Cowboy Buddy Meets The Blues
April 16, 2023
Cowboy Buddy Meets The Blues
A Short Story
by
R.E. Prindle
The United States us usually spoken of as one country while it is not; the US isn’t even uniformity of culture within each State. The country is a diversity. The races have different agendas, the nationalities can barely speak to each other knowingly. Class divisions while denied are one of the most prominent features of the US.
To take only one State as an example, Michigan, In Michigan its metropolis is Detroit which has nothing in common with upstate, or the Upper Peninsula , the East Side or the West side of the State. Indeed, at one time the dividing line between Eastern Standard Time and Central Standard Time ran right through the middle od the State. One foot could exist at 10:00 o’ clock and the other foot at 9:00.
Saginaw the key city of the Saginaw Bay has nothing in common with Grand Rapids of the West. My head was in Michigan and my feet were in Del Rio Texas and my belly button in Waterloo Iowa where the great country radio stations were.. I was a son of Dixie though I had never been below the Mason-Dixon line.
California is an entirely different country, once briefly one, to any other State in the Union, it includes Oregon to the North and Arizona to it’s East, all enclosing Nevada.
The populations themselves were diverse and unrelated to each other as different as Black and White. Religions are so different that they can’t speak to each other. Even the climates are total contradictions, deserts and swamps, hot and cold. Cold. And that brings us to our story.
Minnesota, contains the northern most point of the Lower Forty-Eight, and if not the coldest there can only be a miniscule difference from second place. The winters in Minnesota are cold and brutal while seemingly interminable. Up there a few miles from the Canadian border is the little town of Hibbing. Sixteen thousand people strong. It sits at the center of the 110 mile long Mesabi Iron Range.
The Mesabi is the greatest open pit range in the world. When it became too difficult to follow the subterranean ore veins they just ripped the top off and dug it up wholesale. A pit train runs up and down the range a couple hundred feet down into the bowels of the earth. Then in the fifties of the twentieth the high grade ore was depleted. This is the time this story takes place They took most of it to Europe for the big wars and blew it up.
The pit yawns empty but the rains are slowiy filling this great gash in the earth. It may one day be the smallest of the great lakes.
It was there in Hibbing in 1941 that a child was born, a boy child. As he lay there in the cradle he was christened Shmuelly Sabbatai Goldenbargain, a little Jewish lad. He would not remain Shmuelly all his life but a different name under which he would become of world renown, from this little place in the wilds of Minnesota that barely merited a name, Hibbing, Minnesota. Ask someone to find that place on the map.
Shmuelly’s people in the 1950s numbered about four hundred, but they ran the town which was mainly Scandinavian and Christian. Shmuelly’s family owned the businesses from movie theaters to heavy equipment. His father operated the town’s grocery store that, as a monopoly did very well, unfortunately his father’s three brothers were partner’s so the profits were divided four ways, but Shmuelly’s father managed the money.
Enough of this background.
I think you have the scene sitting pretty well in your mind, except for one thing, the main drag through town was a hundred yards wide, nearly as big as a four lane highway giving it a kind of ‘High Noon’ quality.
If it’s alright we’ll call Shmuelly by the name he would take for his career as a musician. I’ll start calling his Buddy, his ‘real’ name, that which he would legally adopt was Cowboy Buddy Wright, but I’ll drop the Cowboy part of his moniker until it’s time.
Hibbing is a school town, education is very important. The magnificent high school, you’d have to see it to believe it, contained all grades from kindergarten through twelfth. That building is a real monument, as glorious as a castle, so Buddy knew his whole class for twelve years while many of us changed our schools several times. There were never any fresh faces for Buddy.
Buddy’s father was an Orthodox Jew even though the synagogue was Reformed. His father led the Anti-Defamation League in town. He ruled with an iron hand. His dad’s name was really Abram but he was known as Jack at both the synagogue and the lodge. He was the leading member of the congregation, made frequent trips to New York City, that is Brooklyn, while his mother lived downstate in the St. Louis Park suburb of Minneapolis that Buddy often visited, sometimes for relatively lengthy stays when things heated up between Jack and Ester.
Buddy was one of the kids who didn’t fit in it and wasn’t just because he was Jewish, he was also intellectually from a different planet, or living on a different plane. I put no negative meaning to his being Jewish but his family and people maintained a strict distance from the town folk. They cherished their separateness. And they owned the town. Everyone acknowledged that and they quietly resented it because the family shut out all competition. As a result Buddy was a shy little lad and developed a forlorn expression. The boys all laughed at him and the girls too. Could give a kid a complex and it did Buddy. It’s not easy to be forced to the outside where life’s greatest tragedy awaited him.
I’ll skip the description and get to the tragedy with maybe a couple of back flashes. All Buddy’s friends, meaning few, were outsiders like him, even his girl friend Sweet Sue. Sue’s father was a handyman, possible rum runner at one time there on the border, for certain adventures over the state border in Superior, Wisconsin, a city infected by the mob, as his family lived above their visible means. The means were slight but noticeable, so above doesn’t mean much.
But Sue’s father was the righteous sort, he had a fabulous Country and Western record collection, LPs, and they didn’t come from Buddy’s cousin’s record store, he must have gotten them downstate.
So, let’s skip a decade. We’re now in late 1958, late meaning that every thing but the air was frozen solid and you had to spoon that into your nostrils. It was in the midnight hour. Buddy and Sue were meandering down that wide main street, she holding his hand in her coat pocket when they drifted over to the Masonic Temple. Stepping into the recessed doorway to get to get out of the wind, Buddy mused that they had a nice grand piano inside that he had always wanted to play.
‘Why don’t we in and do it Shmuelly, I’ll dance.’ Said Sweet Sue.
‘But the door’s locked, Honey.’ Buddy pointed out.
‘Oh, that’s no problem.’ Sue said, pulling a jackknife from her pocket while in a deft move she inserted the tip of the blade and popped the lock. I did say she was an outsider, didn’t I? Buddy gaped but it was like magic. When his eyes focused next he was standing in front of the piano, Little Richard style. Now for the heartbreaking part; this is where Buddy’s life took a left turn. He slid into ecstasy hardly knowing what he was doing. He hammered the keys and began to play.
Buddy had been a Little Richard fan from day one when Little Richard’s scream rent the air from the radio: Oop Bop a luna…it rattled your brain and shook your nerves, a new person was born in that instant. Little Richard had burst on the scene like Jack from his box.
That entry into society was alone a life changing event. The circus had come to town. Even today if you were there the memory will still slay you. People who didn’t grow up with the music won’t understand.
Buddy put his hand on the keys and hammered them as hard as he could then began screaming Little Richard’s Tutti Frutti as loud as he could. Sweet Sue shrilled jumping on the piano to do a go go dance. This went on for ten minutes until Buddy and Sue simultaneously focusing their eyes saw two gentlemen in blue standing there with grim looks on their faces.
‘We weren’t doing anything.’ Buddy bleated.
‘It’s called breaking and entering.’ The policeman said. ‘It’s a crime.’
They put the cuffs and Buddy and Sue and marched them to the station which was just around the block. Sue was dismissed for being a girl although she was the one who actually broke in. Buddy was marched to a holding cell while his father was notified that his son was downtown in the can. He was in the jailhouse now. Shades of James Dean in ‘Rebel Without A Cause.’
So, now, Buddy came hard up against the wall. Jack and Ethel were aghast. Certain members of the city smiled a little glow of satisfaction. They were not only getting one of them, but the chief instigator. This fly in every ointment. Buddy who in his real life sometimes had his real name pronounced ‘Smelly’ because Shmuelly was too hard to say and damn hard to spell didn’t have the best reputation.
In fact, he seemed to be known in Duluth where a newspaper reporter called Walter Eldot even wrote an article about the arrest saying that the Iron Range didn’t need characters like Shmuelly. Of course both Hibbing and Duluth were backwoods towns where the news of Rock and Roll was received with extreme distaste. Perry Como was much more honored. And Buddy’s performance of Little Richard at the school assembly had terrified nearly all, the news of which had reached Duluth, ruined Buddy’s reputation forever…and ever.
And there was that one time he ran down that kid when passing down the street on his Harley, but the kid had darted out between two cars so it wasn’t like Shmuelly had been careless. Still it had cost father Jack four hundred dollars to fix it. That would have been forty thousand in today’s dollars.
Buddy didn’t dress other that middle class, no black denim trousers, motorcycle boots with a black leather jacket with an eagle on the back. But he still became a bohemian to the old folks. Perhaps, Eldot did overstate though.
Jack tried to fix this new charge but not only was the price out of range, the faux pas was unfixable. What the heck it was a first offence, the alibi was reasonable enough for a couple kids, maybe a couple keys did have to be replaced on the piano but how much did that cost. Buddy was cold irons bound. He was sent to Redwing Reformatory School down on Highway 61. The fabled route from the Canadian border down to the Gulf of Mexico. Riding downstate toward Minneapolis in the police cruiser Buddy was in a daze remembering when he received the sentence that Jack couldn’t fix but was at least limited to his eighteenth year a few months away in May. Jack was able to arrange things so that Shmuelly could graduate with his class.
Buddy might have been able to handle that but his own father Jack Goldenbargain stood him up and sternly advised that the a son could become so defiled that even his father would reject him but that God in his mercy would redeem him if in his future life he followed the straight and narrow. And then his mother turned on him. Lordy, lordy. Stressed and half dead he got into the police cruiser for the drive down highway 61 to Redwing. His body was tied in knots, his stomach churning, his brain whirling. Buddy could remember nothing of the next few days until he woke up one morning to realize that he was in prison. His soul had died but his body lived on in a miserable second birth.
The next year or so was just a hazy mirage that was never clear in his mind. The most apt description of this horrible period that I’ve found was recorded in a couple songs by the current recording artist Bob Dylan who was a schoolmate of Buddy’s in Hibbing although they a=had never known each other, unaware that the other existed. Just as Buddy chose a musical and performing career so did Mr. Dylan, they both went on to great success in what might be called parallel careers they were so similar.
Mr. Dylan captured Buddy’s moment in one song called ‘The Chimes of Freedom’ and the other ‘Highway 61 Revisited’ in which he surely must have had Buddy in mind. These two songs match Buddy’s experience too closely and so sympathetically that one must believe that Mr. Dylan, the same age and a schoolmate, watched Buddy in his plight carefully, almost putting himself in Buddy’s shoes. At any rate, in later life, Buddy would play these two songs until the groove’s wore out. The whole first song stirred Buddy to his chill but most especially this verse: ‘The Chimes of Freedom’ flashing
.
