“The Kreutzer Sonata” and The Moonlight, part 1

A group of strangers meet in a Russian railway carriage. It is 1889 and the conversation turns to the decline of marriage. An old man states that this is all because of too much education: people have become too learned and there is no more fear. Women should fear their husbands, then there would be fewer divorces. A woman shakes her head:

“Oh, that, my little father, that is ended.”

“No, madam, that cannot end. As she, Eve, the woman, was taken from man’s ribs, so she will remain unto the end of the world,” said the old man, shaking his head so triumphantly and so severely that the clerk, deciding that the victory was on his side, burst into a loud laugh.

“Yes, you men think so,” replied the lady, without surrendering, and turning toward us. “You have given yourself liberty. As for woman, you wish to keep her in the seraglio. To you, everything is permissible. Is it not so?”

“Oh, man, –that’s another affair.”

Double standard? The old man says, No. He says that men, too, have received the Law, but that it is not so bad for them to break it as it is for women. Double standard, yes.

The old man gets off the train and the others continue chatting about marriage and the status of women, all except one passenger who keeps to himself and avoids eye contact with the others. Finally, he is drawn into the conversation and begins talking wildly about love, which he denounces. One of the other passengers mentions the Posdnicheff case, where a man murdered his wife. “I see that you have recognized me,” says the man who does not believe in love and reveals himself as Posdnicheff.

At the next stop all of the passengers leave the carriage except Posdnicheff and the narrator. “Love, marriage, family, — all lies, lies, lies,” says Posdnicheff and then he tells the narrator the story of how he came to murder his wife.

“The Kreutzer Sonata”, painting by Prinet, 1901, inspired by Tolstoy’s work but illustrating something that never happens in the story — except, perhaps, in one man’s fevered imagination. This painting was used in an advertisement for Tabu perfume and was well-known enough in the 1950s to be parodied in Mad.

Thus begins Leo Tolstoy’s “The Kreutzer Sonata”, a work disliked by pretty much everyone who has read it. But Tolstoy had serious purpose in writing the story and put a lot into it over the years. “The Kreutzer Sonata” incorporated much of his own thinking on sex, marriage, and the relations between the sexes. This is not to say that Posdnicheff is Tolstoy’s double — Tolstoy never murdered anyone — but his words often reflect Tolstoy’s opinions.

Posdnicheff tells the narrator that he comes from a wealthy family and that he did not marry until he was thirty. Before that time he lived, he says, a life of debauchery, having sex with prostitutes. Eventually, though, he is persuaded that he should marry and decides on a young woman from a family fallen on hard times. Before their wedding he shows his bride-to-be his diary, which describes his various sexual adventures, one of which he wants her to know about before she hears of it through gossip.

Now this last bit also happens in Anna Karenin, when Levin shows Kitty his diary. And, in fact, Tolstoy also showed his diary to Sophia before he married her, particularly because he wanted her to know about a liason with a woman that she knew. All three of these women — Sophia, Kitty, and Posdnicheff’s fiancée — were terribly embarrassed by this action, though Tolstoy would have it that they were horrified rather than mortified.

“The Kreutzer Sonata” by Joseph deCamp, about 1913.

Anyway, the Posdnicheff wedding proceeds. The marriage is not a success. The couple quarrel often and then make up and have sex. Then they quarrel again. Posdnicheff is convinced that they quarrel because, once their sexual desire is satisfied, that they are not interested in one another. They hate each other, says Posdnicheff, and their hate grows because neither is able to find a reason for this hatred. Of course, he is ascribing thoughts and feelings to his bride that she is unable to refute and, over the course of the story, the reader may come to see Posdnicheff as a very unreliable narrator. Certainly, by this point, most readers will find him unlikeable, cold and distant, though he believes himself a creature controlled by passion.

The marriage staggers on. There are children — at least five, maybe seven, possibly two died — and Posdnicheff names two of them, the boy that he uses as a weapon against his mother and the girl that she enlists as an ally against him. The couple fight and screw and propagate until a “rascally” doctor explains birth control to Mrs. Posdnicheff. Now she blossoms, becoming plumper and prettier. Of course, Posdnicheff hates this. When his wife becomes interested in performing music with a male violinist, he becomes jealous. They perform Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata for Piano and Violin, No.9 in A Major (Opus 47), a work that greatly disturbs Posdnicheff. His jealousy and hatred grows until he tells his wife that he wishes she were dead. She attempts suicide; they reconcile, briefly, then back to the old routine of quarrel/hate/screw; he suggests divorce, but only if she initiates it. Finally, in a fit of jealous rage, Posdnicheff stabs his wife, right through her corset, inflicting a wound that turns out to be fatal. The story ends by quoting Matthew 5:28, “…whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery…” and goes on to say that this includes a husband looking lustfully on his own wife.

A couple of notes are due here: Posdnicheff never actually discovers that his wife is unfaithful — there’s that unreliable narrator trick — and it is only when she is dying that Posdnicheff sees his wife as a human being, that is, a real individual person as opposed to a Wife, a Mother, a Woman; throughout his tale, he never once uses her name. Along the way in this story, we are treated to various rants: against contraception — which is a terrible evil; against pretty dresses and hairdos — traps to catch men; about love — which does not exist; about music — which is so disturbing that it should be controlled by the state; about the fact that all women care about is entrapping a husband; and the fact that women actually run the world by being totally in control of men all the time, even though they exercise this control from a condition of slavery. By now the reader’s brain is shouting the word “misogyny”.

Clandestine copy of “The Kreutzer Sonata” circulated in 1889. [British Library] The Library says that this is a hectograph rather than a mimeograph. That is, a special carbon paper proof was imprinted on a sheet of gelatin, then paper copies were pulled from the jello plate. Maybe fifty good copies could be made before the sheet became unusable. This was a method used up to half a century ago to print ‘zines.

“The Kreutzer Sonata” was circulated in a mimeographed form for a while. Tolstoy rightly thought that the Czarist government would block its publication but perhaps he did not forsee that an enterprising Berlin publisher would release versions in four different languages. After the English version was released, the United States Post Office made it illegal to send it through the mail. The US Attorney-General backed this action and President Roosevelt called Tolstoy a “sexual moral pervert”. Of course, Teddy might have been just getting back at a guy who disapproved of hunting. The case went to the courts after some newspaper vendors excitedly offered “Suppressed!” copies for sale. In the end, Philadelphia’s Justice Thayer struck down the ban. Tolstoy might hold some absurd ideas, he said, but the work was not an “obscene libel”. In the first place, it wasn’t obscene and, after all, the anti-sex ideals expressed in it were a commonplace in Christian thought.

G.K.Chesterton, who held a jaundiced view of Tolstoy’s “simplicity”, said:

The emotion to which Tolstoy has again and again given a really fine expression is an emotion of pity for the plain affairs of men. He pities the masses of men for the things they really endure — the tedium and the trivial cruelty. But it is just here, unfortunately, that his great mistake comes in; the mistake that renders practically useless the philosophy of Tolstoy… Tolstoy is not content with pitying humanity for its pains: such as poverty and prisons. He also pities humanity for its pleasures, such as music and patriotism. He weeps at the thought of hatred; but in “The Kreutzer Sonata” he weeps almost as much at the thought of love.

Isabel Hapgood, who had translated and championed Tolstoy’s work for Americans, refused to translate “The Kreutzer Sonata”. She said:

The whole book is a violent and roughly worded attack upon the evils of animal passion. In that sense, it is moral. Translation, even with copious excisions, is impossible, in my opinion, and also inadvisable. The men against whom it is directed will not mend their ways from the reading of it, even if they fully grasp the idea that unhappiness and mad jealousy and crime are the outcome of their ways, as Pozdnisheff is made to say in terms as plain as the language will admit of, and in terms much plainer than are usually employed in polite society.
On the other hand, the book can, I am sure, do no good to the people at whom it is not launched. It is decidedly a case where ignorance is bliss…

This bit of peck-sniffery makes me almost sympathize with Tolstoy. (I say, fuck “polite society”! And “Stay ignorant, blissful fools,” is elitist bullshit. [rant rant rave rave]) But there is an interesting bit in Hapgood’s essay:

Count Tolstoi one day praised the Shakers in this manner [i.e., for the same reason that Posdnicheff praised them, because they were committed to non-reproduction] before a table full of people. I was afraid to ask him his meaning, lest he should explain in detail, so I questioned his wife in private as to whether this new departure was not somewhat inconsistent with his previously advocated views on woman’s vocation.
She replied: “Probably it is inconsistent; but my husband changes his opinions every two years, you know.”

I like that she didn’t ask what he meant, “lest he should explain in detail” which says quite a bit about Count Tolstoy and his imperious verbosity. I also like the interchange with Sophia Tolstoy that confirms many men’s suspicions that all women are in league and constantly plotting together against the master sex.

Sophia and Leo. Photos from around the time of their wedding in 1862.

That brings up the question of the Tolstoy marriage. In brief: it was troubled. Leo was thirty-four, a little older than Posdnicheff when he married. Sophia was nineteen, about the same age (so far as I can tell) as Posdnicheff’s bride. The Tolstoys had thirteen children; nine survived infancy. They began arguing early on but Sophia was not shy with her opinions. She acted as Tolstoy’s editor and transcribed his manuscripts over all the years of their marriage. When she didn’t like a work — and she hated “The Kreutzer Sonata” — she let him know. When Leo leapt into appealing new systems of thought, she tried to restrain him. They certainly fought. Sometimes, like many battling couples, their fights were ridiculous to outsiders. But Leo’s lofty foolishness could be forgiven as idealism gone off the rails; Sophia’s actions appeared neurotic and mad.

Sophia spied on her own house through binoculars, sizing up the situation. She hated cats and banned them from the Tolstoy estate at Yasnaya Polyana; then, to counter the vermin problem, brought in snakes. The symbolism here, of Eve investing a would-be Paradise with swarms of serpents, cannot have been lost on either Tolstoy. And Sophia was a temptress, always trying to turn Leo away from a multitude of notions. Their daughter Aleksandra cited a letter:

“You are harassing and killing yourself,” [Sophia] wrote him on April 19, 1889, to Yasnaya Polyana. “I…have been thinking: he does not eat meat, nor smoke, he works beyond his strength, his brain is not nourished, hence the drowsiness and weakness. How stupid vegetarianism is….Kill life in yourself, kill all impulses of the flesh, all its needs — why not kill yourself altogether? After all you are committing yourself to *slow* death, what’s the difference?”

Yeah, dude, why not just kill yourself? Which is what Posdnicheff says to his wife and which she promptly attempts to do. And it was Sophia who actually attempted suicide, several times, so often that it seems to have become a ritual. Sophia’s diary also castigates Leo for his coldness which he interrupts only in fits of sexual desire. So the real life drama is close to the story. Well, except for one thing: it wasn’t sex that the Tolstoys fought about, mostly it was money.

Sophia and Leo, around 1905.

Tolstoy, in a bout of spiritual fervor, decided to leave his entire estate to some noble purpose or other. Sophia wanted the money to go to their children. This was the cause of the great combat between them at the end of their lives. Tolstoy was assisted by a number of fervent Tolstoyians. Some he employed as secretaries. One of these, Vladimir Chertkov, helped Leo determine how to distribute his fortune in his will and it was Chertkov that Sophia was most worried about; this was the guy she was looking for with binoculars. She had heard that there was a secret will signed by Tolstoy in 1909 and was determined to fight it. In 1910, Leo and Sophia quarrelled and he stalked out of the house, attended by an acolyte. He was persuaded not to try to walk to wherever it was he had chosen as a destination and instead took up refuge in a series of railway stations, headed somewhere else. Tolstoy succumbed to pneumonia in one of these stations and died at the age of 83. Sophia was not allowed to see him; she hovered nearby, in a railway car, talking about hiring a private detective to follow Leo and find the secret will. A decade later, everything became moot as the Bolshevik Revolution wiped out the Tolstoy property values.

Sophia, trying to get entry to the place where Leo is dying, 1910.

