life is fast, and I’ve found it’s easy to confuse the miraculous for the mundane, so I’m slowing down, way down, in order to give my full presence to the extraordinary that infuses each moment and resides in every one of us.”

Mr. Forsthoefel’s literary gurus were Walt Whitman and Rainer Maria Rilke, not the ones I would have chosen, but not all bad either. His counselors along the way across the country include a cattle farmer, a family of Navaho women, artists, and lots of just regular people. He thinks a lot about death and life, mostly death, and he never does come to any kind of unifying theory of life that ties his journey together. I guess I wanted some kind of epiphany or conversion or eureka! moment, and that never happened.

My favorite walk-across-america books are Peter Jenkins’ A Walk Across America and The Walk West. I’ve never read William Least Heat-Moon’s best-selling Blue Highways, partly because I thought the New Age-y-ness of it would annoy me. The meandering existentialism of Walking to Listen was sometimes a little too much for me, too, but I would recommend this book for anyone who enjoys the project story genre. It’s as much about pushing through, endurance, and completing the project as it is about the people he meets along the way, which is to say it’s a lot more about the author than it is about the people he supposedly listens to. A Walk Across America is a much better story.

The Man Without a Country by Edward Everett Hale

Jul4

Despite the trite and oft-repeated slogan of “Make America Great Again” and the hoopla that attends our national political life every four years or so, it seems to me that there is a distinct lack of true patriotism (as opposed to jingoism) among a great Americans today. In fact, I find that many people in my generation and especially in my children’s generation are disdainful of and cynical about the United States of America. Love of one’s native country is something to be ashamed of, something to suppress if it is present in oneself, and something to criticize if it is found in others.

I wonder how many people have ever read Edward Everett Hale’s short story, The Man Without a Country. The version I re-read recently, a “first book edition” with illustrations by Leonard Fisher, is a reminder to those who are open to its message that love of country does not have to manifest as rabid nationalism, but rather, rightly ordered, a a deep but subordinate love of home, community, and family.

In the story Philip Nolan, a callow young army officer, is seduced into traitorous activities by none other than Alexander Hamilton’s famous nemesis, Aaron Burr. Burr comes to an Army post out west where young Philip is stationed and dazzles Nolan with his fascinating talk of a western Empire. Hale calls Burr a “gay deceiver” and his plans “the grand catastrophe.” Philip Nolan is caught up in the aftermath of that catastrophe and tried for treason. When asked at the end of his trial whether he wishes to say anything to show his loyalty to the United States, Philip Nolan makes the rash and fateful statement: “D–n the United States! I wish I may never hear of the United States again!”

The premise of the entire story is that the judge then sentences Philip Nolan to have his wish fulfilled. Nolan is made a prisoner to travel the world on U.S. Navy vessels, in comfort, but never to see or hear of the United States again. He becomes “The Man Without a Country.”

Of course, Nolan comes to regret his rash and thoughtless disavowal of his native land. And over the many years that Nolan spends on one ship after another, forgotten by his own country, but held in a sort of ongoing limbo, his caretakers come to pity Philip Nolan. He is treated kindly, lives a comfortable life, but the sentence of never having a home, never even hearing news of his former country, is a cruel and unusual punishment.

Surely our love of country is an intimation of the joy prepared for us in heaven someday. And as such, that love is to be cherished while never made into an idol. Philip Nolan on his deathbed tells a friend that he has a prayer marked in the Presbyterian prayer book, a prayer that he has prayed every day for the fifty-five years that he served his country-less sentence:

“For ourselves and our country, O gracious God, we thank Thee, that notwithstanding our manifest transgressions of Thy holy laws, Thous hast continued to us Thy marvelous kindness. . . Most heartily we beseech Thee with Thy favor to behold and bless Thy servant, the President of the United States, and all others in authority.”

And may God give us all a proper and appropriate love for our nation and for our community, and may we remember to pray a similar prayer to that of the fictional Man Without a Country, on this Independence Day and every day.

Christopher Smart, b. April 11, 1722, d.1771

Apr11

April is National Poetry Month.

Christopher Smart, a 16th century poet and writer of popular songs, was said to be mentally disturbed, confined for some period of time to a mental institution, but nevertheless a talented poet and perhaps just the unfortunate victim of enemies who wanted him out of the way. He wrote a famous free verse poem called Jubilate Agno, part of which is about his cat, Jeoffry, and how said cat worshipped the Lord. The book pictured below is one I have in my library, and it contains the part of Jubilate Agno that is about Jeoffry the cat. Smart also wrote a poem called A Song to David about David and the Psalms and how God speaks through the psalms of David.