Starry eyed and laughing as I recall when we were caught
Trapped by no track of hours for they hang suspended
As we listened one last time an’ we watched with one last look
Spellbound an’ swallowed ‘till the tolling ended.
Tolling for the aching whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung out ones an’ worse
An’ for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.
Yes, Mr. Dylan hit Buddy’s plight on the button. As Buddy sat shocked, morose and crushed in a bottomless depression he ruminated on those feelings if not in those words to numb even to cry. He and Sue would never meet again for she was as devastated as he if not more so. And then stunned when Buddy refused to see her ever again. Never again, never again, without even a last goodbye. Just, boom, out of her life.
Of course, Buddy was not yet able consciously to put his misery into such words as those of Mr. Dylan that might have been some consolation. His other care even more debilitating than Sweet Sue was what he considered his father’s betrayal. Buddy conveniently forgot his aggravations to his father including the motorcycle incident of which his arrest capped the climax but his mind was captured by the image of Abraham in the Bible about to sacrifice his son just as God stayed his hand and saved the son.
No god saved Buddy. A few years later when he heard Mr. Dylan’s line from the song Highway 61 Revisited, ‘And God said kill me a son’, and Abe answered, Where you want this killing done?’, and God said, ‘Out on highway 61.’ There was none to spare poor Buddy. No. It was the midnight of his soul. He died the death. He now spoke of his former existence. He had been searching for an identity to relieve him of him of the lesser self of being Shmuelly Goldenbargain and he found it in prison.
He entered Redwing as Shmuelly Goldenbargain and left in a nebulous state of being Cowboy Buddy Wright. It would look better on the marquee anyway. All the Jews did it for that reason.
An Incident In Juarez
April 2, 2023
The Incident In Juarez
A Short Story
by
R.E. Prindle
Officer Smith: Look at this, face down, feet in Mexico and head and torso across the line in the US.
Officer Riley: Ya, on the Bridge of America.
Smith: Don’t see any wounds. Is he asleep?
Riley: I don’t think so. Probably just knocked out loaded.
Smith: I wonder who he is.
Riley: You don’t know who that is? That’s the folk singer Cowboy Buddy Wright.
Smith: Who’s that?
Riley: Never heard of Cowboy Buddy? C’mon, man, as President Biden would say.
Smith: OK, big deal, I never heard of him. Who is he? What next?
Riley: Well, we’ll pick him up and take into the station house, put him in a cell, and wait till he comes to.
Smith: Yeah, Ok, but who put him there?
Riley: I don’t know, but I know someone who might.
Smith: Miguel?
Riley: Uh, yup. Here, I’ll, pick Buddy up, throw him over your shoulder and see if can raise Miguel on my device.
Smith carries Buddy while Riley hefts his phone and pushes a key. It was a hundred degrees in the shade and there wasn’t any shade on the bridge. Smith throws Buddy in the back seat as Buddy unconsciously mutters: I can’t breathe. Neither can I Smith huffs and puffs in the heat.
Smith: Get ahold of Miguel?
Riley: Yes, I did. And he’s as chipper as ever.
Smith: Do I care about chipper? What’s his take on Cowboy Buddy?
Riley: I don’t know. Mystery wrapped in an enigma. It seems that Buddy’s presence was required by El Lobo to make a charity concert at the Sisters of Mercy orphanage. Easter time too. But they’re not celebrating Jesus but the guys on either side of hm.
Smith: The place that’s trafficking in the kids.
Riley: The same. Big to do. Lots of the Epstein crowd making merry and taking their choice. Buddy seems uncomfortable with the gig but lacks the balls to refuse El Lobo. Of course, I’m not sure that I would have the balls to refuse El Lobo. Buddy gets a little intox providing subpar entertainment and offends El Lobo from the stage.
Smith: From the stage?
Riley: Yup. Should have been there. Buddy says that he has had enough, packs up his guitar and heads for the door, unsteadily. El Lobo in his quiet way is enraged. Buddy leaves, falls down he steps, fortunately not hurting his guitar, stands up and starts yelling for a taxi. Even if taxis were standing around outside the doors of the orphanage none are in sight.
So Buddy muddled and lost is stumbling down the streets of Juarez looking for a direction home when a car pulls and up and a voice says get in. Miguel ends his story there, saying that he doesn’t know what happened then.
Our trail ends there Smitty, my lad, now we’ll hat to prove we’re real detectives, inspector Keene, tracer of lost persons.
Smith: Yeah, like real detectives we’ll get our knowing sidekick Miguel going where no gringo dares to go. Pay him another c-note and put him on the track.
Riley: Cynical bastard you Smitty. Maybe you don’t, but I’ve got a nose for this kind of work. Jeez the pervs out picking up the kiddies and it’s Eastertime too.
Time passes. Miguel the bloodhound sniffs, get on the trail and makes his report.
Miguel: Ah Senores, it went down like this. Senor Cowboy Buddy Wright of who I’m a big fan and sincerely regret his mistreatment, apparently lives in a different world when he’s one brick from completing the wall, should not have offended El Lobo, not only once but twice in the same evening.
El Lobo is very tender concerning his orphans, several of which he has apparently made so he thinks Cowboy Buddy must learn a lesson. Standing in front of the orphanage is a poor choice to hail a taxi, Buddy appears to have thought his next step was the very dangerous one of walking stoned, alone and in the dark through Juarez to the bridge.
However he doesn’t have to. A car pulls up, a door opens and Buddy is pulled inside. Sound familiar. What happened to Cowboy Buddy, I am not permitted to say but they drive him down to the place called The Rue Morgue, know that club, yes? Yes, well you know then the trouble our Buddy was in.
Riley: Oh, you don’t have to say any more Miguel, I’ve got it figured out. See, Smitty, I told you I’m a master detective.
Smith: Nevermind the self-applause, it’s disgusting. So, what’s the story?
Riley: You know the reputation of the Morgue? Buddy’s up and about now but he did have a couple punction marks. But he’s fine for now. This is a case of ‘Better dying through chemistry.’ Murder but it will never be traced. Buddy’s been injected with some chemical delayed action poison. Very slow acting. Ten, fifteen years from now Buddy will break out into a terrible rash that intensifies and will kill him. Not knowing what to call it the Docs will name it Shingles, no one will be the wiser and El Lobo, if he’s still alive, will sit back and smile. You should never mess with El Lobo he will be thinking that it was a simple twist of fate.
The Origins of Jesus
April 1, 2023
The Origins of Jesus
by R.E. Prindle
This discussion relies heavily on P.M.. Fraser’s history Ptolemaic Alexandria.
The discussion has delayed proceedings since there was a rather hot discussion concerning nationality of Jesus.
Our approach here is a psychological one while the discussion is on the macro or societal level and not the personal. It is necessary then to introduce a more detailed account of the conditions in the East Mediterranean at the time of Jesus. The great mélange of nations in Alexandria under the Ptolemies.
It appears that many of the terms we have been employing were not understood by our members.
Alexander the Great conquered the Eastern world to the Western part of India. He died on his and the Army’s return, the Hellenic Empire he created then being divided among his generals. The province of Egypt fell to the general named Ptolemy, hence Ptolemaic Alexandria, which city he founded in the conquest. Thus the Delta of Egypt from -300 to approximately the year 0 was governed by Greeks. Greek customs, mores and language.
A concept that may be hard to grasp apart from the annual calendar time is that it existed within the Ages of Aries and Pisces of the Zodiac. There are two manners of counting time involved. At this exact time the Age of Aries was ending and the Age of Pisces was beginning. That meant that the avatar of Aries, Zeus was now displaced and that there was a search for the new avatar of Pisces. In the Greek version of the Zodiac, their god Dionysus had been appointed to succeed Zeus. But, the conquest of the East Mediterranean by Alexander had created a larger Greek dominion of various gods and goddesses thus demoting Dionysus to merely a candidate.
The key players the Greeks, the Egyptians and more especially the Jews had to be placated. Rome would enter the scene near the year 0. Determining the outcome would take a few hundred years of religious turmoil and great political changes. The question will be asked, who did this? I think probably the religious schools of the time and the place Alexandria.
The great Egyptian religion that had existed for thousands of years was the focal point. Egypt had been battered by various conquerors over the last eight hundred years or so, that’s eight hundred, call it a millennium, so that the priesthood had had to be flexible and adaptive to maintain itself at all. It had done that and now on the annual level when the Greek governors assumed control about the year -300 the priesthood of Memphis had come up with a solution. They simply legislated a new god, Serapis. Serapis was a universal god becoming no longer strictly an Egyptian god.
Imagine that, creating a god. What does that say about godhood. If you can just create a god how much is being a god worth? And what happens to the old gods? There must have been a horde of gods asking: What next?
Well, there was an answer. You simply amalgamate gods with similar functions. The bigger States having the bigger say. So, Dionysus, the Greek putative avatar of Pisces was amalgamated with the chief Egyptian god, Osiris. Osiris in his original form in Egypt couldn’t be exported so he was folded into Dionysus.
In his Egyptian form Osiris was the god of the rise of the Nile. The Nile before all the dams, rose and flooded Egypt in August at the time of the Dog Star. In brief and to the purpose his story is that he had a battle with the evil Set.
Losing he was dismembered into fourteen pieces and distributed around. His wife and sister, Isis, searched and found all the pieces and put them back together while Osiris’s penis had been thrown into the Nile and couldn’t be recovered. Thus in the annual procession before the rise of the Nile celebrating Osiris the body of Osiris was carried along with a wooden penis operated by strings so that it could be raised into an erection and lowered. When erect the magical effect was that the Nile would rise and flood the land again because Osiris’s penis was in the waters. A mighty fine procession but it wouldn’t be the same outside Egypt so Osiris became the Egyptian contribution to the avatar of Pisces.
Now, I’m going to have to take this out of order. The Jewish contribution to Pisces was Jesus. Thus Jesus is a tripartite image. Dionysus/Osiris/Jesus. Now, leaping ahead let us consider the alleged birth of Jesus in the manger. That is pure Zodiacal myth that was manufactured long after the fact when the succession had become clear..
Let us compare the birth of Jesus with the birth of Zeus. Zeus was the avatar of the Age of Aries, his father Cronus was the avatar of the Age of Taurus, and his father was Uranos the avatar of Gemini. The Ages change every two thousand one hundred and fifty years so historically we’re looking at six thousand and odd years between Gemini and the end of Aries..
When Cronus heard that he was to be replaced by one of his children he attempted to evade the problem by eating them when they were born. When Zeus was born on the island of Crete he was immediately hidden in a cave and carefully watched so no signs were visible to Cronus until Zeus was grown and could do battle, and there was a tremendous battle that Zeus ultimately won thus taking his place as the new avatar.