But there is still the question of how much Posdnicheff’s views reflect those of Leo Tolstoy. Well, Posdnicheff’s views on sexy clothing had already been stated by Tolstoy both in other works and in rants to his listeners. He was horrified by the sight of a naked shoulder. Or perhaps he was filled with lust, which is much the same thing, right? And, this was the fault of the shoulder-barer — at least to a egocentric like Tolstoy. Then there is the stuff about music: Posdnicheff says, “…a terrible thing is music in general. What is it? Why does it do what it does? They say that music stirs the soul. Stupidity! A lie! It acts, it acts frightfully.” Tolstoy once told Rachmaninoff that he could not stand Beethoven, “Is such music needed by anyone? I must tell you how I dislike it all. Beethoven is nonsense.” Stefan Zweig said that Tolstoy distrusted both women and music because they unleashed his passions. But let’s go directly to Tolstoy’s own defense of “The Kreutzer Sonata” in which he explains his thinking:

…it is necessary for the view in regard to carnal love to change. Men and women ought to be educated in their homes and by public opinion to look, before and after marriage, on infatuation and the carnal love connected with it, not as upon a poetical and exalted condition, such as it is now considered to be, but as upon an animal condition, degrading to man…

It is not good to use means preventive of childbirth, in the first place, because people are thus relieved of cares and labours in regard to children, who serve as a redemption of carnal love, and, in the second, because it comes very near to the act which is most repulsive to a human conscience, to murder. Nor is non- continence during pregnancy and nursing good, because it is destructive of the physical, and still more of the mental, powers of woman.

…the attainment of the aim of being united in wedlock or of being outside of wedlock with the object of love, however much extolled by poetry it may be, is unworthy of man, just as the aim of obtaining sweet and superabundant food, which presents itself to many as the highest good, is unworthy of man.

And so on. Tolstoy proceeds from principles which he says everyone agrees with — the value of chastity, for instance — and he cites the New Testament as a basis for his thinking — hence the quotation that ends “The Kreutzer Sonata”. Tolstoy thinks it is best not to have sex – procreation is not an issue for him, better not to breed — but he recognizes that complete celibacy is difficult if not impossible. So, try for the chaste ideal but if continence is the best you can manage, so be it. There are echoes here of Paul’s notion that it is better to marry than to burn. Marriage is an accomodation with sin. Although Tolstoy claims to believe in the equality of the sexes, his argument is based on unstated premises of female subservience. The old man in “The Kreutzer Sonata” who proclaims that obedience is a wife’s duty is saying something that Tolstoy accepts as obvious.

Still from a 2008 movie version of “The Kreutzer Sonata” that has the action in current times. That sound you hear is Leo Tolstoy doing cartwheels in his coffin.

Sophia Tolstoy took over responsibility for publishing her husband’s work in 1886 and performed this duty very well. She disliked the crowds that called at Yasnaya Polanya, thinking that many of the Tolstoy-worshippers were “lunatics” and the women “hysterics”. But mostly she regretted the loss of her husband as he took on the role of living saint. From Sophia’s journal, 1903:

I went to [my husband's] room this evening as he was getting ready for bed, and realised I never hear a single word of comfort or kindness from him nowadays.

What I predicted indeed has come true: my passionate husband has died, and since he was never a friend to me, how could he be one to me now? This life is not for me. There is nowhere for me to put my energy and passion for life; no contact with people, no art, no work – nothing but total loneliness all day.

That, I think, is the authentic voice of Posdnicheff’s wife. Posdnicheff himself says that he murdered his wife, not when he stuck a knife in her, but when he married her. Perhaps that’s what Tolstoy thought about Sophia. One last thing: as Tolstoy’s publisher, it was Sophia who demanded that the czar lift the ban on Russian publication of “The Kreutzer Sonata” in 1891. She was successful.

[Part 2 will discuss a riposte to Tolstoy also titled from a Beethoven sonata, Joyce Cary's The Moonlight.]

Notes:

The full text of “The Kreutzer Sonata” is here and in other places on the Net. I have kept Posdnicheff’s name as the anonymous translator has it, though you can find it spelled at least three other ways in the various pages I have linked.
Tolstoy’s Epilogue, his explanation of “The Kreutzer Sonata”, was published in English in 1904.

Besides her anti-Kreutzer essay linked above, Isabel Hapgood wrote a long account of visiting the Tolstoys in 1890. There she gives another version of the Shaker/celibacy business mentioned above.

This is a marvelous account of visiting Yasnaya Polnaya by Elif Batumen which has quite a bit to say about “The Kreutzer Sonata” and the Tolstoy marriage.

Many adaptations have been made of “The Kreutzer Sonata” for stage, screen, and television. None (that I have seen) are particularly good since they all follow the action of the narrative, so you get a drama about a neurotic, jealous wife-murderer with none of the surrounding rationale. You can see the same thing on many TV crime shows. But there is one movie of interest: The Last Station starring Helen Mirren, Christopher Plummer, and Paul Giametti as the scummy Chertkov, which looks at the final days of the Tolstoy marriage.

Heaven’s Maps

Sibusiso Mthembu, who lives near Durban, South Africa, has drawn a map of the way to heaven on the wall of his home. Pilgrims troop by to view this marvel and newspapers are reporting this as yet another weird event, something to chuckle over. But maps of heaven have been common throughout human existence and they are usually quite serious affairs.

Sibusiso Mthembu in front of his map to Heaven.

Heaven is not necessarilly Paradise; it may be simply the Land of the Dead, the place human beings go after death. Still, it is a place and places are located by maps. Sibusio Mthembu is unusual, though, in that he has managed to return from Heaven. Usually this is a place that people only glimpse in dreams.

“Journey of the Dead to Dhuwa”, Land of the Dead for the Jiridja Australians, by Binyinyuwuy, 1948.

Humans have made maps for thousands of years but one culture’s version may be unreadable by other humans from other cultures. Maps derive from concepts of the World and people’s place in it. Medieval European maps used to place Jerusalem in the center and the known continents were arranged around it. The medieval concept of Heaven has to do with concentric rings of spheres of existence. Heaven is in the outermost sphere.

A map of Existence according to Dante. [via Kinkanon]

As Western concepts have become more technical, so Heavenly maps have become more diagrammatic:

Chart of Heaven by Clarence Larkin, about 1895.

But ecstatic visions still occur and are recorded by those who do not fear social judgment.Brenda Davis paints what she dreams. “I can’t help it. God knows I can’t read or write, so he tells me the stories.” Here is her “Map to Heaven”:

The most exact maps to Heaven are possibly those made by Athapaskan tribes in northeastern British Columbia. Hugh Brody has written of this in his great Maps And Dreams. Hunters, some of them, would dream of the hunt they would have and the game they would take. This was a special gift of a few. Amongst these, some would also dream of Heaven and the way to get there. The maps that are made from dreams are very special and not to be seen except on special occasions, such as when the Beaver people were trying to convince certain bureaucrats that they did indeed understand their area in geographic terms and had mapped it. They brought a moosehide bundle into the meeting place:

…they untied the bundle’s thongs and began very carefully to pull back the cover. …the contents seemed to be a thick layer of hide, pressed tightly together. With great care, Aggan took this hide from its cover and began to open the layers. It was a magnificent dream map.
The dream map was as large as the table top, and had been folded tightly for many years. It was covered with thousands of short, firm, and variously colored markings. …Up here is heaven; this is the trail that must be followed; here is a wrong direction; this is where it would be worst of all to go; and over there are all the animals….all of this had been discovered in dreams.
…it was wrong to unpack a dream map except for very special reasons. But…the hearing was important. Everyone must look at the map now. …They should realize, however, that intricate routes and meanings of a dream map are not easy to follow. There was not time to explain them all. The visitors crowded around the table, amazed and confused.
A corner of the map was missing…someone had died who would not easilly find his way to heaven, so the owner of the map had cut a piece of it and buried it with the body. With the aid of even a fragment…the dead man would probably find the correct trail, and when the owner of the map died, it would all be buried with him. His dreams of the trail to heaven would then serve him well.

But the bureaucrats did not understand the map nor the Beaver people’s claim to the land. Their mindset was biased toward the geological survey maps being used by the companies who wanted to build a pipeline through Beaver territory. So it is: we are unable to understand the maps of others and we lose our way to heaven.

Connections: Revolutionaries and Explosions

In 1898, the battleship Maine blew up in Havana harbor. The American press immediately formulated the notion that the ship was blown up by Spanish authorities, since the American press favored the Cuban rebels in their insurrection. Later investigations by American agencies, public and private, have concluded that the explosion was accidental, though they do not all agree on the nature of the accident. The official version in Cuba now is that the Americans blew the ship up themselves in order to facilitate US intervention in the Cuban conflict, which is sort of okay since it was done to get rid of the Spanish and free Cuba.

In 1960, on March 4, the French freighter la Coubre blew up in Havana harbor while unloading munitions sent from Belgium. A hundred people were killed and many injured including firefighters and rescue workers who were caught in a secondary explosion. Che Guevara was on the scene and used his medical training to help the injured. The official Cuban version is that the CIA, using William Alexander Morgan as an agent, engineered the event. The CIA’s account of the incident is sealed but most American reports note that unloading a munitions ship directly onto the dock was against Havana harbor’s own regulations and suggest that sloppy handling of the munitions was the cause of the explosion.

A victim of the la Coubre explosion.

The next day, there was a memorial ceremony at Havana harbor honoring the dead. Che Guevara attended and the photographer Alberto Gutierrez, known as Korda, snapped two pictures of him. The paper Korda worked for selected a photo of Castro to run with their story and returned the unused pictures to Korda.

uncropped photo of Che Guevara taken March 5, 1960 at Havana harbor by Korda

The American adventurer William Alexander Morgan, who was the only foreigner besides Che Guevara to become a commandante, the highest rank in the Cuban revolutionary army, was discovered to be smuggling weapons into Cuba to anti-Castro forces. He was executed by firing squad in 1961. Che Guevara went to Bolivia to organize a revolution there.

Memorial ceremony for la Coubre. Castro at left, Che toward center, Morgan on the right (circled).

Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, an Italian publisher, had discovered Che through the writings of Regis Debray and decided to do something that featured the man. Feltrinelli had been a Communist, but split with the party in 1956 or ’57. He had picked up Doctor Zhivago while it was still a secret and, after some clandestine correspondence with Boris Pasternak, published an Italian edition in 1957. He also published Lampedusa’s The Leopard in that year and, during the 1950s and ’60s, a number of other important books by writers such as James Baldwin and Carlos Fuentes, as well as revolutionary materials such as manuals of the Uruguayan Tupamaros that inspired Italian groups such as the Red Brigades.

Korda with Che and Che

Feltrinelli had gone to Bolivia to effect the release of Regis Debray. Later, he tried to track down Che but was expelled by the authorities. In Cuba in 1967, Feltrinelli visited Korda and asked him if he had any pictures of Che Guevara. Korda pointed to one that he had taken at the la Coubre ceremony and hung on his wall and said, “That’s the best one that I have.” Feltrinelli offered to buy it but Korda said that, because Feltrinelli was a friend of the revolution, he would give it to him. Feltrinelli left with the picture. Shortly thereafter, Che Guevara was murdered in Bolivia by American operatives. Feltrinelli copyrighted the picture, published it, and sold about 200,000 posters in six months. The image has been reproduced a zillion times since. Feltrinelli made a lot of money. Korda never got a nickel from the photograph. Feltrinelli also published Che’s Bolivian Diaries, given to him by Castro. Later, he supplied a pistol that was used to assassinate Bolivian colonel Quintanilla, who was supposed to be one of Che’s killers.

Feltrinelli and Castro, 1964

Feltrinelli’s corpse.

In 1970 Feltrinelli founded his own leftist group Gruppi d’Azione Partigiana (GAG), which was dedicated to something or other. Two years later, his body was discovered at the base of a high voltage tower near Milan. He had been blown apart by a bomb. There were a good many leftist revolutionary groups in Italy in those days and the newly formed Red Brigades, later famous for the kidnap and murder of Aldo Moro among others, investigated Feltrinelli’s death. Their conclusion was that he died when the dynamite bomb he was trying to arm at the base of the power pylon went off accidentally because of a defective timer. The official Italian government version is that Feltrinelli failed to wire his bomb properly. There are rumors that his death was arranged by Italian authorities.

 

Catching Up On Old Posts

Here’s some new stuff about these posts:

The Death of Neil Heywood:
As expected, Gu Kailai was found guilty of murder and Bo Xilai’s political career seems to be done. He may yet stand trial, though all is rumor at this point. Likewise, Wang Lijun may stand trial, once he is released from the “vacation-style” medical facility where he is being held. Questions about the murder remain. One persistent story is that Wang Lijun kept a vial of blood from Heywood’s body before it was cremated so that he could prove that Gu Kailai murdered Heywood with cyanide. An e-book on the affair by Australian journalist John Garnaut: The Rise and Fall of the House of Bo sums up current knowledge. Garnaut thinks that we may never know the full story.

