The Atheist Utopian State of Delmarva
Posted on July 29, 2022 by Royal Rosamond Press
There is a blueprint for the formation of a NEW STATE called Delmarva. I propose a Deity-Free Fifty-first State of Secular beings, founded on the philosophy of Franciscus van den Enden. This state can be populated by Native American Atheists, or, by Atheist Anglos. How about a mixture of all peoples? As long as you are NOT RELIGIOUS, you can own or rent property in Delmarva.
Eureka! There was a Bohemian Czech Community in Balitmore. Fromond Delmarva will be a Contract State. To live there you sign agreement to Be Happy with what this Bohemian Culture has to offer. If you are not happy, then move to another State that can make you a better offer. I will invite Disney and Amazon to make a permanent home. There will be plenty of MAGIC for everyone!
The Sokol clubs are the Czech Turnverein.
John Free State
From the vault: Remembering Baltimore’s Czech community (baltimoresun.com)
History of Czechs in Baltimore – Wikipedia
SOKOL – all about (czechgallery.com)
Lady Ada Antionette Erasmus
Posted on August 14, 2021 by Royal Rosamond Press
I found this day The New Bohemian Puritan Church upon the union of Lady Erasmus, and Robert Wilson. The Evangelicals have launched a Catholic-like rebellion against a true Democracy that Pope Francis – must address! The Protestant Church of America is guilty of Popism, and must purge itself of Trumpism, the worst heresy ever to visit Christianity.
I have paid for the book on the descendants of John Wilson, my alleged great grandfather. John was the leader of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. I believe the Neo-Confederate Evangelical Traitors have put together a family tree that they want to rule America in the name of Jesus – with. I claim the history of all writers and artists that have had the name BOHEMIAN placed next to their name. Because my newspaper Royal Rosamond Press was founded in Eugene after the Miller Brothers, it is the foremost Bohemian Newspaper in the history of America. My fathers people immigrated from Bohemia. Bohemians have a long history of opposing Papal-like rule, something the Pranksters and Deadheads do not have a clue how to fight. How about Jack Kerouac and Ken Kesey? Did they author a great Bohemian Declaration before they died? How about Jack London who descends from Puritans?
John ‘The Puritan Prophet
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erkinger_I_von_Seinsheim,_Baron_of_Schwarzenberg
Lady Ada Antoinette Erasmus (1425–1460) • FamilySearch
The Life Summary of Ada Antoinette
When Lady Ada Antoinette Erasmus was born in 1425, in Cham, Bavaria, Germany, her father, Baron Erkinger IV. Eramus of Senshiem, 1st Baron von Schwarzenberg, was 63 and her mother, Princess Barbara von Abensberg, was 27. She married Sir John Robert Wilson II, Earl of Cuper, Burgess of Edinborough in 1445, in Canongate, Edinburgh, Edinburghshire, Scotland, United Kingdom. They were the parents of at least 6 sons. She died in 1460, in Cupar, Fife, Scotland, at the age of 35, and was buried in Liverpool, Lancashire, England, United Kingdom.
Cyber Czech Republic
Posted on August 14, 2018 by Royal Rosamond Press
Over four years ago I had an idea of contacting Amazon and creating a Cyber Brownsville Oregon. I have posted on forming the nation of Fromond. I am also set up to take over the Legends that J.R. Tolkien began in his books, that were inspired by William Morris. The Liberal Left needs to found an American Euro Union, a Bond that will last the ages, a Bond that will take on mutual foes.
If you become the Virtual Owner of a Bohemian castle via bidding, then you hold the title ‘Sheriff’. Your job is to settle disputes and solve virtual problems. You are sworn to protect your castle and lands from all enemies of Bohemia, such as, the twelve Russian army officers indicted by Mueller. Hunting down and capturing Russian Trolls, is a priority.
Czechs will be able to buy stock in Bohemian Hot Spots in the U.S. This is all in the planning stage. We will have our own Travel Agency and Hostels. We can have Space Exchange where Bohemian Travelers swap dwellings. I saw Gandalf as a Sheriff of the Shire. He is a Peacemaker. We Bohemians avoid war, but, will never back down.
The study of the events of 1948 holds the key to the future of Europe. I need help in authoring a Constitution. I see Nine Judges, a Board of Directors, and Secular Guilds that may issue limited Trading Seals. There will be an application form aimed at weeding out Christians who want to take over the whole world, by any means, and, will roll over a nation to this end. Jesus did not found a church. He prepared his followers for ‘The Terrible Day of the Lord’ that was a NO SHOW!
I want to avoid elections because Putin and Trump, of the Christian Conquest, have all but destroyed the idea of Democracy. The Bohemian Way of Life has a long and prosperous history that can bring people together for all the right – secular reasons!
John Presco
“Will Bohemia arise in Oakland,” was the question asked in an article in the Oakland Tribune on April 22, 1917. The reporter told of the formation of an artist’s club of the East Bay with a membership of more than 30 painters, sculptors and art students including Selden Gile, William H. Clapp and William A. Gaw (1891-1973). Many of the things that made the area seem so desirable to “The Six” were mentioned in that review, such as the picturesque waterfront and the sunny rolling hills above the Bay. Oakland was depicted as “…a Bohemia where kindred spirits meet with art and the great adventures that stimulate art to color its atmosphere.”
For almost 10 years, 1917 to 1927, until Selden Gile moved to Belvedere,[2] his cabin on Chabot Road in Oakland was the weekly meeting place for “The Six.” The “Chow House,” as it was called, had electricity but no toilet or bath.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Czechoslovak_coup_d%27état
http://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/2018/images/07/13/gru.indictment.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hluboká_Castle
http://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/2018/images/07/13/gru.indictment.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hluboká_Castle
The word sheriff is a contraction of the term “shire reeve“. The term, from the Old English scīrgerefa, designated a royal official responsible for keeping the peace (a “reeve”) throughout a shire or county on behalf of the king.[2] The term was preserved in England notwithstanding the Norman Conquest. From the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, the term spread to several other regions, at an early point to Scotland, latterly to Ireland and to the United States.
In British English, the political or legal office of a sheriff, term of office of a sheriff, or jurisdiction of a sheriff, is called a shrievalty[3] in England and Wales, and a sheriffdom[4] in Scotland.
The Impact of NATO Membership in the Czech Republic
The Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1999, in the alliance’s first round of post-Cold War enlargement. Their accession represents a milestone in their integration into the trans-Atlantic community and a recognition by long-standing NATO members that they had made a successful transition in establishing democratic political systems and market economies. Nevertheless, the Czech Republic’s first two years of membership in NATO have had more than their share of problems.
Just like Poland and Hungary, the Czech Republic has had trouble fulfilling its obligations towards the alliance and has faced daunting problems in restructuring its Cold War legacy military into an organization compatible with the alliance framework. But, differentiating the Czechs from Hungarians and Poles, some foreign and security policies of the Czech Republic have seemed at times to dissent from NATO and have introduced doubts within NATO about the country’s reliability as an alliance member.
In order to probe the deeper causes of the seeming Czech ambivalence about NATO and to assess the impact of NATO membership on Czech perceptions of security, Ivan Gabal, Lenka Helsusova, and RAND analyst Thomas Szayna conducted a survey-based study to examine the extent to which the Czech public identifies with its responsibilities as an alliance member. As NATO considers expanding membership to other post-Communist countries, this study provides some lessons regarding the impending next round of enlargement.
The study found that Czechs value and support the security that NATO membership offers. Two-thirds of the public recognizes that effective membership in NATO requires a well-performing Czech military, fully integrated in NATO. The Czech public has a good understanding of the military’s problems and is ready to support fundamental military reform, if there are reasonable assurances that the funds for reform will not be squandered through corruption or poorly thought-out strategy of modernization.
