Notes
© 2018 Jan M. Ziolkowski, CC BY 4.0 https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0148.06
Nothing that has ever happened. Walter Benjamin, “Über den Begriff der Geschichte,” in idem, Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhäuser, 7 vols. in 14 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1972–1989), 1: 691–703, at 694.
Notes to Chapter 1
an art which we have made our own. William Morris, Hopes and Fears for Art (Boston, MA: Roberts Brothers, 1882), 20; delivered on December 4, 1877 as “The Lesser Arts.”
medievalizing printed books. Rolf Söderberg, French Book Illustration, 1880–1905, trans. Roger Tanner, Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis: Stockholm Studies in History of Art, vol. 28 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1977), 29–30 (on Luc-Olivier Merson and Georges-Antoine Rochegrosse).
the new bibliopolis. Willa Z. Silverman, The New Bibliopolis: French Book Collectors and the Culture of Print, 1880–1914 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008).
twentieth-century modernism. Michael T. Saler, The Avant-Garde in Interwar England: Medieval Modernism and the London Underground (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 61–62.
personally acquainted with Victor Hugo. “Ein Besuch bei Victor Hugo,” Die Gartenlaube 26 (1867): 408–10.
texts by the British author that he chose to put into German. For example, see Enoch Arden (Hamburg, Germany: Grüning, 1868), and Freundes-Klage: Nach Alfred Tennyson’s “In Memoriam” (Hamburg, Germany: Grüning, 1870).
The Dancing Little Monk. Robert Waldmüller, “Das tanzende Mönchlein,” Über Land und Meer: Deutsche illustrirte Zeitung 39 (October 1894–1895). Cited by August Andrae, “Das Weiterleben alter Fablios, Lais, Legenden und anderer alter Stoffe,” Romanische Forschungen 16 (1904): 321–53, at 327. The poem comprises sixteen octaves of octosyllabic lines.
warp children’s literature to their political purposes. Jack David Zipes, Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion: The Classical Genre for Children and the Process of Civilization (London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1983), 137.
The quality of his scholarship degenerated. Dietrich Boueke and Brigitte Röttger, “Severin Rüttgers: Ein Beitrag zum Irrationalismus in der Literaturdidaktik,” Pädagogische Rundschau 28 (1974): 23–41.
delightful and childlike simplicity. Both quotations appear on p. 73 in the 1914 volume. The first is Rüttgers’s own German: “der feinsinnige und gelehrte Kenner der mittelalterlichen Dichtung seines Vaterlandes.” The second comes from Gaston Paris, La littérature française au Moyen Âge (Paris: Hachette, 1888), 208.
learned interest in the original medieval French. Rüttgers’s book was reprinted three times between the late teens and 1925. See Severin Rüttgers, Unser lieben Frauen Wunder: Altfranzösische Marienlegenden (Leipzig, Germany: Insel, 1914), with reprints in 1918, 1920, 1925, 1936, and 1940. The story “Vom Tänzer unsrer lieben Frau” was reprinted again decades later in Vom Reich der Kleinen, ed. Elisabeth Antkowiak, illus. Gitta Kettner, Benno-Bücher: Reihe religiöser Erzählungen 13 (Leipzig, Germany: St. Benno, 1961), 10–18.
arrived at his inquisitiveness about the story naturally. In 1913, Lommatzsch had published his postdoctoral thesis (in German, Habilitation), Gautier de Coincy als Satiriker, a study of Gautier de Coinci as satirist. His lifework continued an Old French dictionary that followed lines projected by his teacher and fellow lexicographer, the Swiss-born Adolf Tobler. Even today, the reference work is still commonly known among initiates as “Tobler-Lommatzsch.”
what would later become the university of Frankfurt. To be specific, Morf was the first rector of the Akademie für Handels- und Sozialwissenschaften in the city, which preceded the university founded there in 1914.
inherited his chair in Romance philology. Morf was not Lommatzsch’s direct predecessor there, since another professor, namely, Matthias Friedwagner, intervened.
Wilhelm Fraenger. He was an art historian and folklorist, even what might be called today a cultural historian, who wrote on such artists as the Netherlandish painter Hieronymus Bosch, the German Renaissance painter Matthias Grünewald, and the Golden Age Dutch painter and printmaker, Hercules Pieterszoon Seghers. For details on Fraenger, see Ingeborg Baier-Fraenger, ed., Der Kunsthistoriker Wilhelm Fraenger (1890–1964): Eine Sammlung von Erinnerungen mit der Gesamt-Bibliographie seiner Veröffentlichungen (Amsterdam: Castrum Peregrini, 1994).
life-sized human heads. Fraenger’s introductory disquisition, entitled “Zucht der Askese und Willkür des Lachens,” was reprinted later separately in Wilhelm Fraenger, Wilhelm Fraengers komische Bibliothek, ed. Ingeborg Baier-Fraenger (Dresden, Germany: Verlag der Kunst, 1992), 172–80. Despite its topic, the introduction is not discussed in Olaf Peters, “Die Physiognomik des Grotesken: Wilhelm Fraenger und das Komische,” in Das Komische in der Kunst, ed. Roland Kanz (Cologne, Germany: Böhlau, 2007), 259–80.
Fraenger contended. See Wilhelm Fraenger, Die Masken von Rheims (Erlenbach, Switzerland: Eugen Rentsch, 1922), 11.
Printed Books as Pseudomanuscripts
extolling the production quality. The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 12.60 (March 1908): 382: “These admirable and charming little volumes must delight the hearts of all who love the romance of the Middle Ages, or are interested in its faith and its code of chivalry. … The leather binding is brown, and looks old and ripe; it has clasps which art has mellowed as richly as time itself could do; and lest the clasps of each book should scratch its neighbours on the shelf, an unobtrusive case is furnished as a shield. The leather is stamped with designs, engraved on wood by Miss Blanche C. Hunter after contemporary manuscripts, which appear again on the first title pages. … Altogether we know of no modern enterprise that should bring so much pleasure at so moderate a cost to the lover of dainty books and the exquisite literature of the ages of chivalry and faith.”
Hunter did the same sort of adaptation from medieval manuscripts for volumes such as The Book of the Duke of True Lovers: Now First Translated from the Middle French of Christine de Pisan. With an Introduction by Alice Kemp-Welch (London: Chatto and Windus, 1907), https://archive.org/details/tumblerourladyo04gautgoog, and Early English Romances in Verse: Done into Modern English by Edith Rickert. Romances of Love (London: Chatto and Windus, 1908), https://archive.org/details/earlyenglishroma00rickuoft
one avid American of more modest means. Otto F. Ege, “I am a Biblioclast,” Avocations 1 (March 1938): 516. On this character, two relatively recent studies are Fred Porcheddu, “Otto F. Ege: Teacher, Collector, and Biblioclast,” Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America 26.1 (2007): 4–14, and A. S. G. Edwards, “Otto Ege: The Collector as Destroyer,” Manuscripta 53.1 (2009): 1–12. The most comprehensive investigation to date of the manuscripts Ege collected and sold is Scott Gwara, Otto Ege’s Manuscripts: A Study of Ege’s Manuscript Collections, Portfolios, and Retail Trade, with a Comprehensive Handlist of Manuscripts Collected or Sold (Cayce, SC: De Brailes, 2013).
the Virgin Mary. On the Virgin in nineteenth-century manuscripts, see Isabelle Saint-Martin, “Rêve médiéval et invention contemporaine: Variations sur l’enluminure en France au XIXe siècle,” in The Revival of Medieval Illumination: Nineteenth-Century Belgium Manuscripts and Illuminations from a European Perspective / Renaissance de l’enluminure médiévale: Manuscrits et enluminures belges du XIXe siècle et leur contexte européen, ed. Thomas Coomans and Jan De Maeyer, KADOC Artes, vol. 8 (Leuven, Belgium: Leuven University Press, 2007), 109–35, at 123–24.
the Pre-Raphaelites. Julian Treuherz, “The Pre-Raphaelites and Mediaeval Illuminated Manuscripts,” in Pre-Raphaelite Papers, ed. Leslie Parris (London: Tate Gallery, 1984), 153–69.
lettering and illumination. Heather Child, More Than Fine Writing: The Life and Calligraphy of Irene Wellington (Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 1987), 14.
French Literature in the Middle Ages. Gaston Paris, La littérature française. Many more editions were to follow the first in 1888.
Gaston Paris’s observation. Anatole France, “M. Gaston Paris et la littérature française au Moyen Âge,” in idem, La vie littéraire, 4 vols. (Paris: Calmann Lévy, 1899–1905), 2: 272.
likened the book itself to a miniature. France, “M. Gaston Paris,” 2: 265 (and cf. 270): “Knights, burghers, churls, clerks, trouvères, and jongleurs appeared to me like the insects that inhabit the grass at our feet. It is a miniature of which my eyes have retained the impression, a miniature so fine that one could discover the least details in looking through a magnifying glass.”
their world, by comparison with ours. France, “M. Gaston Paris,” 2: 268.
gigantic miniature. Paul Bourget, Sensations d’Italie (Toscane—Ombrie—Grande-Grèce) (Paris: Lemerre, 1891), 111 (“une gigantesque miniature”), https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k9610094m.texteImage
France wrote elsewhere. Anatole France, “José-Maria de Heredia,” in La Vie littéraire, 5th series (Paris: Calmann Lévy, 1949), 292–301, at 294.
Image-Makers Go Mainstream
one brand of such products. A text box, in modern italics and not a medieval script, announces the topic as “The Middle Ages: Gothic Script and Illumination on Parchment, 13th Century.”
troubadour style. The fullest study remains the revised and abridged dissertation of François Pupil, Le style troubadour, ou, La nostalgie du bon vieux temps (Nancy, France: Presses universitaires de Nancy, 1985).
Chambord missal. So called because written and illuminated in 1844 (in Paris) for Count Henri de Chambord, grandson of the deposed French king Charles X. London, Victoria and Albert Museum, 22 × 14.8 cm (8 ½ x 5 ¾″). Catalogued among the holdings of the Victoria and Albert Museum in Rowan Watson, Western Illuminated Manuscripts: A Catalogue of Works in the National Art Library from the Eleventh to the Early Twentieth Century, with a Complete Account of the George Reid Collection, 3 vols. (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 2011), 3: 1106–17 (no. 242).
those arts had beyond doubt declined. Contrast their earlier fame: in Purgatorio 11.80–81, Dante attests that by his time the city of Paris had acquired celebrity for its excellence in this medium, or at least had given it its name by calling it “illumination”: “‘Oh,’ I said to him, ‘Are you not Oderisi, / the honor of Gubbio, and the honor of that art / which is called “illumination” in Paris?’” (“‘Oh!’ diss’io lui, ‘non se’ tu Oderisi, / l’onor d’Agobbio e l’onor di quell’arte / ch’alluminar chiamata è in Parisi?’”).
enjoyed a uniquely vibrant revival. For a bibliography of manuals on illumination published in France, see Rowan Watson, “Publishing for the Leisure Industry: Illuminating Manuals and the Reception of a Medieval Art in Victorian Britain,” in Coomans and De Maeyer, Revival of Medieval Illumination, 79–107, at 106–7. The density within a dozen years is remarkable.
The Image-Maker. In French, L’imagier.
for only two years. From 1894 to 1896.
Remy de Gourmont and Alfred Jarry. Elizabeth Emery and Laura Morowitz, Consuming the Past: The Medieval Revival in fin-de-siècle France (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2003), 44–45; Emmanuel Pernoud, “De l’image à l’ymage: Les revues d’Alfred Jarry et Remy de Gourmont,” Revue de l’art 115.1 (1997): 59–65.
The Illuminator: Art in the Family. In French, L’enlumineur: L’art dans la famille. Organe de la Société des miniaturistes et enlumineurs de France, published from 1889 to 1900.
The Color Illuminator. In French, Le coloriste enlumineur: Journal d’enseignement du dessin, de la miniature, des émaux, de l’aquarelle, de la peinture sur verre, sur soie, etc., à l’usage des amateurs et professionels (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1893–1899), published monthly. This journal was edited by the Assumptionist Fathers (in French, the Société de St. Augustin), who would be banned from France in 1900 for activities deemed to be anti-state. On the highly conservative Société de St. Augustin, see Sandra Hindman et al., Manuscript Illumination in the Modern Age: Recovery and Reconstruction (Evanston, IL: Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, 2001), 153–54. During this same wave of interest in France, books on the topic by Alphonse Labitte appeared.
hope for a rebirth of taste. Louis de Lutèce, “IIe Exposition de la Société des miniaturistes et enlumineurs de France,” Le coloriste enlumineur 3.6 (October 15, 1895): 48.
father of art nouveau. Anne Murray-Robertson, Grasset, pionnier de l’Art Nouveau (Lausanne, Switzerland: Éditions 24 heures, 1981).
chromolithograph posters. Philip Denis Cate and Sinclair Hamilton Hitchings, The Color Revolution: Color Lithography in France, 1890–1900 (Santa Barbara, CA: Peregrine Smith, 1978). Grasset worked closely with Charles Gillot, a technician who pushed the boundaries of color reproduction further than any of their contemporaries.
Festival of Paris. In the late nineteenth century, this piece of commercial art was reproduced in collections of highly admired posters. Beyond that, it was hawked to amateurs in smaller form as separate chromolithographic sheets. See Ernest Maindron, Les affiches illustrées (1886–1895) (Paris: G. Boudet, 1896), and among the 256 color plates of Les maîtres de l’affiche, delivery no. 13, plate no. 50 (December 1896). More recently, the image has been used in a study of the absorption of the Middle Ages into mass culture at the turn of the century, in black and white on the dust jacket for Emery and Morowitz, Consuming the Past, and as figure 1.3 on p. 28.
in 1886. The specific date in this year was March 26. Eugène Grasset, Les fêtes de Paris, 122 × 88.5 cm, chromolithograph, 1885, Musée d’art et d’histoire, Geneva. For context, see Melanie Paquette Widmann, Eugène Grasset: A Passion for Design. The Father of Art Nouveau (CTG Publishing, 2012 [digital publication]); Catherine Lepdor, ed., Eugène Grasset, 1845–1917: L’art et l’ornement (Milan, Italy: 5 Continents, 2011).
linking medieval and modern France. Emery and Morowitz, Consuming the Past, 26–27.
He was enlisted. By the printer and engraver Charles Gillot.
chanson de geste. Introduced and annotated by Charles Marcilly.
The Story of Aymon’s Four Sons. In French, Histoire des quatre fils Aymon, très nobles et très vaillans chevaliers.
published in 1883. Paris: H. Launette, 1883.
still being exhibited. Silverman, New Bibliopolis, 39, 41–42.
bibliophilia for bibliophiles. Anatole France, Le livre du bibliophile (Paris: Lemerre, 1874), https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k5482297s
a major new edition of his works. Söderberg, French Book Illustration, 30.
The first of the two Ferroud versions. Anatole France, Le jongleur de Notre-Dame, calligraphed (in a Gothic bastarda script), illuminated, and historiated by Henri Malatesta (Paris: F. Ferroud, 1906). The most expensive volumes in the edition were on Japon vellum and contained, beyond the main run of illustrations, preliminary sketches in black and white, as well as a unique gouache. The work was engraved in color by Reymond with the collaboration of the colorist Henry Joufroy. On Malatesta, see Ddi, 744. All the original gouaches for the 1906 printing, in an early twentieth-century binding, appeared on the bibliophilic market in 2016 in Argentina. This manuscript book was acquired by Houghton Library, within Harvard College Library. It has now been reproduced in facsimile, at full size, with facing English translation: Anatole France, The Juggler of Our Lady, illus. Henri Malatesta, trans. Jan M. Ziolkowski (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2018), with an afterword by Ziolkowski (unnumbered pages).
Like a small number of others. Two worth singling out are Léon Lebègue and Edmond Malassis. See Pierre-Jean Foulon, L’illustration du livre en France de 1870 à 1918, Monographies du Musée royal de Mariemont, vol. 10 ([Marlemont, Belgium]: Musée royal de Mariemont, 1999), 66, 90.
Saint Euphrosina. With illustrations and borders by the French illustrator Louis Édouard Fournier. The volume also contains watercolors by Edmond Pennequin and engravings on wood by L. Marie.
a young lady in the fifth century. The legend originated in the East, and survives in Greek, Syriac, and Arabic. For editions of the Greek and Arabic, see Mourad Kamil, “Ste. Euphrosyne, vierge d’Alexandrie,” in Institouton Anatolikōn Spoudōn, Tome commémoratif du millénaire de la Bibliothèque patriarcale d’Alexandrie, Publications de l’Institut d’études orientales de la Bibliothèque Patriarcale d’Alexandrie, vol. 2 (Alexandria, Egypt: Institouton Anatolikōn Spoudōn [Patriarchikē Vivliothēkē Alexandreias, 1953]), 231–60.
adopt a monk’s attire. Brigitte Cazelles, ed., The Lady as Saint: A Collection of French Hagiographic Romances of the Thirteenth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991), 172–81 (headnote and selected passages in translation).
Until her death. Reported variously as 420 or 470.
role models for nuns, anchorites, and other aspirants to sanctity. Judith Oliver, “Gothic Women and Merovingian Desert Mothers,” Gesta 32.2 (1993): 124–34.
the story’s elaborate subtitle. It reads “Les actes de la vie de sainte Euphrosine d’Alexandrie, en religion frѐre Smaragde, tels qu’ils furent rédigés dans la laure du Mont Athos, par Georges, diacre” (“The deeds of the life of Saint Euphrosina of Alexandria, named Brother Smaragdus, as written in the lavra [a type of monastery] of Mount Athos by Georges, deacon”).
a detailed illustration. By Edmond Pennequin, in white, black, and orange. The Latin is Formosa virgo.
Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller. In French, La légende de Saint-Julien l’Hospitalier.
The tale had already been printed three times. In 1895, it was made into a book by the Parisian A. Ferroud, in an edition with twenty-six compositions designed by Luc-Olivier Merson and engraved by Adolphe Alphonse Géry-Bichard. In 1900, it was published by the London-based Eragny Press (London: Hacon & Ricketts, 1900), in the original French, in a limited edition of 226 copies with a frontispiece designed and engraved on wood by Lucien Pissarro. The same artist also created the borders and embellished letters, which were engraved on wood by his wife Esther. Finally, in 1912, the story appeared in a different edition by the same French publisher as earlier, in a limited run of 1,000 copies in the little “Andréa” library, with twenty etchings by Gaston Bussière (Paris: A. & F. Ferroud, 1912). All three tales were published in 1909 by another Paris-based firm (Paris: Pierre Lafitte, 1909). This collection was illustrated by R. Lelong.
illustrated repeatedly. It was illustrated once by Maurice Georges Lalau, former student of the painter and sculptor Jean-Paul Laurens and of the painter Jean-Joseph Benjamin Constant. See Ddi, 650–51.
The composer was evidently well versed. Jules Massenet, My Recollections, trans. H. Villiers Barnett (Boston, MA: Small, Maynard, 1919), 149.
colophon. Its text relates how the printed form of Malatesta’s illuminated manuscript was reproduced as a facsimile through photogravure, at the expense of the Société normande du livre illustré (Norman Society of the illustrated book), which existed from 1894 to 1921 in Évreux. On such societies, see Raymond Hesse, Histoire des sociétés de bibliophiles en France de 1820 à 1930, 2 vols. (Paris: L. Giraud-Badin, 1929–1931).
a Gothic lancet. The inscription included in the representation explains its contents: “Reconstitution of the window imagined by Malatesta after Flaubert’s text. The different motifs in it constitute the illustrations of the present work.”
envisaged a design. Arthur Join-Lambert, “Rapport du président pours les années 1907, 1908 et 1909,” Bulletin de la Société normande du livre illustré 7 (1909): 3–16, at 6; pp. 20–28 contain follow-up observations on the book by Georges Vicaire (pp. 20–22), anonymous reviews reprinted from other journals (pp. 23–25), and a review by René-François-Armand (Sully) Prudhomme (pp. 26–28).
a colorized reproduction of an engraving. Eustache-Hyacinthe Langlois, Mémoire sur la peinture sur verre et sur quelques vitraux remarquables des églises de Rouen, orné de cinq planches, dessinées par Mlle. Espérance Langlois (Rouen, France: F. Baudry, 1823).
he acknowledged having taken his inspiration. Rori Bloom, “‘Sur un vitrail d’église’: Structures and Sources in Flaubert’s ‘Légende de Saint Julien l’Hospitalier,’” in Medieval Saints in Late Nineteenth Century French Culture: Eight Essays, ed. Elizabeth Emery and Laurie Postlewate (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004), 13–24, at 20–22.
The Sacristan Monk. In French, Le moine sacristain: Fabliau du XIIIe siècle (Paris: Maurice Glomeau, 1912). Both the cover and title page tally meticulously the embellishments by Malatesta: “Illustrated with 26 color compositions, comprising six plates, one heading, one tailpiece, one title fleuron, and seventeen decorated initials.” For English translations, see John DuVal, trans., Fabliaux, Fair and Foul (Binghamton: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, State University of New York, 1992), 148–65; Paul Brians, trans., Bawdy Tales from the Courts of Medieval France (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), 108–23.
a Trumpeter. In French, D’un trompette qui fust refusé de loger à son logis ordinaire par la maîtresse en l’absence de son mari, illustré d’un frontispice, un en-tête, un cul-de-lampe, un fleuron du titre, des lettres ornées, dessinés, coloriés et enluminés par Henri Malatesta (Paris: M. Glomeau, 1913).
The Mystery Play of Griselda. In French, Le mystère de Grisélidis, ed. Marie-Anne Glomeau (Paris: Maurice Glomeau, 1923). The book was adorned by the artist Georges Ripart, who furnished illustrations as well as ornamented initials, modeled after the original unique manuscript, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Français 2203, dated 1395. On Ripart, see Ddi, 982.
The Life of Saint Mary the Egyptian. In French, La vie de sainte Marie l’Égyptienne: Suivie de la légende de sainte Marie l’Égyptienne par Jacques de Voragine (Paris: Maurice Glomeau, 1925). The text is once again translated by Glomeau, with color illustrations by Léon Courbouleix. For a modern English translation of the Latin text, see Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, no. 96, trans. William Granger Ryan, 2 vols. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 1: 374–83. A distinctly different work, published by a different editorial house, was Marie-Anne Glomeau, Un doyen d’Orléans au XVe siècle: Pierre de Puy de Val (Orlèans, France: Société archéologique et historique de l’Orléanais, 1931).
Of Saint Peter and the Jongleur. In French, De Sainct Pierre et du Jongleur: Fabliau du XIVe siècle, escript, enlumyné et ystorié (Paris: Maurice Glomeau, 1914). See Willem Noomen and Nico van den Boogaard, Nouveau recueil complet des fabliaux (NRCF), 10 vols. (Assen, Netherlands: Van Gorcum, 1983–1998), 1: 129–59 (for the Old French text); Willem Noomen, ed. and trans., Le jongleur par lui-même: Choix de dits et de fabliaux (Louvain, Belgium: Peeters, 2003), 152–85 (for the Old French facing a modern French translation); DuVal, Fabliaux, Fair and Foul, 130–39.
Legend of Sister Beatrice. This text was reprinted with illustrations by Georges Ripart: Légende de sœur Béatrix (Paris: Maurice Glomeau, 1924).
His illustrations are splendid in their own right. His effort is packaged in a jacket with ribbons to secure loose leaves, thirty-six of which are color compositions by him.
the esteem of the Parisian cultural establishment. See the 1909 review by Sully Prudhomme of the Académie française, the first French winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature: “L’art d’illustrer,” Bulletin de la Société normande du livre illustré 7 (1909): 26–28, at 28.
occupied by the name of the book. Like the rest of the text, the title is lettered in a calligraphy modeled on the late medieval Gothic script known colorfully as bastarda.
the Ferroud edition of 1924. France, Le jongleur de Notre Dame, illus. Maurice Lalau (Paris: Librairie des amateurs, A. & F. Ferroud, 1924). The illustrations have been reprinted in Anatole France, The Juggler of Notre Dame, illus. Maurice Lalau, trans. Jan M. Ziolkowski (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2018), with an introduction by Ziolkowski (pp. v–xii).
Chrétien de Troyes and the Golden Legend. Chrétien de Troyes, Erec et Enide: Le chevalier au Lion, trans. André Mary (Paris: Boivin, 1925); André Mary, La loge du feuillage, où il est devisé de l’enfance d’Eracle, Cligès et Fénice et de Guillaume d’Angleterre (Paris: Boivin, 1928); Jacobus de Voragine, Contes de la légende dorée (Paris: Garnier Frères, 1929). Other related efforts include Hilaire Enjoubert, Passerose: Récits du Moyen Âge en Provence (Paris: Boivin, 1936).
The Fifteen Joys of Marriage. In French, Les quinze joyes de mariage, ed. Jules Meynial (Paris: Jules Meynial, 1928).
The Romance of Tristan and Iseult. Bédier, Tristan (Paris: Piazza, 1909); trans. Florence Simmonds, The Romance of Tristram and Iseult (London: W. Heinemann, 1910).
The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller. Gustave Flaubert, La légende de Saint-Julien l’Hospitalier (Paris: Librairie des amateurs, A. Ferroud & F. Ferroud, Successeur, 1927).
The Miracle of the Magpie. In French, Le miracle de la Pie (Paris: Librarie des Amateurs, A. Ferroud & F. Ferroud, 1921). The story was published first in the European edition of the New York Herald as a supplement on March 23, 1904, and later in the Revue bleue on November 21, 1908, 641–45. Subsequently, it formed the second chapter in Les Contes de Jacques Tournebroche, in Anatole France, Œuvres, ed. Bancquart, 4: 258–68. 4 vols. Paris: Gallimard, 1984.
Missal Attack
A new Gothic building. John Constable, “Literary and Scientific Institution,” Lecture at Hampstead, July 25, 1836, from notes taken by C. R. Leslie, in John Constable, Discourses, ed. R. B. Beckett, Suffolk Records Society, vol. 14 (Ipswich, UK: Suffolk Records Society, 1970), 70.
how to handcraft their own liturgical codices. E. H. A. Frankland, Amusements for Wet Mornings: Hints to Young People on Photographic Colouring and Illuminating Missals (London: William Freeman, 1869); Henry Noel Humphreys, The Art of Illumination and Missal Painting: A Guide to Modern Illuminators. Illustrated by a Series of Specimens, from Richly Illuminated Mss. of Various Periods, Accompanied by a Set of Outlines, To Be Coloured by the Student according to the Theories Developed in the Work (London: H. G. Bohn, 1849), https://archive.org/details/geheimegeschich00blgoog; David Laurent de Lara, Elementary Instruction in the Art of Illuminating and Missal Painting on Vellum: A Guide to Modern Illuminators. With Illustrations (Printed in Gold and Colours) and Outlines for Copying for the Students, 2nd ed. (London: Ackermann, 1856). For a detailed bibliography, see Watson, “Publishing for the Leisure Industry,” 102–6. This medievalizing vogue arrived somewhat later in France, as evidenced for example, relating specifically to missals, by Lucien-Adolphe Foucher, “Notre cours: Missels et livres d’heures,” Le coloriste enlumineur 6 (1898): 8.
A contemporary commented. Le Constitutionnel (May 14, 1904): quoted by Terence Noel Needham, “‘Le Jongleur est ma foi’: Massenet and Religion as Seen through the Jongleur de Notre Dame” (PhD dissertation, Queen’s University Belfast, 2009), 105–6.
treated as next of kin. From the Latin brevis “brief”, a breviary is a short book that contains the hymns, psalms, and readings for the canonical hours of prayer. A missal collects similar texts for the mass. The publisher commented that the tales “are like the pictures that one finds in ancient missals, delicate and refined, though so far away from our modes of expression. They are restful to contemplate. The colours blend satisfactorily, even though the drawing be not quite modern.” Selections from the Gesta Romanorum, trans. Charles Small (Boston, MA: Privately printed by Nathan Haskell Dole, 1905). The quotation appears in Nancy Finlay, Artists of the Book in Boston, 1890–1910 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard College Library, 1985), 73.
an amateur calligrapher. Her name was Clothilde Coulaux. She was a known quantity among nonprofessional book-makers, since a decade earlier she had netted second prize in a competition sponsored by The Color Illuminator.