Now at the Age of Pisces the matter was handled thusly. Remember the human mind is now two thousand and odd years matured and what was possible at the beginning of Aries was no longer credible at the end. Times change. And the times were in turmoil. Also bear in mind that this myth of the baby Jesus in the manger was put together many long years after the crucifixion and backdated. That was likely real. A historical Jesus must have existed however it is impossible that he would have been recognized as an infant. Therefor we have a myth of the birth of the Age of Pisces attached to the death of Jesus.
The story goes that two obscure Jewish people with no distinctions, the woman, Mary being not only pregnant but at the point of delivery arrive at the inn. The inn of Nazareth refuses to admit them. Now I don’t know how the reader envisions an inn of a small dusty dump of a town but I see it as a small dirty building of three or four rooms and a dining room. I’m sure the inn was full, no rooms available. This is a normal situation but as Mary is in extreme labor pains at that very moment they are put up in the only unoccupied place available, that of the barn or stable. Mary drops the kid on the spot in the Manger. Lucky her. Now, this isn’t any ordinary kid, it is the child of destiny. How do we know this? Because there are three great kings from the East traveling from afar because they somehow know that a child is being born. How do they know? Because they are ‘following’ the star of the new age of Pisces, which apparently hovers over the stable in Nazareth.
Now, these guys traveled from afar, from Persia. They somehow divined some years previously, one presumes, as would be natural is they were studying the skies, that a baby, who is destined to be the light of the world will be born in a town none of them ever heard of and located they couldn’t know where.
By what magical means did they find the way to where X marked the spot? They followed a star. There is a great debate of which star that was. It isn’t even an inkling of a mystery. The Age of Pisces had dawned and the Kings followed the star of the constellation of Pisces. Worked for some reason.
These kings are portrayed to be in magnificent raiment, wearing gold crowns and carrying gifts the price of which would feed all Israel for at least a year. Now, picture these three kings walking along for months with these gifts in their hands, without a military escort to ward off bandits and here they are at the exact moment Mary drops the Babe. Her last scream of pain hadn’t yet faded away and here come the three kings though the door. This never happened, don’t even think it.
Compare this with the Zeus of two thousand years earlier. Instead of a cave like Zeus, the Babe is born in hovel with a strong aroma of urine and droppings. Zeus had to be protected so the goddesses looked after him. Cronus was not going to eat him! By the way, Mary and Joseph didn’t exist either. I don’t know about the inn.
So, in Jesus’ case word gets around that a Holy Babe has been born who will be the King of Israel. Well, King Herod says ‘We can’t have that.’ So, get this, he orders that every male child in Israel born in the last two years be snuffed hoping to eliminate his successor. Sound familiar. In order to secure the Babe from immolation he was sent out of the country. To where? Where else than Egypt, that weak reed that the Jews always relied on.
So, some many decades later when Jesus wins election to be the avatar of Pisces this myth was invented and affixed to him. The Babe never existed but in +33 a historical Jesus does and he has offended the elders of Israel. Who was Jesus and where did he come from? Let’s go back to Egypt.
Remember the Memphite Egyptian priest? History sort of deprives the ancients of personality but they were real people dealing with real problems. They weren’t stick figures. The City of the Sun was near Memphis. Real people devised the City of the Sun as a utopia while the longing for a utopia lived past the end of that dream. Euhemerus wrote his utopia The Sacred City in this era. The fact that the Memphites could invent a god out of whole cloth and impose him on the population is a sign that the gods were no longer taken viscerally but more intellectually. Jesus himself would be a new god, a manmade god as it were.
Alexander’s conquest heralded the need for a universal god for at least the East Med as their notions of geography were somewhat limited. But there was a problem that existed and had existed for a long time and that was the exclusiveness of the Jews. In our time, of course, we have been taught to revere the Jews on their own terms, but this was not the case in ancient times. The Jews were a stumbling block on all terms, they refused to cooperate with anyone.
The Eastern world accepted the conquest of Alexander and found Greek customs, attitudes and thinking amenable except for the Jews. Well, the Sadducee faction adopted Greek manners and customs but not the Pharisees. The Maccabees, more as bandits than a national army, fought the Syrian Greeks, to whom they were subject, tooth and nail and for a brief period were independent and then the Romans came and brought the Empire with them.
In Egypt they were a minority, a numerous minority, but unable to dominate, in Jerusalem they were the dominant people and not only that but within the Empire they were located in every city as a relatively large minority. The Jerusalemites levied a 10% tithe on every Jew in the Empire from Rome to Jerusalem. The gold flowed East and the Jewish province became very wealthy. So wealthy that it thought it could challenge the Empire…and win.
The problem then was what to do with the Jews. No anti-Semitism, just a stubborn block of people who wouldn’t submit to the standard but couldn’t impose their rule on the Empire.
In Alexandria and Egypt means of persuasion were sought. It was probably conceived that the main problem with the Jews was that they believed themselves a separate and superior people who their god had made his own people to the exclusion of all others. In their vision of creation their god had created the peoples of the world. Having done so he examined them all and found the Jews worthy and all others not. So he made them his own special people, not human, but somewhere between the angels and the rest of mankind. Well and good but their belief was shared only by themselves, as, indeed, it was only their fancy.
Therefore the attempt would be made to negate their exclusivity. Hence, the Memphites created the Serapis and sent him downriver to Alexandria and said something like, ‘Try this.’
The idea was to preach Egyptian values to the Jews wrapped in the bright wrapping of an individual. Now, remember, at this time the overarching astrological universal religion was changing Ages. So two things where going on. Hence, an agent was necessary to carry the word to the Jews, that the god, their god, had changed his mind and no longer needed a special people. After Jesus’ ministry it was phrased that God so loved the world at large that he sent his only begotten son to redeem not only the Jews but all the peoples of the world.
Now, who was Jesus? Forget the Babe in the Manger, that is a pure myth created later to explain the supposed divinity of Jesus while also appointing him the avatar of the Piscean Age. Sort of quid pro quo. None of this happened all at one time but was spread out over a few hundreds of years. It did not catch on easily or rapidly.
Jesus himself must have been trained in Egypt because his program was wholly Egyptian and hence was an abomination to the priesthood of Jerusalem. Was Jesus Jewish? There is no way to tell. He educated and reared in Egypt. He might as easily have been an ethnic Greek or Egyptian. There is no way to tell. At the very most he is termed Jewish because that was his ministry. The Pharisees wasted no time in giving evidence of their displeasure labelling Jesus as a revolutionary, Which he was, by the way.
So, Jesus must have been educated and trained in Egypt, hence he would have had Alexandrine appearance and manners, perhaps an Alexandrine accent. If you read biblical history there were lots of saviors running around. Jesus was only one but as it turned out he had the best organization.
I can only speculate that the Memphite religion of Serapis was organized as nearly all religions are and that they had a corps of missionaries to spread their good word, and that was that god so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son to redeem it, or at least that is what the Jews did in Jerusalem. Other missionaries would have gone to other locations with whatever success they had.
Jesus would have been recognized immediately as a Serapian missionary. His whole program was Egyptian while being by its very nature antagonistic to Jewish beliefs. Remember that these people were just as leery of innovators as today. The execution of Jesus solved no problem for the Pharisees, the ruling party in Jerusalem. The reason being that a very effective organization survived. The Pharisees persecuted them to death.
Paul rescued them by coming up with a plan to convert the goyim to the Minian religion, that is the Jewish predecessor to Christianity. It was a good plan but it would only work when Jews were in the majority. When the goyim became more numerous power naturally shifted to them and members of the dominant goy majority then took control. The role of messiah and avatar of the Age of Pisces had to be conceded to the Jewish faction for the good of all, but the Greek Dionysus and the Egyptian Osiris had to be recognized and they were combined with Jesus under the title of the Christ, to form the Christian religion. Jesus, the Christ. Jewish/Greek/Egyptian. The Christ being the Greek anointed or awaited one. That must have taken a couple hundred years to work out. The church became ecumenical at that point but the Jews remained outside the Catholic or Universal Church remaining as they were previously an irritant.
Nothing had been settled, only changed. The future would be just as troubled as the past had been.
One can’t expect all the members of a society to be convinced but the Society will move ahead on this basis.
from the minutes of the Century Society 3/19/23
March 19, 2023
from the minutes of the Century Society 3/192023
The birth of Christianity was not wholly Jewish. The plethora of gods, goddesses and religions could not be excluded and they weren’t. A hotbed of religious activity not properly understood is at Alexandria, the second city of the Roman Empire and the first intellectually. The arrival of the Greeks as conquerors fueled religious speculation while it was obvious that on the cusp of the Airean and Piscean Ages a new Age was beginning. A new sky (Piscean stars) and a new earth, In the distance from the Taurean Age to the Piscean the mentality of humanity had advanced dramatically. Change was in the air.
As pointed out previously the universal Roman Empire called out for a universal religion. The Jews themselves were not susceptible to change reveling in ages old practices. The belief that God so loved the Jews especially could not stand up. As the Roman Empire was universal and a universal religion proclaiming that God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son to proclaim it was I believe developed in Alexandria.
Now, when as Jewish legends have it the Jews fled Egypt it is ridiculous to think that the entire Jewish population, the Jews having been in Egypt for 400 years, all chose to leave. The fleshpots of Egypt were much to alluring.
Even fifty years after having been transported to fabulous Babylon when the Jews were given the option of returning to Jerusalem or remaining in Babylon only a small group of cranks preferred to leave. The main body chose to stay. It cannot have been otherwise in Egypt. Thus there were probably more Jews in Alexandria and Egypt than in Palestine. There were nearly a million in Alexandria. Mingling with the Greek and Egyptians religionists the main challenge to Jewish beliefs came from those two religions.
Of the three peoples the Greeks were the most internationally minded having conquered the Eastern lands the least stubbornly rooted in old ideas. One must assume that the idea of a universal religion came from them, possibly even before Alexandria became Roman, certainly so. Now, Jesus, was a universal religious symbol. It is recorded that he was sent to Jerusalem to preach the new gospel, which he was in fact preaching. If he was sent he came from somewhere else.
I think it more probable that Jesus and perhaps a dozen or two others were selected as infants to be raised in the new universal religion, thus they would know nothing else. A myth was created to associate Jesus. with Judaea, perhaps after the fact of his ministry. The myth of the three wise men from Persia following a star is one. The star obviously was the star of Pisces, thus indicating that Jesus was the avatar of Pisces. Trained in Alexandria, he was sent to the religious capitals of the Empire to assimilate a universal attitude. Thus he was initiated into the Greek Eleusis religion which was in itself international in scope. Anyone in the Empire who was any one would be required to be an initiate.