They also found that, even though Czechs are highly critical of the current state of the Czech military, they retain a high level of trust in the armed forces. On the other hand, Czechs show a high level of dissatisfaction with the performance of Czech political and constitutional bodies and are skeptical of their effectiveness in times of crisis.
Strong Czech support for NATO is linked to an awareness of shared responsibility and a commitment to assist allies in time of need. However, the Czechs have not fully internalized the meaning of non-Article 5 alliance operations (Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty states that an attack on one member shall be considered an attack on all and provides for appropriate responses, including the possible use of force.). Without a clear knowledge of the connection between NATO’s peace operations and European security, and absent public debate on these issues, most Czechs interpreted Operation Allied Force, NATO’s action against Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic’s repression of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, as a relapse into Cold War patterns of behavior and an aggression by a military alliance against a sovereign country.
The study found that the main source of Czech hesitation towards NATO is a perception of a low level of influence that the public has on decision-making in security issues. This lack of transparency and public debate in the Czech decision to join NATO, exemplified by the lack of a referendum on the issue, is the main source of the problem. When taxpayers are neither consulted about their views on accession nor informed properly about the costs of accession, as happened in the Czech Republic, both the quality of the new member’s membership is damaged, and NATO has to deal with embarrassments that are potentially damaging to its operations. In other words, shortcomings in the democratic process in the Czech Republic continue to affect Czech attitudes and behavior toward NATO. This is the most pertinent lesson regarding the anticipated next round of enlargement and one that the alliance should not re-learn.
The study’s final report, The Impact of NATO Membership in the Czech Republic: Changing Czech Views of Security, Military, and Defence, was published by the Conflict Studies Research Center. For more details about the study, order the RAND reprint of this report.
Fairyland – The Restored Kingdom
Posted on May 5, 2022 by Royal Rosamond Press
The attacks by Governor DeSantis on Disneyland, is an attack on my family heritage and family business. My great grandfather, Carl Janke, may haver operated the first theme park in California. My grandmother took her grandchildren to Fairyland. Finding the lost family crypt in 2000, opened the door to our lost magical history that I have restored – all by myself!
John Presco
Candidate For Governor of Oregon
Walt Disney toured many amusement parks in 1950, including Children’s Fairyland, seeking ideas for what turned out to be Disneyland.[1][2] He hired the first director of Fairyland, Dorothy Manes, to work at Disneyland as youth director, in which position she continued from the park’s opening until 1972.[4]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauline_Baynes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanny_Cory
My grandmother took her four grandchildren to Fairyland.
OZ at Children’s Fairyland
Posted on May 13, 2021 by Royal Rosamond Press
Capturing Beauty
by
John Presco
This morning as I awoke I had a image of my grandmother taking her grandchildren to Oakland’s Fairyland. She did so once a year. I was puzzling over why the Belmont Historical Society was only showing the top half of the photograph of the carousel and perhaps the sons of Carl Janke. When I saw the children gathered on the bridge, to I assume is the entrance to Carlmont Land, I then added the pictures in these giant oaks, the claim that my great, great grandfather built a place for drunks to come and get drunk – faded away! Carl had built a Turnverein Hall in San Francisco where I am sure beer was consumed in large quantities, but Belmont was going to be a special place for….The German Children of The Future…..and all Children! I google Children’s Fairyland…and I am blown away! Alas, I am home!
On this day, May 13, 2021, I add a Children’s Fairyland to Sarsaparilla Pier. When you add the images of Corey, who encouraged Royal Rosamond to take up writing, then we have arrived at Disneyland. What will be – will be! Follow the Yellowbrick Road. I beseech my daughters Heather Hanson apologize to me, and accept her heritage. I told her from the beginning
“All’s well, that ends well!”
I had a vision of the brownie camera Melba Charlotte Broderick owned and she forever taking pictures of the Presco Children. She has us pose in front of the oak trees at the entrance to Fairyland, and then there were many pics taken insider the FIRST CALIFORNIA THEM PARK that Walt Disney used as a model. I wondered what happened to them. Then I recalled her only child, my father, telling me his mother burned our photos and letters because we had neglected her. Th reason we did that, was, Melba had this HIDDEN AGENDA that Vic was made aware of. Rosemary did not not have a clue who those people were sitting in a forest that I now suspect is Twin Peaks Park. My mother said those were our “Bohunk kin”. Vic did go on about our German heritage, but it was distorted not full of any facts. Since I got into recovery thirty-four years ago, and then into therapy, I talked about how THE CHILDREN were supposed to figure out what THE ADULTS were fighting about, why we were always mentioned. They were fighting for – our sake! To be met with a rude non-greeting by members of BHS, perhaps because, I posted on Vice President Kamala Harris and her families connection to the Black Panthers?Did Kamala and Huery Newton go to Oakland’s Children’s Fairyland?
I have made numerous references to Sleeping Beauty, who Grimm named ROSAMOND, and how I might be the New Walt. Spooky Noodles has compared me o Disney. Three days ago I said I was a Ring Master in the Belmont Circus, and was bringing all the history I have gathered under….THE BIG TENT….like the striped one you see over the Janke Carousel.
Yesterday I discussed with my therapist about authoring MY REVENGE BOOK to destroy those who tried to destory me – and my late sister – who drowned on her first sober birthday! I have refrained from posting too much about OUR MAGICAL CHILDHOOD lest The Art Parasites come and steal that too! This morning at 8:39, I own a theme to my autobiography…
The Magical Children of Beautiful Mountain
I just posted this on the facebook of my frriend, Ed Howard, who has made a historic film about Oakland.
“Ed, do you have any pics of Fairyland? I would like the testimony of black people who may have felt unwelcome at Fairyland. There is much evidence my grandfather’s had their theme park taken from them at the end of world war one because they were Germans. The Belmont Historical Society snubbed me and was very rude to me when I posted on Kamala VP connection to the Black Panthers. If any former Panther went to Oakland’s Fairyland, I would like to hear your story. The Jankes were Turnverein Germans who put Lincoln in office, and nominated my kin, John Fremont. They were abolitionists.”
John Presco
Copyright 2021
President: Royal Rosamond Press: Belmont Soda Works, California Barrel Company.
Children’s Fairyland – Wikipedia
Yes, Oakland, there’s still a black Santa Claus at Fairyland (sfchronicle.com)
Oz was born in Hereford, England; the son of Frances (née Ghevaert; 1910–1989) and Isidore Oznowicz (1916–1998), both of whom were puppeteers.[6] His father was also a window trimmer.[2][7] His parents moved to England after fighting the Nazis with the Dutch Brigades. Oz’s Dutch-Polish father was Jewish, and his Flemish mother was a lapsed Catholic.[3][8][9][10] They left England when he was six months old and lived in Belgium until he was five.[11][12] Oz and his family moved to Montana in 1951.[7] They eventually settled in Oakland, California.[2] Oz attended Oakland Technical High School and Oakland City College. He worked as an apprentice puppeteer at Children’s Fairyland as a teenager[13] with the Vagabond Puppets, a production of the Oakland Recreation Department, where Lettie Connell was his mentor.[14]
Career[edit]
Puppeteering[edit]
Oz is known for his work as a puppeteer, performing with Jim Henson‘s Muppets. As a teenager, he worked with the Vagabond Puppets at the Children’s Fairyland of Oakland,[15] which is how he first met Henson.[16] He was 19 when he joined Henson in New York to work on the Muppets in 1963.[17] His characters have included Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Animal, and Sam Eagle on The Muppet Show, and Grover, Cookie Monster and Bert on Sesame Street.
