My writing assistants advise me that winter is coming. It’s chicken soup time, they say, pumpkin time, cozy all the time– except when it’s time for the walk!
This finds us still working on the next Marfa Mondays podcast. I’m almost finished transcribing a fascinating 4 hour interview recorded in the Cactus Capital of Texas, which I’ll be editing down to a listenable 45 minutes (or thereabouts). Stay tuned. Meanwhile, with the peculiarities of the past in mind, herewith, a book review from the archive:
Thomas M. Settles’ John Bankhead Magruder: A Military Reappraisal
Originally published on this blog and my Maximilian-Carlota Research Blog (sharing research on Mexico’s Second Empire / French Intervention), February 15, 2011
As the subtitle indicates, most of Thomas M. Settles’ splendid biography of John Bankhead Magruder (1807 – 1871) is dedicated to a detailed examination of his role in the U.S. Civil War, specifically, his audacious if nonetheless inevitably doomed defense of Richmond, and later, Galveston. Though this part of the narrative does not have direct bearing on Mexican history, it informs the portrait of an unusually flamboyant Confederate who, in defeat, looked south to a future in Maximilian’s Mexican Empire.
Based on three decades of archival research, this biography must have been a titanic task, for Magruder left no diary and many of his most important papers were lost in a San Francisco fire. Worse, he was much maligned during his lifetime, victim of both malicious gossip from his Confederate rivals and less than sympathetic Federals– just the sort of thing to send a biographer down blind alleys. In addition, there were misunderstandings, as when earlier historians, in recounting what appeared to be a less-than honorable leave-taking from Washington DC at the start of the Civil War, confounded Magruder with a relative.
General John Bankhead Magruder was, as Settles convincingly argues– backing every point with what sometimes seems a forest of footnotes– a Civil War general whose tactical ingenuity and tenacity are deserving of far greater respect than he has been accorded. Most of the book details his early military career, from West Point to a garrison duty and recruiting at various army posts from the Carolinas to Maine, until, with the invasion of Mexico in the late 1840s, his fortuntes took a radical turn. Along with many of the men who would later play major roles in the U.S. Civil War– Grant, Lee, and McClellan, among them– Magruder distinguished himself in several major battles against the Mexicans. (Magruder’s artillery was, in fact, the first to fire upon Chapultepec Castle.) Following the U.S.-Mexican War, Magruder served in California, where in Los Angeles, briefly, he ran a saloon.
He was on a visit to Europe when recalled to Washington DC in 1861, only a month before his native state of Virginia seceded. He had not wanted to leave the U.S. Army, but as “he could not fight against his own people,” he resigned, calling it “the most unhappy moment of my life.” He walked across the Potomac, offered his services to the Confederacy and, in short order, was reporting to Robert E. Lee.
Settle’s treatment of Magruder’s return to Mexico in 1865, in the final chapter, “Postwar Odyssey,” is a relatively brief one; nonetheless, it is an important contribution to understanding the nature and role of the ex-Confederates in Maximilian’s government.
At the end of the U.S. Civil War, General Magruder was one of several thousand ex-Confederates who pulled up stakes for Mexico. In 1865 the French Imperial Army, considered the greatest in the world, occupied most, if not all of Mexican territory, while the ex Archduke of Austria, Maximilian, a direct descendant of the King of Spain during the Conquest, reigned as Emperor. Though by the late summer and fall of 1865, when the ex-Confederates began arriving en masse, the French occupation was beginning to fray at the edges, Maximilian and his consort, Carlota, still presided over a court and elaborate palace balls and other festivities that were, to Americans at that time, considered the height of glamor. In the words of journalist William V. Wells, this was the “high noon” of the empire, when it was impossible for many to even imagine the catastrophe that would, in only a matter of months, befall the “cactus throne.”
Some ex-Confederates came to Mexico because they could not bear living in a defeated South, others, because they had expected to participate in a dynamic plantation economy under the French-backed Maximilian (who, to entice the ex-Confederate colonists, proclaimed slavery legal in Mexico). But others, such as General Magruder, simply felt pushed out. As Settles writes:
“It must have been extremely difficult for so proud a man as John Bankhead Magruder to have signed the articles surrendering the Trans-Mississippi Department. But when the Federals began arresting and imprisoning high Confederate officials, he resolutely refused to submit to such personal humiliation. He was not eligible for the amnesty proclaimed by President Lincoln on December 8, 1863, or that proclaimed by Andrew Johnson on May 29, 1865”
Although I had spent several years researching Mexico’s Second Empire under Maximilian for my novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, until recently, I was flummoxed as to the background of the author of the exceedingly rare English language memoir, Sketches of the Last Year of the Empire, Henry R. Magruder. It turns out he was the son of General John Bankhead Magruder and I now know, from Settles’ biography, that father and son did not arrive in Mexico via the same route. General Magruder came down overland from Houston with General Shelby, while his wife, son Henry, and unmarried daughter, Kate Elizabeth, arrived via Veracruz, for they had come from Florence, Italy, where they had been residing for some years.
As Settles explains:
“[B]ecause of the hardships of travel, uncomfortable living conditions, and extremes of climate found in the remote locales where magruder was stationed during his military career, [Mrs Magruder] found it more practical to live and raise her children in the comforts of Baltimore, where she could stay closer to family business interests. She remained there until 1850 when, as a consequence of [daughter] Isabella’s ill health, she took her children to Europe. Mrs Magruder had relatives in Germany, but she moved to Italy, living briefly in Rome, then in Florence.”
From Texas, not yet reunited with his family, Magruder headed straight down to Monterrey and then to Mexico City, arriving in the summer of 1865.
Writes Settles:
“Magruder checked into a room on the first floor of the fashionable Iturbide Hotel, and there he received several distinguished visitors, including Matthew Fontaine Maury and his old friend Marshal Francois-Achille Bazaine, now in command of the imperial forces in Mexico. He also met with the British minister to Mexico, Sir Peter Campbell Scarlett, whose nephew, Lord Abinger, had married Magruder’s niece, Helen Magruder, in Montreal several years earlier.”
It appeared Magruder felt as at home as an American could be in Mexico City. He bought himself a new wardrobe, “‘a cut-a-way suit of salt and pepper color, with a tall dove-colored hat and patent leather boots,’ and then went to the palace of Montezuma [the Imperial Palace], which Scott’s army had victoriously occupied eighteen years earlier.”
Soon after a successful interview with Maximilian and Carlota, Magruder, now a naturalized Mexican citizen, was appointed head of Maximilian’s Land Office of Colonization. The idea was to establish colonies along the main route inland from Veracruz to Mexico City, on land Juarez (under the Republic) had expropriated from the Church.
Settles covers the rapid collapse of the scheme along with Maximilian’s government, and Magruder’s return to the U.S. In 1867– surprisingly, for memories of the Civil War remained fresh— he attempted to set up a law office in New York City. His family had returned to Italy, but he remained in the U.S. to work the lecture circuit with a crowd-pleasing talk on Maximilian and Carlota. He was on that tour when, in a Houston hotel in 1871 he died of a stroke.
When asked if I publish guest blogs, in recent years my answer has invariably been, “not any more.” But why have your own blog if you can’t make an exception? (Or two!) And an exceptional exception this Monday’s post is. Dear writerly reader, it is a tremendous honor for me to share Timothy Heyman’s essay “Traven’s Triumph” with you, for it imparts watershed news about one of the most important writers of the twentieth century– one who happened to have been Mexican, and originally– the long-standing mystery solved– German, the illegitimate son of an immensely wealthy Jewish industrialist, and the half-brother of the Weimar government’s Minister of Foreign Affairs.
There are a multitude of theories about B. Traven’s true identity, however, consider this source: Timothy Heyman, together with his wife, B. Traven’s stepdaughter, Malú Montes de Oca de Heyman, administers B. Traven’s literary estate.
Most people today will have heard of B. Traven because of his novel The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, which was made into John Huston’s classic movie starring Humphrey Bogart. But Traven was the author of multiple best-selling novels, many still cult-classics and in-print in multiple languages. Find out more at the official B. Traven website, www.btraven.com.
TRAVEN’S TRIUMPH by Timothy Heyman
This essay was originally published in Spanish in Letras Libres
B. Traven
Of German origin and naturalized Mexican, B. Traven was one of the great writers of the twentieth century. He has been called the German “George Orwell” for his combination of the novelist’s art and moral, social and political engagement. He wrote fifteen novels and innumerable stories and has sold more than thirty million copies, so far five hundred editions in more than thirty languages. No less popular have been film and television adaptations of his work. Some are already classics such as The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) which won 3 Oscars, Macario (1960), which was the first Mexican film to be nominated for the best foreign film Oscar, and Das Totenschiff (1959), a cult classic in Germany. Other films such as La Rosa Blanca, Días de otoño and Canasta de cuentos mexicanos are considered outstanding examples of the first golden age of Mexican cinema in the 1950s-60s.
Traven used many pseudonyms, using the argument that “the creative person should have no other biography than his works.” The year 2019 includes two Traven anniversaries: on March 26, 2019, it was fifty years since his death and, on May 1, one hundred years since he escaped a death sentence in Munich for having participated in 1919 in the government of the Bavarian Council Republic (Bayerische Räterepublik). My wife Malú, Traven’s stepdaughter, and I are using the opportunity of this double anniversary to reveal his parentage, with the desire that current and future generations focus more on his books than his family. This revelation could also contribute to a deeper understanding of his sources of inspiration and a greater appreciation for his work.
The Son of Emil Rathenau
On December 13, 1990, Gabriel Figueroa, one of the most important Mexican cinematographers of the 20th century, revealed for the first time to Ange-Dominique Bouzet, a journalist of the French newspaper Libération, that the real name of Traven was Moritz Rathenau, the illegitimate son of Emil Rathenau.
