| Wynken, Blinken and Nod
by Eugene Field Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night
Sailed off in a wooden shoe,—
Sailed on a river of crystal light
Into a sea of dew.
“Where are you going, and what do you wish?”
The old moon asked the three.
“We have come to fish for the herring-fish
That live in this beautiful sea;
Nets of silver and gold have we,”
Said Wynken,
Blynken,
And Nod.
The old moon laughed and sang a song,
As they rocked in the wooden shoe;
And the wind that sped them all night long
Ruffled the waves of dew;
The little stars were the herring-fish
That lived in the beautiful sea.
“Now cast your nets wherever you wish,—
Never afraid are we!”
So cried the stars to the fishermen three,
Wynken,
Blynken,
And Nod.
All night long their nets they threw
To the stars in the twinkling foam,—
Then down from the skies came the wooden shoe,
Bringing the fishermen home:
‘Twas all so pretty a sail, it seemed
As if it could not be;
And some folk thought ‘twas a dream they’d dreamed
Of sailing that beautiful sea;
But I shall name you the fishermen three:
Wynken,
Blynken,
And Nod.
Wynken and Blynken are two little eyes,
And Nod is a little head,
And the wooden shoe that sailed the skies
Is a wee one’s trundle-bed;
So shut your eyes while Mother sings
Of wonderful sights that be,
And you shall see the beautiful things
As you rock in the misty sea
Where the old shoe rocked the fishermen three:—
Wynken,
Blynken,
And Nod.
"Wynken, Blinken and Nod” by Eugene Field. Public Domain. (buy now) It's the birthday of Austrian novelist and journalist Joseph Roth (books by this author), born in Brody, Ukraine (1894). He started out as a journalist just after the end of the First World War, and he began moving back and forth between Berlin and Paris, as well as Russia, Poland, Albania, Italy, and southern France. He covered the riots and assassinations and political uprisings that went on all over Europe during the 1920s and '30s. He rarely had a home in his adult life, and he lived in hotels for years on end. He wrote his novels in between newspaper deadlines, while sitting at café counters. He somehow managed to produce 16 novels in 16 years. He had one big hit novel, Job (1930), a modern retelling of the biblical story. Roth was inspired by his small success to try writing a big ambitious book, and the result was his masterpiece, The Radetzky March (1932), a historical novel about the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The book had just come out when Hitler came to power in Germany, and Roth had to flee the country. As a result, he lost his publishers, his newspaper employers, and his readers. Roth spent his last years in Paris, living in poverty and suffering from alcoholism. When he died in 1939, he was largely unknown as a writer. His last novel had been published in the Netherlands, and the Nazis destroyed the entire first printing of the book just after it had come off the presses. It took a long time for his work to be translated into English. Joseph Roth said, "We all overestimated the world." It was on this day in 1935 that George Gershwin officially completed the score for the opera Porgy and Bess. Nine years earlier, during tryouts for his musical Oh, Kay! (1926), Gershwin picked up the novel Porgy by DuBose Heyward. Set in the slums of Charleston, South Carolina, the book told the story of a crippled beggar named Porgy, a beautiful drug addict named Bess, and her abusive lover, Crown. Gershwin immediately envisioned it as an opera, and he wrote to Heyward asking if he wanted to collaborate. The novelist agreed, but not before he and his wife finished adapting the novel into a play, which had a new ending and became a hit on Broadway. The play became the basis for the opera. Gershwin intended to call the opera Porgy, just like the novel and play. For several years, the opera was put on hold as George and his brother Ira worked on other projects. Then Heyward wrote to Gershwin with a dilemma: he had received a request for the musical rights to Porgy from a famous white actor, who wanted to play Porgy in blackface and collaborate with a different composer and lyricist. Heyward preferred to work with Gershwin, but he had lost money in the stock market crash and was feeling desperate. He asked whether they could consider bringing the white actor into the project, but Gershwin was adamant that he wanted a black cast, and convinced he could make his own version of Porgy a success even if someone else beat him to it. The other version fell through and was never made. Gershwin kept hoping to find time to devote himself to the opera, which he called "a labor of love" — but he needed money, so he continued accepting smaller jobs that promised a decent cash flow. Finally, he found the break he needed: a lucrative gig hosting a radio show in New York, Music by Gershwin, which was sponsored by a laxative chewing gum called Feen-A-Mint. Gershwin became the target of plenty of jokes, but he said afterward that without Feen-A-Mint gum, there would be no Porgy and Bess. It took him almost two years to finish the opera — 11 months to write it and another nine months to do the full orchestration. About orchestrating, he wrote to his brother Ira: "It goes slowly, there being a million notes." While he was writing Porgy, Gershwin received a letter from a young soprano named Anne Brown. She was a star graduate student at Juilliard; she had heard that Gershwin was writing an opera and wanted an interview. At his request, she came to his apartment to sing for