Children’s Fairyland, U.S.A. is an amusement park, located in Oakland, California, on the shores of Lake Merritt. It was one of the earliest “themed” amusement parks in the United States.[1] Fairyland includes 10 acres (4.0 ha) of play sets, small rides, and animals. The park is also home to the Open Storybook Puppet Theater, the oldest continuously operating puppet theater in the United States.[2]
Fairyland was built in 1950 by the Oakland Lake Merritt Breakfast Club, a local service club.[3] The park was immediately recognized nationally for its unique value, and during the 1950s it inspired numerous towns to create their own parks. Walt Disney toured many amusement parks in 1950, including Children’s Fairyland, seeking ideas for what turned out to be Disneyland.[1][2] He hired the first director of Fairyland, Dorothy Manes, to work at Disneyland as youth director, in which position she continued from the park’s opening until 1972.[4]
Numerous artists have contributed exhibits, murals, puppetry, and sculptures to the park. Some of the better-known artists are Ruth Asawa and Frank Oz, who was an apprentice puppeteer in the park as a teenager.[2]
Contents
- 1Origins of the park
- 2The original park
- 3Puppet theater
- 4The park today
- 5Aesop’s Playhouse
- 6Bibliography
- 7References
- 8External links
Origins of the park[edit]
On a 1947 trip to the Detroit children’s zoo in Belle Isle Park, Oakland nurseryman Arthur Navlet saw a collection of small nursery-rhyme themed buildings, and wanted to create something similar in Oakland’s Lake Merritt Park. His hope was to create much larger sets that children could climb in and interact with. After getting the backing of the Lake Merritt Breakfast Club, a civic organization devoted to improving the park, he took his ideas to William Penn Mott Jr., then director of Oakland’s parks department. Mott and the Breakfast Club were able to raise $50,000 from Oakland citizens. Contributing sponsors included Earl Warren, Clifford E. Rishell, Joseph R. Knowland and Thomas E. Caldecott.
Navlet hired fantasy artist and architect William Russell Everritt (1904–1978) to design the original 17 sets. Everritt originally presented models which followed a standard fantasy architecture: straight-sided, “precious” buildings in gingerbread and candy. When told his models were too staid, he delightedly destroyed them and came back with buildings with no straight sides and outré colors and textures. It was exactly what Navlet was looking for.
The original park[edit]
The park opened on September 2, 1950. Admission was 9 to 14 cents, depending on age. The original guides to the park were a dwarfish married couple dressed in glamorous Munchkin-style costumes. The park was reported on nationally, with numerous newsreels shot in the park. The original sets included Pinocchio‘s Castle, Thumbelina, Three Billy Goats Gruff, The Merry Miller, The Three Little Pigs, Willie the Whale, and several others. The entrance to the park was through the shoe illustrating the Old Woman in the Shoe. The entrance through the shoe was sized for children, so that adults had to bend over to go through. The park thrived, and in 1956, the City of Oakland Parks and Recreation Department hired Burton Weber to promote the wonders inside Fairyland’s gates. Weber created a program for young children called Fairyland Personalities, which is still part of Fairyland’s Children’s Theater program.
Fairyland is also home to the original “Magic Key” and Talking Storybook Boxes. Oakland television personality Bruce Sedley would often make appearances at the park to tell the stories of the sets. The constant strain of speaking threatened his voice, and he invented a system of talking books with recorded stories on tape. The boxes were activated by a plastic key. Sedley took the system he developed at Fairyland to zoos and children’s parks across the country, where they are still used extensively. The Magic Key system is still in effect at Fairyland.
Puppet theater[edit]
Fairyland’s Storybook Puppet Theater, which opened in 1956, is the oldest continuously operating puppet theater in the United States. The theater presents three performances a day, year round, from a repertoire of more than 150 puppet shows. Most of the shows are based on classic fairytales and folk tales from around the world, including The Three Little Pigs, Pinocchio, and The Pied Piper. All of the puppets – including bunraku, shadow puppets, hand puppets, rod puppets, and marionettes – are constructed at the theater by the puppet director and apprentices.
The theater structure was designed by the park’s original architect, William Russell Everitt, with the assistance of members of the San Francisco Bay Area Puppeteers Guild.[5] It accommodated hand and rod puppets. For the theater’s 50th anniversary, in 2006, the building was redesigned with a storage area, workshop, and higher ceiling for dramatic effects.[6]
Many accomplished puppeteers have worked at Fairyland’s puppet theater, including Tony Urbano,[7] Luman Coad,[5] and Frances and Isadore (“Mike”) Oznowicz.[8] The Oznowiczes’ son, Frank, performed at the theater when he was a teenager; he later shortened his name to Frank Oz and went on to perform with The Muppets and to direct many Hollywood films. Muppet performer Alice Dinnean also got her start at Fairyland’s puppet theater. Lewis Mahlmann, who served as the puppet theater’s director from 1967 to 2005, authored four books about puppetry, and twice served as president of the Puppeteers of America.[9]
The current theater director is Randal J. Metz,[10] who apprenticed with Mahlmann while he was still in grade school. Metz shared the director’s job with Mahlmann beginning in 1991, and became sole director upon Mahlmann’s retirement in 2005.
The park today[edit]
The park continued to grow through the early years, adding the Open Storybook Puppet Theater, also designed by Everritt, in 1956, as well as other sets. In 1994, with help from the Lake Merritt Breakfast Club, Fairyland applied for and received 501(c) (3) nonprofit status to allow it to apply for grants, receive bond funds, and solicit donations.
In 2006, the Storybook Puppet Theater celebrated its 50th anniversary with a near-complete renovation including the addition of a new facade and workshop. The current master puppeteer is Randal Metz.[11]
In addition to exhibits, the park today has rides such as the spiderweb Ferris wheel, a carousel, and the Jolly Trolly (a train). For safety reasons, Fairyland admits adults only when they’re accompanied by children and children only when they’re accompanied by adults.[12]
Fanny Corey
Posted on August 4, 2018 by Royal Rosamond Press
Fanny Corey could have worked for Walt Disney. Were they aware on one another? Fanny and her brother encouraged my grandfather to become a writer. Fanny’s magical illustrations were known all over the world. Her books came out about 1920. The Hobbit was published in 1937. The Chronicles of Nania were published around 1954. I will be putting Fanny in the Liz Taylor Society I am forming.
John Presco
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauline_Baynes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanny_Cory
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._R._Tolkien
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Meredith
Moy Mell
Posted on August 4, 2018 by Royal Rosamond Press
The Avatar of Moy Mell
Posted on February 23, 2014by Royal Rosamond Press
Here is the post that Rena Easton responded to.
https://rosamondpress.wordpress.com/2013/08/22/royal-rosamond-fanny-y-cory/
I am a very spiritual and religious person. All my letters and writing are protected by a special copyright for ministers. To destroy my letters and words may constitute a hate crime.
Jon the Nazarite
“Rosamond recalls that Jack Cory and his sister Fanny Y. Cory, cartoonist, started him on his writing career.”
In looking for traces of my Muse, Rena Easton, in Montana, I found what can be described as the Rosamond Holy Grail in Helena Montana. My grandfather lived in Helena and says he was inspired to write by Jack Cory, a political cartoonist and equestrian artist, and his sister Fanny Y. Cory, a famous illustrator who lived in a secluded ranch in Montana.
There was an art show of four generations of this family. This is the vision I had for my family when I became a Pre-Raphaelite. Christine Rosamond Benton did several Fairy paintings, as did Drew, who is employed rendering avatars for fantasy games.
Alas we have a true genealogy that traces the Rosamond Family Muse from the Cory family, to my grandfather, to me, to my sister, and to her daughter Drew Benton whose father was the famous muralist, Garth Benton, the cousin of the artist, Thomas Hart Benton. This is the convergence of three creative families – that is unheard of! The Great Muses are at work here. Consider our DNA!
If I had not been following my Muse wherever she leads me, then I would not have made this profound discovery that cast out the outsider from Rosamond Creative Legacy, those parasites who dare title themselves “caretakers” of Rosamond’s art and life story. If my grandfather came back from the dead, he would take a bullwhip to these usurpers – of his history! Fanny was a very famous woman artist – before Christine was born!
