Category Archives: Animals

Readers Respond to Peter Parley’s Feature “The Odd Picture:”  What Was It?

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Photograph of Samuel Griswold Goodrich editor of Parley's Magazine Samuel Griswold Goodrich (1793-1860), posed this question to the little subscribers of his Parley’s Magazine in 1835:

What’s here? some of my young readers will probably say…and no Wonder.  But instead of answering them…I shall only return the question: What is it?

Will you not try?—If you can write me about it, please to be very particular…. Let me see, how good your eyes are, and how well you have learned to study pictures.

P.A.C. wrote to Peter Parley in the next issue:Man sitting on chest with dead monkey at his feet.Although I am afraid I shall not make a very good story, I will try to do my best…. There appears to be a young man in prison, and his only companion, a monkey, lies dead before him, on the floor.  At one side of him, it seems as if there was a pile of apples, which I supposed had had for his monkey to eat; and he appears to be sitting on a chest, in which he may keep his clothes.—I should be glad to know if prisons are useful, and what they can be for?

Without making one comment on the young lady’s interpretation of the odd picture, Griswold launched into an explanation of why prisons failed to reform inmates.  He seems not to have considered that his reply might discourage children from submitting their ideas…   It was a stroke of luck that a school teacher in Portland, Maine, sent along six of her pupils’ attempts to make sense of the picture in their weekly writing assignment, which Griswold ran in the next number.

Portland Pupil no. 3 had a more active imagination than P.A.C.:

Blue Beard handing a key to his wife by Gustave Dore

The resemblance is slight…

I think this singular man looks something like Blue Beard. Or it may be an invalid, who is put in the hospital, and has a great deal of money; and does not know what to do with it.

At his feet there is something like a monkey dressed in clothes, or it may be a child.  He may, too, be a robber, who has got into a house, and stolen some money; and he did not like to leave the child at home, so he took it with him.  Then perhaps the house heard some one, and they found the man and child and locked him up during the night so as to keep him; and so he feels very  unhappy about it.  The child might have said something he did not like, and so he chained them to the floor.  It may be a slave who is going to be sold at auction, and they have put him there to keep him from running away.

Unable to decide if the man was Blue Beard, an invalid, or a robber or if the figure at his feet was a child, a monkey, or a slave, no. 3 was clear that whoever they were, they were unhappy being held against their wills (or dead, in the case of the child/monkey/slave).

Portland Pupil no. 4  saw money everywhere, which meant the man had to be a miser—unless he was a robber who took the child (or monkey) hostage:

Miser counting money on his desk

Seems unlikely…

I think the picture represents a miser, who has a great deal of money, and has shut himself up in a dungeon and feels very unhappy.  There is something lying at his feet which looks very much like a child, or a monkey.  Or he may  be a robber, and has stolen the money and taken the child so that he may not be found out.  He looks as if he was sitting on a chest, which may be money; and that which likes on the side of him may be money.

Portland Pupil no. 2 concurred that the figure might be a miser, seated on a chest of gold and bags of gold to one side.  Unless he happened to be a showman with his monkey, a sailor seated on a bird cage, or a smuggler.  No. 2 was the only one to suggest the man was seated on the pavement underneath a building with windows.  The  board in the window might reflect a European custom of “hanging out of the window a board with written characters on it when any one of their relations or friends are dead, I think this board may be hung out for this purpose.”

A robber would have plumes in the man’s hat, opined Portland Pupil no. 4, which would also  explain the presence of a locked chest with the symbols for pounds and pence written upon it. The pile of stuff against the wall could be money, but was more likely “provisions.”  A robber would be likely to store his plunder in a dungeon and imprison a child there.