Below this information. Sandra Hindman, with Laura Light, Neo-Gothic Book Production and Medievalism, Primer, vol. 5 (New York: Les Enluminures, 2015), 24–25 (for text and image).
a daintily illuminated leaf. L’Évènement, May 18, 1904: quoted by Needham, “Le Jongleur est ma foi,” 105.
Austin Dobson published a ten-stanza poem. The Century Magazine 23.1 (November 1881): 48. The poem has been discussed by Barbara A. Shailor, “Otto Ege: His Manuscript Fragment Collection and the Opportunities Presented by Electronic Technology,” The Journal of the Rutgers University Libraries 60.1 (2003): 1–22, at 3, 7–9.
critics professed. Bettina Liebowitz Knapp and Myra Chipman, That was Yvette: The Biography of Yvette Guilbert, the Great Diseuse (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1964), 297.
The town has no reason for existing. Bourget, Sensations d’Italie, 111 (“La ville n’a pour raison d’être que ce blazon sacré, que cette espèce de page de missel dressée en pierre. …”), https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k9610094m.texteImage
extremely rich, grotesque, and full of pure color. “The Grande Chartreuse,” in Praeterita: Outlines of Scenes and Thoughts Perhaps Worthy of Memory in My Past Life, vol. 3, chap. 1, in The Works of John Ruskin, ed. E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn, 39 vols. (London: George Allen, 1903–1912), 35: 473–96, at 490.
roll back the stages of life to childhood. Ruskin, Praeterita, 35:491: “But now that I had a missal of my own, and could touch its leaves and turn, and even here and there understand the Latin of it, no girl of seven years old with a new doll is prouder or happier: but the feeling was something between the girl’s with her doll, and Aladdin’s in a new Spirit-slave to build palaces for him with jewel windows. For truly a well-illuminated missal is a fairy cathedral full of painted windows, bound together to carry in one’s pocket, with the music and the blessing of all its prayers besides.”
fairy cathedral. See Bernadette Nelson, “Ruskin’s ‘Fairy Cathedrals,’” The Ashmolean 21 (Christmas 1991), 12–14.
Adolphe-Napoléon Didron. He is also known as Didron the elder.
in 1845. See Enrico Castelnuovo, “La ‘cathédrale de poche’: Enluminure et vitrail à la lumière de l’historiographie du XIXe siècle,” Zeitschrift für schweizerische Archäologie und Kunstgeschichte 40 (1983): 91–93, at 92, https://doi.org/10.5169/seals-168125
cathedral binding. For discussion, Eleanore Jamieson, English Embossed Bindings, 1825–1850, Cambridge Bibliographical Society Monograph, vol. 7 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 1, 19; for examples, figures 1, 2, 9, 26, 32, 40.
Gold was common. Josep Cambras, The Complete Book of Bookbinding (New York: Lark, 2004), 16.
Guardian Saints. Auguste-Pierre Garnier, Les saintes gardiennes: La geste de Jeanne d’Arc, Le mystère de sainte Geneviève, Le dit de sainte Odile, illus. Maurice Lalau (Paris: Garnier frères, 1925).
The Legend of Saints Oliverie and Liberette. Anatole France, La légende des saintes Oliverie et Liberette, 38 pp. Although best known for his phase as a symbolist between 1903 and 1918, Mossa subsequently illustrated for Ferroud a number of other tales by France, such as “Le petit soldat de plomb” (The little tin soldier) in 1919, “Les sept femmes de la Barbe-Bleue” (Bluebeard’s seven wives) in 1921, “La leçon bien apprise” (The well-learned lesson) in 1922, and “Madame de Luzy” (with the identical title in English) in 1927. On Mossa, see Ddi, 831.
medievalesque influences. Jean-Roger Soubiran, “Les influences gothiques dans l’art de Gustav-Adolf Mossa,” Nice historique 81 (1978): 73–81.
coracle. This small circular boat consisted of a simple wooden framework covered with leather.
Oliverie survived ten years. She allegedly died on October 9, 364. The dramatic date of the action was calibrated to accord loosely with the market timing of its original publication date, when it was published in Le Gaulois under the title Mystic Tale: The Legend of Saints Oliverie and Liberette. See Anatole France, “Conte mystique—La Légende des saintes Oliverie et Liberette,” Le Gaulois, October 21, 1890.
Duc Jean’s Illuminator. Nalim, L’Ymagier du duc Jean, illustrated by Pichot (Paris: Maison de la Bonne Presse, 1928), 43–49 (chap. 8). The original edition has the key noun spelled with an initial i, as it is in modern French: L’Imagier du duc Jean, illustrated by Pichot (Paris: Maison de la Bonne presse, 1912). On Pichot, see Ddi, 909.
The Distressing Episode of the Glazier. Paul Duplessis de Pouzilhac, La fâcheuse aventure du verrier, de l’enlumineur et de la gargouille: Légende du XIIIème siècle (Montpellier, France: Firmin et Montane, 1921). On the author, see Etienne Bouday, “Paul Duplessis de Pouzilhac,” Histoires des sciences médicales 31 (1997): 277–80.
Handwriting the Medieval
Théophile Gautier’s 1832 short story. The piece of fiction can be found in Théophile Gautier, Works, trans. Frederick C. de Sumichrast, 12 vols. (Boston, MA: C. T. Brainard, 1900–1903), 11: 280–81.
from another dealer. The Heritage Book Shop, Inc., of Los Angeles. Although the posted description left open the possibility that the item was printed on vellum (which could be Japanese vellum), the dealer informed me that the book was a true manuscript.
two twenty-four page exemplars. Both copies were reportedly lost until this leaf resurfaced: see Guy Bertaud du Chazaud, “Saint Léonard, par Robert Lanz,” in Sculptures en Touraine: Promenade autour de cent oeuvres. Catalogue de l’exposition, une exposition du Conseil général d’Indre-et-Loire, ed. idem et al. (Tours: Conseil général d’Indre-et-Loire, 2014), 116–17.
six golden spheres. The orbs, looking a little like blobby fried eggs, match in their circularity the halo behind his head, as well as the larger one behind Mary’s crowned head. Likewise, they complement the circles around the flames on three tapers next to the Madonna.
commitment to manuscript illustration. From 1931 to 1935, he served as an instructor in illumination to the infante Maria de Bourbon. He produced a forty-page missal for the use of young clerks of Saint Martin of Tours, created between 1937 and 1940, in the collection of the museum of Saint Martin.
typifies his own times. The center of the illumination is occupied by four lancet windows with stained glass. The rectangular frame is studded at each corner by a modified quatrefoil, tapering to points rather than rounded on the four leaves. The colors are bright, all the more so for the liberal application of gold leaf. The Madonna, with gilt stars on her dark blue mantle to cover the crimson garment beneath, is elongated to form one side of a Gothic arch over the tumbler. Even the three onlooking monks to the side, despite their closed mouths, bring faintly to mind the chief figure in The Scream of Edvard Munch, as does the clash between the hard-edged rectilinear frame and the wavy curvilinear movement within it.
an attractive illuminated manuscript. The item is possibly by Mary O. Kneass, who signed the front free endpaper. It emerged on the book market after being obtained from her family.
twenty-two pages of text. The full text is written in a modified blackletter script in black ink, with ornamental capitals in blue (a few ruled spaces awaiting further initials), and with rubrication restricted to the final nine and a half lines—and earlier for the single battle cry monjoie (a cryptic exclamation, meaning either “Mount Jove” or “Mount Joy”). The whole is bound in pebbled brown morocco leather (James Cummins Bookseller Inc., consulted on May 1, 2006).
the renowned calligrapher Irene Sutton. Newberry Library, Vault Case Wing MS folio ZW 945.W45. The manuscript bears the identification “Written out from the 12th century French by Irene Sutton [Wellington] and illustrated by Sax R. Shaw and given by us to Hubert Wellington. June 1942.” The last-mentioned was her future husband. The work was done in Edinburgh.
handwritten manuscripts. The phrase is, of course, a pleonasm.
a small publication in a private impression. Anatole France, Our Lady’s Tumbler: A Twelfth Century Legend Done out of Old French into English, trans. Philip H. Wicksteed (New York: Privately printed for Stanford Briggs, 1923). The printing was of 500 copies.
In the colophon. Here it is placed on the verso of the title-leaf.
the pleasure of designing them. The cloth cover of the book is stamped with an attractive motif. At its center stands a cartouche, an architectural device that resembles an escutcheon—a stylized heraldic shield of the sort that often surrounds a coat of arms. This frame highlights the title and a five-branched candelabrum.
a large and bustling commercial art studio. Reference is made to fifteen to twenty-five artists managed by two art directors and one assistant art director. Ninety-five percent of their work went into generating illustrations for advertising agencies to place in magazines and newspapers. See Percy V. Bradshaw, Art in Advertising (London: Press Art School, 1925), 446, 482, cited by Ellen Mazur Thomson, The Origins of Graphic Design in America, 1870–1920 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997), 81.
samplers. For example, Stanford Briggs, Inc., Advertising Art, Advertising Arts & Crafts, Layouts, Designs and Illustrations for Every Purpose in Every Practical Technique (New York: Stanford Briggs, 1923).
extreme deshabille. What he wears on his lower body is challenging to determine: unless he has on the sheerest tights imaginable, he appears to be naked but lacking genitals.
a handbill. 11.5″ × 9″, printed on eight large quarto pages of Waldorf watermarked paper, enclosed in green string-tied wraps.
letterpress printing classes. London: Aldhenham Institute Letterpress Printing Classes, Goldington Crescent, Pancras Road, Session MCMIX–MCMX. The same details as on the title page are reprinted at the foot of the final printed page, with the additional crumb of the compositor’s name, C. H. Hensby. The educational establishment had existed since the 1880s.
a collective exercise in typesetting. The text proper begins with a single oversized letter in red in the left margin and the first eight lines entirely in red capitals, but switches to black and normal handling of capitalization, with the red reserved for repetition of the running head Our Lady’s Tumbler on each printed page, and for the colophon. Each sentence after the initial one is preceded by the paragraph mark, known as a pilcrow.
Typing a Translation
Pierson Underwood. He studied at Yale (class of 1918), Harvard, and Cambridge Universities, as well as at the Sorbonne and in the Art Students League. A painter, printmaker, and sculptor, and in addition, a composer, he was active at times as a freelance writer. In the prime of his career, he had widest renown as a board chairman of a now-defunct radio station (WGMS) in Washington, DC, that promoted a classical music format. The source of the life dates recorded in the index is Virgil E. McMahan, The Artists of Washington, D.C. 1796–1996, vol. 1 (Washington, DC: The Artists of Washington, 1995), 219.
his undergraduate years at Yale. He served on the board of the Yale Literary Magazine: Yale Alumni Weekly 26.27 (March 23, 1917): 713. In addition, he published poems in The Yale Book of Student Verse, 1910–1919, ed. John W. Andrews et al. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1919).
volumes of verse. Including his own Brief Harvest, printed in 150 copies (Mount Kisco, NY: Peter & Katherine Oliver, 1940). This collection comprises occasional pieces, prompted by the events that led up to the Second World War.
A dry point engraving of his. On Japanese paper.
The Monk, the Little Bird. New York City: Peter & Katherine Oliver, 1936. The same two friends who printed his later volume of poetry served as his publishers.
migrated in every direction. Paul Meyer, “Les manuscrits des sermons français de Maurice de Sully,” Romania 5 (1876): 466–87; 23: 177–91, 497–507; 28: 245–68. An imaginative analysis of the exemplum can be found in Carolyn Dinshaw, How Soon Is Now? Medieval Texts, Amateur Readers, and the Queerness of Time (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012), 44–54, 64–72 (on Longfellow), although her study suffers from being altogether innocent of knowledge about the major source studies in modern research languages other than English.
he retains a reputation. Sermons in both Latin and Old French have been ascribed to him in some abundance.
the short story of the monk and the bird. The most thorough study is Louis Leonor Hammerich, Munken og fuglen: En middelalderstudie. Festskrift udgivet af Københavns Universitet i anledning af Universitetets Aarsfest, November 1933 (Copenhagen, Denmark: Bianco Lunos, 1933); the most concise exposition of the evolution, Fritz Wagner, “Mönch und Vöglein,” in EdM, 9: 788–93; the most comprehensive listing of versions is in ATU, 1: 278–79, no. 471A: “The Monk and the Bird.” The tradition of stories is particularly strong in English and German.
Felix the Monk. In German, Mönch Felix.
translated by him from Bishop Maurice. “An extract from a manuscript attributed to Maurice de Sully, Bishop of Paris in the years A.D. 1160–1196, translated by Pierson Underwood.”
puts the reader on more equivocal ground. “This story exists in at least six manuscripts. We believe this translation to have been made from a printed version of a manuscript in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, number 24862, folio 126 c.” The choice of verb in the main clause is curiously evasive, as is the lack of bibliographic information on the text followed.
homemade book. It has boards backed with cloth tape.
The typescript. The colophon reads, in caps: “One Copy Set Up on the Typewriter January I, MDCCCCXXXIX, In Honour of the Birthday of Peter Oliver, Esquire, by the Translator, Pierson Underwood, Scribe.” Oliver emended the year to 1940, which corresponds to the handwritten dedication in French on the front pastedown: “Père Sous-Bois à Père Olivier, Jour de l’An, 1940: C’est à dire: P.O. from P.U. with love” (“Father Underwood to Father Olivier, New Year’s, 1940: That is to say: P.O. from P.U. with love”).
holiday-season pamphlets. A case in point would be his Petit Noël: A Christmas Cantata for Treble Voices, based on Old French Noëls of the Twelfth to Eighteenth Centuries (New York: Chappell, 1938). The musical score was composed in collaboration with Lawrence Perry.
Medieval French for Amateurs
a limited edition. Thirty numbered copies on a softly textured pure cotton known as velin d’Arches (also called Arches text wove) and fifty numbered copies on velin de Docelles (from the papermaker in Docelles). In both instances velin (cognate with English vellum) denotes a high-quality bond paper, felt to resemble true parchment. The verso sides have nothing but an Arabic numeral in a medieval-looking script. The recto bears the text, heavy ornamentation, and occasional miniatures.
The Messengers of the Book. In French, “Les messagers du livre.” The group’s chief supporters are inventoried on an unnumbered page near the end.
a series of writings by French moralists. Illus. Paul Dufau, typography Yves Filhol, binding René Privat, layout Bernard Gastaud, typeface by the foundry Deberny and Peignot. The illuminations were made by the Messagers as a group. The volume was printed at Villeneuve (which one is left unspecified). It is dated March 8, 1954, which would situate it during Lent.
A One-Novel French Novelist
The Tumbler of Our Lady, after Gautier de Coinci. The 215-page novel is Henri Alphonse André Marmier, Le bateleur de Notre-Dame (d’après Gautier de Coincy) (Paris: H. Piazza [imprimerie de Priester frères], 1951). The publishing house was established by Henri Jules Piazza.
The Romance of Tristan and Isolde. In French, Le roman de Tristan et Iseult.
under its imprint. The firm was eventually purchased in 1944. Four decades later, it disappeared from bibliographic view after being acquired by Editions d’Art Les Heures Claires, which had been founded in 1945. The current Paris-based art publisher has no record of the author, beyond the name Henri Marmier.
other than in 1951. Occasional indications of 1952 seem to refer equally to the 1951 printing. All editions, even including one limited to 250 copies on special paper (“vélin hollande de pannekoek”), appear to have been in paperback. This printing was purportedly held to 250 numbered copies, but mine lacks a number. All versions have beige card covers. The traditional bibliographic yardstick of reprints suggests that the volume was red-hot in the year of its publication. One copy indicates on the half-title page that it derives from the twelfth printing. A dozen print runs within a single year is impressive—and out of keeping with the relative lack of critical notices.
more notice in newspapers and journals. Vanishingly few reviews show up in scholarly periodicals. For one of the rare exceptions, see Omer Jodogne, in Les Lettres romanes 8 (1954): 189. This reviewer concludes by commending the book, “By my faith, it is noteworthy and will exercise a lively attraction.” A very short write-up appears in Bulletin de l’Université de Toulouse 59–62 (1951 or later): 105. It has not been easy to discover resonance in the popular press.
Marmier. The family name, although far from unique, is not very common. In assorted library catalogues (as of the Bibliothèque nationale de France) the initial H on the title page has been expanded without further ado to Henri: see La librairie française: Catalogue général des ouvrages parus du 1er janvier 1946 au 1er janvier 1956, 3 vols. (Paris: Cercle de la librairie, 1957), 2: 205. The listing signals two numbered runs, one on vellum and the other on Holland paper.
Born in 1894. On March 17, in Castets-en-Dorthe, Gironde. The fullest biographical information is to be found in Who’s Who in France 1959–1960, 4th ed. (1959), 146. This entry lists Le bateleur among Marmier’s publications.
a successful career as a magistrate. He wrote a 1924 doctoral thesis in law, Les garanties de la liberté individuelle et la réforme du Code d’instruction criminelle (Paris: Jouve, 1924).
André Hubert. Pseudonym of Edmond Baptiste. He worked primarily as a painter and glazier.
From this artist’s involvement. Two years after illustrating this version of Our Lady’s Tumbler, the same illustrator produced color initials and vignettes in debonair profusion to adorn a three-volume edition of The Lives of the Gallant Ladies of His Day. See Pierre de Bourdeille, seigneur de Brantôme, Mémoires de Messire Pierre de Bourdeille sur les vies des dames galantes de son temps, 3 vols. (Paris: Union latine d’éditions, 1953). This memoir takes the reader on a rambling romp through the social register of the author’s day. The memoirist, a nobleman, abbot, and soldier of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, offers a graphic description of sexual mores and (particularly female) organs.
it was pitched. This initiative was brought out in at least two different runs. The smaller one was on higher-quality paper. Yet even the many ordinary printings come on better stock than in typical mass-market editions. The typography reflects similar foresight and expense. The ornamentation of the volume, put together with the other features, makes it a late manifestation in the genre of livres d’artistes that we saw in the two Ferroud editions of 1906 by Malatesta and 1924 by Lalau. In overall professionalism, the book stands far above Anatole France’s French prose as reprinted in 1944 by Pierre Watrin as a work of children’s literature, and from the medieval French text of the original poem printed in 1954 for “The Messengers of the Book.”
conversation between the lead male character and the Viscount. Marmier, Le bateleur de Notre-Dame, 62–63.
the charm of the primitive text. Marmier, Le bateleur de Notre-Dame, 13: “Nulle adaptation n’égalera le charme du texte primitif du Gautier de Coincy.”
the juggler is linked implicitly to great churches. Marmier, Le bateleur de Notre-Dame, 12.
the version by the devout Catholic. Marmier, Le bateleur de Notre-Dame, 11, 13.
a reworked and expanded version. Marmier, Le bateleur de Notre-Dame, 13: “Une version remaniée et amplifiée. C’est donc une adaptation fantaisiste, un pastiche.”
claims the boy melted. Marmier, Le bateleur de Notre-Dame, 24.
including the Faust-like Theophilus. Marmier, Le bateleur de Notre-Dame, 17, 18, and, for Theophilus, 28, 35.
sister Beatrice. Marmier, Le bateleur de Notre-Dame, 36.
French Language-Study
The Beautiful Country of France. Josette Eugénie Spink, Le beau pays de France (Boston, MA: Ginn, 1922).
instructor at the University of Chicago. In the School of Education.
The version by this pedagogue cobbles together. She referred succinctly to the medieval tale “taken from the writings of the Fathers in the Middle Ages,” to the “most exquisite” retelling of Anatole France, or to the opera by Massenet, indebted to Anatole France, “which Mary Garden interprets so superbly.” See Spink, Le beau pays, 160.
good-looking. In French, beau, the adjective of choice for both, means both handsome and beautiful.
textbooks for instruction. A partial inventory would include: W. M. Daniels, Contes de la France contemporaine (Boston, MA: D. C. Heath, 1922); Anatole France, Contes, ed. C. J. M. Adie and P. C. H. de Satgé (London: Oxford University Press, 1923), 5–16; George Neely Henning, ed., Abeille et autres contes: With Notes, Direct-Method Exercises and Vocabulary, illus. Kurt Wiese (Boston, MA: Heath, 1928), with questions after each story, 115, 215–16; Anatole France, Abeille, Le Jongleur de Notre-Dame, Les Pains noirs, ed. R. L Græme Ritchie, illus. Henry Morin (London: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1928); Le Jongleur de Notre-Dame, adap. Angèle Hyland, illus. Nellie Gordon, Work[s] Projects Administration: Remedial Reading Program, Secondary Schools (New York: Board of Education, City of New York, [1940?]); Laurence Hervey Skinner, Quinze conteurs (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1940), 27–32 (text), 269–70 (questions, with French phrases to study closely and English sentences to translate); François Denoeu, Contes et récits (New York: Henry Holt, 1947), 130–36 (text), 246–47 (biographical note and questions); John Le Coq, Vignettes littéraires: French Life and Ideals (Boston, MA: D. C. Heath, 1957), 56–64, text with brief footnotes (mainly sources and parallels), preceded by a one-page introduction and one-page description of date, place, qualities, and meaning; Le Jongleur de Notre-Dame and Other Stories, trans. Margaret Weale (London: George G. Harrap, 1955), 6–14 (in facing-language format, with the French original on one side and the English on the other); Germaine Brée and Anne Prioleau Jones, Hier et aujourd’hui: Premières lectures littéraires (New York: Ronald Press, 1958), 77–86.
delightful and childlike simplicity. Henning, Abeille et autres contes, 115.
Old favorites can stale. In reviewing Arsène Croteau and Arthur M. Selvi, eds., Belles lectures françaises (New York: American Book Co., 1949), C. Maxwell Lancaster first comments on the assistance provided in annotations and translations by the compilers of an anthology, and then declares: “In this new presentation such old favorites as Le Jongleur de Notre Dame … assume a new interest and charm.” See The French Review 23 (1950): 403–4, at 404.
one compendium. Benjamin F. Bart, La France: Carrefour des civilisations (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1949).
the reviewer proposes. Cyrus C. Decoster, review of Denoeu, Contes et récits, in The French Review 21 (1948): 493–94, at 493: “Those of us who have been teaching a few years have on our shelves a half dozen or more collections of short stories, each of which includes about fifty per cent of the stories in any one of the others. … Naturally enough, some teachers have become a little weary of these old favorites and the effort to keep them amused is already at least a quarter of a century old. (I have italicized the word teachers, because it should be obvious that the students, reading the stories for the first time, have no reason to be bored.)”
a language teacher. Edward Harvey, review of Albert J. Salvan, D’un siècle à l’autre: Contes et nouvelles, in The French Review 24 (1950): 55–56, at 55.
a third assessor. Arsène Croteau, “Old Chestnuts,” The French Review 25.1 (October 1951): 65–67, at 67.
a 1953 paperback volume. Anatole France, Le Jongleur de Notre-Dame et d’autres contes, ed. Grazia Maccone (Milan, Italy: Carlo Signorelli, 1953), 14 (“La simplicité, touchante jusqu’aux larmes”). The whole volume is in French, including the introduction and notes.
an article. Robert A. Wagoner, “Fitting the Foreign Language into a Core Curriculum,” Modern Language Journal 38 (1954): 304–8, at 308.
A late specimen of anthologizing. Walter J. Cobb, Pages à Plaire: A Modern Approach to Reading (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966), 74–86 (with discussion on i–vi).
takes as his starting point. Cobb, Pages à Plaire, 1–5.
In another anthology. Le Coq, Vignettes littéraires, 58.
made a confession to a reporter. Marc Shulgold, “Obscure ‘Jongleur’ Entertains,” Rocky Mountain News, July 9, 2004. The director was Ken Cazan; the opera house, Central City Opera in Colorado.
Notes to Chapter 2
The Middle Ages. Jacques de Baroncelli, “Avant presentation: La légende de Sœur Béatrix,” Comoedia 17.3819, June 1, 1923, “Cinéma,” repr. in idem, Ecrits sur le cinéma, suivi de Mémoires, ed. Bernard Bastide (Perpignan, France: Collection Institut Jean Vigo, 1996), 110–11.
onto pianolas. Much of the trade was controlled by the Aeolian Company, which prospered until the Depression began in the late 1920s. This American-based multinational relied upon instruments that were often manufactured by Steck, a subsidiary in Germany. The roll for Massenet’s Le jongleur de Notre-Dame (reference number 69769) contains a “bouquet of melodies” arranged for four hands by Jacques-Albert Anschütz (1835–1902). The arranger would have had to work rapidly to produce the music between the premiere of the opera and his death.
Making a Spectacle of Miracle
Manhattan Opera Company. Its operations were based in the Manhattan Opera House, located at 311 West 34th Street, the building that now houses the Manhattan Center Studios.
Metropolitan Opera House. At 1411 Broadway. The facility, now known as “the old Met,” opened in 1883.
Salomé. In Boston, her costume precipitated the banning of the production.
Le jongleur de Notre Dame. Vincent Sheean, The Amazing Oscar Hammerstein: The Life and Exploits of an Impresario (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1956), 283.
Aloyse and the Minstrel. In French, Aloyse et le ménestrel, 1909, produced by Pathé Frères.
Medieval miracles. The foundational scholarship has all been published by François Amy de La Bretèque, especially “Présence de la littérature française du Moyen Âge dans le cinéma français,” Cahiers de recherches médiévales et humanistes/Journal of Medieval and Humanistic Studies 22 (2011): 155–65, at 156–57; and L’imaginaire médiéval dans le cinéma occidental (Paris: H. Champion, 2004), 906–16. In addition, see Amédée Ayfre, “La Vierge Marie et le cinéma,” in Maria: Études sur la sainte Vierge, ed. Hubert Du Manoir de Juaye, 5: 793–810, with a filmography at 802–10. 7 vols. Paris: Beauchesne, 1949–1964.
Joan of Arc enjoyed an extraordinary vogue. La Bretèque, L’imaginaire médiéval, 1101–1225, nos. 1, 2, 4, 6, 25, 32, 72, 75, 109, 110, 114, 134, 158.
not a single purpose-built cinema existed. David Atwell, Cathedrals of the Movies: A History of British Cinemas and Their Audiences (London: Architectural Press, 1980), 2.
moviegoers referred to their seats. Jeffrey Richards, Age of the Dream Palace: Cinema and Society in 1930s Britain (London: I. B. Tauris, 2010), 1.
picture palaces. They were also called by other names, such as “electric palaces” and “palaces of light.”
this form of mass entertainment. See Charlotte Herzog, “The Movie Palace and the Theatrical Sources of Its Architectural Style,” Cinema Journal 20.2 (1981): 15–37, at 15.
Roman temples and amphitheaters. On a smaller scale, what is a nickelodeon etymologically but a pseudoantique odeon or theater where entrance costs a nickel?
Gothic great churches. See Richards, Age of the Dream Palace, 20–21, and Atwell, Cathedrals of the Movies, 130–33, 139–41, on two theaters designed by the Russian-born Theodore Komisarjevsky: both the Granada at Tooting and the one at Woolwich were hybrids of Venetian and Spanish Gothic.
lighting features. William Paul, When Movies Were Theater: Architecture, Exhibition, and the Evolution of American Film (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016), 15.
Norman Bel Geddes decorated one building. On the Century Theater, see Paul, When Movies Were Theater, 16.