Proof that Jesus was initiated is provided by the Last Supper as indicated at another of our sessions. At the supper Jesus toasted the members by saying first with a loaf of bread, this is my body, then with a goblet of wine, this is my blood. The bread from the earth represented the temporal world and wine from sun represented the spiritual, thus uniting the two spheres, the above and the below. Thus he gave away the secret of the Eleusis ritual which had been a closely guarded secred.
How the ritual of communion developed isn’t clear but surely the Last Supper is a myth. We will continue this issue at our next session.
from the minutes of the Century Society, 3/17/2023
March 18, 2023
From the minutes of the Century Society, 3/17/2023
Today we look at the consequences of the Roman deportation of the Jews from Palestine to Spain. One must know that there were already Jewish colonies in Spain as there were in every other part of the Empire. The stress from this total warfare with the Jews had helped to breakdown the integrity of the Empire. Admisistrative controls were seriously damaged.
With the breakdown of the Empire, the peoples of the pale outside the Roman borders, taking advantage of Roman weakness, the decay of the central authority, began to take advantage crossing the border into the Roman provinces.
This may be compared to the US today when the central authority has deteriorated so that the ‘barbarians’ to the South of the US are flooding in without opposition.
In Spain the Vandals first and then the Visigoths succeeding took possession of Spain. One must remember that by human conceptions of time the period of the Vandal and Visigoth possession was a matter of hundreds of years, to get the feel that’s like 1600 to the present. Before the invasion of the Moors in 711 brought across the straits by the Jews who threw open the gates of the cities. The Visigoths were driven out and the period known as the three religions began.
The Jews had a ‘sweet deal’ with the Visigoths as one member put it. What he meant was that the Visigothic kings were having difficulties collecting taxes by their own countrymen. The Jews stepped up saying ‘Tell us how much you need and we’ll get for you pronto and keep anything over your needs.’
That solved the Monarch’s problem but destroyed the lives of his subjects. Given a license to steal you can believe the Jews made use of it.
Backed by the authority of the crown they descended on the subjects like the locusts of legend. They took everything the people had down to the seeds required for the next crop.
When planting time came up the tax collectors sold their seed back to them along with the confiscated equipment charging the subjects exorbitant rates of interest. Thus the Visigoth subjects were enslaved by the Jews. Over time the subjects rebelled and attacked the Jew who retreated into their enclaves and demanded protection from the King. The kink took their side and attacked his own subjects.
The method had been used by Joseph in Egypt during the seven fat and lean years. The Egyptian people were free and prosperous before the Jews and slaves after. Compare that to the period of the Jud Suss, Joseph Oppenheimer, in Germany. As the viceroy of Duke Alexander of the German State of Wurttemburg in the eighteenth century the Wurttemburgers were free and prosperous but while the Duke was defending the State against the French, Suss, using his powers as the viceroy destroyed the freedom of the people reducing them to the equivalent of slaves.
The US was free and prosperous before the Jewish colonists arrived in the nineteenth century while today through usurious interest collected from credit cards half the country is in debt slavery while freedom is eroded more every day.
Thus over millennia the Jewish method remains the same. Any setback is only temporary, they only come back stronger than ever.
Just as the Romans tried to solve the problem by dispersing the Jews (and these were only the Palestinian Jews, not the colonies or Mesopotamia) and forbidding them to occupy Palestine.
In the crucial years of 290 to say 1492 the Europeans tried to solve the problem by expelling the Jews for their lands. Finally, under the threat of extermination by the Jews themselves, the Germans responded by trying to exterminate their professed enemies.
Our next meeting will backtrack a little again.
Minutes of the Oxford Society 3/17/2023. R.E. Prinde Sec’y.
From the minutes of the Century Society 3/16/2023
March 17, 2023
From the minutes of the Century Society 3/16/2023
Today the discussion was a back and fill of the minutes of last session. The defeat of 70AD caused the Jews to reflect but not desist. Even though the temple was destroyed and the population decimated forty-five years later two of the largest Jewish colonies were convinced to revolt, or perhaps, other colonies preferred to remain quiet.
The expression of this Jewish revolt was no military action, but rather the Jews rose up and began murdering the non-Jewish population in a sneak attack. The two colonies affected were the very large settlements of Alexandria, Egypt and the island of Cyprus. Two hundred fifty thousand Alexadrines and two hundred fifty thousand Cypriots were slaughtered and not just slaughtered; the Jews were said to wear their intestines as belts and other atrocities.
So, in real terms not much different from the holocausts of WWII. The reactions of the Mediterranean world must been to be aghast. It also must follow that Jews in all parts of the Empire were shunned, distanced and avoided. The slaughter was horrific. What the reaction was in attacked Jewish colonies was isn’t recorded but it must have been harsh. This was a mere forty-five years after the Jewish defeat. There must have been many people alive who remembered that.
Twenty years later in 135 the Bar Kochba revolt was waged that exasperated the Romans beyond endurance. The legions descended on Israel slaughtering how many. while masses were deported, mainly to Spain. Then a manhunt was conducted to kill any militants and planners left alive.
The Romans forbade the Jews to inhabit Israel for all time in hope that without their home of Jerusalem survivors would blend In with the population. But the colonies and Jews in Mesopotamia still existed.
The result must have been the detestation of Jews everywhere, how could it have been otherwise. Yet Jewish resistance was not done yet although clandestine.
Meanwhile the Catholic, or Universal Church, for that is what catholic means, was slowly taking form. The Christians were persecuted from time to time by various Emperors but their numbers were increasing although they remained a minority.
Constantine would win the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312, subsequently to make Christianity, as the Catholic Church, the State religion. All the old gods were not yet finished still being practiced at that time.
This date 3/16/2023, Sec’y R.E. Prindle
Century Society Minutes 3/15/2023
March 16, 2023
From the minutes of the Century Society:
With a tip of the hat to the late great historian, Arnold Toynbee
The current problem in world affairs stems from the political and religious conditions of the conquest by the Roman Empire of the myriad populations surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. By consolidating the littoral and surrounding people the Romans unintentionally created a universal State. Roman mores extended over this ancient world.
Each of these various nations had their own chief god and other gods. Thus, as examples, Zeus and Yahwey; the former Greek and the latter Judaic. The two gods were equal along with the Phoenician Baal, and the Egyptian Isis and Osiris among others.
The political unification of the Mediterranean thus demanded an accompanying universal religion. The people having the most qualified god to offer as this universal god were the Judaics. They leaped to fill the void. While other gods represented only their respective people, the Jews had fashioned their god as a universal god above all other gods.
The Jews themselves, seeking to impose their god on humanity, made the attempt by reproducing themselves at a fantastic rate. ‘Go ye forth and multiply.’ their god told them. Asymmetric warfare. With the admonition to bring all the other peoples to him alone. Having followed their god’s desire the Jews had multiplied sending colonies out to all the cities of Rome including Rome itself.
Therefore by the year 0, Julian calendar, and at the cusp of the Age of Pisces according to the Zodiacal calendar the Jews having thoroughly infiltrated the Empire declared war on Rome much as they would do in Germany in the twentieth century. It was their intent that the colonies in Roman cities would rise with them thus keeping Roman troops so dispersed that an easy conquest would ensue. The colonies did not rise and the Roman legion smashed Jerusalem and Israel in 70 AD. Jewish military hopes were shown to be impracticable.
Realizing the futility of military means the Jews adopt a bore from within strategy by religious means. Thus Paul began the process of converting the Jewish followers of Jesus of Nazareth to a universal god while admitting the goyim. The goyim were unimpressed with circumcision and the peculiar dietary laws so that these were dropped as a condition of admittance. At the same time the Greek avatar of the emerging Piscean Age, Dionysus was joined to Jesus under the title Jesus the Christ, or the anointed one. Hence Christianity. Then Christianity escaped them after the religion had been organized by them in Rome. By another change of name Christianity became the Catholic or Universal Church.
From that point on the history of Europe evolved into the situation of today in which the Jews are claiming spiritual and temporal domination.
Dated this day: 3/15/2023. Sec’y of the Century Society, R.E. Prindle
G.W.M. Reynolds, Psychology, Pickwick And A Link To Edgar Allan, Poe
by
R.E. Prindle
Texts: Pickwick Abroad, Teggs Edition.1839
The Youthful Impostor, reprint, original 1832, rewritten in 1835.
As I’ve said, I’ve read Pickwick Abroad three times. I think the book is slighted the first reading because of its appropriation of Charles Dickens’ characters and story idea. The shock to one’s proprieties is quite strong. Bedazzled by the daring of Reynolds one tends to be critical of the novel compared to the original. Time passes, a deeper understanding of Reynolds is acquired and a finer understanding of Pickwick Abroad begins.
Reynolds was quite young when he wrote the book, a mere twenty-three. Forced out onto the world at the tender age of sixteen, the book fictionalizes his experience in the land of his exile, France. All the memories are raw from just having been experienced, while his future was very uncertain.
Reynolds left England in 1830 some few months after the July Revolution in France. The revolution would have a profound effect on the boy, turning him into what was called a Red Republican, that is one who endorsed the violence of the First French Revolution and the bloody three days of the second, or July Revolution. He would carry this attitude with him back to England.
At the age of eighteen he married a girl his age by the name of Susannah Pierson. Her death only, in 1858, ended the marriage. She was apparently the perfect help mate for him, being herself an author of several books their interests meshed. Little is known of her but if Reynolds remembrance is factual he probably met her father on his arrival in the French port of Calais. This man unidentified by name opened Reynolds’ perception to the criminal side of human behavior. He showed young Reynolds how to see the world. Indicating to him the methods of criminals thus broadening young Reynolds perspectives by double. Pickwick Abroad thus becomes a history of petty criminals, con men and sponges, that is parasites. This was recorded in The Youthful Impostor.
Little is directly known of Reynolds’ doings in France other than what he tells us of his explorations. To see and do what he describes must have occupied the bulk of his time. Would that we knew more of his associates. He moved in literary circles acquiring a sound background in editing and publishing that was of use to him on returning to England. He immersed himself in French culture and history as will begin to be evident later in this essay when he displays his knowledge of activities in psychology and its center at the Salpetriere Asylum in Paris.
Thus he viewed the major attractions in and around Paris becoming familiar with the police and judiciary. A constant grey presence throughout the length of novel is the gendarme Msieu Dumont. The presence is beneficial while Reynolds expresses great admiration of him and actually of the police and the gendarmerie. Here one wonders if the model for Dumont might be the father of Susannah and hence Reynolds’ father in law. Pickwick met Dumont in Calais and It was in that town that Reynolds had his eyes opened. Ah, but that might be too convenient.