Of all the Portland Pupils, no. 1 teased out the greatest number of meanings with the least confidence:Man sitting on chest with dead monkey at his feet.Studying a picture, is a subject with which I am very little acquainted.  I shall not therefore compose a very correct piece.  I think the picture looks something like a man put in a cell, for punishment—a robber or a murderer—who may be going to kill that person, who lies at his feet, in order to get the money, which seems to be scattered around him.  The one at his feet in dress, resembles an Indian, and his head, resembles that of a monkey.  Were there any instruments there, I should come to the conclusion that murder was his object.  In some respects he looks like a miser.  Those bags and the chest may contain money, but I think it rather doubtful.  Some might think it was a robber, in  a cavern, who has been stealing, and that person at his feet has detected him, and for fear he should expose him, is going to put an end to his life.  Whether this is an idol, or a human being, I do not know.  He looks very sober, but he may be thinking of some way of escape.  And again, it looks like a Pirate, who having murdered all the crew, with the exception of the one at his feet, and having taken the money from the vessel, has retired into a cave or cavern, and is thinking of some way of secreting it, and passing away unobserved.  Which is the most likely, I will leave the reader to decide.

No consensus was reached beyond Portland Pupils’ intuitions that the scene was dark and the man’s calling made it likely that he was up to no good.  Their interpretations of the picture suggest the Gothic-tinged adventure stories devoured outside of class may caused them to read the picture as more exciting that it was.  I thought it might be a picture of a young organ grinder seated on his instrument, mourning the death of his animal.  That kind of street performer often wore a fancy hat…Italian organ grinder and monkeyAnd the editor’s opinion of “The Odd Picture?”  On p. 279 of part X, he offered this explanation without any assurance that it was authoritative:

I think the object lying on the floor or pavement cannot be a child or an Indian; but is most evidently a monkey.  The boy or young man does not seem to be a miser, for he is too well dressed; nor do I see anything that looks like money.  He seems rather, to be some eccentric (odd) young man—perhaps a sort of hermit in a lonely, though not mean habitation—(possibly he is in prison)—whose only companion a monkey, has just died; and he is mourning his loss.  He probably dressed him in this way sometimes to suit his own fancy.  The pile of something at the man’s right hand, I think must be fruit for the monkey to eat.

Griswold turned this into an opportunity to invite readers to write in about a new picture:

More than a hundred scholars, I dare say,–certainly a very large number—wrote down their thoughts about the picture of the boy and the monkey.  Though this picture is not so curious as that…it will afford all our young readers an excellent subject in composition, if their teachers are willing they should write on it.  And if they are not, you can write at home.

If his selection of pictures had been as fascinating as the illustrations for the columns on his first loves, natural history and science, perhaps the feature would have continued beyond the 1835-6 volume….Staghorn beetle.

 

The Robins in The Children in the Wood and Other Birds Who Watch Over People

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Many English superstitions are associated with birds: Simpson and Roud’s Dictionary of English Folklore notes that swans were once thought to sing before they died and swallows to hibernate underwater.  A stranger one is you’ll have good luck all year if a bird poops on you Easter Sunday.  When a bird beat its wings against a window or flew through one into the house, it was a dark portent (Susanna Clark certainly played on that in Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell).

The Children in the Wood, or the Norfolk Gentleman’s Last Will and Testament. London: John Evans, c1790. (Cotsen 38704)

The robin and the wren enjoyed almost sacred status as reflected in the once familiar traditional saying, “Cock Robin and Jenny Wren/ Are God Almighty’s Cock and Hen.”  Bad luck followed  anyone who destroyed their nests.  But both are associated kindness to people.One reason may be the robin’s role at the end of the hugely popular ballad The Children in the Wood, or The Norfolk Gentleman’s  Last Will and Testament. Robbed of their inheritance by a greedy uncle, the sister and brother abandoned in the forest freeze to death at night and the robin tenderly covers their little bodies with leaves.   The pathetic tale was so well known that it was reprinted without an introduction in the great ballad collection of the 1720.  Allusions to the ballad are sprinkled all over eighteenth-century literature.  Jonathan Swift furnished the cottage of the humble Baucis and Philemon with a copy of the ballad pinned to the wall.  Gay preserved it among the many references to popular lore  in The Shepherd’s Week, Richardson’s Pamela refers to it along with satirists, playwrights, and the essayists of The Guardian, Rambler, and Connoisseur.

Folklorists still debate if the ballad conferred this status upon the robin, or it was an even older tradition.Edmund Burke used the ballad as a case history of the relative power of stories versus pictures used the ballad as a case study: which stirred the emotions more?