Thank you my dear grandfather, whom I never met, for laying down the true stepping stones of our family history.
Royal wrote a short story about a bullfight in Montana where his sister lived. It appears their father adopted these sibling out to W.S. Spaulding after his wife died.
The top two images were done by Drew Benton. The boy with dragon was done by Drew’s mother, Christine Rosamond Benton. The connections I just made – with no ones help – increase the value of all my families creative efforts. This is what real Art Books look like!
I’ve considered doing illustrations for most of my books. C’mon Rena. Show yourself. Do it for Montana! You were Rosamond’s Muse. This is your State History. You got some major bragging rights! Put this in your resame. At least send me copies of photos of you that I can work from to illustrate
‘Capturing Beauty’. I want your side of the story! I will got to the Governor and have you declared Montana’s State Treasure who brought the history of Royal Rosamond and Fanny Cory, together!
https://rosamondpress.wordpress.com/2012/03/16/meeting-drew-at-moy-mell/
https://rosamondpress.wordpress.com/2012/05/23/rendering-rena-as-the-high-priestess/
https://rosamondpress.wordpress.com/2012/02/25/happy-birthday-meher-baba/
https://rosamondpress.wordpress.com/2013/07/03/beautiful-cultural-warfare/
https://rosamondpress.wordpress.com/2011/12/11/the-arcadian-tentmakers-of-america/
Jon Presco
Copyright 2013
I also found an article about a Royal Rosamund, who was said to be the son of W.S. Spaulding – I do not know if that was the same person as the Frank Rosamund who is the coach driver with the family in 1900, but the ages match.
INDEPENDENT RECORD NOVEMBER 26, 1950
Royal Rosamond, Helena native, is Planning Book About
Home City, Chamber Is Told
Royal Rosamond, widely known
author and Helena native, is planning
a book about the city according
to a letter received by the
Helena Chamber of Commerce
from the resident of Oklahoma
City.
Rosamond said the book will
be based on recollections of his
childhood in the city. He asked
the chamber for assistance with
additional material about the city
and the surrounding area.
Rosamond said his parents followed
my grandfather, John L.
Reese, to Helena from Missouri
In the spring of 1884.” The family
lived in the Sixth ward for three
years before moving to the Sanford
and Evans building.
His father, W. S. Spaulding,
and Gary Cooper’s father were
Business partners with a shop on
the lot where the post office now
stands. When he was six years old,
Rosamond said, he was a playmate
of Tommy Cruse’s little boy,
about the time the elder Cruse
was financed with a grub stake by
a local grocer and struck it rich
at Marysville. .
Rosamond asked the name of
the grocer and wanted to know
the Cruse boy’s name. The letter
said Rosamond attended Hawthorne
school when he was six,
seven and eight years old. “There
was not a bob sled in town that
I had not ridden. . . . I was on
speaking terms .with every horse in
every barn in town. . . . I doted
on pigtailed Chinamen but failed
to win their friendship except for
one, a merchant up the gulch,” he
said.
A frame residence built hy Rosamond’s
father at the head of Walnut
still stands. .The author
visited the city In 1945.
His mother died when he was
nine years old and he moved to
Missouri until he was 18 when he
returned to Helena. Rosamond recalls
that Jack Cory and his sister
Fanny Y. Cory, cartoonist, started
him on his writing career.
Rosamond asked for information
about the earthquake, early gold
operations, a map of the city and
other information which he expects
to include in his book.
One of his novels, “Bound in
Clay” is available at the Helena
public library. He has been called
“Oklahoma’s greatest living humorist,”
and is holder of the international
Mark Twain award for
his contribution to literature.
Hollywood and the “Dunites,” 1934
Meher Baba returned to Hollywood in 1934, avoiding publicity and instead working with a number of screenwriters and filmmakers on proposed film projects. During the earlier 1932 visit he had met a spiritual seeker named Sam Cohen, a Theosophist and resident of a loosely knit freethinkers’ community named “Moy Mell” nestled among the dunes on the beach at Oceano, California. The benefactor of this group of intellectuals, spiritual seekers, artists and social misfits was Chester Alan Arthur III, grandson of the 21st President, who went by the name of Gavin. For a time Gavin published a magazine called the Dune Forum, which included articles by such notables as Stuart Edward White (author of the spiritualist classic, The Unobstructed Universe), and photographic contributions by Ansel Adams and Edward Weston (whose dune photographs are well-known).
Gavin would frequently entertain the intellectual and artistic elite of America at his cabin in the dunes. Although accounts differ somewhat, it appears that Baba sent disciple Meredith Starr and his wife to Moy Mell in 1932, and that they stayed on for a period of time (this was approximately a year and a half before Meredith’s defection). When Baba returned to Hollywood in 1934, he agreed to visit the “Dunite” community. On the evening of Christmas day (accounts different as to the exact days), Baba arrived with eighteen of his followers, including Norina Matchabelli, wife of Georges Matchabelli, known for the popular perfume brand. Norina had previously arranged for a special cabin to be built for Baba, but he chose instead to stay in Gavin’s cabin. Gavin was not in Moy Mell at the time, and it was decided that he wouldn’t mind.
There was also a Theosophical center called the Temple of the People in nearby Halcyon, founded in 1904 with the intent of preparing for the arrival of the next incarnation of the Avatar, but there is no record of Baba visiting it.(21)
Three weeks ago I exchanged words with my niece, Drew Benton, for the first time in a cyber Land of Make Believe – that will go unnamed lest our worldly enemies track us down and snatch the secret key from us. Let us call this place ‘Moy Mell’ after a Faire Land far over the sea, where only………
The Dunites called their Bohemian community Moy Mell, a sanctuary for folks who had left the beaten path, could not cope, or, were just following their dream. It has been suggested that most people who can’t cope, become dreamers. But, it is a matter of what came first, the chicken or the egg. Whatever, we are not eggs or chickens. Usually wer are poets and artists, mystics, and hermits, who at an early age considered ourselves Foundlings.
I am a Foundling, after my grandfather, Royal Rosamond, who took his third born daughter Lillian down to the dunes in Ventura where there was another shanty town built by Bohemians and odd fellows.
“These are my people!” Royal proudly exclaimed as he he did an Irish Jigg to the music an old Scotsman played on his violin. My kindred had just had tea in a little shack in Ventura by the Sea.
When I interviewed Lillian for my autobiography, she told me her father took her to the top of hill overlooking Ventura where she and her three beautiful sisters had grown up. Royal had been away, and had come home……………just to say goodbye!
Mary Magdalene Rosamond had banished her husband from his home where dwelt the Faire Roses of the World. My grandfather was a very poor provider. Mary was making hats to support her children. However, there was a man lurking about, a dark man whose history did not survive for some reason. Perhaps it is because he sired no children. Uncle Conrad was Mary’s brother. He owned several home in the Ojai Valley, and the home the Rosamond’s lived in. He was a landlord.
With tears in her eyes, Lilian told me how her father imparted his dream to her, when he affixed her gaze out to sea, over the horizon, to the land of eternity, where the noblest attributes of humankind, dwell – a land where poets and artists are not punished for creating their beloved sanctuaries.
I met Drew Benton for the first time at her mother’s house, the day before Christine Rosamond Benton’s funeral in Carmel by the Sea. She had come over to play video games with her cousin, Shamus. Vicki Presco introduced us. Drew turned to look me in the eyes, did not speak, and went back to play in cyber world. When we met in Moy Mell, our Avatars, she approached this grey haired warrior and exclaimed with her computer keyboard;
“My long lost uncle!”
Fanny Y. Cory, Grandmother of Ann Cory on her mother’s side
Now I will go back in time. I will go back to one of the dearest people in my life, my grandma.