Excerpt from Smart’s poem, A Song to David

Glorious the sun in mid career;
Glorious th’ assembled fires appear;
Glorious the comet’s train:
Glorious the trumpet and alarm;
Glorious th’ almighty stretch’d-out arm;
Glorious th’ enraptur’d main:

Glorious the northern lights a-stream;
Glorious the song, when God’s the theme;
Glorious the thunder’s roar:
Glorious hosanna from the den;
Glorious the catholic amen;
Glorious the martyr’s gore:

Glorious—-more glorious is the crown
Of Him that brought salvation down
By meekness, call’d thy Son;
Thou that stupendous truth believ’d,
And now the matchless deed’s achiev’d,
Determin’d, dar’d, and done.

Samuel Johnson on Christopher Smart, from The Life of Johnson:

“Madness frequently discovers itself merely by unnecessary deviation from the usual modes of the world. My poor friend Smart showed the disturbance of his mind, by falling upon his knees, and saying his prayers in the street, or in any other unusual place. Now although, rationally speaking, it is greater madness not to pray at all, than to pray as Smart did, I am afraid there are so many who do not pray, that their understanding is not called in question.”

Concerning this unfortunate poet, Christopher Smart, Johnson had, at another time, the following conversation with Dr. Burney:

BURNEY. “How does poor Smart do, Sir; is he likely to recover?”
JOHNSON. “It seems as if his mind had ceased to struggle with the disease; for he grows fat upon it.”
BURNEY. “Perhaps, Sir, that may be from want of exercise.”
JOHNSON. “No, Sir; he has partly as much exercise as he used to have, for he digs in the garden. Indeed, before his confinement, he used for exercise to walk to the alehouse; but he was carried back again. I did not think he ought to be shut up. His infirmities were not noxious to society. He insisted on people praying with him; and I’d as lief pray with Kit Smart as any one else. Another charge was, that he did not love clean linen; and I have no passion for it.”

I’d as lief pray with Kit Smart as any one else. Indeed.

Julius Caesar by John Gunther

Apr10

Since most of what I know about Julius Caesar comes from Shakespeare (and a little GB Shaw, which I assume is mostly fiction), I learned a lot about the life and times of Mr. Caesar from reading this Landmark history book for middle grade children. Yes, his surname really was Caesar; it became a term for a ruler or king after Julius and Augustus made it famous.

Julius Caesar was a successful and intrepid general and an excellent and shrewd politician; that’s how he rose to the place where he was a threat to the Roman republic and ripe for assassination. I didn’t really realize that he won so many important battles or subjugated so much territory. I also didn’t know about, and still don’t understand, the intricate and corrupt state of Roman politics in the time of Julius Caesar. Caesar had to weave his way through some labyrinthine politics that would challenge a modern American political consultant or campaign manager. And I thought our political system was bad. If Washington, D.C. is a swamp, Rome was a swamp in which people actually died over their failure to back the right candidate for tribune or consul. And that’s before Julius Caesar died for being so ambitious. (Apparently, Sulla was a bad dude.)

I learned or had confirmed a few more things about Julius Caesar:

~ He liked the Jews and gave them special privileges to practice their religion in Rome.
~ According to Gunther, it was on Caesar’s watch that the library of Alexandria burned down. (Although Wikipedia says no one knows exactly when it burned and that there may have been several separate fires over the space of hundreds of years.)
~ Caesar did have a fling with Cleopatra, and she did get delivered to his headquarters in a pile of rugs. (GBS was right about that.) Egyptian politics were just as complicated, devious, and deadly as Roman politics.
~ The Rubicon is (was?) a shallow, insignificant river, but crossing the Rubicon, the boundary of his authority to lead an army, was a momentous decision for Caesar, the beginning of the end for Julius Caesar and for the Roman Republic.
~ Julius Caesar used the phrase “Veni, vidi, vici” in a letter to the Roman Senate after he had achieved a quick victory in his short war against Pharnaces II of Pontus at the Battle of Zela.