Let there be light. Quoted in Ben M. Hall, The Best Remaining Seat: The Story of the Golden Age of the Movie Palace (New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1961), 5–11, at 8: “Ye portals bright, high and majestic, open to our gaze the path to Wonderland, and show us the realm where fantasy reigns, where romance, where adventure flourish. Let ev’ry day’s toil be forgotten under thy sheltering roof—O glorious, mighty hall—thy magic and thy charm unite us all to worship at beauty’s throne. … Let there be light.”
a succession of scenes or vignettes. Tom Gunning, “The Non-Continuous Style of Early Film 1900–1906,” in Cinema 1900/1906: An Analytical Study, ed. Roger Holman, 2 vols. (Brussels: fiaf [Fédération internationale des archives du film], 1981), 1: 219–29; La Bretèque, L’imaginaire médiéval, 201.
implicitly a Golden Legend. François Amy de La Bretèque, “Les films hagiographiques dans le cinéma des premiers temps,” in Une invention du diable? Cinéma des premiers temps et religion, ed. Roland Cosandey et al. (Sainte-Foy, France: Presses de l’Université Laval, 1992), 121–30, at 121: “implicitement une Légende dorée en tableaux animés.”
The Dream. In French, Le rêve. For excellent analysis, see Elizabeth Emery, “‘A l’ombre d’une vieille cathédrale romane’: The Medievalism of Gautier and Zola,” The French Review 73.2 (1999): 290–300. The text of the narrative was subsequently adapted as an opera, silent film, and early film with sound. The novel was reworked by Louis Gallet as the libretto for an 1891 opera composed by Alfred Bruneau, and twice by the cinematic director Jacques de Baroncelli, once as a film without sound in 1921 and later as his second talkie in 1930. For information on Baroncelli’s movies (especially the one with audio), see Gilles Martinez, “Zola-Baroncelli, le traitement du son dans l’adaptation du Rêve (1930),” in Jacques de Baroncelli, ed. Bernard Bastide and François de La Bretèque (Paris: Association française de recherche sur l’histoire du cinema/Les mistons productions, 2007), 159–67.
the writer was filled with paradoxes. Elizabeth Emery, “Bricabracomania: Zola’s Romantic Instinct,” Excavatio 12 (1999): 107–15.
Beautiful Mountain-The Church. In French, Beaumont-l’Église.
Church of Saint Mary. In French, l’Église Sainte-Marie.
The story commences. Émile Zola, Le rêve, illus. Louis Icart (Lausanne, Switzerland: Aux Éditions du Grand-Chêne, 1946), frontispiece.
The Dream of the Lacemaker. In French, Le rêve de la dentellière (Lux, 1910).
The Legend of the Argentan Lace. In French, La légende du point d’Argentan (1907), a six-minute-long French production (without sound).
The Legend of the Old Bell-Ringer. In French, La légende du vieux sonneur (Pathé Frères, 1911), written and directed by Camille de Morlhon.
silent films. In French, La légende de la fileuse (Société des Établissements Gaumont, 1908), directed by Louis Feuillade, although it contains the motif of weaving, deals with the Greek myth of Arachne, who metamorphosed into a spider. It is unrelated to the preceding films.
an opera printed a year earlier. With music by Félix Fourdrain, libretto by Henri Cain and Arthur Bernède (Paris: Choudens, 1907).
The Legend of the Old Bell-Ringer. Produced by Pathé frères, written and directed by Camille de Morlhon, and screenplay published in 1910 and 1911: La légende du vieux sonneur: Scenario.
Sister Beatrice
Sister Beatrice. The original French title was Sœur Béatrice.
Caesarius of Heisterbach. Dialogus miraculorum, distinctio 7, capitulum 34 (“De Beatrice custode”), ed. Joseph Strange, 2 vols. (Cologne: J. M. Heberle, 1851), 2: 42–43, https://archive.org/details/caesariiheister00stragoog; trans. H. Von Essen Scott and C. C. Swinton Bland, The Dialogue on Miracles, 2 vols. (London: G. Routledge, 1929), 1: 502–3. For a study, see Heinrich Watenphul, Die Geschichte der Marienlegende von Beatrix der Küsterin (Neuwied, Germany: Heuser, 1904).
miracle collections from the Middle Ages. Graciela S. Daichman, Wayward Nuns in Medieval Literature (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1986).
Eight Books of Miracles. In Latin, Libri octo miraculorum.
Adgar. This writer worked in two rounds on his translation of the Latin Miracles of the Virgin into rhymed octosyllabic couplets. First, around 1150, he completed a longer redaction of forty-nine tales. Later, between 1165 and 1180, he intercalated in his “Book of Grace” of twenty-two tales, not all of them repeated from the earlier collection. The tale of the sacristan appears in his Le gracial.
Miracles of Our Lady. Adgar, Le gracial, miracle 48, ed. Pierre Kunstmann, Publications médiévales de l’Université d’Ottawa / University of Ottawa Mediaeval Texts and Studies, vol. 8 (Ottawa, Canada: Editions de l’Université d’Ottawa, 1982), 305–17; La vie des Pères, 13, lines 6842–7403, ed. Félix Lecoy, 3 vols. (Paris: Société des anciens textes français, A. et J. Picard, 1987–1999), 1: 222–39; Gautier de Coinci, Les miracles de Nostre Dame, ed. V. Frédéric Koenig, 4 vols., Textes littéraires français, vols. 64, 95, 131, 176 (Geneva: Droz, 1955–), 1: 43.
This French author’s medievalizing. For the “Légende de Sœur Béatrice” (first published in Revue de Paris in October 1837), the standard edition is Charles Nodier, Contes: Avec des textes et des documents inédits, ed. Pierre-Georges Castex (Paris: Garnier, 1961), 781–98. The story was also printed separately: Nodier, Légende de sœur Béatrix. On Nodier’s medievalizing, see Walter Kudrycz, The Historical Present: Medievalism and Modernity (London: Continuum, 2011), 63. Victor Hugo wrote a poem entitled “La Légende de la nonne,” which tells of a pious young nun who falls in love with a brigand; they are struck dead by God when they rendezvous beneath a statue of Saint Veronica.
a seemingly sentimentalized account. Under the title “The Legend of Provence.” For the text, see Adelaide A. Procter, The Poems (Boston, MA: Ticknor and Fields, 1863), 181–91 (“Legends and Lyrics: A Book of Verses, Second Series”). How far the sentimentality runs can be debated: a case has been made that the Victorian morality apprehensible on the surface is belied by covert questioning of conventional gender politics and repressed emotions and sexual desires. For interpretation, see Gill Gregory, “Adelaide Procter’s ‘A Legend of Provence’: The Struggle for a Place,” in Victorian Women Poets: A Critical Reader, ed. Angela Leighton, Blackwell Critical Readers in Literature, vol. 2 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996): 88–96; Francis O’Gorman, Victorian Poetry: An Annotated Anthology (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2004), 320–21; Christine A. Colón, “Lessons from the Medieval Convent: Adelaide Procter’s ‘A Legend of Provence,’” in Beyond Arthurian Romances: The Reach of Victorian Medievalism, ed. Lorretta M. Holloway and Jennifer A. Palmgren (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 95–115.
Seven Legends. In German, Sieben Legenden.
The Virgin and the Nun. For the German text, see Gottfried Keller, Sämtliche Werke: Historische-kritische Ausgabe, ed. Walter Morgenthaler, 31 vols. (Frankfurt, Germany: Stroemfeld, 1996–2012), 7: 377–85; for an English translation, see “The Virgin and the Nun,” in idem, Seven Legends, trans. Martin Wyness (London: Gowans and Gray, 1911), 51–60, and in idem, Stories, ed. Frank G. Ryder, German Library, vol. 44 (New York: Continuum, 1982), 364–68.
recapitulated it in a few words. Anatole France, La vie littéraire, 4 vols. (Paris: Calmann Lévy, 1899–1905), 2: 268. See also Paul Gsell, Les matinées de la villa Saïd: Propos d’Anatole France (Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1921), which records a version of the story delivered orally by France.
The Miracle. In German, Das Mirakel. On the biographical circumstances, see Frederick D. Tunnat, Karl Vollmoeller: Dichter und Kulturmanager. Eine Biographie (Hamburg, Germany: Tredition, 2008), 152. The book has been reprinted in an expanded form under exactly the same title (Vendramin, 2012). In the second edition, key stretches on The Miracle are pp. 326–60, 457–73.
images of Mary. Tunnat, Karl Vollmoeller (2012), 295.
Vollmoeller sought to produce it as a pantomime. Tunnat, Karl Vollmoeller, 39, 44, and 48.
in the countdown to Christmas of 1911. It was drafted in Berlin and Starnberg from June to December of 1911, and it opened on December 23, 1911, in Olympia Hall. Its score was by the German composer Engelbert Humperdinck, whose name has proven to be more enduring than his music.
throughout Europe. It was produced in 1912 in Vienna; in 1913, in Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig, Elberfeld, Breslau (today Wrocław), Cologne, Prague, and Frankfurt am Main; in 1914, in Karlsruhe and Hamburg; and in 1917, in Stockholm, Gothenburg, Malmö, Helsingborg, and Bucharest.
across the Atlantic. F. Ray Comstock and Morris Gest Present for the First Time in America the Stupendous, Spectacular Pantomime, the Miracle: Staged by Max Reinhardt; Book by Karl Vollmoeller; Score by Engelbert Humperdinck, Revised and Extended by Friedrich Schirmer; Production Designed by Norman-Bel Geddes; Built by P. J. Carey & Co. Entire Production under the Personal Supervision of Morris Gest: Souvenir, ed. Oliver M. Sayler (New York: Sackett & Wilhelms, 1926).
forty-two multi-lancet windows. Laura Morowitz, “The Cathedral of Commerce: French Gothic Architecture and Wanamaker’s Department Store,” in Medieval Art and Architecture after the Middle Ages, ed. Janet Marquardt and Alyce Jordan (Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009), 340–62, at 357.
The inaugural London production. Bradford Smith, “A Religious Spectacle in Theater and Film: Max Reinhardt’s The Miracle (1911–1912),” in Cosandey et al., Une invention du diable?, 311–18.
A city newspaper. The Illustrated London News.
the place of worship. The building was designed by the architect Dominikus Böhm.
a single stream of brightness. Gösta M. Bergman, Lighting in the Theatre (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1977), 343. On his relation to expressionism, see Lotte H. Eisner, The Haunted Screen: Expressionism in the German Cinema and the Influence of Max Reinhardt, trans. Roger Greaves (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1973), 7–8, 39–40.
in prerevolutionary Russia. See Robert Leach, Vsevolod Meyerhold (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 12. On lighting, see pp. 104–5.
highly innovative techniques. Leach, Vsevolod Meyerhold, 31, 57, 60, 89, 115.
remained strictly motionless. Leach, Vsevolod Meyerhold, 57.
Blessed Virgin Mary. To be more precise, the equivalent Latin phrase Beata Virgo Maria: see Leach, Vsevolod Meyerhold, 106.
a plan for the stage engineering. George Wall, drawing “How the Century Theatre Was Converted into a Cathedral for the Production of The Miracle,” in Albert A. Hopkins, “Theatre without a Stage: The Whole Building Given over to the Play with the Audience Part of the Scenery,” Scientific American 130 (April 1924): 228–29, at 229.
cyclorama. An image of this sort is a panoramic painting presented on the inside of a cylinder, so that a viewer standing in the middle has a 360° view.
twice been made into films. On the first, see La Bretèque, L’imaginaire médiéval, 1120, no. 58. On the relationship between the two, see Smith, “Religious Spectacle,” 311–18.
In full color. Created by hand-coloring in the Pathéchrome process.
live actors. The movie was considered a “filmed pantomime” rather than a “moving picture drama.”
the score by Humperdinck. See The Miracle: Great Pantomime in Two Acts and One Entr’act, by Karl Vollmoeller and Max Reinhardt (Berlin: Bote und Bock, 1912). On the score, see Eva Humperdinck, Der unbekannte Engelbert Humperdinck: Engelbert Humperdinck Werkverzeichnis zum 140. Geburtstag seinem Andenken gewidmet (Koblenz, Germany: Görres Verlag, 1994), 140–41, no. 151.
Ludwig Hohlwein. In his heyday before World War I, this graphic artist enjoyed a reputation as the “Munich Poster King” (Münchner Plakatkönig). See Ludwig Hohlwein, Plakate der Jahre 1906–1940 aus der Graphischen Sammlung Staatsgalerie Stuttgart: Ausstellung der Graphischen Sammlung in der Staatsgalerie Stuttgart 2. März bis 21. April 1985. Deutsches Plakatmuseum Essen: Bestandskatalog, ed. Christian Schneegass (Stuttgart, Germany: Staatsgalerie, 1985), 5. As a Bavarian, he had good reason to be nostalgically aware of the medieval past.
advertising art. The German is Gebrauchsgrafik.
His poster was issued in 1914. Schneegass, Ludwig Hohlwein, 79, no. 143.
owing to the outbreak of the War. Presumably, any entertainment at all would have been deemed inappropriate at the time, but the joint Anglo-German origins of the production opened an even bigger can of worms.
the picture enjoyed an esteemed afterlife. For instance, it was included in 1926 in a book devoted to reproductions of Hohlwein’s posters, where it was printed with text in both German and English: Ludwig Hohlwein, ed. Hermann Karl Frenzel (Berlin: Phönix Illustrationsdruck, 1926), table 59; Schneegass, Ludwig Hohlwein, 79, no. 143. In Frenzel, the posters are reproduced on pages 11.75 × 8.75″ (30 × 22 cm). Schneegass refers to dimensions of 174 × 125.5 cm and 40.5 × 28.5 cm. Interest in Hohlwein among scholars and the public has exploded since the mid-1980s: see Ragna Jäckle, Ludwig Hohlwein (1874–1949): Traditionsverbundenheit in Leben und Werk, Tuduv-Studien: Reihe Kunstgeschichte, vol. 66 (Munich, Germany: Tuduv, 1994); Volker Duvigneau and Norbert Götz, eds., Ludwig Hohlwein, 1874–1949: Kunstgewerbe und Reklamekunst (Munich, Germany: Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1996); Ddi, 532.
a substantial tome of scholarship. Robert Guiette, La légende de la Sacristine: Étude de littérature comparée, Bibliothèque de la Revue de littérature comparée, vol. 43 (Paris: H. Champion, 1927). For distilled information on subsequent scholarship, see Michaela Fenske, “Nonne, die in die Welt ging,” EdM, 10: 69–72.
qualify as damnable forms of expression. Smith, “Religious Spectacle,” 311–12.
the singer Yvette Guilbert. Bettina Liebowitz Knapp and Myra Chipman, That Was Yvette: The Biography of Yvette Guilbert, the Great Diseuse (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1964), 246.
In clunky verse. “From Eastertide to Eastertide / For ten long years her patient knees / Engraved the stones—the fittest bride / Of Christ in all the diocese.”
Ballads and Songs. John Davidson, Ballads and Songs (London: John Lane, Bodley Head; Boston, MA: Copeland & Day, 1894), https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.503751. The poem enjoyed modest success, being reprinted with illustrations less than a decade later in London.
one of the librettists. The two were French writers (especially of plays and librettos), Robert de Flers and Gaston Arman de Caillavet. The latter’s father was Albert Arman de Caillavet, and his mother Lippmann.
the composer. The musician in question was André Messager.
The Legend of Sister Beatrice. In French, La Légende de sœur Béatrix. La Bretèque, “Présence de la littérature française,” 157, offers a distinctly different chronology of the relationship among these constituents.
The movie was directed. La Bretèque, L’imaginaire médiéval, 1133, no. 93; idem, “La Légende de sœur Béatrix (1923),” in Bastide and Bretèque, Jacques de Baroncelli, 134–45.
recast three of Adgar’s legends. Likewise, in octosyllabic couplets.
Gautier de Coinci. Specifically, Les miracles de Nostre Dame, 1.31: “Dou soucretain que Nostre Dame visita,” 11–22.
he gives special notice. Baroncelli, “Avant présentation.”
Gustave Lanson. Histoire de la littérature française, 10th ed. (Paris: Hachette, 1908), 70.
the stories’ naïveté. “Above all, medieval faith made of the Virgin and of her credibility with her son an inexhaustible wellspring of naïvely ludicrous marvel.”
ironic and condescending. “People did not tire of hearing how the good Virgin took care of those devoted to her.”
Robin Hood. In French, Robin des bois.
naïve and gilded language. Comoedia, 17.3819, June 1, 1923, (notes added), quoted by La Bretèque, “Présence de la littérature française,” 158, and L’imaginaire médiéval, 915. The same piece is reprinted in Baroncelli, Écrits sur le cinéma, 110–11.
a unity that by implication is wanting. “There is not at all collision or conflict: there is coexistence and connection.”
One reviewer rewarded him. Edmond Epardaud, in Cinéa, July 8, 1923, quoted by La Bretèque, L’imaginaire médiéval, 915n26.
Sister Angelica
Sister Angelica. In Italian, Suor Angelica, libretto by Giovacchino Forzano. The opera was the centerpiece in a trio of one-act operas known as Il trittico (The triptych). It was preceded by Il tabarro (The cloak) and followed by the comic opera Gianni Schicchi (from the name of a man in Dante’s Inferno, canto 30). Suor Angelica had its premiere at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City in 1918. See Michele Girardi, Puccini: His International Art, trans. Laura Basini (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 396.
Le jongleur de Notre Dame. On Puccini’s debt to Massenet’s opera, see Mosco Carner, Puccini: A Critical Biography, 2nd ed. (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1977), 434–35; Girardi, Puccini, 263.
the particulars of transgressions. Yasmina Foehr-Janssens, “Histoire poétique du péché: De quelques figures littéraires de la faute dans les Miracles de Nostre Dame de Gautier de Coinci,” in Gautier de Coinci: Miracles, Music, and Manuscripts, ed. Kathy M. Krause and Alison Stones, Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe, vol. 13 (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2006), 215–26.
lyric drama. In French, drame lyrique.
the libretto for Puccini’s own Margherita da Cortona. By Valentino Soldani.
he contemplated creating his own. The key sources are letters from Puccini to the librettist Luigi Illica, dated May 16, 1904; June 7, 1904: see Carteggi pucciniani, ed. Eugenio Gara (Milan, Italy: Ricordi, 1958), 273–74 (no. 379), 275–76 (no. 383), 276 (no. 386), 278–79 (no. 388), 279 (no. 389), 280 (no. 391). See Girardi, Puccini, 263.
we are presumably bedazzled. Robert C. Ketterer, “Machines for the Suppression of Time: Statues in ‘Suor Angelica,’ ‘The Winter’s Tale,’ and ‘Alcestis,’” Comparative Drama 24.1 (1990): 3–23, at 5–7.
Audio Recording
printed scores and librettos. The English version of Maurice Léna’s libretto was Le Jongleur de Notre Dame: Miracle Play in Three Acts, trans. Charles Alfred Byrne (New York: C. E. Burden, 1907).
a journalist published. In the Baltimore Evening Sun, later reworked for the American Mercury (October 1925): 158–160.
The best verdict. H. L. Mencken, “In Memoriam: W. J. B.,” in A Mencken Chrestomathy: His Own Selection of His Choicest Writing (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1949), 243–48, at 244–45.
the curmudgeonly passage. In 1994, Russell Baker, a New York Times editorialist, invoked Mencken’s obituary for its incisive harshness by way of contrast to the lifeless press of Baker’s own day: “The Tiger with No Teeth,” New York Times, late edition, April 26, 1994, 23.
Recordings were made. The French baritone Gabriel Soulacroix, who sang as the prior on the opening night, made a recording in 1903 of the “Legend of the Sage-Plant” from the second act of Massenet’s Le jongleur de Notre-Dame. The Belgian tenor Adolphe Maréchal, the first Jean, who created the role in its premiere in Monaco, followed suit in 1904. In 1911, Mary Garden recorded Jean’s “O freedom, my friend” (in French, “O liberté m’amie”). These three, together with various other early recordings, have been reproduced on Malibran-Music CDRG 156. The “Legend of the Sage-Plant” had already been preserved twice for posterity in 1910 by French operatic lyric tenors, David Devriès and Émile Marcelin. In 1912, the baritone Louis Nucelly was captured on a recording device marketed by the American inventor and businessman Thomas Alva Edison from 1908 to 1912, singing the aria as the character Boniface: on the Edison Amberol label, issue number 17166, listed in The Edison Phonograph Monthly 10 [1912], digitized transfer available online.
a lute in hand. The caption reads “The Classic Lute of the Troubadours.”
ancestor of the violin. The caption reads “The Tromba Marina of the Middle Ages, the Ancestor of the Violin” (1916).
forerunners of a military band. The caption reads “Ancient Zinke and Nakeres, Forerunners of the Military Band.”
Silent Film
Like the cathedral. S. Charles Lee, a designer of motion picture theaters on the US West Coast, interview with Karen Safer (April 28, 1980), quoted in Karen J. Safer, “The Functions of Decoration in the American Movie Palace,” Marquee 14.2 (1982): 3–9, at 6.
silent film in Germany. The German is “Der Spielmann unserer lieben Frau,” produced in 1917 by Legenden Film-Gesellschaft (DE) under commission from Weißblaugesellschaft in Munich, passed the censor first in Munich and later in Berlin: see Herbert Birett, ed., Verzeichnis in Deutschland gelaufener Filme: Entscheidungen der Filmzensur. Berlin, Hamburg, München, Stuttgart, 1911–1920 (Munich, Germany: K. G. Saur, 1980), 556 (Munich, Germany, 1917, no 25665, as a film of 170 meters), and 442 (Berlin, 1918, no. 42353, as a film of 180 meters).
Legend Film Company. In German, Legenden-Filmgesellschaft.
The Life of Saint Elizabeth. In German, Das Leben der heiligen Elisabeth. Rosenheimer Anzeiger: Rosenheimer Tagblatt, 63.285, December 12, 1917, unpaginated 3, col. 3.
Charlie Chaplin: Tramp Meets Tumbler
nearly forty years apart. He printed the first in 1939 and the other in 1977.
thrown into a cell. In the later report, the tumbler is taken in by a nunnery not because of some wrongdoing but because he is starving, and there is no mention of his being imprisoned in a cell or escaping from it.
him in his death trance. Alistair Cooke, “Charlie Chaplin,” in New Directions, ed. Warren Bower, 2nd series (Philadelphia, PA: J. B. Lippincott, 1941), 408–23, at 421. The piece was first printed in Atlantic Monthly 164 (August 1939): 176–85.
printed in 1977. Alistair Cooke, Six Men (New York: Knopf, 1977), 43–44.
the comedian dropped the undertaking. Although Chaplin’s reaction to the story could hardly be described as a conversion experience, this episode could explain a tantalizing reference in Sheldon Christian, Our Lady’s Tumbler: A Modern Miracle Play (Portland, ME: Anthoensen Press, 1948), xii: “it is related that after a great modern tumbler (whose name, were we to give it, would be familiar to you) had read this story, he suddenly found new meaning in life, and from then on was a changed man. That veteran of the boards has enjoyed a peculiar veneration among his following, who sense in him something deeper than laughter. And, like all great truths, the truth set forth in the story of the tumbler is so apparent that one almost passes it by.”
They don’t pay their shillings and quarters. Compare Cooke, “Charlie Chaplin,” 422.
phlegmatic tramp. Cooke, “Charlie Chaplin,” 422.
Notes to Chapter 3
The Ecumenical Juggler
Be he Catholic or Protestant. Henry T. Finck, Massenet and His Operas (New York: John Lane, 1910), 95.
suggested readings for high schoolers. Beekman W. Cottrell and Lois S. Josephs, “Love in the Tenth Grade,” English Journal 52 (1963): 430–33, at 431.
Index of Forbidden Books. “Anatole France’s Books Put on the Index: Controversy Expected over Vatican Ban,” New York Times, July 8, 1922, front page. The verdict was reached by the dicastery responsible for Censura librorum, which means both “examination of books” and “repression of books.” This department, before being abolished in 1966, was called first the sacred Congregation of the Index and later the Holy Office.
thirteenth-century monk. During the abbacy of Adam de Harcarres (d. 1245).
Adam explained. “The Chronicle of Melrose,” in The Church Historians of England, ed. and trans. Joseph Stevenson, 5 vols. in 8 (London: Seeleys, 1854), 4.1, repr. in Joseph Stevenson, Medieval Chronicles of Scotland: The Chronicles of Melrose and Holyrood (Dyfed, Wales: Llanerch, 1988), 7–124, at 94–95.
two lay brothers. Caesarius of Heisterbach, Dialogus miraculorum, 8.17, 2: 95, https://archive.org/details/caesariiheister00stragoog; Scott and Bland, Dialogue on Miracles, 2: 18–19.
a Unitarian catechism. Frances May Dadmun, Children of the Father: A Manual for the Religious Instruction of Children of Primary Grade, Prepared Especially for Pupils Eight Years of Age (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1916), 204–9 (lesson 36). At the time, “The Beacon Press Publications in Religious Education” series was more than a half century old: it had been established in 1854.
he published the text. Albino Luciani, “La beatitudine dei semplici” (or “La Madonna e il giocoliere”), Messaggero di sant’Antonio (1976), repr. Anatole France, Il giocoliere di Maria, ed. Roberto Alessandrini (Bologna, Italy: Lampi d’autore, 2016), 37–41.
Royal Murdoch. Robert Harlow, Royal Murdoch (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1962).
her previous Protestantism. The principle of “cleanliness is indeed next to godliness” is recorded first in a 1778 sermon by a cofounder of Methodism, John Wesley.
it is a mockery. Harlow, Royal Murdoch, 76.
a consummation of this clerical choler. The passage continues: “‘Madam,’ he said. ‘I am the priest. For you, I am the Church, and you must do as I say to expiate your sins—contrition, confession, penance, a hundred Hail Marys if I say so. But you do not, on your own, decide to scrub the steps.’ He stood straight again. ‘To interpret for yourself what the Church is here to rule on is…’ He hesitated. ‘A cardinal sin.’ Mrs. Darien began to cry and cross herself. ‘And no more Indians,’ he said. ‘Bring me no more Indians. I will make my own converts. If I need an assistant I will ask the Bishop for one.’ Mrs. Darien dropped her brush into the bucket and kneeled before him, crushed. ‘I must be forgiven, Father.’ The priest smiled. “Of course, dear lady,’ he said. ‘Go. And no more scrubbing and no more Indians. Just come to mass and if you would like to do something for God I tell you now the organ needs a little work on it—just a few repairs and a bit of tuning.’ He came down from the steps and bent over her, giving her the sign of the cross and raising her by the arm to her feet.” Harlow, Royal Murdoch, 76.
an Australian book. Graham English, author and illustrator, Saying Hello to God: Learning to Pray (Mulgrave, Victoria: John Garratt, 2006), cover, 74–80.
G. K. Chesterton. See his “The Innocence of Criminals,” The Living Age 292 (8th ser., vol. 5).3783, January 6, 1917: 740–43, at 741.
Christmas Stories That Never Grow Old. The citation in full is Van B. Hooper, ed., Christmas Stories That Never Grow Old (Milwaukee, WI: Ideals Publishing, 1959), unpaginated, selection no. 3: “This old favorite has been universally loved by people of all faiths for its warm portrayal of the spirit that is Christmas. It is presented here with the heartfelt hope that, whatever your belief, you will have found in its message added meaning for your celebration of the birth of the Son of God.”
Ida Lublenski Ehrlich. See her A Trilogy of Interfaith Plays (n.p.: n.p., 1961), 2–6.
a Jewish mother. Edward Kessler, “Mary—The Jewish Mother,” Irish Theological Quarterly 76 (2011): 211–23. Mary, by way of the Latin Maria, derives from the Hebrew Miriam. Moses’s sister is the only woman in the Hebrew Bible to bear the name.
a music critic. Carl Van Vechten, The Merry-Go-Round (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1918), 48.
you really do what sings. Leonard Cohen, “Leonard Cohen Considers the Poetic Mind,” interview by Adrienne Clarkson, “Take 30,” 1966, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yta36Ry8UFc
The Acrobat & the Angel. Mark Shannon, The Acrobat & the Angel, illus. David Shannon (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1999), copyright page.
a popular appeal. Shannon, Acrobat & the Angel, copyright page.
