Edward Carpenter: “Clouds and Daemonic Thunder Through the Blue Vault”

Photographers Unknown, Clouds and Daemonic Thunder Through the Blue Vault

O APRIL, month of Nymphs and Fauns and Cupids,
Month of the Sungod’s kisses, Earth’s sweet passion,
Of fanciful winds and showers;
Apollo, glorious over hill and dale
Ethereally striding; grasses springing
Rapt to his feet, buds bursting, flowers out-breathing
Their liberated hearts in love to him.

(The little black-cap garrulous on the willow
Perching so prim, the crested chaffinch warbling,
And primrose and celandine, anemone and daisy,
Starring the tender herb which lambs already nibble.)

Month of all-gathering warmth,
Of breathless moments, hotter and hotter growing-
Smiles turned to fire, kisses to fierce earnest-
Of sultry swoons, pauses, and strange suspense
(Clouds and daemonic thunder through the blue vault
threateningly rolling):
Then the delirious up-break- the great fountains of the
deep, in Sex,
Loosened to pouring failing rushing waters;
Shafts of wild light; and Sky and Earth in one another’s
arms
Melted, and all of Heaven spent in streams of love
Towards the Loved one.

George Carpenter, April, Towards Democracy, 1911

Born in August of 1844 in Hove, a seaside city located next to Brighton, Edward Carpenter was an English poet, utopian socialist, philosopher, and an early activist for both prison reform and gay rights. Among his most notable philosophical publications was his 1889 “Civilization: Its Cause and Cure” which contained Carpenter’s famous essays on civilization and his theory that it is a disease of mankind that must be cured. Papers included in this collection discuss the rampant ill-health suffered by society as well as criticisms of modern science to support this theory.

One of four siblings, Edward Carpenter was educated at nearby Brighton College where his father served as governor. A late starter academically in life, he was still able to secure a position at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. While at Cambridge, Carpenter was influenced by the teachings of Christian Socialist theologian Frederick Denison Maurice, who had recently founded London’s Working Men’s College. He also began to explore his sexual identity; the most notable example of which was his close relationship with fellow student Edward Anthony Beck, who eventually ended the relationship.

In 1868, Carpenter graduated from Trinity College as tenth Wrangler, having earned first-class honors in mathematics. After graduation, he remained in Cambridge and was ordained, by convention and not conviction, as a curate of the Church of England where he served at St. Edward’s parish under F. D. Maurice. In 1871, at the age of twenty-seven, Carpenter was invited, but declined, to become a tutor to Prince George Frederick, later King George V, and his brother Prince Albert Victor, the Duke of Clarence. This position was accepted by his lifelong friend from college, John Neale Dalton, whom Carpenter continued to visit during Dalton’s fourteen-year tutelage to the princes.

Discouraged with his life in the church and university and weary of the hypocrisy of Victorian society, Edward Carpenter immersed himself in reading, particularly finding solace in the works of Walt Whitman whom he would later meet in 1877. He was released from his duties in the Anglican ministry and left the church in 1874. Moving to Leeds, Carpenter became a lecturer with the University Extension Movement, formed to provide education to deprived communities. His lectures on astronomy and ancient Greek culture and music were, however, not attended by the working classes but by mostly middle-class people who expressed no real interest in the subjects.

Disillusioned, Carpenter moved to Sheffield, a crucial center of England’s Industrial Revolution, where he came in contact with its manual workers and, inspired, began to write poetry. During this time in Sheffield, Carpenter became increasingly radical and joined the Social Democratic Federation, Britain’s first organized socialist political party. Upon his father’s death in 1882, Carpenter inherited a substantial sum of money, in excess of six-hundred thousand pounds in today’s currency. This inheritance allowed him to cease lecturing and start a simpler life on a farm managed by Albert Ferneyhough and his family.

Edward Carpenter and Albert Ferneyhough eventually became lovers and moved in 1883, with Albert’s family, to Millthorpe in Derbyshire. In Millthorpe, Carpenter built a large house with outbuildings constructed of local stone with slate roofs; a small business was started with marketable garden produce and handmade leather sandals. As a member of the Social Democratic Federation, Carpenter worked on a number of projects to improve the living conditions of industrial workers. He left the SDF in 1884 and, along with textile designer and author William Morris, joined the Socialist League.

In 1883, Carpenter published the first part of “Towards Democracy”, a long poem expressing his idea of spiritual democracy and a freer, more just society. This tome, heavily influenced by Walt Whitman’s poetry and passages from the Bhagavad Gita, was later expanded several times with the complete edition published in 1905. In 1887, Carpenter published his “England’s Ideal”, a collection of essays which included his “Simplification of Life”. From 1888 to 1889, he lived with Cecil Reddle, an educational reformer whom he helped found the Abbotsholme School, a progressive alternative to public education.