This version was also recorded in Figueroa’s Memoirs, which were published in 2005, eight years after his death. After his interview with Libération, Figueroa tried first to call Rosa Elena (Chelena) Luján, widow of Traven and mother of my wife Malú, to inform her of his revelation, but he was unable to reach her. Later he met with Malú and me at a Christmas party in Mexico City, and he told us about his revelation to Liberation. In his Memoirs, Figueroa recalls a comment from me that my father’s stepfather (Robert Pohl) had worked for AEG, the German electricity company founded by Emil Rathenau. Gabriel also writes that the day after the party he visited Malú in our apartment. Malú remembers the visit well.
Despite its importance, the Traven-Rathenau connection has not been picked up by the many people who have analyzed his life and work, called “Travenologists.” Both Karl S. Guthke, Harvard professor and author of the best and most complete biography of Traven (B. Traven: The Life Behind the Legends) and the scholar Jasmina Jäckel de Aldana ventilated the possibility in the 1990s, but neither of them took it further.
This lack of interest can be explained in several ways. Travenologists have attributed various fathers to Traven, from Kaiser Wilhelm II to a North German brickmaker called Feige. A skeptic might believe that the connection with Rathenau was just another smokescreen from Traven, who used more than 10 pseudonyms, with several different identity documents. In relation to the whole parentage issue, it has not helped that one of the prominent people who thought that Traven was son of the Kaiser was Gerd Heidemann, famous for discovering the fake Hitler diaries.
Meanwhile, many non-Mexican Travenologists are unaware of the Mexican environment, or the relationship that Traven maintained with Figueroa and Esperanza López Mateos, Figueroa’s cousin, translator and literary agent of Traven between 1941 and 1951 and sister of Adolfo López Mateos, subsequently President of Mexico (1958-1964). Malú knew Figueroa very well, to the extent that she considered him a member of the family: she was still a child when in 1951 Esperanza died at the relatively young age of 44 years. Many Mexican Travenologists do not know Germany and prefer to focus on Traven’s life in Mexico.
After the death of Traven in 1969, Chelena confirmed that her Mexican husband was the same person as the writer, actor and journalist Ret Marut in Germany, because Traven had authorized it. For many Travenologists, that statement was sufficient. However, also following the instructions of Traven, Chelena took the ultimate secret, Marut / Traven’s parentage, with her to the grave (she died in 2009).
Malú and I do not know anyone who has taken the trouble to follow up Figueroa’s revelation in the nineties. In our investigation, we have reviewed the biographies, documents and personal effects that are part of the the “B. Traven Estate” in our Mexico City home. Our research includes publicly available information on the Rathenau family in books and articles and a visit to the New York headquarters of the Leo Baeck Institute, the center dedicated to the investigation of the history of German-speaking Jews.
Traven and Emil Rathenau
For various reasons, we are convinced that Figueroa’s version is correct. It is very unlikely that Figueroa, who did not speak German and did not know the country well, would have heard of Emil Rathenau and his importance in Germany, or of AEG––with the almost correct spelling of the company (Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft)––if it were not through Esperanza López Mateos, who revealed to him the information about Traven. Esperanza, in a letter to her family, referred to Traven as “Mauricio.” She was also illegitimate, and this was possibly the basis of her close friendship with Traven, as evidenced by their copious correspondence in our archive. Until he hired Chelena Luján as her translator in 1953 and married her in 1957, Traven ́s closest friends in Mexico were Esperanza López Mateos and Gabriel Figueroa.
The life of Emil Rathenau (1838-1915) provides other clues. His father’s name was Moses Rathenau, but he later changed it to Moritz, the German translation of the Hebrew Moshe. In honor of his father, Emil’s full name was Emil Moritz Rathenau. He called neither of his two legitimate sons Moritz after him: the first, born in 1867, was called Walther and the other, born in 1871, Erich. In 1883 he had a daughter, whom he named Edith. It is possible that, due to its obvious “Jewishness” Emil chose not to call any of his legitimate children “Moritz.”
Until 1878, Emil Rathenau, engineer and entrepreneur, had tried many businesses. But none really paid off until in 1881 he attended the International Electricity Exhibition in Paris and it occurred to him to acquire the rights to Edison’s patents. In 1883 he founded the Deutsche Edison Gesellschaft and four years later he converted it into AEG. In 1903, with the support of Kaiser Wilhelm II, Rathenau through AEG formed together with Siemens & Halske (owned by his rival Werner von Siemens) a wireless communication subsidiary, Telefunken Gesellschaft für drahtlose Telegraphie (Telefunken). He went on to become one of the richest and most successful entrepreneurs in Wilhelmine Germany.
The birth of Traven, possibly in 1882 (one of the birthdates produced by the author himself in at least two identity documents) would have coincided with the creation of the Deutsche Edison. Probably, Emil had gained even more confidence as an assimilated Jew and changed his mind when an illegitimate child (i.e., Traven) appeared. That’s why he chose to call him Moritz.
Walther Rathenau’s letters to his mother imply that, in 1883, a year after the birth of Traven, she was not happy in her relationship with Emil. Like many others of his social and economic status, Emil liked the theater, its surroundings and its women. Figueroa said that Traven’s mother was an Irish actress, Helen Mareck, which would explain his mastery of English at an early age, as well as his affinity for the theater.
Traven and Walther Rathenau
One of the reasons why Traven hid his parentage was that he knew it. He knew who his relatives were and lived with one or both for a period. Walther, Traven’s half-brother, studied physics, chemistry, and philosophy and became an engineer like his father. When Emil Rathenau died in 1915, Walther succeeded him as president of AEG. In World War I he was commissioned to set up a Department of Raw Materials for the German government, and after WWI in 1921 he became Minister of Reconstruction and in 1922 Minister of Foreign Affairs of Germany, the most important political post ever held by a German Jew. He was assassinated on June 24, 1922 by an anti-Semitic extreme rightist group.
The success of his half-brother could have motivated Traven, at a young age, but in activities very different from Walther’s, specifically in theater and anarchist activism. In Mexico, Traven called himself “engineer” Traven Torsvan, like his father and half-brother. In several of his books, the hero is an engineer. Traven’s first unpublished novel, written in 1914, which we have in our archives under the title of Die Fackel des Fürsten, was written (under the pseudonym Ret Marut), its hero was an engineer and it was about a major engineering project in Vietnam. His last novel, published in German in 1960, was entitled Aslan Norval, and its heroine champions a major engineering project in the US.
After starting his career as an actor and theater director, Traven (under the pseudonym Ret Marut) became interested in politics at the beginning of the twentieth century, at the same time as his half-brother. Walther was considered a renaissance man of his time, for his interest in philosophy and the arts, and his literary activities. He embraced capitalism, but tried to sweeten it, in a Bismarckian way, with the social safety net and philanthropy. Traven / Marut went in another direction, towards a version of Max Stirner’s idealistic anarchism, or a more extreme form of “universalism”, to summarize a paragraph of Isaac Deutscher in his essay “The Non-Jewish Jew” (1968):
“They were a priori exceptional in that as Jews they dwelt on the borderlines of various civilizations, religions, margins or in the nooks and crannies of their respective nations. Each of them was in society and yet not in it, of it and yet not of it. It was this that enabled them to rise in thought above their societies, above their nations, above their times and generations, and to strike out mentally into wide new horizons and far into the future.”
Walther Rathenau published stories under the pseudonym W. Hartenau. He also wrote about the situation of “non-Jewish Jews” in Germany and the issue of assimilation. He was a friend of Maximilian Harden, a non-Jewish Jew who changed his name from Felix Ernest Witkowski. Harden began his career as a member of an acting company and founded a magazine, Die Zukunft, for which Walther contributed some articles. An interesting model for Traven, who used a pseudonym, Ret Marut, was also an actor and founded in 1917 in Munich an anarchist magazine, Der Ziegelbrenner. In this publication, Traven describes in detail how, having participated in the Räterepublik of Bavaria, he escaped the death sentence on May 1, 1919. After that escape he continued to live underground, mainly in Germany, until 1923 and the following year he arrived in Mexico.
Traven appears for the first time in 1907, as an actor under the name of Ret Marut. There are several reasons why he chose a pseudonym. The main one is that he knew he was an illegitimate child, and had a dual identity, a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother: a book on the Räterepublik of 1919 published in Munich in 1968, which is part of our Traven archive, says that Ret Marut self-identified himself as “Aryan-Jew.” Jews were increasingly assimilated, but they were tired of being identified as such, especially as anti-Semitism persisted.
At that time, it was common for people in theater and politics to use alternative names: Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky were pseudonyms. Furthermore, actors and writers were accustomed to playing with their identity or creating different names, and there is no doubt that for an anarchist like Traven any system, with names, passports and identities, was anathema.
A final consideration is that, as an anarchist, Traven did not want it to be known that he was related to a rich family, as it would have undermined his credibility (although he did insinuate in Der Ziegelbrenner that he had private means). Similarly, Emil Rathenau probably preferred to keep the relationship secret, both for familial and political reasons.
Traven and Ret Marut
Ret Marut was the main pseudonym Traven used during his German period, and it is similar to another name he used, Richard Maurhut. It is not difficult to see both names as anagrams of Moritz Rathenau. Marut has several etymological ramifications. It means “storm” in Sanskrit. When Traven founded a publishing company in Mexico with Esperanza López Mateos in 1943, he had no hesitation in calling it Ediciones Tempestad (“storm” in Spanish). The storm was a reality in Traven’s life and a frequent metaphor in his books. He even uses it in an unpublished letter to Malú when she was a girl. Traum is an anagram of Marut, and easily becomes Traven in Indo-European philology.
The change of Ret Marut (Moritz Rathenau) to B. Traven has a curious symmetry. In the first half of his life his last name Marut came from his first name Moritz and in the second half he used it as an anagram of his original surname, “Rathenau” becoming “Traven,” u becoming v, and a and h removed. The presence in his name of the letter “B.” reflects the second part of his life, an explanation he gave personally to Malú: he tirelessly corrected fictitious first names assigned to him beginning with the letter B. (such as “Bruno”). When Traven produced a document that he was born in San Francisco in 1882, he invented a name for his American mother: Helene Ottarrent. The first name is practically the same as that of his mother, Helen, and Ottarrent is another anagram of Rathenau (with O instead of u, adding 2 ts, and 1r, and removing the h). Malú mentions that, at the time when she and her sister Rosa Elena were growing up with him, Traven frequently enjoyed playing word games with them.
