Reminiscences of Levi Coffin, the Reputed President of the Underground Railroad

Reminiscences of Levi Coffin, the Reputed President of the Underground Railroad by Levi Coffin

It is said that historians consider Reminiscences of Levi Coffin, published in 1876, to be one of the best firsthand accounts of the Underground Railroad. Coffin was born in what is now Greensboro, NC in 1798, so he was raised in the antebellum South and observed the evils of slaveholding first hand. As an adult he first moved to Indiana and then later to Ohio. In each location, while he did not try to help slaves escape, when he encountered escaped slaves who needed assistance, shelter, food, and clothing, he saw it as his Christian duty to provide the help his fellow humans needed. He did this quite openly and gained quite a reputation with the result that his home became such a major refuge that people started calling him the President of the famous Undergroud Railroad that helped escaping slaves reach safety. Even the famous book Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe used Levi and Catherine Coffin as models for the Ohio couple Simeon and Rachael Halliday who help the escaping slave Eliza after she crossed the Ohio River. It is estimated that over 3,000 escaping slaves received assistance from Levi and his wife Catherine.

Coffin was a warehouse manager and for 10 years he worked at developing a business of selling free goods, goods from the South that had not been produced with slave labor. In doing this he was not contributing to the establishment of slavery, promoted the Southerners who produced thier products with their own labor, and provided a source for goods free of the taint of slavery. However, he could not find the quantities and quality of goods to make the business profitable and had to give it up. In this section of the book, Coffin tells of his trips to the South to establish relations with free goods producers and his discussions with slave owners he meets in his travels.

Much of the book is taken up with the stories of individuals and groups of slaves who came to him for help in the years before the Civil War. On his trips to visit black communities in the North and Canada he met with many of the people he helped to freedom and reports on how they established themselves and their families.

During the Civil War his focus shifts to providing supplies and assistance to the camps of freed slaves behind the Union Army lines. In a single year he raised more than $100,000 for the Western Freedman's Aid Society which went to provide food, clothing, money, and other aid to the newly freed slave population in the United States west of the Appalachian Mountains.

Today almost everyone knows of Oskar Schindler, the German industrialist who is credited with saving the lives of 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust, but very few know of Levi Coffin, who helped around 3,000 slaves to freedom. He is a man who deserves much greater recognition thatn he has received.

The Life and Times of Emile Zola

The Life and Times of Emile Zola by F. W. J. Hemmings

This is an excellent biography of one of France's greatest authors. Hemmings follows through Zola's life, showing how personal and societal events tie into the publications he was writing at the time. This makes the book especially useful to someone who has already read Zola's works, but will be of interest to those who want to use this to get acquainted with the author and his works. Although written almost 50 years ago, the scholarship holds up well. Having read most of Zola's novels and short stories in English translation, I found this to be a great way to reminisce about the life and works of one of my favorite authors.

Tantrum

Tantrum by Jules Feiffer Tantrum is a 1979 black and white graphic novel about a 42 year old married father of two teenagers named Leo who is facing a midlife crisis. His life has no meaning, no mystery, no excitement. During a particularly bleak moment he wills himself back to the age of two so that he can play, be pampered, and get piggy back rides. Only he finds out that the rest of the world doesn't have the time or interest to oblige. As he goes to each person in his life, they all disappoint him in one way or another. Each is caught up in their own concerns and have little or no attention for Leo and his need to be nurtured. Feiffer's black and white line drawings are wondederfully expressive, and his story telling is richly complex as Leo and all the people he confronts reveal their own inner turmoils and concerns.

The Gates Ajar

The Gates Ajar by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

The Gates Ajar is an 1868 novel that was immensely popular following its publication soon after the American Civil War where so many men had been killed. In diary format, it tells the story of Mary Cabot, who is mourning the death of her brother Royal who was shot dead in the war. Their parents are deceased, and Mary is unable to find sympathy and relief from anyone. She is on the verge of losing her religious faith and giving in to despair when her widowed aunt Winifred Forceythe fortuitously arrives from Kansas with her daughter Faith. Through their conversations, recorded in Mary's journal Winifred offers an inspiring image of heaven that gradually restores her niece's faith. I have wanted to read this novel for a long time since I first heard of it and have finally found the time. The image of the afterlife portrayed in the novel is based upon selected readings of Christian sources, and appears very comforting to those in the novel. However, that is not the important part of the work for me. It is a wonderful story of two women bonding together to help each other through difficult times.

Lucille

Lucille by Ludovic Debeurme

Lucille is a French coming of age graphic novel about an anorexic girl and a suicidal boy who find love for each other in their uniqueness. The first part of the book is depressing in it's description of how these young people became so seriously troubled. This is followed by an uplifting middle as they find meaningful companionship despite their problems. Illustrated with black and white line drawings that are expressive despite their simplicity.