Drawn increasingly to Hindu philosophy, Edward Carpenter traveled to India and Ceylon where he developed the conviction that socialism would bring about a revolution in both economic conditions and human consciousness. His account of the journey was published as the 1892 “From Adam’s Peak to Elephanta: Sketches in Ceylon and India”. On his return to England in 1891, Carpenter met George Merrill, a Sheffield working-class man twenty-two years his junior. After the Ferneyhough family left Millthorpe in 1893, Merrill became his partner, cohabiting from 1898, and remained with Carpenter for the rest of their lives.

Carpenter and Merrill had many friends among activists and artists, including Henry Stephens Salt, founder of the Humanitarian League; author Aldous Huxley; essayist and sexologist Havelock Ellis; actor and producer Ben Iden Payne; Labor activists Bruce and Katharine Glasier; and feminist writer Olive Shreiner. One of his closest friends was the writer E. M. Forster, who often visited the couple at Millthorpe. Carpenter and Merrill’s relationship would inspire Forster during a 1913 visit to write his gay-themed novel “Maurice”.

In 1902, Edward Carpenter published his anthology of prose and verse “Ioläus: An Anthology of Friendship” and, in 1915, published “The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife”, a tome against class-monopoly and social inequality. His 1921 book, “Pagan and Christian Creeds” espoused the story of Christ as mythology. In 1922 after the death of Carpenter’s former lover George Hukin, Carpenter and Merrill relocated to Guildford in Surrey. On Carpenter’s eightieth birthday, he was presented with an album, signed by every member of the Labor Party Government, in recognition of his support for the working classes.

In January of 1928, George Merrill, who had grown dependent on alcohol since moving to Surrey, died suddenly. Carpenter was devastated and sold their house and lodged for a short time with his care giver Ted Inigran. They took a small bungalow in Surrey where, in May of 1928, Carpenter had a stroke. He lived for another thirteen months and died on the 28th of June in 1929, at the age of eighty-four. He was interred in the same grave as Merrill at the Mount Cemetery in Guildford, England.

Note: A collection of Edward Carpenter’s works and papers are housed at the Harry Ransom Center of the University of Texas at Austin. This collection includes letters and the hand-written manuscripts of “Toward Industrial Freedom” and “The Trojan War & Constantinople”, among other items.

A transcript of a discussion, given by poet Allen Ginsberg, on Edward Carpenter’s 1888 “The Secret of Time and Satan” can be found at The Allen Ginsberg Project website. An audio of that discussion is also provided. The discussion is located at: https://allenginsberg.org/2014/03/expansive-poetics-42-edward-carpenter-4/

Top Insert Image: Fred Holland Day, “Edward Carpenter”, 1900, Black and White Photogravure, 9.9 x 7.3 cm, National Portrait Gallery, London

Second Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Edward Carpenter and George Merrill”

Third Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “George Edward Hukin, Edward Carpenter and George Merrill”, Date Unknown, Photogravure

Fourth Insert Image: Henry A Bishop, “Edward Carpenter”, 1907, Oil on Canvas, 47.3 x 43.8 cm, National Portrait Gallery, London

Bottom Insert Image: Alvin Langdon Coburn, “Edward Carpenter”, November 28 1905, Photogravure, 20.8 x 15.7 cm, National Portrait Gallery, London

Calendar: April 30

A Year: Day to Day Men: 30th of April

The Mesh Pouch

April 30, 1952 was the date for the first advertisement of a toy on national television in the United States.

In the early 1940s, Brooklyn-born toy inventor George Lerner came up with the idea of inserting small, pronged body and face parts into fruits and vegetables to create a “funny face man”. Lerner would often take potatoes from his mother’s garden and, using various other fruits and vegetables as facial features, he would make dolls with which his younger sisters could play. The grape-eyed, carrot-nosed, potato-headed dolls became the principal idea behind the plastic toy which would later be manufactured.

In the beginning, Lerner’s toy proved controversial. With World War II and food rationing a recent memory for most Americans, the use of fruits and vegetables to make toys was considered irresponsible and wasteful. After several years of trying to sell the toy, Lerner finally convinced a food company to distribute the plastic parts as premiums in breakfast cereal boxes.

in 1951, Lerner showed the idea to Henry and Merrill Hassenfeld, who conducted a small school supply and toy business called Hassenfeld Brothers which later changed its name to Hasbro, Inc.. Realizing the toy was quite unlike anything in their line, they paid the cereal company to stop production and bought the rights. Lerner was offered an advance of $500 and a 5% royalty on every kit sold. The toy was dubbed “Mr. Potato Head” and went into production.

On April 30, 1952, Mr. Potato Head became the first toy advertised on television. The campaign was also the first to be aimed directly at children; before this, commercials were only targeted at adults, so toy adverts had always been pitched to parents. This commercial revolutionized the field of marketing, and caused an industrial boom. Over one million kits were sold in the first year.

