Talk Like a Pirate Day Redux

Your annual reminder that no, you are probably not talking like a pirate, you are talking like actor Robert Newton, who played Long John Silver in a movie and then a TV miniseries in the 1950s. And he didn't actually talk like a pirate either.

You can find episodes on YouTube, or if you're especially lucky--I was--in boxed sets in thrift stores.

Newton also played many, many other roles. Check them out.

Sailing through Disneyland

When I started researching The Stowaway, I became aware of tall ships everywhere. It's been fun to see how much sailing lore still exists in modern culture (as well as annoying to note the inaccuracies in everything from TV shows to video games--oh my, video games).  I recently spent a couple of days in Disneyland, which unsurprisingly turns to be a splendid place for ship-spotting.

Peter Pan's flight was the obvious first stop. There's something rather marvelous about "sailing" over London and Neverland in a tiny ship.

Donald Duck's home is a little ship too, the Miss Daisy, moored in Toon Lake in Mickey's Toontown.

My companion and I were impressed with the full-sized, three-masted replica of the sailing ship Columbia, which turns out to have a link to my research for The Stowaway (as do so many things). In 1790, the Columbia was the first American ship to circumnavigate the globe, accompanied by Washington state's own Lady Washington on the first part of the voyage. Captain Robert Gray was the first recorded European to enter the mouth of the Columbia River, which takes its name from the ship.

Columbia has been a Disneyland attraction since 1958. It runs on a gas engine along a track, but does have rigging and sails, though they're rarely unfurled. It now plays the role of the Black Pearl in the Fantasmic! evening show, but for twenty-four years before that played the part of Captain Hook's Jolly Roger. I am, of course, sorry to have missed that.

Belowdecks in Disneyland's version is a galley and officers' quarters, added in 1964, all looking quite accurate to me. The twelve-minute ride around Tom Sawyer's Island doesn't provide quite enough time to examine every detail, at least if you also want to see the "shipwreck" on the island.

The Storybook Land canal boats take riders past Prince Eric's castle and ship from The Little Mermaid,

and also a tiny Kensington Gardens complete with golden Peter Pan statue.

Night falls with a glimpse of a pirate flag beyond the trees.

Here's one last ship from my favorite window on Main Street:

a diorama that rotates from the interior of the Darling children's house to their flight with Peter Pan over London.

I almost missed that transition. It's worth taking a second look at everything at Disneyland, probably, if you get the chance.

Weird words: A diversion

While it may seem that everything I do--certainly everything I write--is related to Captain Hook and Peter Pan, occasionally I do compose something else. When I write "weird poetry," it tends to appear in a publication called Spectral Realms.

Cover art: “Cave Dwellers” by Mutartis Boswell

I have two poems in the most recent issue (Winter 2018/No. 8), but I think this entire issue is particularly good. In addition to original poetry, each issue has a couple of classic reprints along with reviews and an article or two. If you like traditional verse or weird poetry (much more in addition to the Lovecraft-inspired), there is much here to enjoy.

This one is a terza rima, the form used in Dante's Inferno and Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind." It may also be tangentially related to Peter Pan in that the subject is a ghost ship, but let's overlook that. I love the title font.

Here's where I nearly got in over my head.As you can see, it's a ballad, but I decided for some reason to create my own rhyme scheme. I ended up with more rhymes than strong words for the rest of the line, and had to decide which rhymes to keep, and then rework the lines I liked to contain them. The whole process took several months of coming back to it, throwing up my hands in despair, and stalking away only to return to it later. But this one was important to me to finish, and do right, and I'm happy with what was finally printed in Spectral Realms.

I have a sestina in mind for my next submission--a companion piece to my "Keeper of the Innsmouth Light" from Issue 2. Since that was printed in Winter 2015 (still available on the website!), it's probably time I get this one done. Sestinas are not easy--there's a reason I haven't written one since 2015--but after "The Ballad of 3 A.M.," writing it will probably be a relief.

Should I rework an old vampire poem as well? I just might.

Peter Pan and Andrew Wyeth

I discovered this unlikely connection at Winter is Always, the recent Andrew Wyeth retrospective at Seattle Art Museum. As I've observed before, I find reflections of J. M. Barrie's famous character in  many unexpected places.

"Christina's World" is certainly Andrew Wyeth's most famous painting (although it was not at the SAM exhibit--it lives at MOMA in New York and does not travel). The history of the land around him--his home in Chadd's Ford, Pennsylvania, and a summer home in Maine--permeates all of Wyeth's work, and that leads us forthwith to his connection with fictional pirates.

Captain Keitt by Howard Pyle (1907)

I've written before in this blog about Howard Pyle, the illustrator who brought the image of the quintessential swashbuckling pirate to the modern world.

One of Pyle's students in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, was N. C. (Newell Convers) Wyeth, Andrew's father. N. C. Wyeth illustrated 112 books during his lifetime, including a 1911 edition of Treasure Island which is considered a masterpiece.

"Trodden Weed," 1951

Wyeth painted this self-portrait of sorts, Trodden Weed, with a piratical pair of boots previously owned by Howard Pyle.

Painter's Folly (1989). The house went up for sale in 2014 and
was ultimately bought by the township of Chadd's Ford in 2017.
Note the mermaids!