Life On Board A Yacht

Life On Board A Yacht by Anonymous

Life On Board A Yacht is an erotic novel with a publication date of 1908 whose authorship has been attributed to George Reginald Bacchus. It tells the story of a voyage on the yacht Water Lily owned by Sir Reginald Seacombe, the heir to a brewery fortune of several million pounds who has spared no expense on his ship. The Water Lily has fifty cabins and a crew of 40 men. It is outfitted in the finest style.
The novel is narrated by the male secretary to Count X..., who has been invited along with seven other male guests on a cruise starting from the port of Cannes with a destination of "Turkish waters". Eight lady guests are companions to Sir Reginald and his seven friends. Three belong to the "demi-monde" (what we would call escorts today), and two are Parisian actresses. The remaining three are a dressmaker's seamstress/model and two of her friends, the youngest of whom is 17.
Once the ship sets sail, and the men and women are paired up, a series of orgiastic evening events take place with the author describing scenes of rape and physical abuse. Reading this today, I can't help but thinking of descriptions of Jeffrey Epstein's yacht parties with underage sex slaves available for the use and entertainment of his guests.
The Introduction is written by C.J. Scheiner, the author of The Encyclopedia Of Erotic Literature, and contains some interesting history on the publication of this book. This edition is a photo reproduction of the original text which has terrible typesetting and numerous misspellings, supposedly because the book was printed in "France, Holland, or Belgium" to avoid censorship from the non-English local police. Not recommended reading, except for those interested in Victorian/Edwardian male sexual fantasies and erotica.

Phoebe Daring

Phoebe Daring by L. Frank Baum

This is the second of a two-volume series that started with The Daring Twins, a story of how the twins restore their family's lost inheritance with the help of Toby Clark, a teen-age orphan. Toby broke his foot helping the Darings and walks with a limp as we begin this second which features the twin Phoebe. Her brother has gone off to college after the twins graduated high school in the first book.
In this second volume Toby is falsely accused of stealing money and papers belonging to Mrs. Ritchie, a widow who doesn't trust banks and stores her money as well as her papers with her lawyer Judge Ferguson in a locked box that he keeps with other such boxes in a secure cupboard. The orphan Toby has been taken on by the lawyer as a clerk. When the Judge dies and the box goes missing Mrs. Ritchie accuses him of taking her box.
When evidence of the theft shows up at Toby's little shack by the river and he is arrested, Phoebe decides to try to find out who is the real thief in order to free her friend. While it looks like Toby is being framed, the true extent of the situation is much more complex and takes all of Phoebe's resources to uncover the truth.
The book starts slowly and it was almost the middle of the book before I became caught up in the mystery of the stolen box. Baum wrote several girl detective mystery series and if you liked the others you may find this one interesting.

Saint Joan of Arc

Saint Joan of Arc by Vita Sackville-West

Vita Sackville-West (March 9, 1892 – June 2, 1962) was a successful novelist, poet, and journalist, who is most remembered now for her close friendship and relationship with Virginia Wolff. She was the inspiration for Wolff's androgynous Orlando. She published this book 15 years after Joan of Arc was declared a saint in the Catholic Church. So it is probably the first major biography of Joan published after her sainthood. In her Foreword she says "that Joan of Arc presented fundamental problem of the deepest importance" and whose "strange career... remains a story whose conclusion is as yet unfound."
What the author attempts to do is to gather all the first hand accounts, and to arrange Joan's story in roughly chronological order. When contemporary narratives differ on a point, she speculates as to what might be the truth. What I found most difficult in reading the book is that she quotes many of the sources in the original French, assuming her readers have a more than passing knowledge of the language. She also relates the story of Joan's guiding voices in a straightforward manner, not giving them a Divine or medical explanation.
I found the author related Joan's life in a sympathetic way that a female author could better provide than some of the male efforts to tell her story.

The Daring Twins

The Daring Twins by L. Frank Baum (1911) from The Reilly & Britton

L. Frank Baum is best known for his series of books about Dorothy Gale and the magical land of Oz that portrayed a truly American fairy tale. He also wrote series of books, mostly under pseudonyms, for children based on growing up in America at the beginning of the 20th Century. The 1911 novel The Daring Twins is the first of two novels that he published under his own name featuring the adventures of Phoebe and Phil Daring the oldest of five children who, once wealthy, become orphaned and penniless when their father dies soon after his business fails.

Phoebe and Phil are seniors in high school when the story opens. They, their three younger siblings, and and their black mammy Aunt Hyacinth are living with their comatose grandfather, his maid Elaine Halliday, in the grandfather's house which is across the street from their own mansion that had to be sold to pay their father's debts. Their grandfather and their father had been successful well-off members of the community but both lost their wealth and the future seems bleak for the family. Reprinted in 2006 as The Secret of the Lost Fortune, the story revolves around the cleverness of the twins in unravelling the mystery of how the wealth disappeared.