The Hasidic Whistle-Blower
This better prayer is mine also. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions, pt. 2, bk. 12.
the founder of Hasidism. For an invaluable unraveling of fact and fiction in the biography of the Besht and publication history of traditions associated with him, see Ada Rapoport-Albert, “Hagiography with Footnotes: Edifying Tales and the Writing of History in Hasidism,” History and Theory (1988): 119–59.
sacred anecdotes. Martin Buber, For the Sake of Heaven (Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society, 1958), vii.
Besht. Acronym for the Hebrew Baʿal Shem Tov, usually translated as “Master of the Good Name.” The tale has also been ascribed, perhaps not inconsistently, to Rabbi Yitzhak Yehuda (Isaac Judah) Yehiel Safrin by his son, Rabbi Eliʿezer Tsevi Safrin. Father and son are respectively the first and second Komarner Rebbe. The son says that he heard the story from his late father, not that his parent claimed to have been rabbi when the incident occurred. The tale is told within a long comment on Psalm 119:105. In this instance the episode is supposed to take place on the two consecutive days of the New Year festival. The simpleminded boy here wishes to whistle with his mouth, but instead merely makes a loud utterance to profess his ignorance.
the horn is sounded on Rosh Hashanah. More broadly, the tale has been associated with the whole of the Yamim Noraim (Days of Awe) that connect two high holidays of Judaism.
anthologies of Hasidic lore. The legend has been retold by Martin Buber, Tales of the Hasidim, trans. Olga Marx, 2 vols. (New York, Schocken, 1947–1948), repr. 1991 (1 vol.), 69–70 (“The Little Whistle”); Yitzhak Buxbaum, The Light and Fire of the Baal Shem Tov (New York: Continuum, 2005), 207–8 (“The Boy with the Flute”); Gedalyah Nigal, The Hasidic Tale, trans. Edward Levin (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2008), 259–60. The story has been retold recently by Richard Walters, The Simple Shepherd: A Baal Shem Tov Picture Story (privately published, 2008).
Jewish tradition. See Dan Ben-Amos, ed., Folktales of the Jews, vol. 1: Tales from the Sephardic Dispersion, 3 vols. (Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society, 2006), 208, 211, nn. 25–27. The tale in question has been put into English in Micha Joseph bin Gorion, Mimekor Yisrael: Selected Classical Jewish Folktales, ed. Emanuel bin Gorion, trans. I. M. Lask (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 336 (no. 186 “The Pipe”); Sheldon Oberman and Peninnah Schram, Solomon and the Ant, and Other Jewish Folktales (Honesdale, PA: Boyds Mills, 2006), 96–99, at 99; Lesli Koppelman Ross, Celebrate! The Complete Jewish Holidays Handbook (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1994), 207; Pinhas Sadeh, Jewish Folktales (London: Collins, 1990), 396 (“The Shepherd’s Pipe”); Ellen Frankel, The Classic Tales: 4,000 Years of Jewish Lore (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1993), 475 (“The Yom Kippur Flute”).
I. L. Peretz. On the story in the writings of this author, see Menasheh Unger, R. Yisroel Bal Shem Toyv (New York: “Hsides,” 1963), 385.
Micha Joseph Bin Gorion. The tale is included in Micah Joseph Berdichevsky, Der Born Judas: Legenden, Märchen und Erzählungen, trans. Rahel Ramberg, 6 vols., 2nd ed. (Leipzig, Germany: Insel-Verlag, 1916–1923). For further information, see Unger, R. Yisroel, 385; Samuel Werses, Sipur ve-shorsho: ʿiyunim be-hitpathut ha-prozah ha-ʿIvrit (Ramat Gan, Israel: Agudat ha-sofrim ha-ʿIvrim be-Yisrael le-yad hotsaat Masadah, 1971), 116–17. This and the preceding citation come from Nigal, Hasidic Tale, 260n13.
accent on tales. On storytelling traditions within Hasidism, see Nigal, Hasidic Tale, 1.
simpleminded and guiltless person. Tamim in Hebrew. See Nigal, Hasidic Tale, 2; 257–63.
swaying or rocking back and forth. Prayer performed with such motions is known as davening, from the Yiddish verb for praying: see Uri Ehrlich, The Nonverbal Language of Prayer: A New Approach to Jewish Liturgy, trans. Dena Ordan, Texte und Studien zum antiken Judentum, vol. 105 (Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2004); Macy Nulman, The Encyclopedia of Jewish Prayer: Ashkenazic and Sephardic Rites (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1993).
the ignorant’s prayer. Ben-Amos, Folktales of the Jews, 1: 207–8 (no. 28 “God Loves the Heart”).
Book of the Pious. In Hebrew, Sefer Ḥasidim.
took shape in the Rhineland. The text of Sefer Ḥasidim survives in two forms. The relevant passage has been preserved only in the more extensive and probably earlier one, attested in a manuscript in Parma, Italy: see Sefer ha-Ḥasidim: ʿAl pi nosaḥ ketav yad asher be-Parma, ed. Yehuda ha-Kohen Ṿisṭinetsḳi (Judah Wistinetzki), 2nd ed. (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: M. A. Vahrmann, 1924), 6, no. 6. This section of the work does not appear in translations of the shorter version, published in Bologna in 1538: Sefer Chasidim: The Book of the Pious, trans. Avraham Yaakov Finkel (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1997) and Medieval Jewish Mysticism: Book of the Pious, trans. Sholom Alchanan Singer (Northbrook, IL: Whitehall, 1971). The author of most of the text in the Parma manuscript is agreed to have been Rabbi Yehudah ben Shemu’el he-Ḥasid (Judah ben Samuel “The Pious”) of Regensburg (d. 1217), but this passage surfaces in the first part that is conjectured to have been written by Rabbi Yehudah’s father, Rabbi Shemu’el ben Kalonimos.
Christian literature of Western Europe. Gautier de Coinci, Miracles de Nostre Dame, 2: 105–8 (1.14, “D’un provoire qui toz jors chantoit Salve, la messe de Nostre Dame,”), 224–26 (1.23, “D’un moigne en cui bouche on trova cinc roses nouveles”).
A Pious Innocent Man Knows Nothing of God. It was formerly designated “A Shepherd Knows Nothing of God.”
pious innocence is pleasing to God. ATU, 1: 465 (no. 827). See Lev G. Barag, “Heiligkeit geht über Wasser,” EdM, 6: 694–98.
a Hasidic writer. [Dov Baer ben Samuel, In Praise of Baal Shem Tov [Shivhei ha-Besht]: The Earliest Collection of Legends about the Founder of Hasidism, ed. and trans. Dan Ben-Amos and Jerome R. Mintz (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1970), 221, no. 219, entitled (by the translators) “The Hasid Who Prayed in the Field.” For analysis, see Yoav Elstein (Yoʾav Elshṭain), Maʿaśeh ḥoshev: ʿiyunim ba-sipur ha-Ḥasidi [Studies in Hasidic tales] (Tel Aviv: ʿEḳed, 1983), 7–40.
God Requires the Heart. Alternatively, “God Desires the Heart.” The expression is found at Sanhedrin 106b.
An example. See Alexander Scheiber, “Two Legends on the Theme ‘God Requires the Heart,’” Fabula: Zeitschrift für Erzählforschung 1 (1958): 156–58, at 157–58, which contains parallels in sixteenth-century Western European Christian tradition. A folklorist, Francis Lee Utley, pointed out the connection of this legend to Our Lady’s Tumbler when he touched upon Scheiber’s article in reviewing the first three issues of Fabula in Zeitschrift für Erzählforschung, Journal of American Folklore 72 (1959): 258–60, at 259. The relationship had already been predicated in an article to which Scheiber was responding: Bernhard Heller, “‘Gott wünscht das Herz’: Legenden über einfältige Andacht und über den Gefährten im Paradies,” Hebrew Union College Annual 4 (1927): 365–404, at 371–72 (under the heading “Simple Prayer”).
compared with Le jongleur de Notre Dame. They have also been likened to the concept of the acte gratuit. In André Gide’s thought, this term applies to a kind of act that is committed “gratuitously,” without motivation or even ulterior motive. See Utley, review of Fabula, 259.
compatible with the aims of preaching by Christians. John Shea, The Spiritual Wisdom of the Gospels for Christian Preachers and Teachers, 4 vols. (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2004–2010), 3 (“Year C: The Relentless Widow”): 212.
theory of diffusionism. For concise definitions, see “Polygenesis” and “Diffusion Theory,” in Funk and Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology, and Legend, ed. Maria Leach (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1984), 876, 313, respectively.
Anatole France. Anatole France, “M. Gaston Paris et la littérature française au Moyen Âge,” in idem, La vie littéraire, 4 vols. (Paris: Calmann Lévy, 1899–1905), 2: 265–74, at 269.
how deeply the East influenced the West. Alice Kemp-Welch, Of the Tumbler of Our Lady and Other Miracles Now Translated from the Middle French (London: Chatto & Windus, 1908), 30–31, https://archive.org/details/tumblerourladyo04gautgoog
Salomé, the daughter of Herodias. Although not identified by name in the biblical accounts in Matthew 14:3–11 and Mark 6:17–20, Salomé is so called in the Jewish Antiquities (18.5.4) of the Romano-Jewish historian Josephus (37–ca. 100 CE).
flowed from Eastern sources. The theory was applied to Our Lady’s Tumbler in Charles Williams Jones, Medieval Literature in Translation (New York: Longmans, Green, 1950), 595.
The Jewish Jongleur
retold it as a children’s story. Melanie Anna Mitchell, The Boy and the Flute: The Tale about a Pure Prayer (n.p.: Palm Tree, 2016).
May God keep you, Marusya. Vladimir Jabotinsky, Five: A Novel of Jewish Life in Turn-of-the-Century Odessa, trans. Michael R. Katz (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005), 94.
embodiment of the Jewish artist. Edouard Roditi, “Chagall’s Windows,” Commentary 33.2 (February 1962): 152–54, at 154: “Chagall remains in a way a kind of Sholem Aleichem figure, an eternal innocent, a Jewish ‘jongleur de Notre Dame.’” The comparison sprang to mind particularly naturally in the case of this artist, since he painted the 1943 oil on canvas Le jongleur and the 1960 color lithograph La jongleuse.
Modes of Being. Paul Weiss, Modes of Being (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1958), 316 (4.47), “This approach is charmingly illustrated in the story of the juggler of Notre Dame, who offered his juggling as a way of expressing his adoration. He submitted himself to God through the agency of an activity, viewed as placing him in an existential relationship to the divine. … It is remarkable how everyone, young and old, educated and untutored, is ready to believe in the efficacy of the juggler’s act. The point of course has been made in other ways; it is embodied in the Hassidic [sic] joyous dance before the Lord and the Zen Buddhists’ gestures and simple movements—in fact in the activities of all those who seek God selflessly apart from the constraints of some formal demand.”
offers his body to the gods. Eugenio Barba, “The Kathakali Theatre,” trans. Simonne Sanzenbach, The Tulane Drama Review 11 (1967): 37–50, at 50. The passage continues “The Virgin Mary responded to the Juggler’s homage and came down from the altar to wipe the brow of her humble worshipper. Similarly, for the true believer the dance is a form of yoga, a method to eliminate the ego in order to attain final identification with the Eternal Future: the Cosmic dance of Shiva Nataraja.”
Allie Sherman. Alexander (Allie) Sherman served as head coach of the New York Giants from 1961 to 1968.
canceled or deferred. Even (or especially?) the storied annual contest between Harvard, of which Kennedy was an alumnus, and Yale University was shelved.
commissioner of the National Football League. He held the office for nearly three decades from 1960 to 1989.
his snap judgment. Peter King, “The Blackest Sunday,” Sports Illustrated, November 22, 1993: 76.
a tough little Hebe. The slur is abbreviated from “Hebrew.” For a consideration of Sherman’s career within the context of his identity as a Jew, see Bernard Postal et al., Encyclopedia of Jews in Sports (New York: Bloch, 1965), 274–77.
they could do the same. Michael Ranville, “Our Lady and the Juggler,” Special to Detroitlions.com (November 22, 2000).
a team has a soul. “A ball club to be a good one has to have a soul. It’s a feeling for each other outside of technique and ability.” For both quotations, see Postal et al., Encyclopedia of Jews in Sports, 277.
a critic of French literature. Arnold Whitridge, Critical Ventures in Modern French Literature (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1924), 122.
a Polish sociologist. Florian Znaniecki et al., What Are Sociological Problems? (Nakom, Poland: Wydawnictwo, 1994), 133.
the title character. Jerry Goldkorn, from Chicago.
rebbie. This word is informal or slang for rabbi.
vocalizing scales. Stanley Elkin, Rabbi of Lud (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1987), 68.
The Catholic Juggler
the station was derided. Henri Tincq, Jean-Marie Lustiger: Le cardinal prophète (Paris: Bernard Grasset, 2012), 291, 293.
Mireille Nègre. Mireille Nègre, with Mireille Taub, Une vie entre ciel et terre (Paris: Balland, 1990), 167.
French Catholic television chain. KTO, pronounced Catho, for short, to refer to both the company name and the denomination.
I am not then a mountebank, https://web.archive.org/web/20110919103610/http://www.csa.fr/upload/publication/20-06-0220KTO.pdf
the Jugglers. The Notre Dame Scholastic 62.10, November 23, 1928: 300; 63.5, October 18, 1929: 139; 64.1, September 26, 1930: 15; 67.7, November 3, 1933: 6. Later they changed their name to the Collegians.
Juggler of Notre Dame. Sometimes the title was shortened to Juggler, plain and simple. The first instantiation ran from December of 1919 through 1934. See Joe Wilcox, “Juggler Memories,” Notre Dame Scholastic 87.7, May 10, 1946: 20. The publication was revitalized in April 1947: Stephanie Phael, “A Juggler’s Celebration,” Notre Dame Scholastic 109.13, May 5, 1967: 13; Richard G. Landry, “Valued Impracticality: The Art of Juggling,” Notre Dame Scholastic 117.2, September 26, 1975: 15–17. See also Thomas Stritch, My Notre Dame: Memories and Reflections of Sixty Years (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991), 163.
the college newspaper. Anonymous editorial, “New Campus Literary Magazine to Make Bow in Late Spring,” Notre Dame Scholastic 88.12, January 10, 1947: 13: “The spirit of any honest literary or artistic work at Notre Dame is embodied in the legend of the medieval French juggler, who performed before the statue of the Virgin, with all skill, sincerity, and devotion, the only art he knew.”
text of the tale. Juggler 1 (1947): 5–6: “Notre Dame has a new Juggler, but it will be very different from the College Comics of the ’20’s. The new Juggler will not be a funny paper, but a general magazine for all kinds of student writing … We shall welcome the best student work we can get, of whatever kind—the merry no less heartily than the serious—and from any student who wishes to try. But we shall not say to you: this is your magazine. The new Juggler belongs to Notre Dame. It is dedicated to Our Lady. Our first purpose, in the words of the old legend, is to please her with whatever art we have.”
If you do the best you can, http://www.notredameutica.org/about-nd/juggler-legend
For a dozen years. The publication ran from 1938 to 1999, with the shorter title from 1965–1977. The last issue was no. 86 (1999). The school, known as the Institution Notre-Dame de Grâce, has now been merged with two others under a different name.
coeducation was adopted. Nancy Weiss Malkiel, “Keep the Damned Women Out”: The Struggle for Coeducation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016).
a society of storytellers. Rachelle Hamlin, The Studio of the Son: Ministering In-Depth Healing. A Radical Approach to the Active Christian Life (Philadelphia, PA: Xlibris, 2001), 164 (with no particulars on place or date).
sometimes oversimplified. Ian Boyd, “Chesterton’s Medievalism,” Studies in Medievalism 3 (1991): 243–55. The topic received first and fullest treatment in Przemysław Mṛoczkowski, The Medievalism of G. K. Chesterton: A Critical Enquiry, 2 vols., vol. 1: Zeszyty naukowe Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, vol. 367 / Prace historycznoliterackie, vol. 30; vol. 2: Prace Komisji Historycznoliterackiej—Polska academia nauk, Oddział w Krakowie, vol. 34 (Cracow, Poland: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe / Oddział w Krakowie, 1974).
the sway that Catholicism exercised. Philip Gleason, “American Catholics and the Mythic Middle Ages,” in idem, Keeping the Faith: American Catholicism, Past and Present (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1987), 11–34, at 33.
the first book he wrote, http://www.fatherbobwild.org/tumbler_6.htm; Joseph Pearce, Wisdom and Innocence: A Life of G. K. Chesterton (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1996), 291–92.
performed for God’s Juggler. Pearce, Wisdom and Innocence, 300.
He appreciates the distinction. G. K. Chesterton, St. Francis of Assisi (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1923), 108–9 (and compare 81): “A jongleur was not the same thing as a troubadour, even if the same man were both a troubadour and a jongleur. The jongleur was properly a joculator or jester; sometimes he was what we should call a juggler. Sometimes he may have been a tumbler; like that acrobat in the beautiful legend who was called ‘The Tumbler of Our Lady.’ And when Saint Francis called his followers the Jongleurs de Dieu, he meant something very like the Tumblers of Our Lady.”
The holy man’s spiritual awakening. Chesterton, St. Francis, 101–3.
The writer clarifies. Chesterton, St. Francis, 104: “Our Lady’s Tumbler did not stand on his head in order to see flowers and trees as a clearer or quainter vision. He did not do so; and it would never have occurred to him to do so. Our Lady’s Tumbler stood on his head to please Our Lady.”
Truth standing on her head. G. K. Chesterton, “When Doctors Agree,” Harper’s Magazine 171 (August 1935): 329–39, at 329.
Ethandune. Today Edington, Wiltshire.
the Saxon in Chesterton’s verse. Boyd, “Chesterton’s Medievalism,” 246.
Signaling that he had perused the epic. T. S. Apteryx (pseudonym for Eliot), “Observations,” The Egoist: An Individualist Review (May 1918): 69–70, at 69. See Russell Kirk, “Chesterton and T. S. Eliot,” The Chesterton Review 2.2 (Spring–Summer 1976): 184–96, at 184.
devoted a chapter. Chesterton’s later biographer also attends to the pose he struck as “Our Lady’s Tumbler,” in a complementary relationship to Francis as God’s juggler: see Pearce, Wisdom and Innocence, 291–300 (chap. 19: “Jongleur de Dieu”).
commends his own routine. “Lady, this is a choice performance.”
Chesterton the philosopher. Maisie Ward, Gilbert Keith Chesterton (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1943), 614–26, at 615, 626.
Like a beneficent bomb. In the preface to G. K. Chesterton, The Surprise (London: Sheed & Ward, 1953), 5. For context, see E. J. Oliver, “Dorothy L. Sayers and Chesterton’s Cloak,” The Chesterton Review 19.1 (1993): 63–71. The passage by Sayers merits comparison with Alan Watts, “G. K. Chesterton: The ‘Jongleur de Dieu,’” in idem, The Modern Mystic: A New Collection of the Early Writings of Alan Watts, ed. John Snelling (Dorset, UK: Element, 1990), 95–100, at 99–100.
provided an alternative. Michael Alexander, Medievalism: The Middle Ages in Modern England (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 217.
poke fun at pretentious intellectualism. Watts, “G. K. Chesterton.”
The Juggler and the Paulines
the Protestant, the Jew, the agnostic. The words were quoted from Father Ellwood E. Kieser, a member of the Paulist order, by C. Gerald Fraser, “Television Week,” New York Times, December 12, 1982, in reference to the movie The Juggler of Notre Dame, dir. Michael Ray, with Mike Rhodes (Walt Disney and Paulist Brothers, 1982). Kieser headed Paulist Productions.
Society of Saint Paul. The “Pauline Family” designates the congregation of the Society of Saint Paul and Daughters of Saint Paul, together with seven other religious institutes.
A Juggler in Paradise. In Italian, Un giocoliere in paradiso, illus. Gino Gavioli, Bimbi e fiori, vol. 28 (Rome: Edizioni Paoline, 1970). The same Italian author also brought out with the same press, Pauline Editions, other volumes for youthful readers, such as Le avventure di Ulisse: Riduzione in prose dell’Odissea di Omero (Bari, Italy: Edizione Paoline, 1975), on the escapades of Ulysses (a retelling of Homer’s Odyssey) and La storia di Enea: Riduzione in prose dell’Eneide di Virgilio (Rome: Edizioni Paoline, 1973), on the story of the Greek hero’s Roman counterpart, Aeneas (a prose version of Virgil’s Aeneid). Other books by the same writer dealt with pedagogy, Simone Weil, and assorted other topics.
published in Rome. By a Catholic publishing house.
A brief introduction. This portion is by Luigi Santucci.
blond-haired and blue-eyed. In Italian, Bionda-capigliatura-occhi-azzurri.
Brother Welcome. In Italian, Benvenuto.
translated into Japanese and Spanish. In Japanese, Tengoku no sākasu bōya, trans. Hiro Ebina, illus. Gino Gavioli (Tokyo: Joshi Pauro kai, 1974). The book in my possession bears the date 1974, but publication dates of 1970 and 1981 have also been reported. For the Spanish, see Un saltimbanqui en el paraíso, trans. Antonio Temiño (Madrid: Ediciones Paulinas, 1972, 1977, 1979).
made-for-television movie. The Juggler of Notre Dame.
Saintly Tales and Legends. Lois Rock and Christina Balit, Saintly Tales and Legends (Boston, MA: Pauline Books & Media, 2004), 29 (text), 95 (notes).
Two Bills: Buckley Jr. and Bennett
not unheard-of. For example, consider Giuseppe De Luca, “A Don Domenico Dottarelli,” in Mater Dei: Bollettino dell’opera “Mater Dei” diretto da don Giuseppe De Luca, 1954–1959 (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1972), 89–98 (81–90).
summed up his interpretation. William F. Buckley Jr., Nearer, My God: An Autobiography of Faith (New York: Doubleday, 1997), xvii: “But of course the special magic of the juggler’s ache to express his gratitude was in the privacy of the devotion. Anatole France’s story would not have worked if the juggler had proposed doing his act in Madison Square Garden.”
My faith has not wavered. Buckley, Nearer, My God, xx.
commencement address. William F. Buckley Jr., Let Us Talk of Many Things: The Collected Speeches (Roseville, CA: Forum, 2000), 242–49, at 245.
responsible civic commitment. William F. Buckley Jr., Gratitude: Reflections on What We Owe to Our Country (New York: Random House, 1990), xiii–xiv, at xiv: “How to acknowledge one’s devotion, one’s patrimony, one’s heritage? Why, one juggles before the altar of God, if that is what one knows how to do. That Americans growing into citizenhood should be persuasively induced to acknowledge this patrimony and to demonstrate their gratitude for it is the thesis of this exercise. By asking them to make sacrifice we are reminding them that they owe a debt, even as the juggler felt a debt to Our Lady.”
Without an economic surplus. Buckley, Gratitude, xxi.
Book of Virtues. William J. Bennett, The Book of Virtues: A Treasury of Great Moral Stories (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993), 782–87.
the derivative revamping of the same anthology for children. William J. Bennett, ed. The Book of Virtues for Young People: A Treasury of Great Moral Stories (Parsippany, NJ: Silver Burdett, 1996), 362–69. In the table of contents, the author’s name of Our Lady’s Juggler is transmuted memorably into “Anatole French.” The story failed to make the cut for inclusion in Bennett’s The Children’s Book of Virtues (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995).
our literature and history. Bennett, Book of Virtues, 12.
The Lyric Juggler and Patrick Kavanagh
Shaemus O’Sheel. “Preface to New Edition (1937),” in idem, Joyce Kilmer’s Anthology of Catholic Poets (New York: Liveright, 1937), second unpaginated side.
Oriel. Bernard Duffy, Oriel (Dublin, Ireland: Talbot, 1918). The relevant chapter has been reprinted as “Portrait of a Parish Priest,” Clogher Record Album: A Diocesan History (1975): 269–81, with allusions at 270, 280–81.
Joan Windham. John Regan, “‘When the Saints Go Marching In’: Saints, Money and the Global Marketplace in Danny Boyles’s Millions,” in Roman Catholicism in Fantastic Film: Essays on Belief, Spectacle, Ritual and Imagery, ed. Regina Hansen (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2011), 17–28, at 18–19.
books about saints for children. Joan Windham, Six O’Clock Saints, illus. Marigold Hunt (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1934), 82–86. The story was reprinted in idem, Sixty Saints for Boys (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1948), 380–84 and in idem, Story Library of the Saints, 3 vols. (Chicago: Catholic Press, 1974) 1: 152–57.
even in the table of contents. The entries in this volume are arranged chronologically by the death dates of the saints, whose deeds and deceases are recounted.
The Lady of the Poets. Úna Agnew, “Patrick Kavanagh: Early Religious and Devotional Influences on His Work,” Clogher Record 15 (1994): 51–73, at 59.
reminiscences about the holiday. Patrick Kavanagh, Collected Poems, ed. Antoinette Quinn (London: Allen Lane, 2004), 39–41, at 41.
selected the names for his children. The need for onomastic options was acute, since the poet had seven sisters and two brothers. See Agnew, “Patrick Kavanagh,” 51.
Inniskeen. In County Monaghan. The church is now the Patrick Kavanagh Rural and Literary Resource Centre. See Agnew, “Patrick Kavanagh,” 64.
Our Lady’s Tumbler. Patrick Kavanagh, No Earthly Estate: God and Patrick Kavanagh, an Anthology, ed. Tom Stack (Dublin, Ireland: Columba, 2002), 62 (“The Lady of the Poets”), 111 (Our Lady’s Tumbler). Our Lady’s Tumbler appeared first in his November Haggard: Uncollected Prose and Verse, ed. Peter Kavanagh (New York: The Peter Kavanagh Hand Press, 1971), 198. The poem is omitted from Collected Poems.
most likely encountered tale from the Middle Ages. Una Agnew, The Mystical Imagination of Patrick Kavanagh (Dublin, Ireland: Columba, 1998), 260n20.
his birth. He wrote: “as a poet, I was born in or about nineteen-fifty-five, the place of my birth being the banks of the Grand Canal.” See Patrick Kavanagh, Self Portrait (Dublin, Ireland: Dolmen, 1963), 27–28, in idem, Collected Pruse (London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1967), 21.
everydayness. Agnew, “Patrick Kavanagh,” 54.
These verses. “And pray for him / Who walked apart / On the hills / Loving life’s miracles.”
likened to a medieval monk. Agnew, Mystical Imagination, 138.
compared with the Russian spiritual tradition. Agnew, Mystical Imagination, 156–60, 171.
Romanization of Irish Catholicism. Agnew, “Patrick Kavanagh,” 51.
“The Chapel at Mountain State Mental Hospital”
Gaffer. The word can denote a daft and deviant person, including one who dances constantly in public without music. The only full detailed information on this noun appears at https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=gaffer&page=2
the wingèd spirit still a space to live. Virginia Hamilton Adair, Beliefs and Blasphemies: A Collection of Poems (New York: Random House, 1998), 27–29.
displayed a flair for poetry. She went on to receive her BA degree from Mount Holyoke College in 1933, and her MA from Radcliffe College in 1936. After holding brief appointments at a few colleges, eventually she served for twenty-two years as professor of English at California Polytechnic University at Pomona.
leading magazines in the 1940s. For instance, The Atlantic, The New Republic, and The Saturday Review.