The Traven estate contains a selection of the things that his friends sent him from Germany. There is a booklet about Harden, his half-brother’s friend, and a technical book about the telephone published in the United States in 1904, a year after Emil Rathenau formed Telefunken with Siemens. There is a piece of paper where Traven practices different orthographic permutations of the name Cahn, a Jewish surname (Cahn is an important name in the family tree of Mathilde Nachman, wife of Emil). In the middle of Der Ziegelbrenner, there is a curious box advertisement with a reference to “St. Moritz “(an ironic canonization of himself); it is the only ad that includes an address in the middle of the text, in any of the editions of the magazine.
Many of the people in Ret Marut’s circle were non-Jewish Jews, among them: Kurt Eisner, Gustav Landauer (grandfather of Mike Nichols), Erich Mühsam, all participants in the Bavarian Räterepublik. It is an interesting fact that Heinrich Heine and Karl Marx, two paradigms of non-Jewish Jews, were born in the lower Rhineland, a border area next to France, which fits Deutscher’s paradigm. Marut’s career as an actor, director and anarchist began to flourish in the Rhineland (Essen and Düsseldorf).
After Traven’s death, the first visit that Chelena made to Germany was to donate to the Ludwig Museum in Cologne the collection of the lithographs of Franz Wilhelm Seiwert (also from Cologne) that Traven had in Mexico City. Other emblematic non-Jewish Jews were strong fans of Traven, including Albert Einstein (who publicly stated that Traven was his favorite author) and Bruno Kreisky, chancellor of Austria from 1970 to 1983.
Mexico: at peace with Chelena
Traven’s life was marked by several traumas, which were the root of his desire to hide his parentage until his death, according to Chelena Luján. In chronological order: his illegitimacy, his Judaism, his sentence and escape in 1919 and the 1922 murder of Walther Rathenau. This reinforced his conviction that Germany would be condemned to fascism and determined his decision to leave Europe. Some historians call this crime the beginning of the Holocaust, and it is interesting that Genius, the recent television series about Einstein, begins with the assassination of Rathenau, who was a friend of the physicist.
The murder of Trotsky in Mexico in 1940 was also important. The idea that hit men of a totalitarian regime could reach Mexico must have reinforced his decision to maintain his anonymity and spend most of his time in Chiapas and Acapulco, far from the German expatriate community, infiltrated by Nazis, in Mexico City. The premature death of Esperanza López Mateos in 1951 also had a strong impact.
The stormy years place the last years of Traven’s life with Chelena Luján, Rosa Elena and Malú Montes de Oca Luján from 1957 to 1969 on the Calle Mississippi in stark contrast: the calm after the storm. He could focus on publicizing his work (the BTNews and Traven newsletters BT Mitteilungen ), including returning to Germany for the first time for the premiere in 1959 of the film version of Das Totenschiff . He could turn his works into films, getting involved in every detail, returning to the beginning of his career as an actor and director of the Rhineland. Through his life and work, he had resolved his ambivalences (illegitimacy-identity, Jewish-non-Jewish, German-Mexican, individual-family, politics-literature) and could die happy.
Ironically, after the extraordinary entrepreneurial success of his father Emil Rathenau and the political success of his half-brother Walther Rathenau, the longest living and most famous member of the family (through his extraordinary life and work) was Moritz Rathenau, B. Traven. Traven is also probably the only member of the Bavarian Räterepublik to have survived to old age. Both achievements were the result of his ability to convert anonymity into an art form. Traven’s triumph.
Timothy Heyman is co-manager of the B. Traven Estate with his wife Malú Montes de Oca Luján de Heyman, stepdaughter of B. Traven. He has degrees from Oxford (in Greek and Roman language, literature, philosophy and history, with a specialization in indo-european philology) and from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (in Management, with a specialization in finance and information technology). In 2013 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II appointed him Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire(CBE) for his contributions to philanthropic and financial relations between the United Kingdom and Mexico.
I miss my dad more than I can say. This week, had he not passed on to further adventures in 2010, he would have celebrated his 85th birthday. Recently my sister sent me the text of his presentation at a conference on POW history, which I had not seen before, and I am honored to post it here.
He was not a professional historian but a veteran (late 1950s in Korea) and a businessman. His retirement he dedicated to researching the POWs of the Japanese in World War II, which was made possible after many US government files were declassified, and by his ability to interview some of the survivors, then elderly (almost all have since passed on). He founded the Center for Research on Allied POWs Under the Japanese, which continues, its website, www.mansell.com, managed now by historian Wes Injerd. How my dad found the inspiration to do this work is something he talks about in his presentation, below.
His book, which he had finished just before his death, was edited by noted historian Linda Goetz Holmes and published in 2012 by Naval Institute Press as Captured: The Forgotten Men of Guam. His papers, which include correspondence, and a multitude of documents and photographs given to him by POWs, are archived at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Since his passing I have maintained his memorial website, www.rogermansell.com.
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Researching the History of the Mukden POW Camp
Roger Mansell Director, Center For Research, Allied POWS Under The Japanese
First, I want to make this very clear. I am NOT an expert of the Mukden POW Camp. Also, I am not an expert on the full story of ANY Japanese POW camp.
Many years ago, I was pursuing and advanced degree in civil engineering… in the days before computers and digital calculators. I shall never forget telling one of my college professors about a particular engineer I had met. I said, rather naively, the “he was a real expert on steel re-enforced dome structures!”
He looked over his glasses and said, “Experts are fools who THINK they have all the answers.”
Some 15 years later, having changed careers a number of times, I had started a printing brokerage and a few other related companies. In one of these companies, I hired a young man, Ken Grimes, as my office manager who, it turned out, had been interned in Santo Tomas in Manila.
Often, we would talk about history. Eventually, he related his own horrific experiences of seeing his father beaten into unconsciousness, he mother frequently slapped and his own endless sense of hunger. It was Ken who said, “Someday Roger, when you retire, you should research what happened to all of us and write a book about it. Tell the whole story, not some officer’s point of view.”
That had to be in September of 1987. I note that my oldest POW files (in DOS) stem from that date. Since then, I have easily spent many thousands dollars and more than 10,000 hours researching and documenting the Allied POWS of the Japanese.
I realized rather rapidly that a number of the books, considered valuable, were actually full of glaring errors, gross exaggerations, and extraordinarily myopic. When I began one could count, on their one hand, the books that gave an overall picture of the POW experiences. Oddly, the best overall book was Joan and Clay Blair’s, Return From the River Kwai [Simon and Schuster, New York, 1979]. It is an outstanding narrative of the Australians return from the Death Railway and the tragedy of the December Hell Ships. A few others stand out, e.g., The Pacific War 1931-1945, by Ienaga, Saburō [Pantheon Books, New York, 1978 (Original- Taiheiyō Sensō-1968)].
However, the early 1990’s was a dynamic period in the development of book publishing programs augmented by the rapid development of low cost, computer driven printing processes. Adobe Corporations’ introduction of scalable type (Postscript) and the introduction of the first PC publishing software (PageMaker) revolutionized the book industry.
A number of individual memoirs and unit histories began to appear in the market. POW experiences in many areas of the Pacific were finally being written and published. My own library began to grow. By 1994, POW histories became an important part of current literature with the introduction of Gavin Daws’ Prisoners Of The Japanese [New York, William Morrow, 1994]. The Australian writer’s book became a best seller in the realm of history books. In my view, it is probably the best overall book written so far on treatment of POWS under the Japanese in World War II. It tended to center heavily on a few main characters but Daws did give a stunning and horrendous overview of maltreatment of the POWS.
For those in United States, Hampton Sides’ Ghost Soldiers [Doubleday Publishing, New York, NY, U.S.A., 2001] reinvigorated the interest of historians to learn more about the Americans captured by the Japanese. Few Americans today can comprehend the scale of the disaster in the Philippines. For the first time in America’s history, we lost an entire Army. The story of the rescue of Allied POWS at the Cabanatuan POW camp, 25 miles behind the Japanese battle lines, was one of the great stories of the war. A brilliant writer, Sides covered the entire war experience of the prisoners, from the Bataan Death March, the hell ships, the massacres and the amazing rescue by the US Rangers. It became a wildly successful best seller, multiple paperback editions, and inspired the movie, The Great Rescue, badly done in the usual Hollywood fashion.
For those of you in academia, you certainly know the dangers of historical research. Many years must pass before the emotional and physical passions of the present disappear from the “Ivy Covered Walls.” In the United States, a young historian could not write a book that negatively portrays President Franklin Roosevelt or President Kennedy. To this day, it would still be an exercise in academic suicide and a sure path to the denial of tenure. Perhaps in another 10 to 20 years.
Not being part of academia I had the freedom to pursue my own interests. I quickly realized that I would never be able to write a book to record the history of the POWs. Perhaps in a six or seven volume set but that was, again, beyond my interest. However, I did decide to focus on an overlooked group of men captured on Guam. I could use the men of Guam as a microcosm to explain the whole.
The introduction of NETSCAPE in 1994 changed the world and the direction of my research. I decided that I would convert my company website into a site to document all that I had learned and what I hoped to learn. My father, as a young man, owned a newspaper in Brooklyn New York and I suppose I acquired a reporter’s gene. I wanted the world to know the facts: who, what, why, where and when.
I started the Center as a non-profit organization and solicited volunteers from the local schools where 20 hours of “volunteer” service are required each year. So far, I have funded every cent of the operation. With but rare exception, I freely make copies of everything we have for any researcher, former POW or descendent anywhere in the world. I pray this attitude will spread amongst those who research how the Japanese exploited the POWS.