The surviving illustrations don’t make it easy to gauge if the robin tugged at the heartstrings of eighteenth-century readers more the sad fate of the children.The image above that frequently appeared in ballads and chapbooks depicted most of the story’s key scenes in one frame.  The duel where the wicked uncle is run through dominated the center, while a rather unsatisfactory rendering of the dead toddlers and the robin is tucked in the upper left hand corner.   Likewise the robin is difficult to see in this engraving after Sir Joshua Reynold’s painting and significantly, there is no litter of leaves.  This highly romantic 1826 folding frontispiece to Mary Belson Elliott’s retelling the only illustration I have found that elevates the robin’s labors, but it does suggest the difficulty in rendering the subject.

The Children in the Wood. London: William Darton, 1826. (Cotsen 14894)

One well known eighteenth-century robin wrote letters of advice to the son of the family whose garden was his home.    When perched on the sill of the library window, it noticed a letter from its little master Billy Careless to his father.  Billy’s failure to express the obligations owed his father when making a request prompted the bird to compose a kind but strong letter:

Give me leave, therefore, dear Billy, to acquaint you, that no one should ever write to his Papa or Mam, without beginning his Letter with, Honoured Sir, or Honoured Madame; and at the same time, not forget to observe…the most perfect Obedience, in a very obliging, respectful Manner.  By these means, you may not only increase your Papa’s Affection, but obtain almost any Thing from him, that you can reasonably ask, provided it be proper and in his Power to grant.

It warbles next the “unpleasing but very useful Song” that a sloppily written letter does not deserve a reply, especially when the recipient knows the correspondent is capable of much better penmanship.  The bird expresses itself “surpris’d  you ever neglect it.”    After reminding Billy about a few other points of good conduct and filial Duty, he takes his “leave on the Wing”, imploring

That I may never have occasion again to write you an unpleasing Letter of Rebuke; and that you will always remember that however distant you are, or how secret you may think yourself from your Friends and Relations, you will never be able to conceal your Faults; for some of our prying, Tattling Trible, will be continually carrying them home, to be whistled in a Melancholy Strain, in the Ears of your Papa.

Signed, “Your ever Watchful, and most affectionate Friend, Robin Redbreast from my little Hole in the Wall, at Sun-rising, the 1st of June, 1758.”  The postscript assures Billy that the letter was “prompted both by Love and Gratitude, in Return for the Plenty of Crumbs I have received at your Hands.”    Robin’s letter first appeared in the steady selling children’s book, The Polite Academy, or School of Behaviour for Young Gentlemen and Ladies first published in 1759.  However, It probably reached an even wider audience through inclusion in The Complete Letter-writer, or Polite English Secretary (also of 1759) reprinted regularly until the end of the century.  I can’t help but wonder if some of the children reading the busy-body bird’s lecture on manners thought Cock Robin in the nursery rhyme had it coming to him:

The Wren. London: John Marshall, [1787]. (Cotsen 374)

Robin’s wife the wren could also be “a little friend to little men.”  An anonymous father wrote the charming but little known The Wren, or The Fairy of the Greenhouse to amuse his three boys while their mother was recovering from the birth of their fourth child. She monitors their behavior, leaving illustrated cards—pink for good, black for bad—hung on ribbons from orange trees in the conservatory when circumstances warrant a reward or punishment. The little boys had behaved well all day until the discovery of a book, the gift of their mama, cut to bits and left it on the window sill.   When their father demanded to know who was responsible, the two culprits accused each other before eventually telling the truth and being ordered upstairs  to bed without any raspberry tarts for dessert.

The Wren. (Cotsen 374)

The next morning, the orange trees in the conservatory tubs had to be checked for a sign from the wren.  (The  method is not original to this book: similar systems were described in Newbery’s The Easter Gift  and in Elizabeth Hamm’s diary in the 19th century.)   The wren also took the extraordinary step of promising to tell the boys’ friends of ups and downs in their behavior.  Too many infractions would cause her to fly away, the cards to be burnt, and papa leave off writing the story.

 

Are these birds benevolent or bossy?