Tag Archives: books

The Imagination of Little Boys 1.

Posted on by
Reply

N.C. Wyeth, “Imagination.”  brandywine.doetech.net/Detlobjps.cfm?ObjectID=1531102&amp… 

            In the many days ago, young people–especially boys–didn’t like to read any more than they do today.  People (parents, teachers, librarians, writers, and publishers) who wanted young people to grow up to be readers snapped up books that they thought kids would actually want to read.  (Fortunately, this awful idea has now been rejected.) 

In general, these people unquestioningly accepted traditional stereotypes about gender roles and characteristics.  Boys were supposed to be adventurous, physically active, self-reliant, brave, and dirty.  As a result, they glommed on to authors who wrote about adventurous boys and young-men in dramatic situations.  They also sought to make these stories even more appealing by peppering the books with vivid illustrations.  Basically, this strategy worked like a dream.  The books engaged kids as life-long readers even after they had matured to the point where they didn’t want to be pirates anymore.  Probably some of them didn’t entirely grow up and went out in search of adventure.  It’s just my opinion, but I don’t see the harm in either one. 

            What is good and what is bad about these stories and illustrations? 

            First, many of these stories, and therefore many of the illustrations, were set in the past.  From my selfish perspective, they’re great because they make people see the past (i.e. History) as really interesting dramas involving real human beings.  This is way better than the kind of guff that appears in most school and college textbooks.  “Bore the balls off a pool table,” as one colleague said. 

Second, they make people want to read.  Reading is essential to all higher-order thinking.  It’s also the source of immense pleasure.  This gives it the bulge on playing video-games. 

On the other hand, these books were directed at white kids.  They don’t show much interest in promoting tolerance for diversity or sensitivity to emotional distress.  Nor are they concerned with contemporary urban problems and all the barriers to success raised up by society.  They tend to take the more simple-minded position that Evil exists, that Courage is required to confront it, that Ambition is a good thing and that the Individual is responsible for his or her fate.  So, they aren’t much in tune with modern opinion. 

Still, they are interesting artifacts of a bygone time.  As such, they can be examined for what messages they convey.  What you find below is not great art.  (Although, to be fair, Vincent Van Gogh said that Pyle’s pictures “struck me dumb with admiration.”)  It is powerful illustration of books and magazine stories.    

Howard Pyle (1853-1911) was born in Wilmington, taught at Drexel, and then set up his own art school in the Brandywine Valley.  He became a popular illustrator of stories about historical subjects.  His influence can still be felt.  For example, no one knew how pirates actually dressed.  Pyle made that up for his pictures.  Hollywood costume designers then just borrowed the “Pyle look” when making movies about pirates.  Compare some of Pyle’s pictures with Errol Flynn movies from the 1930s, or Captain Hook in the animated movies, or Johnny Depp’s “Jack Sparrow” and you will see what I mean. 

Pyle’s greatest student was N.C. Wyeth (1882-1945).  Wyeth was born in Massachusetts, but moved down to the Brandywine to study with Pyle.  He never left.  He’s the ancestor of all the other Wyeth artists whose work can be seen at the Brandywine River Art Museum.  (NB: see my colleague’s comment above.) 

British Disarmament in the Nineteen Twenties.

Posted on by
Reply

            Britain’s military spending had soared during the First World War.  It remained high in the immediate aftermath of the war: £766 million in 1919–20.  Then, in August 1919, led by the Secretary of State for War and Air,[1] the Cabinet’s Committee of Imperial Defence adopted the “Ten Year Rule”: the government would base its defense budgets “on the assumption that the British Empire would not be engaged in any great war during the next ten years.” 

            From January 1920 to July 1921, Britain suffered a severe recession.  In 1921, the media titan Lord Rothermere founded the “Anti-Waste League” to pressure the government.[2]  It worked: the government appointed a budget-cutting Committee on National Expenditure with Sir Eric Geddes as chairman.  What followed became known as the “Geddes Axe.”[3]  In the end, total defense spending fell from £189.5 million (1921–22) to £111 million (1922–23), before rebounding to £114.7 million in 1924–25.[4] 

            Then a series of international agreements altered the context.  The Washington Naval Conference (1921-22) prevented a naval arms race between Britain, the United States, and Japan.  The Dawes Plan (1924) conceded to German objections on reparations.  The Locarno Pact (1925) stabilized relations in Western Europe between Germany and its former opponents.  In 1925, the new—and very popular in Britain–League of Nations began pushing for a World Disarmament Conference that would reduce “offensive” weapons almost out of existence.  The Versailles treaty had substantially disarmed Germany; now it was time for the other powers to follow suit.  A reduced chance of war would justify deep cuts in military budgets.  In 1928, in light of all these developments, the Chancellor of the Exchequer[5] persuaded the Cabinet to make the “Ten Year Rule” permanent unless specifically changed by the government.   