Some local educators were (and still are) hostile to anything that they think glorifies war. Some have refused to even mention our work. Still, we regularly greet new volunteers. I assure you, getting more than an hour of effective work from the 20 required is a challenge in itself. Teenagers are easily distracted but at least I know we expose them to “real” history that they will never forget.
I started the site to tell just a simple story of the Guam captives. However, these men were eventually scattered all over Japan and I began to explore every camp.
In 2004 the National Archives in Washington finally permitted the use of personal digital cameras with tripod mountings and my researching ability changed dramatically. In my previous five visits to NARA, I averaged around 200 Xerox copies and 5 to 10 written pages of notes each week. It was a slow and tedious process… noting the contents and location of every document that I planned to copy so we could validly cite, tabbing each page I wanted to copy, securing a NARA permission tab, standing in line for a copier… waiting… and doing it all over again for each box.
Now, I could setup a tripod, point my camera to the table, get one permission tab for 16 boxes at one time, and never hesitate to copy an entire file if I thought it may give valid information. Yes, I often seem to photograph duplicates of the same page but when I get home, we try to strip this out. In five subsequent visits, we now have over 8000 pages of rosters, reports, affidavits and diaries. I don’t think twice… if it looks interesting, I shoot the page!
By cooperating with other researchers around the world, e.g., Michael Hurst who has done a magnificent job documenting the camps on Taiwan, Rod Beattie & Neil MacPherson of Australia who are documenting the Burma-Thailand Railways, we have created a VIRTUAL POW RESEARCH CENTER. We freely exchange data bases and work together to assure accuracy of the camp records.
Other than the roster, we have NOT begun to photograph the Mukden files. I do know that numerous affidavits, diaries and reports are at NARA that describe the experiences of Allied POWS here at the Mukden Prison. Probably a dozen or more books have been written by the survivors of Mukden.
Perhaps the most notable was Joseph A. Petak’s Never Plan Tomorrow.
We can be grateful to Corporal Petak, initially assigned to the 4th Chemical (Smoke Generators), for he created one of the most comprehensive stories about the men imprisoned at Mukden. As with any war history written by a participant, he writes glowingly of those who were his friends, ignores most of the others and relates the story from his point of view.
For the individual, war is “five yards.” He can only see and feel what is five yards in front, to the left, to the right, and to his rear. He can only hope that the enemy is not to his rear.
One is reminded of Sir Winston Churchill’s clear understanding of his historical importance when he stated he would be remembered well by history, “for I shall write the history.” As any reader of Churchill’s work can attest, he clearly placed himself in the middle of all decisions, cleverly evading the credit due to “Ultra,” the breaking of the German coding machine, “Enigma.”
Still, Churchill’s book has stood the test of time for it was sequentially accurate and offered insight into the conduct of the war. No student of the European War can begin to understand the full scope of the Allied efforts unless they read all five volumes.
So it is with Charles Petak. While his skill as a writer is not of literary merit, it is an excellent example of historic, non-fiction, literary narratives– a memoir using re-created conversations. The reader is projected into the milieu of prison life. We see and feel the daily struggle against hunger, the bitter cold of winter and the unrelenting brutality of the Japanese guards.
With over 150 hours of computer time, cross-checking each name against the National Archive list of American POWs, we have been able to correct every American name and all those who were deceased.
What Petak failed to include was a reasonably accurate time line of events. It is one of the most important details that must be known in order to investigate and document any camp or, if interested, the story of any individual man, hell-ship, unit or camp.
The second most important diary for this camp is that of Dr. (Captain) Mark Gardner Herbst. As a medical officer, the Japanese allowed him to have paper and pencils. In some camps, the possession of a pencil was a crime, punishable by a severe beating or even death. Many camp inmates knew that Herbst had carefully recorded the date, cause, and place of each known death. This diary, if found, would be a good time-line for numerous events.
Many researchers had heard of the diary but it could never be found in the National Archives. Despite many individual searches, the diary remained elusive. Finally, in May 2005, I stumbled across a diary labeled “Diary, Capt MARK G. HERREST”. Flipping the cover open, I realized immediately it was the Herbst Diary– not just his original diary but an additional written summary that included POW numbers, date and cause of death plus, most important, the exact location of all known graves.
Whoever prepared the diary for the archive mis-read his name and the error was simply a permanent part of the archive ascension order. No computer search or visual search of the finding aids would point you to the diary. In over 50 days of careful searching through over 500 carefully selected boxes, and skimming through at least twice that many more, I can say without reservation that ninety percent of research success is pure luck.
At the Imperial War Museum in London, we also found a diary (IWM File 96/41/1) of the British Major R. Peaty. Unfortunately Major Peaty clearly demonstrated the immense gulf between officers and, as the British term their enlisted men, the “other ranks” or OR’s. Still, he did, rather carefully, note the deaths of each man but rarely bothered with a name unless it was an officer he knew personally. He did make a reasonable time line, recording significant events, e.g., one yank died; 2 Yanks died; 1 Yank died, etc. But, he did record the arrival of the influx of men from the Oryoku sequence and the high ranking officers from Taiwan. Now we had a confirmation of Herbst’s dates of death. (I extracted notes for this for at the time, digital cameras were still not allowed at the IWM).
Last April, I found the Mukden rosters (in RG 407 Box 122, dated 1 November 1944) and we were at last able to determine the arrival dates, prior POW numbers and current POW numbers for the full camp… at least those that remained. The only surprise was that it now appears the Americans arrived in two groups. The larger group arriving on 11 November 1942 and a smaller group on 18 December 1942. We do hope to get one of our volunteers to add this important information to our data set. As the Japanese normally assigned one’s POW number based upon the day they arrived, we should be then able to sort and verify the EXACT composition of the arriving groups of men.
It is this type of information that will enable us to establish a complete and accurate time line of events for the camp. Until we have these POW numbers and arrival dates added to our data set, we cannot even be certain that we have the complete list of men transferred back to Japan in May of 1944. We noted these men in the Nagoya POW branch camp at Kamioka but we have also seen notations of a second group that may have been sent to a camp in Fukuoka. These newly found rosters, with arrival dates, old POW numbers and Mukden Camp POW numbers will resolve some of the mysteries– at least for our Center.
In a cursory look, however, we suspect there may be some errors in the numbers that were assigned to some of those who arrived from Taiwan. Remember, these lists were prepared by ordinary military clerks and prepared mostly on Mimeograph machines, a process that died in the 1960’s when Xerox developed the office copier. Having typed my share of these mimeo masters, I know for certain there will ALWAYS be errors. I have NEVER found a NARA roster without an error.
We have contributed the final list of Americans in this camp. We were spurred to create this full roster a few years ago by AO Wang and Linda Goetz-Holmes. Last year, I donated my personal copy of Petak’s book to this museum. We will soon add a separate and more accurate listing, including unit designations, of the first 100 Mukden Commonwealth prisoners (16 Australian POWS already fully documented).
These specific 100 men were part of 1000 men in the first group of “white slaves” sent into slavery for the Japanese industrial corporations. These were the men of Group “B” sent north from Singapore on the Fukkai Maru, arriving in Fusan (Pusan) Korea on 22 September 1942. Five hundred of the thousand captives remained on the ship and went sent to Moji in Japan.
The “A” Group were some 400 odd high ranking officers and aides sent to Formosa (Taiwan) and, as you all know, many of these “A” group men came to Mukden with the “Generals.”
Ridden with malaria, diarrhoea and dysentery, the 1000 men of “B” group were paraded for hours, marching through the streets of Pusan. Koreans lined the route as it was a national holiday and the Japanese fully intended to show the Koreans they were the master of the Pacific. The Japanese nationals were easy to spot as they were more colorfully clad and frequently tossed garbage, spittle and stones at the passing prisoners. The more harassment, the more the malnourished and malaria ridden troops stood up to the Japanese, finally marching in step, sounding off cadence and looking back at the Japanese with total disdain. The large number of Japanese photographers and film makers found little to use for their propaganda.
At best, the early Korean POW camps were poorly organized by the Japanese. The work loads were light, often non-existent. Compared to other POW camps, the food rations in Korea were actually equal to those of the Japanese soldiers. In general, their health improved over the next two months. But with the onset of winter, the sick rates climbed due to their weakened conditions.
In the first week of November, the most healthy 100 men were selected and sent by train on 9 November 1942 for their journey to Mukden. Their health, on average compared to the Americans who arrived at the same time, was markedly better. None of these men perished from illness or disease while at Mukden — not one — despite suffering the same privations. However, two men of the “B” Group died in the bombing of 10 December 1944.
The only other Commonwealth man to die at Mukden was an Australian Colonel Pigdon who died in July 1945 , having arrived from Taiwan in a severely malnourished condition. His death, incidently, was not recorded by Doctor Herbst nor his name noted by Major Peaty.
In researching the POWS, one also finds amazing little tidbits that open entirely new areas of interest. For example, in looking at other Korean files, I noted that a number of the “B” group men and some 100 Americans were eventually sent to a camp called KONAN in present day North Korea. The location of this camp is in a port city that some suspect was used by the Japanese in their efforts to process uranium. Hopefully, these files will all be declassified in my lifetime. Tucked into one of the of the Keijo (Seoul) files was a report on the balance of the “B” group who were taken directly to Japan on the same voyage as the Korean contingent.
This example is how we find we are able to tell the story of the POWs. One document leads to another and another mystery is solved. If you are new to the world of POW research, welcome! If you need help, ask! Don’t hoard information. Don’t make others waste time trying to find the same information. The facts of history should not to be hidden. Let others write their interpretations and tell their stories. As a researcher of the POWS, keep your opinions off the web sites unless you ARE the POW or relative thereof.
Now, I fully support this new Museum, here on the site of the Mukden POW Camp. I hope you will create a great web site to tell the story of the Japanese POWS, especially those men held here at Mukden. Let the men who were here write their stories on your web site. Tell the story of Unit 731. Tell the story of the civilian internment camps in China. Tell the story of ALL the Japanese camps in China. Let the world know what happened. Tell the facts. Show the pictures. Let the facts speak for themselves.