The chapters of XXXII, XXXIII and XXXIV held special interest to me. These are Reynolds at his best. In chapter XXXII Pickwick and his entourage of conmen, spongers and hanger ons along with his club members and the irrepressible Samuel Weller go out for the evening. They enter what appears to be a restaurant but as the evening progresses many women at the table d’hote begin acting zany and get madder and madder when a woman jumps up jumps up on the table to do an obscene dance. The entourage realize that they are in a madhouse. The proprietor is a Doctor.
This introduces the subject of the Salpetriere. The women’s asylum. Later in the novel. Reynolds will introduce us to the men’s asylum the Bicetre, another very interesting episode. This now brings us to the connection of Reynolds and Edgar Allan Poe.
Poe was of course a profound psychologist, much more than Reynolds although in many ways whatever the latter learned in France put him well ahead of anyone in England. The French themselves were the psychological leaders of Europe. While Freud preempted them in a shameful way he owed nearly everything to Jean Martin Charcot, Pierre Janet and the doctors around Charcot at the Salpetriere. One might say that without his French connection there would have been no Sigmund Freud.
Of course Charcot was just beginning his career when Reynolds wrote Pickwick Abroad. We have to know a lot more about what circles Reynolds ran in. We do know that he once bought a story from William Makepeace Thackeray and actually paid him. Most magazines either refused to pay or put it off as long as they could. Nevertheless Reynolds must have actually visited the Salpetriere and Bicetre as these chapters around the institutions are actually quite intense and heart rending.
The question then is did Reynolds’ story influence Edgar Allan Poe. Reynolds published in 1839 and Poe in 1845. Poe was certainly well known in English literary circles by 1845 as Poe more or less took them by storm. Reynolds was known in the US by 1836 when his rewritten story The Youthful Impostor was published in the US. It is not unreasonable then to think that Pickwick Abroad was also published in the US shortly after 1839 and that Poe at sometime between say, 1840 and 1844 read the book and was impressed by the named chapters under discussion. He took the hint and turned it into the brilliant story of The System Of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether. There may be a clue to Reynolds in the use of the word ‘system’ by Poe.
Reynolds has a running joke about his character Hook Walker, Hamas Ambulator as another character translates the name into Latin. Walker has a system for every thing his systems becoming somewhat a tiring joke. Actually the name Hook Walker is a joke that would have been funny to many readers. A book published in 1841, still de riguer for the cognoscenti, Chales Mackay’s Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness Of Crowds, explains the meaning of the name Hook Walker to Renolds. I quote from the chapter titled Popular Follies Of Great Cities:
Quote.
‘Hookey Walker’ derived from the chorus of a popular ballad, was also in high favor at one time and served like its predecessor ‘Quoz’, to answer all questions. In the course of time the latter word (Walker) alone became the favorite, and was uttered with a peculiar drawl upon the first syllable, a sharp turn upon the last. If a lively servant girl was importuned for a kiss by a fellow she did not care about…the probable answer he would receive was, ‘Walker!’ If a dustman asked his friend for the loan of a shilling and his friend was unwilling to accommodate him the probable answer he would receive was ‘Walker!’
Unquote.
So I suppose the meaning was something like ‘Fat Chance.’
Hookey Walker was a ballad popular some time earlier. The character of Hook Walker would have provided hilarity throughout PA. The book itself, which is very comedic, must have been thought hilariously funny, or Reynolds hoped so.
Poe being an honest writer, while he doesn’t directly indicate Reynolds as the source for the idea, Poe’s narrator and a companion are riding down the road discussing insanity and his friend point’s out the famous asylum of Dr. Tarr The narrator turns off to investigate while his friend rides on. I interpret that as Poe indicating he got the story idea from Reynolds (or someone as Reynolds isn’t named) but his own story is quite different being more highly developed. Poe, then, as I interpret had read PA and borrowed the idea. Thus Reynolds for at least one story had an influence on Poe.
At the end of chapter XXXII one of the madwomen slips a letter to Pickwick that he pockets. Carrying on the looniness of the times Reynolds shifts from the ladies to the men in a parody of Craniology in chapter XXXIII. He portrays a different kind of lunacy, that of Prof. Franz Gall’s Phrenology, or the reading of the contours of the head. Phrenology was misunderstood at the time and roundly ridiculed, but Gall was vindicated in later times as the functions of the different areas of the brain have been understood. A number of good horror films from the thirties to today deal with the issue, an excellent one being ‘The Black Death’. Another mad doctor. Everybody gets a good laugh at the joke played on the craniologist and then we get on with the story.
Pickwick finds time in his busy schedule to open the letter written by the madwoman that details the descent into madness off herself and her lover and would be husband.
From my point of view Reynolds really turns on the juice to rival Poe in his understanding of psychology.
The psychologist Dr. Jean Martin Charcot working in the sixties, seventies and eighties in the Salpetriere on what was then called hysteria initially believed that hysteria had a physical origin while others contended it was a psychological reaction to a traumatic event or events. Writing in the late thirties Reynolds was already certain of the latter. Women during the nineteenth century were treated very badly. The burdens placed on their psychological well being were horrendous, especially in the lower economic classes. One would think that this would have been immediately clear to Charcot where he had an asylum full of mistreated women.
Reynolds presents two sides to the problem. Another point of view was that insanity was inherited, a family characteristic. I’m not sure which side Reynolds took on this issue, he may have been ambivalent or believed both.
Pickwick’s letter gives the woman’s side of what happened. This is a very tragic story, detailed in chapters XXXIV and XXXV. The woman and a man fall in love. Both are ardent. The woman’s problem is that she thinks insanity is inherited in her family line. She therefore believes that she is destined to go insane at some future time while at the same time she doesn’t want to bring any children into the world who will inevitably carry what we would call today, a gene of insanity.
While she is in love with her future husband she refuses to marry him without saying why; the deeper reason being that her children will have the insanity propensity or gene. This refusal to marry drives her lover to distraction. Thus we have a traumatic cause of insanity on both sides without any neurological damages.
Her prospective husband has a reaction to disappointed expectations traversing through depression to insanity. There is a great deal of depth to Reynolds that is easily overlooked by a casual reading. This first story in Pickwick of the horrors of Madness comes from deep down. In his five year residence in France with visits to almost all significant sites, the next will be the prison and insane asylum of the Bicetre at which Dr. Pinel worked. Reynolds seems to have been inside each as well as nearly every prison in France. And he is going to take all of this profound experience back to England to be digested
Bob Dylan And The C Lawsuit
March 9, 2023
Bob Dylan And the C Lawsuit
by
R.E. Prindle
Here of late I’ve become a little troubled about the recent lawsuit filed against Bob Dylan by a complainant identified only as C by her lawyers. The charge is that Bob Dylan imprisoned her for six weeks in New York City’s Chelsea Hotel for sexual reasons.
The charge aroused a large denunciation from Dylan’s ardent fans, one might say disciples. I know not if the charges are true but, at the same time, something was happening at the Chelsea. Bob did have rooms there, that’ a fact, although unknown to the general public. Nineteen sixty-five when this was alleged to have happened, was one of the strangest years of the Sixties Era. Mind baffling stuff was taking place. Many strange and weird movies were being screened, ground breaking in their audacity
I am going to construct a scenario about the alleged Chelsea incident within the context of the time. While I can come to no definite conclusion, I think there is a good film at least in the account.
The mores of our time are largely shaped by the movies we see. We begin, then with the 1963 movie of John Fowles novel, ‘The Collector.’ This was a very influential film, replicated many times in real life in subsequent times expressed in the sexual mores of Britain and the US.
Incredibly the movie was made and released in the same year the book was published. So the script was either written before the book was published or the day the book was released and rushed into production. The film astonished us all. It came across as a blueprint to be followed.
The idea was that a young man took a fancy to a young twelve year old girl who attended a London school. He abducted her coming from school and placed her in an underground wine cellar on his estate. He didn’t molest her as he hoped that she would learn to love him and settle in with him. She refused and the movie continued as one might expect. I’m speculating that Dylan saw the movie and it made an indelible impression on him as it did us all.
In her autobiography, Dandelion, Catherine James says she was introduced to Dylan as a thirteen year in 1963. Devoting a few pages to Bob she says that it was a sparkling romance, although ‘platonic,’ if that is believable.
Now we shift to New York City in 1964. The social scene in NYC was vibrant. Drugs, amphetamine, ruled the scene. The city was saturated with amphetamines. Dylan was a partaker. Andy Warhol and his crowd lived on amphetamines. And had captured the attention of the art world by using the image of a Cambell’s soup can as a topic, one might say a portrait. That fact might not have become general knowledge but for Time Magazine seizing on Warhol and the Pop Art phenomenon promoting it aggressively for years.
Time Magazine at the time was the trend setter of American magazine publishing. One might say that Time was instrumental in creating this period. Warhol, the Beatles and Dylan formed a large part of the entertainment section of the magazine. Thus in 1965 Dylan, Edie Sedgwick and Any Warhol were the center of notoriety. Within NYC Edie was famous, if not more famous than Dylan himself. Within the Bohemian community the two people were the talk. Outside the bohemian community they were probably unknown, still their lives were and would be influential.
Dylan had met Edie Sedgwick, who was the talk of the town, when his sidekick, Bobby Neuwirth virtually snatched Edie off the street and brought her to the venue at which Dylan was performing in December 1964. Neuwirth introduced Edie, who was a lovely if totally insecure girl to Bob and the two hit it off. Dylan was smitten by her. The romance developed quickly into January at which time Dylan was booked into his fabled folk tour of England.
He persuaded Edie to say she would wait for him until he returned in May. Of course she promised but as soon as Bob’s plane was airborne she changed her allegiance to Andy Warhol thereby setting off a serious feud between Dylan and himself. Andy wooed Edie by promising her movie roles in his worthless films. The movies well received in what was then known as the counter-culture but were rejected by general society.
Now, up to this point in his career Dylan had been a political folksinger. He was the darling of the civil rights crowd. He performed solo with his guitar and harmonica dressed in his vision of an Okie farm laborer and singing with a hokey invented accent.
So far, so good.
Up to this point in his career Dylan had sung and written politically correct songs. He was actually revitalizing a dormant crowd of folkies. Folk music was on a solid downward trend until he came along. The catch was that he wanted to be a rock and roll singer. The folk scene was just a shuck with an easy entry into recording. Thus unknown to anyone he had signed a rock band to back him up with electric instruments for the tour.
In England he played his opening set as expected solo with his guitar and harmonica and was adoringly received. For the second set he brought out his electric band. There are videos of this on the internet and viewed from a musical sense it was just a noisy, uncoordinated, raucous scarcely understandable set.