John McAfee Is On The Run:
 Using his blog as a dodge, McAfee slipped into Guatemala where he claimed asylum. Puzzled authorities asked asylum from what? Belize had issued no arrest warrant and authorities said that they simply wanted to question McAfee. McAfee claimed that he was in danger of being murdered if he returned to Belize. Guatemala said that he had entered the country illegally and now must leave. After some legal wrangling and a faked heart attack, McAfee managed to get himself shipped back to the US. He was last heard of in Miami where he claims to be waiting for his Belizean girl friend, One reason given for McAfee’s leaving the US in the first place was to avoid a Wrongful Death lawsuit in Arizona. Now McAfee claims not to have any money in the US. Few believe him. Journalist Jeff Wise, who has reported on McAfee for years believes that the man has fried his brains on “bath salts” = cathinone-like drugs or MDVP. In a series of posts to a Russian drugs forum, McAfee claimed MDVP to be the best drug ever. Later, he claimed that the messages were all a joke. Who the hell knows?

Is Football Finished?:
The notion behind the post was that concussions would end American football. One of the articles linked there suggested that the end would come when people started suing colleges and universities for brain injuries suffered while playing ball. Since then, there have been some high profile examples of concussed college players being sent back into the fray. Professional sports have adopted certain protocols for dealing with concussion that involve time spent away from play and medical examination. College sports have no such guidelines and the NCAA seems unwilling to deal with the problem, because even acknowledging the situation might make the Association liable. So, when the lawsuits are filed, they will be aimed at individual schools. We’ll see how long that takes before something really happens. Meanwhile, the NFL keeps tweaking the rules to try to lessen the danger of concussions. One move has been to move the point of kickoff further up the field — to the 35-yard line presently — so as to force more touchbacks and fewer returns that end in particularly high-speed impacts. Some are advocating ending kickoffs altogether.

Gendarme at the Bugarach roadblock. [Patrick Aventurier/Getty Images]

The End Is Nigh, Find the High Ground:
The village of Bugarach has been declared off-limits to doomsters, but the horde of outsiders who have descended on the town have been mostly journalists. Not finding the swarms of VW vans and crowds of doomed New Agers, the Press became upset and has blamed the mayor for starting a false rumor. Well, at one point it wasn’t so false and, before French authorities cordoned off the mountain, a number of folks did get up top. Anyway, this story is happening right this minute and may require further updates — if that is still possible tomorrow.

The Christian War On Christmas

It’s that time of the year again, that time when right-wing fantasists bloviate about the War On Christmas. In a sense, they are correct — there have been efforts to do away with Christmas for centuries — but these anti-Xmas efforts have been Christian in origin. My mother’s Scots Presbyterian ancestors banned Christmas in 1583, faced down a royal attempt to reinstate the holiday, and outlawed it by Parliamentary decree in 1640. English Puritans followed suit. During the period when England’s government was a Christian dictatorship, it was illegal to throw a party or hang any decorations.

Christian opposition to Christmas reflected a deep suspicion of its pagan roots. Besides the north European Yule celebration, there was Roman Saturnalia, a celebration of the Winter solstice, when people dressed up, sang and danced, gambled, exchanged gifts, feasted and partied. There was a notion of turning things around (so that the dying day would begin to lengthen once more) and masters served slaves, high was low, and rules were broken.

December illustration for a Roman “calendar” of 354. Dicing is part of Saturnalia. [via Wikipedia]

Early Christians were generally conflicted about the idea of celebrating. Birthdays were regarded with suspicion because emperors had public celebrations of their own birth and anything that seemed like emperor-worship was anathema. Celebrating the birthday of a god was a serious problem. Still, pragmatic religious followers recognized that folks love a party and eventually came around to giving a date to Jesus’ birth (different dates for different sects) and naming it a holy day. Christ’s Mass was the early medieval version.

Medieval Christmas was a wild affair that incorporated many aspects of both Yule and Saturnalia. There was a Lord of Misrule, adapted from a similar figure in the Roman holiday, who presided over merriment and foolishness. There was a feast. There were holiday trappings like holly and miseltoe and Yule logs — all this was given a Christian plating of course, but underneath it was still the same old mid-winter party.

Frontispiece for The Vindication of Christmas, published 1652. The Puritan on the left says “Come not here.” to Old Christmas in the center who replies, “I bring good cheer.” The man on the street bids Old Christmas welcome, “Do not fear.” Yes, it all rhymes.

Still, some Christians were suspicious of Christmas and after the Reformation, many Protestants denounced Christmas as wicked Popery. In England, it didn’t help that the champions of Christmas, the Stuart kings, were suspected of Catholic sympathies. This all culminated in the Puritan shut-down of the holiday which resulted in pro-Christmas riots. The Restoration brought back Christmas right away and it has been a great British holiday ever since. Mind you, the Puritans and Presbyterians still didn’t do much celebrating — then or any other time — but eventually they were worn down. American Presbyterians began joining in Yuletide celebrations in the mid-19th Century and there was little objection when President Grant declared December 25th to be a national holiday.

This license to party was questioned by certain Christians. New American faiths such as Seventh Day Adventism and Jehovah’s Witnesses refused to celebrate either Christmas or birthdays, so reverting back to earlier beliefs. And, as Christmas became more and more a day characterized by consumer values, American preachers began advocating that people “put Christ back into Christmas”. This also echoed some early Christian thinkers opposed to the holiday:

This festival teaches even the little children, artless and simple, to be greedy, and accustoms them to go from house to house and to offer novel gifts, fruits covered with silver tinsel. For these they receive, in return, gifts double their value, and thus the tender minds of the young begin to be impressed with that which is commercial and sordid.
[Asterias, Bishop of Amasea, in a sermon given January 1, 400 AD]

[via irregular.com]

But those who inveigh against the “War On Christmas” generally are supporting consumerism — Christmas trees in shopping malls and the like. Of course it could not be otherwise since the War On Christmas is part of the cynical right-wing project to enlist Christians as political supporters. The large enterprises behind this project are not about to oppose the commercialization of Christmas or anything else that is good for business.

Well, I’m what Jimmy Swaggart calls a Secular Humanist, a label that I embrace. And I love Christmas. Not speaking for Christians but just for me, Christmas is a big party right when you shouldn’t have one. You know things are going to get worse. There’s going to be more snow and it’s going to get colder, cold enough so your pipes may freeze,  so cold that trees freeze in the forest and you hear them in the night cracking. Then even when it gets warmer all that snow thaws and refreezes and there’s mud and nasty slush everywhere. Christmas comes right at the beginning of the worst time of the year. And the days are short. You get up in the dark, you go to work, the sun comes up a little after, just gray light though, the sun is weak. Then, about three, you look up and the sun is setting and it gets dark and you go home in the dark. But at Christmas the days start to get a little longer and that’s the thing, you know you’ve turned some kind of corner, the light is coming back and things will get better eventually, even though you’ve got three miserable months to go. So, you throw a party, a big party, and everybody celebrates! They eat too much and they drink too much and they spend too much money and do stupid silly things and it’s all a kind of defiance. It’s saying, “Come on, show me the worst you got, I’m laughing!” This setup, this deal that humans get here on Earth – that’s what we’re defying. We’re saying, “I can take the worst there is and still celebrate!” Because, you know what? No matter how bad it sometimes gets, life is still pretty good.

The Saga of Unn the Deep-Minded

Some sources call her Aud the Deep-Minded but that seems to be a name she adopted in old age. Her sisters were Jor-Unn Wisdom-Slope and Thor-Unn Horned and I think it fairly obvious that whoever named these girls had a plan in mind. Jor and Thor have pagan religious connotations and I suspect that Unn dropped a pagan prefix to her name after she became a devout Christian before she moved to Iceland. The father of these three was Ketil Flat-Nose who moved from Norway to the Hebrides sometime in the 9th Century. There he went a-viking from his base, probably at Barra, into Ireland, the British Isles, and back into Norway — something the Norwegians would later punish him for.

Modern reproduction of “tortoise style” brooches found in a grave on Barra Island. These attached over-the-shoulder straps to the front bodice of a woman’s outer dress. [northstararmoury.com]

South of the Hebrides is the great island of Ireland, a rich source of booty and a beautiful prize for anyone who could capture it. In the first half of the 9th Century there was at least one serious attempt to do just that but the expedition’s leader, who the Irish called Turgeis (possibly = Thorgeis or Thorgils), only lasted a few years before Irish resistance, led by the Ui Niall clan, brought him down. Then followed a period of conflict between different groups of Norse invaders complicated by the presence of a growing number of Gall-Gael — Norse/Irish métis who were struggling to find their own place in the world. But in 853, the Hebridean Norse launched a well-conceived plan to conquer Ireland.

The leaders of this invasion were, the Irish say, brothers called Ivar and Olaf the White. Ivar sailed up the Shannon river to the heart of the island and anchored a fleet on the large lakes there. Olaf set up shop at Ath Cliath on the coast, the place we now call Dublin. The country south and west of Dublin, Osraighe (now Leinster), was ruled by the Irish king Cearbhall or Kjarval, as the Norse called him. Kjarval wished to be king of all Ireland and the Norse promised to help him. So Kjarval, Olaf, and Ivar began their campaign to bring the country under their sway. [see map here]

The alliance between these three was forged, in the fashion of the time, through marriage. Kjarval married Jor-Unn Wisdom-Slope. His grandson, Helgi the Lean, married Thor-Unn Horned. Helgi’s father, who had married one of Kjarval’s daughters, was a Swede who led Kjarval’s forces. Unn the Deep-Minded married Olaf the White. The fact that Ketil’s daughters were the unifying threads of this peace-weaving is an indicator of his importance in the area.

Viking artifacts from Dublin area. Swords, spearheads, shield bosses, brooches, and gaming pieces. [Watercolor by James Plunkett, ca. 1847]

The Hebridean invasion prospered. Tribute was collected and churches raided. Local Irish clans sometimes fought the Norse, sometimes fought with them against Irish. Except, that is, the Ui Niall of the north who maintained an implacable resistance to the foreigners and fought with them constantly. In 857, Ivar won a decisive victory over the Gall-Gael and from time to time the brothers had to take out some outsider vikings who invaded their patch, but generally things went well. Kjarval’s troops took on a great deal of the fighting and the Norse brothers occasionally found things settled enough so that they could raid across the sea into Pictland or Strathclyde or Wales.

Around 863 the brothers began looting the tombs of Irish kings on the Boyne. This roused the Irish and for four years or so the battles between the Norse and the Irish grew fierce but soon the fighting settled back into a pattern of desultory skirmishes with the resistant Irish and military incursions into areas that the Norse wished to control. In 870, the brothers left Kjarval in charge and mounted a cross-sea expedition against the Britons of Strathclyde. For four months they besieged the fortress at Dumbarton before taking it and returning to Ireland with, the Annals say, “a great prey” of captives. These would be sold into slavery, a great source of wealth to viking Norse over their two centuries of depredation.

But after 871 the Hebridean venture began to unravel. Ivar died in 873. Olaf in 875. The cause of these deaths are unknown but, also around this period, King Harald Finehair of Norway ran out of patience with Hebridean vikings and sent a punitive expedition that struck at their home bases. The Sagas say that he harried as far south as the Isle of Man and, on the way home, installed one of his followers as the first Jarl of Orkney, who was meant to keep an eye on things in this part of the world.

The daughters of Ketil Flat-Nose suddenly found themselves adrift. Sometime in the next few years, Thor-Unn and her half-Swedish husband sailed to Iceland. Once Kjarval understood how the winds of change were blowing, he repudiated the Norse and teamed up with the Irish. He probably turned Jor-Unn out, but she may have stuck around until his death in 888 before she, too, emigrated to Iceland. Unn the Deep-Minded went to see her dad, Ketil, and introduced him to her son, Thorstein the Red. Grand-dad and grandson got on well and the old pirate instructed the youth in the ways of extracting wealth from the poor and defenceless. So Thorstein set up in Scotland. His wife, Raferta (or maybe Thurid), was a grand-daughter of Kjarval’s and so a sister to Helgi the Lean. These two had a bunch of children — five or six daughters, depending on which source you read (possibly one or two were by other wives of Thorstein) and a son named Olaf, the youngest of the brood.