Eastern State Hospital. Under a different name, an earlier institution on the site, the “Public Hospital for Persons of Insane and Disordered Minds,” “was the first building in North America devoted solely to the treatment of the mentally ill. The first patient was admitted on October 12, 1773” (Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, http://www.history.org/almanack/places/hb/hbhos.cfm). For the sake of thoroughness, it must be mentioned that a Mountain State Mental Hospital existed for roughly fifty years, between 1921 and 1971, on Virginia Street in Charleston.
One assessment. This assessment is quoted from an anonymous entry on Adair on the Poetry Foundation website, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/virginia-hamilton-adair
Notes to Chapter 4
This old favorite. Colophon to reprint of Anatole France’s “The Juggler of Notre Dame” in Hooper, Christmas Stories That Never Grow Old.
Easter Tumbling
the celebration was abominated. On the history of the holiday in the US through approximately 1950, see James H. Barnett, The American Christmas: A Study in National Culture (New York: Macmillan, 1954).
in a Gothic architectural setting. Behind the flower, it shows a lancet with a quatrefoil surmounting two further lancets.
a version from 1949. Dorothy Ramsey and Gerald Keenan, Our Lady’s Tumbler: An Easter Play in Two Acts (West Chester, PA: n.p., 1949). Not surprisingly in view of its heavy bookishness, the text is rife with archaisms. Just to take a few examples from the first two pages: “Nay, trust me, brother”; “Let us hang out the hospice light betimes tonight”; and “the kine in the byre.”
a theatrical production of Our Lady’s Tumbler. A morality by Irene Hall, produced by Christian Simpson.
the day before Easter Sunday. March 30, 1956.
verses. “The moral of this story? Let us say / That Jesus also has his dancing day, / Who dances in the heavens and the seasons, / Who dances in the thoughts of proper reasons, / Who, to prove us far more than husks of clay, / Dances the sun itself on Easter Day!”
The Commercial Aesthetic of “Ye Olde”
To be up-to to-date. David Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 9.
The family nurtured a passion for the Middle Ages. Their medievalism acquired its most enduring form in the resplendent Lady Chapel at Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, as well as in the Bethany Church (see Fig. n.4).
Wanamaker Grand Organ. The instrument was built for the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, and it was moved to the Philadelphia emporium in 1911.
musical performances. The nature of the entertainment can be surmised from the 1923 songbook Christmas Carols and Songs of Olden Time.
a replica of the façade of the Reims cathedral. It was depicted “on a scale of 60 feet for the frontage and with every one of the innumerable details of the façade faithfully reproduced.” See “Fidelity to Realism in Artistic Set in Wanamaker’s Credo Display,” Women’s Wear Daily, February 4, 1928, 1, quoted in Morowitz, “Cathedral of Commerce,” 345.
knock-off of Chartres. Morowitz, “Cathedral of Commerce,” 340.
organized a fundraising expedition. Morowitz, “Cathedral of Commerce,” 354–55.
annual German Volksfest. William Allen Zulker, “Presidential Profile: Our 19th—John Wanamaker: King of Merchants”: http://williamzulker.com/yahoo_site_admin/assets/docs/JW_Presidential_Profile1.32170222.pdf
playing up the Middle Ages. For example, the company’s “1924 Book of Gifts” bore on its cover, in best medievalesque style, flourishes in red, green, and blue, with medieval lettering of “Happy Christmas” to match.
long-lived. The term ephemera, a plural form from a Greek adjective that meant “temporary” or “short-lived,” is used to denote such publications that were often expected to be discarded.
one Christmas card. The legend within reads “Ye Compliments of Ye Season.” The caption below explains: “Many Victorian cards featured designs with a historical influence, especially from the medieval period, as in this humorous unmarked card from the early 1880s.” See Michelle Higgs, Christmas Cards from the 1840s to the 1940s (Princes Risborough, UK: Shire Books, 1999).
one card. By the innovative publisher and printer Ernest Nister.
Samuel Johnson. For the ascription (which has not been without dissent), see Uncle Jabez; or The Teachings of Adversity (London: Religious Tract Society, 1860), 7.
these two words. The convention originated in the graphic resemblance of two letterforms that should have been kept distinct. One remains to the present day in the letter y. The other is the similarly shaped medieval English letter known as thorn (þ). Used routinely in Old English and often in Middle English, thorn was adapted from the runic alphabet called futhark. This rune served to represent the sound “th,” as it appears as the initial phoneme of the word from which it takes its name. This “ye” is then really a misunderstanding of an old letter to represent the sound at the beginning of the definite article “the.” The final -e of olde, too, is a relic of the Late Middle English period, by which time the complex system of noun endings inherited from Germanic had been reduced essentially to -e, en, and -es.
Another archaic “ye”. This other one is not a matter of mistaken identity through misreading of a forgotten letter. Rather, it preserves a nearly obsolete form of the pronoun “you.”
one and the same card. For example, one purveys “Ye Merrie Christmas Wishes.” In this case, ye gives us the misunderstood old initial letter of the definite article. Then follows a poem that contains the two rhyming lines “Right Heartily we meet Ye” and “With a Merry Christmas greet Ye.” Both of these ye’s are the archaic pronoun.
holiday cards from the early twentieth century. Take the legend on one Christmas card from around 1910, which begins “Ye Merrie Christmas Greetings” and ends “Ye Jolly Boys.” The topmost panels depict a procession led by a jester dressed in his parti-color costume, brandishing in his right hand a jester’s wand and in his left a sprig of holly. The main strip shows boys carrying a Yule log, astride which a little child clutches a twig.
a card that portrays youths. The inscription reads “Come bring with a noise / My merrie merrie boys / The Christmas log to ye firing.”
Ye Jollie Christmastide. “Call for ye Jolly Jester / he’s brimful of Fun. / His merry jokes make Laughter / For Christmastide’s begun.”
Merrie Xmas Cheer. In the legend, Xmas is a common abbreviation for Christmas. The X stands in lieu of either a Christian cross or the letter chi in the Greek alphabet, which it resembles in shape. Chi is the first letter in the word christos, the source of English Christ.
rife with “ye’s”. The list comprises “ye holly,” “ye mistletoe spray,” “ye heart,” and “ye jolly good folks.”
holding on to a jester’s wand. In between, the caption “Are we Downhearted” leads into “with hearty good wishes for a merry Xmas.”
a buffoon in red. He rides on horseback upon a snowy road through a moonlit landscape, with “Greeting” at the top and the little ditty “Sing hey the green holly, / This life’s most jolly” at the bottom.
Charles Eastlake anticipated them. Charles L. Eastlake, A History of the Gothic Revival: An Attempt to Show How the Taste for Medieval Architecture Which Lingered in England during the Two Last Centuries Has Since Been Encouraged and Developed (London: Longmans, Green, 1972), 238: “It was Nash’s aim [in Mansions of England] to represent the[se ancient mansions] as they were in the days when country life was enjoyed by their owners, not for a brief interval in the year, but all the year round, in days when there was feasting in the hall and tilting in the courtyard, when the yule log crackled on the hearth, and mummers beguiled the dullness of a winter’s evening, when the bowling-green was filled with lusty youths, and gentle dames sat spinning in their boudoirs, when the deep window recesses were filled with family groups, and gallant cavaliers rode out a-hawking; when, in short, all the adjuncts and incidents of social life, dress, pastimes, manners, and what-not, formed part of a picturesque whole of which we in these prosaic and lack-lustre days, except by the artist’s aid, can form no conception.”
architecture of the English countryside. Andrew Jackson Downing, Cottage Residences, or, A Series of Designs for Rural Cottages and Cottage Villas, and Their Gardens and Grounds: Adapted to North America (New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1842), 25, quoted in Elizabeth Bradford Smith, Medieval Art in America: Patterns of Collecting, 1800–1940 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996), 74–76: “back to a past age, the domestic habits, the hearty hospitality, the joyous old sports, and the romance and chivalry of which, invest it, in the dim retrospect, with a kind of golden glow, in which the shadowy lines of poetry and reality seem strangely interwoven and blended.”
England of Old, 1475. By M. C. Whishaw. Among many other Christmas cards, one features angels (and quatrefoils) as wall art behind three children (see Fig. n.5). The messengers of God are costumed as miniaturized versions of two noble damsels, one clutching holly and the other mistletoe, flanking an equally well-dressed boy. It is the work of the American illustrator and cartoonist Albertine Randall Wheelan. The scene is presented as if an illumination, with what looks like a manuscript page to the right that reads “Give thanks to God alway upon thys blessed daye. Let all men sing and saye, ‘Holy, holy.’” Understand [sic] after all unusual spellings.
garb of a professional entertainer. If we had any trouble dating the scene from the sartorial evidence, the lancet to the left would suffice on its own. Even the pointed arch is expendable. Eastlake and Downing had nothing to say about swigging alcohol, but “A Merrie Christmas” card shows in the foreground a red-nosed tippler with a hearty pewter tankard in his right hand and a broad smile on his face.
publication on Christmas Eve of 1968. Philadelphia Daily News, Tuesday, December 24, 1968, 13.
Noel Juggling: The Gift That Keeps on Giving
roughly comparable to A Christmas Carol. Murray Sachs, Anatole France: The Short Stories (London: Edward Arnold, 1974), 43. Dickens’s story was first published on December 19, 1843.
establishing Christmas. For a balanced assessment, see David Parker, Christmas and Charles Dickens (New York: AMS Press, 2005).
one such case. Pamela J. Edwards, Catechizing with Liturgical Symbols: Twenty-Five Hands-On Sessions for Teens and Adults (San Jose, CA: Resource Publications, 1997), 118–23: the Little Juggler Play is “a tale that has been told a hundred times.”
positive messages. Somewhat curiously for the cheery Christmastide context, the narrative is described as bearing retelling “because each generation must learn to discern the false prophets of its time.” A negative message about threats posed by false prophecy seems ill suited to the story.
a passage from the New Testament. 1 Corinthians 1:18–26.
fools for Christ. “How have we been ‘fools for Christ,’ daring the ridicule of others as the little juggler did?” Compare 1 Corinthians 3:18 and 4:10.
his annual poem of holiday greeting. Showell Rogers, “The Tumbling Monk of Clairvaux (1897),” in Christmas Greetings and Other Verses (Birmingham, UK: Cornish Brothers, 1902), 63–76 (proem 65–66, translation 67–71, short extracts from the medieval French 73–74).
the flavor and spirit of the original. In Rogers’s view, the French from the Middle Ages was a ballad-like “pious tale” (he uses the modern term conte pieux), belonging then to a subsection of fabliaux. He saw it, as many others have mistakenly done, as the work of Gautier de Coinci.
Hungarian tale. Désiré [Dezsö] Malonyay, “Le fou, légende hongroise,” trans. Adrien Remacle, illus. Alphonse Mucha Le Figaro de Noël (Figaro illustré) (December 1897): 221–26 (224–25 are an accompanying dance song by the composer Carolus Agghàzy).
the first draft. Demar Irvine, Massenet: A Chronicle of His Life and Times (Portland, OR: Amadeus, 1994), 230. The manuscript survives in the Heugel archives. Although the timing may have been serendipitous, Massenet may have had Christmas in mind while composing the opera, since the music contains references to Hector Berlioz’s L’enfance du Christ, a work that had made a deep impression upon him as a young boy.
The Juggler of Touraine. See The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine (December 1907).
unusually meritorious. For the assessment, see the anonymously penned “Notes,” The Nation 88.2288, May 6, 1909: 462–65, at 463.
color illustrations. They were made after paintings commissioned from Leon Guipon. The French-born artist, who immigrated to the United States around 1903, received his training in both Paris and New York. For basic biographical information, see Anita Jacobsen, Jacobsen’s Biographical Index of American Artists, 4 vols. (Carrollton, TX: A. J. Publications, 2002), 1.1: 1341.
cover art. Collier’s: The National Weekly 42.10, November 28, 1908 (December Fiction number), cover (“The Illustrator in the Middle Ages”).
The artwork in question. Could it be a self-portrait?
setting that was a favorite artistic theme. Anatole France, Abeille, Le Jongleur de Notre-Dame, Les Pains noirs, ed. R. L. Græme Ritchie, ill. Henry Morin (London: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1928), 129.
tools of his trade. We can make out books, parchment, lecterns, flasks, quills, candles, ink- and paint pots, and, of course, manuscripts.
focused intently on a codex. Presumably, he is working as a scribe, rubricator, illuminator, or some combination of the three.
The Fair Crowning the Brave. Woman’s Home Companion, October 1910. The caption reads, “The Fair Crowning the Brave.”
Brandywine School. So called after the creek by this name in Pennsylvania and the artists’ colony located nearby at Chadds Ford.
reached its pinnacle. See James J. Best, “The Brandywine School and Magazine Illustration: Harper’s, Scribner’s and Century, 1906–1910,” Journal of American Culture 3.1 (1980): 128–44.
father of American illustration. Pyle’s students referred to themselves as H.P.S.A., for Howard Pyle School of Art. The headcount of artists and illustrators in this orbit exceeded a hundred. It included such renowned figures as N. C. Wyeth and Maxfield Parrish.
golden age of book illustration. For Guipon’s place in the movement, see Best, “Brandywine School,” 136. Henry C. Pitz, Howard Pyle: Writer, Illustrator, Founder of the Brandywine School (New York: Crown Publishers, 1975), 228, lists those who studied with Pyle: Guipon is not among them.
tales about heroes. Jeanne Fox-Friedman, “Howard Pyle and the Chivalric Order in America: King Arthur for Children,” Arthuriana 6 (1996): 77–95.
the specific holiday. To either side, lozenges spell out “In the lowly Stall—was the holy Birth.”
In the final quatrain. The poem was published under the title “A Christmas Carol,” Scribner’s Monthly 3.3 (January 1872): 278.
Violet Moore Higgins. See Higgins, Fairy Tales: The Little Juggler—The Wooden Shoe—The Noel Candle, illus. Helen Chamberlin (Racine, WI: Whitman, 1917), 6, and author, French Fairy Tales: The Little Juggler—The Wooden Shoe—The Noel Candle, illus. Helen Chamberlin (Racine, WI: Whitman, 1917), 6. The latter volume, at least when reprinted close to two decades later, was sold with the same author’s English Fairy Tales in a pictorial cardboard halfbox as a set labeled “2 Books in a Box” (Racine, WI: Whitman, 1934). The French Fairy Tales version has the exactly the same text of the story as in the distinct publication of the book from 1917, under the title The Little Juggler and Other French Tales Retold, that has more sophisticated illustrations by Higgins herself.
a French sociologist. Marcel Mauss, Essai sur le don: Forme et raison de l’échange dans les sociétés archaïques (Paris: Alcan, 1925). The treatise was not brought out in English until more than four decades later: The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies, trans. Ian Cunnison (New York: Norton, 1967).
numerous books for Christmastide. For example, see Joe Hayes, The Wise Little Burro: Holiday Tales from Near and Far (Santa Fe, NM: Trails West, 1991), 27–32; Bob Hartman, Lion Storyteller Christmas Book, illus. Susie Poole (Colorado Springs, CO: Lion’s Children’s Books, 2000), 114–16.
children’s activity guide. Mary Reed Newland, The Year and Our Children: Planning the Family Activities for Christian Feasts and Seasons (New York: P. J. Kenedy and Sons, 1956), 13–16 (“Advent Penances, and a Story about a Juggler”).
takes the narrative. “There is a story to tell at the beginning of Advent, about someone who had nothing to give. It illustrates best of all for children how the intangible is to God the most tangible, and makes entirely reasonable to them a scale of values one would suppose far over their heads.”
this presentation. Another such volume of Advent activities, published in 2004, describes how the author’s children loved to draw the characters on paper, color them, and cut them out for use in an improvised puppet theater. See Julie Walters, Advent: A Family Celebration. Prayers and Activities for Each Day (Ijamsville, MD: The Word Among Us Press, 2004), 124–26 (based on Barbara Cooney’s version). The story has also found a niche in less didactic collections of tales for children to be read during Christmastide. For example, see Hayes, Wise Little Burro; Hartman, Lion Storyteller Christmas Book, 114–16.
Mary’s role. Beverly Roberts Gaventa and Cynthia L. Rigby, eds., Blessed One: Protestant Perspectives on Mary (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2002), xi, 59, 87.
The Juggler in Holiday Books and Cards
From a business perspective. Elizabeth C. Hirschman and Priscilla A. LaBarbera, “The Meaning of Christmas,” Interpretive Consumer Research 1 (1989): 136–47. Sales of books, now often e-books, and other products soar in late November and December in comparison with other intervals in the year. Turnout at theatrical events spikes at the same time.
These gift books. For an example from Christmas 1935, see Three Legends of the Middle Ages as Related by Three Modern Authors (Yellow Springs, OH: Walter Kahoe at The Antioch Press, 1935). The exemplar consulted has printed on the page opposite the title page: “This copy was made for / S. W. Farnsworth to wish him a Merry / Christmas and a Happy New Year / from / Walter & Mildred Kahoe.” For 1937, see Alexander Woollcott, Our Lady’s Juggler: An Antique Legend as Retold for the Air (San Mateo, CA: Quercus, 1937): “The Quercus Press San Mateo California has printed thirty copies of this tale in Goudy Mediaeval type with the kind permission of the author, Christmas 1937.”
one such volume. The book in question is Our Lady’s Juggler (with English translation followed by the original French of Anatole France), trans. Henriette Metcalf, illus. Cyrus Leroy Baldridge (New York: English Book Shop, 1933): “This edition … is limited to fifty signed copies … designed & printed at the press of William E. Rudge’s sons.” Metcalf also translated the play Camille by Alexandre Dumas (fils). Baldridge was a prolific author and artist. This item was produced in one batch of fifty copies in which the artist not only autographed the colophon, but also colored the frontispiece by hand. Another much larger run of five hundred in the same year lacks both distinguishing features.
the French original. Anatole France, Our Lady’s Juggler: Le Jongleur de Notre Dame, trans. Frederic Chapman, illus. Fritz Eichenberg (New York: For the Friends of William E. Rudge’s Sons, Christmas 1938). William Edwin Rudge was a well-known printer, whose son by the same name was also in the trade. The booklet opens with a colored frontispiece woodblock. It was printed in blue wraps, stamped in gilt.
little softcover. Alice M. Pullen, “Our Lady’s Juggler: A Legend from Long-Ago France,” in Further Christmas-Tide Stories, ed. Bertha C. Krall (London: National Sunday School Union, 1934), 41–44. It was priced at “one [shilling] and sixpence net.”
scriptural quotations. The first of two texts that lead into the story are “They brought unto Him gifts” (Matthew 2:11) and “Now there are diversities of gifts” (1 Corinthians 12:4), too obviously scriptural to require identification for an audience of Sunday-school instructors.
trained as a printer. He began at the house of William Edwin Rudge in Mount Vernon, New York, and moved later to the Antioch Press in Yellow Springs, Ohio. In Philadelphia in 1940, Kahoe launched as a hobby The Rose Valley Press, which specialized in small books to be given as Christmas gifts: http://historical.ha.com/c/item.zx?saleNo=683&lotIdNo=23040. A typical product is the 1935 volume Three Legends of the Middle Ages as Related by Three Modern Authors, crowned by Anatole France’s “Our Lady’s Juggler,” which is preceded by two, shorter, poems.
based in Maine. He served in the Unitarian Universalist Church in Brunswick, Maine, from 1932 to 1945.
maintained a passion for theater. His commitment to the stage was evident already in his days as a college student at Tufts University, in Medford, Massachusetts.
short plays. One was entitled The Birth in a Cave, another The Wise Men’s Well (based on a legend by the Swedish novelist Selma Lagerlöf).
the earlier. Thomas J. McCabe, An Adaptation of the Story of Our Lady’s Juggler, illus. Raymond Lufkin (Tenafly, NJ: Privately printed for the Friends of Adeline and Raymond Lufkin, Christmas 1951).
features illustrations. It captures a juggler in medieval, but not monastic, garb and headgear as he juggles a physically impossible total of eleven balls and knives. All these objects are in alternation but restricted to a semicircle.
The later of the two books. Entitled Christmas Miscellany: A Collection of Short Stories from Traditional Literature (Berkeley, CA: Lederer, Street & Zeus, Christmas 1953).
two items. They are “Frankincense and Myrrh,” by the newspaper columnist and author Heywood Hale Broun, and “Our Lady’s Juggler,” by Anatole France, both illustrated by William F. M. Kay, with a cover imprint of simply “Christmas 1953.” This illustrator supplied the artwork for several books, including Donkey of God by Louis Untermeyer in 1951 and The Selfish Giant by Oscar Wilde in 1954 (with the cover imprint “Christmas 1954”).
this production. Anatole France, Le jongleur de Notre-Dame (Basel, Switzerland: Printed for Editions St. Alban by Bader & Sturm, December 1955). The book comprises sixteen sides, of which two are solely text, four solely illustration, and ten mixed text and illustration. The copy (numbered 49 of 50 exemplars) that has been acquired by Houghton Library at Harvard University includes a card from the artist’s wife, Betty Jacqueline Bühler, wishing the unidentified recipient a happy New Year (“Mit unseren besten Wünschen für ein glückliches neues Jahr!”). On it, see Jan M. Ziolkowski, in “An ‘Enchanted Palace’: A Humanistic ‘Masterclass’ for Houghton Library’s Seventy-Fifth Anniversary,” Harvard Magazine (March-April 2017): 36–41, at 37.
worked above all in advertising. After studying in Basel, Berlin, and Paris, he spent the rest of his life in Basel, where the special volume was printed. His life was relatively short: he died in an auto accident at the age of 53.
a tool to convert the public, http://a-g-i.org/user/fritzbuhler/view/bio/. Out of the same conviction he cofounded the International Graphic Alliance (in French, Alliance graphique internationale).
think about the task and not about yourself. Christian Jaquet, Fritz Bühler, der Gestalter, Berater und Texter (1909–1963) (Zurich: Swiss Graphic Design Foundation, 2015), 17: “Mann kann immer schöne und richtige Lösungen finden, wenn man an die Aufgabe denkt und nicht an sich selber.”
matchmake graphics and typography. Fritz Bühler’s desire for outreach through posters and lithographs that would wile casual viewers or readers almost unwittingly into an aesthetic experience accounts for his promotion of a renowned Swiss-designed typeface: Helvetica, meaning “Swiss” in Latin, was originally called Neue Grotesk Haas. It was created by Max Miedinger, with Eduard Hoffmann.
In this case. The product was a book printed on unnumbered pages of handmade Auvergne paper. The coloring varies from volume to volume.
Inside. The back of the card indicates only “Deer Crest Grant 2504, USA.” It bears no date, copyright, or trademark.
a set of three Christmas cards. The others tell of “The Shepherd Boy and the Wreath” and “The Drummer Boy.”
an origin story. Hallmark 150BX 87-1B. The card is copyrighted by Hallmark Cards, Inc.
Amateur Theater
Charles Robinson Smith. Yale class of 1875.
This noncommercial production. Charles Robinson Smith, The Story of Jean, the Jongleur, and the Monks, Dedicated to David and Robin Beecher Stowe (n.p.: Privately printed, 1927), 11 pp. Held at the New York Public Library and University of Texas, Austin (Harry Ransom Center). One of Smith’s daughters, Hilda, was the wife of Lyman Beecher Stowe. This Stowe was a grandson of Harriet Beecher Stowe, the American abolitionist and author still known for her antislavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin (serialized 1851–1852). Their two sons, David and Robinson, were the addressees of both the slight book and the performance it recorded (and for which it served as text).
it was a miracle. He defines a miracle as “a thing so wonderful and so difficult that it can only be performed by God or by one of His saints or angels.”
“song and dance” men. “… people who did something like that [what minstrels and troubadours do] in a smaller way. On Broadway today they would be called ‘song and dance’ men. They knew how to fiddle and to sing songs that pleased the people and to dance and do all sorts of tricks.” This analogy between jongleurs and “song and dance” men calls to mind a note in the English score for the opera. See Our Lady’s Juggler, libretto by Maurice Léna, trans. Louise Baum, music by Jules Massenet ([Paris]: Heugel, n.d.), a publication that has been dated variously 1908, 1909, 1911, and 1929: “The Jongleur of the middle ages was minstrel, juggler, tumbler, jester, dancer, in one. The best the translator can do is to give the word its literal translation, juggler, although the name does not suggest to-day the character of those wandering men-of-all-arts whose programs foreshadowed the modern Vaudeville.”
a pianist and singer. The Frenchwoman Lillie Sang-Collins played the piano, as Miss Flora Collins warbled. Sang-Collins taught piano at the Institute of Musical Art (now the Juilliard School). See Andrea Olmstead, Juilliard: A History, Music in American Life (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 25, 28.
names of artists. The sculptor Daniel Chester French, the writer Robert Underwood Johnson, and unnamed painters.
at his home. In Stockbridge, Massachusetts.
Protestant work ethic. “The lesson of this story is that if you cannot do the best that others can do, at least do the best that you can do, and if the Virgin Mary now takes a less active interest in rewarding people than she used to do in the Middle Ages, you may be sure there will be others who will reward you.”
film and television actor. His career ran mostly from the 1940s through the 1960s.
the Xmas Jinks. Everett Glass, “The Tumbler, after an Old Legend, a Play in Two Scenes,” Poet Lore 37.4 (January–December 1926): 516–36. The indications of characters’ names in Glass’s book are sometimes disorganized, even apart from the author’s confusing choice to have a monk named Barnabas but to make the tumbler a person called Pierre. The name Barnabas signals Glass’s indebtedness to Anatole France. As we have seen, Xmas is, of course, a now common abbreviation for Christmas, and “jinks” are pranks or frolics, as in “high jinks.”
European languages. Scandinavian, Slavic, Spanish, Italian, and German.
would seem to be a classicist. He has lines such as “Don’t trust him. He doesn’t know any Latin” and is wont to pepper his speech with Latin tags that mean nothing in context.
the cases of nouns. Glass, “Tumbler,” 528–29: “Abbot. Another thing I like about the sermon is that brotherly love is always in the ablative case. / Barnabas. Is it really? / Abbot. If the whole thing had been in Latin you would have sensed that at once. It doesn’t show so well in translation. / Barnabas. No. / Abbot. The ordinary man has no conception, has he, of how hard we labor in our search for the truth? / Barnabas. No. Perhaps it is just as well. He might feel discouraged.”
have them flog each other. One has to wonder what subtexts of prurient curiosity about flagellation may have been in play here.
Barnabas exclaims. Glass, “Tumbler,” 536.
professor of engineering drawing. James Steele, Faculty Club, University of California at Berkeley: Bernard Maybeck, Historical Building Monograph, vol. 5 (London: Academy Books, 1995).
His architecture. Among the several masterpieces he built in the city of Berkeley must be counted the First Church of Christ, Scientist (1910), and the Maybeck Recital Hall. On the former, see Edward R. Bosley, First Church of Christ, Scientist, Berkeley (London: Phaidon, 1994).
northern California style. The style is known as Craftsman or Bungaloid.
fantasy of the monastery. “The fantasy of the monastery, in fact, has been institutionalized in one of the groups with the longest and fondest traditions of The Faculty Club”; James Gilbert Paltridge, A History of the Faculty Club at Berkeley (Berkeley: The Faculty Club, University of California, 1990), 59–61, 68–69 (quotation from 59).
fifty singers. The group has been known variously as The Choristers, The Chorus of Monks, The Good Monks, The Monks, and The Monks’ Chorus. The custom of annually celebrating the holiday with a banquet began in 1902, the first year in which the Club occupied its present clubhouse.
comic plays. Many scripts have been deposited in the Bancroft Library.
on campuses. In Oregon, Reed College alumni were feted by a performance at their annual Christmas reunion in 1941. The student dramatic club adapted Our Lady’s Tumbler to dance form, to the accompaniment of an organ and madrigal singers. See The Sunday Oregonian, December 14, 1941: 20. A women’s modern dance organization known as Orchesis presented at Christmas in the 1930s an annual production of Le jongleur de Notre Dame at what was then San Jose State Teachers College. For information on these performances, see Vol. 4, Chapter 1, https://books.openbookpublishers.com/10.11647/obp.0147.pdf#page/14
in French and Spanish. On the musical plays “with original dialogue and catchy songs” Le petit jongleur and El pequeño Bérnabe, see Alan Garfinkel, “Notes and News,” The Modern Language Journal 62.3 (March 1978): 113–31, at 122–23.
activities. Helene Freireich Farrere, “The Creative Teaching of French,” French Review 6.2 (December 1932): 114–22, at 117: “The study of Christmas vocabulary gave an impulse to the compilation of many pictures of the season, writing of French words and sentences to them, and gathering them into attractive, copious scrapbooks. Christmas cards, bearing French greetings were made, many carols were sung and two dramatic projects completed: one, a fragment of ‘L’Oiseau bleu’ [The Bluebird] by Maeterlinck, and the other a medieval French legend ‘Le Jongleur de Notre-Dame.’ The drama involves Christmas music, expressive dances, … manufacture of costumes, painting of a large stained glass window from the illustrations of the French Cathedral in Chartres, and the study and manufacture of medieval costumes for the Juggler of Notre-Dame.”