In 1953, Mrs. Potato Head was added, and soon after, Brother Spud and Sister Yam completed the Potato Head family with accessories reflecting the affluence of the fifties that included a car, a boat trailer, a kitchen set, a stroller, and pets called Spud-ettes. Although originally produced as separate plastic parts to be stuck into a real potato or other vegetable, a plastic potato was added to the kit in 1964.

Calendar: April 29

A Year: Day to Day Men: 29th of April

Lazy Sunday Morning

A pivotal figure in the history of jazz, Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington was born on April 29, 1899 in Washington, D.C.

Duke Ellington wrote his first composition “Soda Fountain Rag” in the summer of 1914 while working as soda jerk at the Poodle Dog Cafe. This piece was created by ear, as he had not yet mastered reading and writing music. At the age of 14, he began sneaking into poolrooms to listen to the poolroom pianists play, causing him to get serious about his piano lessons. With the guidance of Washington pianist and band leader Oliver “Doc” Perry, Ellington learned to read sheet music, project a professional style and improve his technique.

Ellington played in other band ensembles while at the same time working several day jobs. In late 1917 he formed and acted as booking agent for his first group “The Duke’s Serenaders”. He had a successful career in Washington D.C. playing for private society balls and embassy parties. When his drummer Sonny Greer was invited to join the Wilber Sweatman Orchestra in New York City, Ellington made the fateful decision to leave behind his successful career in Washington, D.C., and moved to Harlem, New York, ultimately becoming part of the Harlem Renaissance.

In 1925 Duke Ellington and his Kentucky Club Orchestra grew to a group of ten players; they developed their own sound by displaying the non-traditional expression of Ellington’s arrangements, the street rhythms of Harlem, and the exotic-sounding trombone growls and wah-wahs, high-squealing trumpets, and sultry saxophone blues licks of the band members.

In the late 1950s Ellington began to work directly on scoring for film soundtracks; one was the 1959 film “Anatomy of a Murder”, in which Ellington appeared fronting a roadhouse comb. Film historians have recognized the soundtrack of “Anatomy of a Murder” as a landmark – the first significant Hollywood film music by African Americans comprising non-diegetic music, that is, music whose source is not visible or implied by action in the film, like an on-screen band. The score avoided the cultural stereotypes which previously characterized jazz scores and rejected a strict adherence to visuals in ways that presaged the New Wave cinema of the 1960s.

Despite his advancing age in the 1960s and 70s, Ellington showed no sign of slowing down as he continued to make vital and innovative recordings: ‘The Far East Suite’, ‘New Orlean Suite’, ‘The Afro-Eurasian Eclipse’, and ‘Francis A and Edward K’, his only album recorded with Frank Sinatra. Ellington performed what is considered his final full concert in a ballroom at Northern Illinois University on March 20, 1974. At his funeral, attended by over 12.000 people at the cathedral of Saint John the Divine, Ella Fitzgerald summed up the occasion, saying “It’s a very sad day. A genius has passed”.

Calendar: April 28

A Year: Day to Day Men: 28th of April

A Road Well Traveled

April 28, 1879 was the birthdate of Edgard Tytgat, the Flemish painter and etcher.

Edgard Tytgat was a Belgium based artist: a painter, author, and engraver. He studied at the Brussels Academy of Fine Arts where he discovered the new movements of symbolism and post-impressionism. It was artists like Cezanne and Bonnard that influenced his work.

One of the publications with woodcuts that he produced in 1917 after the death of his friend, Wouters, is the volume “Quelques Images de la Vie d’un Artiste” (Some Images of an Artists’ Life), of which he singlehandedly printed forty numbered copies. By every one of the sixteen intentionally naïve prints Tytgat wrote a short text about the life of Rik and Nel Wouters, whom he knew so well.

Tytgat’s style evolved from local Fauvism to a wayward Expressionism with a popular and naïve character. During his career Edgard Tytgat painted nearly five hundred canvases and made countless watercolors, woodcuts, etchings and drawings. Even though he belonged to the group of artists associated with the journal Sélection, his work cannot be placed in any one particular camp. It is difficult to divide his work into well-defined periods, and it lacks clear chronological development. His earliest works are considered impressionistic, while later works can be described as expressionistic or naive.

Tytgat’s world was bittersweet. He was thoroughly familiar with art history and often drew inspiration from classic themes. His works are often bathed in an atmosphere of lost innocence or youth, fantasies, and eroticism. Everyday life and incidents from his own environment were also a great source of inspiration. However, Tytgat’s real strength was his virtuoso manner of storytelling. He invested images that at first glance seem naive, childlike and cheerful with a dark side. In this way he was able to create a complex web of meanings. A multitude of scenarios play out within a single image.

Calendar: April 27

A Year: Day to Day Men: 27th of April

Natural Extension into Space

April 27 1791 was the birthdate of Samuel Finley Breese Morse, the American painter and inventor.

