Leo HS Morning 2/11/2014 -I Ride With Pride and Clyde By My Side!

 I am blessed with a great life and the opportunity to work for Leo High School.  I get to Leo at about 4:45 most days and start the boilers, do some paper work and get one of the vans ready to pick up between seven and nine guys participating in early morning activities. My crew is usually Cyde, Chris, TJ, Mick, Joe, Latrell, Caleb, Gaylon, and Sydney.  I begin in Englewood at 74th & Normal, go to Grand Crossing at 66th & King Drive, take that beautiful, historic and inspiring Boulevard north to 35th and Dunkin Donuts!

At 5:45 AM I defrost and chip ice from Old # 7 and get the heat up -somewhat and at 6:10 head to pick up my co-pilot and fifteen year old mentor Clyde at 74th & Normal 

 The man emerges and runs to the van.  Hoists himself and a twenty pound book bag in to the van and greets me with a genuine "Good morning Mr. Hickey! My Mom says hi!  Let's Roll!"Route #66   Nelson Riddle   Nelson Riddle Collection

Download Route #66   Nelson Riddle   Nelson Riddle Collection MP3 for free on Dilandau

 Roll we do north toward Hamilton Park . . .

and then east to Wentworth, north again to 67th and then east to grab Chris - on the way Chris's Mom calls to say that he has the flu. Like Clyde, Chris never misses a day and commands a 3.8 GPA.

We pass Chris's home in the Park Homes and head north

 Under the 63rd Street L Platform

 and past Wahsington Park at 59th Street.  Past the 55th Street Garfield Boulevard the real charms of Chicago Architecture from the days of Burnham become evident.

 East and west we see scores of the very best examples of Chicago Architecture.

 We come to heart of Bronveville the birthplace of Chicago Blues and Jazz and the Harold Washington Library on the east side King Drive.

 At 45th we pass a beautiful old building boarded up and aching for a rehab.

 The Sax Man agrees!

 On the east side of 43rd and MLK drive stands my very favorite Chicago building.

 Just before 35th Street we come to the wonderful WWI Memorial to the Men of Bronze - the all African American Illinois Guard Regiment from Chicago that twisted the Kaiser's mustache until he gave up.   We make a right at 35th Street and a left at the strip mall that is home to our Dunkin Donuts

I explain that we are 'showing the flag,' like a 1920's Yankee gun-boat on the Yangtzee River - representing Leo High School in words and deeds and the lads have stepped up magnificently. For two years now, we are warmly greeted by the Dunkin Donuts regulars, headed by the Mall Manager Roy and the working the men who begin their day here.

Not a day goes by without a full report from Clyde

and fleshed out by Joe, Mick, Caleb, TJ, Latrell & etc.

The Dunkin Donuts He-Bull . . .

and the Dream Team serve us with coffee, OJ and a box of Munchkins ( chocolate glazed only).

These are my pals!  Missing is eighty year old Miss Marie and the famous BB Ref.

Back to the van and west on 35th Street, we pass Catholic League rival D.

 and approach the Dan Ryan.

 We pass Sox Park and merge with a near miss which upsets sissy-britches Mick

 Now, I pay great attention to rush hour south!

 We exit at 79th Street head west and arrive at Leo High School at 7:15 AM.

The guys polish off the Munchkins and get a hot breakfast at Leo.  The guys head to their activities, or tutoring sessions.  They put in a very long day of academics and sports and most do not get home until well after 7PM.

I am a very blessed man - Facta Non Verba.

Sharing Rides With Clyde , Leo High School Freshman

Clyde and the X Country Team - The Man is Dead Center Front Row Tossing the Leo Lion "L"

I pick up ten guys every morning along a route that comprises Englewood, Grand Crossing and Bronzevill neighborhoods. My first passenger is a freshman named Clyde B@@#$^% who lives in the concrete pocket that intersects the Metra line, the Skyway and Vincennes/Wentworth along the Dan Ryan.

Leo freshman Clyde is a perfect gentleman, mature beyond his years, thoughtful, tough and suffers from no self-esteem issues, whatsoever. Clyde is unarguably the shortest man at Leo High School, but stands much taller than some of classmates.  He ran cross-country and is a member of the freshman basketball team now playing .500 ball with a victory over Calumet (Perspectives) and a tough loss to the Fighting Irish of Bishop McNamara on Friday.  Clyde can steal and handle the ball, but can not shoot to save his life and neither can his team mates. They'll get there.

I take the grey van from the lot on Sangamom each morning and drive north on Halsted to 74th Street, make a right to south bound Stewart, a left on 75th Street and quick left at Normal.  I am at Clyde's in less than six minutes.  His Mom is a nurse raising two boys in Englewood and paying Catholic school tuition.  She is a valiant young woman.  Clyde's brother attends a Chicago public grade school.  He too will attend Leo High School.

Clyde emerges from the warmth of this home promptly at 6:30AM, climbs in to the passenger seat next to me with genuine,   " Good Morning, Mr. Hickey!"  Morning Clyde! We begin the morning dialog.