I hope that all of you, in this room, contribute your research freely so that the full story can be posted to a web site run by this museum. Make the site available in as many languages as possible. Make it the best POW site in the world and share the information freely.
Last, always remember that nothing in history is new. It is only information that YOU never knew.
C.M. Mayo here: If you have any questions about POWs and this research I am not the one to ask. Please check out www.mansell.com and from there, you can always email the webmaster, Wes Injerd, whom I am sure will be very glad to hear from you.
Poet, writer and teacher Pat Schneider has passed on. She left a remarkable body of work, and over many decades, as the visionary founder of Amherst Writers & Artists, she taught and helped and otherwise influenced uncounted writers and poets. Read her obituary here.
Pat Schneider. Screenshot of photo from Amherst Writers & Artists Founder’s bio.
Back when I was editing the bilingual journal Tameme, Noemí Escandell sent me her lovely translation of Pat’s poem, “How to Tell a Daughter.” It appeared in the third and final issue, “Reconquest/ Reconquista,” published in 2003. In tribute to Pat, here it is:
I’m away from the blog this Monday– my writing assistants illustrate the concept.
Another One Hundred Foreigners in Morelos: José N. Iturriaga (and Yours Truly) in Cuernavaca’s Historic Jardín Borda
Originally posted on Madam Mayo blog July 4, 2016
The two volume anthology by José N. Iturriaga, a collection of writings by foreigners in Morelia, from the 16th to the 21st century.
To see one’s own country through the scribbles of foreigners can be at once discomfiting and illuminating. Out of naiveté and presumption, foreigners get many things dead-wrong; they also get many things confoundingly right. Like the child who asked why the emperor was wearing no clothes, oftentimes they point to things we have been blind to: beauty and wonders, silliness, perchance a cobwebby corner exuding one skanky stink. And of course, there are things for foreigners to point at in all countries, from Albania to Zambia.
As an American I have to admit it’s rare that we pay a whit of attention to writing on the United States by, say, Mexicans, Canadians, the Germans or the French. True, we have the shining example of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, which every reasonably well-educated American may not have waded through but has at least heard of (and if you haven’t, dear reader, now you have.) But de Tocqueville’s tome is a musty-dusty 181 years old (the first of its four volumes was published in 1835, the last in 1840– get the whole croquembouche in paperback here.)
José N. Iturriaga, signing copies of his anthology, July 1, 2016, Centro Cultural Jardin Borda, Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico.
This past Friday, July 1, 2016, I participated in the launch of novelist and historian José N. Iturriaga’s anthology Otros cien forasteros en Morelos [Another One Hundred Foreigners in Morelos], the companion volume to Cien forasteros en Morelos [One Hundred Foreigners in Morelos], from the 16th to the 21st century.
(For those rusty on their Mexican geography, Morelos is a large state in central Mexico that includes Cuernavaca, “the city of eternal springtime,” which it actually is, and Tepoztlán, a farm town surrounded by spectacular reddish bluffs that, despite an influx of tourists from Mexico City and abroad, still has a strong indigenous presence, and has been designated by Mexico’s Secretary of Tourism as a “pueblo mágico.” The most famous resident of the state of Morelos was Revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata.)
The launch was held in the Centro Cultural Jardín Borda (Borda Gardens Cultural Center), an historic garden open to the public in downtown Cuernavaca– about an hour and a half’s drive from Mexico City.
Jardín Borda, entrance patio, towards evening on an overcast day.
As Iturriaga said in his talk, for almost forty years he has been studying the writings of foreigners on Mexico, precisely for the fresh, if not always kind nor necessarily accurate, perspective they offer on his own country.
I admire Iturriaga’s work, and his curiosity, open-mindedness, and open-heartedness more than I can say. It was a mammoth honor to have had an excerpt from my novel included in his anthology, and to have been invited to participate on the panel presenting his anthology. The other two panelists, whose work is also in the anthology, were poet, novelist and essayist Eliana Albala and journalist and poet María Gabriela Dumay, both of whom came to live in Cuernavaca in the early 1970s, political exiles from Pinochet’s Chile.
Mexican book presentations tend to be more formal affairs than those in US (the latter usually in a bookstore with, perhaps, a brief and informal introduction by the owner or a staff member. I have war stories.) In Mexico, in contrast, there is usually a felt-draped dais, always a microphone, and two to as many as five panelists who have prepared formal lectures about the book. The author speaks last, and briefly. Another difference is that the Mexican reporters, photographers, and oftentimes television cameras crowd the dais, lending the affair a glamor and gravitas rare for a US book presentation. Afterwards, there is a party with white-gloved waiters pouring “vino de honor”– in this case, for Iturriaga’s Otro cien forasteros en Morelos, whoa, mezcal.
C.M. Mayo, Eliana Albala, María Gabriela Dumay, José N. Iturriaga, July 1, 2016, Centro Cultural Jardín Borda, Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico
>> Where to buy Otros Cien Forasteros en Morelos? I hope to be able to provide a link shortly.
Here is my talk for the panel, translated into English.
Dear José Iturriaga; fellow panelists, Eliana Albala and María Gabriela Dumay; everyone in this beautiful Centro Cultural Jardín Borda who made this event possible; Ladies and Gentlemen:
First of all, heart-felt congratulations to José Iturriaga on this extraordinary anthology in two volumes, a magnificent and opportune cultural contribution that, no doubt, required endless hours of reading, not to mention the tremendous labor of love that went into selecting and then translating so many writers.
Between the covers of this second volume, Otros cien forasteros en Morelos, I find my fellow Americans Jack London, Katherine Anne Porter, and John Steinbeck– among the most outstanding figures in US literature. There is also the great novelist who arrived, so mysteriously, from Germany: B. Traven; and artists such as Pedro Friedeberg; and distinguished historians such as John Womack, author ofZapata and the Mexican Revolution, Michael K. Schuessler, biographer of the eccentric poetic genius Pita Amor; and the Austrian Konrad Ratz, whose meticulous research on Maximilian von Habsburg was essential, in fact a parting of the seas, in our understanding of the personality, education, and politics of the Archduke of Austria.
In three words, José Iturriaga’s anthology is eclectic, fascinating, and illuminating.
It is a great honor for me to participate in this presentation and an even greater honor that this second volume, Otros cien forasteros en Morelos, includes excerpts from my novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire. [In the anthology, excerpts are taken from the Spanish translation by Mexican novelist and poet Agustín Cadena, El último príncipe del Imperio Mexicano.]
(*Agustin de Iturbide (1783-1824) led the final stage of Mexico’s war for independence from Spain, and supported by the Catholic Church, was crowned Emperor of Mexico in 1822, deposed in 1823, and executed in 1824. )
In the winter of 1866, Maximilian brought his court here, to the Jardín Borda. And since we are within those very walls and surrounded by those very gardens, in celebration of José Iturriaga’s work, I would like to invoke those foreigners of the past, that is to say, I would like to read the few very brief excerpts from the novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, as they appear in this anthology.
This bit from the novel is the imagined point of view of José Luis Blasio, a Mexican who served as Maximilian’s secretary:
Depend on it: Maximilian is shepherding Mexico into the modern world— so José Luis Blasio, His Majesty’s secretary, has told his family and tells himself. And this is no small task when His Majesty must grapple not only with our backwardness and ingratitude, but that thorn in his side, General Bazaine. The rumor is that, abetted by his Mexican wife’s family, Bazaine schemes to push aside Maximilian; they aim to have Louis Napoleon make Mexico a French Protectorate with himself in charge— not that José Luis would give that a peso of credence. But José Luis does consider it an outrage, the latest of many, that he would wire a complaint that Maximilian has removed his court to Cuernavaca, rather than “attend to business in the capital.”
Yes, they are here in the Casa Borda amongst gardens and fountains, fruit trees, palm trees, parrots of every size and color— a world away from Mexico City. But does not Louis Napoleon go to Plombières and Biarritz? Queen Victoria, who has sterner blood, travels as far as Balmoral in the Scottish Highlands. Dom Pedro II of Brazil retires to his villa in Petropolis. And did not the empress’s late father, Leopold, absent himself from Brussels in the Château Royal at Laeken? It is natural that for the winter, His Majesty should hold court in a healthier clime.
But even here where he siestas in a hammock, drinks limeade from a coconut shell, and wears an ecru linen suit with an open-necked blouse, Maximilian’s work never ceases. It is a wide, rushing river that José Luis can only hope will not overspill its banks. In the past year, José Luis has come to appreciate the uncompromising necessity of working long hours; indeed, his eyesight, never strong, has deteriorated from so much reading in the dim of early mornings. Maximilian arises at four; his valet attends him, and though he might linger over breakfast, by no later than six, he is at “the bridge,” as he says, that is, his desk— or, as here in Casa Borda, a folding table on the veranda. His Majesty’s dispatch box is heavy, and growing ever heavier…
And now Pepa de Iturbide, daughter of the Emperor Agustín de Iturbide, godmother to Agustin de Iturbide y Green, and member of Maximilian’s court:
It is a holy miracle that she got a wink of sleep at all! So appalled she is by Maximilian’s whim to uproot the court to this hamlet two bone-jarring days travel up and down the sierra— good gracious, this is no time to abandon the capital, and go gallivanting about with butterfly nets and beetle jars! Matamoros is under siege; the whole state of Guerrero, from Acapulco to Iguala, is in thrall to guerrillas. And Pepa got it from Frau von Kuhacsevich, who got it from Lieutenant Weissbrunn, that whilst the empress was in Yucatan, Maximilian fancied a visit to Acapulco, but General Bazaine nixed it because it would have been impossible to maintain security for his person. That is the sum of things!