Excavated longhouse site at Quoygrew, Orkney. [photo: Donna Surge]

Thorstein managed very well in Scotland. He allied with the Orkney Jarls and between them, the Picts and other peoples were squeezed for everything they had. The Sagas say he was king over half of Scotland, which may be a bit of an overstatement, but he was a force in the area. Eventually, though, Thorstein was killed — via Scots treachery, the Sagas say.

Now Unn was in a tough spot. Her father was dead by this time and she had no real holdings in the Hebrides. Her grandson was very young, tweve or thirteen, and not able to take over his father’s enterprise. Nevertheless, Unn asked him for his counsel and he replied, “Whatever you think best, Grandmother.” This, in fact, was more or less what anyone who confronted Unn wound up saying. She was a formidable woman.

Unn hatched an audacious scheme. She went to the chief of her slaves, a man named Koll, and asked for his assistance. ”Koll” might be a Norse version of a fairly common name in Irish or any of the Briton languages. It may be that he was one of that “great prey” captured in Strathclyde in 870. He seems to have been fairly well on in years at this time — forty, say, at a time when boys became men at fifteen or sixteen, when they could wield a sword, and girls became women at thirteen or fourteen, when they could bear children. Unn offered Koll a deal: if he would help the other slaves to build a ship, so that they could all sail out of Scotland for Iceland, she would give him his freedom, land, and one of her grandaughters as a bride. Koll agreed.

That winter, the slaves put together a ship. It was important that they leave in the Spring, before the Picts and Scots discovered their weakness and attacked. Sources vary on the exact number of men and women on board when Unn’s group set sail, but let’s say fifteen to twenty-five people. The ship sailed around to the Orkneys, where more skilled craftsmen refurbished it for the voyage to come. There, Unn gave away one of her granddaughters in marriage “and from this line all the Jarls of Orkney descend”. Then she sailed to the Faroe Islands, where another granddaughter was married off and from her “stems the greatest family line in the Faroe Islands”. Then Unn sailed west to Iceland.

…it is generally thought that it would be hard to find another example of a woman escaping from such hazards with so much wealth and such a large retinue. From this it can be seen what a paragon among women she was.
[Laxdaela Saga]

Unn had two brothers. One, Helgi Bolan, was a Christian who lived in the southwest. The other, Bjorn, lived on the north side of Snaefellness. He was called Bjorn the Easterner because, while the rest of his family found fortune in the Hebrides, he travelled east to the Baltic where he made his fortune. When he returned west to the Hebrides, Bjorn found that the rest of the family had become Christians. He thought it “weak-minded of them to have renounced the old belief of their forefathers… so he refused to make his home there.” Bjorn sailed on to Iceland, the first of the family to do so, and remained a pagan after settling there.

Unn landed, or possibly wrecked her ship, in the south of Iceland. She sent to her brother Helgi, who invited her and nine of her group to spend the winter with him. Unn was incensed at his meanness for inviting only nine and left immediately to see her brother Bjorn. Bjorn knew that his sister was “large-minded” and sent out a large party to welcome her and everyone with her to spend the winter.

The next spring, Unn set sail to find the location she wished to settle. Various places in Iceland get their names from this voyage: Dogurdarness (= Breakfast Point) where she had a meal, Kambsness, where she lost a comb, and so forth. Finally, she took up land, a lot of land around Breidafjord in the west of Iceland. Her own home was at Hvamm. To the south was the Laxardale, one of several Salmon River valleys in Iceland. This she granted to Koll as a wedding-gift when he married her grand-daughter, Thorgerd. Her remaining granddaughters married prominent Icelanders.

The slaves that had come to Iceland with Unn were all freed. Amazingly, it turned out that every one of them was descended from kings, not just common folk swept up in a violent struggle. One such, of noble descent, was the slave Vifils who had to ask Unn for his freedom. She replied that it was of no importance, that Vifils would be a man of quality wherever he was. But she granted him land at Vifilstead. That farm did not prosper and Vifil’s sons got on by marrying rich widows. One of them was the father of Gudrid Thorbjornsdottir who was part of the Norse attempt to colonize North America and bore the first child of European descent born in North America. Unn’s ex-slaves played a great part in the settlement of Iceland and few were ever made to feel ashamed for having been enslaved. It was a matter of pride for an Icelander to be able to claim descent from someone who had sailed with Unn in the voyage from Scotland.

Everyday viking items unearthed in Dublin. [Walter Pfeiffer/National Museum of Ireland]

Now that Unn was settled there was another matter of great importance to deal with. She called her grandson, Olaf Feilan, to her and said, “It is time you were married.” “Whatever you say, Grandmother,” was his reply and Unn sent an emissary, the peg-legged Onund Tree-Foot, to the Hebrides to ask his wife’s cousin, Alfdis, to be Olaf’s bride.

Unn’s plan is clear: she tied her family to the great families of the Orkneys, the Faroes, Iceland, and now back to the Hebrides. If there was to be a renaissance of Hebridean Norse supremacy, her kin would be major actors. Of course, that was not to be. All these islands — the Faroes, the Orkneys, the Hebrides — faded into insignificance as the Scandinavian and Scottish kingdoms coalesced. Even Iceland lost its independence to Norway in the 13th Century. The great viking sea kingdom vanished.

Olaf’s wedding was a grand affair. Unn invited all her kin and most of west Iceland’s notables. Koll was a guest as were others of Unn’s freed slaves, now Icelandic grandees. Helgi the Lean and Thor-Unn attended, as did Helgi Bolan and Bjorn the Easterner. Jor-Unn Wisdom-Slope could not make it and people said What a shame! Though one wonders if this is the understated Saga way of hinting that Jor-Unn, last to leave Ireland, was a bit estranged from her sisters. The festivities were well underway when Unn announced that the house and all inside it now belonged to her grandson, Olaf. Then she said it was her bedtime.

By now, old age was weighing heavilly upon Unn; she never rose before noon and always went early to bed. …she would give an irate reply if anyone asked about her health. [Laxdaela Saga]

Unn urged her guests to enjoy themselves and then retired. Here we have the only physical description of Unn:

Unn was tall and stoutly-built. She walked briskly down the length of the hall and those present remarked how stately she still was. [Laxdaela Saga]

The next morning, when Olaf looked in on her, she sat erect in her bed, dead. Everyone remarked on Unn’s forethought, to arrange her funeral feast in conjunction with her grandson’s wedding. Unn was given a ship-burial and was interred with many valuables. Her grave is undiscovered to date.

Viking ship-burial in Orkney. [from Graham-Campbell and Batey, <em>Vikings in Scotland</em> ISBN 0-7486-0641-6]

Notes:

The primary source for Unn is Laxdaela Saga. Quotes above are from Magnus Magnusson’s translation. This saga tells the story of Koll’s descendants who also figure in other works, such as Njal’s Saga.
There is more on Unn, called Aud, in Eyrbyggja Saga, now available in Gisli Surssons Saga And The Saga Of The People Of Eyr. Translation used above was that of Hermann Palsson.
Orkneyinga Saga is the story of the Jarls of Orkney and speaks of both Unn/Aud and her son, Thorstein.
Grettir’s Saga tells of the marriage embassy of Onund Treefoot and also has a great deal to say about Eyvind the Easterner, Swedish warlord in the pay of the Irish king Kjarval.
The Vinland Sagas tell of Vifils and his granddaughter, Gudrid, who is the main character in the two sagas. The version used here was translated by Magnus Magnusson and Hermann Palsson.
The Book of Settlements: Landnamabok is the earliest extant source for all of the people named above who made it to Iceland.
The Irish Annals may be examined at CELT, a very valuable resource.
A detailed look at the Hebrideans who invaded Ireland: “The Vikings In Scotland And Ireland In The Ninth Century” by Donnchadh Ó Corráin

Spain Rodriguez

Spain Rodriguez died yesterday after a six year battle with cancer. He was 72. Rodriguez was one of the major underground comics artists, of course, but he created or illustrated many other kinds of work from Sherlock Holmes to personal stories of “What the Fifties Were Really Like”.

His work was political, from a proletarian perspective. He was pleased to work in a mass medium that was disdained as lowbrow. When he knew he was dying, Rodriguez said, “I’ve enjoyed immensely being a Zap artist. I’ve enjoyed being an underground cartoonist. I generally wish everybody well.”

Self-portrait, 1974

Some of his political comics include: The Dark Hotel about an attempted American coup in the 1930s, a biography of Che Guevara , and stories about The Long War aka the War On Terrorism.

I particularly liked his work based on the great struggle between fascism and communism in the twentieth century. His direct, thick lines were well suited for depicting the industrial scale combat of the 1940s. Although a collection of these strips was proposed once or twice, it never was published and that’s too bad.

from “Durrutti”, Anarchy Comics #3

from “Stalin”, Arcade: the Comics Revue #4

Interview from 1998.

This link includes a fifteen minute documentary.

Much of Spain Rodriguez’ work, such as The Dark Hotel , is out of print. His most recent book in print is Crusin’ With The Hound: The Life And Times Of Fred Toote , a series of stories from the 1950s.

“The Inheritance of Rufus Griswold” and other graphic stories from the classics

Dies Irae – “One man against the American empire.”

Sinéad O’Connor Twenty Years After

Twenty years ago today, during a Saturday Night Live performance, Sinéad O’Connor ripped up a photo of Pope John Paul II. There was an immediate outcry from critics, journalists, and, a week later, SNL host and noted theologian, Joe Pesci. O’Connor’s career never recovered. When she attempted to perform Bob Marley’s “War” at a Bob Dylan concert, she was booed off the stage. Now, twenty years on, Michael Agresta takes a fresh look at the event.

[click to see performance via YouTube]

Agresta listened to what O’Connor had to say: she added some fresh lyrics to “War” about child abuse as one of the Catholic Church’s sins. This isn’t news today, but it was then. In fact, most people (including me, I have to admit) missed the allusion altogether and thought O’Connor was protesting abortion/contraception policies or something. But O’Connor, when anyone bothered to ask, was quite clear about what angered her:

In Ireland we see our people are manifesting the highest incidence in Europe of child abuse. This is a direct result of the fact that they’re not in contact with their history as Irish people and the fact that in the schools, the priests have been beating the shit out of the children for years and sexually abusing them. This is the example that’s been set for the people of Ireland. They have been controlled by the church, the very people who authorized what was done to them, who gave permission for what was done to them.

The Time magazine interviewer didn’t really grasp what O’Connor was saying, so she tried to explain by giving some personal history. She said she had been subjected to every kind of abuse:

Sexual and physical. Psychological. Spiritual. Emotional. Verbal. I went to school every day covered in bruises, boils, sties and face welts, you name it. Nobody ever said a bloody word or did a thing. Naturally I was very angered by the whole thing… [Time interview, November 9, 1992, behind a pay wall, unfortunately.]

Her mother, said O’Connor, was a Valium addict, a product of Catholic schools. Later, when O’Connor went to an Adult Children of Alcoholics-type group, she got a handle on her situation. The photo of the Pope that she tore up? That had belonged to her mother: “The photo itself had been on my mother’s bedroom wall since the day the fucker was enthroned in 1978.”

Young Sinéad, striped shirt.

O’Connor herself was incarcerated in a Magdalene laundry, an Irish institution for wayward girls, at the age of 15. The Magdalenes have been criticized by the UN Committee Against Torture and one Magdalene being sold by nuns trying to make up stock market losses turned out to have twenty-two unregistered anonymous corpses buried out back.

After Pope Benedict apologized in 2010 for the Irish abuse cover-up, O’Connor criticized him for calling the cover-up “well-intentioned” and called for a boycott of the Church. She told Rachel Maddow that she is a believer who wants to free the Church from those who have brought it into disrepute. And in the Los Angeles Times:

I’m a Catholic, and I love God. . . . That’s why I object to what these people are doing to the religion that I was born into. . . .

I’m passionately in love and always have been with what I call the Holy Spirit, which I believe the Catholic Church have held hostage and still do hold hostage. I think God needs to be rescued from them. They are not representing Christian values and Christian attitudes. If they were truly Christian, they would’ve confessed ages ago, and we wouldn’t be having to batter the door down and try to get blood from a stone.

