Delanceyplace.com 5/23/08-Jonathan Wild

In today's excerpt--in the era of accelerating city size, but before professional police forces, stood men like London's Jonathan Wild. Wild served a police function, but like many before and since, used this position to operate on both sides of the law:

"By the time the hangman finished him off, Jonathan Wild had few friends. In his own way he had been a public servant--a combination bounty hunter and prosecutor who tracked down thieves and recovered stolen property; a useful figure in 18th-century London, which had no formal police force of its own. Such men were called 'thief-takers,' and Wild was good at his work. But along the way, he became more problem than solution.

"He called himself the 'Thief-Taker General of England and Ireland,' but he became London's leading crime boss, specializing in robbery and extortion. He frequently encouraged or even set up thefts and burglaries, fenced the booty for a relative pittance, then returned it to its owner for the reward. If his cronies tried to double-cross him, he had them arrested, to be tried and hanged--then collected the bounty. It was said that he inspired the term 'double-cross,' for the two X's he put in his ledger beside the names of those who cheated him.

"Daniel Defoe, a journalist as well as the author of Robinson Crusoe, wrote a quickie biography of Wild a month after he was hanged, in 1725. Henry Fielding, the author of Tom Jones and Joseph Andrews, satirized him in The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild. The great John Gay took him as his inspiration for the villainous Peachum in The Beggar's Opera.

"But by the time that work had morphed into the Bertolt Brecht-Kurt Weill hit The Threepenny Opera two centuries later, Wild had all but faded from memory. And when Bobby Darin made a hit out of "Mack the Knife" 30 years after the play opened, Wild was largely a forgotten man."

Guy Gugliotta, "Digitizing The Hanging Court," Smithsonian 38, No. 1 (April 2007), pp.66-75.

With special thanks to Jane Malcolm

Delanceyplace.com 5/22/08-The Boer War

In today's encore excerpt--the Boer War. By 1898, the Boers, farmers descended from the early Dutch settlers of the Cape of Good Hope [in present day South Africa], were striving to retain their independence in a land now governed by the British. Yet the strategic importance of South Africa and the recently discovered gold in their lands meant that their independence was difficult for the British to abide:

"[British Colonial Secretary] Chamberlain and [Alfred] Milner provoked the Boer War, believing that the Boers could be bullied quickly into giving up their independence, ... It was 'the British Empire against 30,000 farmers.' ... [But] what Vietnam was to the United States, the Boer War very nearly was to the British Empire, in two respects: its huge cost in both lives and money--45,000 men dead and a quarter of a billion pounds spent--and the divisions it opened up back home. ...

"By the summer of 1900, ... the British Army had advanced into Boer territory, capturing both Bloemfontein, the capital of the Orange Free State, and Praetoria, capital of the Transvaal. ... Despite the loss of their principal towns the Boers stubbornly refused to surrender. Instead, they switched to guerrilla tactics. ... In frustration, [British Commander] Roberts adopted a ruthless strategy designed to hit the Boers where they were most vulnerable. ... British troops were authorized to burn down the Boers' homes systematically. In all, around 30,000 were razed. ... The only question this begged was what to do with their wives and children, whom the Boer guerrillas had left behind when they joined their commandos ... After some dithering, the generals came up with an answer. They herded the Boers into camps--to be precise, concentration camps. ... Altogether, 27,927 Boers (the majority of them children) died in the British camps. That was 14.5 percent of the entire Boer population, and they died mainly as a result of malnourishment and poor sanitation. More adult Boers died this way than from direct military action. A further 14,000 of 115,700 black internees--81 percent of them children--died in separate camps."

Niall Ferguson, Empire, Basic, 2002, pp. 226- 233.

Delanceyplace.com 5/21/08-Revolutionary Leadership

In today's excerpt--the leadership ranks of large-scale social and revolutionary movements--whether noble or tyrannic--are almost always highly populated with the young, along with the manichean self-assuredness and invincibility of these young. In this case, the movement is that of the Nazis (National Socialists) who rose to power in the economic rubble of the global depression, the humiliation of Versailles, and the accelerating upheavals of the Industrial Revolution itself:

"Like all other revolutionaries, the predominately youthful members of the Nazi movement had an urgent, now-or-never aura about them. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Joseph Goebbels was thirty-five years old; Reinhard Heydeich was twenty-eight; Albert Speer, twenty-seven; Adolf Eichmann, twenty-six; Josef Mengele, twenty-one; and Heinrich Himmler and Hans Frank, both thirty-two. Hermann Goring, one of the eldest among the party leadership, had just celebrated his fortieth birthday. And a decade later, in the midst of World War II, Goebbels could still conclude from a statistical survey: 'According to the data, the average age of midlevel party leaders is 34, and within government, it's 44. One can indeed say that Germany today is being led by its youth.' At the same time, Goebbels nonetheless called for a continuing 'freshening of the ranks.'