The tale has lost its allure. A musical called Juggler to the King is based on Anatole France’s short story, but is set in Denmark as a prequel to Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The author has commented forlornly on the uphill battle to market it. See Stan Peal, http://dev.juggle.org/history/discussion/archives/10477.php: “The marketing of the script has been slow, as it is a challenging piece. It’s a full-scale musical, which is challenging enough, but also requires an excellent juggler who can sing and act. … [I]t is well-suited for churches and community theatres as a Christmas show.” The musical was first produced in 1995. The most recent production, which speaks eloquently to the triangulation of the story with Christmas and children, was in December 2005 by a cast of children aged 5 through 18. Another musical expression of the story that is directed unambiguously to use in churches at Christmastime is “The Clown of God: A Christmas Chancel Drama for Children’s Choir,” by Mark Schweizer (St. James Music Press, n.d.).
Mass Radio
the granddaddies of later home entertainment systems. See Mark V. Stein, Cathedral and Tombstone Radios (Chandler, AZ: Sonoran Publishing, 2008).
the latest electronics. The then-advanced technology included vacuum tubes and superheterodyne detectors.
fireside chats. The sculpture entitled The Fireside Chat forms part of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, DC. To convey the poverty of the Depression, the man is barefooted and a horizontal support is missing from the chair on which he is seated. The relief is one of three sculpted by George Segal.
entertainment for families with children. Eventually, this Jesuit published these scripts in Castilian, from which they were translated into French. See Remigio Vilariño Ugarte, De broma y de versa 182–183 (February and March 1926) (Bilbao, Spain: El Mensajero del Corazón de Jesús, 1926), Cuento 9 “El volatinero de la Virgen,” 94–106, illus. Goiko, 95, 97, 101, and Radiocuentos por Erreví Esejota, 2nd ed. (Bilbao, Spain: El Mensajero del Corazón de Jesús, 1929). This text was put into French in Vilariño, Contes radiophoniques, trans. and adap. Paul Bellot (Paris: Desclée De Brouwer, 1934), 91–108. For a brief biography, see Manuel Revuelta González, “Remigio Vilariño (1865–1939),” XX Siglos 12.47 (2001): 145–47.
elsewhere on the Continent. Jean Sarraihl, “Le prestige d’Anatole France en Espagne,” Revue de littérature comparée 16 (1936): 98–120, at 120. Accordingly, Vilariño had a free hand in his long retelling of Le jongleur de Notre Dame. In his adaptation, the protagonist is a Hungarian jongleur named Georges, whose sidekicks are a horse and thirteen-year-old nephew.
in its 1928–1929 season. Printed librettos to assist listeners in following the opera during the transmission survive in abundance: Le Jongleur de Notre Dame, BBC Opera Libretto, broadcast on May 27 and 29, 1929, English version adapted from the translation by M. Louise Baum (London: BBC, 1929), with one full-page black-and-white illustration. For a detailed review, see Scott Goddard, “Le Jongleur de Notre Dame,” Listener 21, June 5, 1929: 795.
in 1928. In this year the date of April 17 fell a week and a half after Easter Sunday. The program was on the theme of the buffoon or loon, and the juggler was the final case in point.
soap-opera. The term, often shortened to “soap,” dates to the golden age of radio, when individual programs were sponsored by advertisers such as soap manufacturers and retailers.
a staple of Christmastide. Schedules and even recordings survive for many of these radio shows, particularly from the 1940s and 1950s. Recordings of a number have been preserved. The following list makes no claim to be complete or fully verified: (1) Gulf Screen Guild Theater of CBS featured the Juggler of Notre Dame, on December 22, 1940, with Nelson Eddy. (2) Screen Guild Theater, episode no. 123, The Juggler of Our Lady, on December 21, 1942. (3) AFRS Presents of the Armed Forces Radio Service, “The Juggler of Our Lady,” on December 25, 1944, with Ronald Colman (host), Anatole France (author), Gladys Swarthout, John Charles Thomas (29:42). This was recorded on 33⅓ rpm LP as Series H-9, program no. 55. (4) World Broadcasting System syndication, The Story of the Juggler of Our Lady, with John Nesbitt, Bing Crosby, Orson Welles, Victor Young and His Orchestra, Bernard Herrmann (music), Charles Laughton, Hans Eisler and His Orchestra, Anatole France (author) (26:00). (5) The Westinghouse Program (NBC net origination, AFRS rebroadcast), Program 101 (also known as The John Charles Thomas Show and “AFRS Christmas Program No. 15”), “The Juggler of Our Lady,” on December 24, 1944, with John Charles Thomas, Victor Young and His Orchestra, The Ken Darby Chorus, John Nesbitt (29:56). Recordings of Nesbitt can be found in the Family Theater, a series created by Father Patrick Peyton for broadcast on the network of the Mutual Broadcasting Company, with Tony LaFrano as the announcer, which aired from February 13, 1947, until August 7, 1957. Its 533 programs included productions of The Juggler of Our Lady which may have been yearly, on December 25, 1947, and on December 29, 1948, in both instances with John Charles Thomas and John Nesbitt. (6) Reader’s Digest Radio Edition, Our Lady’s Juggler, on April 21, 1946, with Richard Conte, Alice Rinehart (30:00). (7) Joppe the Juggler (at Christmas, Joppe is discovered juggling his plates for the Holy Mother), on December 20, 1950, with Tony La Frano (announcer), Harry Zimmerman (composer, conductor), Francis X. Bushman, Tudor Owen, Milton Merlin (adaptor), Barbara Merlin (adaptor), Herbert Rawlinson, William Johnstone, Joseph F. Mansfield (director), Mae Clarke, Spencer Tracy (host, with opening and closing remarks), Wallace Ford (29:42). (8) The Juggler of Our Lady, on January 16, 1952, with Danny Thomas, John Lund (29:40). The mimeographed, 25-leaf typescript of this radiocast is available archivally (OCLS 24511278). (9) The Juggler of Our Lady, on December 22, 1954, with Margaret O’Brien, J. Carroll Naish (24:40). (10) The Juggler of Our Lady, on December 21, 1955, with Maureen O’Sullivan, Jack Haley, Paul Frees (24:40). (11) An additional broadcast that would seem to be the same story is Lux Summer Theater (a summer series of fourteen shows), “The Lady and the Tumbler,” on June 15, 1953.
The texts for these dramatic readings. For example, see Walter C. Hackett, “‘The Juggler of Our Lady’ by Anatole France, Adapted for Radio,” in The Jumbo Christmas Book, ed. Edna M. Cahill (Boston, MA: Baker’s Plays, 1951), 5–13. Hackett wrote both plays and screenplays. The text gives a good idea of how the germ of religion in Anatole France’s story could be stripped of irony and intensified, down to the chorus of “Ave, Maria” at the end.
its author’s notoriety. In fiction, he was the real-life model for Sheridan Whiteside, the main character in the three-act 1939 comedy “The Man Who Came to Dinner,” by the American playwrights George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. The play is set in a small Ohio town in the 1930s, in the weeks leading up to Christmas. The subject of many salty anecdotes, Woollcott brought his legend to a fitting climax by dying on the air, while participating in a live roundtable on the war in Europe: by the end of the show, the mike was live, but the discussant was not.
it spread much more broadly. Woollcott’s version was reprinted as “Our Lady’s Juggler” already in Twice Told Tales, Reader’s Digest 39.234 (October 1941): 15–16, and in David Goldstein, What Say You? (St. Paul, MN: Radio Replies Press, 1945), 154–56.
columnists would cite it. Ida Smith, “A Thought for Christmas,” Prescott (Arizona) Evening Courier, December 15, 1947, 4.
the colophon. The text reads: “THE QUERCUS PRESS SAN MATEO CALIFORNIA has printed thirty copies of this tale in Goudy Medieval type with the kind permission of the author, Christmas 1937.”
John Booth Nesbitt. He was sufficiently famous to earn a star of his own on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. His middle name memorialized his membership in an illustrious and notorious theater family: he was a grand-nephew of both Edwin Booth, a nineteenth-century thespian who made Shakespeare’s Hamlet his signature role, and of Edwin’s younger brother and fellow actor John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated the American president Abraham Lincoln.
December, 1938. The performance aired on the Gulf Oil Company radio program.
his late father. His father had died in 1931.
printed and recorded. Already in 1939, the text was circulated privately as a holiday gift for friends of a small press in San Francisco: John Booth Nesbitt, The Juggler of Our Lady (San Francisco: L’Esperance, Sivertson & Beran, 1939). The title page indicates: “Noel. / Printed for private circulation among friends of the press.” The story in approximately this form was made into a 78 rpm recording on Decca Records in 1943 as “A Christmas Gift: The Story of the Juggler of Our Lady.” This was reissued repeatedly. Later the cover was changed, and it was released as a 45 rpm recording.
rebroadcast on radio stations. In 1946, a fan of juggling in the United States sent to Juggler’s Bulletin word of his delight that while testing out a clock radio, he had heard the recording by Nesbitt. See Juggler’s Bulletin 27 (Tulsa, OK: December 1946), at http://www.juggling.org/jb/jb27.html: “The jolly old man with whiskers figured out a way to improve our ‘getting out of bed disposition’ and dropped off a radio-clock combination that wakes us up to music. By mere chance we were testing the gadget out when John Nesbitt, who is our favorite narrator, was introduced and gave out with his version of ‘The Juggler of Our Lady.’ We gathered that this was a recording and if this is correct, ’tis an excellent collectors’ item. Barnaby, the principal character of the story, was quite a juggler, tossing twelve knives while standing on his head and then catching them with his feet.”
long-play (LP) records. Fifteen years later, in 1961, this kind of record was singled out for special mention in an illustrated German printing of the juggler story: see Hans Hömberg, Der Gaukler unserer lieben Frau, illus. Ernst von Dombrowski (Vienna: Eduard Wancura, 1961). More than thirty years later, Nesbitt’s version was still being lauded. A rereading of it was recorded by Georgianna Moore with the Tennessee Players on December 27, 2002. It was later sold as a compact disk (CD). In it, Nesbitt’s text is reread as a narration with music that forms part of a Christmas medley, including “Little Drummer Boy,” on a recording made by the arts organization that is entitled The Juggler of Our Lady: A Christmas Gift.
Also in 2002, an American storyteller published “The Little Juggler,” as one of four stories for Christmas in a volume entitled Tales of Holidays. In the notes, he reveals that he happened upon the tale when listening to a holiday radio program in 1966, an encounter that affected him powerfully and made him resolve to tell the story himself eventually. See Pleasant DeSpain, Tales of Holidays, illus. Don Bell, The Books of Nine Lives. vol. 5 (Little Rock, AR: August House, 2002), 80–81. In 1997, the storyteller Howard Edmond recorded a cassette with four stories, under the title Christmas Tales (OCLC 39099503).
a living activity. The quotation comes from the opening paragraph: Music Educators Journal 33.2 (November–December 1946): 24–25, at 24. The article is entitled “An Industrial Music Program: Goodyear Believes in Employee Participation in Music.”
Christmas fare. In the calendar of events that were organized by the corporate director of education and recreation: “Industrial Music Program,” p. 24: “Christmas found the employees prepared to present an original production called ‘The Simple Heart.’ The story was based on the old French Christmas legend, ‘The Juggler of Notre Dame,’ and the scenes were transplanted to an early California mission. C. C. Osmun of the Dealer Department was responsible for the story. The orchestra and chorus added much to the story by performing Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony (fifth movement), Amparito Roca, The Monastery Garden, Grieg’s At Christmas Time, Intermezzo, Adams’ Holy Night, Gounod’s Ave Maria, and the traditional Christmas songs.” Amparito Roca is a piece composed in 1925 by the Spanish musician and composer Jaime Teixidor. In a Monastery Garden is by the English composer Albert William Ketelby. The 1847 Christmas carol “O Holy Night” (French Minuit, chrétiens!), was composed by Adolphe Adams.
The Simple Heart. In French, Un cœur simple.
political and social anxieties. This factor helps to explain the release of such films as the American The Song of Bernadette (1943, directed by Henry King); the Italian Doorway to Heaven (La porta del cielo, 1945, directed by Vittorio De Sica); the Spanish Our Lady of Fatima (La señora de Fátima, 1951, directed by Rafael Gil); and the French documentary Lourdes and Its Miracles (Lourdes et ses miracles, 1955, directed by Georges Rouquier); alongside a host of other documentaries released worldwide (Ayfre, “La Vierge Marie et le cinéma,” 804–6, 808–9).
Mid-Century Medieval US Television
mutual importance of Christmas and television. Diane Werts, Christmas on Television (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006), 3–16.
Plays and pageants. Gladys Cromwell, daughter of James H. Cromwell, wrote Our Lady’s Tumbler, a play, typescript, one-act, 13 pages, n.d.; in Princeton University Library, III. Papers of Persons Other than Ridgely Torrence, Box 95, Folder 7.
medieval-themed television. The history of medieval content in television has not been written even preliminarily. For studies on the twenty-first century, see Meriem Pagès and Karolyn Kinane, editors, The Middle Ages on Television: Critical Essays (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2015). In their “Introduction: Television Medievalisms,” 1–11, at 2, they refer to “the unlikely alliance between medievalism and the commercial medium of television.”
Fred Waring’s America. Also known as “The Fred Waring Show,” his program ran on the CBS network from 1949 to 1954. It was stereotypical family TV, a favorite in surveys that canvassed teachers and parents about viewing suitable for children. See Paul Witty, “Children and TV—A Fifth Report,” Elementary English 31.6 (1954): 349–57, on teachers’ preferences in 1954; idem, “Two Studies of Children’s Interest in TV,” Elementary English 29.5 (1952): 251–57, on parents’ beliefs.
leader of a big band. His most famous ensemble was The Pennsylvanians, a fifty-five-piece jazz orchestra formed in the 1920s.
Waring girls. Along the same lines, Waring was also known as an arbiter of the “Miss America” competition, which originated in 1921.
already left a mark. For instance, his first auditions included one recorded for the entrepreneur Thomas Edison in the early 1920s. His band was also among the earliest to play in movies with sound.
vaudeville. On this connection, see Gunning, “Non-Continuous Style of Early Film,” 221–22, 228n1.
With an acute sense. As much a businessman as a musician, Waring may have spread his name most widely in America through a line of kitchen appliances, most notably the Waring blender.
inserted it annually into his show. The variety show offered performances of “The Juggler” in at least four of its five years: 1950, 1951, 1952, and 1953. The kinescope recordings of these segments last roughly fifteen minutes. According to an endnote provided by McCabe (unnumbered final printed page), at the time when his version was printed in 1951, the story had “been done frequently on radio, as a record album by Decca, and at Christmas in 1950 by Fred Waring with choir and ballet.” Kinescope copies of performances on television in 1951, 1952, and 1953 are held by the Fred Waring’s America Collection, The Pennsylvania State University in University Park, Pennsylvania.
several sentences of recapitulation. “Christmas has always been a season of giving, ever since the three wise men first placed their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh beside the manger. … That is the reason that during this week before Christmas we do now present the legend of the little juggler who with his paltry bag of tricks sought to gain livelihood by begging pennies from the crowds which gathered before the cathedral. It all happened centuries ago on a certain day when this pathetic little juggler, ragged, hungry, and scorned by the people he hoped to entertain, found his way into the inside of the sanctuary of the great cathedral. It was just the time of the year when all other people were presenting beautiful gifts of great material worth. But he had no gift other than his meager art. But when with humility he laid the only thing he possessed at the feet of the statue in that sacred quiet place, a miracle occurred. The legend begins during the festival of Nativity in the square of the cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris.” My transcription from the kinescope.
a female modern dancer. Nadine Gae came to television with a résumé in vaudeville as long as her arm—or legs. Her primary role in the Waring Show was as choreographer. Her husband was Ray Sax Schroeder, a member of Fred Waring’s Pennsylvanians as a musician, singer, and dancer. Like his wife, he had substantial credentials in vaudeville.
techniques reminiscent of mime. Like the actor who plays the Madonna, she is in theatrical terms a supernumerary. Neither role requires speaking.
cajoled him into televising. The episode is recounted in the cover story by Bill Goodner, “The Juggler of Notre Dame,” Sooner Magazine 25.4 (December 1952): 8–10.
Imitation is the sincerest form of television. Attributed in Newsweek, January 14, 1980.
Postwar Britain
published in 1951. The publisher was the London Theatre of Dramatic Arts, which subsumed the London School of Mime.
Our Lady’s Tumbler: A French Mime. Mary Gertrude Pickersgill, Clever Alice and Other Mimes, French’s Acting Edition, vol. 1838 (London: Samuel French, 1951), 44–46: “Our Lady’s Tumbler: A French Mime.” The author was headmistress of the Theatre. In this mime, eight carols as well as the Angelus are sung. The cast is split into two sets of characters, namely, the statues and the mortals.
Ronald Duncan. Our Lady’s Tumbler (London: Faber and Faber, 1951), repr. in idem, Collected Plays (New York: Theatre Arts Books, 1971), 151–92. He wrote the play after composing the libretto for Benjamin Britten’s opera The Rape of Lucretia.
minor vogue. The vogue had culminated in the extraordinary religious plays of Charles Williams, such as Thomas Cranmer of Canterbury (1936), Seed of Adam (1937), and The House of the Octopus (1945). On poetic drama, see A. Trevor Tolley, The Poetry of the Forties (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1985), 185.
T. S. Eliot. His 1950 lecture on “Poetry and Drama” laid a prestigious basis for the very notion that drama should be once again in verse, as opposed to prose.
many of his works. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral (1935) had afforded a model for religious drama in a 1946 play, This Way to the Tomb. Earlier, Duncan had written a miracle play, Ora Pro Nobis (1939). A decade after Our Lady’s Tumbler, he set another theatrical work in the Middle Ages, Abelard and Heloise: A Correspondence for the Stage (London: Faber & Faber, 1961).
Festival of Britain. The commission came in the summer of 1950. The Festival was propelled by the postwar Labour government. The extended celebration was conceived to reinspirit the British after the war for their achievements in the arts, technology, science, and more. The boost in morale had to be realized on a small budget, because of the battered economy in postwar Britain. In some respects, the series of events and exhibitions was a last, or at least a late, gasp of the English artist and medieval revivalist William Morris, and the medievalizing of Our Lady’s Tumbler may deserve to be so understood.
Duncan’s contract stipulated. Ronald Duncan, How to Make Enemies (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1968), 219–20 (subtitled on the book cover An Autobiography and on the half-title page A Second Volume of Autobiography); Max Walter Haueter, Ronald Duncan: The Metaphysical Content of His Plays (London: Rebel Press, 1969), 79. The limited decor for the original production was designed by Cecil Beaton, who is better known as a documentary, society, and fashion photographer of the 1940s.
full choir. It makes extensive use of choric passages. The music, with anthems, was composed by Arthur William Oldham. Chorus master as well as composer, Oldham was also credited for “special anthems” when the production was televised by the Canadian Broadcast Corporation. The two quotations are from Duncan, How to Make Enemies, 222.
claims explicitly. It even quotes at the beginning and ending nine lines from the original.
he kept picturing a clown. Irene Mora, “Duncan, Ronald (1914–),” in The Columbia Encyclopedia of Modern Drama, ed. Gabrielle H. Cody and Evert Springchorn, 2 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 1:377–78, at 377.
he suddenly remembered. Duncan, How to Make Enemies, 220: “Then suddenly the bizarre filing system in my mind got reshuffled and I remembered that some years ago, I had received through the post, from a girl I had not met, a suggestion that I should write a ballet on the theme of a French legend called Le Jongleur de Notre Dame. She had enclosed a brief synopsis.”
three finalists. Brother Sebastian writes a poem, Brother Gregory grows roses and offers the most beautiful one, and Brother Justin composes an anthem.
only the live hand being visible. Duncan, How to Make Enemies, 221.
the overriding concern. Duncan, How to Make Enemies, 220.
the world premiere. From June 5–9, 1951.
long-running. 1965–1996.
two Christmas episodes. Jackanory, season 3, episode 110, “The Little Juggler,” December 22, 1967. Jackanory, season 5, episode 62, “Christmas Stories: The Little Juggler,” December 24, 1968.
broadcast once by radio in Italy. On the transmission, see Anatole France, Le jongleur de Notre-Dame et d’autres contes, ed. Maccone, 19. The radio play led to a published Italian translation, see Il giocoliere della vergine: Mistero in due tempi, trans. Giuliano Friz and Gianfilippo Carcano, Controcorrente 40.5–6 (May–June 1962): 11–38.
a thirty-minute telecast. This version, in a series “On Camera,” featured anthems from the Stratford Festival Singers to accompany the acrobatic performance. The music was composed by Louis Applebaum, who (in another manifestation of cross-religious attention to the story) was Jewish. See Walter G. Pitman, Louis Applebaum: A Passion for Culture (Toronto: Dundurn Group, 2002), 163. Although the episode was recorded, the black-and-white kinescope no longer exists at either the Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC) or the National Archives in Ottawa, but production files are available in the CBC Reference Library in Toronto.
Paul Almond. A movie and film director, producer, and writer, he studied at Oxford University and worked as an actor in a repertory company in England, before returning to Canada to embark upon a career in television in 1954 with the Canadian Broadcasting Company. Many of his productions and novels revolved around Christian themes. In an autobiographical novel entitled The Inheritor he describes selecting Our Lady’s Tumbler for programming at Christmas.
the Anglophones and the Francophones. Pitman, Louis Applebaum, 163: “The CBC had found a story in the French tradition that could be perceived as universal and appropriate for the celebrations of all Canadians of the Christian faith on that sacred night.”
actor with a gamin hairdo. The actor is Christiane Lasquin. See Bernard Lesquilbet, “Christiane Lasquin,” Télé 60, no. 795, January 17–23, 1960: 2 (photo by D. Fallot).
two Dominican sisters. Renée Vancoppenolle, Noël aujourd’hui, illus. Marie Authelet (Liège-Bressoux, Belgium: Éditions dricot, 2005), 47–52. The volume is pitched at the child in all of us. The illustrations do not always bear much relation to the stories contained in it.
Juggler Film
The Juggler of Notre Dame. The film also circulated under the titles Magic Legend of the Juggler and Legend of the Juggler. Its cast included Barry Dennen in the title role, along with Jessica Benton, Willoughby Goddard, Joe E. Ross, and Walter Slezak.
This made-for-television movie. The Juggler of Notre Dame (1984), directed by Michael Ray, with Mike Rhodes. Christmas is also the occasion for which The Gift of the Little Juggler is pitched. This product took the form of a low-budget filmstrip and an accompanying sound cassette (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica Educational Corporation, 1982).
human values and audience enrichment. C. Gerald Fraser, “Television Week,” December 12, 1982.
a real juggler. The performer was named Carl Carlsson. The film co-starred Merlin Olsen and Melinda Dillon. The role of the prior was played by Eugene Roche, whose character was called Father Delany.
Juggler Christmas Books Live On
private-press printing. Frederic Vanson, Our Lady’s Tumbler: A Medieval French Tale Retold in English Verse (Harlow, UK: Poetry Essex, 1978). The final page reads: “This story retold from the Medieval French Legend at the Feast of Our Lord’s Nativity Nineteen Hundred and Seventy Seven. Thanks be to God.”
a coxcombed jester once painted. Rockwell’s The Jester appeared on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post on February 11, 1939. It was reprinted with the text of Anatole France’s story in Norman Rockwell’s Christmas Book, ed. Molly Rockwell (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1977), 59–62.
pop-up. Carol Schwartz, The Little Juggler, illus. Marcy Dunn Ramsey, paper engineering by Dick Dudley, Dial Stockingstuffer Pop-Ups (New York: Dial Books for Young Readers, 1991). Movable parts such as volvelles had been used already even in medieval manuscripts, but not until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were whole books designed and produced to spring out in three-dimensional tableaux, and the term and format of the pop-up came into their own only in the middle of the twentieth century.
one in a series. The set of products counted among its constituents The Twelve Days of Christmas, The First Noel, The Nutcracker, and A Visit from Saint Nicholas.
advertising copy. The standard selling points were simple: “Each one contains a beautiful three-dimensional scene from a favorite Christmas tale or carol, and a twelve-page full-color illustrated book that tells the story.” Intentionally or not, the total pagination matches the twelve nights of Christmas.
120 seconds or less. Elena Pasquali, The Lion Book of Two-Minute Christmas Stories, illus. Nicola Smee (Oxford: Lion Children’s Books, 2012).
he was sure the mother was smiling. Pasquali, Lion Book, 37.
first production of a script. According to the fiction, the draft happens to be his 844th—but the first to meet even this provisional success.
gave what was closest to him. John Guare, Rich and Famous (New York: Dramatists Play Service, 1977), 29 (scene five).
Related Stories of the Season
one-act lyric opera. It was commissioned by NBC-TV, performed by the NBC Opera Company, produced by Samuel Chotzinoff, and conducted by Thomas Schippers.
specifically for television. It aired on the NBC network on December 24, 1951, as the premiere presentation in the Hallmark Hall of Fame showcase. For studying the original and subsequent performances, the central resources are Ken Wlaschin, Gian Carlo Menotti on Screen: Opera, Dance, and Choral Works on Film, Television, and Video (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1999); Donald L. Hixon, Gian Carlo Menotti: A Bio-Bibliography, Bio-Bibliographies in Music, vol. 77 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000), 53–80; Richard C. Burke, “The NBC Opera Theater,” Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 10.1 (1965): 13–23.
the child actor. The boy was Chet Allen. His performance as Amahl was the highlight, and perhaps concurrently the curse, of a life that was snuffed out by suicide. He descended into long mental illness, alongside protracted failure to replicate the success that he had achieved in his debut. After 1951, the crippled shepherd boy was played several times by Bill McIver. The role of the mother was created by Rosemary Kuhlmann, who played the role repeatedly thereafter.
Menotti insisted. Gian Carlo Menotti, Amahl and the Night Visitors (Piano-Vocal Score) (New York: G. Schirmer, 1997): “It is the express wish of the composer that the role of Amahl should always be performed by a boy. Neither the musical nor the dramatic concept of the opera permits the substitution of a woman costumed as a child.”
crept toward near extinction. Jennifer Barnes, Television Opera: The Fall of Opera Commissioned for Television (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2003).
Gospel of Matthew. Matthew 2:1–12. See Richard C. Trexler, The Journey of the Magi: Meanings in History of a Christian Story (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997).
