The Madman’s Library (Simon and Schuster, 2020) by Edward Brooke-Hitching was built for browsing. It’s a sort of Ripley’s Believe It or Not for the book-minded and documents freaks not of nature but of a bibliophilic nature. The subtitle says it all: The Strangest Books, Manuscripts and Other Literary Curiosities from History. The illustrations are wonderful, the text nearly always negligible. Here is the caption for my favorite picture in the book, spread across two pages:
“He-Gassen (literally: ‘Fart
Competitions’) is a Japanese scroll of the Edo period (1603-1868) by an unknown
artist, depicting characters exercising flatulence against each other, likely
as satire.”
By my count there are
thirteen such competitions illustrated, some conducted on horseback. The gas
emissions are depicted as geometrically precise isosceles triangles of
smoke-like gray.
A single sentence is the
exception to the general blandness of Brooke-Hitching’s prose: “The British politician
Augustine Birrell (1850-1933) found Hannah More’s works so boring that he
buried the complete nineteen-volume set in his garden.”
More was a prolific poet
and moralist on the margins of Dr. Johnson’s circle. Boswell in his Life
recounts an evening in 1781 when Johnson tells a story about a “very
respectable authour” who married a printer’s devil, an apprentice in the trade.
Sir Joshua Reynolds says: “‘A printer's devil, Sir! Why, I thought a printer’s
devil was a creature with a black face and in rags.’” Johnson replies, “Yes,
Sir. But I suppose, he had her face washed, and put clean clothes on her. (Then
looking very serious, and very earnest) And she did not disgrace him—the woman
had a bottom of good sense,” and Boswell continues:
“The word bottom
thus introduced, was so ludicrous, when contrasted with his gravity, that most
of us could not forbear tittering and laughing, though I recollect that the
Bishop of Killaloe kept his countenance with perfect steadiness, while Miss
Hannah More slyly hid her face behind a lady's back who sat on the same settee
with her. His pride could not bear that any expression of his should excite
ridicule, when he did not intend it; he therefore resolved to assume and
exercise despotick power, glanced sternly around, and called out in a strong
tone, ‘Where's the merriment?’”
For reasons aesthetic
and ecological I endorse Birrell’s notion of burying boring books in
the garden.
The Cleveland Museum of Art owns (or owned) a similar illustrated Japanese scroll. It tells the story of a peasant who produces uniquely musical flatulence. In successive illustrations, we see how he performs for progressively more august company, until finally, he is called to perform for the emperor himself. Unfortunately, when the peasant bends over in front of the emperor, instead of the expected music, he emits a fountain of diarrhea that sprays over the court. The scroll was the cause of great merriment among the younger set in my day, but I haven't looked for it lately.
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