The story opens with a classic representation of a mammy, a stereotype common in the U.S. South at the beginning of the 20th Century of a black woman who worked in a white family and nursed the family's children. Mammies were idealized figures of caregivers: amiable, loyal, maternal, non-threatening, obedient, and submissive, showing deference to white authority and devoted to her employers. The mammy figure is rooted in the history of slavery in the United States. Twenty two years after Baum wrote this book the United Daughters of the Confederacy proposed the erection of a mammy statue on the National Mall. The proposed statue would be dedicated to "The Black Mammy of the South".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammy_archetype_in_the_United_States

Such a woman is Aunt Hyacinth, spending her own savings to take care of the five orphans, caring for them when no one else would. She is contrasted by Grandpa Eliot's caretaker Miss Elaine Halliday, who is commanding, threatening, mean, selfish, and cruel. Yet both are working in the same household and neither is getting paid, loyal to those in their care.

This is a delightful mystery book for children, marred by the racial stereotypes of the time.

Sherlock Holmes: The Adventure of the Dead Rabbits Society: The Lost Reminiscence of John H. Watson, M.D.

Sherlock Holmes: The Adventure of the Dead Rabbits Society: The Lost Reminiscence of John H. Watson, M.D. by Philip J. Carraher

I have a fondness for Sherlock Holmes in all his manifestations from the original A. Conan Doyle stories through Holmesian novels and series by various writers, as well as movies and television series featuring Sherlock. So I enjoyed this "lost reminiscence" that relates a story set in 1893 New York City.

Holmes is living in a New York men's boarding house under an assumed name as he hides from Moriarty's gang when he agrees to help a man who seems to be pursued by a murderer intent on killing him. The man wants Holmes to discover if it is his brother who is responsible for the attacks, as he doesn't want to get the police involved if it is a family matter. What Holmes discovers is much more involved than a sibling rivalry.

The novel is presented to the readers by the author as a manuscript found in 1999 by the Watson family, purportedly written by Holmes' companion Dr.John Watson and never published, but rather hidden at the bottom of a steamer trunk. If you are a fan of Holmesiana like me, then you may enjoy this complicated mystery with a wonderfully Holmesian ending.

Unexpectedly Eighty: And Other Adaptations

Unexpectedly Eighty: And Other Adaptations by Judith Viorst

I have grown old reading Judith Viorst's poetry on aging, one book every ten years (more or less) starting with When Did I Stop Being Twenty in 1987. Fortunately for me, Judith is two decades ahead of me so I can normally get her book relevant to my situation on the discount shelf of my local used book store. This is where I got Unexpectedly Eighty, published in 2010. While I am not eighty yet, I couldn't pass up the chance to see what Life has in store for me if I survive the COVID-19 Pandemic.
The book starts off with a quote from songwriter Gordon Jenkins: "Lingering sunsets, stay a little longer." In her eighties, Judith can see the end of life looming on the horizon, but is still enjoying the simple pleasures available to octogenarians. Always with a bit of humor and nostalgia, she looks at the situation in which she finds herself at this point in time. Of course, it is an upper middle class heteronormative life that she lives filled with grandchildren, an irritating but lovable husband, and middle-aged children who have little need of her.
I think her books appeal to me because they seem like guidance from an idealized American mother that I never had. My mother was an immigrant from what is now Ukraine and her guidance, while equally funny and insightful, was quite different and not always relevant to my life.

The Cartoon History of the Modern World Part 1: From Columbus to the U.S. Constitution

The Cartoon History of the Modern World Part 1: From Columbus to the U.S. Constitution by Larry Gonick

For many years I have been a big fan of Larry Gonick's cartoon nonfiction history books and guides to scientific subjects, so it is with great pleasure that I read (re-read?) his Cartoon History of the Modern World Part 1. He has a great way of simplifying and finding humor in historic topics. While this book does suffer from being male-centric, it is a problem shared by many survey histories of this period. I did find his description of the European wars with all the changing leaders of states and shifting alliances somewhat confusing, but I think that is the nature of things rather than his fault. Not being a historian, I cannot verify the accuracy of his treatment, but it is good for quite a few laughs.

The Good Soldier Švejk

The Good Soldier Švejk by Jaroslav Hašek

The Good Soldier Švejk is a satirical dark comedy of World War I that strongly reminded me of MASH and Catch 22 in their portrayal of the insanity and senselessness of war. Švejk is portrayed as a simple-minded but loyal Czech soldier who is always ready with a humorous anecdote, and the novel deals with his ineffectual attempts to get to the front without ever quite reaching it.
During World War I Austria-Hungary was a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual empire, and the novel is based on Hašek's service as a a Czech soldier in the Austro-Hungarian Army.
Originally planned as a six volume work, Hašek died while writing the fourth volume. It is the most translated novel of Czech literature. The translation by Cecil Parrott is into British English and reminds me of English language war movies with Germans all speaking with English accents. The work is dated and has a translation that sounds off to an American reader.