Andrew Wyeth considered Pyle his "spiritual grandfather," said Joyce Hill Stoner, the art conservator who worked for the Wyeths for thirty years. Pyle's house, Painter's Folly was the subject of several of Wyeth's paintings, as were Helen and George Sipala, the couple who lived in the house during his lifetime.

Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009) was often in poor health as a child and was home-tutored. He had a difficult relationship with his demanding father, who died when his car stalled on railroad tracks when Andrew was 28. He considered his father's death to be a formative emotional event--much as J. M. Barrie was affected by his brother's death. After this, Wyeth turned from watercolors to egg tempera (i think Captain Hook would approve of this old-fashioned technique), which gives his work a stark and timeless quality.

Perhaps it is odd that I was so alert to connections to Peter Pan, but note the hook appendage in this portrait of Wyeth's neighbor Bill Hoper, a blacksmith and handyman. The docent who discussed the exhibit at SAM said that Wyeth's father wouldn't have approved of so much reality in a portrait--not an issue for Andrew.

Although he was one of the foremost American artists of the twentieth century, his style of work became unfashionable during his lifetime, considered too sentimental by those who preferred their art abstract. I admit I was drawn to seeing this exhibit because a friend of mine described it as bleak, and I hoped I would find some comfort in that given my own mindset after the death of my father last September. What I found in Andrew Wyeth's paintings was imagery that is almost surreal, realism that expands into symbol and emotion, a depth beneath what has been dismissed as cartoonish or antiquated. This is what I hope in some small way to bring to my portrayal of Captain James Hook: something close to the heart, or maybe the bone.

“Life is strange,” Wyeth once told [Edgar Allen Beem]. “From the outside, things may look one way, but when you look inside, they’re very different.”

*  *  *

Note for further reading: I came across A Piece of the World, a fictionalized memoir of Christina Olson of "Christina's World," not long after seeing the Winter is Always exhibit. Naturally, it is now on my reading list.

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.

Peter Pan and the historical novel

The Stowaway began as a fantasy story, but it very quickly became a historical novel about Edwardian England (and other places). When I discovered the Historical Novel Society, I realized I had found a group of people who also understood the pleasures and perils of research. And when the organizers announced their 2017 conference would be held in Portland, Oregon--only a few hours' trip away from me--I knew this was something I shouldn't miss.

And sure enough, I found panels and sessions on topics immediately relevant to my work, from one on historical fiction set in and around World War I (a conflict that will inform the potential sequel to The Stowaway) to panels on Gilded Age fiction (including fairy tales set in that time period) to Victorian funeral customs  (as there is a funeral in The Stowaway).

Art in Harper's New Monthly Magazine,1880, by George du Maurier,
grandfather of the Llewelyn Davies boys who inspired
J. M. Barrie to write Peter Pan.

I also learned about new places to find primary source materials, some expensive and difficult to access for non-academics, but others free and online, such as ProfNet (set up for journalists, but helpful for other writers as well), The American Association for State and Local History, and Google Scholar --and don't forget Google Maps. The Metropolitan Museum's website Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History is particularly wonderful, both as a historical reference and for illustrations of building interiors.

Always of interest to historical fiction writers is the question of balancing history with fiction. Specific facts add realism to a novel and bring the reader deeper into that world, but too much of that can distract from the story the writer is trying to tell. Inaccuracies can throw a reader out of the story. And as was also discussed at the Pop Culture Association/American Culture Association conference I attended in Seattle last year, a historical novel is also a novel about today. Research turns up new information every day, and our interpretations of the past vary accordingly--and it's unavoidable that we bring our own contemporary values and outlook to what we write. We inevitably comment on the time we're writing in as well as the time a novel takes place, and that, along with putting the past into context with the present, makes historical fiction relevant to modern readers.

Peter Pan in Barrie's hometown of
Kirriemuir, Scotland.

The 2018 HNS conference will take place next August in J. M. Barrie's home country of Scotland. This is a little more difficult to arrange than a four-hour drive from home--but no doubt it would be worth the effort.

Manga in Neverland (Volume 3)

I am delighted to announce that Elaine Tipping has posted the Kickstarter campaign for Volume 3 of her Peter Pan manga (with a lovely animation). This volume, chapters 7-10 of the webcomic, contains full versions of Neverland adventures J. M. Barrie only mentioned briefly in his book. If you like reading about the shenanigans of the lost boys, you will especially enjoy this.

Elaine and I agree that too many people have never read the original Peter Pan, and thus she's illustrating it rather than other, altered versions that have appeared since the book's publication in 1911. Barrie's book contains both whimsy and darkness that other versions such as Walt Disney's 1953 animated feature skip over, and Elaine Tipping's manga embraces them as well.

The rewards for each campaign level include digital and print versions of Volume One and Volume Two, chibi keychains, tote bags, art cards, and character notebooks. I'm especially hoping for the completion of the second stretch goal: A new eight-page Wendy adventure. And, of course, supporting the continued manga adventures of Peter Pan means seeing more of Captain Jas. Hook in future editions.

Elaine began her Peter Pan webcomic in 2011, and updates it every Sunday. In addition to supporting and reading the collected, updated comics in book form, you can follow the story as it's completed on Smackjeeves, Deviant Art, tumblr, and Tapastic.