In England, Morse perfected his painting techniques under the watchful eye of notable artist Washington Allston; by the end of 1811, he gained admittance to the Royal Academy. At the Academy, he was moved by the art of the Renaissance and paid close attention to the works of Michelangelo and Raphael. After observing and practicing life drawing and absorbing its anatomical demands, the young artist produced his masterpiece, “The Dying Hercules” after first making a sculpture as a study for the painting.

In 1825, Samuel Morse decided to explore a means of rapid long distance communication. While returning by ship from Europe in 1832, he encountered Charles Thomas Jackson, a man from Boston well schooled in electromagnetism. Witnessing various experiments with Jackson’s electromagnet, Morse developed the concept of a single-wire telegraph. In time the Morse code, which he developed became the primary language of telegraphy in the world. It is still the standard for rhythmic transmission of data.

Morse encountered the problem of getting a telegraphic signal to carry over more than a few hundred yards of wire. His breakthrough came from the insights of Professor Leonard Gale, who taught chemistry at New York University. With Gale’s help, Morse introduced extra circuits or relays at frequent intervals and was soon able to send a message through ten miles (16 km) of wire. This was the great breakthrough he had been seeking. Morse and Gale were soon joined by Alfred Vail, an enthusiastic young man with excellent skills, insights, and money.

At the Speedwell Ironworks in Morristown, New York, on January 11, 1838, Morse and Vail made the first public demonstration of the electric telegraph. Although Morse and Alfred Vail had done most of the research and development in the ironworks facilities, they chose a nearby factory house as the demonstration site. The first public transmission, with the message, “A patient waiter is no loser”, was witnessed by a mostly local crowd.

On May 24, 1844, a 38 mile line financed by Congress and stretching between Washington D.C. and Baltimore, was officially opened. Samuel Morse sent the now-famous words, “What hath God wrought” from the Supreme Court chamber in the basement of the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., to the B&O’s Mount Clare Station in Baltimore.

Calendar: April 26

A Year: Day to Day Men: 26th of April

Hanging at the Park

On April 26, 1478 the Pazzi Conspiracy occurred in Florence, Italy.

The Pazzi conspiracy was a plot by members of the Pazzi family and others to displace the de’ Medici family as rulers of Renaissance Florence, Italy. The Salviati, Papal bankers in Florence, were at the center of the conspiracy. Pope Sixtus IV was an enemy of the Medici family. He had purchased from Milan the lordship of Imola, a trade route stronghold on the border between Papal and Tuscan territory. Lorenzo de’ Medici also wanted this stronghold for the city of Florence. The purchase was financed by the Pazzi bank, even though Francesco de’ Pazzi had promised Lorenzo they would not aid the Pope.

Girolamo Riario, Francesco Salviati and Francesco de’ Pazzi put together a plan to assassinate Lorenzo and Giuliano de’ Medici. Pope Sixtus was approached for his support. He made a very carefully worded statement in which he said that in the terms of his holy office he was unable to sanction killing. He made it clear that it would be of great benefit to the papacy to have the Medici removed from their position of power in Florence, and that he would deal kindly with anyone who did this. He instructed the men to do what they deemed necessary to achieve this aim, and said that he would give them whatever support he could.

On Sunday, 26 April 1478, during High Mass at the Duomo before a crowd of 10,000, the Medici brothers were assaulted. Giuliano de’ Medici was stabbed 19 times by Bernardo Bandini dei Baroncelli and Francesco de’ Pazzi. As Giuliano bled to death on the cathedral floor, his brother Lorenzo escaped with serious, but not life-threatening, wounds. Lorenzo was locked safely in the sacristy and the coup d’etat failed.

Most of the conspirators were soon caught and summarily executed; five, including Francesco de’ Pazzi and Salviati, were hanged from the windows of the Palazzo della Signoria. Jacopo de’ Pazzi, head of the family, escaped from Florence but was caught and brought back. He was tortured, then hanged from the Palazzo della Signoria next to the decomposing corpse of Salviati. He was buried at Santa Croce, but the body was dug up and thrown into a ditch.

Although Lorenzo appealed to the crowd not to exact summary justice, many of the conspirators, as well as many people accused of being conspirators, were killed. Between 26 April, the day of the attack, and 20 October 1478, a total of eighty people were executed. The Pazzi were banished from Florence, and their lands and property confiscated. Their name and their coat of arms were perpetually suppressed. The name Pazzi was erased from public registers, all buildings and streets.

Calendar: April 25

A Year: Day to Day Men: 25th of April

Rivulets of Water

The first edition of “Robinson Crusoe” by Daniel Defoe was published on April 25, 1719.

Around 1692 at the age of thirty-two, Daniel Defoe began to write, partly as a moneymaking venture. One of his first creations was a poem written in 1701, entitled “The True-Born Englishman,” which became popular and earned Defoe some celebrity. He also wrote political pamphlets. One of these, “The Shortest Way with Dissenters”, was a satire on persecutors of dissenters and sold well among the ruling Anglican elite until they realized that it was mocking their own practices. As a result, Defoe was publicly pilloried—his hands and wrists locked in a wooden device—in 1703, and jailed in Newgate Prison.