Gunther leans heavily on Shakespeare in the concluding chapters of the book, but I think both Gunther and Shakepeare were leaning heavily on Plutarch and Suetonius for the facts on Julius Caesar’s life, his death and the aftermath of his assassination. According to Gunther, “Friends, Romans, countrymen” was an actual speech that Mark Antony gave at Caesar’s funeral, and it was indeed a real barnburner. Portia really did commit suicide by swallowing burning coals (ouch!), and Brutus truly was a noble but indecisive character. According to Gunther, everything went pretty much the way Shakepeare wrote it many years later. (Except for Caesar’s ghost, which probably didn’t appear; I’m not much of a believer in ghosts, and Gunther doesn’t mention any spooks.)

This book would be an excellent prequel to watching Shakepeare’s Julius Caesar. The movie version with Marlon Brando as Mark Antony is an excellent film, even if it is in black and white.

To learn more about the Landmark series of biographies and history books for young people, check out this podcast episode, Parts 1 and 2, of Plumfield Moms, What Are Landmark Books? Why Do They Matter?

The Exploits of Xenophon by Geoffrey Household

Mar1

So I finished this Landmark history book last night, and I really found it absorbing. Apparently, it’s a famous story that comes from the Anabasis by Xenophon, but my ancient Greek history is a little rusty. I’ve heard of Xenophon, but I didn’t know anything about this little incident. It’s really all about this orphaned Greek army marching all over Asia Minor and trying to survive and get back home. They encounter multiple enemies, raging rivers, treachery, harsh winter weather, and more treachery and finally the army does make it back to Greece, or at least near-Greece, maybe Thrace/Bulgaria, just across the Dardanelles from Constantinople?

I needed a better map in my head to follow all of the wanderings of the Greek army called the “Ten Thousand” because supposedly there were that many Greek soldiers in this super-duper Greek fighting force of mercenaries who were tricked into fighting for the younger brother, Cyrus, of the Persian emperor, Ataxerxes, in Cyrus’s attempt to take over his brother’s throne. The Greeks won the battle for Cyrus, but while they were enjoying a little plundering, Artaxerxes managed to kill Cyrus. So they became an army without a mission, trapped deep in enemy territory, with no way to get home safely. Artaxerxes just wanted to get rid of them, and so he allowed them to march north through Kurdistan and Armenia and then west to the Black Sea. Not that the Persians didn’t harass the Ten Thousand as much as possible, and then the Kurds were another problem, and the rivers and snows and mountains, and then more Persians and other “wild tribes.”

Xenophon apparently wrote the Anabasis, the story of the March of the Ten Thousand, in the third person, writing about how “Xenophon did this” and “Xenophon decided that”. He probably wrote his masterpiece that way to “distance himself as a subject, from himself as a writer,” according to Wikipedia. Mr. Household chose to put the whole story into first person and write it from Xenophon’s point of view, a perspective that is already in the original, just disguised a bit. I’m not sure why Household switches the narrative to first person, but it does make the story more immediate and modern-sounding. We’re rather fond of first person memoir in our day and time.

Household also says in the preface to the book that he modernizes some of Xenophon’s style and cut the story for this juvenile edition to quarter of its original length. However, all of the content is pure Xenophon. I think it would be fascinating to follow the Ten Thousand on their journey on a map of ancient Mesopotamia, Turkey, and Greece, and read this slimmed down version of the Anabasis aloud as a family—especially if you have a family of adventurers.

A few random facts, courtesy of Wikipedia:

“Traditionally Anabasis is one of the first unabridged texts studied by students of classical Greek, because of its clear and unadorned style.”

“The cry of Xenophon’s soldiers when they meet the sea is mentioned by the narrator of Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), when their expedition discovers an underground ocean. The famous cry also provides the title of Iris Murdoch’s Booker Prize-winning novel, The Sea, the Sea (1978).”

Author Geoffrey Household served in British Intelligence during World War II in Romania, Greece and the Middle East. He was best known for his suspense novels, especially one called Rogue Male. Between the World Wars, he worked in the banking business in Romania, moved to Spain to sell bananas for United Fruit Company, and came to New York and wrote radio plays for children for CBS.

I really wish I knew more about how Bennett Cerf found and assigned different authors to write the books in the Landmark history series. Cerf on hiring authors: “I decided not to get authors of children’s books, but the most important authors in the country.” How did Mr. Household come to Cerf’s and Random House’s attention, I wonder?

Oh, by the way, Exploits of Xenophon is one of the more rare titles in the Landmark history series. It’s listed at anywhere from $30.00 to $80.00, used, at Amazon.