"For most young Germans, National Socialism did not mean dictatorship, censorship, and repression; it meant freedom and adventure. They saw Nazism as a natural extension of the youth movement, as an antiaging regimen for body and man. By 1935, the twenty- to thirty-year-olds who set the tone for the party rank and file viewed with open contempt those who advocated caution. They considered themselves men of action with no time for petty, individual concerns. 'The philistines may fret,' they mocked, 'but tomorrow belongs to us.' In January 1940, one ambitious young Nazi wrote of Germany's standing on the threshold of 'a great battle' and declared that, 'no matter who should fall, our country is heading toward a great and glorious future.' Even as late as March 1944, despite the terrible costs Germany had incurred, the faithful were still cheerfully gearing up for 'the final sprint to the finish in this war.'

"In a diary entry from 1939, a thirty-three-year-old described his decision to apply for a position helping resettle ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe in the expanding German empire: 'I didn't need to think about it for a second. It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I hope they'll be able to use me and will accept my application. It would get me out of the confines of my office, which has grown very stale.' Two weeks later he noted: 'I'm awed by the size of the task. I've never been given such great responsibility before.' Female university students spent semester breaks in occupied Poland, staffing the provisional day care centers that freed German settlers to bring in the harvest. One student later wrote enthusiastically: 'It made no difference which school we were from. They were united in one great mission: to apply ourselves during our break in Poland with all our strength and whatever knowledge we had. It was truly an honor to be among the first students allowed to do such pioneering work.' "

Götz Aly, Hitler's Beneficiaries: Plunder, Racial War and the Nazi Welfare State, Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 2005, pp. 13-14.

With thanks to Thomas E. (Pete) Jordon

Delanceyplace.com 5/20/08-Hard Work

In today's excerpt--Jay Leno tries to build a career in comedy:

"Born in 1951, [Jay] Leno grew up in Andover, Massachusetts, outside Boston, the son of an insurance salesman who ran motivational classes in which he'd inspire his salesmen with the Sinatra song 'High Hopes.' Leno struggled through high school and enrolled at the Bentley School of Accounting and Finance--then realized he had no aptitude for either. ... Leno decided to strike out on his own. 'It was a wonderful time to be a comic,' says Leno, 'because nobody else wanted to be a folksinger: 'Stop your war machine, Mr. President!' As comics, the audience couldn't wait to see us.' ...

"Leno pursued his stand-up career with the same dogged , can-do optimism of his dad's motivational lessons. In Boston he picked up work at Kiwanas clubs, retirement homes, hospitals, even prisons. He would walk into bars, plunk down a fifty-dollar bill, and tell the owner he wanted to do a set of stand-up; if he bombed, the proprietor could keep the money. (Most gave him back the cash no matter how he did.) ... [New York Improv owner Budd] Friedman remembers his first encounter with the eager youngster: 'He said, 'Mr. Friedman, my name is Jay Leno. This is the third night in a row I've driven down from Boston. I don't get on. When can I get on?' I said, 'You drive down from Boston and back in the same night?' 'Yeah.' 'You're on next.' ' ...

"There was something appealing, almost inspiring, about Leno's dogged, Horatio Alger-style enthusiasm. He went on TV auditions wearing his only suit; when he tried out for Jack Paar's variety show, they laughed at him. 'They said, 'Is that your suit?' It was so heartbreaking, I remember crying all the way home because I failed the audition.' His strategy was simply to work harder, and to stick to it longer, than anyone else. 'You'd spend your whole day sitting on the curb, waiting and waiting,' he wrote of lining up for auditions in his memoir, Leading with My Chin. 'Inevitably, somebody in front of you would say, 'This sucks!' and walk away. I always enjoyed that. All of a sudden, I had moved up! Without my doing a thing, my standing in show business had just improved!' "

Richard Zoglin, Comedy at the Edge, Bloomsbury, Copyright 2008 by Richard Zoglin, pp. 93-94.

Delanceyplace.com 5/19/08-Sex

In today's excerpt--evolutionary psychology; in this case, gleanings from the study of sex in the animal kingdom and the observation that males want lots of it, and sometimes bring gifts:

"In species after species, females are coy and males are not. Indeed, males are so dim in their sexual discernment they they may pursue things other than females. Among some kinds of frogs, mistaken homosexual courtship is so common that a 'release call' is used by males who find themselves in the clutches of another male to notify them that they are both wasting their time. Male snakes, for their part, have been known to spend a while with dead females before moving on to a live prospect. And male turkeys will avidly court a stuffed replica of a female turkey. In fact, a replica of a female turkey's head suspended fifteen inches from the ground will generally do the trick. The male circles the head, does its ritual displays, and then (confident, presumably, that its performance has been impressive) rises into the air and comes down in the proximity of the female's backside, which turns out not to exist. The more virile males will show such interest even when a wooden head is used, and a few can summon lust for a wooden head with no eyes or beak. ...