In the early Thirties, the Great Depression forced still more economies: defense spending fell to £102 million in 1932.  In April 1931, the First Sea Lord told the Committee of Imperial Defense that “owing to the operation of the ‘ten-year-decision’ and the clamant need for economy, our absolute [naval] strength also has … been so diminished as to render the fleet incapable, in the event of war, of efficiently affording protection to our trade.”  Moreover, if the Navy had to move the bulk of its strength to the Far East to deal with Japan, it would have the means to defend neither Britain’s overseas trade nor Britain itself. 

            In September 1931, Japan seized the Chinese outlying province of Manchuria.  On 23 March 1932, the Cabinet formally abandoned the “Ten Year Rule.”  However, it stipulated that “this [change] must not be taken to justify an expanding expenditure by the Defence Services without regard to the very serious financial and economic situation” of Britain. 

Then, in January 1933, Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany.  War was less than seven years, not ten, away.  Much rearmament would have to be done in great haste. 

[1] Winston Churchill. 

[2] See: Anti-Waste League – Wikipedia and Harold Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Rothermere – Wikipedia  Comic in light of current events.  However, it was his rival, Lord Beaverbrook, who was the immigrant. 

[3] On Geddes, see: Eric Geddes – Wikipedia   On the Committee on National Expenditure, see: Geddes Axe – Wikipedia 

[4] For its part, social spending (education, health, housing, pensions, unemployment) fell from £205.8 million (1920–21) to £182.1 million (1922–23) to £175.5 million (1923–24), before rising to £177.4 million (1924–25). 

[5] Winston Churchill. 

Movies About War at Sea: Bear With Me Here.

Posted on by
Reply

            C.S. Forester (1899-1966)[1] was rejected when he volunteered for military service during the First World War.[2]  He tried med school, but left without the MD.  He tried writing.  This time he got what he wanted.  Forester discovered “write fast, send it off, and start something new—you’ll learn as you go.”  In 1922 he started a relationship with Methuen publishers that led to four popular history books.[3]  In 1924, he published two little noticed novels; in 1926 he hit pay-dirt with Payment Deferred; in 1927 he wrote two more little-noticed novels, and a third in 1928; in 1929 he hit pay-dirt again with Brown on Resolution; in 1930 and 1931 he wrote two more little-noticed novels; then in 1932 and 1933 he wrote two successful historical novels, Death to the French,[4] and The Gun.[5]  Then, suddenly, he was successful.  He got a contract to spend a quarter of each year in Hollywood working on screen-plays.  In 1935, “Brown on Resolution” became a movie[6]; he published both the still highly-regarded The General and The African Queen (and the soon-forgotten The Pursued).   In 1937 and 1938 he published the first three novels in the “Horatio Hornblower” series.[7]  These books launched a string of a dozen works that dominated his later career.  Not knowing this in advance, in 1940 he wrote To the Indies, about Spanish conquistadors. 

            Then the Second World War came.  He had missed “doing his bit” in the first war; he wasn’t going to miss it this time.  He couldn’t soldier, but he could write.  By 1938, he had created a series of British characters who were stolid, courageous, undeterred by adversity, and inventive about overcoming it.  He had mastered the action scene.[8]  The British Ministry of Information sent him to America.  “You’ve been there, you know them, make us sympathetic, eh what?”[9] 

            So he moved to the United States.  Lippity-lippity quick like a bunny, he wrote another novel about war in the Age of Fighting Sail.  This time, the Hero-Captain was an American during the War of 1812.[10]  It turns into a story of Anglo-American friendship developing in wartime.  Timely, huh?  Appearing in Summer 1941, it was a huge hit with critics and readers.  He wrote a magazine story about Americans flying in the RAF while the United States remained neutral.  It got made into a successful movie.[11]  He wrote a magazine story about Commando raids on occupied Europe.  It got made into a movie.[12]  In 1942-1943, the Royal Navy took him along on missions.  A trip on H.M.S. Penelope during a convoy to Malta resulted in the trim little fact-based novel The Ship (1943).[13] 