Today her art work is bought and sold today on e-bay and other sites and she is noted in books about illustrators of the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Her art name is Fanny Y. Cory, although sometimes she signed with FYC and other versions of her name. The one thing that never changed, though, was that she signed her art vertically and with carefully formed capital letters.
Fanny Y. Cory was someone who always drew from the time she was old enough to hold a pencil. One of her early memories was lying on the floor of her home drawing away with adults patiently stepping over her.
She drew so much and so well that not only could she draw anything she saw but anything she wanted to materialize out of her fertile imagination.
Fanny Y. Cory’s brother, Jack Cory, a well-known political cartoonist, paid her way to attend the Metropolitan School of Fine Arts in New York City.
She took part in the Artists Student Legue there but soon needed to earn money from her art to support her darling sister who had consumption.
Many times as I grew up I heard her tell the story about her beginning attempt to sell her illustrations. The first journey at 17 up the ”well-worn iron stairs” into the unknown world of “Scribners” was frightening.
“The young man at the desk flipped carelessly through my portfolio. Then he looked up and said to ‘Come back when you became known’ ”.
“I thanked him kindly and then walked across the hall to “Century” and they took my illustrations right away.”
Before long Fanny Y. Cory was known as the “Sweetheart of the Century Company,” and became one of the best known illustrators in the country.
She did covers and illustrations of St. Nicholas, Life, Scribner’s, Century, Harper’s Bazaar and The Saturday Evening Post.
She also illustrated many books during this time among them Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1902) by Lewis Carrol, and several books by Frank L. Baum, author of The Wizard of Oz.
Fanny Y. Cory married a Montana rancher whom she had gotten to know in earlier years via his sisters and moved to his ranch at Canyon Ferry, Montana.
They raised their children there and she continued her illustration work on a limited basis.
After Fanny Y. Cory’s children become older, it was apparent that they needed college training.
Fanny Y. Cory had always done her art for the good of others and to help her children have their dreams, she threw her talents into a new art field: two syndicated comic strips which she did for 25 and 30 years respectively.
One was “Little Miss Muffet,” a daily strip that King Features ran originally as their answer to the very popular “Little Orphan Annie” comic strip.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roos
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._R._Tolkien
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hobbit
Aesop’s Playhouse[edit]
Aesop‘s Playhouse performance, 2008
In 2008, Fairyland opened Aesop’s Playhouse, a dedicated children’s theater funded by Oakland City bond measure DD. It is a Greek theater-style outdoor amphitheater seating 215 people. Fairyland had a long tradition of plays put on by local children ages 8–10, but they were performed on the smaller Emerald City Stage.[13] Previous plays have included The Monkey King’s Journey to the West, Brer Rabbit, The Wizard of Oz, Cuoi, the Boy in the Moon, Ohana Means Family, Little Red Riding Hood, Lost in Fairyland, Hip-Hop Pinocchio, The Panchatantra, Méxica, Aesop’s Fables, The Girl Who Lost Her Smile, Harvest at the Lake, Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type, The Cat in the Hat, and Five Little Monkeys.
The Pyre of The Woodminster
Posted on February 18, 2019 by Royal Rosamond Press
Joaquin Miller built a pyre where he wanted fellow members of the Bohemian Club to cremate his body after death. This was an attempt to lure the Quinotaur to the watery home they made for him. From the Hights, they could see the rising tower of Portreo. On a certain night, copper was poured into the furnace under the boiler, and a bluish green flame shot a hundred feet into the air! This constitutes the first lightshow.
https://www.thoughtco.com/how-to-make-blue-fire-606194
On the night of October 8, 1962, The Ballet Bolero was danced in the Woodminster amphitheater. At the same time, the Dance of the Owl was being performed at the Potrero Electric plant. The attempt to raise Baphomet, failed, but the consciousness of the entire Bay Area, was raised – up! We could not get – high enough!
The Family Stone lived together in the Oakland Hills. They played at WOODSTOCK!
If Meg Whitman has affixed her name to the CBCLLC Deed, or, knows the owners, she must call for a news conference, and confess her ignorance, and the ignorance of the team who works for her. She should call up her allies at Dreamworks, and let them know she erringly tapped into The Source, that can’t be capped like an oil well, for the benefit of a few. The High and Mighty Owl wings home, and, a shadow cross the face of the moon.
Long Live the Bohemian Wood Empire!
John Presco
President: Royal Rosamond Press
https://www.bejart.ch/en/ballet/bolero/embed/#?secret=CNUNf38JW3#?secret=hgDH0iVEY1
https://localwiki.org/oakland/The_Funeral_Pyre
Woodminster Amongst the Redwoods
Posted on April 18, 2014by Royal Rosamond Press
I was twelve when I came upon the Woodminster amphitheater. I was put in a trance by what I beheld. I sensed I had entered the real world, the one I belonged in. Juanita Miller was the visionary for this outdoor theatre where plays inspired by her father were performed. Redwoods were planted around Woodminster. George Miller planted many trees in his visionary city, Fairmount. Nearby, my great grandfathers had picnics. Note the rifle hanging in the tree. The Stuttmeister farm lie just below this structure that is right out of Lord of the Rings.
Jon Presco
https://livingnewdeal.berkeley.edu/projects/woodminster-amphitheater-and-cascade-oakland-ca/
Woodminster Cascade flows from the base of Woodminster Theatre and falls over 100 feet through a series of pools. The cascade and theatre were conceived by Juanita Miller, daughter of Joaquin Miller, and were constructed by the Works Progress Administration as a memorial to California writers and poets. During their construction in 1939-40, William Penn Mott was starting his career with the Oakland Parks & Recreation Department. He was responsible for the original landscaping, roads, parks and picnic grounds in the area we are now working to restore.” – http://www.wpamurals.com/oakland.htm
http://oaklandwiki.org/Joaquin_Miller_Park
http://oaklandwiki.org/Woodminster_Amphitheater
http://www.woodminster.com/Webpages/Ticketbuying/schedule.html
William Morris and Joaquin Miller
Posted on August 1, 2018 by Royal Rosamond Press
Joaquin Miller had dinner with the Pre-Raphaelites and was my grandmother’s friend. This history is being compiled for the grant I am applying for. The history of the Pre-Raphaelites has not been discarded, thus, Kehinde Wiley has no right to claim it and hand it out to NOBODIES who don’t deserve it! I don’t give a rat’s ass what the color of their skin is, and how badly they were oppressed. Let them work for their bragging rights. Just because Wyley thinks he has immortalized these non-artists, does not give them any titles. I will see to that.
Miller built a monument to my kin, John Fremont, the first Presidential Candidate for the Abolitionist Republican Party, and the first to emancipate slaves, forcing Lincoln’s hand.
Honoring The Visions of George Miller
Posted on May 30, 2016by Royal Rosamond Press
I will be going out to Coburg today to plant another flower at the grave of George Miller, the brother of Joaquin Miller, a honorary member of the Bohemian Club that was a place for Bay Area Journalists to gather and compare notes. If Miller lived in the Bay Area, then he too would be a honorary member.
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=29810634
Elizabeth Maude “Lischen” or “Lizzie” Cogswell married George Miller. Lizzie was the foremost literary woman in Oregon. On Feb. 6, 1897, Idaho Cogswell, married Feb. 6, 1897, Ira L. Campbell, who was editor, publisher and co-owner (with his brother John) of the Daily Eugene Guard newspaper. The Campbell Center is named after Ira.
The Wedding of John Cogswell to Mary Frances Gay, was the first recorded in Lane County where I registered my newspaper, Royal Rosamond Press. Idaho Campbell was a charter member of the Fortnightly Club that raised funds for the first Eugene Library.
George Melvin Miller was a frequent visitor to ‘The Hights’ his brothers visionary utopia where gathered famous artists and writers in the hills above my great grandfather’s farm. The Miller brothers promoted Arts and Literature, as well as Civic Celebrations. Joaquin’s contact with the Pre-Raphaelites in England, lent credence to the notion that George and Joaquin were Oregon’s Cultural Shamans, verses, he-men with big saw cutting down trees.