Charles Tazewell. Charles Tazewell, The Littlest Angel, illus. Katherine Evans (Chicago: Children’s Press, 1946).
a script for radio. It was read initially in 1940 by a British actor, Edna Best, in the show Manhattan at Midnight (see Fig. n.7). In the following year it was performed by an American, Helen Hayes (see Fig. n.8). Eventually, it was recorded by yet another US actor, Loretta Young (Decca). The text was first published as a story by the general-interest digest, Coronet, and as a book in 1946. In 1969, it was adapted and expanded as a 90-minute musical broadcast on television in the Hallmark Hall of Fame. This anthology program, which ran from 1951 on, was the same in which “Amahl and the Night Visitors” had premiered nearly two decades earlier. The title role was played by the American actor and singer Johnny Whitaker.
products in other media. Charles Tazewell, The Small One: A Christmas Story (Philadelphia, PA: Winston, 1947), recorded by the singer and actor Bing Crosby in 1955, and adapted by the Walt Disney Company as an animated feature in 1978. The Little Gray Donkey, about the beast of burden that carried Mary to Bethlehem, was recorded by the singer and television host Tennessee Ernie Ford, with music by the Roger Wagner Chorale. The Littlest Stork, narrated in 1952 by the actor Joan Crawford, with music by the composer André Previn. Last, The Littlest Snowman, winner of the Thomas Edison Prize for best children’s story of 1956, was recorded later by Bob Keeshan—an actor and producer best known as Captain Kangaroo, the title character in a television program extremely popular with American children, during the nearly three decades in which it aired from 1955 through 1984.
posthumously. For example, we have The Littlest Tree in 1997, The Littlest Uninvited One in 1998, and The Littlest Red Horse in 1999.
a 1955 article. Shirley M. Carriar, “Christmas Story Project—a Junior High Unit,” The English Journal 44 (1955): 469–72, at 469: “‘The Juggler of Notre Dame’ (a favorite religious story emphasizing the value of gifts given in love), The Littlest Angel (a modern tale on the same theme, popular among adults and children, appealingly recorded by Loretta Young), and The Small One (another recent narrative recorded by Bing Crosby).”
The Little Drummer Boy. The ditty has its roots in a song entitled “Carol of the Drum,” with music and lyrics by Katherine K. Davis. This original was written and first printed in 1941: “Carol of the Drum: For Chorus of Mixed Voices” (Boston, MA: B. F. Wood Music Co., 1941). From 1958, “The Little Drummer Boy” was printed under the names of Davis, Simeone, and Henry Onorati, with either Simeone’s or Davis’s name in first place: “The Little Drummer Boy: S.A.T.B. or S.A., with Piano Accompaniment” (Delaware Water Gap, PA: Shawnee Press, 1958). The “Carol of the Drum” may come in turn from a Czech folk song.
The piece has been a staple of Christmas playlists on the radio and in related media since 1955. In that year, the Trapp family recorded it as “The Carol of the Drum.” The song became a hit when recorded and released in 1958, as rearranged by Henry Onorati and produced by Harry Simeone. The best-known version, based on the composition by Katherine K. Davis as arranged by Onorati and Simeone, was released by the Harry Simeone Chorale annually from 1958 through 1962, entitled “Little Drummer Boy.” It has been sung by many others, including Bing Crosby, both solo and, a month before his death, in a 1977 duet with the rock star David Bowie in a modified form known as “The Little Drummer Boy/Peace on Earth.” In 1968, the story recounted in the song, despite being diaphanously slim in its narrative fabric, was made into an animated television special, and in 1989 into a holiday classic in the form of stop-motion animation known as claymation.
The ox and lamb. The Davis lyrics differ from the Trapp and later versions in only a single word: they have “The ox and ass kept time” instead of “The ox and lamb kept time.”
unable to speak. From Latin infans, literally “not speaking.”
Stanzas on the Life of Christ. Originally entitled Coplas de Vita Christi, the piece was composed in at least three stages between 1467 and the editio princeps of 1482. Its heterogeneous contents incorporate romances, hymns, and various other genres. This long poem was the principal work of the Franciscan Friar Íñigo de Mendoza (not to be confused with Íñigo López de Mendoza y Zúñiga, the first Marqués de Santillana). Friar Íñigo was a favorite of the Catholic kings, and a major figure in Castilian poetry of the late Middle Ages.
pastoral Nativity play. In Spanish, the play could be (and has been) called Auto pastoril navideño. For an edition and Italian translation, see Íñigo de Mendoza, Coplas de Vita Christi, ed. and trans. Marco Massoli (Messina, Italy: D’Anna, 1977), 163–74 (stanzas 122–57). A more widely available edition of the key stanzas 127–41 is Ana Maria Álvarez Pellitero, ed., Teatro medieval (Madrid: Espasa calpe, 1990), 91–104. For interpretation, see Charlotte Stern, “Fray Iñigo de Mendoza and Medieval Dramatic Ritual,” Ηispanic Review 33 (1965): 197–245, esp. at 198, 204–7, 236–37, 244. At 237n99, Stern provides information on processions with accompanying dance that took place in the Canary Islands in the 1940s.
Mingo. Or Minguillo.
His gift can be compared. W. O. E. Oesterley, The Sacred Dance: A Study in Comparative Folklore (New York: Macmillan, 1923), 22–23.
New Mexico. Winfred Ernest Garrison, “A Surviving Mystery Play: Primitive Religious Drama on the American Frontier,” Journal of Religion 7 (1927): 225–43, reported witnessing a version performed by amateurs in Santa Fe and the nearby Las Vegas (at that time twin municipalities, both in New Mexico and distinct from the city in Nevada) on evenings preceding Christmas in 1906 and 1907. They could have been along the lines of a medieval mystery play, representing Bible stories with song, about the reaction of the shepherds to the Nativity.
he has no possessions to offer. Garrison, “Surviving Mystery Play,” 229 (for the translation quoted), 238 (for information on the dates of the performances): “I am the poorest of all. I have neither sheep nor wheat, / But only a gift of song and nimble dancing feet. / So may I dance in thy honor, and make a song in thy praise? / The steps and the notes are gone when I cease, but my heart’s devotion stays.”
biblical name. Tubal, after a son of Japheth in Genesis 10.
Why the Chimes Rang. The story, the creation of Raymond MacDonald Alden, is also known through the theatrical adaptation Why the Chimes Rang: A Play in One Act by Elizabeth Apthorp McFadden (New York: Samuel French, 1915).
may still serve well. The bestselling author Paulo Coelho has posted a short version in which the leading player has the family name Burkhard, and the venue is Melk Abbey, overlooking the Danube River in Austria. “Christmas Tale: Our Lady’s Juggler,” source http://paulocoelhoblog.com/2016/12/24/christmas-tale/, trans. James Mulholland.
tensions between the two extremes in the debate flare up. At least since the early 1970s, contention has centered upon the holding of yuletide assemblies, singing of carols, display and decoration of trees, and even less obviously religious practices and trappings. Thus far, the courts have not intervened to settle the legal issues, which relate to fundamental constitutional rights. John Aquino, “Can We Still Sing Christmas Carols in Public Schools?,” Music Educators Journal 63.3 (November 1976): 70–73; Gilda Drotman, “Take the Crisis Out of Christmas,” Learning 2.3 (November 1972): 62–63; John M. Hartenstein, “A Christmas Issue: Christian Holiday Celebration in the Public Elementary Schools Is an Establishment of Religion,” California Law Review 80.4 (July 1992): 981–1026; Charles J. Russo and Ralph D. Mawdsley, “December Dilemmas: The Celebration of Christmas in American Public Schools,” Education and the Law 13.4 (2001): 381–87.
war on Christmas. For the fullest treatment, see now Gerry Bowler, Christmas in the Crosshairs (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017).
Notes to Chapter 5
Suitable for Children
the question has been posed recently. See Paul Bretel, “Le Jongleur de Notre-Dame, un miracle pour enfants?” in Grands textes du Moyen Âge à l’usage des petits, ed. Caroline Cazanave and Yvon Houssais, Annales littéraires de l’Université de Franche-Comté, vol. 869, série littéraires, vol. 23 (Besançon, France: Presses universitaires de Franche-Comté, 2010), 277–97, repr. in Bretel, Littérature et édification au Moyen Âge: “Mult est diverse ma matyre,” Essais sur le Moyen Âge, vol. 56 (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2012), 477–96.
reminiscences of his own childhood. Guillemette Tison, “France, Anatole,” in DLJ, 381.
a famous private school in the United States. The institution in question is Shady Hill School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
“play book”. Katharine Taylor (director of the Shady Hill School from 1921–1949) and Henry Copley Greene, The Shady Hill Play Book, illus. Harold R. Shurtleff (New York: Macmillan, 1928), 95–97 (introduction), 98–102 (English play), 103–7 (French play), 107–8 (references and Latin chant).
the original was far above average. “Its clarity and its naïveté are incarnate in the poem” (p. 95).
for reading aloud. Juan José Arreola, Lectura en voz alta, Sepan cuantos—, vol. 103 (Mexico City, Mexico: Porrúa, 1968, 11th ed., 1991) 44–48: “El juglar de nuestra Señora.”
major author of the literary scene in Mexico. A biography of him by his son bears a title that begins with a common Spanish epithet meaning “The Last Jongleur”: see Orso Arreola, El último juglar: Memorias de Juan José Arreola (Mexico City, Mexico: Editorial Diana, 1998).
master of minstrelsy. In the original Spanish, mester de juglaría. The title alludes to a column that Arreola published under this name in El Búho in 1988–1989.
Jorge Salazar. Often known for short as Jors. The caricature is printed in Juan José Arreola: 1992, ed. Jorge Orendáin (Guadalajara, Mexico: Editorial Universitaria, 2005), facing the table of contents.
his top 100. Antonio Robles [Antonio Joaquín Robles Soler], Rompetacones y 100 cuentos más (Heelbreaker and One Hundred Other Stories), Nueva biblioteca pedagógica, vol. 2, 3rd ed. (Mexico City, Mexico: Oasis, 1968), 5 (for the table ranking), 8 (with the identification of Anatole France as the ultimate source), 83–85 (retelling of the story).
charm, simplicity, and diminutiveness. France, Our Lady’s Tumbler, trans. Wicksteed, vii: “Difficult as it is to convey the charm of so slight a thing, we cannot but feel that Mr. Wicksteed has successfully turned into Nineteenth Century speech the simple Old World diction of this diminutive story.”
sent a photograph of herself. Sacha Guitry, If Memory Serves: Memoirs of Sacha Guitry, trans. Lewis Galantière (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran, 1935), 293. The memoirist quotes from his diary for November 15, 1931. On Guitry, see Ddi, 472–73; on Anna de Brancovan, countess of Noailles, see Ddi, 849.
Madame Arman de Caillavet. Jeanne Simone Maurice Pouquet, Le salon de Madame Arman de Caillavet, ses amis, Anatole France, comdt. Rivière, Jules Lemaître, Pierre Loti, Marcel Proust (Paris: Librairie Hachette, 1926).
cheerlessly bound booklet. Pullen, “Our Lady’s Juggler,” 41–44. This retelling, based at least indirectly on Anatole France, ends with the moral (voiced by the prior), well suited to children anxious about Christmas gift-giving: “Who gives his all with love in his heart, his gift is accepted.”
An article that appeared a year after the initial publication. “The University School Laboratory,” Educational Research Bulletin (The Ohio State University Elementary School and Kindergartens) 14.5 (May 15, 1935): 124–43, at 136, “All of the girls enjoy the use of scarfs in interpreting these ideas. A few of the boys use them although the majority of the boys prefer a more vigorous interpretation, as Morris dancing. The girls especially like to dramatize such abstract ideas as ‘religion,’ ‘suffering,’ and ‘fear.’ Both boys and girls enjoy rhythmic interpretation of stories such as ‘The Juggler of Notre Dame.’” The exact significance of “rhythmic interpretation” is not immediately transparent.
Violet Moore Higgins. The Little Juggler and Other French Tales Retold (Racine, WI: Whitman, 1917), 7–34 (see Fig. n.10). Before marrying, she published under the name Violet Moore. Having attended the Art Institute in Chicago in the early 1900s, by 1916 she had become an artist distinguished for writing and illustrating more than a dozen children’s books and simply illustrating even more.
The Noel Candle. Higgins, Little Juggler, 70: “And so, forever after, they and all their descendants, have burned a candle in the window on the eve of Noel, to light the lonely Christ-child on his way.” The book would have made a fine Christmas gift: relatively early in its long life, one surviving copy acquired on one of the first pages a sticker that reads “Health: Christmas 1924,” on another the handwritten words “Xmas 1924.”
The frontispiece in this more upscale edition contains one curiosity. The little juggler is portrayed, with his six copper balls on his knees, before the image of the childless Virgin. The Madonna has prominently below her niche a candelabrum that bears an uncanny resemblance to a Hanukkah menorah with candles (see Fig. n.11). This multibranched candleholder anticipates by a few years the one on the cover of the Wicksteed translation of Our Lady’s Tumbler as printed privately by Stanford Briggs, Inc. in 1923 (see Fig. 1.53 p. 49).
Making the protagonist more youthful. Higgins, Little Juggler, 9.
a juggler and a dancer. The author may have been exposed not only to Markham’s poem, but also to either a translation of Our Lady’s Tumbler from the original medieval French poem or a performance of Massenet’s opera with Mary Garden.
Downsizing the Juggler
Did you ever hear of a little juggler. “Fascinating Legend Revived in Massenet’s Coming Opera,” New York Times, August 16, 1908.
a large-format children’s book. José María Souvirón, El juglarcillo de la Virgen, illus. Roser Bru (Santiago, Chile: Difusión Chilena, 1942). Bru, a Chilean artist, produced the artwork for this project while still a college student, not even twenty years old. The story is divided into four sections, each one headed by a Roman numeral.
twelve years old, more or less. Roughly seventy-five years have elapsed, and the author has been dead for more than forty. At such a remove, we cannot know for certain the author’s reasons for making the lead character this age.
A short prelude. The preamble, presumably by the writer, is printed on the inside of the front cover. On the following page, the author dedicates his effort to his two children, aged nine and six. The translation is mine.
full of naïveté. In Spanish, ingenuidad.
critic and professor. Born in Malaga, in 1923 he joined in the founding of the short-lived literary magazine Ambos in his hometown. He belonged to the Generation of ’27, an influential group of Spanish poets.
published profusely in Chile. The first of many books composed, edited, or translated by him to appear from Chilean presses came out in 1932.
he had settled there. He served as a professor at the Catholic University in Santiago, and he became a close friend of Pablo Neruda, the Chilean poet and diplomat.
His children’s book found its way into print. The press was Editorial Difusión Chilena, which operated during the war years.
gone back permanently to his homeland. There he held a professorship at the Instituto de Cultura Hispánica in Madrid.
a Madrid newspaper. ABC (November 18, 1956): 13–17. This newspaper, founded as a weekly, has been published in Madrid since 1903. In this version, the dedication to his children remains, although they would have been twenty and seventeen, but the preamble has fallen by the wayside. The unexpurgated text is printed as prose. Two illustrations and a closing vignette are dropped, and the other illustrations are presented more according to the dictates of compressed space than the precise flow of the narrative.
Other children’s versions. To offer only a partial list, we have books by Violet Moore Higgins, Barbara Cooney, and Katherine Evans, as well as the pop-up, The Little Juggler, with text by Carol Schwartz and illustrations by Marcia Ramsey.
an alleged folktale of the juggler. Rock and Balit, Saintly Tales and Legends, 29. The notes explain: “Variations of this legend are told in France and Italy”; see p. 95. In this case, influence is likely from Tomie dePaola, author of a version to be discussed later in this chapter. The giveaway is the Italian setting. All the same, the story manifests independence in its narrative, most particularly in the motif that the statue of an infant Jesus cradled by Mary catches one of the balls tossed by the little entertainer.
pop-up book. Schwartz, Little Juggler.
Lilliputian format. 75 × 62 millimeters (2 15/16″ × 2 ⅜″).
Maryline Poole Adams. Adams is her married name; she was née Poole. She may be known best to the larger public as the mother of Timothy Hutton, an actor and director.
her private press. Poole Press, located in Berkeley, California.
Matryoshka: Russian Nesting Dolls. (Berkeley, CA: Poole Press, 1993).
Song of the Wandering Aengus. William Butler Yeats, Song of the Wandering Aengus (1998). 2 7/8″ × 2″, crewel embroidered cloth boards, decorative slipcase in the shape of a fishing creel, hand-colored illustrations throughout.
her version of our story. The entire product amounts to only thirty-two pages, printed on double leaves. The printing, binding, and hand-colored illustrations were all the work of Poole Adams.
imaginative in both physical composition and literary content. The book won a prize from the Miniature Book Society in its annual competition: see Frank J. Anderson, A Catalog of the 2004 Miniature Book Society Exhibition ([Cincinnati, OH]: Miniature Book Society, 2004), p. 9.
Two parts. Examined from a bird’s-eye view, the spine and covers look like a squared S. Each segment has text that starts at the outside and finishes at the middle, where they share what would be a back cover if they were not bound together as conjoined twins. The volume, in full green morocco, fits within an accompanying slipcase, covered in marbling that resembles what was often found on the endpapers of nineteenth-century books. It was published during the years of Timothy Hutton’s second marriage (2000–2009), to the Frenchwoman Aurore Giscard d’Estaing, a children’s book illustrator.
An imagined journal. In French, Jongleur de Notre-Dame: Un journal imaginaire à propos de la legende ancienne.
presented in the first person. According to narrative theory, the technique of presenting a narrative from the perspective of an individual character is “focalization.” In this case, the story is focalized through the boy juggler.
a collector’s item. The edition was limited to 45 copies.
American Children’s Literature
Massive retrenchment is inevitable. Schwartz, Little Juggler.
Mary Fidelis Todd. The Juggler of Notre Dame: An Old French Tale; Retold and Illustrated (New York: Whittlesey House, McGraw-Hill, 1954). The hero is here named John.
many forms had been written. She provides this information in a note on the back of the title page.
Saint Catherine Labouré. Mary Fidelis Todd, Song of the Dove: The Story of Saint Catherine Labouré and the Miraculous Medal (New York: Kenedy, 1957).
you must be my Mother now. The wording differs, but only trivially, in the English of Joseph I. Dirvin, Saint Catherine Labouré, of the Miraculous Medal (New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, Inc., 1958), 14–17.
two episodes. On the night of July 18–19 and during meditation on November 27, 1830.
no formal schooling. She did receive the fundamental catechesis that came in advance of her first communion.
Mary’s attire and coiffure. Dirvin, Saint Catherine Labouré, 98–99: “A white veil covered her head, falling on either side to her feet. Under the veil her hair, in coils, was bound with a filet ornamented with lace, about three centimeters in height or of two fingers’ breadth, without pleats, and resting lightly on the hair.”
design that was revealed to her. The obverse would picture the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception standing, with arms open and extended, and with bundles of luminous rays issuing from her hands, to symbolize the Grace that she obtains for humankind. This side of the medallion was to bear an inscription entreating Mary of the Immaculate Conception to pray on behalf of those who resort to her. The reverse would display a capital M surmounted by a small cross, above the sacred hearts of Jesus and the Mother of God.
more than 100 million circulated. René Laurentin, Catherine Labouré et la médaille miraculeuse: Documents authentiques, 1830–1876 (Paris: Lazaristes, 1976), 56.
for fledgling Latinists. The author was a Latin instructor appointed in 1940 at Phillips Academy. This famous private boarding school in Andover, Massachusetts has existed since 1778.
the version in this primer. John K. Colby, Lively Latin: Stories for the First and Second Years (Andover, MA: Published by the author at Phillips Academy, 1954; New York: Longman, 1971), 37–38 (text), 66 (notes). The selection is one of thirty-two for schoolboys. The text, two pages in length, is supplemented by short notes and vocabulary. The stories were used in mimeographed form in classes at the preparatory school over several years before being printed as a book.
the protagonist is a juggler. His standard equipment for performing is six balls.
Caldecott Medals. This distinction is awarded annually by the American Library Association to honor the best US illustrated book for children.
one of the Canterbury Tales. Her version, entitled Chanticleer and the Fox, retells an episode from the medieval cycles of stories about Reynard the Fox. The artwork of Chanticleer and the Fox (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1958) is by Cooney, but the text is not her work; it is adapted from the English in The Canterbury Tales of Geoffrey Chaucer: A New Modern English Prose Translation, trans. R. M. Lumiansky (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1948). Whereas Katharine Lee Bates proceeded from a poetic form of Our Lady’s Tumbler to her redesign of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales for children, Cooney followed the opposite trajectory. First, she adapted a tale by the grandest of medieval English poets, and then she tried her hand at the story of the juggler.
A reviewer praised her. Virginia Haviland, Horn Book Magazine 34 (December 1958): 463.
her second picture book. Cooney, Little Juggler.
She professed. Barbara Bader, “Barbara Cooney,” Horn Book Magazine 76 (2000): 520–27, at 520: “The answer is that I love stories.” Cooney deposited the drawings and illustrations for The Little Juggler in the Kerlan Collection of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.
the modern reception. About it, she commented, “The legend has been written often and in many ways.” The foreword of the 1982 edition (“A Word about This Book”) is on p. 5 (counting backwards from the first numbered page).
a preparatory expedition to France. Barbara Cooney, “The Spirit Place,” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 9.4 (Winter 1984–1985): 152–53.
a simile lifted from the medieval French poem. Paul Bretel, ed. and trans., Le jongleur de Notre-Dame, Traductions des classiques du Moyen Âge, vol. 64 (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2003), 83, lines 159–60.
a Spanish author. Souvirón, El juglarcillo de la Virgen.
The style she chose. Her own version was scratchboard, in one and four colors. This technique requires the artist to use sharp tools to cut into a thin layer of ink-coated clay. To achieve more than one color, multiple layers of the substance may be used: the depth of the etching determines the color of clay revealed.
This tendency. Maria Nikolajeva and Carole Scott, How Picturebooks Work (New York: Routledge, 2006), 62.
she resolved to name her son. Cooney, Little Juggler, 5: “I decided to name my next child, if it were a boy, after the little juggler.”
his mother fused. In another sign of such hybridization, she concludes the story by recounting and illustrating how the Virgin Mary fanned the tumbler with a white napkin. In the French short story of the late nineteenth century, the character is a juggler, and the Madonna ministers to him with the edge of her blue mantle.
later authors. Like her, Pleasant DeSpain, who published his refashioning of “The Little Juggler” more than four decades later, acknowledged that his first exposure to the tale came through hearing a radio broadcast. Yet he cited as his main sources printed texts by Ruth Sawyer and Cooney: DeSpain, Tales of Holidays, 80–81. In 1968, a female storyteller singled out “The Little Juggler” as her most loved story. Although also a devotee of Sawyer’s telling, she identified Cooney as having written the best among “all the many and varied versions” of “The Little Juggler” to which she had been exposed: Gwendella Thornley, “Storytelling is Fairy Gold,” Elementary English 45 (1968): 67–79, at 69. Later still, Bob Hartman gave credit to Cooney for motivating his iteration of the narrative, which is likewise entitled “The Little Juggler”: Hartman, Lion Storyteller Christmas Book, 114–16. Julie Walters capped her Advent: A Family Celebration, 124–26, with “The Little Juggler of Notre Dame,” based once again upon Cooney’s book. Walters presented Cooney’s own form of the miracle as having itself relied on “an old French legend known as ‘The Juggler of Notre Dame.’”
The reach of Cooney’s reshaping has been stretched geographically, since it has been brought out with the texts translated into both Korean and Japanese but with the artwork unaltered. See Barbara Cooney, Kkoma kogyesa: P’urangsu yet chonsol, trans. Mi-rim Yi (Waegwan, Korea: Pundo Ch’ulp’ansa, 1987); Chīsana kyokugei-shi Bānabī: Furansu ni tsutawaru ohanashi, trans. Chieko Suemori (Tokyo, Japan: Suemori, 2006; Gendaikikakushitsu, 2014).
Louis Untermeyer. The Firebringer and Other Great Stories: Fifty-Five Legends That Live Forever, illus. Mae Katharine Gerhard (New York: M. Evans, 1968), 207–10 (“The Little Juggler … and the Virgin”). On the artist, see “Mae Gerhard of Philadelphia,” American Artist 22.9 (1958): 48.
a booklet. Hayes, Wise Little Burro, 41 (“This was one of the most popular stories with minstrels and troubadours in medieval France”); the text of the story, 27–32. Of the seven tales, five are set at Christmas, and three even put the name of the holiday in their titles. In his notes on the stories, the author refers to the 1978 picture book by his fellow American, the prolific and influential children’s storybook creator Tomie dePaola. Even so, Hayes clarifies that the piece originated not in Italy (where the Italian-American dePaola placed it) but in France. The storyteller, who often focuses on the folklore of the American Southwest, also realizes that the account can be traced back to the Middle Ages. At the same time, he embroiders the popularity of the narrative then (at least as it can be gauged by the number of extant manuscripts).
The Acrobat & the Angel. Shannon, Acrobat & the Angel.
the version of our story by Henri Pourrat. In a note on the copyright page, Mark Shannon identifies the story as a French folktale from the twelfth or thirteenth century. He acknowledges that he took his little hero’s name from the version of the tale in Henri Pourrat, French Folktales from the Collection of Henri Pourrat, selected by C. G. Bjurström, trans. and with an introduction by Royall Tyler (New York: Pantheon, 1989), 36–41.
Gawain and the Green Knight. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1994 (see Fig. n.13). The title proclaims how beholden they are to the fourteenth-century romance, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The medieval English alliterative poem has itself been thought by some to be indebted to folklore for various narrative elements: see Frederick B. Jonassen, “Elements from the Traditional Drama of England in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” Viator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies 17 (1986): 221–54; Claude Luttrell, “The Folk-Tale Element in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” Studies in Philology 77 (1980): 105–27. Regardless, it begins memorably on Christmas day. In the background of one opening in the Shannons’ version, two unnumbered pages depict an acrobat standing on one hand, a juggler juggling torches, and a musician running a bow across the strings of an odd instrument with two bellies and two sound holes.
incorporate picture books and novels. Nancy Polette and Joan Ebbesmeyer, Literature Lures: Using Picture Books and Novels to Motivate Middle School Readers (Greenwood Village, CO: Teacher Ideas Press, 2002).
The plague and many other hardships. Polette and Ebbesmeyer, Literature Lures, 25–26.
European Children’s Literature
first into children’s newspapers. We saw that in 1923 Anatole France’s text was reprinted in the illustrated periodical for youngsters, Chanteclair 18.176 (1923). In 1925, the story was likewise included in a Belgian illustrated review for young readers with a title that means “Youth” in French: La Jeunesse 5.34, August 20, 1925: 5–6. In this latter instance, the original author’s name was omitted or suppressed. The explanation may lie in religious authority: in 1922, the entire oeuvre of this author had been registered on the Catholic Church’s Index of Prohibited Books.
A French-language weekly newspaper intended for Catholic children aged 11 to 14 had a title that could be translated into English as “Brave Hearts”; see Thierry Crépin, “Cœurs vaillants,” in DLJ, 202–3. It was founded in 1929 by the Union des œuvres catholiques de France, as part of a broader popular movement for Catholic youth known as Cœurs vaillants–Âmes vaillantes. In 1930, the periodical began distributing in France the print syndication of The Adventures of Tintin, created by the Belgian cartoonist Hergé. A featured story in one 1930 number (May 4) tells of none other than our jongleur de Notre Dame. The cover shows at the top a line of nine lancets above the title, and at the bottom the performer with an enormous halo juggling before the Virgin. The story, with a different version of both text and art, was again displayed noticeably in no. 22, June 1, 1961: 22–23.
indistinct and historically inaccurate. Florence Plet, “Le jongleur, portrait de l’artiste en clown,” Études de lettres (2001): 37–64.
A children’s movie made in France. Le jongleur de Notre-Dame, color, 17–19 minutes and 27–30 minutes, France, 1965, produced by Stephano Lonati, Italo Bettiol, and Françoise Bettiol. The actions of the marionettes are supported by a voiceover, alongside music. The film was directed by Pierre Rémont. The French text, by Maurice Genevoix, was read by Jean Rochefort, and the music was by François de Roubaix. The US version was produced by Thomas Craven. The story is listed elsewhere as having been produced by the same team, with the addition of Rudi Briel, but at 26 minutes, Canada, 1980. The soundtrack has been put into other languages, such as English, Spanish, and Italian.
