|
|
|
Last week I brought up the name of William Butler Yeats, the Irish poet who was quoted by President Bush in a speech. Something bothered me about Yeats’s name though. It always had. There was a connection of some sort to something else that I kept missing. This time the light broke through. Of course! “Yeats” reminded me of Keats, and that was what had been floating around in the back of my mind. Keats was a poet too, maybe the greatest in English since Shakespeare, making me realize that what I had really wanted to do all these years was to compile an anthology which would be called “Poetry from Keats to Yeats”.
This would blaze new trails in publishing. I could see other anthologies coming out in emulation, “Poetry from Dante to Bronte”, “Nursery Rhymes from Mother Goose to Dr. Seuss”, the possibilities are endless. So what if some soreheads complained that the whole thing made no sense. Who’d listen to them when I had discovered a way of making anthologies on a whole new plan never tried before? The dogs bark but the caravan moves on.
Naturally the train of thought above led me to consideration of the sad end of John Keats, who died of consumption at the age of 26. I couldn’t help thinking that if he had been William Butler Keats instead of just plain John, he might have lasted longer. There’s something about a name like that that gives a man strength, that gives him standing in the community. It’s not the kind of name whose owner is suddenly snatched away from us in the flower of his youth. Consider the following, all writers we encountered in grammar school, all of whom died in their beds at a ripe old age: Oliver Wendell Holmes: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; John Greenleaf Whittier; James Russell Lowell: James Fenimore Cooper: Harriet Beecher Stowe ; et al.
Obviously these triple names served each as a charm to ensure long life and happiness. People with names like that just don’t succumb until they’re good and ready. They’re too important. In addition these names served another purpose.
All these folks were American writers of the first half of the nineteenth century. At that time the reputation of American writers was below sea level in the cultural capital of the world, England. Americans were considered to be barely literate, and the thought of any of them writing something that a civilized person would consider reading was beyond the scope of anyone’s imagination.
This all changed with the arrival of books by the heavies named above. Names like these demanded consideration. Not even royalty in England had three names, even though they had titles, which were better. Without a title, though, an Englishman had only two names and was clearly outranked by someone with three, each containing at least two syllables for a total of six or eight.
The Americans moved in in force. Cooper was the first with his ‘Last of the Mohicans’ and other frontier fantasies, Longfellow was received by Queen Victoria, and mobbed for his autograph by her staff, Mrs. Stowe shook up the country with “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, and America had arrived. But England wasn’t about to be taken over so easily. The Empire would strike back.
Seeing what the three-name gimmick had done for the Yanks, the upper class took counsel and adopted countermeasures. In the future high-born Englishmen would have three names too. Only theirs would be joined by a hyphen, meaning that not one, but two important families had joined hands to create the name bearer. The American middle names didn’t necessarily mean this. They might refer to the mother’s family, but then again they might not. The middle name could be something taken out of a book, or from a friend, or from nowhere at all. The English middle name, with its hyphen, wasn’t a middle at all, but a family name which couldn’t be omitted like the American entry but had to be used in its entirety for proper identification. In due time names like Royde-Smith, Sackville-West, Baden-Powell, Bonham-Carter and countless others made their appearance and served their purpose of overawing the natives. They were something brand new in England, not having been known before the nineteenth century. But they put the Old Country back on top in the race for social glory.
Interestingly, Shirley Temple, who came of two important British families, the Shirleys and the Temples, would have been known in England as the Hon. Jane (or something) Shirley-Temple, eldest dtr. of Sir Henry, etc., etc. Luckily she was born here and didn’t have to suffer this handicap to her career.
As a kid in school I wasn’t aware of all these ramifications, but I did know that the Longfellows and the others were a big deal and not to be taken lightly. I mean, just their names took up space enough for any two of my classmates. Nobody in my neighborhood called himself Patrick Fogarty Flanagan or Umberto Salvatore D’Amico or Irving Goldberg Fishman for that matter. Even the president of the United States called himself Franklin D. Roosevelt and only trotted out the “Delano” on special occasions.
As for the neighborhood, well our most famous resident was content with only two names. This was Vito Bartolomeo, who was no longer among the living, but was a real presence to everyone who attended Sunday Mass at St. Anthony’s. Vito, it seems, was a foresighted fellow who had left the church money for masses to be said in perpetuity for the salvation of his soul. So every Sunday. along with the other announcements it was announced that Mass that Tuesday would be said for the repose of the soul of Vito Bartolomeo.
Without exaggeration, this went on for years. Vito’s name became a household word throughout the parish. People moved in, moved out, and moved in again, and Vito went on being prayed for. There was some murmuring about this. Surely to God, said the old ladies, Vito is in heaven by this time, or he’s never going to make it. But the terms of his will continued to be observed and the masses went on. Even the priests were said to believe that enough was enough, but so far as I know, that didn’t stop anything. Vito was still being memorialized when I moved out of the neighborhood in 1958. There was a book lately popular called “The Five People You’ll Meet in Heaven”. I’ve no need of it.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