"For a species low in [the need] for male parental [involvement], the basic dynamic of courtship, as we've seen, is pretty simple: the male really wants sex; the female isn't so sure. She may want time to (unconsciously) assess the quality of his genes, whether by inspecting him or letting him battle with other males for her favor. She may also pause to weigh the chances that he carries the disease. And she may try to extract a precopulation gift, taking advantage of the high demand for her eggs. This 'nuptial offering'--which technically constitutes a tiny male parental investment, since it nourishes her and her eggs--is seen in a variety of species, ranging from primates to black-tipped hanging flies. (The female hanging fly insists on having a dead insect to eat during sex. If she finishes before the male is finished, she may head off in search of another meal, leaving him high and dry. If she isn't so quick, the male may repossess the leftovers for subsequent dates.)"

Robert Wright, The Moral Animal, First Vintage, Copyright 1994 by Robert Wright, pp. 46-47, 59-60.

Delanceyplace.com 5/16/08-Praise

In today's excerpt--at fourteen, soon-to-be Broadway, cinema and television superstar Julie Andrews's singing talent is bringing her larger opportunities, in this case on a nationally broadcast radio program. However, she has also endured much hardship--poverty and an alcoholic stepfather who abuses both her mother, Barbara, and her younger brothers. Further, she has just been stunned with the discovery that the man she adores and believes to be her real father is in fact not. All of which has left her especially vulnerable to criticism and starved for praise. Here she performs in front of her mother and her highly regarded vocal coach, the demanding Madame Stiles-Allen, whose kind word at a mortifying moment is still remembered 58 years later:

"During my lessons with her, Madame gave me a valuable piece of advice, which has stayed with me over the years. 'Julie,' she said. 'Remember: the amateur works until he can get it right. The professional works until he cannot go wrong.' ...

"[Once], Madame attended a radio broadcast that I was doing. I sang the aria from La Traviata with the recitative 'Ah, fors'e lui,' which leads to the very difficult 'Sempre Libera.' There is an a cappella cadenza before the main aria begins. My pitch was usually flawless, but because Madame was in the audience, I tried too hard to sing correctly for her, and I began listening to my own sound. The result was that when I finished the cadenza, I landed a half-tone high. As the orchestra picked up the melody, I realized that I was sharp. My mother, who was also in the audience, berated me for making the mistake. I'm sure she wanted to shine for Madame as much as I did. I was mortified that I had goofed, especially as this had been a live radio broadcast. I was as much my own critic as anyone else.

"Madame rose to my defense.

" 'Be gentle with her, Barbara, she sang beautifully. She was trying so hard; you have to be a little kinder. She's only a young girl.' ...

"I had never sung sharp before, but I learned to watch my pitch even more closely from then on. I was forever grateful to Madame for her kind words.

Julie Andrews, Home, Hyperion, Copyright 2008 by Julie Andrews,
pp. 117-119.

Delanceyplace.com 5/15/08-Baseball Mascots

In today's encore excerpt--baseball mascots in the 1910s and 1920s, the heyday of baseball's biggest stars Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth, show how much American societal norms have changed:

"Superstition flourished in baseball. Teams hired black children, hunchbacks, and mis-fits as good luck charms. The 1911 World Series had seen the clash of two of the most famous mascots, Charles 'Victory' Faust, described by some as a lunatic, and Louis Van Zelst, a dwarf. (Faust's Giants lost; within three years, he was in an insane asylum.) The Tigers had a six- toed batboy in 1919. They adopted a mutt, nicknamed Victory, in 1923--a year after experimenting with a live tiger cub. The St. Louis Browns even toured with a monkey--until the team started losing.

"[Ty] Cobb himself had the exuberant Alex Rivers, who since 1908 had acted as his personal assistant and number-one devotee. Rivers, a five-foot-two black man from New Orleans, was a familiar sight at [Detroit's] Navin Field, bounding through the dugout to retrieve bats, flashing his toothy smile. 'I want Alex around,' Cobb said during a Detroit winning streak. 'I realize that the work of our players wins games, but just the same I wouldn't like to start one without Alex here. Superstitious? Well, maybe.' ...

"The Yankees employed the prize of all mascots. The much sought Eddie Bennett--a stunted, crippled orphan credited with helping the White Sox, Dodgers, and Yankees win pennants from 1919 to 1923--had joined the Yankees as a grinning, seventeen-year-old batboy in 1921. Before games, Ruth and Bennett sometimes entertained with a game of catch in which Ruth would continually hurl a ball just above Bennett's reach. Ruth wanted only Bennett to handle his bats."

Tom Stanton, Ty and the Babe, St. Martin's Press, 2007,
pp. 104-5.