            After the war he stayed in America.  He continued the Hornblower series to completion.[14]  He also wrote a bunch of other stuff.  In part, he wrote a different kind of fiction.  The Sky and the Forest (1948) seems to me like the inspiration for Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart (1958).  Or perhaps Achebe just reacted against the White man’s view of Africa, like he did with Joseph Conrad and Joyce Cary.  But that’s just me.  Randall and the River of Time (1951) is a bit of a head-scratcher, but it seems to me a riff on Ecclesiastes 9: 11-12.  In part, the cobbler returned to his last, writing The Naval War of 1812/The Age of Fighting Sail (1957) about the naval side of the War of 1812; and Hunting the Bismarck/The Last Nine Days of the Bismarck/Sink the Bismarck (1959).[15] 

Among that “other stuff” is The Good Shephard (1955).  The book brings together The Captain from Connecticut and The Ship.  That is, it is the story of an American Captain commanding the escort vessels of a convoy crossing the Atlantic in the face of ferocious U-boat attacks early in 1942.  From this novel came the movie “Greyhound.” 

[1] I think that I had read all his “Hornblower” books by the time he died.  I was then twelve years old. 

[2] Only a serious medical problem would get you rejected by the British Army in 1917-1918. 

[3] Victor Emmanuel II (1922); Napoleon and His Court (1922); Josephine, Napoleon’s Empress (1925); Victor Emmanuel II and the Union of Italy (1927); Louis XIV, King of France and Navarre (1928). 

[4] OK, this has a funny side to it.  In America, it was titled Rifleman Dodd and its central character is Rifleman Matthew Dodd.  He is a soldier in the 95th Regiment of Foot who becomes separated from his unit during Sir Arthur Wellesley’s retreat to the Lines of Torres Vedras.  There is also a Rifleman Matthew Dodd who becomes separated from his unit in the 95th Regiment of Foot during Sir John Moore’s retreat to Coruna.  He appears in Bernard Cornwell, Sharpe’s Escape (2004).  Not an accident. 

[5] Very loosely adapted as “The Pride and the Passion” (dir. Stanley Kramer, 1957).  Interesting back-story. 

[6] Forever England 1935 John Mills (youtube.com).  Later remade as “Sailor of the King” (dir. Roy Boulting, 1953)  Sailor Of The King 1953 (youtube.com) 

[7] The Happy Return/Beat to Quarters (1937); A Ship of the Line and Flying Colours (both 1938).  Warner Brothers bought all three.  “Captain Horatio Hornblower” (dir. Raoul Walsh, 1951) tried to squeeze all three into one movie.   

[8] Of course the battles are well done, but the towing-off of the dismasted flagship in Ship of the Line is memorable. 

[9] Lynne Olson, Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America’s Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941 (2013) casts some light on the British information/influence operations. 

[10] Captain from Connecticut (1941). 

[11] “Eagle Squadron,” (dir. Arthur Lubin, 1942). 

[12] “Commandos Strike at Dawn” (dir. John Farrow, 1942).  Filmed on Vancouver Island because of the close resemblance to Norway.  HA! 

[13] On the background and significance for this convoy, see My Weekly Reader 14 June 2021. | waroftheworldblog 

[14] Commodore Hornblower (1945); Lord Hornblower (1946); Mr. Midshipman Hornblower (1950); Lieutenant Hornblower (1952); Hornblower and the Atropos (1953); Hornblower and the Hotspur (1962).  

[15] See: “Sink the Bismarck!” (dir. Lewis Gilbert, 1960).  Sink the Bismarck! 1960 Film in English Full HD, Kenneth More, Dana Wynter, Carl Möhner (youtube.com)  Gilbert seems unknown now, but he directed a bunch of interesting stuff.  Started with a short documentary on how cod liver oil is made.  Lesson for all young people there.  That same year, the country-western singer Johnny Horton came out with a song “Sink the Bismark!” (1960).  American theaters often ran the song as part of the trailer for the movie. Sink The Bismarck (youtube.com)