A year ago I received in the mail a book I ordered on E-Bay. I quickly scanned it to see if their were any illustrations or photographs. Then, I found it, what amounts to my personal Holy Grail. Joaquin Miller dedicated his book of poems ‘Songs of The Sun-Land’ to the Rossetti family that includes Gabriel, Michael, and, Christine. Gabriel was a artist and poet, Michael, a publisher, and Christine, a poet.
“TO THE ROSSETTIS”
Gabriel, who had Joaquin over to his house for dinner, where he met several members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Miller sends Michael a photograph of himself, and is sent a photo. This photo may be the famous one taken by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who is better known as Lewis Carrol the author of ‘Alice in Wonderland’. If Joaquin had glued this portrait to a piece of paper, then we might have seen it on the dedication page.
What is going on here is extremely profound. Miller has exported his vision and lifestyle to the England, where he wrote Song of the Sierras, and now he is importing to America a cultural brand that contains Grail and Arthurian subject matter that was at the epicenter of the work of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
Lewis Carrol posed two children as Fair Rosamond and Queen Eleanore. I associate Fairmount with Rosamond. Johnnny Depp is starring in another Alice in Wonderland movie. Eugene can celebrate our Land of Make Believe, our White Rabbit made famous by the Jefferson Airplane. I stood before the Mayor of Eugene and suggested a Newspaper Museum at Kesey Square wherein is a model of Miller’s Fantastic Flying Machine. We could build a parade around this contraptions, a world contest that would bring creative people to our Fair City. Children would love this! They too would be in costume for the White Rabbit Run!
Here is what amounts to MY FANTASTIC MOVIE shot in Eugene. What an Amazing Journey is has been!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohemian_Club
Juanita Miller ‘The White Witch’
Posted on December 6, 2014by Royal Rosamond Press
Joaquin Miller, William Morris & Me
Posted on August 5, 2013by Royal Rosamond Press
Christine Rosamond Benton and I were drawn into Tolkien’s Trilogy. The artist known as ‘Rosamond’ could not put these books down, nr could I. This caused our mutual friend, Keith Purvis, a British subject, to comment;
“She doesn’t know these books are real.”
We three were original hippies who took the Lord of the Rings to heart as we modified the modern world, made it over more to our liking, we oblivious to what normal folk were about. This is exactly what William Morris and the Pre-Raphaelite Brother and Sisterhood did. They – returned!
I discovered the Pre-Raphaelites in 1969 and let my hair grow long for the first time. I gave up drugs in 1967 and was looking for a spiritual format. I came under the spell of the Rossetti family who were friendly with Joaquin Miller. We Presco children knew Miller’s daughter as ‘The White Witch’ and we would call her for advice. Miller’s home ‘The Abbye’ was above our home in the Oakland Hills. Our kindred were friends of Miller, who was also a friend of Swineburn, who wrote ‘The Queen-Mother and Rosamund’ and ‘Rosamund Queen of Lombards. Tolkien was inspired by the Lombards.
Filed away in Rosamond’s probate is my plea to the executor to allow me to be my sister’s historian. I mention Miller and Rossetti. I saw myself in the role of Michael Rossetti who had his own publishing company. He published Miller and other famous poets. When I was twelve, my mother read evidence I might become a famous poet.
All my imput has been ruthlessly ignored, because petty un-creative minds have forced our families creative legacy down the tiny holes of their hidden agendas, into the mouths of worms and parasites, because these ignorant people sensed I and the real Art World, did not let them in the door – would never admit them into our circle, our ring of genius!
Jon Presco
Copyright 2011
William Morris had a major influence on J. R. R. Tolkien. As John Garth points out, unlike most authors traumatized by the experience of World War I, Tolkien did not “discard the old ways of writing, the classicism or medievalism championed by Lord Tennyson and William Morris. In his hands these traditions were reinvigorated so that they remain powerfully alive for readers today” (40). His love of Morris, in particular, goes back to his undergraduate days when he turned from studying the Greek and Latin classics to the the northern traditions — the language and literature of the Scandinavian and Germanic past. According Garth,
William Morris, from the late 1870s on, decided to “remedy” the defects of the real historical record by producing specific works of “pseudo-history,” fully-fleshed stories that he could present as “re-discovered” manuscripts of ancient tribal lore. So eager were the Germanic speakers of 19th century Europe to know more about their ancestors, that sometimes even academically trained scholars would be fooled by the books Morris wrote, and asked him for his sources, and wanted to read the original saga manuscripts themselves. To which requests Morris replied “Doesn’t the fool realize, that it’s a romance, a work of fiction — that it’s all lies!” (from May Morris, daughter of W. Morris recollections).
JRRT, a generation later than Morris, got in on the tail end of this nationalistic/ romantic period, and became as fully enmeshed in its allures as Morris. Tolkien went on to “sub-create” his own “pseudo-histories,” manufacturing his versions of the source myths that would allow a richer understanding of the Nordic tradition, especially the Anglo-Saxon phenomena of England. Between them, as much by accident as firm intent, Morris and Tolkien established an entire genre of pseudo-history that has, by now in the 21st century, become one of the most popular fields of literature.
“These two men knew either much (Morris) or most (Tolkien) of all that was known about these [northern] people and their lives. They used that wealth of knowledge to create ‘dreamed realities’ (Morris) or an ‘imaginary history’ (Tolkien) about what it might have been like to live in those days. While what they wrote wasn’t necessarily true in a strict sense, both knew enough about the past and were talented enough as writers that what they wrote created a strong sense that they described what might have been.” ( Michael W. Perry, More to William Morris, p. 7, 2003)
So, the question then becomes, for Tolkien readers, how does Morris stand up to JRRT? Is it worth the money to buy Morris’s books? Will I get the same, or at least a very similar thrill from reading them as I get when running through the pages of LotR and The Hobbit? Well, that’s what I am trying to decide in the next few installments of this topic. How do the works of the two authors compare, in what ways are they similar, in what ways do they differ?
http://tolkiensring.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=authors&action=display&thread=675
Joaquin Miller looked me up at Somerset House, and left with me
the remaining proofs of his forthcoming volume. He showed me the dedication, ‘To the Rossettis.’ I strongly recommended him to write direct to Gabriel as to the matter before anything further is done. I mentioned the dedication to Christina. She feels some hesitation in sanctioning it, not knowing what the book may contain. If she makes up her mind to object, she is to write to Miller. I looked through the proofs and noted down some remarks on them. They include a series of poems about Christ, named Olive Leaves, implying a sort of religious, or at least personal, enthusiasm, mixed up with a good deal that has more relation to a sense of the picturesque than of the devotional. These poems, though far from worthless from their own point of view, are very defective, and would, I think be highly obnoxious to many readers and Reviewers. I have suggested to Miller the expediency of omitting them altogether. – Christina, I find, has already read these particular poems, and to some considerable extent likes them, which is so far in their favour as affecting religious readers”
The wider world of Victorian London is present: Turgenev comes to dinner, Browning sends his new volumes, Swinburne arrives drunk, and the American poet and adventurer Joaquin Miller makes himself known to the Rossetti circle. Nine appendices include five devoted to Poems and one to the Fleshly School controversy.
Joaquin Miller Cabin is located in Washington, DC. The Hights, the Oakland home Miller built at the end of his life, is currently known as the Joaquin Miller House and is part of Joaquin Miller Park. He planted the surrounding trees and he personally built, on the eminence to the north, his own funeral pyre and monuments dedicated to Moses, General John C. Frémont, and the poets Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The Japanese poet Yone Noguchi began his literary career while living in the cabin adjoining Millers’ during the latter half of the 1890s. The Hights was purchased by the city of Oakland in 1919 and can be found in Joaquin Miller Park.[42] It is now a designated California Historical Landmark.