Oh, but in Mexico City Maximilian felt cramped, “an oyster in a bucket of ice,” he said. Over the past two months, the few times Pepa chanced to see Maximilian, he had spoken of the empress’s dispatches from Yucatan proudly but with— Pepa recognized it when she saw it— a glint of green. If Maximilian could not have his expedition to Yucatan, by Jove, he was going to go some place tropical! And Maximilian could not be outshone by his consort, oh no. A mere visit to Cuernavaca would not do; he had to serve himself the whole enchilada with the big spoon: an Imperial Residence with landscaping, fountains, an ornamental pond stocked with exotic fish, and furnishings and flub dubs aplenty, comme ça and de rigueur. Whom did he imagine he was impressing with this caprice? Poor Charlotte, exhausted after Yucatan. And as if the von Kuhacseviches were not already foundering in their attempts to manage the Imperial Household in Mexico City! As if the Mexican Imperial Army could offer its officers anything approaching a living wage! Or keep its depots stocked with gunpowder! It is a monumental waste of time, of effort, of money, and to boot, Casa Borda is a-crawl with cockroaches, beetles, earwigs, and moths— a bonanza for Professor Bilimek!
And now the Austrian Frau von Kuhacsecvich, Mistress (chief administrador) of the Imperial Household:
On the steps to the next patio, Frau von Kuhacsevich must pause to fan herself. Cuernavaca is not the Turkish bath of the hot lands, more, as Maximilian put it, an Italian May. Pleasant for the men, and Prince Agustín, perhaps, but a trial for those who must encase themselves in corsets and crinolines. Oh, poor Charlotte that her father has died, but Blessed Jesus, what would Frau von Kuhacsevich have done had she been obliged to wear mourning black! The thought simply wilts her. She is afraid her face has gone red as a beet. Her back feels sticky, and under her bonnet, she can feel her scalp sweating. Taking the bonnet off is out of the question: her roots have grown in nearly an inch— in all the rushing to and fro, there has not been a snatch of time to touch up the color.
An Italian May: in that spirit, for luncheon, Tüdos has concocted an amuse-gueule of olives, basil, and requeson, a cheese too strong to pass for mozzarella, but toothsome. In addition to coffee, he will be making a big pot of canarino: simply, the zest of lemons steeped as tea. Well, here it has to be made of limes, ni modo, no matter, as the Mexicans say.
Finally, Maximilian himself:
Here, this moment in Cuernavaca, one is happy: perfumes in the air, colors from the palette of Heaven, birds, flowering trees and vines and oranges, the music of the orchestra and of the fountains, this bone-warming sunshine…
I wish I’d had the foresight to take a photo of what this book looked like before its repair: the spine torn off and hanging to one side by threads. It’s the ninth edition of the “Fannie Farmer” Boston Cooking-School Cook Book published in 1951, not a valuable book in the rare book market, and this specimen less so for its decades-old gravy and butter stains. But it is a tremendously valuable book to me because it was my mother’s. I took it to my local bookbinder and, for about the price of a pair of Keds, voilà:
Restored for use by my local bookbinder.
It strikes me as curious that in all the many writers workshops and conferences I’ve attended over the years I cannot recall anyone ever even mentioning the craft of book binding. But what skill it takes to do it well! And what a difference it makes! With its repaired binding, this dear workhorse of a book has been given the dignity it well deserves.
What has this to do with a writing workshop? Two things.
First, as a writer I’ve come to realize that the quality of the book’s design, paper, and binding is immensely important, for its gives the book its presentation– like a frame for a picture or the dress for a bride– and it also gives it the sturdiness it requires to survive over time.
Second, I’ve come to believe that as a writer it matters why and how I treat my books because respect for them is respect my own endeavor. Generally speaking, I have learned to try to keep them out of the sun, I avoid eating or drinking while reading them, and I take care not to fade, fold, bump or tear any dust jackets. However, that doesn’t mean I’m ever and always fussy about my books. I’ll toss out battered old mass market paperbacks, and I often donate books. And some books I go ahead and give myself liberty to attack! I mean in a good way!
A more recent example: Doug Hill’s superb Not So Fast: Thinking Twice About Technology. When I ordered Not So Fast I guessed it would eventually become an important collector’s item, so I shelled out the clams for the University of Georgia Press first edition hardcover from bookdespository.com. Alas, when it arrived I found that the dust jacket had been badly treated (um, actually it looked like the forklift left greasy tire tracks on it). Translation: as a physical object my copy has little to zero value. Because I was so anxious to read it for my own work-in-progress however, rather than ask bookdepository.com for a replacement, I took this as a welcome opportunity to go ahead and mark it up with my notes. So: maltreated my copy may be, both in the warehouse and by my scribbles, it’s a book that is tremendously valuable to me as a working writer. (And I warmly recommend it to you, dear reader, by the way.)
I ordered the book from bookdepository.com and alas, the dust jacket arrived looking like this….
…so I gave myself permission to go ahead and mark it up. This one stays in my working library.
How do you treat your books? And why? These are questions I didn’t think to ask myself for many years. These may not be trick questions, but they are tricky questions, for they necessitate distinguishing the book as a thoughtform from the book as a physical object, and they also require self-awareness and clarity in one’s intentions, as both a reader and a writer.
WHITE DOG
The other day my copy of visual artist and writer Katherine Dunn’s latest book, White Dog, arrived. So obviously made with love and joy, White Dog is one of the most exquisite books that I have ever seen. Dear writerly readers, it is self-published. And I do not believe that any commercial publisher would have, nor could have, done justice to her vision.
UPDATE: See the Q & A with Katherine Dunn for this blog here.
MORE TO COME ON SELF-PUBLISHING
Those of you who have been following this blog well know that since early 2019 I’ve been migrating selected posts from the old Google platform. I have a batch of posts on self-publishing that I’ll be getting to in the coming weeks.
To be clear, I’m not a champion of self-publishing per se; I sincerely respect and value what a good publisher’s team (editor, copyeditor, book designer, sales reps, publicist, back office) can do. Most of my books have been published by traditional publishers or university presses, and indeed, I aim to place my recently completed collection of essays and my book in-progress with a publisher (wish me luck). But without making much effort to find a publisher (for good reason, which I go into in the relevant blog post) I self-published Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution. In addition I have self-published several Kindles, including this longform essay about the Mexican literary landscape. I remain open to the idea of self-publishing again in the future. In the post-covid economy, where we can expect smaller catalogs and fewer publishers, that may turn out to be the increasingly more realistic route. We shall see. More anon.
P.S. You can find the archive of workshop posts migrated-to-date here. Again, I offer a post for my workshop students and anyone else interested in creative writing on the second Monday of every month.
The outlook for the book biz in general… well… let’s say if it were weather, you’d want thermal underwear and a flashlight with extra batteries. (As a writer that doesn’t phase me in the least, in case you were wondering, for I live in my very own ever-sunlit and toasty-cavernous imaginal crystal igloo! Dear writerly reader, I can recommend it! Write on!) Nonetheless one bright spot just might sparkle: certain niches of the rare book business. It has occurred to me, rare book aficionada that I am, to go into this business, but whenever the urge strikes, I make a cup of camomile tea, do some Pranayama… and reread Greg Gibson’s “Don’t Do It.”
The best of the rare book purveyors are members of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America (ABAA). Over the past few months I’ve been watching some interviews with these fine folks on the ABAA website. Herewith some of the especially interesting ones, starting with Larisa Cassell:
Nicholas Potter:
Peter Burnett:
John Reznikoff:
Priscilla Juvelis:
Penelope Daly:
P.S. Check out Greg Gibson’s Ten Pound Island Book Company blog here. (He’s a splendid writer, too. My favorite of his books is Demon of the Waters, one of the strangest true stories I have ever read.)
This past Friday I had the honor and delight of being interviewed for the Words on a Wire podcast by Daniel Chacón, an award-winning creative writer and Chair of the University of Texas El Paso Creative Writing Program– and not about my latest book (Meteor, poetry) but about an older book of mine which, over the years since it came in 2014, surprisingly few people have dared to ask me about. Yep, it’s super spooky! Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution: Francisco I. Madero and His Secret Book, Spiritist Manual. I often refer to it as a chimera of a book, for it is not only my book about Madero’s book + my translation of Madero’s book, but my part of it is a work of scholarship that is at the same time intended to be a work of literary art in itself.
Just as soon as that link to the Words on a Wire podcast is live, I will post it here.
In the meantime, because I wish I’d thought to mention it in the interview, herewith a post from 2014 about a very rare but very important Mexican book, Una ventana al mundo invisible:
Una Ventana al Mundo Invisible (A Window onto the Invisible World): Master Amajur and the Smoking Signatures
Una ventana al mundo invisible. Protocolos del IMIS Editorial Antorcha, Mexico City, 1960. [A Window to the Invisible world: Protocols of the IMIS]
I was a long ways into into the labyrinth of research and reading for my book, Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution, when I happened into Mexico City’s Librería Madero, expressing a vague interest in Francisco I. Madero and “lo que sea de lo esotérico.” When the owner, Don Enrique Fuentes Castilla, set this book upon the counter, I confess, the cover, which looks like a Halloween cartoon, with such childish fonts, did little to excite my interest. But oh, ho ho (in the voice of the Jolly Green Giant):
A Window to the Invisible World: Protocols of the Mexican Institute for Psychic Research Mexico City, 1960
This book, Una ventana al mundo invisible, is nothing less than the official, meticulously documented records of the dozens and dozens of research-séances of the Instituto Mexicano de Investigaciones Síquicas or IMIS (Mexican Institute of Psychic Research) from April 10, 1940 to April 12, 1952, members of which included– the book lists their names and their signatures— several medical doctors and National University (UNAM) professors; an ex-Rector of the UNAM, the medical doctor and historian Dr. Fernando Ocaranza; several generals; ambassadors; bankers; artists and writers, including José Juan Tablada; a supreme court justice; an ex-Minister of Foreign relations; an ex-director of Banco de México, Carlos Novoa; Ambassador Ramón Beteta, ex Minister of Finance; and… drumroll… both Miguel Alemán and Plutarco Elías Calles. *
Close up of the subtitle. Oy, the font. (Dude, what were you smoking?)
*I hate giving wikipedia links but as of this writing, the official webpage for the Mexican presidency doesn’t go back more than four administrations.