He also worked as a spy, reveling in aliases and disguises, reflecting his own variable identity as merchant, poet, journalist, and prisoner. This theme of changeable identity would later be expressed in the life of Robinson Crusoe, who becomes merchant, slave, plantation owner, and even unofficial king. In his writing, Defoe often used a pseudonym simply because he enjoyed the effect. He was incredibly wide-ranging and productive as a writer, turning out over 500 books and pamphlets during his life.

Defoe began writing fiction late in life, around the age of sixty. He published his first novel “Robinson Crusoe”, in 1719, attracting a large middle-class readership. He followed in 1722 with “Moll Flanders”, the story of a tough, streetwise heroine whose fortunes rise and fall dramatically. Both works straddle the border between journalism and fiction. “Robinson Crusoe” is thought to be based on the true story of a shipwrecked seaman named Alexander Selkirk and was passed off as history, while “Moll Flanders” included dark prison scenes drawn from Defoe’s own experiences in Newgate and interviews with prisoners.

His focus on the actual conditions of everyday life and avoidance of the courtly and the heroic made Defoe a revolutionary in English literature and helped define the new genre of the novel. Stylistically, Defoe was a great innovator. Dispensing with the ornate style associated with the upper classes, Defoe used the simple, direct, fact-based style of the middle classes, which became the new standard for the English novel. With the theme of solitary human existence in “Robinson Crusoe”, Defoe paved the way for the central modern theme of alienation and isolation. Defoe died in London on April 24, 1731, of a fatal “lethargy”—an unclear diagnosis that may refer to a stroke.

Calendar: April 24

A Year: Day to Day Men: 24th of April

A Lavish Display

April 24, 1944 was the release date of the thriller movie “Double Indemnity”.

The movie “Double Indemnity” is a 1944 film noir, co-written by Billy Wilder and detective fiction writer Raymond Chandler. The screenplay was based on the novella of the same name by James M. Cain which was originally presented as an eight-part serial. The term ‘double indemnity’ refers to a clause in certain life insurance policies that doubles the payout in rare cases when death is caused accidentally, such as while riding a railway.

The film starred Fred MacMurray as the insurance salesman, Edward G Robinson as the insurance claims adjuster who job is to find phony claims, and Barbara Stanwyck as a housewife who wishes her husband were dead. Fred MacMurray is infatuated with Barbara Stanwyck and devises a plan to make the murder of her husband appear to be an accidental fall from a train, thus triggering the double indemnity clause in the husband’s insurance policy.

The story began making the rounds in Hollywood shortly after it was published as a serial in 1936. Its author James Cain had already made a name for himself the year before with the “Postman Always Rings Twice”, a story of murder and passion between a migrant worker and the unhappy wife of a café owner. Cain’s agent sent copies of the novella to all the major studios and within days, all were competing to buy the rights for $25,000. Then a letter went out from Joseph Breen at the Hays Office, the enforcers of the 1930 Production Code, saying the story was unacceptable. All the studios withdrew their bids.

Eight years later, Paramount resubmitted the script to the Hays Office, but the response was nearly identical to the one eight years earlier. The studio then submitted a film treatment crafted by Wilder and his writing partner Charles Brackett, and this time the Hays Office approved the project with only a few objections: the portrayal of the disposal of the body, a proposed gas-chamber execution scene, and the skimpiness of the towel worn by the female lead in her first scene.

Praised by many critics when first released, “Double Indemnity” was nominated for seven Academy Awards but did not win any. Widely regarded as a classic, it is often cited as a model for the film noir style and as having set the standard for the films that followed in that genre. Wilder himself considered “Double Indemnity” his best film in terms of having the fewest scripting and shooting mistakes and always maintained that the two things he was proudest of in his career were the compliments he received from James Cain about “Double Indemnity” and from Agatha Christie for his handling of her “Witness for the Prosecution”.

Calendar: April 23

A Year: Day to Day Men: 23rd of April

The Observer

The Cath Chluain Tarbh, the Battle of Clontarf, took place on April 23, 1014.

The Battle of Clontarf took place at Clontarf, near Dublin, Ireland pitting the forces of Brian Boru, High King of Ireland, against a Norse-Irish alliance comprised of forces of the Kings of Dublin and Leinster and an external Viking contingent. It lasted from sunrise to sunset and ended in a rout of the Viking and Leinster forces.

It is estimated that between seven to ten thousand men were killed. Although Brian Boru’s forces were victorious, Brian Boru was himself killed, as were his son Murchad and his grandson Toirdelbach, leaving no heirs to the throne. The Leinster King Mael Morda and the Viking leaders were also slain. After the battle the the Kingdom of Dublin was reduced to just a secondary power.