To learn more about the Landmark series of biographies and history books for young people, check out this podcast episode, Parts 1 and 2, of Plumfield Moms, What Are Landmark Books? Why Do They Matter?

The World’s Greatest Showman by J. Bryan III

Jan4

The World’s Greatest Showman: The Life of P.T. Barnum by J. Bryan III.

I’m going with some of the urchins to see The Greatest Showman, the new movie musical starring Hugh Jackman as Phineas Taylor Barnum, the great huckster, advertiser, showman, lecturer, and promoter of nineteenth century America. So I had to pull out the Landmark history book about the life and times of Mr. Barnum so that I could check the movie against reality. I’m told that there’s not much reality in the movie.

If so, that’s probably a tribute to the real P.T. Barnum, who included about as much truth and reality in his shows and his advertisements and media campaigns as the average Hollywood movie mogul does in his, not very much. Everything in Barnum’s shows, first his New York museum, and then his circus, was colossal, unique, amazing, stupendous, prodigious, and/or fantastic—because Barnum said so. He was a liar and a humbug (one of his favorite descriptors), but the public knew it and ate it up. He made a fortune first for himself, but also for Charles Stratton, aka General Tom Thumb, for The Swedish Nightingale singer Jenny Lind, and for numerous other performers and partners who worked with and for him.

He also lost more than one personal fortune. Five different fires destroyed his various businesses and homes at different times, and he never did learn to adequately insure his holdings against disaster. Each time, according to the book, he was under-insured and had to start all over again building up his museum or circus or house to come back from the brink.

The World’s Greatest Showman portrays Barnum as a joker and a salesman, certainly not averse to exaggeration or downright lies as long as he could put on a good show and rope in a big audience. His views and actions in regard to racial issues and and slavery and justice were mixed, as befits the time in which he lived (1810-1891). But he was all-in-all a likable character, generous and a sharp businessman at the same time, a teetotaler and a “religious man”, according to Wikipedia, a dedicated member of the Universalist Church.

******************************

I’ve been to see the movie, and it was a great show, but not at all true to the life of P.T. Barnum. The movie took many liberties with the timeline and events of Barnum’s life, but that’s to be expected. Barnum would probably not have minded a bit or a even a lot of “humbug” in the interest of a good show. However, two elements of the movie plot would emphatically not have been to Mr. Barnum’s taste.

As I said, Barnum was quite dedicated to the temperance movement, didn’t drink alcohol at all, and encouraged others to abstain from alcoholic beverages, too. In the movie, he not only drinks, he’s rarely seen without a drink in his hand or sharing champagne or whiskey with friends, associates, and strangers. In fact, in the movie, alcohol almost becomes a symbol of the joie de vivre that Barnum tries to share with everyone he meets.

Also, Jenny Lind was Barnum’s friend and associate, and he did sponsor, finance, and arrange her American tour. But she would never have kissed him or tried to seduce him, on stage or off. Jenny Lind was, indeed, a devout Christian, and she gave most of her money, if not all of it, away to charities and churches. She and Barnum parted amicably before her contract with him had quite expired because she was tired of his commercialism and relentless promotions, even though she wanted to make as money as she could for her charitable endeavors.

Still, I recommend the movie and the Landmark book about his life. Each tells the story of a different man, one factual and the other fictional. I enjoyed both stories, and the music in the movie and Hugh Jackman’s performance as Barnum were worth the ticket price. (The movie reviewer at EW didn’t cut the movie any slack at all, and that wasn’t the only bad review I found in a cursory search. So you may want to ask yourself how much you can abide in the name of humbug from a fictionalized musical bio-pic.)

Quoting P.T. Barnum:

“Men, women, and children who cannot live on gravity alone need something to satisfy their gayer, lighter moods and hours, and he who ministers to this want is, in my opinion, in a business established by the Creator of our nature. If he worthily fulfills his mission and amuses without corrupting, he need never feel that he has lived in vain.”

“There’s no such thing as bad publicity. I don’t care what the newspapers say about me as long as they spell my name right.”

“Nothing draws a crowd quite like a crowd.”

“More persons, on the whole, are humbugged by believing in nothing, than by believing too much.”

“I am a showman by profession… and all the gilding shall make nothing else of me.”

“The bigger the humbug, the better people will like it.”

To learn more about the Landmark series of biographies and history books for young people, check out this podcast episode, Parts 1 and 2, of Plumfield Moms, What Are Landmark Books? Why Do They Matter?