His audience was shocked and offended feeling betrayed as, actually, they were. Dylan by this time was nearly a cult figure to core, almost worshipful, followers. They began to boo loudly and continuously. And audiences kept booing all around England. When booed as vociferously as they were the usual reaction is to get off stage or stop what you’re doing. Dylan plowed straight ahead ignoring the response. There’s video of the next bit available too. Someone in the audience shouted ‘Judas!’ which gives evidence of their solemnity. Judas of course is the disciple who betrayed Jesus. Bob shouted back ‘You’re a liar.’ And kept on going.
There are videos of this so that you can see the whole thing. You can see Dylan going into shock. Now, this is important, Dylan suffered psychological damage from this booing. One of the band members quit the band because he couldn’t stand the constant booing. Neither could Dylan actually although he wasn’t deterred. And then he returned to the US with shattered nerves. He had to have. He perhaps returned with expectations of taking up where he left off with Edie. If you’ve had a bad love affair you still can’t imagine the effect this likely had on his shattered self-esteem from the booing. He could still conjure it up.
It was this time in early June when Bob attended a Warhol party and he and Edie went into a corner to discuss what he considered her betrayal. Now, these were all very young people doing a lot of drugs, mainly amphetamines, where fidelity was not thought highly of. The theme song was: If you’re not with the one you love, love the one you’re with. That phrase was thought to be really clever. Bob had not been faithful to Edie while overseas. So…
Did Bob really expect a young psychologically unsettled woman who he had just met to sit around and wait for him for five months. A woman who was the talk of the town. Did he think no one would make a move on the belle of the town? Apparently he did.
Andy Warhol wasted no time. He had moved in: ‘Hello Baby, want to be in the movies?’ Edie did and she went with the Warhols. Now she was attempting to explain this to Bob perhaps per John Sebastian and the Lovin’ Spoonfuls song: Have you ever had to make up your mind, pick up on one and leave the other one behind; it’s not often easy and not always kind. Did you ever have to make up your mind? Bob should have but with the booing ringing through his mind he was enraged by this rejection.
He went home and raged for a couple weeks then sat down and vomited up his disappointment in the crazily raging song ‘Like A Rolling Stone.’ The rolling stone was perhaps Edie who rolled from him to Andy. And then a month later Dylan in a hate filled screed called ‘Positively Fourth Street’ blasted Andy Warhol.
Keep in mind now that I don’t say what follows happened, nevertheless fifty some years later a woman appears and claims that when she was a teenager Bob coaxed her into his rooms at the Chelsea Hotel where he kept her for his sexual amusement for six weeks. The woman’s lawyers refused to reveal her name other than the initial C. Obviously she expected Bob to understand who had filed the suit, the C being the giveaway. We don’t know, but perhaps the intent was merely a shakedown, if indeed Bob was guilty of something. After a few weeks the suit was withdrawn.
A fact is that Bob did have rooms at the Chelsea. The door to his room was recently sold along with other doors when the Chelsea remodeled.
So, we have the Collector movie of 1963 that Bob had undoubtedly seen, we have the unnerving booing, and it is a fact because it is on film even when a fan called out ‘Judas’ and Bob answered ‘You’re a liar.’ Then we have Bob’s disappointed sexual expectations disappointed when he felt rejected by Edie, we have his violent emotional outbreaks that were broadcast nationwide, even internationally in his songs ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ and ‘Positively Fourth Street’. The songs indicate a distressed mind and Bob didn’t care who knew it. In fact, he wanted to unburden his mind to the whole, wide, entire world. And…he had the means to do it.
We don’t have a confirmed identity for C. Remember Catherine James? C. could stand for Catherine. Bob’s mind would definitely have to turn that way because if he knew Catherine as well as she says he did, and if so in the circumstances she says he knew her than I find it hard to believe that he didn’t seduce the thirteen year old Catherine James.
I have had slight contact with Catherine after publishing my review of her autobiography Dandelion. I questioned her Dylan stories but she assured me that she does not lie. She had some amazing contacts as a groupie, including as a live in with Mick Jagger that sounds like a stretcher but I have validated that and all those other claims and they are true. Pamela Des Barres could also confirm them in her auto-biography ‘I’m With The Band’. Catherine doesn’t lie as she emailed me but that doesn’t mean she can keep her dates straight.
Yet I can find no record of Bob having been in California for an extended stay in 1963. Catherine was in NYC in 1964-65 as a fifteen year old. She also has connections to Connecticut, in which State the suit was filed. She does record running into Bob in NYC but he fluffed her off as though he didn’t know her. Whether he might have looked her up after he knew she was in NYC is possible. Catherine may not lie but she doesn’t have to tell all.
Connecticut lawyers took C’s. case and publicly announced it, nobody had to dig it out. Later they retracted it. A couple things could have happened if Bob realized that there was a basis for the suit. One, C. could have chickened out. Two, Bob could have bought C off to avoid adverse publicity.
At any rate he is said to have put his future wife Sara up at the Chelsea. The war between he and Warhol continued on through 1966. As Edie went with Andy because of the movie offers, Dylan through 1965 tried to woo Edie back with a promise of a starring role in a movie he and his manager Albert Grossman said they were going to make, and that kept Edie on tenterhooks wavering between he and Warhol. In November of 1965 it was announced to Edie that Bob had secretly, or at least quickly, married Sara.
Edie was devastated, crushed and destroyed. Then rubbing salt into Edie’s wounds as a final blast he set down and vomited out his song Sooner or Later (One Of Us Must Know) Once again blaring it to the world. Then, he turned Edie over to his sidekick Bobby Neuwirth. From Bobby she went on to debasement after debasement released finally by death.
The identity of C remains a mystery, she appeared suddenly and just as suddenly disappeared. Strange that no sleuth has detected her identity. I do believe that there may been a basis for the lawsuit however. Bob always was careless with women.
Texts:
Des Barres, Pamela: I’m With The Band
Fowles, John: The Collector, book 1963, movie 1963
James, Catherine: Dandelion (Memoir Of A Free Spirit) 2007
Prindle, R.E. A Review: Catherine James: Famous Groupies Of The Sixties | I, Dynamo (idynamo.blog)
Shelton, Robert: No Direction Home, 1986
Shelton, Robert: No Direction Home. The Life And Music Of Bob Dylan (Revised and Updated Edition by Elizabeth Thomson and Patrick Humphries,) 2011
Stein, Jean: Edie, An American Biography, 1982
Warhol, Andy & Pat Hackett: Popism, The Warhol Sixties.
George W. M. Reynolds, CharlesDickens And Mr. Pickwick
February 5, 2023
George W. M Reynolds, Charles Dickens
And Mr. Pickwick.
by
R.E. Prindle
One is mystified concerning the importance of Charles Dickens’ Pickwick Paper in Reynolds’ career. One almost thinks that he is trying to steal Dickens’ identity. The significance of the influence does not end with Reynolds continuation of Dickens Pickwick Papers but continues throughout his life. In fact, Dickens himself adapted his style to that of Reynolds, especially in his novel ‘Our Mutual Friend’. It’s as though he moved to blend with Reynolds. Perhaps the title might even refer to the two writers rivalry.
Dickens began publishing his Pickwick in March of 1836 in serial magazine form that ended after twenty numbers; actually nineteen as the last two installments sold as a unit, perhaps to publish the book while the title was hot. Each installment sold for a shilling. Twenty shillings makes up a pound. The book was then published in 1837.
George Reynolds who had exiled himself to France at the end of 1830 returned to England in 1836. He was then twenty-two. Dickens was twenty-four, both very young.. Reynolds who had earned a literary reputation in France was quickly employed as the editor of The Monthly Magazine where he watched the amazing success of the Pickwick Papers. He itched to be such a successful author. He had everything but a format.
Reynolds had matured far beyond his years in France. He was only sixteen when he left England on his own, thus as a mere youth he had to grope his way through the Parisian jungle.
He had a capacious mind while being very ambitious. He succeeded until he was swindled of his money. Along the way he assumed, or tried to assume the character of a Man of the World. Interestingly Dickens admired and assumed the role of a Man of Feeling; it was the direct opposite of The Man of the World.
While Reynolds would turn out to be an astonishing author with the hard edge of a Man of the World he needed a framework or model to portray his own work. In this case he chose the Pickwick Papers. In 1844 and the Mysteries of London he would model his novel on the Frenchman Eugene Sue’s Mysteries of Paris.
In a rather breathtaking way he appropriated Dickens’ characters and method. Having just returned from Paris with a satchel full of impressions he placed Pickwick in France and called his work Pickwick Abroad. Apart from the fact that the two novels had two different authors the continuation was quite seamless and logical; they might as well have been vol. one and two.
Dickens’ novel was published in 1837 and Reynolds in 1839. Sort of the proper distance for the sequel to be published. Thus Reynolds was riding Dickens’ coattails very closely. As it turns out, according to E.F. Bleiler of Dover Books, Abroad was a near best seller, perhaps rivalling PP. That implies at least several thousand copies, perhaps into ten digits.
Dickens’ serial was selling forty thousand copies an issue near the end so the numbers may be even higher. Remember half or better of the England’s population was illiterate at the time. Naturally Dickens was enraged, despising Reynolds the rest of his life, although ‘Our Mutual Friend’ may acknowledge recognition of their influence on each other.
Reynolds’ work had, at least, four different editions over time; not printings but separate editions. The first two were in 1839, the second in 1857, and the last in 1864. Each date is significant. It’s possible that there were others but I am unacquainted with them if there are.
What is considered the first edition was printed for the publisher Thomas Tegg, Cheapside, R. Griffen and Co., Glasgow, and Tegg and Co., Dublin and also S.A. Tegg, Sydney and Hobart Town.
The second first of 1839 was published by Greenwood, Gilbert and Piper, Paternoster Row. Both were 600+ pages, single volume. Both as deluxe editions bound in leather. As Greenwood was a name assumed by Eugene, Richard’s brother of Mysteries of Paris, there may be something fishy about this edition. Both had forty-one full page illustrations and 33 woodcuts.
Two first editions in the same year is somewhat unusual, and perhaps unique. I have no information on which came first while Greenwood, Gilbert and Piper may be relatively unknown. How the sales were divided between the two I couldn’t guess.
The Teggs edition would imply that the book was placed on sale simultaneously in England, Scotland, Australia and New Zealand. Perhaps inflamed by Dickens’ success the twenty-two year old aspiring Man of the World envisioned the most enormous of successes sparing no expense and effort.