The motif of the flower. Gautier de Coinci has two miracles in which a flower blooms in the mouth of a dead man: Les Miracles de Nostre Dame, book 1, miracles 15 and 23.
The Madonna’s Juggler. In Italian, “Il giocoliere della Madonna” (1976). The artwork was created by this comic book artist from Italy, while the text was composed by his wife, Laura (née De Vescovi) Battaglia, for the monthly magazine Messagero dei ragazzi (Children’s herald). The story has been reprinted often in collections bearing various titles, such as Dino Battaglia, Uomini, donne e santi, ed. Giovanni M. Colasanti (Padua, Italy: EMP, 1979); Orient Express, special 1, “Omaggio a Dino Battaglia” (Milan, Italy: L’Isola Trovata, 1983), 58–64; and Dino Battaglia, Leggende (Grumo Nevano, Italy: Grifo, 2004), 35–41.
fairy tales. An example of such a fairy tale-like story would be that of Aladdin, a Middle Eastern folk tale that has come to be allied with The Book of One Thousand and One Nights. For brevity’s sake, the collection just mentioned is designated here as Arabian Nights.
children’s books. The volumes include the 1883 adventure novel Treasure Island (serialized, 1881–1882) by the Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson, and the 1904 fantasy Peter Pan by the Scottish author J. M. Barrie.
classic novels and short stories. The classics encompass the 1851 Moby Dick by the American novelist Herman Melville, and stories by the American writer Edgar Allan Poe, the French short story writer Guy de Maupassant, and many others.
the ring from her finger. The motif is reminiscent—in reverse—of stories in which a man becomes betrothed to a statue of a woman by placing his ring upon her finger. See Theodore Ziolkowski, Disenchanted Images: A Literary Iconology (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977), 18–77.
hagiographic yearbook. Max Bolliger, Die schönsten Heiligenlegenden, illus. Ute Thönissen (Freiburg, Germany: Herder, 2008).
set at Noel. For example, Max Bolliger, Das Weihnachtswunder: Eine Geschichte, designed by Ulli Wunsch (Eschbach, Germany: Verlag am Eschbach, 2014).
The Way to the Stable. Illustrated by Arcadio Lobato (Edinburgh, UK: Floris Books, 1999).
the Christmas fool. The story was published first in a volume entitled Der Weihnachtsnarr: Drei Weihnachstlegenden für Kinder und Erwachsene, ed. Bruno Bischofberger (Zurich: Artemis, 1982). It has been reprinted often since then in German, by itself first as Der Weihnachtsnarr: Ein Weihnachtsgeschichte, illus. Gianni De Conno (Zurich: Bohem, 2004).
the Italian translation. I tre doni del giullare, trans. Donatella Mazza (Padua, Italy: Bohem, 2003).
Jacob the Juggler. Max Bolliger, Jakob der Gaukler: Nach einer französischen Legende aus dem 13. Jahrhundert, illus. Štěpán Zavřel (Zurich: Bohem, 1991). The story, including the frontispiece and title pages, comprises twenty-six unnumbered pages, all of them with color illustrations. The book has been translated into Italian, French, Dutch, Korean, and Japanese, as well as four dialects spoken in Friuli (including Bagnarola, Frisanco, and Montereale). See https://web.archive.org/web/20180129021435/http://www.castellodibrazza.com:80/spazio-brazza/il-museo-artistico-stepan-zavrel/libri-illustrati-e-premi-vinti. In all the translations, the illustrations have remained unmodified. The volume has been put belatedly into English: Jacob the Juggler, trans. Jan M. Ziolkowski (Trieste, Italy: Bohem, 2018), with an afterword by Ziolkowski.
Jacob. In German, the name is Jakob.
once upon a time. In German, Es war einmal.
Štěpán Zavřel. He emigrated to Italy in 1959. In 1968, he put down roots in the small village of Rugolo, located in the Veneto, and remained there until his death. In 1971, Zavřel cofounded the Zurich-based publishing house Bohem Press, which published the book.
the style of woodblocks. Here the medium is water-colored woodcut and silkscreen (a technique known equally as screen printing or serigraphy), as well as color linocut, which allows for both sharpness and intensity. The preparatory artwork for Jacob the Juggler stands out for its excellence in the illustrator’s corpus. It makes good sense for one of the pieces to feature on the cover of the official guidebook to the museum of his art located in the Castello di Brazzà. See Marina Tonzig, L’arte racconta: Guida al Museo artistico Štěpán Zavřel (Brazzacco di Moruzzo, Italy: Leonardo, 2011), 44.
Barnaby the Jongleur. Elena Wullschleger Daldini, Barnaba il giullare: Una leggenda medievale, illus. Fiorenza Casanova (Bellinzona, Switzerland: Casagrande, 1996). A televised version of the same story achieved modest success under the title Il giullare di Nostra Signora (a coproduction of SSR, A. Mondadori Publishers, and Polivideo). Produced with the help of Grytzko Mascioni and Mohammed Soudani, with original music by Andreas Pflüger, and directed by Manuela Crivelli, it was broadcast early on Christmas evening.
Helena Olofsson. Her name in full is now Helena Olofsson-Heshmat Pasand.
The Little Jester. Helena Olofsson, Gycklarpojken (Stockholm: Rabén & Sjögren, 2000). The Swedish original was followed a year later by a translation into Danish: Gøglerdrengen, trans. Vibecke Sandberg (Copenhagen, Denmark: Thorup, 2001). Two years later came an English version: The Little Jester, trans. Kjersti Board (Stockholm: R & S Books, 2002). The initial elements in the Swedish and Danish compound nouns are cognate with French jongleur and Latin ioculator.
smiles. The same motif appears in the final line of Vincent Arthur Yzermans, Our Lady’s Juggler (St. Paul, MN: North Central, 1974), 16.
Marian Atlas. Wilhelm Gumppenberg, Atlas Marianus, sive, De imaginibus Deiparae per orbem Christianum miraculosis, 2 vols. (Ingolstadt, Germany: Typis Georgii Haenlini typographi academici, 1657).
definitive edition of 1672. Wilhelm Gumppenberg, Atlas Marianus: Quo sanctae Dei genetricis Mariae imaginum miraculosarum origines duodecim historiarum centurijs explicantur (Munich, Germany: Typis & impensis, Ioannis Iaecklini, 1672). On the project, see Naïma Ghermani, “Zwischen Wunder und Vernunft: Der ‘Atlas Marianus’ des Jesuiten Wilhelm Gumppenberg,” Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung 40.2 (2013): 227–55.
a Madonna painted on the wall. Gumppenberg, Atlas Marianus (1672), 441–43, no. 334.
a basilica was built. Anna Benvenuti, ed., Santa Maria delle Carceri a Prato: Miracoli e devozione in un santuario toscano del Rinascimento (Florence: Mandragora, 2005).
contrast of repentance with laughing. On the theme of repentance, see Jean Charles Payen, Le motif du repentir dans la littérature française médiévale, Publications romanes et françaises, vol. 98 (Geneva: Droz, 1967).
history of the circus. This paragraph follows scrupulously the explanation and interpretation provided in a letter sent in a personal communication from the author, dated August 8, 2017.
Tatiana von Metternich. Der Gaukler der Jungfrau Maria: Eine Legende in Versen nach altenglischen Motiven erzählt und illustriert (Wiesbaden, Germany: Modul, 1999). She was born a Russian princess, called Tatiana Hilarionovna Vassiltchikova. Her family fled Russia after the 1919 Revolution. After living in France, England, and Lithuania, she settled in Germany. Later, she married a half-Austrian and half-Spanish aristocrat, Paul Metternich, great-grandson of the famous diplomat who steered the Congress of Vienna to its conclusion and thus shaped Europe after the Napoleonic wars. On her life, see Tatiana Metternich, Fürstin von Metternich-Winneburg, Tatiana: Full Circle in a Shifting Europe, 2nd ed. (London: Elliott & Thompson, 2004).
Maria’s Juggler. Alberto Benevelli, Il giocoliere di Maria, illus. Manuela Marchesan (Cinisello Balsamo [Milan], Italy: Edizioni San Paolo, 2005).
a high school textbook. André Lagarde and Laurent Michard, Moyen Âge: Les grands auteurs français du programme, Collection textes et littérature, vol. 1 (Paris: Bordas, 1962), 108–10.
The Notre Dame Tumbler. In French, “Le Tombeur Notre-Dame.”
Christian marvelous. The established French phrase is merveilleux chrétien.
a fiction by a writer. Jacqueline Mirande, Contes et légendes du Moyen Âge (Paris: Nathan, 1995), 89–95. On this author, see Raymond Perrin, “Mirande, Jacqueline,” in DLJ, 665–66. The prose sports three illustrations by André Juillard, best known as a comic book artist. For close analysis of both the text and illustrations, see Bretel, “Le Jongleur de Notre-Dame, un miracle pour enfants,” 282–84.
moral or edifying tales. In French, contes moraux ou édifiants.
The Divided Horse Blanket. In French, “La housse partie.”
A third volume. Caecilia Pieri, Il était une fois. Contes merveilleux, vol. 1. (Paris: Flammarion, 2004), 87–101, with the story proper on 90–94.
fairy-tale world. “Once upon a time there was a fantastic world divided between the forces of good and of evil. Inhabited by good fairies and inhumane giants, by talking animals and animate objects, it accorded frightful ordeals to noble heroes and beautiful princesses. To overcome them, they had to be wily and to muster all their mettle. In the end, they would perhaps attain happiness.”
marvelous tales. In French, contes merveilleux.
wonder tales. Somewhat paradoxically, the term “wonder tale” is associated above all with the Soviet-era folklorist Vladimir Propp.
The narrative from the thirteenth century is labeled specifically. Pieri, Il était une fois, 87, 89, 100.
Global Children’s Entertainment
Robert Heinlein. He selected it for inclusion in the collection by Spider Robinson, The Best of All Possible Worlds (New York: Ace Books, 1980).
Spanish Fascist Party. Emilio Pascual, “Sánchez-Silva y Marcelino,” Lazarillo: Revista de la Asociación de Amigos del libro infantil y juvenil 1 (2000): 8–28.
Marcelino Bread and Wine. The Spanish Marcelino pan y vino was published in English as Miracle of Marcelino, trans. John Paul Debicki (Chicago: Scepter, 1963).
the Franco regime in Spain. Jessamy Harvey, “Death and the Adorable Orphan: Marcelino pan y vino (1954; 1991; 2000),” Journal of Romance Studies 4 (2004): 63–77.
Spanish-language film. Directed by the Hungarian Ladislao Vajda.
lived on in various media. Francisco Manuel Valiñas López and Roberto Cuadros Muñoz, “Marcelino pan y vino: Visiones literarias y cinematográficas de un milagro,” in El franciscanismo en Andalucía: Conferencias del VII Curso de Verano el arte franciscano en las catedrales andaluzas (Priego de Córdoba, 31 de julio al 5 de agosto de 2001). Conferencias del VIII Curso de Verano (Priego de Córdoba, 22 al 26 de Julio de 2002), ed. Manuel Peláez del Rosal (Cordoba, Spain: Obra Social y Cultural, 2003), 1: 229–42.
a crust brought by a boy. Stith Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk-Literature: A Classification of Narrative Elements in Folktales, Ballads, Myths, Fables, Mediaeval Romances, Exempla, Fabliaux, Jest-Books, and Local Legends, 6 vols., 2nd ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1955–1958), 5: 149 (Q 172.1).
offers bread to a statue. The tale is classified (or “typed”) as type 767 “Food for the Crucifix,” in ATU, 1: 424. The most important medieval references are Guibert of Nogent, De pignoribus sanctorum, book 1, chap. 2, ed. PL 156 (1853): 607–80, at 617B–D; Walter of Compiègne, De miraculis beatae virginis Mariae, chap. 3, ed. PL 173: 1379–86, at 1383C–84A; Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum historiale, book 8, chap. 99 (Nürnberg: Anton Koberger, 1483), unpaginated. Additional citations may be found under this number in other indexes constructed on the ATU model, such as Ralph S. Boggs, Index of Spanish Tales: Classified According to Antti Aarne’s Types of the Folktale, Translated and Enlarged by Stith Thompson in FF Communications, No. 74, FF Communications, vol. 90 (Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1930), 90 (Alfonso X, Songs of Holy Mary of Alfonso X, the Wise: A Translation of the “Cantigas de Santa Maria,” trans. Kathleen Kulp-Hill, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, vol. 173 [Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2000], 429–30, no. 353); Julio Camarena Laucirica and Maxime Chevalier, Catálogo tipológico del cuento folklórico español, vol. 3: Cuentos religiosos (Madrid: Centro de Estudios Cervantinos, 2003), 147–48; María Jesús Lacarra, Cuento y novela corta en España (Barcelona: Crítica, 1999), 253–54. The principal motif in the tale is Thompson, Motif-Index, 5: 149, Q 172.1.
For further information, see Johannes Bolte and George Polívka, Anmerkungen zu den Kinder- und Hausmärchen der Brüder Grimm, 5 vols. (Leipzig, Germany: Dieterich’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1913–1932), 3: 474–77, 4: 464; Agata Sobczyk, Les jongleurs de Dieu: Sainte simplicité dans la littérature religieuse de la France médiévale (Łask, Poland: Oficyna Wydawnicza Leksem, 2012), 74, 240–43; Joseph Szövérffy, “A Medieval Story and Its Irish Version,” in Studies in Folklore, in Honor of Distinguished Service Professor Stith Thompson, ed. W. Edson Richmond, Indiana University Publications: Folklore Series, vol. 9 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1957), 55–65 (with many additional listings at n13); Gábor Tüskés and Éva Knapp, “Kruzifix gefüttert,” in EdM, 8: 517–21.
Philippines and Japan. The film has been remade repeatedly in an international Catholic context: a Philippine remake in 1979; an Italian-Spanish-French coproduction, Marcellino, in 1991; in animated form in a Spanish-Japanese-French collaboration, Marcelino pan y vino, in 2000; a Philippine television series, May Bukas Pa, in 2009; and a Mexican remake in 2010.
Folktale or Faketale?
it will some day be as familiar. The tale came close to attaining such fame and permanency. In 1982, it was included in a set of four filmstrips, each with an accompanying sound cassette, that was published under the title Christmastime Treasures (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1982). The four selections were “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” “The Gift of the Little Juggler,” “The Story of Silent Night,” and “The Little Match Girl.” They were targeted at children aged six to eight. The abstract reads: “A tale of making the best of what is available—in Barnaby’s case, talent and love. The story proves that the best gifts are given from the heart.”
his intended. Her maiden name was Elsie Moll. Their engagement ran from December 1908 to September 1909.
Once upon a time. Letter 139 to Elsie Moll, December 8–9, 1908, in Letters of Wallace Stevens, ed. Holly Stevens (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966), 112–15, at 114; The Contemplated Spouse: The Letters of Wallace Stevens to Elsie, ed. J. Donald Blount (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2006), 110–13, at 112. In the Stevens material of the Huntington Library, this letter is WAS 1795.
other later versions. Examples include Violet Moore Higgins’s English in 1917, Pieri’s French in 2004, and Max Bolliger’s German in 2007.
Once-upon-a-Time Saints. Ethel Marbach (Pochocki), Once-upon-a-Time Saints: Faith-Tales for Children, illus. Victoria Brzustowicz (Cincinnati, OH: St. Anthony Messenger Press, 1977), 59–61, at 60. This version figured prominently in the whole collection, since the illustration accompanying it was reproduced on the cover. The story apparently met a need in the market, because it was reprinted in 1996 and later, with different illustrations: see Ethel Pochocki, Once upon a Time Saints, illus. Tom Matt (Bathgate, ND: Bethlehem Books, 1996), 22–25.
anthology of French folktales. Ernst Tegethoff, Französische Volksmärchen, Die Märchen der Weltliteratur, vol. 21, 2 vols. (Jena, Germany: Eugen Diederichs, 1923), 1: 97–99, 310 (“Aus älteren Quellen”).
its frequent inclusion. Under the title “Der Tänzer unserer lieben Frau,” it is included in Ré Soupault, Französische Märchen, Märchen der Welt (Zurich: Buchclub Ex Libris, 1963), 29–32 (the medieval tale retold), 319 (a densely packed quarter page of notes—but be warned that the citations are both frustratingly imprecise and only loosely relevant). The tale also formed part of the repertoire in Karl Rauch, Der Zaubervogel: Märchen aus Frankreich (Freiburg, Germany: Herder, 1963). Once again under the title “Der Tänzer unserer lieben Frau,” it was among those stories from Rauch’s initial collection later subsumed within Märchen aus Frankreich, den Niederlanden und der Schweiz, ed. Karl Rauch, trans. Ursula Rauch, illus. Eva Raupp-Schliemann (Gütersloh, Germany: Bertelsmann, 1976), 81–82 (text), 83 (illustration). This later volume was reprinted frequently under various imprints. In it, the translations are presented, without further specification, as being based on old copies (“alte Vorlagen”) in French. Karl Rauch was a publisher and writer, who in 1923 founded a press named after him.
Suggested Readings. Corinne Brown, Suggested Readings for a Course in Children’s Literature ([Cedar Falls, Iowa: Dannevirke Printing Co.], 1918), fourth unnumbered page of text.
fresh names. Thus, his jongleur is a Hungarian called Georges, who is the proud possessor of an Assyrian horse known polysyllabically as Téglathphalazar (or Phalazar, for short). The entertainer enters an unspecified monastery after the death of his little nephew, Frédéric.
the sweetest blessings will come from her. “As for you, my dear children, imitate worthy Georges in offering the Holy Virgin the best of your actions. Do you study? Study your best in honor of the Virgin. Are you learning a trade? Learn it then the best possible to bring pleasure to the Holy Virgin. Still being very small, do you just run errands? Do them the most perfectly you can, always in honor of the Holy Virgin. And so, likewise, in all your actions, that it may be always to pay homage to the Holy Virgin. Even in your games and recreations, play well in her honor. If you do well then in everything, as perfectly as possible in this objective, you will see, the Holy Virgin will load you up with her sweetest blessings” (pp. 107–8).
The Way of the Storyteller. New York: Viking Press, 1942.
In a 1966 version. Marcella Marie Holloway, The Little Juggler: A Miracle Play with Music, music by John Joseph Bezdek (London: Samuel French, 1966). The quotation appears on p. 3.
Sawyer’s own proximate source. In fact, she went so far as to declare: “Those who have ever seen a production of the Jongleur of Notre Dame will never forget it. I have tried to put something of the loveliness of the opera into this arrangement for storytelling.” Sawyer, Way of the Storyteller, 232.
substantiably oral in origin. Sawyer, Way of the Storyteller, 232–33: “Here is an old story, told by French mothers to their children for many centuries.” The tale is also mentioned in Marie L. Shedlock, The Art of the Story-Teller, 3rd rev. ed. (New York: Dover, 1952), 141, and is included in John Harrell and Mary Harrell, A Storyteller’s Treasury (Berkeley, CA: Harrell, 1977).
Sawyer’s hold on subsequent practitioners. Apart from her own direct influence, a family factor enters the picture. Her daughter married Robert McCloskey, an American writer and illustrator of children’s books. If only his mother-in-law had supplied the right sort of encouragement, his most famous creation might have been a legendarily duckling-less Make Way for Jugglerlings.
The Little Juggler by Katherine Evans. Katherine Evans, author and illustrator, The Little Juggler, Christian Child’s Stories (Milwaukee, WI: Bruce, 1960). Fourteen years earlier, the same children’s book illustrator had illustrated Charles Tazewell’s The Littlest Angel, a Christmas story that we have seen relates in its general conception to The Juggler of Our Lady.
The Treasury of Tales. Henri Pourrat, Le trésor des contes, 13 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1948–1962).
The Fairies. The French text is to be found in what has become the standard edition, Henri Pourrat, Les fées, ed. Claire Pourrat (Paris: Gallimard, 1983), 233–39. Edited by his daughter, the volume contains reproductions of many woodcuts from early modern printed books, often (as with “Le Péquelé”) only loosely related to the contents of the tales they accompany.
Le Péquelé. The name is not attested as a substantive in the dialect of the Auvergne. To be more precise, it is not recorded in either Pierre Bonnaud, Nouveau dictionnaire général français-auvergnat (Nonette, France: Créer, 1999), or Karl-Heinz Reichel, Grand dictionnaire général auvergnat-français (Nonette, France: Créer, 2005). It would appear to be a pejorative related to a French noun péquenaud (also spelled péquenot or pecnot), denoting a simple or brutish peasant.
Gaspard of the Mountains. In French, Gaspard des montagnes.
in 1931. Henri Pourrat, Les vaillances, farces et gentilesses de Gaspard des montagnes: La tour du Levant, ou, Quand Gaspard mit fin à l’histoire, roman (Paris: A. Michel, 1931). For this, this man of letters was honored by a French postage stamp in 1987.
He has even been described. Gisèle Sapiro, La guerre des écrivains, 1940–1953 (Paris: Fayard, 1999), trans. Vanessa Doriott Anderson and Dorrit Cohn, The French Writers’ War, 1940–1953 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014), 275 (for the quotation), 495.
His method. Anne Collinot, “Pourrat, Henri,” in DLJ, 764.
revitalizing the French spirit. Jack Zipes, The Brothers Grimm: From Enchanted Forests to the Modern World (New York: Routledge, 1988), 96–108, at 99; 2nd ed. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 135–151, at 139.
a childlike stage. Elizabeth Emery, “Le Berceau de la littérature française: Medieval Literature as Storytelling in Nineteenth-Century France,” in Telling the Story in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honor of Evelyn Birge Vitz, ed. Kathryn A. Duys et al., Gallica, vol. 36 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2015), 219–35.
Tomie dePaola’s The Clown of God
The Clown of God: An Old Story. A DVD (Scholastic, Weston Woods Studios, 2002) entitled The Tomie dePaola Library comprises three stories, namely, “Charlie Needs a New Cloak,” “Strega Nona,” and “The Clown of God” (runtime: ten minutes). “The Clown of God” has also been included as the first of two bonuses on a DVD entitled The Night Before Christmas … and More Christmas Stories (Scholastic, Weston Woods).
first adapted for the stage. Theatrical adaptation by Thomas W. Olson, with music composed and orchestrated by Steven M. Ryberg, and with visual design consultation by dePaola himself. This reworking was presented in a very successful production by the Children’s Theater Company in Minneapolis; this regional theater featured the play in the 1980–1981 season. DePaola’s version was animated in 1982 by Weston Woods Studios in a very simple ten-minute form, intended for children from kindergarten through third grade.
Strega Nona. Her name derives from Italian words for “witch” and “grandmother,” though the second is normally spelled nonna.
Early in his career. Barbara Elleman, Tomie dePaola: His Art & His Stories (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1999), 59.
in art school. DePaola was at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York.
the instructor. Her name was Jill Johnston.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s. DePaola happened to be in San Francisco.
Because of her distinction. She had prominence for having won a Caldecott Medal for “most distinguished American picture book for children” in 1959.
dePaola himself won recognition for one of his books. His Strega Nona was cited as a Caldecott Honor Book.
a list drawn up in the 1920s. This is likely to be Brown, Suggested Readings, fourth unnumbered page of text (from 1918 rather than the 1920s).
a one-sentence-long compression of the story. The reference must have been to the Latin exemplum.
the piece by Marguerite Yourcenar. The tale is the first of ten in Marguerite Yourcenar, Oriental Tales, trans. Alberto Manguel (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1985), 3–20. The French original, Nouvelles orientales, was published in 1938. Master Wang’s cognomen Fo tags him as an aspiring Buddha, since Fo means “the Buddha.”
an old juggler named Giovanni. DePaola returned to a protagonist (this one a little boy) who clowns in Jingle, the Christmas Clown.
the good saint has often been styled. DePaola wrote first Francis: The Poor Man of Assisi (New York: Holiday House, 1982), and later The Song of Francis (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2009).
As a junior in college. Tomie dePaola, Christmas Remembered (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2006), 42–63.
an apparition of the Virgin. New York: Holiday House, 1980. This was the only such appearance of Mary to receive Church approval between the Middle Ages and the nineteenth century.
Mary: The Mother of Jesus. New York: Holiday House, 1995.
resembles medieval representations. Elleman, Tomie dePaola, 62–63.
the marketing power of late December. Beyond the titles that have been enumerated already, his 1983 tale about the magi and his 1984 one about the first Noel hold true to this pattern: see The Story of the Three Wise Kings (New York: Putnam, 1983) and The First Christmas (New York: Putnam Juvenile, 1984). The list could be lengthened considerably by taking subsequent books by him into account. Also relevant is his nostalgic presentation of Christmases in his own life, from 1937 on, in Christmas Remembered. Most of the illustrations in the last-mentioned volume are of Noel settings without human beings in them, but in one vignette, dePaola presents black-robed monks standing in the chapel of the Weston Priory in Vermont, before the crèche figures he fashioned of the Virgin and Child during his sojourn there.
either the Virgin herself or an image of her. For the distinction, see Margaret Read MacDonald, The Storyteller’s Sourcebook: A Subject, Title, and Motif Index to Folklore Collections for Children (Detroit, MI: Neal-Schuman, 1982), 366 (cf. V92 and V92.01.1*).
an oral folktale of Italian origin. See Rock and Balit, Saintly Tales and Legends, 29–34: “The Little Juggler: A Folk Tale.” Hartman, Lion Storyteller Christmas Book, 114–16, does not claim the story to be Italian in origin, but despite acknowledging direct indebtedness to Barbara Cooney’s version, he includes it in a section that he identifies at the beginning (p. 75) as “Christmas tales and legends … handed down from generation to generation.”
Old English motifs. Metternich, Der Gaukler der Jungfrau Maria, title page and 5.
the dance of the sixes. In Spanish, el baile de los seises. Despite the name, there are never now so few as six, but actually ten little performers who kick up their heels.
this ritual. The fullest accounts of the practice are probably Simón de la Rosa y López, Los seises de la Catedral de Sevilla (Seville, Spain: F. de P. Díaz, 1904); Juan Moraleda y Esteban, Los seises de la catedral de Toledo (Toledo, Spain: A. Garijo, 1911); Pierre Jobit, Le ballet des six (el baile de los seises), Collection hispanique, vol. 5 (Paris: Tambourinaire, 1954). The most succinct introduction in English can be found in J. B. Trend, “The Dance of the Seises at Seville,” Music & Letters 2.1 (January 1921): 10–28. For more recent reviews of the evidence, see E. Louis Backman, Religious Dances in the Christian Church and in Popular Medicine, trans. E. Classen (London: Allen & Unwin, 1952), 77–85; Lynn Matluck Brooks, “Los Seises in the Golden Age of Seville,” Dance Chronicle 5 (1982): 121–55.
Cantigas de Santa María. Manuel Serrano y Ortega, Glorias sevillanas: Noticia histórica de la devoción y culto que la muy noble y muy leal ciudad de Sevilla ha profesado a la inmaculada concepción de la Virgen María desde los tiempos de la antigüedad hasta la presente época (Seville, Spain: E. Rasco, 1893), 732.
Henri Pourrat. For the English of a sampling from the Trésor des contes, see Pourrat, French Folktales, 36–41.
another American author. Sue Stauffacher, The Angel and Other Stories, illus. Leonid Gore (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002), 7–13. Stauffacher has a note (p. 74) to indicate “the tales collected here have ancestors that date back to the 14th and 15th centuries.”
packaged as adolescent fiction. For a consideration of how the medieval past is treated in such texts, see Rebecca Barnhouse, Recasting the Past: The Middle Ages in Young Adult Literature (Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 2000).