Brian’s body was brought to Swords, north of Dublin. There it was met by the coarb of Patrick, the traditional head of the church in Ireland, who brought the body back with him to Armagh, where it was interred after twelve days of mourning. Along with Brian were the body of his son Murchad and the heads of Conaing, Brian’s nephew, and Mothla, King of the Déisi Muman. Máel Sechnaill, then King of Mide, was restored as High King of Ireland, and remained secure in his position until his death in 1022.

The battle was an important event in Irish history and is recorded in both Irish and Norse chronicles. In Ireland, the battle came to be seen as an event that freed the Irish from foreign domination, and Brian was hailed as a national hero. This view was especially popular during English rule in Ireland; it still has a hold on the popular imagination.

In modern times there has been a long-running debate among historians, which is now 250 years old, about Ireland’s Viking age and the Battle of Clontarf. The standard view, and the popular view, is that the battle ended a war between the Irish and Vikings by which Brian Boru broke Viking power in Ireland. However revisionist historians see it as an Irish civil war in which Brian Boru’s Munster forces and its allies defeated Leinster and Dublin, and that there were Vikings fighting on both sides.

Calendar: April 22

A Year: Day to Day Men: 22nd of April

Piercing Eyes

The Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889 began on April 22.

On March 3, 1889, U. S. President Harrison announced the government would open the 1.9 million-acre tract of Unassigned Lands in Oklahoma for settlement precisely at noon on April 22. Anyone could join the race for the land. With only seven weeks to prepare, land-hungry Americans quickly began to gather around the borders of the irregular-shaped rectangle of territory. By the appointed day more than 50,000 hopeful settlers were living in tent cities on all four sides of the territory.

The events that day at Fort Reno on the western border were typical of events that happened in other places of the border. At 11:50 a.m., soldiers called for everyone to form a line. When the hands of the clock reached noon, the cannon of the fort boomed, and the soldiers signaled the settlers to start. With the crack of hundreds of whips, thousands of settlers streamed into the territory in wagons, on horseback, and on foot. All told, from 50,000 to 60,000 settlers entered the territory that day. By nightfall, they had staked thousands of claims either on town lots or quarter section farm plots.

By the end of the day of April 22, towns like Norman and Kingfisher had sprung into being almost overnight. Both Oklahoma City and Guthrie had established cities of around 10,000 people in literally half a day. The story that ran in the Harper’s Weekly, a New York based political magazine read: “At twelve o’clock on Monday, April 22d, the resident population of Guthrie was nothing; before sundown it was at least ten thousand. In that time streets had been laid out, town lots staked off, and steps taken toward the formation of a municipal government”.

Many settlers immediately started improving their new land or stood in line waiting to file their claim. Many children sold creek water to the new homesteaders waiting in line for five cents a cup, while other children gathered buffalo dung to provide fuel for cooking. By the second week, schools had opened and were being taught by volunteers paid by the pupils’ parents until regular school districts could be established. Within one month, Oklahoma City had five banks and six newspapers.

On May 2, 1890, the Oklahoma Organic Act was passed creating the Oklahoma Territory. This act included the panhandle area of Oklahoma within the territory. It also allowed for central governments and designated the city of Guthrie as the territory’s new capitol. By 1907, the area once known as Indian Territory entered the Union as a part of the new state of Oklahoma.

Calendar: April 21

A Year: Day to Day Men: 21st of April

Weathered Log

April 21, 1868 was the birthdate of Alfred Henry Maurer, the American modernist painter.

Maurer’s 1901 oil painting “An Arrangement”, which was compared to the work of Whistler in its color sense and fluid handling of paint, made his reputation in the American art world. The painting received first prize at the 1901 Carnegie International Exhibition, whose jurors included Thomas Eakins and Winslow Homer. In 1905, he won the third medal at the Liege Exposition in Belgium and a gold medal at the International Exposition in Munich.

At age thirty-six, in Paris, deviating from what everyone called “acceptable” painting styles, Alfred Maurer changed his methods sharply and from that point on painted only in a cubist or fauvist manner. His break from realism and new commitment to modernism, fostered by exposure to the art collected by his friends Gertrude and Leo Stein, subsequently cost him his international reputation. Four of his paintings from this period were included in the legendary Armory Show of 1913. He acquired esteem in avant-garde circles. He did not, however, find the popular following he needed to make a living and his father denied him any support.

For the next seventeen, increasingly depressed years, Maurer painted in a garret in his father’s house on the West Side of Manhattan and gained only limited critical acclaim. He participated in prestigious exhibitions, such as “The Forum Exhibition of Modern American Painters” in 1916, a New York show which featured seventeen of the most significant native modernists of the time. He also exhibited regularly at the New York-based Society of Independent Artists and was elected their director in 1919. In 1924, the New York dealer Erhard Weyhe bought the contents of Maurer’s studio and represented the artist for the remainder of his career. The death of his mother in 1917, however, intensified his gradual withdrawal from the world.

