Captain of his soul

I would hate to say that I've been so wrapped in the minutiae of Peter Pan that I've missed some obvious facts connected with it, but I did not comprehend until today that William Ernest Henley--inspiration for the character of Long John Silver and also father of the young girl who gave J. M. Barrie's Wendy Darling her first name--wrote the poem Invictus. If today weren't Henley's birthday, and if Garrison Keillor hadn't mentioned him on today's edition of The Writer's Almanac, I don't know when I might have realized this.

November 26, 1892, illustration
of Henley in Vanity Fair by artist
Leslie Ward.

Born on August 23, 1849, Henley contracted tuberculosis of the bone and had his left leg amputated below the knee when he was 20. The experience led to his poem Invictus, written in 1875 and published in 1888.

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeoning of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

While it's this that Henley is most remembered for, he also lives on as the inspiration for the pirate Long John Silver in Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island--and  thus all the interpretations of the character that have followed since.

2002 Disney animated feature. I may once have
attended a sci-fi convention dressed as
Captain Amelia.

"I will now make a confession: It was the sight of your maimed strength and masterfulness that begot Long John Silver ... the idea of the maimed man, ruling and dreaded by the sound, was entirely taken from you," wrote Stevenson in a letter to Henley after Treasure Island was published--a line that rather reminds one of a certain Captain James Hook.

But lest you think Henley was dour and embittered by his injury and the struggles of being recognized as a poet (he found arguably greater success during his life as a journalist, critic, and editor), he was described by Stevenson's stepson, Lloyd Osbourne, as "... a great, glowing, massive-shouldered fellow with a big red beard and a crutch; jovial, astoundingly clever, and with a laugh that rolled like music; he had an unimaginable fire and vitality; he swept one off one's feet."

William Ernest Henley died in 1903 at the age of 53, leaving behind not only several volumes of poetry and critiques but also three plays written with Robert Louis Stevenson.

And returning to Peter Pan, as always we must here at Hook's Waltz, J. M. Barrie was a friend of Stevenson and found his own inspiration in  the character of Long John Silver. And it was Henley's five-year-old daughter Margaret who may have been the inventor of the name Wendy. Sadly, Margaret died of meningitis in 1894, at the age of 6, eight years before the play Peter Pan was first performed.