Sometimes angry people are dismissed when they do or say things other people find disturbing. Often these angry people are absolved over time. Sinéad O’Connor paid a price for expressing her anger and for telling truths that people weren’t ready to hear. She is a brave woman who has finally been awarded some of the respect that she has earned.

Good Books: The Bounty Trilogy by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall

In 1787, HMS Bounty left England on a voyage to the South Seas to gather breadfruit plants that were to provide food for the slaves on sugar plantations in the West Indies. On the return voyage, Fletcher Christian mutinied and set Captain Bligh and eighteen others adrift in the Bounty’s launch. The mutineers sailed back to Tahiti where some remained, the others going on to establish a colony on Pitcairn’s Island. The story is well-known and has been the subject of several movies. In popular imagination, Captain Bligh has become a symbol of tyranny and Fletcher Christian, one of romantic resistance. Christian’s role has been played by handsome leading male actors of the day — Errol Flynn, Clark Gable, Marlon Brando, Mel Gibson — while Bligh has been portrayed by Charles Laughton, Trevor Howard, and a pre-Hannibal Lecter Anthony Hopkins. All of this derives from the trilogy by Nordhoff and Hall, published between 1932 and 1936. But the three Bounty books are more than just an adventure story, or a tale of resistance to tyranny; they are an exercise in political philosophy and a discussion of the nature of human society.

Each of the three books  has a different point of view. The first, Mutiny on the Bounty, is narrated by Roger Byam, who served as a midshipman on the Bounty‘s voyage. Now the Bounty‘s roster is a matter of record and the authors decided to create Byam, a fictional character, around the experiences of Peter Heywood who actually did serve on the Bounty. There are at least two reasons to fictionalize this narrator: first, Peter Heywood was only fifteen when the Bounty sailed, and, second, his role in the mutiny is rather ambiguous and there is no ambiguity about the character Roger Byam in Nordhoff and Hall’s novel. Byam is about eighteen. He has no part in the mutiny but is believed to be one of the mutineers. He suffers the injustice of the law and Injustice is what the first book describes.

The trilogy’s major theme is broached early on, when Bligh has dinner with Byam and his mother.

“Roger and I,” observed my mother, “have been studying the ideas of J.J.Rousseau. As you know, he believes that true happiness can only be enjoyed by man in a state of nature.”
Bligh nodded. “…if a rough seaman may express an opinion on a subject more suited to a philosopher, I believe that true happiness can only be enjoyed by a disciplined and enlightened people.”

And that is the question to be examined: discipline or state of nature?

Byam is introduced to discipline before he ever leaves England. A man is being flogged through the fleet; that is, he is taken from one to another of the vessels at anchor and flogged with a cat, a vicious whip designed to tear flesh from men’s backs. So Byam and Bligh are guests aboard another ship when the man is rowed around for punishment: “From neck to waist the cat-o’-nine-tails had laid the bones bare, and the flesh hung in blackened, tattered strips.” A doctor examines the man and declares that he is dead. “Lucky devil!” exclaims the captain whose ship Byam and Bligh are visiting, then he orders his boatswain’s mate to lay two dozen lashes on the corpse. As the Articles of War are read the captain doffs his hat and “…every man on the ship uncovered in respect to the King’s commandments”. This uncovering at the reading of “the King’s commandments” will be seen several more times in this book. The boatswain’s mate is reluctant to perform the whipping but follows orders. Byam, “giddy and sick”, counts the strokes as they fall, each cracking like a pistol shot, on the dead man’s back.

Back at their interrupted dinner, the captain complains that his soup has grown cold during the punishment, then he and Bligh fall to talking about old times together. Then they come back around to the scene they have witnessed and Bligh asks about the man’s crime. He struck a superior officer, says the captain. “By God!” says Bligh, “He deserved all he got, and more! No laws are more just than those governing the conduct of men at sea.” Byam cannot contain himself: “Is there any need of such cruelty? …Why not just hang the poor fellow and have done with it?” The two older men laugh at the callow youth: “Discipline must be preserved.”

William Bligh from his book A Voyage to the South Seas available from gutenberg.org

Back on the Bounty, Byam becomes familiar with his shipmates. He is one of six midshipmen — essentially young men training to be officers. There are two divisions amongst the crew: one is that between officers and seamen and the other is between gentlemen and commoners. The midshipmen are gentlemen and, even though they have an inferior rank, might sometimes order about a seaman or warrant officer with a higher rating. (see Wikipedia for a very good breakdown of this system on the Bounty) This class division is accepted by Byam (and others) as the natural order of things, as Nordhoff and Hall subtly but surely make you recognize. In fact, Byam is a middle class prig, which doesn’t mean he is unlikeable. Still, contemporary readers may get a shock when Byam refers to all the “sharp-faced Jews” swarming about the ship trying to peddle articles to the seamen. Later, when he says that Samuel, Bligh’s clerk, has a Jewish look, suspicions are confirmed. Only in Byam’s narration occur these anti-semitic remarks, which may or may not be typical of the day.

It is interesting to compare Byam’s characterizations of the men around him with those given in the following books. Byam dislikes Hallet, a fellow midshipman, fifteen years old, and remarks on his “weak, peevish mouth”. At one point he accuses him (retrospectively, in the narrative) of being a sneak and an informer. When the mutiny occurs he claims that Hallet begged and pleaded not to be put on the launch with Bligh, but in Men Against the Sea, the narrator Ledward says that Hallet did his duty like a man. Most interesting is Byam’s description of Ned Young, who is one of the pivotal characters in Pitcairn’s Island. According to Byam, Young, another midshipman and assistant to the botanist, is seen as “a stout salty-looking fellow, with a handsome face marred by the loss of nearly all his front teeth”. Later, in Tahiti, Young gets tattoos of coconut palms, one each on the back of his calves, and a tattooed breadfruit tree all across his back. This contrasts with the thoughtful, troubled man we see on Pitcairn’s Island, not stout but physically weak, who is Fletcher Christian’s close friend.

Nordhoff and Hall began their writing by putting together biographies of all the characters. That amounts to about fifty (I haven’t done a precise count) people. Some of these folks occupy only a line or two out of the three novels but each of these peripheral characters is given weight that goes beyond a certain oddity of appearance or personal idiosyncrasy that is usually the mechanism authors utilize to make a bit player memorable.

The Bounty arrives in Tahiti.

The Bounty finally arrives in Tahiti. There have been a few problems along the way but nothing too terrible — a flogging or two, what’s that? Byam goes to his work, which is to make a thorough dictionary of the Polynesian language. The Bounty is in Tahiti more than five months and here is where her troubles truly begin. The men of the Bounty are all volunteers (the 1935 Clark Gable film wrongly has them being impressed) and some were already familiar with the South Seas and wanted to return. Tahiti is still a new, glorious, place; no one has to work very hard, at least by 18th Century British standards, and there are many beautiful women willing to spend some time with a sailor. This is indeed Rousseau’s natural paradise. Several times characters remark that the common English seaman would find Tahiti much more preferable than England as a place to live. Still, when the breadfruit are finally loaded, the Bounty sails with all hands.

Bligh has become troublesome to his immediate inferiors. He berates them and insults them in front of common seamen. And he is accused of avarice. Bligh is acting purser (something the real life Bligh had tried to avoid) and responsible for the Bounty‘s economy. Samuel is his clerk. So Bligh and Samuel take from the men items they had purchased or been given on shore — food such as pigs, for instance. The crucial dispute is over coconuts — Bligh says some were stolen and publicly accuses Christian of taking them. Christian is wounded by the accusation. Ironically, it is young Tinkler who confesses to Byam that he had stolen a coconut — this shortly before Tinkler joins Bligh in the launch after the mutiny.

Fletcher Christian and Maimiti. Illustration by N. C. Wyeth for The Bounty Trilogy

Roger Byam sees Christian as a romantic revolutionary, but an aristocrat, therefore admirable:

Fletcher Christian was at that time in his twenty-fourth year, — a fine figure of a seaman in his plain blue, gold-buttoned frock — handsomely and strongly built, with thick dark brown hair and a complexion naturally dark… His mouth and chin expressed great resolution of character , and his eyes, black, deep-set, and brilliant, had something of hypnotic power in their far-away gaze…. Christian was what women call a romantic-looking man ; his moods of gaiety alternated with fits of black depression, and he possessed a fiery temper which he controlled by efforts that brought a sweat to his brow. Though only a master’s mate, a step above a midshipman, he was of gentle birth — better born than Bligh and a gentleman in manner and speech.

You can try to lay it off on the women, Byam, but I think you are terribly attracted to this guy. But there is more to be said about Christian later. For now it is enough to say that Christian had fallen in love with Maimiti, a Tahitian woman whose light skin, Byam informs us, means that she is, like Christian, of a higher class. Others also made liasons on Tahiti. When the Bounty sailed, a cutter was almost cut free, only a small bit of line holding her. Nordhoff and Hall say that this was part of of a plot to allow some seamen to jump ship; Captain Bligh also came to think so, though at first he believed otherwise. Barrow (see below) says that the line scraped on the rocks. This is an example of the kind of evidence Nordhoff and Hall try to juice for the facts that underlie their fiction.

One character well-depicted by Nordhoff and Hall is the alcoholic ship’s doctor, Thomas Huggan, aka Old Bacchus. The old scoundrel has gallons and and gallons of booze aboard and usually has a snootfull — not that it makes him a worse doctor, understand. In fact, Bacchus is one of the best-loved of the Bounty‘s crew. He often has Byam, other midshipmen, and various seamen up to his cabin where he passes his bottle around. So, when he accidentally dies on Tahiti, it is a blow to Byam. Another man remarks that it is people like Bacchus who form the invisible glue that holds together a ship’s crew and that, without him, the crew will feel a great loss. The authors have had a great deal to say about the doctor over quite a few pages and then, suddenly, he is gone. The reader is made to feel the same loss that the Bounty‘s crew does. That is a pretty piece of writing.

Christian decides to jump ship. He lashes together some planks but is stopped from paddling back to Tahiti by chance events — seamen on deck rather than below, for instance. His desertion disintegrates and becomes, in the course of a couple of hours, a mutinous conspiracy that includes a number of other men. Bligh always believed that men had plotted against him for a long time before mutinying, but Nordhoff and Hall follow all the testimony that says that the mutiny was spontaneous — that dissatisfaction with Captain Bligh combined with a desire for a better life in tropical paradise caused men to grab a musket and revolt.

In the confusion, as Bligh is tied up and trading curses with the mutineers, Byam runs below to grab some clothing since he means to get into the launch with Bligh, but by the time he gets back on deck, there is no room for him in the overloaded open boat. There are others that Christian will not allow to leave: the armorer, who is a smith, and the carpenter’s assistants, though the carpenter, Purcell, is thought troublesome and allowed to leave the Bounty. Bligh yells out to the men gathered at the rail that he won’t forget them when he gets back to England and Byam thinks Bligh’s grace will extend to him. On the other hand, no one thinks it likely that Bligh and the crew of the launch will live for very long.

Ned Young, who was not one of the original mutineers, throws in his lot with them. Chance has decided, he says, and he has no wish to see England again.

“We may as well make the best of it… It’s far from a bad best, if you look at the matter sensibly. I’ve always wanted a life of ease. Ever since reading Captain Wallis’s and Captain Cook’s accounts of their discoveries in the Pacific, I’ve dreamed of nothing but tropical islands. When the chance came to ship with the Bounty I was the happiest man in England. I’m willing to confess now that, had it been possible, I would have deserted the ship at Tahiti.”

Christian is chosen captain of the mutinous crew and he names Young as his second-in-command. Christian gives a little speech:

“It should be needless to tell British seamen that no ship, whether manned by mutineers or not, can be handled without discipline. …I mean to be obeyed. There shall be no injustice here. I shall punish no man without good cause, but I will have no man question my authority.”

The mutineers know that, in a year or perhaps two, when no word of the Bounty is received in England, a warship will be sent out to look for her. If any of the mutineers (who are also pirates now) are caught, they will be hanged. So Christian means to find a place where they can live in the vast uncharted South Pacific. There will be no return to England for them, ever.

Christian takes on a solitary life: “All the gaiety had gone out of him; there was never the hint of a smile on his face — only an expression of sombre melancholy.” At first Byam feels bitter about Christian but soon comes to pity him. Nine of the mutineers sail off to find an uncharted island where they can start over. Byam and some others, non-mutineers and some who don’t wish to stay with Christian’s crew, are dropped off at Tahiti.