In 1932, Alfred Maurer took his own life by hanging, several weeks after his father’s death. As the art historian Sheldon Reich observed, had Maurer been a European or remained in Europe in 1914, he would probably be discussed today in the same terms applied to Vlaminck or Derain, both principle members of the Fauvist Movement in Europe. Instead, he became a citizen of a country with very limited interest in bold artistic experimentation and took his place as part of that “tragic fraternity of artists who during their lifetimes have suffered the tortures of neglect.”

Maurer’s works are included today in the many museum collections: Carnegie Museum of Art, Chicago Art Institute, Whitney Museum of American Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and National Museum of American Art of the Smithsonian Institution, among others.

Calendar: April 20

A Year: Day to Day Men: 20th of April

The Rising of the Sun

Harold Clayton Lloyd was born on April 20, 1893 in Burchard, Nebraska.

Harold Lloyd was an American actor, comedian, director, producer, screenwriter, and stunt performer who is best known for his silent comedy films. He ranks alongside Chaplin and Keaton as one of the most popular and influential film comedians of the silent film era. Lloyd made nearly 200 comedy films, both silent and sound, between 1914 and 1947.

His films frequently contained “thrill sequences” of extended chase scenes and daredevil physical feats, for which he is best remembered today. Lloyd desperately hanging from the hands of a skyscraper clock high above the street in the 1923 film “Safety Last” is one of the most enduring images in all of cinema. This was achieved through using camera angles and successively taller buildings to create the illusion of distance and perspective, always keeping the street below in full view. Lloyd, however, did many other dangerous stunts in his films himself.

Harold Lloyd moved away from playing tragicomic personas; he started portraying the ‘everyman’ with that character’s unwavering confidence and optimism. The persona Lloyd referred to as his “Glass” character (often named “Harold” in the silent films) was a much more mature comedy character with greater potential for sympathy and emotional depth, and was easy for audiences of the time to identify with. To create his new character Lloyd donned a pair of lensless horn-rimmed eyeglasses but wore normal clothing.

In 1924 Harold Lloyd became the independent producer of his own films. These included his most accomplished mature features “Girl Shy”, “The Freshman” (his highest-grossing silent feature), “The Kid Brother” and “Speedy”, his final silent film. The 1929 film “Welcome Danger” was originally a silent film but Lloyd decided late in the production to remake it with dialogue. All of these films were enormously successful and profitable, and Lloyd would eventually become the highest paid film performer of the 1920s.

In the early 1960s, Lloyd produced two compilation films, featuring scenes from his old comedies, “Harold Lloyd’s World of Comedy” and “The Funny Side of Life”. The first film was premiered at the 1962 Cannes Film Festival, where Lloyd was fêted as a major rediscovery. The renewed interest in Lloyd helped restore his status among film historians. Lloyd was honored in 1960 for his contribution to motion pictures with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame located at 1503 Vine Street.

Calendar: April 19

A Year: Day to Day Men: 19th of April

The Paw Print

April 19, 1946 is the birthdate of English actor and singer, Timothy James Curry.

Tim Curry’s first full-time role was as part of the original London cast of the musical “Hair” in 1968, where he first met Richard O’Brien who went on to write Curry’s next full-time role, that of Dr. Frank-N-Furter in the 1975 play “The Rocky Horror Show”. Originally, Curry rehearsed the character with a German accent and peroxide blond hair, and later, with an American accent. However, he decided to play Dr. Frank-N-Furter with an English accent after deciding that the character should sound like Queen Elizabeth II.

Curry originally thought the character was merely a laboratory doctor dressed in a white lab coat. However, at the suggestion of director Jim Sharman, the character evolved into the diabolical mad scientist and transvestite with an upper-class Belgravia accent. That character carried over to the film “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and made Curry a household name and gave him a cult following. He continued to play the character in London, Los Angeles, and New York City until 1975.

Shortly after the end of the “Rocky Horror Show” run on Broadway, Curry returned to the stage with Tom Stoppard’s “Travesties”, which ran in London and New York from 1975 to 1976. That play was a Broadway hit winning two Tony Awards: Best Performance by an Actor for John Wood, and Best Comedy for the play. “Travesties” also won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play, and Curry’s performance as the famous dadaist Tristan Tzara received good reviews.

In 2004, Tim Curry began his role of King Arthur in Eric Idle’s “Spamalot” in Chicago. The show successfully moved to Broadway in February 2005. The play brought Curry a third Tony nomination, again for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical. Curry reprised this role in London’s West End at the Palace Theater, where “Spamalot” opened on October 16, 2006. He was nominated for a Laurence Olivier Award as the Best Actor in a Musical for the role, and also won the Theatergoers’ Choice Award as Best Actor in a Musical.

One of Tim Curry’s best-known television roles (and best-known roles overall) is as Pennywise the Clown in the 1990 horror miniseries “Steven King’s It”. Aside from one “Fangoria” interview in 1990, Curry never publicly acknowledged his involvement in “It” until an interview with Moviefone in 2015, where he called the role of Pennywise “a wonderful part”.