The books had forty-one full page inserted illustrations and thirty-three woodcuts. As Reynolds said the pictures ran the cost of publishing up so he must have been expecting really marvelous results. As he closely followed Dickens publishing methods also publishing twenty installments at a shilling each, as the book was well received being a near best seller, according to Bleiler I think it fair to assume that Reynolds repaired his financial position, especially as Bleiler says that in his personal financing publishing with the Temperance Society a year or two later he lost money heavily. If he had the money to lose it would have had to have come from Pickwick Abroad.
The next edition in time, that of Henry Lea of Paternoster Row by the author of “Robert Macaire In England, etc. etc”. Now, the 1857 edition was published outside the partnership of Reynolds and John Dicks therefore it seems probable that Reynolds didn’t cut Dicks in on any profits. So Reynolds considered Pickwick Abroad as his own separate property. This would hold true of the 1864 edition also. Whether that caused any problems between Reynolds and Dicks isn’t known.
The copyrights for The Mysteries of Paris published earlier were also held outside the partnership by Stiff and Vickers the original publishers . Now this gets interesting. In 1856 Reynolds completed his novels Mysteries of London and Mysteries of the Court of London that he considered one work. These two books were a monumental work extending from 1844 to 1856, that is twelve years. That must have been very exhausting.
My question is why did he cap his masterwork with a new edition of Pickwick Abroad? How do they relate to Dickens? I speculate that it is not improbable that Pickwick formed some sort of psychological connection to Dickens, the Man of Feeling, himself, while Dickens, who was not all that prolific was increasingly drawn into the same psychological connection with Reynolds as is seen by his adoption of Reynolds methods and style specially as seen in his novel ‘Our Mutual Friend.’
There is a significant psychological difference between the two authors which might explain their seeming magnetic attraction to each other. Dickens in a list of eighteenth century authors that influenced him named a writer named Henry MacKenzie. That was a new name to me. Upon checking I learned that he wrote a 1771 novelette titled ‘The Man of Feeling’, following it by a novelette titled ‘The Man of the World’.
Dickens wrote sentimental novels as The Man of Feeling while Reynolds wrote hard edged realism as the Man of the World that he longed to be. Each supplied what the other lacked. Just a thought. Both men were top sellers although Dickens sentimentalism has survived two centuries and continuing while Reynolds’ hard edged man of the world stuff was buried by 1914 although the American author Edgar Rice Burroughs had read The Mysteries of the Court of London somewhen before 1914 as a reference shows up in his ‘Outlaw of Torn’. But until E.F. Bleilers resuscitation of ‘Wagner the Werwolf’ in 1975 Reynolds had been out of print.
At any rate Dickens Pickwick Papers is a monument to sentimentalism or feeling while Reynolds comes down heavy on fairly brutal realism. The contrast as well as similarities between the two is quite striking. Between the two of them they definitely dominated middle century literature.
One might note, however, that of the two brothers of Mysteries of London Eugene is a man of the world while Richard is a man of feeling. Once again, a strong contrast. The story of Richard and Castelcicala might even be called a fairy tale. Reynolds then republished Pickwick Abroad after he finished his major work. This raises the question of what is the relationship of Abroad to the long Mysteries novels? Those two novels are bracketed by Abroad indicating enclosure. Thus Abroad and the Mysteries are one unit.
So, we have the two first editions of 1839, 1857, and finally the last edition of 1864 after Reynolds had laid down his novelistic pen. Thus we have the end of the novels and the first and last editions of Pickwick Abroad enclosing the whole of Reynolds production. Is it all one unit resolving Reynolds’ psychology? He sold his copyrights to John Dicks so he dumped his whole life from 1839 to 1864. He was free from it.
Was that his intent?
Of course his beloved wife Susannah had died in 1858 and that most definitely took the spunk out of the man. He didn’t remarry and possibly didn’t even look for another wife. Things very probably just emptied out.
If there are other editions of Pickwick Abroad I haven’t found them.
Dickens, Charles, Pickwick Papers, 1837
Dickens, Charles, Our Mutual Friend, 1865
McKenzie, Henry, The Man of Feeling, 1781
McKenzie, Henry, The Man of the World
Reynolds, George W. M., Pickwick Abroad, Tegg & Co., 1839
Reynolds, George W. M. Pickwick Abroad, Sherwood, Gilbert & Piper, 1839
Reynolds, Pickwick Abroad, Henry Lea, 1857
George W. M Reynolds, Charles Dickens
And Mr. Pickwick.
by
R.E. Prindle
One is mystified concerning the importance of Charles Dickens’ Pickwick Paper in Reynolds’ career. One almost thinks that he is trying to steal Dickens’ identity. The significance of the influence does not end with Reynolds continuation of Dickens Pickwick Papers but continues throughout his life. In fact, Dickens himself adapted his style to that of Reynolds, especially in his novel ‘Our Mutual Friend’. It’s as though he moved to blend with Reynolds. Perhaps the title might even refer to the two writers rivalry.
Dickens began publishing his Pickwick in March of 1836 in serial magazine form that ended after twenty numbers; actually nineteen as the last two installments sold as a unit, perhaps to publish the book while the title was hot. Each installment sold for a shilling. Twenty shillings makes up a pound. The book was then published in 1837.
George Reynolds who had exiled himself to France at the end of 1830 returned to England in 1836. He was then twenty-two. Dickens was twenty-four, both very young.. Reynolds who had earned a literary reputation in France was quickly employed as the editor of The Monthly Magazine where he watched the amazing success of the Pickwick Papers. He itched to be such a successful author. He had everything but a format.
Reynolds had matured far beyond his years in France. He was only sixteen when he left England on his own, thus as a mere youth he had to grope his way through the Parisian jungle.
He had a capacious mind while being very ambitious. He succeeded until he was swindled of his money. Along the way he assumed, or tried to assume the character of a Man of the World. Interestingly Dickens admired and assumed the role of a Man of Feeling; it was the direct opposite of The Man of the World.
While Reynolds would turn out to be an astonishing author with the hard edge of a Man of the World he needed a framework or model to portray his own work. In this case he chose the Pickwick Papers. In 1844 and the Mysteries of London he would model his novel on the Frenchman Eugene Sue’s Mysteries of Paris.
In a rather breathtaking way he appropriated Dickens’ characters and method. Having just returned from Paris with a satchel full of impressions he placed Pickwick in France and called his work Pickwick Abroad. Apart from the fact that the two novels had two different authors the continuation was quite seamless and logical; they might as well have been vol. one and two.
Dickens’ novel was published in 1837 and Reynolds in 1839. Sort of the proper distance for the sequel to be published. Thus Reynolds was riding Dickens’ coattails very closely. As it turns out, according to E.F. Bleiler of Dover Books, Abroad was a near best seller, perhaps rivalling PP. That implies at least several thousand copies, perhaps into ten digits.
Dickens’ serial was selling forty thousand copies an issue near the end so the numbers may be even higher. Remember half or better of the England’s population was illiterate at the time. Naturally Dickens was enraged, despising Reynolds the rest of his life, although ‘Our Mutual Friend’ may acknowledge recognition of their influence on each other.
Reynolds’ work had, at least, four different editions over time; not printings but separate editions. The first two were in 1839, the second in 1857, and the last in 1864. Each date is significant. It’s possible that there were others but I am unacquainted with them if there are.
What is considered the first edition was printed for the publisher Thomas Tegg, Cheapside, R. Griffen and Co., Glasgow, and Tegg and Co., Dublin and also S.A. Tegg, Sydney and Hobart Town.
The second first of 1839 was published by Greenwood, Gilbert and Piper, Paternoster Row. Both were 600+ pages, single volume. Both as deluxe editions bound in leather. As Greenwood was a name assumed by Eugene, Richard’s brother of Mysteries of Paris, there may be something fishy about this edition. Both had forty-one full page illustrations and 33 woodcuts.
Two first editions in the same year is somewhat unusual, and perhaps unique. I have no information on which came first while Greenwood, Gilbert and Piper may be relatively unknown. How the sales were divided between the two I couldn’t guess.
The Teggs edition would imply that the book was placed on sale simultaneously in England, Scotland, Australia and New Zealand. Perhaps inflamed by Dickens’ success the twenty-two year old aspiring Man of the World envisioned the most enormous of successes sparing no expense and effort.
The books had forty-one full page inserted illustrations and thirty-three woodcuts. As Reynolds said the pictures ran the cost of publishing up so he must have been expecting really marvelous results. As he closely followed Dickens publishing methods also publishing twenty installments at a shilling each, as the book was well received being a near best seller, according to Bleiler I think it fair to assume that Reynolds repaired his financial position, especially as Bleiler says that in his personal financing publishing with the Temperance Society a year or two later he lost money heavily. If he had the money to lose it would have had to have come from Pickwick Abroad.
The next edition in time, that of Henry Lea of Paternoster Row by the author of “Robert Macaire In England, etc. etc”. Now, the 1857 edition was published outside the partnership of Reynolds and John Dicks therefore it seems probable that Reynolds didn’t cut Dicks in on any profits. So Reynolds considered Pickwick Abroad as his own separate property. This would hold true of the 1864 edition also. Whether that caused any problems between Reynolds and Dicks isn’t known.
The copyrights for The Mysteries of Paris published earlier were also held outside the partnership by Stiff and Vickers the original publishers . Now this gets interesting. In 1856 Reynolds completed his novels Mysteries of London and Mysteries of the Court of London that he considered one work. These two books were a monumental work extending from 1844 to 1856, that is twelve years. That must have been very exhausting.
My question is why did he cap his masterwork with a new edition of Pickwick Abroad? How do they relate to Dickens? I speculate that it is not improbable that Pickwick formed some sort of psychological connection to Dickens, the Man of Feeling, himself, while Dickens, who was not all that prolific was increasingly drawn into the same psychological connection with Reynolds as is seen by his adoption of Reynolds methods and style specially as seen in his novel ‘Our Mutual Friend.’
There is a significant psychological difference between the two authors which might explain their seeming magnetic attraction to each other. Dickens in a list of eighteenth century authors that influenced him named a writer named Henry MacKenzie. That was a new name to me. Upon checking I learned that he wrote a 1771 novelette titled ‘The Man of Feeling’, following it by a novelette titled ‘The Man of the World’.
Dickens wrote sentimental novels as The Man of Feeling while Reynolds wrote hard edged realism as the Man of the World that he longed to be. Each supplied what the other lacked. Just a thought. Both men were top sellers although Dickens sentimentalism has survived two centuries and continuing while Reynolds’ hard edged man of the world stuff was buried by 1914 although the American author Edgar Rice Burroughs had read The Mysteries of the Court of London somewhen before 1914 as a reference shows up in his ‘Outlaw of Torn’. But until E.F. Bleilers resuscitation of ‘Wagner the Werwolf’ in 1975 Reynolds had been out of print.