Roger Byam and Tehani. Illustration by N. C. Wyeth for The Bounty Trilogy

Months pass. Byam falls in love with Tehani, a chief’s daughter, who is delivered of a baby girl in 1790. Several of the non-mutineers begin building a schooner that they mean to sail to Batavia, a Dutch colony, where they hope to get passage on a ship back to Europe. There is some trouble when a mutineer murders a native — an Indian or a Maori, as the English called these Polynesians– and he and a companion are killed in return. Then a British warship, the Pandora, arrives. Byam paddles out to her and is immediately clapped in irons. Soon, he shares a prison space with others of the Bounty‘s crew. The Pandora leaves Tahiti.

From this point on, Mutiny on the Bounty is concerned with the injustices suffered by Byam and his fellow prisoners. They are mistreated in captivity and some die, no one will listen to Byam when he proclaims his innocence, a young man named Ellison, who Byam thinks a foolish and harmless boy, may hang, but all these are secondary to Byam’s main grievance: the letter his mother received from Captain Bligh. When Bligh finally reached England after the voyage described in the next volume in the trilogy, Byam’s mother wrote to him enquiring about her son. Bligh replied that Byam was a contemptible villain and second only to Christian in culpability for the mutiny. Mrs. Byam dies before Roger gets home and he blames Bligh for her death.

Bligh overheard Christian and Byam talking together the evening before the mutiny and believes that they were plotting. Only one person can save Byam: Tinkler, the coconut thief, who survived the voyage of the Bounty‘s launch, but when word arrives that Tinkler’s ship has been wrecked in the West Indies, all hope seems lost. Byam, along with young Ellison and two others, is condemned to hang. Serious testimony against him is given by a fellow midshipman on the Bounty, a man Byam disliked. Several men who tried to get into the launch are freed and one man is convicted and pardoned. During this period, as the court attempts to parse the guilt or innocence of each man, so we are invited to assess the evidence for and against. Nordhoff and Hall have loaded the testimony to favor Byam, but his real life counterpart, Peter Heywood, played a more amibiguous role in the proceedings and shifted his story once or twice. The authors are determined to present us with an innocent man facing the gallows.

Well, you know Byam will escape hanging or else he wouldn’t be narrating this book. Poor Ellison will hang. And there is the nub of the problem: how can good men and women accept life under injustice? Byam is, as he tells us at the book’s beginning, conservative, but Nordhoff and Hall are Americans, descendants of revolution, and you can sense a certain dissonance in their account of Byam’s pliant accomodation to a system that elevates cruelty and calls it discipline.

Three mutineers hanged. Illustration by N. C. Wyeth for The Bounty Trilogy

After his release, Byam wants to return to his Tahitian family but others talk him out of it, saying that he needs to uphold his family’s name and so on. So Byam returns to the Royal Navy just in time for the Napoleonic Wars. After twenty years of service he finally makes it back to the South Seas only to discover that the place has been terribly damaged by intercourse with Europe. The population has diminished, disease has struck the natives, the tribes have warred, and the old social structures are in disarray. Tahiti is “a graveyard of memories” to Byam. Nordhoff and Hall lived in Tahiti and had native wives. There is a melancholy about the last pages of Mutiny on the Bounty that arises from their own feelings (I think). At any rate, Byam discovers that Tehani died only a few months after the Pandora carried him away. He sees his daughter, a grown woman now with a child of her own, but Byam does not make himself known to her. To him the island has become “full of ghosts, — shadows of men alive and dead, — my own among them.”

Bligh being cast adrift in the lauch by the mutineers. A man is throwing down cutlasses to the boat, which will be their only armament. Engraving by Robert Dodd, 1790. [via Wikipedia]

Mutiny on the Bounty is twice as long as either of the two books that follow. Men Against the Sea can be quickly summarized: this is the story of Bligh’s triumph. He successfully navigates 3600 miles of ocean to bring those who followed him — all except one man killed by hostile natives — to safety at the Dutch settlement in Timor. In this book, Bligh is a hero, a man who accomplishes a great and perilous task. And he does this through his iron will and application of discipline:

We reached the Dutch East Indies, not by a miracle, but owing to the leadership of an officer of indomitable will, skilled in seamanship, stern to preserve discipline, cool and cheerful in the face of danger. His name will be revered by those who accompanied him for as long as they live.

The narrator of Men Against the Sea is Thomas Ledward, who succeeded Old Bacchus as acting surgeon on the Bounty. Ledward is a very different kind of man than Byam. First, Ledward did exist and did sail with Bligh on the Bounty and on the launch. But there is no great story around Ledward as there was about Byam’s model, Peter Heyward, who may or may not have been part of the mutiny. And, Ledward is a grown man, one who has a certain quality of assessing people without judging them — possibly he is Nordhoff and Hall’s version of a good general practitioner, the doctor who sees the flaws and wounds in a patient, but who does not diminish that person with his knowledge.

Ledward’s assessment of Samuel, Bligh’s clerk who Byam accused of Jewishness, is that “He was a man wholly lacking in imagination, and his belief in Captain Bligh was like that of a dog in its master.” Now, willing lieutenants to tyrants are a subject of interest to anyone who has examined the last century’s political history, but there is more to Samuel than simple devotion. After the famished exhausted crew find a place that they name Restoration Island where they can rest and feed on shellfish, some of the crew complain. Then:

“You know your Bible, Mr. Ledward,” remarked Samuel…”Do you recall the passage concerning Jeshurun who waxed fat and kicked?” [Deut. 32:15]
“Aye, and it falls pat on Restoration Island!”
Samuel smiled. “Where would they be, where would they all be, without Captain Bligh? Yet they must murmur the moment their bellies are full! I’ve no patience with such men.”
“Nor I.” Glancing at the clerk’s formerly plump body, now reduced to little more than skin and bones, and clad in rags, I could not suppress a smile. “Though we kick,” I said, “none of us could be accused of waxing fat!”

Before reaching this bit of land, the crew had been reduced to eating raw seagulls, when they can catch them, first cutting their throats so that the blood could be given to the weakest. The birds are cut up into eighteen pieces, one for each man. When Bligh is offered a portion of breast, he refuses and says that he will take the same chances as any other man. So the crew plays the seaman’s game of Who-Shall-Have-This. One man holds a portion behind his back and the others call out a name at random. The order of names is to be changed at every capture of a bird. So a name is called, that man gets a piece of raw seagull. Another name… And so on. Bligh winds up with a bird’s foot, but he gnaws it to the bone.

Ledward speaks of the men’s charity toward one another, their attention to each other’s weaknesses, and there is a cooperative spirit amongst the crew that Fletcher Christian wanted among the mutineers who land on Pitcairn’s Island. There is one exception, Lamb, who has stolen food on the launch and who ruins a bird-catching expedition by catching and devouring as many as he can, thereby alarming the huge flock that fly away. “I must do him the credit to say that he had done a good job of them; scarcely anything remained but feathers, bones, and entrails.” Cole had earlier given Lamb his own portion because he thought the man needed it more than himself, now he shakes his head looking down at the blood-smeared wretch. Cole, Ledward, Samuel, and Tinkler agree not to tell Bligh about Lamb’s gorging, because it would do no good. They do, however, tell the captain that Lamb frightened the birds away — this to protect themselves.

Along the voyage only one man challenges Bligh and that is Purcell, the carpenter, who had been rejected by the mutineers because of his troublesome nature. Several times Purcell challenges Bligh who finally takes up a cutlass and throws another to the carpenter and invites him to duel it out. This bit of political action is very ancient and there are records of Viking raiders in 9th Century France who battle it out for leadership. In this instance Purcell backs down and Bligh has no more trouble with him.

One more person needs mention: Tinkler, who stole the coconut that precipitated the mutiny, who is necessary to Byam’s defense, the young midshipman who is respected by Purcell as a gentleman, though the carpenter disrespects Captain Bligh. On one of the islands where the crew lands and tries to find sustenance, a forage team loses Tinkler. Bligh is furious with the team leader and berates him. The team sets out to find Tinkler when he suddenly reappears, leading some natives carrying food and water:

This good fortune came at a time when it was needed, and I was glad that Bligh, who had been cursing the lad during his absence, forgot his anger and commended him warmly. Tinkler was pleased as only a boy can be who has succeeded in a matter in which his elders have failed.

That is a warm and human assessment of a young man. But the troublesome note, about Bligh forgetting his anger, suggests something about the man’s difficult personality. And Tinkler, it must be said, is one lucky fellow throughout all three books.

Difficult or not, Bligh completes his mission. He sails his open boat to Timor, 3600 miles from where he was dropped into the sea. He returns to England and is hailed as a hero. The Pandora sets out to find the mutineers. Ledward has a few words to say about the fate of his fellow voyagers — some are worn out and do not live long after reaching Timor. The launch is sold at a Dutch auction. It disturbs Bligh that the boat the crew has come to love is knocked down for peanuts. Ledward is still unable to travel; he shakes Bligh’s hand — “…the finest seaman under whom I have ever had the privilege to sail. From the bottom of my heart I wish him God Speed.”

Now we have seen the injustice of English society, the unspoiled paradise of Tahiti, the necessity of discipline and the cruelty of its use — now it is time to see what Fletcher Christian can offer as a substitute. Pitcairn’s Island is very different in structure from the other two books. It is related in the third person, except for a long bit at the end, but Nordhoff and Hall faced a problem here. When, in 1808, the American sealer Topaz discovered that there were people on Pitcairn’s Island, there was only one of the mutineers still alive. This man called himself Alexander Smith on the Bounty, but his real name was John Adams. He had been raised in a foundling home before he went to sea. He had been virtually illiterate until fellow mutineer Ned Young taught him to read and write. Young had kept a journal and Adams added to it — some parts have been reconstructed from quotes given by those who read the book, but the original has long since disappeared. Still, Adams told the story of the mutiny and the Pitcairn settlement to anyone who asked. The trouble is, he never told the same story twice. Some of the other Pitcairners, like Jenny, possibly wife to Isaac Martin (Jenny is Brown’s wife in the novel), also told their stories, but there are many discrepancies and lapses of memory among them. Nordhoff and Hall, experienced novelists, have put together a story that is internally coherent but may not be completely factual. But, for the moment, let’s stick with their version, Pitcairn’s Island.

The nine mutineers still commanding the Bounty picked up six Polynesian men and twelve women at Tahiti and other places. They stocked the ship with animals, plant and seeds, anything they could find that might aid them in creating a new community. Some of the men and women have formed bonds before taking ship, but several women have essentially been abducted from their home island. These twenty-seven will form a new society.

Bounty Bay. Only boats can cross the reef and pull into shore.[via Wikipedia]

Christian knows that there is a place called Pitcairn’s Island at a certain location but when he cannot find it, calculates that the discoverer was off in longitude. He then criss-crosses the latitude he has until he finds the island, some hundred and fifty or so miles off its supposed location. Pitcairn has fertile land, is uninhabited, and no safe landing for ships to use. It is perfect. The mutineers send a boat in past the reef to reconnoiter, then strip everything from the Bounty that they can use. Then the Bounty‘s husk is set afire so that no one may ever find it.

There are three groups on Pitcairn’s Island: the Bounty mutineers, the Polynesian men– some of them chiefs and some quasi-slaves, and there are the women. Although a few female characters have been introduced previously, Nordhoff and Hall take care in delineating the different personalities of the women taken to Pitcairn. Maimiti, wife to Christian, is generally deferred to, since her husband is obviously the most important chief. Taurua is married to Young and Balhadi to Alexander Smith (Adams). Moetua, Nanai, and Hutia are married to the three Polynesian chiefs. The chief’s servants are without wives, something that both men and women sense may cause a problem.

The women gather to bathe in the afternoon, There they talk amongst themselves. The whites have strange ways. Among the Polynesians it is the custom for men and women to eat separately and their meals are prepared by someone of the same sex. But the whites insist that their native wives, who they have given odd English names, cook for them and share their meals. Some — like Maimiti and Balhadi – say they are content with their white husbands but others are unhappy. They were abducted and now some are abused.