Calendar: April 18

A Year: Day to Day Men: 18th of April

On a Bed with Black Pillows

The Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 happened on April 18 at 5:12 AM.

The 1906 San Francisco earthquake struck the coast of northern California on April 18 with an estimated moment magnitude of 7.9 and a Mercalli intensity of XI (Extreme). Heavy shaking was felt for a distance of 370 miles along the coast of California.. Devastating fires started and lasted for several days. As a result, over eighty per cent of the city of San Francisco was destroyed and up to 3000 lives lost.

The San Andreas Fault is a continental fault that forms part of the tectonic boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North American plate. The 1906 rupture propagated both northward and southward fo a total of 296 miles. The observed surface displacement was about 20 feet; geodetic measurements show displacements up to 28 feet. Shaking was felt from Oregon to Los Angeles, and inland as far as central Nevada. Between 227,000 and 300,000 people were left homeless out of a population of about 410,000 residents.

As damaging as the earthquake and its aftershocks were, the fires that burned out of control afterward were even more destructive. It has been estimated that up to 90% of the total destruction was the result of the subsequent fires. Within three days, over 30 fires caused by the ruptured gas mains destroyed about 25,000 buildings.

Almost immediately after the quake (and even during the disaster), planning and reconstruction plans were hatched to quickly rebuild the city. Rebuilding funds were immediately tied up by the fact that virtually all the major banks had been sites of the conflagration, requiring a lengthy wait of seven-to-ten days before their fire-proof vaults could cool sufficiently to be safely opened.

The Bank of Italy had evacuated its funds and was able to provide liquidity in the immediate aftermath. Its president also immediately chartered and financed the sending of two ships to return with shiploads of lumber from Washington and Oregon mills which provided the initial reconstruction materials. In 1929, Bank of Italy was renamed and is now known ad Bank of America.

Reconstruction was swift, and largely completed by 1915, in time for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition which celebrated the reconstruction of the city and its “rise from the ashes”. Since 1915, the city has officially commemorated the disaster each year by gathering the remaining survivors at Lotta’s Fountain, a fountain in the city’s financial district that served as a meeting point during the disaster for people to look for loved ones and exchange information.

Calendar: April 17

A Year: Day to Day Men: 17th of April

The Seat of the Revelation

April 17, 1918 was the birthdate of William Franklin Beedle Jr., known to the public as William Holden, one of the biggest stars of the 1950s and 1960s.

William Holden’s first starring role was in the 1939 film “The Golden Boy”, costarring Barbara Stanwyck, in which he played a violinist turned boxer. He was still an unknown actor at the time, while Stanwyck was already a film star. She liked Holden and went out of her way to help him succeed, devoting her personal time to coaching and encouraging him.

Next he starred with George Raft and Humphrey Bogart in the 1939 Warner Brothers gangster epic “Invisible Stripes” followed by the role of George Gibbs in the film adaptation of “Our Town”. After Columbia Pictures picked up half of his contract, he alternated between starring in several minor pictures for Paramount and Columbia before serving as a second lieutenant in the United States Army Air Force during World War II, where he acted in training films for the First Motion Picture Unit.

Holden’s career took off in 1950 when director Billy Wilder tapped him to star in “Sunset Boulevard”, in which he played a down-on-his-heels screenwriter taken in by a faded silent-screen star, played by Gloria Swanson. Holden earned his first Best Actor Oscar nomination with the part. Getting the part was a lucky break for Holden, as the role was initially cast with Montgomery Clift, who backed out of his contract.

Following this breakthrough film, his career quickly grew as Holden played a series of roles that combined his good looks with cynical detachment, including a prisoner-of-war entrepreneur in the 1953 “Stalag 17”, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor. His most widely recognized role was an ill-fated prisoner of war in the 1957 “The Bridge on the River Kwai” co-starring with Alec Guinness. He also starred in John Ford’s western “The Horse Soldiers” playing an American Civil War military surgeon opposite John Wayne.

William Holden co-starred as Humphrey Bogart’s younger brother, a carefree playboy, in the 1954 “Sabrina” starring Audrey Hepburn. It was Holden’s third film with director Billy Wilder. His career peaked in 1957 with the enormous success of “The Bridge Over the River Kwai”, but Holden spent the next several years starring in a number of films that rarely succeeded commercially or critically.

By the mid-1960s, the quality of his roles and films had noticeably diminished. A heavy drinker most of his life, Holden made a comeback in 1969 when he starred in director Sam Peckinpah’s graphically violent Western “The Wild Bunch”, winning much acclaim. Holden gave two more great performances, in the 1974 “Towering Inferno” and the 1976 “Network”, until his shock death from blood loss due to a fall at his apartment while intoxicated. In 1982, actress Stefanie Powers, with whom Holden had been in a relationship since 1975, helped set up the William Holden Wildlife Foundation and the William Holden Wildlife Education Center in Kenya, an area where Holden was active in animal sanctuary.