At any rate Dickens Pickwick Papers is a monument to sentimentalism or feeling while Reynolds comes down heavy on fairly brutal realism. The contrast as well as similarities between the two is quite striking. Between the two of them they definitely dominated middle century literature.
One might note, however, that of the two brothers of Mysteries of London Eugene is a man of the world while Richard is a man of feeling. Once again, a strong contrast. The story of Richard and Castelcicala might even be called a fairy tale. Reynolds then republished Pickwick Abroad after he finished his major work. This raises the question of what is the relationship of Abroad to the long Mysteries novels? Those two novels are bracketed by Abroad indicating enclosure. Thus Abroad and the Mysteries are one unit.
So, we have the two first editions of 1839, 1857, and finally the last edition of 1864 after Reynolds had laid down his novelistic pen. Thus we have the end of the novels and the first and last editions of Pickwick Abroad enclosing the whole of Reynolds production. Is it all one unit resolving Reynolds’ psychology? He sold his copyrights to John Dicks so he dumped his whole life from 1839 to 1864. He was free from it.
Was that his intent?
Of course his beloved wife Susannah had died in 1858 and that most definitely took the spunk out of the man. He didn’t remarry and possibly didn’t even look for another wife. Things very probably just emptied out.
If there are other editions of Pickwick Abroad I haven’t found them.
Dickens, Charles, Pickwick Papers, 1837
Dickens, Charles, Our Mutual Friend, 1865
McKenzie, Henry, The Man of Feeling, 1781
McKenzie, Henry, The Man of the World
Reynolds, George W. M., Pickwick Abroad, Tegg & Co., 1839
Reynolds, George W. M. Pickwick Abroad, Sherwood, Gilbert & Piper, 1839
Reynolds, Pickwick Abroad, Henry Lea, 1857
Reynolds, Pickwick Abroad. Henry G. Bohn, 1864 Reynolds, Wagner the Werwolf, forward by E.F. Bleiler, Dover Books,
George W. M Reynolds, Charles Dickens
And Mr. Pickwick.
by
R.E. Prindle
One is mystified concerning the importance of Charles Dickens’ Pickwick Paper in Reynolds’ career. One almost thinks that he is trying to steal Dickens’ identity. The significance of the influence does not end with Reynolds continuation of Dickens Pickwick Papers but continues throughout his life. In fact, Dickens himself adapted his style to that of Reynolds, especially in his novel ‘Our Mutual Friend’. It’s as though he moved to blend with Reynolds. Perhaps the title might even refer to the two writers rivalry.
Dickens began publishing his Pickwick in March of 1836 in serial magazine form that ended after twenty numbers; actually nineteen as the last two installments sold as a unit, perhaps to publish the book while the title was hot. Each installment sold for a shilling. Twenty shillings makes up a pound. The book was then published in 1837.
George Reynolds who had exiled himself to France at the end of 1830 returned to England in 1836. He was then twenty-two. Dickens was twenty-four, both very young.. Reynolds who had earned a literary reputation in France was quickly employed as the editor of The Monthly Magazine where he watched the amazing success of the Pickwick Papers. He itched to be such a successful author. He had everything but a format.
Reynolds had matured far beyond his years in France. He was only sixteen when he left England on his own, thus as a mere youth he had to grope his way through the Parisian jungle.
He had a capacious mind while being very ambitious. He succeeded until he was swindled of his money. Along the way he assumed, or tried to assume the character of a Man of the World. Interestingly Dickens admired and assumed the role of a Man of Feeling; it was the direct opposite of The Man of the World.
While Reynolds would turn out to be an astonishing author with the hard edge of a Man of the World he needed a framework or model to portray his own work. In this case he chose the Pickwick Papers. In 1844 and the Mysteries of London he would model his novel on the Frenchman Eugene Sue’s Mysteries of Paris.
In a rather breathtaking way he appropriated Dickens’ characters and method. Having just returned from Paris with a satchel full of impressions he placed Pickwick in France and called his work Pickwick Abroad. Apart from the fact that the two novels had two different authors the continuation was quite seamless and logical; they might as well have been vol. one and two.
Dickens’ novel was published in 1837 and Reynolds in 1839. Sort of the proper distance for the sequel to be published. Thus Reynolds was riding Dickens’ coattails very closely. As it turns out, according to E.F. Bleiler of Dover Books, Abroad was a near best seller, perhaps rivalling PP. That implies at least several thousand copies, perhaps into ten digits.
Dickens’ serial was selling forty thousand copies an issue near the end so the numbers may be even higher. Remember half or better of the England’s population was illiterate at the time. Naturally Dickens was enraged, despising Reynolds the rest of his life, although ‘Our Mutual Friend’ may acknowledge recognition of their influence on each other.
Reynolds’ work had, at least, four different editions over time; not printings but separate editions. The first two were in 1839, the second in 1857, and the last in 1864. Each date is significant. It’s possible that there were others but I am unacquainted with them if there are.
What is considered the first edition was printed for the publisher Thomas Tegg, Cheapside, R. Griffen and Co., Glasgow, and Tegg and Co., Dublin and also S.A. Tegg, Sydney and Hobart Town.
The second first of 1839 was published by Greenwood, Gilbert and Piper, Paternoster Row. Both were 600+ pages, single volume. Both as deluxe editions bound in leather. As Greenwood was a name assumed by Eugene, Richard’s brother of Mysteries of Paris, there may be something fishy about this edition. Both had forty-one full page illustrations and 33 woodcuts.
Two first editions in the same year is somewhat unusual, and perhaps unique. I have no information on which came first while Greenwood, Gilbert and Piper may be relatively unknown. How the sales were divided between the two I couldn’t guess.
The Teggs edition would imply that the book was placed on sale simultaneously in England, Scotland, Australia and New Zealand. Perhaps inflamed by Dickens’ success the twenty-two year old aspiring Man of the World envisioned the most enormous of successes sparing no expense and effort.
The books had forty-one full page inserted illustrations and thirty-three woodcuts. As Reynolds said the pictures ran the cost of publishing up so he must have been expecting really marvelous results. As he closely followed Dickens publishing methods also publishing twenty installments at a shilling each, as the book was well received being a near best seller, according to Bleiler I think it fair to assume that Reynolds repaired his financial position, especially as Bleiler says that in his personal financing publishing with the Temperance Society a year or two later he lost money heavily. If he had the money to lose it would have had to have come from Pickwick Abroad.
The next edition in time, that of Henry Lea of Paternoster Row by the author of “Robert Macaire In England, etc. etc”. Now, the 1857 edition was published outside the partnership of Reynolds and John Dicks therefore it seems probable that Reynolds didn’t cut Dicks in on any profits. So Reynolds considered Pickwick Abroad as his own separate property. This would hold true of the 1864 edition also. Whether that caused any problems between Reynolds and Dicks isn’t known.
The copyrights for The Mysteries of Paris published earlier were also held outside the partnership by Stiff and Vickers the original publishers . Now this gets interesting. In 1856 Reynolds completed his novels Mysteries of London and Mysteries of the Court of London that he considered one work. These two books were a monumental work extending from 1844 to 1856, that is twelve years. That must have been very exhausting.
My question is why did he cap his masterwork with a new edition of Pickwick Abroad? How do they relate to Dickens? I speculate that it is not improbable that Pickwick formed some sort of psychological connection to Dickens, the Man of Feeling, himself, while Dickens, who was not all that prolific was increasingly drawn into the same psychological connection with Reynolds as is seen by his adoption of Reynolds methods and style specially as seen in his novel ‘Our Mutual Friend.’
There is a significant psychological difference between the two authors which might explain their seeming magnetic attraction to each other. Dickens in a list of eighteenth century authors that influenced him named a writer named Henry MacKenzie. That was a new name to me. Upon checking I learned that he wrote a 1771 novelette titled ‘The Man of Feeling’, following it by a novelette titled ‘The Man of the World’.
Dickens wrote sentimental novels as The Man of Feeling while Reynolds wrote hard edged realism as the Man of the World that he longed to be. Each supplied what the other lacked. Just a thought. Both men were top sellers although Dickens sentimentalism has survived two centuries and continuing while Reynolds’ hard edged man of the world stuff was buried by 1914 although the American author Edgar Rice Burroughs had read The Mysteries of the Court of London somewhen before 1914 as a reference shows up in his ‘Outlaw of Torn’. But until E.F. Bleilers resuscitation of ‘Wagner the Werwolf’ in 1975 Reynolds had been out of print.
At any rate Dickens Pickwick Papers is a monument to sentimentalism or feeling while Reynolds comes down heavy on fairly brutal realism. The contrast as well as similarities between the two is quite striking. Between the two of them they definitely dominated middle century literature.
One might note, however, that of the two brothers of Mysteries of London Eugene is a man of the world while Richard is a man of feeling. Once again, a strong contrast. The story of Richard and Castelcicala might even be called a fairy tale. Reynolds then republished Pickwick Abroad after he finished his major work. This raises the question of what is the relationship of Abroad to the long Mysteries novels? Those two novels are bracketed by Abroad indicating enclosure. Thus Abroad and the Mysteries are one unit.
So, we have the two first editions of 1839, 1857, and finally the last edition of 1864 after Reynolds had laid down his novelistic pen. Thus we have the end of the novels and the first and last editions of Pickwick Abroad enclosing the whole of Reynolds production. Is it all one unit resolving Reynolds’ psychology? He sold his copyrights to John Dicks so he dumped his whole life from 1839 to 1864. He was free from it.
Was that his intent?
Of course his beloved wife Susannah had died in 1858 and that most definitely took the spunk out of the man. He didn’t remarry and possibly didn’t even look for another wife. Things very probably just emptied out.
If there are other editions of Pickwick Abroad I haven’t found them.
Dickens, Charles, Pickwick Papers, 1837
Dickens, Charles, Our Mutual Friend, 1865
McKenzie, Henry, The Man of Feeling, 1781
McKenzie, Henry, The Man of the World
Reynolds, George W. M., Pickwick Abroad, Tegg & Co., 1839
Reynolds, George W. M. Pickwick Abroad, Sherwood, Gilbert & Piper, 1839
Reynolds, Pickwick Abroad, Henry Lea, 1857
Reynolds, Pickwick Abroad. Henry G. Bohn, 1864 Reynolds, Wagner the Werwolf, forward by E.F. Bleiler, Dover Books,
Reynolds, Pickwick Abroad. Henry G. Bohn, 1864 Reynolds, Wagner the Werwolf, forward by E.F. Bleiler, Dover Books,
I, Dynamo 