“What of the men who have no wives?” asked Moetua [wife to the chief Minarii]…
“How miserable they are!” said Hutia [wife to Tararu, Minarii's nephew], laughing. “Who is to comfort them?”
“Not I,” remarked Balhadi, “I am content with my man, and will do nothing to cause him pain or anger.”
“Why should he be angry for so small a thing?” asked Nanai [wife to Tetahiti, close friend of Brown and Christian].
“You know nothing of white men,” said Prudence [abducted by Mills]. “They consider it a shameful thing for the wife of one man to give herself to another. Nevertheless, I will be one of those to be kind to the wifeless men.”
“And I!” exclaimed Susannah. “I fear Martin as much as I hate him, but I shall find courage to deceive him. To make a fool of him will comfort me.”

The Rope. [copyright Mike Warren via onlinepitcairn.com]

But the first one to be unfaithful is Hutia who has an affair with John Williams. Williams’ own wife, Fasto, “a short, dark, sturdy woman”, is determined to be a good wife. When she learns of the affair, she kills herself by throwing herself off a cliff called The Rope. Williams falls into depression. He stays away from Hutia for a time but finally goes to the other white men and tells them that he wants to take Hutia into his house. Everyone knows that this will mean conflict and bloodshed and they refuse to go along with Williams. After a time, Williams takes the Bounty‘s cutter and tries to leave the island. Christian and some others catch up with him:

“Leave be, Mr. Christian… I’ll not go on as I have…
Christian seated himself beside him. “Think, Williams,” he said kindly. “This boat is common property. And how would we fare without a blacksmith? Tahiti lies three hundred leagues from here. You would be going to certain death. … Come, take yourself in hand!”
Williams sat gazing at his bare feet for a long time before he spoke, “Aye, sir, I’ll go back… I’ve done my best. If trouble comes o’ this, let no man hold me to account.”

Williams and Hutia resume their clandestine affair.

Meanwhile, babies begin arriving and the young women settle in. There are other difficulties between the white and native factions that do not involve lust. Some of the whites consider the Polynesians their slaves. They cannot force their will on the chiefs, but begin mistreating the other three native men. Christian, Young, and Smith try to put a stop to this but problems are brewing.

Hutia moves in with Williams and Tauru is unable to get her back. His uncle, Minarii, a man of great strength, beats Williams and fetches Hutia back. Christian holds a council. Hutia must choose who she will live with. Hutia chooses Williams and the matter is closed. But the humiliated Tauru means to kill Williams. When Hutia learns of this, she goes to where Tauru is working and poisons his lunch. Tauru and his servant both die.

The colony is teetering on the edge of destruction and Christian knows it. There are several wistful statements from him and the others about how they should cherish this paradise where they live but finally some of the mutineers come to him with a demand that the land on the island be parcelled out into private plots, but only for the whites, the natives must labor as slaves. Christian tries to dissuade them but they call for a vote and win, five to four. Earlier, Young had tried to convince Christian that allowing every man a vote was a bad idea, that Christian should remain captain and rule. Christian refused, saying that he had brought the men here against their will and now they deserved a voice in how things are run. There was never any question, apparently, of giving the Polynesians a vote. Later, Christian decides that he must intervene and stop the injustice of the whites, but by then it is too late.

Death of Mills from the Classics Illustrated version of Pitcairn’s Island, artist: Rudolph Palais.

Word of the vote reaches the natives and they decide to attack the white men and kill them all. They argue as to whether the “good” men, Christian, Young, and Brown should die, but the logic is: kill one, then all must follow. The natives quietly remove the weapons from the places where they are stored, then begin their mission. Williams, Martin, Mills, and Brown are killed. Christian and Smith  are seriously wounded. Ned Young is hidden by the women including those married to the chiefs. The women determine to protect him and the two wounded men and agree amongst themselves that they will try to block any attempt at vengeance when the killing subsides.

The Polynesian men split up to search for Quintal, Young, and McCoy. Tetahiti finds Moetua, Minarii’s wife. She tells him that she has not seen Quintal or McCoy and, if she knew where Young was, would not tell him. Tetahiti shrugs, he feels the same way about Young, yet he thinks Minarii is right, all the whites must die. Moetua turns away, “Blood! Blood!… Men are wild beasts. To-day I hate them all!”

Meanwhile, Minarii finds Quintal near the cliff that the islanders call The Rope. Minarii hates Quintal so much that he wants to kill him his bare hands. He throws aside his musket and slaps his left bicep with his hand, loud as a pistol shot, the Polynesian challenge to fight. The two men rush together. Minarii is incredibly strong but Quintal is the most powerful of the mutineers. The two grapple with one another and Quintal manages to break Minarii’s arm. Then he throws him down the Rope.

Three of the mutineers’ widows gather and decide to kill the three last native men. Jenny, Brown’s wife, has discovered where they are sleeping:

“We have an axe and two cutlasses. Are your hearts strong? Will your arms not falter?”
“Not mine,” said Hutia grimly.
“I claim Nihau,” remarked Prudence in her soft voice.
“Aye,” said Jenny, “and Tetahiti is mine!”

The women then go off quietly and kill the three sleeping men. Later, they get Quintal to claim that he committed the killings so that they will escape the vengeance of the bereft women.

Maimiti, Christian’s wife, had given birth to their third child while all this was going on. No one tells her of the deaths. Finally, though, she is brought to the dying Christian. Smith picks up the narration now and the remainder of the book is in his voice:

God meant this little island to be a little Garden of Eden, and we’d made a hell of it. Mr. Christian had done all a man could. Now he lay dying for his pains. Knowing him as I did, I reckoned he’d be glad to go. We’d had our chance and we’d failed. Why? …it was no fault of the Indians. All the men asked was to be treated like men; they’d have been our best friends had we met ‘em halfway. As for the girls, ye’d travel far to find a better lot. Real helpmates, they was, ready to take their share in all that was going. And none o’ your sour scolding kind. We was to blame and no one else.

Smith attends the dying Christian who now has heard what has taken place:

When he spoke again it took me by surprise and I’m not certain of the words to this day. He said, “There’s a chance, now,” or “There’s still a chance” — one or the other.
He seemed to expect no reply, so I made none, but lay there trying to make out just what he meant. If he’d said, “There’s a chance, now,” the words was the bitterest ever spoke, for he must have meant that with him dead and out of the way there might be hope for us. I can scarce believe he spoke so, but it may have been.

Christian’s last words: “Never let the children know!” This was September, 1793, six years after the mutiny and four years after the landing on Pitcairn.

Now there is peace, but a new problem arises. McCoy, who has worked in a Scottish distillery, has figured out how to distill alcohol from a native plant. The four remaining men descend into a perpetual state of drunkeness. Some of the women, especially those who have much they want to forget, like Hutia and Prudence, also learn to drink but most stay away. McCoy’s hut becomes the scene of a perpetual drunken orgy. Finally, the women can no longer stand it and abandon the men. They actually try to leave the island, taking the children with them, but their boat capsizes and the four men rescue them. For a while they are shaken enough to resolve to give up drinking, but that doesn’t last. Although the men’s wives still bring them food, they leave them otherwise alone. The women have taken all the arms and they build a stockade. Maimiti (called Mrs. Christian by Smith) is their leader.

Young has come to a stage of deep self-hatred and when Smith tells him of the stockade, Young says that he means to leave the women alone and McCoy agrees. But Quintal intends to take Moetua, the widow of the strong chief Quintal killed. She is almost as strong as her husband was, and she despises Quintal who considers the widows of the dead Polynesians his own property. He advances on the stockade. Instead of retreating into the fort, the women spread out in a line. Moetua gets on her knees and Prudence rests a musket on her shoulder. Maimiti sets up behind a rock. Quintal advances “like the thick-skulled simpleton he was” and the women open fire. Quintal is wounded and runs away.

It takes a few months for Quintal to heal. Young, from the moment Smith told him of the women’s fort, ceases drinking completely and the other three men seldom see him. Quintal is determined to take one of the women back. He and McCoy decide to steal one from the fort. Smith refuses to help them. Quintal and McCoy seize Nanai, Tetahiti’s widow, and Jenny, Brown’s widow. They take them back to McCoy’s hut and, when they cannot force the women to drink, batter them into submission. Later, when the men have passed out, the women escape.

Smith comes around the next day. Young arrives. He is having a bout of what Smith/Adams says is asthma but what sounds more like tuberculosis. Young brings a message from the women: the men must clear out. They can take the cutter and supplies, but they have three days to leave. Young says that he will go with them. Young is clearly in no shape for any kind of exertion but he is the only man left who can use a sextant. Without him, the others don’t have a chance. “…he was thinkin’ of the women and children more than us. He wanted them to have a chance to live quiet decent lives.”

Quintal and McCoy refuse. Young goes away. Smith: “…low-spirited I was, thinkin’ of the lonesome unnatural life we had, when there was no need for it. …I missed the children and craved to see ‘em. What fools we was to think more of our grog than we did of them!” After three days, the women attack. They set fire to the hut and shoot at the men as they try to escape. Smith gets away and runs to Young’s house only to find it deserted. The women have come and carried Young off so that they can care for him. McCoy also escapes and manages to get to Young’s house, though he is terribly wounded. There is no sign of Quintal.

McCoy heals and, one day his wife, Mary, meets him in the woods. Quintal was wounded, she says, and Smith and McCoy have been watched since the women suspected that they were nursing Quintal. Neither Mary, nor Balhadi, Smith’s wife, nor even the battered Sarah Quintal had participated in the assault on McCoy’s hut. “Bad as we’d used ‘em.” says McCoy, “they had no wish to see us dead.” The women will leave the men alone, so long as they stay away.

Smith and McCoy talk of giving up alcohol, but they cannot manage it. Over the next months, McCoy comes to guilt himself for all that has happened. He drinks and blames himself for instigating the quarrel with the native men. One night, he throws himself off a cliff. After that, Smith smashes the kegs and bottles of homemade booze and throws the still into the sea. Then he struggles with exorcising alcohol. He moves into Young’s house and works hard during the day to repair all the houses abandoned when the women built their stockade. At night he is lonely and fights for sleep. One day Balhadi comes to see him. At first he tries to rescue his pride, “Where’s your musket, Balhadi?” but she embraces him, weeping on his shoulder. He tells her that he has destroyed the still and she tells him that Young is alive but very sickly among the women. Soon, the colony reunites, occupying the houses that Smith has repaired. Quintal, now quite mad and sunken into a beast-like state, takes one of the women. Smith tracks him down and kills him. Young teaches Smith to read and write, the Bible being the only text available. Young dies and Smith turns the islanders to Christianity.

The colony is discovered by the Topaz in 1808. The captain decides not to arrest the mutinous pirate Smith and sails away, leaving the old man to determine how, in spite of Christian’s directive, to tell the children of their history.

Two descendants of Fletcher Christian pose beside the Bounty anchor, raised in 1957.

There is no easy path through this lengthy metaphoric narrative about human governance. Discipline — rules — may be necessary, but it is noble to oppose tyranny. The natural state of man may be Utopia or it may be a Hobbesian nightmare. When democracy results in bad decisions by the majority, should a higher authority intercede? If so, where does this stop? And so on. One area of interest is the women’s part in this story. I think there is a fair amount of material here for a feminist analysis, but I lack the parts for that. One item of interest is that, in 1838, when Pitcairn created its first constitution, all native Pitcairners are able to vote. Thus, Pitcairn’s Island becomes the third nation in history, after Sweden and Corsica, and the first with a British-based constitution, to allow women’s suffrage.

Over the last fifty years or so, there have been a number of books and articles that attempt to shift the blame for the mutiny from Bligh to Christian. John Barrow’s 1831 account,The Eventful History of the Mutiny and Piratical Seizure of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause and Consequences was a main source for Nordhoff and Hall and, to me, rings true in its assessment of the situation: Bligh was an asshole who did not understand the nature of command, at least on a peaceful situation such as the voyage to Tahiti, but Christian was an oversensitive jerk who needed to wait it out and charge Bligh once he got back to England. In other words, blame shared but the lion’s part goes to Christian whose personal grievances drew a good many others to catastrophe.

There is a cave on Pitcairn that Fletcher Christian discovered but kept secret. There he hid weapons and ammunition. Nordhoff and Hall say that was because he was determined never to be taken and was prepared for a fight to the death should a ship appear. One of the contradictory statements of John Adams/Smith says that Christian had become dictatorial and disliked –  “by many acts of cruelty and inhumanity, brought on himself the hatred and detestation of his companions, he was shot by a black man whilst digging in his field” (from the report by Captains Staines and Pipon) . He implies that Christian fortified the cave to stand off the other colonists.