Miller went to England, where he was celebrated as a frontier oddity. There, in May 1871, Miller published Songs of the Sierras, the book which finalized his nickname as the “Poet of the Sierras”.[22] It was well-received by the British press and members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, particularly Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Michael Rossetti.
While in England, he was one of the few Americans invited into the Savage Club along with Julian Hawthorne, son of Nathaniel Hawthorne. The younger Hawthorne referred to Miller as “a licensed libertine” but admitted him “charming, amiable, and harmless”.[
The Savage Club was formed to supply the want which Dr Samuel Johnson and his friends experienced when they founded the Literary Club. A little band of authors, journalists and artists felt the need of a place of reunion where, in their hours of leisure, they might gather together and enjoy each other’s society, apart from the publicity of that which was known in Johnson’s time as the coffee house, and equally apart from the chilling splendour of the modern club.
At present, there are 315 members. The club maintains a tradition of fortnightly dinners for members and their guests, always followed by entertainment. These dinners often feature a variety of famous performers from music hall to concert hall. Several times a year members invite ladies to share both the dinner and the entertainment — sometimes as performers. On these occasions guests always include widows of former Savages, who are known as Rosemaries (after rosemary, a symbol of remembrance).
Born in London, he was a son of immigrant Italian scholar Gabriele Rossetti, and the brother of Maria Francesca Rossetti, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Christina Georgina Rossetti.
He was one of the seven founder members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848, and became the movement’s unofficial organizer and bibliographer. He edited the Brotherhood’s literary magazine The Germ which published four issues in 1850 and wrote the poetry reviews for it.
It was William Michael Rossetti who recorded the aims of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood at their founding meeting in September 1848:
1. To have genuine ideas to express;
2. To study nature attentively, so as to know how to express them;
3. To sympathize with what is direct and serious and heartfelt in previous art, to the exclusion of what is conventional and self-parading and learned by rote;
4. And most indispensable of all, to produce thoroughly good pictures and statues.
Although Rossetti worked full time as a civil servant, he maintained a prolific output of criticism and biography across a range of interests from Algernon Swinburne to James McNeill Whistler. He edited the diaries of his maternal uncle John William Polidori (author of The Vampyre and physician to Lord Byron), a comprehensive biography of D. G. Rossetti, and edited the collected works of D. G. Rossetti and Christina Rossetti.
Rossetti edited the first British edition of the poetry of Walt Whitman, which was published in 1868; however, this edition was bowdlerized.[1] Anne Gilchrist, who became one of the first to write about Whitman, first read his poetry from Rossetti’s edition, and Rossetti helped initiate their correspondence.[2]
In 1874 he married Lucy Madox Brown, daughter of the painter Ford Madox Brown. They honeymooned in France and Italy. Their first child, Olivia Frances Madox, was born in September 1875, and her birth was celebrated in an ode of Swinburne.
William Michael Rosetti was a major contributor to the 1911 edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica; his contributions on artistic subjects were criticised by many reviewers at the time and since, as showing little evidence of having absorbed the mounting body of work by academic art historians, mostly writing in German.
Dinner at Rossetti’s
by Joaquin Miller
________________________________________
There is no thing that hath not worth;
There is no evil anywhere;
There is no ill on all this earth,
If man seeks not to see it there.
September 28. I cannot forget that dinner with Dante Gabriel Rossetti, just before leaving London, nor can I hope to recall its shining and enduring glory. I am a better, larger man, because of it. And how nearly our feet are set on the same way. It was as if we were all crossing the plains, and I for a day’s journey and a night’s encampment fell in with and conversed with the captains of the march.
But one may not gave names and dates and details over there as here. The home is entirely a castle. The secrets of the board and fireside are sacred. And then these honest toilers and worshippers of the beautiful are shy, so shy and modest. But I like this decent English way of keeping your name down and out of sight till the coffin-lid hides your blushes–so modest these Pre-Raphaelites are that I should be in disgrace forever if I dared set down any living man’s name.
But here are a few of the pearls picked up, as they were tossed about the table at intervals and sandwiched in between tales of love and lighter thoughts and things.
All London, or rather all the brain of London, the literary brain, was there. And the brain of all the world, I think, was in London. These giants of thought, champions of the beautiful earth, passed the secrets of all time and all lands before me like a mighty panorama. All night sol We dined so late that we missed breakfast. If I could remember and write down truly and exactly what these men said, I would have the best and the greatest book that ever was written, I have been trying a week in vain, I have written down and scratched out and revised till I have lost the soul of it, it seems to me; no individuality to it; only like my own stuff. If I only had set their words down on the next day instead of attempting to remember their thoughts! Alas! the sheaves have been tossed and beaten about over sea and land for days and days, till the golden grain is gone, and here is but the straw and chaff.
The master sat silent for the most part; there was a little man away down at the other end, conspicuously modest. There was a cynical fat man, and a lean philanthropist all sorts and sizes, but all lovers of the beautiful of earth. Here is what one, a painter, a ruddy-faced and a rollicking gentleman, remarked merrily to me as he poured out a glass of red wine at the beginning of the dinner:
“When travelling in the mountains of Italy, I observed that the pretty peasant women made the wine by putting grapes m a great tub, and then, getting into this tub, barefooted, on top of the grapes, treading them out with their brown, bare feet. At first I did not like to drink this wine. I did not think it was clean. But I afterward watched these pretty brown women” and here all leaned to listen, at the mention of pretty brown women– I watched these pretty brown women at their work in the primitive winepress, and I noticed that they always washed their feet after they got done treading out the wine.”
All laughed at this, and the red-faced painter was so delighted that he poured out and swallowed another full glass. The master sighed as he sat at the head of the table rolling a bit of bread between thumb and finger, and said, sitting close to me: “I am an Italian who has neven seen Italy. Belle Italia!…”
By and by he quietly said that silence was the noblest attitude in all things; that the greatest poets refused to write, and that all great artists in all lines were above the folly of expression. A voice from far down the table echoed this sentiment by saying:”Heard melodies are sweet; but unheard melodies are sweeter.” “Written poems are delicious; but unwritten poems are divine,” cried the triumphant cynic. “What is poetry?” cries a neighbor. “All true, pure life is poetry,” answers one. “But the inspiration of poetry?” “The art of poetry is in books. The inspiration of poetry in nature.” To this all agreed.
Then the master very quietly spoke: “And yet do not despise the books of man. All religions, said the Chinese philosophers, are good. The only difference is, some religions are better than others, and the apparent merit of each depends largely upon a mans capacity for understanding it. This is true of .poetry. All poetry is good. I never read a poem in my life that did not have some merit, and teach some sweet lesson. The fault in reading the poems of man, as well as reading the poetry of nature, lies largely at the door of the reader. Now, what do you call poetry?” and he turned his great Italian eyes tenderly to where I sat at his side.
To me a poem must be a picture,” I answered.
Proud I was when a great poet then said: “And it must be a picture–if a good poem so simple that you can understand it at a glance, eh? And see it and remember it as you would see and remember a sunset, eh?” “Aye,” answered the master, “I also demand that it shall be lofty in sentiment and sublime in expression. The only rule I have for measuring the merits of a written poem, is by the height of it. Why not be able to measure its altitude as you measure one of your sublime peaks of America?”
He looked at me as he spoke of America, and I was encouraged to answer:”Yes, I do not want to remember the words. But I do want it to remain with me a picture and become a part of my life. Take this one verse from Mr. Longfellow:
“And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares that infest the day
Shall fold their tents like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away.’”
