A. Merritt's Christmas card for 1936

Merritt holds a pitchfork:  "Ready for the Critics"!

Happy holidays.

Roger Dean's Gollum

Roger Dean (b. 1944) is a British artist perhaps best known for his album covers, especially those for the band Yes. I knew that he did at least one Tolkien-related illustration, a painting of Gollum, done at the suggestion of a friend.  It's a bit dark (in appears in Views, published in 1975), but I rather like it.

Poetic Elves in the 1920s

I was discussing "twee" with a friend and remembered a nifty poem I read about thirty-five years ago.  Of course I had to go find it, and it's as good as I recall, so I'll share it here.

How to Treat Elves

by Morris Bishop

I met an elf-man in the woods,
the wee-est little elf!
Sitting under a mushroom tall—
'twas taller than himself.

"How do you do, little elf," I said,
"and what do you do all day?"
"I dance 'n fwolic about," said he,
"'n scuttle about and play;

"I s'prise the butterflies, 'n when
a katydid I see,
'Katy didn't!' I say, and he
says 'Katy did!' to me!

"I hide behind my mushroom stalk
when Mister Mole comes froo,
'n only jus' to fwighten him
I jump out 'n say, 'Boo!'

"'N then I swing on a cobweb swing,
up in the air so high,
'N the cwickets chirp just to hear me sing,
'Upsy-daisy-die!'

"'N then I play with the baby chicks,
I call them, chick chick chick!
'N what do you think of that?" said he.
I said, "It makes me sick."

"It gives me sharp and shooting pains
to listen to such drool."
I lifted up my foot, and squashed
the God damn little fool. *

The poem first appeared in The Saturday Evening Post for 3 April 1926 (it was reprinted in an anthology edited by Thomas L. Masson, Laughs: A Sovereign Remedy for Boredom, published in November 1926). That makes it nearly contemporary with Lord Dunsany's poem, "Ode to a Dublin Critic," apparently first published in Fifty Poems (1929). Here are the first two stanzas (of five):

        Ode to a Dublin Critic

 

        Through steely gaps that I have known 

           In mirage mountains, upon wings 

        Has my imagination flown 

          To bring you news of magic things.

        And lesser journalists have said, 

          That cannot see such things themselves, 

        The man is clearly off his head 

          To write of things like gods and elves

Of course earlier in the same decade, J.R.R. Tolkien was writing of 'Tinfang Warble" in a fairy poem first published in 1927. It is a conception Tolkien would (thankfully) abandon.  Here are the first eight lines.

Tinfang Warble

O the hoot! O the hoot!

How he trillups on his flute!

O the hoot of Tinfang Warble!

Dancing all alone,

hopping on a stone, 

Flitting like a fan, 

In the twilight on the lawn, 

And his name is Tinfang Warble!

 

* The text of "How to Treat Elves" is that given in Bishop's collection Spilt Milk (1942). The poem also appears in Bishop's earlier collection Paramount Poems (1929), but I have not seen that appearance.

More E.A. Wyke-Smith nonsense

I named this blog "A Shiver in the Archives," but sometimes that shiver is one of revulsion. I'm getting tired of finding photos on the internet of supposed authors, when they are completely and wrongly identified. For example, this photo, which I just observed here,

 Not E.A. Wyke-Smith

No, no, this is not E.A. Wyke-Smith (more fully, Edward Augustine Wyke-Smith), the author of The Marvellous Land of Snergs. I don't know who it is, but presumably someone found a photo of an Edward Smith and sloppily claimed it was was the author.

I have several photos of Wyke-Smith, shared with me by his family. I published the nicest portrait in The Annotated Hobbit.  It, too, has migrated to the internet, where it appears without source-credit at the Open Library and the ISFDB. 

Here is a photograph of the actual author. 

The real E.A. Wyke-Smith

New Issues with Following Blogs by email

The short version:  Most blogs I'm involved with have a "Follow by email" option. The "Follow by email" function worked (fine) via Google's Feedburner since I started using it.  Google is eliminating Feedburner in July, which means I have had to find an alternate source. I have transferred this following-by-email function to follow.it. I already have seen anomalies, and hope they won't be numerous. This blog has a new "Follow by email" widget that goes directly to follow.it. I have migrated the subscription list there too, but I suspect there will be issues. I'll try to fix errors if they are reported to me.

A Rider Ghost Annual

G.F. Marson—more fully Gerald Francis Marson (1884-1969)—was a British clergyman who published a small number of books. His first two were in a series of parish plays, Jerusalem & Bethany: A Passion Play (1928) and St. Christopher: A Miracle Play in Eight Scenes and an Epilogue (1928). His third book was also religious in nature, The Power of the Cross: Meditations on the Seven Last Words from the Cross (1938). His final book was his most substantial, Ghosts, Ghouls and Gallows (London:  Rider & Co., [1946]). It consists of two parts, the first containing thirty-five autobiographical reports; the second containing eighteen stories, nearly all of  them supernatural. At the top of the dust-wrapper, there is a banner claiming it is a "Rider Ghost Annual." Which is all well and good, but were there any other such titles in this series?  I haven't been able to find any.