And here it must be said that the voyage on the Bounty’s launch wasn’t all that cooperative. Most historians now see a division between the pro- and anti-Bligh factions. This might explain some of Bligh’s comments later. And it may or may not raise him in your estimation as a commander. After all, it is one thing to sail a ship with regulations in force and another to steer an open boat full of starving, disgruntled men, half of whom hate you, 3600 miles through uncharted ocean. So, it is not easy to shape the messy affairs of humanity into a coherent narrative or political tract.

After Pitcairn’s discovery, the place became a stopover for whaling ships who provisioned there, then a regular stop for ships on the passage to New Zealand. The islanders supplied food to the whalers and knick-knacks to the tourists. John Adams reigned as patriarch until his death in 1829. His grave is still maintained, though the original stone has been removed. There was a major effort, at one point, to remove the Pitcairners to Norfolk Island, though some returned. A crazed but charismatic outsider brought the island under his control for a while before the people discovered that he was a fraud. Seventh Day Adventists converted the Pitcairners and most still follow that faith. There was a flurry of interest in Pitcairn genetics in the 1960s when it was claimed that one of the mutineers’ recessive gene for blindness was rampant. That seems of  little importance now, with Pitcairners not seen in terrible genetic danger, although Pitcairn is an archetypal exemplar of “founder effect”, that occurs in populations with little genetic diversity. In the late 20th and early 21st Centuries, reports of incest and abuse were investigated by outside authorities and several men — patriarchs — were convicted. The current population, once more than two hundred and thirty is now less than fifty. The island remains what the UN calls a Non Self-Governing Territory (under British authority but administered through New Zealand).

Hall and Nordhoff [via jamesnormanhallhome.pf]

Nordhoff and Hall both served in World War I in the Lafayette Escadrille, a French Foreign Legion unit of mostly American flyers. They did not meet during the war — Hall was shot down over German lines and spent the last part of the war in a German prison camp. Both were writers, both had published in The Atlantic Monthly. In 1919, they were approached to do a history of the Lafayette Escadrille, which they found themselves well able to do. They collaborated on a number of books after that, notably 1929′s Falcons of France about World War I aviation. Harper’s sent them to the South Pacific in 1920 to do a series of articles. Hall spent the rest of his life in Tahiti, Nordhoff lived there for twenty years, then divorced his wife and moved to California. He was suffering from depression and alcoholism which had begun to show up during the writing of the Bounty trilogy. He died, possibly a suicide, in 1947. Hall died in Tahiti in 1951 where he is well remembered. None of the pair’s other books ever approached the success of Mutiny on the Bounty but that book, and the two that followed, are very much worth reading.

Notes:

 The Bounty Trilogy is the primary work. Used editions with N.C. Wyeth illustrations are readilly available.
Caroline Alexander’s The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty is currently the best book on the mutiny.
For more on James Norman Hall.
For the story of Europe meeting the South Seas, Alan Moorehead’s The Fatal Impact is good and available in many different editions.

There is a lot of historic data on the mutiny on the internet:

Captain Bligh’s account via Project Gutenberg.
John Barrow’s 1831 history, mentioned above. 
The Pitcairn Islands Study Center has a great deal of info including a rundown of each of the mutineers that includes Captain Bligh’s descriptions of the wanted men.
Fateful Voyage makes available a number of documents pertaining to the case.
More on Pitcairn and the history of its inhabitants.
And this from janesoceania.com

Charles Altamont Doyle

Charles Doyle was a gifted artist, a tormented soul, and father to a famous son who tried to aid him. In 1889, during his incarceration at the Montrose Royal Lunatic Asylum, Charles put together an album of drawings and watercolors that was rediscovered in 1977 by Michael Baker and published as The Doyle Diary: The Last Great Conan Doyle Mystery. The book attracted a number of readers and has formed the base for further investigation of The Curious Case of the Mad Artist.

Charles Altamont Doyle and six-year-old Arthur Conan Doyle, 1865. This is one of only two photographs of Charles known to exist.

Charles Doyle was one of a batch of artist brothers fathered by John Doyle, an artist who had found success as a political cartoonist. His sons went in different directions: James illustrated the arms of the peerage; Henry became director of the National Gallery of Ireland; Richard (“Dickie”) was a much-admired illustrator who established the graphic style of Punch and came to specialize in fairytales. Charles, born 1832, was the unsuccesful son.

Richard Doyle, illustration for Andrew Lang’s Princess Nobody, 1886.

At the age of 17, Charles Doyle took a position at the Scottish Office of Works in Edinburgh. He soon met Mary and the two married in 1853 when Charles was 22. They began having children, probably ten altogether, with seven surviving infancy, but the numbers are disputed. One of these — the second or third or fourth — was Arthur Conan Doyle, born 1859.

Charles was unsuccessful at his work and began a course of heavy drinking. By 1862, he had become so debiliated that he was put on half-pay. It may be that, during this time, his supervisor helped him keep his job. At any rate, when that man retired in 1876, Charles shortly afterward left the Office of Works.

Mary Doyle, sketch by her brother-in-law, Richard. [Doyle Dairy]

In order to support her large family, Mary began taking in boarders. One of these was a comparatively well-off young fellow named Bryan Waller. Meanwhile, in 1869, the young Arthur Conan Doyle was sent to Hodder, a Jesuit boarding school, by his uncles. There, Doyle learned to loathe religion. During this period, the police were summoned to the Doyle household to settle a domestic dispute during the course of which Charles broke a window. He may also have struck Mary.

Charles continued his downward slide. His supervisor got his name on one plan for a fountain but that was as close to success as he could manage. It may be that Bryan Waller had an affair with Mary Doyle, fifteen or sixteen years older than he. Her last child, a daughter, was named Bryan Julia Doyle. “Julia” was the name of Waller’s mother. 

“I believe this is technically known as a ‘Pick-Me-Up’. — Wonderful effect of what the Dr. gave me at my last gasp.” Charles Doyle drawing of effects of a drug administered to counter a headache at Montrose, 1889. The next page is a death scene. [Doyle Diary]

In 1881, the out-of-work Charles was sent off to the first of a series of hospitals where he was kept for the rest of his life. In 1883 Mary Doyle and two of her daughters took up residence at Bryan Waller’s estate in Massongill. Mary lived there as a rent-free tenant until 1917. Waller married someone else in 1896. Arthur Conan Doyle visited his mother at Massongill a number of times and it might be relevant that the name “Sherlock” was prominent in the area at the time.

It was apparently Waller who steered Conan Doyle toward the study of medicine. Whatever the relationship between the two men, Arthur Conan Doyle never spoke of it except to say that he and Waller once had a great fistfight. Doyle also made the enigmatic statement that: “My mother had adopted the device of sharing a large house, which may have eased her in some ways, but was disastrous in others.”

Study of a servant working at Montrose. She asked for a copy of the watercolor which Charles gave her, then he speculated about the “delicious little romance this opens up” when her boy friend receives it. [Doyle Dairy]

Arthur Conan Doyle wasn’t all that interested in the practice of medicine. He wanted to write. In 1887, the first Sherlock Holmes novel, A Study in Scarlet, was serialized, and the following year Doyle wrote what he considered a more substantial work, Micah Clarke, an historical novel set in the 17th Century Monmouth Rebellion.

Charles had been held at Blairernoe House, a “Home for Gentlemen” who were “intemperate”. But, in 1885, somehow Charles got hold of some booze and became a problem. The authorities were called in and had Charles certified and transferred to the Montrose Asylum before Mary heard of it.

Montrose Asylum as painted by Charles Doyle. [Doyle Diary]

Arthur Conan Doyle went to his father in 1887 and asked him to illustrate the upcoming book publication of A Study in Scarlet. Charles produced eight drawings, his last paying work. I don’t think that anyone looking at these illustrations would think that Charles Doyle was the proper Sherlock artist. It is interesting to note how much Sherlock resembles Charles.

That’s Sherlock Holmes in the center. Illustration by Charles Doyle for A Study in Scarlet, 1887

The book of illustrations reproduced in The Doyle Diary has several recurrent themes. First, there is fairydom, the realm of successful brother Richard Doyle. There are constant pointers that this or that drawing or idea might be capable of  bringing in some cash. And there are the plaints that Charles was ignored by his family and a sane man held captive.

“The Dreadful Secret” is the upper right portion. Other parts: at left, top “Man of Great Breadth”, “Striking Example of Carroty Hair”, bottom “This dog has such a twist in his tale that it’s turned him right over.” below,Center, “What’s he after? — You may think it’s the flower — but — I think it’s a kiss –, Right, bottom “Bow-wow” [Doyle Diary]

For all the sympathy one might have for Charles, I find his fairy paintings not very interesting. Some, I think, are rather blatant ripoffs of his brother’s work. The drawings of life at Montrose are an interesting record of a Victorian asylum. But the most compelling work comes from the margins of Charles Doyle’s reason: he shows himself meeting death (“…to a Catholic, there is nothing so sweet in life as leaving it…”) in several ways and he has some symbolic work such as “The Dreadful Secret” or “The Artist Worried by a Sphinx” that was never given the care and polish of the fairy stuff.

“Horrible fate of the artist worried by a sphinx.” The writen area above the drawing mention “Dick’s Diary” (?),and goes on to describe Sunday practices of the Catholic Doyle family and extends into an argument about Union and Irish independence. The sphinx is a notion sometimes used by Doyle for England. [Doyle Diary]

 

Embracing Death. Doyle’s annotation: “July 1889 tho’ drawn at an earlier date. The actual accomplishment of the event is today I believe.” [Doyle Diary]

When Greg Stacy was allowed to view another of Charles Doyle’s notebooks at the Huntington Museum he was struck by one drawing:

One simple drawing in the Huntington archives stopped me cold: Beneath a full moon, a fat, leering drunk tipped his glass to the viewer as he tottered atop a horse with a frenzied, mirthless grin. The caption was, “Hurrah! For the jolly night mare!” It was a phrase that aptly described Doyle’s work, perhaps his entire life: the jolly nightmare.

Ah, yes, the jolly nightmare. And perhaps, before we sentimentalize Charles we should consider the domestic not-so-jolly nightmare. Mary Doyle wrote in a letter to the director of the Crichton Asylum where Charles was confined in1892:

My poor husband’s condition was brought on by drink, he has had delirium tremens several times. Just thirty years ago – Decr. 62 – he had such a bad attack that for nearly a year he had to be on half pay and for months he cd [could] only crawl and was perfectly idiotic, could not tell his own name. Since then he has been from one fit of dipsomania to another. Using the most awful expedients, many times putting himself within reach of the law – to get drink – Every article of value he or I possessed carried off secretly, debts to large amount contracted to our trades people, bills given etc. – all for goods which never entered our doors, but were at once converted into money.

He would strip himself of all his underclothes, take the very bed linen, climb down the water spout at risk of his life, break open the children’s money boxes. He even drank furniture varnish…

And, it should be noted, that for all Charles’ whinging about the family ignoring him, Mary also wrote in another letter about how she consulted with her son, Doctor Arthur Conan Doyle, about when his worst symptoms came on. And a daughter, who died in 1890, left all of her estate (400 pounds) to provide for his care — he was costing 42 pounds a year to be kept at Montrose at the time. It was Arthur who signed the papers that changed his father to the Crichton Asylum — such changes were thought to be beneficial at the time. He stated that his father was not dangerous (“Certainly not”) and paid the 40 pounds a year that the place cost.

Picnic at Montrose.”Any nicer sandwiches and beer I never met, and tried to prove.” [Doyle Diary]

Charles clearly had problems that went beyond alcohol addiction. He had suffered brain damage and it seemed to be getting worse. His doctors suggested epilepsy but modern analysts lean toward Korsakoff’s Syndrome — but when a guy is drinking varnish, who knows what the final diagnosis will be. Whatever it was, it caught up with Charles in 1893 in the form of heart failure.

Charles Doyle’s case is of interest because of his famous son and because it sheds some light on Victorian practices and attitudes. The complete reticence of everyone in the family about every aspect of the case is, in itself, informative. How this affected the creator of the world’s greatest detective can only be speculation.

Notes:

The Doyle Diary is long out-of-print but can be had very cheap from used booksellers.
The Chronicles of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is very helpful as is
A. Beveridge, “What Became of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Father?”