For those a little foggy on their Mexican history, Plutarco Elías Calles served as Mexico’s President from 1924-1928, and Miguel Alemán, 1946-1952. At the time of the séances documented in Una ventana al mundo invisible, Calles was in retirement, having returned from the exile imposed on him by President Cardenás in the 1930s.
President of Mexico, “El Jefe Máximo” Plutarco Elías Calles. In retirement he joined the IMIS and was a regular participant in the research-séances documented in Una ventana al mundo invisible
When Una ventana al mundo invisible was published in 1960, Alemán was long gone from power, and Calles had passed away.
I had heard, as has anyone who goes any ways into the subject, that Alemán and Calles and other Mexican “public figures” were secret Spiritists, but here, dear readers, in the Protocolos del IMIS, are the smoking signatures.
Yes, There are Other References to Una ventana al mundo invisible
Mexican historian Enrique Krauze was one of the first to cite Una ventana al mundo invisible in his chapter on Calles in Biography of Power, as does Jurgen Burchenau in his biography, Plutarco Elías Calles and the Mexican Revolution. But, as I write these lines, Una ventana al mundo invisible remains surprisingly obscure.
The Revolution as dolor de cabeza
Of course, I googled. A Mexican writer, Héctor de Mauleón, had discovered Una ventana al mundo invisible in a different Mexico City antiquarian bookstore and written up a summary for the October 2012 issue of Nexos. (But he complains of his copy’s missing the picture of the conjured spirit, “Master Amajur.” More about that in a moment.) And also recently, Grupo Espírita de la Palma, a Canary Islands Spiritist blog, which has posted several important bibliographic notes as well as a bibliography of Spanish works on Spiritism, posted this piece about the Jesuit Father Heredia’s involvement with the IMIS–thanks to his friend, none other than Calles–and about this book.
(A research project for whomever wants it: to delve into the Mexican hemerotecas of 1960-61 for any newspaper coverage, and 1979 and 1994 for anything about the Posadas and Planeta editions. My guess is, not much, for the press was largely under the thumb of the ruling party and this sort of information about Mexican Presidents would have been, to say the least, unwelcome. But that’s just my guess.)
So, Now, Delving into the Contents…
Rafael Alvarez y Alvarez (1857 – 1955), Mexican banker and founder of the Instituto Mexicano de Investigaciones Síquicas (IMIS)
The copy Don Enrique was offering, and for a very reasonable price, still had its dust jacket, small tears in places along the bottom and the top, but intact (the image on this blog post is a scan of my copy). The rest of it was pristine; the pages had not even been cut. Don Enrique slit open a few for me in the bookstore, and once home, I continued with my trusty steak knife (read about my other steak knife adventure here.)
I dove right in and learned that the founder of the IMIS, to whose memory the book is dedicated, was Rafael Alvarez y Alvarez (1887-1955), a distinguished Mexican banker, a president of the Monte de Piedad, and a congressman and senator. (Looking at his portrait with my novelist’s eye– that gaze! the bow tie!– yes, the intrepid maverick.)
The introduction is by Gutierre Tibón, an Italian-Mexican historian and anthropologist, professor in the National University’s prestigious faculty of Philosophy and Literature, and author of numerous noted works, including Iniciación al budismo and El jade de México.
A Brief Bit of Background on 19th Century Parapsychological Research
The goal of the IMIS was to progress in the tradition of pioneer American, English, and European parapsychological researchers. From my book, Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution, the first chapter, which provides 19th century background for Madero’s ideas about Spiritism, which he considered both a religion and a science:
“The exploits of mediums such as the Fox sisters, D.D. Home, the Eddy Brothers, and later in the nineteenth century, prim Leonora Piper (channel for the long-dead ‘Dr Phinuit’ and the mysterious ‘Imperator’), and wild Eusapia Palladino (whose séances featured billowing curtains, floating mandolins and, popping out of the dark, ectoplasmic hands), spurred the studies of investigators, journalists and a small group of elite scientists. Noted German, Italian, and French scientists, such as Nobel prize-winning physiologist Charles Richet undertook the examination of these anomalous phenomena, but the British Society for Psychical Research, founded in 1882, and the American Society for Psychical Research founded three years later, led the fray. Though their ranks included leading scientists such as chemist William Crookes, naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, physicist Oliver Lodge, and William James (the Harvard University professor considered the father of psychology). Yet their researches almost invariably met not with celebration, nor curiosity on the part of their fellow academics, but ridicule, often to the point of personal slander.”
Medium Luís Martínez and “Spirit Guide” Dr. Enrique del Castillo
Luis Martínez, Mexican medium
As James et al had Leonora Piper, and Richet and Lombroso, Eusapia Palladino, the IMIS employed the medium Luis Martínez, who was able to evoke a broad spectrum of phenomena, from ringing bells to apports, ectoplasm, breezes, raps and knocks, levitation, and so on.
In séances with Martínez, the IMIS heard from its spirit guide on the “other side,” one Dr. Enrique del Castillo, a Mexican doctor of the 19th century. According to Dr Tibón in his introduction to Una ventana al mundo invisible (p. 20, my translation):
“The way he looked was perfectly well known because once he “aported” his photograph, which was later made into a larger size, framed and displayed the Institute’s workroom. Another aport of Dr. del Castillo were his spectacles, identical to those in the portrait. He brought them on October 24, 1944, at 10:30 pm, in a séance that was documented in Cuernavaca, and he said these words, directing them to Rafael Alvarez y Alvarez: ‘In leaving my spectacles to you, dear son, it is with the wish that you will see clearly the future road we must take. May these spectacles take you on the path where we will always be companions.’”
Enter “Master Amajur”
Of special note was the séance on the evening of September 24, 1941, when Plutarco Elías Calles invited Carlos de Heredia, S.J., author of a book debunking Spiritism– and Father Heredia, sufficiently awed (and according to Calles, converted) affixed his signature as witness to genuine phenomena. That séance is documented in its entirety in Una ventana al mundo invisible. From Dr. Tibón’s introduction (p.21, my translation):
“That memorable night there materialized another spirit guide for the circle: an oriental doctor named Master Amajur; and he did not only show himself completely to Father Heredia, he also spilled a glass of water, saturated it with magnetic fluid, and gave it to him to drink. Then there appeared the phantom of Sister María de Jesús and, before the astonished cleric, illuminated her face in a most unusual manner. Finally, Dr Enrique del Castillo appeared, surrounded by many tiny lights. These levitated the medium, chair and all– the equivalent of raising almost 100 kilos– and silently left him in the other end of the room. This phenomenon was verified for the first time. Later, I had the fortune to attend its repetition and I literally saw the medium fly two meters into the air.”
Master Amajur started showing up from the first documented séance of May 8, 1940 (p. 89, my translation of some of the highlights):
“Master Amajur [appeared] very clearly, he touched all of us and he wrote a message which says: Go forward and I will help you. When we asked him [for a message] he left a message for Colonel Villanueva that says: It would be good for you to attend a séance. [… ]The first materialization produced an electric spark above the lightbulb that was loose in its socket [… ] There was an aport: a small bottle of perfume and its essence sprinkled above us. The music box passed over our heads. The Master gave us his cloak to touch, which seemed to all of us a piece of gauze. One again he produced a fresh breeze: it smelled of ozone.
On June 12, 1940 (p.90, my translation):
[…] the Master came in. This manifestation appeared first as a human hand covered with a veil, imitating a human figure. Then it increased in size and luminosity until it came txo a height of about 1.5 meters. Only the head and bust could only be seen. It was covered in a bluish white veil which I touched with my face. It gave me the impression of being a cotton fabric… It gave me a large glass of water to drink… It put flowers in our hands, it gave us a perfumed air, and when luminous blobs passed near my face I perceived the smell of phosphorous.”
On June 22, 1941 (my translation, p. 92):
“In front of all of us, Amajur left on the wall an inscription that said: Go forward. Upon request, he gave fluid to a magnolia and then he began to cut the petals. One by one these were deposited in the mouths of the participants.”
And so on. Séance after séance after séance–96 in all–with sparks, music, levitations, ectoplasmic this & that, perfumes, flowers, and frequent appearances not only by Master Amajur and sundry others, but also a childlike spirit, “Botitas” (Little Boots), who would tug on the participants’ pant legs.
Photographing Master Amajur
Close up of “Master Amajur” From the cover of Una ventana al mundo invisible
Skipping ahead to the séance of June 17, 1943– which Plutarco Elías Calles attended– Master Amajur has agreed to pose for a photograph. At first this doesn’t work; the photographer only captures a hand and then, suddenly, falls into convulsions. But then, after some further bizarre phenomena and friendly intervention by the spirit Dr. del Castillo, the photograph is achieved (p. 194, my translation):
“According to Mrs. Padilla [wife of Ezequiel Padilla, ex Minister of Foreign Relations, also in attendance on this occasion], and in agreement with all the other participants, at the moment of the explosion or flash from the photographer’s lamp, in the shadow could be seen the complete figure of the master, as if a statue of about 2 meters covered in a cloak, from head to foot. It was also noted that Master Amajur received a powerful shock and on asking him if he would permit another photograph to be taken, he said no.”
According to the dust jacket flap text, this is the very photograph that adorns the cover of the book. But, um, it looks more like a drawing to me. (As, by the way, many purported “spirit photographs” do. Google, dear reader, and ye shall find. Lots on eBay, by the way.)
Madame Blavatsky. The monumental figure of modern esotericism. Author of The Secret Doctrine and Isis Unveiled, etc. Founder, Theosophical Society
For historians of the metaphysical, it is interesting to note that Master Amajur claimed to be a member of the Great White Brotherhood, a term which came into use in the West with Madame Blavatsky, co-founder of the Theosophical Society, in the 19th century. She claimed that her teachers, who often met with her on the astral plane, were the Great White Brothers or Mahatamas, the Ascended Masters Koot-hoomi (Kuthumi) and Morya. Later, her follower A. P. Sinnett expanded on this topic in a sensational book of its day, The Mahatma Letters (1923). Over the decades, other psychics claimed to receive channeled messages from various Ascended Masters, most notably “St. Germain” and Alice Bailey’s “Djwahl Khul” or “The Tibetan.” It would seem that “Master Amajur” falls into this rather blurry and ever-morphing category.*
*So are the terms Great White Brother, Mahatma, and Ascended Master one and the same? In this article in Quest, modern-day Theosophist Pablo B. Sender elucidates.
