Damsels, Distressed and Not — Faerie Queene, Book 2, Canto 1

Have a good knight

Onward with Sir Guyon, the allegory of Temperance (so it’s rather fitting that my earlier post today dealt with just that). We have a new hero! We may have a new hero, but we get the same old villain, the Archimage, at least at the beginning. And the Archimage is at the very beginning of the canto, getting the first four stanzas all to himself, with Sir Guyon showing up at the end of the fifth:

A goodly knight, all arms in harness meet,
That from his head no place appeared to his feete.

He’s well armored. That gives the Archimage an idea, though how he prepared for this one, the poem doesn’t make clear. Okay, he tells Sir Guyon that he saw a fair maiden attacked by a knight.

When that lewd rybauld, with vyle lust advaunst,
Laid first his filthie hands on virgin cleene.

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The Broader Battle of the WCTU

Diana by Augustus
Saint-Gaudens. Thirteen
feet of smut!

If the Women’s Christian Temperance Union got everything they wanted, the United States would be a different place today.[1] A much more repressive place. We have the Women’s Christian Temperance Union to thank for Prohibition (thanks a lot, ladies), but it looks like we got off easy. An article in the September 30, 1894, New York Sun makes it clear that their ambitions went far beyond just alcohol. There doesn’t seem to be anything that they wouldn’t complain about.

It’s a long article, but in the end, I decided to include the whole thing, mainly to get the smug statements of Mrs. Martin. Mrs. Martin seems (by her own statements, at least) to have been quite involved in the late nineteenth century reform movements. The WTCU was active in the suffrage moment, and found that the United States Brewers Association was funding the anti-suffrage side.[0] [0]: As noted in the Wikipedia article on the WCTU.

As the article shows, politics (even the politics of temperance) can make strange bedfellows, particularly when there’s mission creep involved.

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A Return to the Faerie Queene

Was this a
temperate
knight?

It’s been a long time since I’ve blogged about Edmund Spencer’s Faerie Queene. I left off on May 23rd, with the last canto of the first book. So, my intention to blog through the book carried me for just under two weeks. Since then, I’ve kept The Faerie Queene in mind, intending to returning to it.[1] Several things kept me from going back:

1. Travel. They’re tough pieces to write when away from my normal routine, even though all I use is the text itself. I’m done with travel for a bit.
2. Response. In those early days of the blog, the Faerie Queene posts were guaranteed to get fewer readers than anything else. People voted with their clicks, and I wanted to give them what they wanted.[2]
3. Scheduling. For a while, I was writing and publishing, writing and publishing. I’m breaking that cycle. By the end of a day, when I had tried to fill the blog with things people might actually read, I was either done with writing for the day, or had gone on to other things.[3]

After months of “I will return to the Faerie Queene tomorrow,” that day has come. I’m easing myself in gently, since each book starts off with just a few stanzas in prologue.[4]

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An Esperanto Socialite in Chicago?

Wealthy. Connected.
Esperantist?

In the early days of Esperanto, the language had a certain level of appeal among the well-to-do. Consuelo Vanderbilt, later the Duchess of Marlborough, was part of this set of prominent New Yorkers, “The 400.”[1] When the Duchess was from her husband (they would eventually divorce) she was reported to be consoling herself with the study of Esperanto.

Although not a New Yorker, the Chicago socialite Bertha Palmer was linked to this exalted level of society, and although her husband had made his money (first in retail, then in real estate) instead of inheriting it, her sister was U.S. Grant’s daughter-in-law. But she did hobnob with European nobility. And she was terribly rich.

But did she know Esperanto?

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Natural Law and Women’s Suffrage

Boycott the ballot!

For every change, for every advance, for every new liberty, there are opponents, and in all of these cases, you will find people who would befit from the proposed change opposing it. It also seems that trumpeting the status quo, when you are the one who would benefit from the change, always grants you a louder voice. It’s the more interesting story, after all. And so while the question was being asked in Massachusetts, the Arizona Republican saw fit to tell its readers on September 28, 1895 what a group of Massachusetts women had announced the day before. Note that they’re rejecting municipal suffrage, merely the ability to vote in local elections.

Arizona, at the time the Republican ran this article, was not yet a state (not until 1912), so even for the men of Arizona, anything beyond local elections was moot.

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Hyperpolyglots, Language, and Hype

How about a menu?
Can you read one?

I’ve always felt that stories of hyperpolyglots are more hype than polyglot. There have been many such stories over the years, including early Esperanto speaker Winifred Sackville Stoner Jr., and in all of these cases there seems to be a lack of independent documentation. In the case of the younger Winifred Stoner, our source for her talents is the elder Winifred Stoner, who could not be relied upon for accurate information about her own parentage.[1]

So when io9 did an article on Timothy Doner, my skepticism kicked into high gear. The article, which includes a YouTube video of Doner demonstrating his skills, was prompted by a recent interview he did with the Harvard Crimson. He did the video at the age of 16, and it has given him a bit of fame. I’m sure that there are people who speak many languages, simply from extrapolating from my own abilities, still, I meet extreme claims with skepticism.

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Sodomy Trial Leads to Acquittal for Accused, Jail for Witness

Don't mess with the courts

There’s tantalizingly little information about the 1899 sodomy trial of one John H. Williams in Montana. The name is common enough that in looking at one newspaper, the Anaconda Standard in that year, I was able to find several men named John Williams, not all of who could be same man: the new father, the dog racer, the retired military man, the (dead) miner, the partier, the con man, the thief, the sodomite. The first two reports on the case, refer to the accused as “John X. Williams,” but in the final story, he’s listed as “John H. Williams.” The “H” is probably correct. Likewise, John Lynch, the alleged witness, could be one of several men (although there are several men of the name in the Anaconda Standard of the time who couldn’t be the witness).

Williams was arrested on June 3, 1899 on the charge of sodomy. He was arraigned on June 5, with a hearing on June 6, leading to a trial on September 13. When the case came to court, he was acquitted, due to a lack of evidence.

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