“Good!” cried the fat cynic, who, I am sure, had never heard the couplet before, it was so sweet to him; “Good! There is a picture that will depart from no impressible clay. The silent night, the far sweet melody falling on the weary mind, the tawny picturesque Arabs stealing away m the darkness, the perfect peace, the stillness and the rest. It appeals to all the Ishmaelite in our natures, and all the time we see the tents gathered up and the silent children of the desert gliding away in the gloaming.”
A transplanted American, away down at the other end by a little man among bottles, said: “The poem of Evangeline is a succession of pictures. I never read Evangeline but once.” “It is a waste of time to look twice at a sunset,” said Rossetti, sotto voce, and the end man went on: “But i believe I can see every picture in that poem as distinctly as if I had been the unhappy Arcadian; for here the author has called in ail the elements that go to make up a perfect poem.”
“When the great epic of this new, solid Saxon tongue comes to be written,” said one who sat near and was dear to the master’s heart, “it will embrace all that this embraces: new and unnamed lands; ships on the sea; the still deep waters hidden away in a deep and voiceless continent; the fresh and fragrant wilderness; the curling smoke of the camp-fire; action, movement, journeys; the presence–the inspiring presence of woman; the ennobl- ing sentiment of love, devotion, and devotion to the death; faith, hope and charity,- and all in the open air.”
“Yes,” said the master thoughtfully, ‘no great poem has ever been or ever will be fitted in a parlor, or even fashioned from a city. There is not room for it there.”
“Hear! hear! you might as well try to grow a California pine in the shell of a peanut,” cried I. Some laughed, some applauded, all looked curiously at me. Of course, I did not say it that well, yet I did say it far better, I mean I did not use the words carefully, but I had the advantage of action and sympathy.
Then the master said, after a bit of reflection: “Homer’s Ulysses, out of which have grown books enough to cover the earth, owes its immortality to all this, and its out-door exercise. Yet it is a bloody book a bad book, in many respects–full of revenge, treachery, avarice and wrong. And old Ulysses himself seems to have been the most colossal liar on record. But for all this, the constant change of scene, the moving ships and the roar of waters, the rush of battle and the anger of the gods, the divine valor of the hero, and, above all, and over all, like a broad, white-bosomed moon through the broken clouds, the splendid life of that one woman; the shining faith, the constancy, the truth and purity of Penelope–all these make a series of pictures that pass before us like a panorama, and we will not leave off reading till we have seen them all happy together again, and been assured that the faith and constancy of that woman has had it reward. And we love him, even if he does lie!”
How all at that board leaned and listened. Yet let me again and again humbly confess to you that I do him such injustice to try thus to quote from memory. After a while he said: “Take the picture of the old, blind, slobber-mouthed dog, that has been driven forth by the wooers to die. For twenty years he has not heard the voice of his master. The master now comes, in the guise of a beggar. The dog knows his voice, struggles to rise from the ground, staggers toward him, licks his hand, falls, and dies at his feet.”
Such was the soul, heart, gentleness of this greatest man that I ever saw walking in the fields of art….
Miller earned an estimated $3,000 working as a Pony Express rider, and used the money to move to Oregon. With the help of his friend, Senator Joseph Lane, he became editor of the Democratic Register in Eugene,[7] a role he held from March 15 to September 20, 1862.[8] Though no copies survive, it was known as sympathetic to the Confederacy until it was forced to shut down.[9] That year, Miller married Theresa Dyer (alias Minnie Myrtle) on September 12, 1862, in her home four days after meeting her[10] in Port Orford, Oregon.
Swinburne Meets Joaquin Miller.” New York Times (10 May 1931) [Online: BR5]
Picture with the text: “Once Joaquin Miller and a British Writer Called on Swinburne, Whom the Englishman Claimed as an Intimate Friend. They Announced Themselves as Joaquin Miller, the American Poet, and a Friend. Swinburne Sent Down Word to ‘Bring the American Poet Up and Tell the Friend to Go to Hell.’” [MCK]
Algernon Charles Swinburne (London, April 5, 1837 – London, April 10, 1909) was an English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic. He invented the roundel form, wrote several novels, and contributed to the famous Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in every year from 1903 to 1907 and again in 1909.[1]
At Oxford Swinburne met several Pre-Raphaelites, including William Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. After leaving college he lived in London and started an active writing career, where Rossetti was delighted with his ‘little Northumbrian friend’, a reference to Swinburne’s diminutive height—he was just over five feet tall.[citation needed]
The first of Rosamond’s five scenes is the most forceful in demonstrating Swinburne’s debt to troubadour conventions as well as to Pre-Raphaelite stylistic influences. Courtly love preoccupations and the medieval setting overshadow elements of Jacobean revenge tragedy throughout the play. Swinburne’s Rosamond, rather than the historical queen of the Courts of Love, espouses the religion of love and, as a result of her lived creed, is poisoned by Eleanor out of jealousy.
Swinburne’s choice of the “rose of the world” as one of his first subjects for verse suggests that he associated his conception of Rosamond with courtly love allegory, specifically the Roman de la Rose, in which the rose is the eternal symbol of the beloved and of the perfect beauty that is fearfully transient but simultaneously immortal.3 As in Swinburne’s later lyrics “Before the Mirror” and “The Year of the Rose,” Rosamond’s central symbol is the rose, and, like them, this play recapitulates the major preoccupations of courtly love poetry: the apotheosis of beauty; love as the necessary consequence of beauty fear of mutability; and a final insistence on the immortality of both love and beauty, which can be attained, paradoxically, only through death.
[39/40] The first scene of Rosamond characterizes its heroine as simultaneously enchanted with her own beauty, exalted by her love affair with Henry, and insecure about the permanence of her beauty and her love. Surrounded by the ephemeral rose blossoms with which she identifies in the maze at Woodstock, she is alone with her maid, Constance. Here Rosamond reveals her concern with the world’s slanderous gossip about her, and as the scene progresses she attempts gradually to rebuild her self-confidence-in her beauty, in Henry’s continuing devotion, and in the unassailable value of beauty and of love. At first, she is defensive:
See,
If six leaves make a rose, I stay red yet
And the wind nothing ruins me; who says
I am at waste? (Tragedies, I, 231)
Is thy name
Babe? Sweet are babes as flowers that wed the sun,
But man may be not born a babe again,
And less than man may woman. Rosamund
Stands radiant now in royal pride of place
As wife of thine and queen of Lombards–not
Cunimund’s daughter. Hadst thou slain her sire
Shamefully, shame were thine to have sought her hand
And shame were hers to love thee: but he died
Manfully, by thy mightier hand than his
Manfully mastered. War, born blind as fire,
Fed not as fire upon her: many a maid
As royal dies disrobed of all but shame
And even to death burnt up for shame’s sake: she
Lives, by thy grace, imperial.
ROSAMUND.
I know it.
I leave thee not the choice. Keep thou thy hand
Bloodless, and Hildegard, whom yet I love,
Dies, and in fire, the harlot’s death of shame.
Last night she lured thee hither. Hate of me,
Because of late I smote her, being in wrath
Forgetful of her noble maidenhood,
Stung her for shame’s sake to take hands with shame.
This if I swear, may she unswear it? Thou
Canst not but say she bade thee seek her. She
Lives while I will, as Albovine and thou
Live by my grace and mercy. Live, or die.
But live thou shalt not longer than her death,
Her death by burning, if thou slay not him.
I see my death shine in thine eyes: I see
My present death inflame them. That were not
Her surety, Almachildes. Thou shouldst know me
Now. Though thou slay me, this may save not her.
My lines are laid about her life, and may not
By breach of mine be broken.
Biography
From 1902 Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale worked both as a painter and illustrator of fine books, among them Alfred Tennyson’s Poems in 1905 and Robert Browning’s Pippa Passes in 1908. She was the first female member of the Institute of Painters in Oils in 1902, a member of the RWS and also taught at the Byam Shaw School of Arts.
Rosamond Press 
Reblogged this on Rosamond Press and commented:
Don’t let Republican take our magic away!