Interesting to note also that a google search brought up the tidbit that “Amajur” was the name of an astronomer of 10th century Baghdad– though I hasten to add, according to the IMIS reports in Una ventana al mundo invisible, “Master Amajur” spoke Mexican Spanish. And of further note: there are Spiritist groups that continue to channel messages from Master Amajur today.
Dear readers, conclude what you will, and whether this finds you embracing a gnosis that “resonates” with you, cackling like a hyena, or just numbly confused, surely we can agree that this is all very remarkable.
So What, Pray Tell, Does All This Have to Do with Don Francisco I. Madero?
Francisco I. Madero, President of Mexico 1911-1913; leader of the 1910 Revolution; and as “Bhima,” author of the 1911 Spiritist Manual
My book, Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution, is about Madero as leader of the 1910 Revolution and President of Mexico, 1911-1913 and how his political career was launched as an integral part of his Spiritist beliefs. (The book includes my translation of his secret book of 1911, Spiritist Manual, which spells it all out– all the way to out-of-body travel and, yes, interplanetary reincarnation.)
Not all– Enrique Krauze, Yolia Tortolero Cervantes, Javier Garciadiego, Alejandro Rosas Robles, Manuel Guerra de Luna, among others, are important exceptions– but most historians of Mexico and its Revolution sidestep, belittle, or even ignore Madero’s Spiritist beliefs. In my book, I have quite a bit to say about why I think that is (key words: cognitive dissonance), but in sum, few have any context for Madero’s ideas which, for most educated people in the western world, fall into the category of absurd nonsense and “superstition.”
My aim in my book– and this blog post– is not to convince the reader of the truth or falsity of any religious beliefs (ha, neither do I poke tigers with sticks for the hell of it), but to provide a sense of the history and richness of the matrix of metaphysical traditions from which Madero’s beliefs emerged. And with this context, I believe, we can arrive at the conclusion that Madero was not mad, nor so naive and weak as many have painted him, but that, in fact, he was a political visionary of immense courage who found himself on a counterrevolutionary battlefield of such rage and chaos that, if it was fatal for him, would have been for almost anyone else as well.
Madero did not, like some mad alchemist, cook up his ideas by himself; they fit into what was then and is now a living tradition. Madero’s Spiritism was French, itself an off-shoot of American Spiritualism, and with roots in occult Masonry and hermeticism and mesmerism; in the early 20th century, Madero also adopted ideas from a wide range of difficult-to-categorize mystics, such as Edouard Schuré, and from the Hindu holy book so beloved of the Theosophists, Thoreau, and Mohandis Gandhi: the Baghavad-Gita.
After Madero, on the one hand, we see Spiritism melding with folkloric and shamanistic traditions, as with the mediumistic healers Niño Fidencio, Doña Pachita, and the “psychic surgeons” of Brazil and the Philippines. On the other hand, a very small and adventurous group of what was primarily members of the educated urban elite– as we see in Una ventana al mundo invisible– continued the international tradition of parapsychological research that, as we know from his Spiritist Manual and his personal library, Madero greatly admired.
“Oscar Wilde arrived here yesterday evening or rather, at our house at the Falls. I took a short walk with him before tea. He talks well but a little loud and with a little too much assertiveness…” — John Bigelow, Jr.
Early last month I made a supersonic visit to New York for two ultra-intensive days in the archives at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.* My object: to consult the diaries of Col. John Bigelow Jr., an officer in the Indian Wars and one of the personalities I am writing about in my book on Far West Texas. I’ve posted on this unjustly little-known officer and military intellectual elsewhere on this blog (here and here) and published a paper about him for the Journal of Big Bend Studies. One of the several things I was searching for in his archive were any mentions of his encounters with the Irish writer Oscar Wilde–for I knew that in between postings to remotest of Texas forts with the 10th Cavalry, Bigelow had returned to West Point to teach, and there, a short walk away, where his family had a country house at Highland Falls, his parents hosted Oscar Wilde. Yes, theOscar Wilde, international literary celebrity, who told U.S. customs on his arrival that he had “nothing to declare but his genius.” I found some choice quotes, not from Bigelow’s diaries, as I had expected, but in his letters to his fiancée, later wife, Mary Dallam. To wit:
West Point, November 21, 1881 …I hear that Oscar Wilde, having played himself out in England, is coming here to infatuate the American demoiselles. He will probably experience the disappointment of finding us on this side of the water in advance of England, rather than behind her, in recovery from the aesthete craze. There are not many symptoms of it now in New York. Yet one may once in a while see a girl on the street in a dress covered with gold colored patterns that make her look as if she were clothed in wall paper. February 10, 1882 ..I am especially sorry I could not be home Sunday as I missed seeing Oscar Wilde, who dined at our house that evening. I had seen him before at one of our receptions but had never had a good chance to hear him talk or to talk with him myself. From everything I learn about him I judge him to be a very companionable man. From the nature of your allusions to him I infer that he was not a social success in Baltimore. I think as little of his poetry as you do; nor do I much like his face. His mouth is not expressive of a delicate and refined instinct, and his hands are of the consistency of fresh bread. Nevertheless I am disgusted with the way in which he has been treated by a large part of our press and of our respectable population. There are young ladies in New York who talk about him as if he had come over here for the express purpose of captivating them and would have to regard his time and money wasted if he should not succeed in doing so! I believe Oscar Wilde is a man of rare talent and rare good taste. He believes in men dressing according to their individual taste and characteristics, not in knickerbockers unless that style of unmentionables especially becomes them. August 29, 1882 …Oscar Wilde arrived here yesterday evening or rather, at our house at the Falls. I took a short walk with him before tea. He talks well but a little loud and with a little too much assertiveness. The loudness is due partly to nature and partly to his speaking in public, the assertiveness is due to his public speaking and to his being lionized. There is more grace in his body than in his voice or features. He went to the ball with Anny and Jenny + my mother… His coat was a black velvet swallow-tail of the style of the last century, with ruffles in the place of cuffs and a white puffy frill-trimmed kerchief… He wore black knee-breeches, black silk stockings, buckled shoes and white kid gloves. When he went out to get into the carriage I saw him in his long easy cloak, his old-time high-crowned soft-felt hat, with its broad brim turned up one side, showing to advantage his long hair underneath; he looked like a typical cavalier. I know that if you had seen him you would have wished as I did that there were such costumes to be seen… August 31, 1882 Oscar Wilde left us today. He says he is to have a theater decorated to suit himself next winter in New York. He told us a good deal yesterday about Greece…
Sorry, no photos of that very photogenic snow-dusted campus at West Point. It was all I could do to work in the archives, then catch the shuttle to my hotel both days.
*It can be expensive indeed to travel to consult an archive, hence one must carefully guard one’s energies for long hours of laser-focus. My strategies include minimal socializing (I beg forgiveness of friends and family); no hither-and-thithering; eating only very lightly (preferably room service in the evening); sleeping as much as possible; showing up as close to when the archives open as possible, and staying glued to my seat, pencil in claw, until closing. I owe the warmest of thanks to the staff at the archives, most especially Susan Lintelman.
HONEY & WAX, ET AL
On this supersonic visit to New York I had but a mini-micro portion of a morning for shopping, and this being December, I had some to do. Since my dad’s family is from New York, the Rockefeller Center and the rest of tourist-clogged Fifth Avenue wasn’t anything novel for me, so I hopped over the river to peek into the Brooklyn Holiday Book Fair.
As those of you who follow this blog well know, I’m a rare book aficionada– as both a collector (in the peewee leagues thereof) and a writer with a few things to say about it all (see my Dispatch from Sister Republic or, Papelito Habla, a longform essay on the Mexican literary landscape and the power of the book). I also have a background as a (now armchair) economist, so I’ve had an eye on the rare book business from that angle, as well. Like the antiques business, and publishing, the rare book business has changed beyond recognition with the advent of Internet. Many of the changes frankly strike me as tragic losses. But there are some upsides. See for example these oral histories with members of the ABAA (Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America): Garrett Scott; Henry Wessells; and Heather O’Donnell of Honey & Wax Booksellers. The latter has been on my radar as one of the very few women in the trade and one of most dynamic of the new generation of rare book dealers. And here she is at the 2019 Brooklyn Holiday Book Fair!
Heather O’Donnell, proprietor of Honey & Wax Booksellers, member, Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America
The latest Honey & Wax Booksellers catalogue
Her Honey & Waxcatalogs are exemplars of elegance. And her inventory, whew! In the latest catalog: “Autumn Rain, Autumn Wind: Memorial for the Executed Revolutionary Qiu Jin,” 1907, USD 20,0000; a 1930s edition of the novels and some letters of Jane Austin, inscribed to E.M. Forster by Lytton Strachey, USD 9,500; and so on. Most of the Honey & Wax catalog items are a galaxy beyond my budget, but the offerings here in the Brooklyn Holiday Book Fair, if just as fancifully varied, and all in exquisite condition, were vastly more economical. For the price of pair of Keds, she sold me this sweet treasure, which I ended up keeping for myself:
Also from my Brooklyn Holiday Book Fair haul, this handsome first edition of The Saga of Texas Cookery from Lizzy Young Bookseller:
And for the price of a burger and fries (!!) I found this fine first edition from Enchanted Books:
Note my Texas Bibliothek bookmark. Yep, that’s where this handsome puppy goes. Dissanayake is also the author of the recently published Early Rock Art of the American West: The Geometric Enigma, which I look forward to reading.
Enchanted Books, antiquarian bookseller at the Brooklyn Holiday Book Fair
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This blog posts on Mondays. Next post will be the fourth Monday Q & A with another writer.