him. She brought music by Brahms and Schubert, and Gershwin played along as she sang. Then he asked her to sing a spiritual. Brown was offended and told him so — she didn't think black people should be expected to sing spirituals. He backed off, but she changed her mind and sang "A City Called Heaven" a cappella. Gershwin was so moved that he was speechless. Not long after that, he called Brown back, told her that he had written the first 33 pages of his opera, and asked if she would come over again and sing the role of Bess. From that point on, he wrote with her in mind, and she often came over to sing new parts for him. Before the show opened, he asked her to meet him a café for an orange juice, and told her that he had decided that her role was so important he was changing the name of his opera from Porgy to Porgy and Bess. Rehearsals for the opera began in August of 1935, before the finishing touches were put on the score. After the first day of rehearsals, the opera's director felt overwhelmed and depressed, but that night while he was in bed, he got a call from Gershwin, who said: "I always knew that Porgy and Bess was wonderful, but I never thought I'd feel the way I feel now. I tell you, after listening to that rehearsal today, I think the music is so marvelous — I really don't believe I wrote it!" Despite many positive reviews, Porgy and Bess was a commercial flop, running for only a few months and losing its initial $70,000 investment. The composer used his royalties from the opera to pay back the copyists who had prepared the score. Gershwin died unexpectedly of a brain tumor two years later. It’s the birthday of baseball pioneer Albert Goodwill Spalding, born in Byron, Illinois (1850). He was a pitcher for the National Association Boston Red Stockings from 1871 to 1875, then became a pitcher and manager of the Chicago White Stockings in 1876. In that same year, he and his brother founded the sporting goods company A.G. Spalding and Brothers. It’s the birthday of American humorist and newspaperman Eugene Field (1850) (books by this author), born in St. Louis, Missouri. Field claimed two birthdays, September 2 and September 3, telling friends if they forgot him on the first date, they could remember him on the second. Field is best known for his humorous, often sardonic poetry for children, like “Wynken, Blynken and Nod” and “The Gingham Dog and the Calico Cat.” Field’s mother died when he was six and his father sent him and his brother to Amherst, Massachusetts, to be raised by a cousin. Field was an exuberant, prankish boy who enjoyed whimsy. He had five chickens in Amherst and named them Winniken, Minniken, Finniken, Boog, and Poog. Fields had no patience for school and spent his youth in and out of boarding schools. He attended four colleges, studying acting and the law, without any success. His father died, leaving Field a small inheritance, which he spent every penny of during six months in Europe. By 1875, he was back in Missouri, writing for the Saint Joseph Gazette. He became enamored with a 14-year-old girl. When the girl’s father said she was too young to marry, Field replied, “She’ll grow out of it.” They married when she was 16, instead, and had eight children. For the rest of his life, whatever money he earned, he directed it be sent to his wife, because he knew he would spend it frivolously. Field wrote for newspapers in Kansas City and Denver before settling down in Chicago and writing a humorous column called “Sharps and Flats” for the Chicago Daily News, a position he would hold for the rest of his life. “Sharps and Flats” ran in the morning edition and featured Field’s cutting quips and observations about Chicago, which he called “Porkopolis,” because of its rampant materialism. He enjoyed comparing Chicago to Boston, once writing, “While Chicago is humping herself in the interests of literature, arts, and the sciences, vain old Boston is frivoling away her precious time in an attempted renaissance of the cod fisheries.” Field enjoyed teasing children, often making faces at them when adults turned their backs. The whimsical, somewhat mean-spirited humor in his book The Tribune Primer (1881) — which suggested that children pat wasps, eat wormy apples, and put mud in a baby’s ears — became sweeter and more nostalgic, as he aged. In “Wynken, Blynken and Nod,” a bedtime story, three children sail and fish among the stars from a boat that is a wooden shoe. The little fishermen symbolize a sleepy child’s blinking eyes and nodding head. The poem became an immensely popular fixture in the cultural lexicon. In the 1960s and ’70s, musicians like Cass Elliott, Donovan, and The Doobie Brothers all sang versions of the song, and in an early version of Lou Reed’s song “Satellite of Love,” the names “Harry, Mark, and John” are sung as “Wynken, Blynken, and Nod.” The three smokestacks at the Lansing Board of Water & Light in Lansing, Michigan, are known locally as “Wynken, Blynken, and Nod.” The popular video game Pac-Man (1980) features four ghosts to be avoided. Their names, “Blinky,” “Inky,” “Pinky,” and “Clyde,” are homage to Field’s poem. Field’s poetry became a staple of school primers throughout the 20th century. More than 30 elementary schools in the Midwest and Southwest are named for him. About reading, he said: “All good and true book-lovers practice the pleasing and improving avocation of reading in bed [...] No book can be appreciated until it has been slept with and dreamed over.” Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.® |