We then talk all manner of things from stray dogs in the neighborhood, to Josh  McCown's rightful place as Bears QB, to basketball practice, to the glorious Chicago architecture between 63rd and 35th Street along Dr. King Drive. We pick up Chris A##$%^^ in the project homes still called South Park at 66th.  Chris is a classmate of Clyde's and a profoundly serious guy who keeps his own counsel.  For the last couple of weeks, construction projects on King Drive required us to detour through Washington Park to 55th Street.  This was grist for the Columbian Exposition narratives mill and Burnham's far-sighted development of the south side from the Lake west to State Street.

As I mentioned, we take in the beautiful homes and apartment buildings on Dr. King Drive.  My favorite is on the north east corner of  43rd Street. 

Clyde prefers the Chicken and Waffle House at 39th & King Drive for more than just the aesthetic but culinary graces bestowed beyond its portals.

We pass the Victory Monument of the Fighting 8th Illinois Regiment and arrive at 35th & and Dr. King Drive, take a right and quick left into the strip mall for the Dunkin Donuts Munchkins that will tide over the seven to eight gents who will join my two passengers for the journey to another day in Catholic education. Clyde's appearance in the door is cause for excitement among the early morning Coffee Anne  crowd,  Roy the mall maintenance manager and Miss Marie get greeted by the young man and then query Clyde's doings as he places the order for his fellow travellers. This fourteen year old gentleman is one of the best examples of what Leo High School is all about.

I look forward to my drives with Clyde.

Tamara Holder - Leo Man

Leo High School opened the school year a week ago.  The school welcomed the freshman class and their families and greeted the returning Lions and their folks.

Absent from the returns was a young gent who earned the respect and affection of every soul in this eight-seven year old Catholic high school for males that has been the home to young guys from Chicago's south side. Many of those Leo Lions are now many of the most successful and generous leaders in every vocation. CEO's who were once poor kids who lived along the tracks that run through Auburn, Gresham, Englewood, Brainerd and Chatham received a Leo education that is fundamentally different from any public or charter school.  The difference is that God's law is the foundation of all studies and activities.

For 87 years, poor kids, as well as the sons of blue-collar parents learned that a Leo High School education is earned and owned jointly with the generations that have gone before them.  A Leo Education still means what it did to the Greatest Generation, the Baby Boomers, the Irish, the Italians, the Lithuanians, the Poles, the Swedes, the Germans, the Mexicans and the African Americans who walked through these portals on 79th Street.

Most of our students receive some financial aid, just as many had in the Great Depression, but no one gets everything.  There are no free rides. Families and students invest time, treasure and talent to earn a Leo diploma.

One guy who is not a particularly bookish student, or a hot athlete, or a magnificent singer, or the reincarnation of St. Francis family could not afford the most modest stab at meeting tuition.  He was going to a public school.  That left a huge hole in the heart of the Lion.

President Dan McGrath had men drive over to the kid's home and we took him out for lunch at Schaller's Pump ( owned by Leo Hall of Fame 1943 Alum Jackie Schaller) in order to negotiate an important man back to Leo High School.

The school had allocated financial aid to all of our registered students, but as is always the case, more is needed because financial situations change like Midwest weather. We told our guy " You worry about your studies; let us worry about how to pay for them.  You are a Leo Man.'

We left it at that.  Dan paid for lunch and we headed to the parking lot.  An eighty-seven year old man was slowly working his way out of his car - it was none other than Louie Knox - Leo '42.  Mr. Knox was a member of Darby's Rangers and had the honor of "liberating Rome" days before General Mark Clark and his Army.  When the Rangers were wiped out Mr. Knox became one of America's pioneer Special Forces warriors fighting in Italy and Southern France with a mixed Canadian/American commando unit. 
Lou Knox -Leo '42 throws out the first pitch at Comiskey Park.

Louie Knox met our guy patted in on his shoulders and admonished him 'to be a Leo Man.' We dropped the Leo Man off at home - now, how to find help.

One can go to the well much too often.  No one knows that more than a person who is tasked with raising money.  We have Go-to-guys in the hundreds(  e.g.Sam Leno Class of 1963 spearheaded this summer's transportation campaign The Lion Express to Opportunity) but there are only so many dollars.  Leo works 24/7 to widen the well and dig in new locations.

One of our Advisory board members and the only woman among a thick baker's dozen middle aged African American and Irish American males who look like the cast of Deadwood,  is an exceptionally tall, athletic, smart, witty and beautiful Jewish woman - Tamara Holder. (See? Tamara is Just one of Guys!. . .Not.)

  Tamara is a criminal defense attorney, as well as a national television figure.

Tamara is a guys-gal.  She has not a drop of pretense coursing through her veins, despite being one of the sexiest women in America. She holds her own with the Brothers and  Boyos who tend to be the polar opposites of NPR-types.  Tamara delights and dazzles the Alumni with an occasional visit to Alumni meetings at Father Perez Knights of Columbus and treats inner city kids who have never ventured north of Chinatown to lunches at Harry Carray's.

I called Tamara in between her appearances  on Neil Cavuto and Sean Hannity as a Fox Television Legal Analyst.  I told Tamara about our guy,  Like a Lou Knox, Ms. Holder took command.of the objective and reached out to public and private pals.

The hole in the Lion's heart is filled by a leggy girl who leads with her heart.

Tamara Holder, like WII hero Lou Knox, lives the Leo motto Facta Non Verba - Deeds Not Words - every day.

Thanks, Baby!

It's Still God's World, Pundits Notwithstanding - Milton and a Huge Loss in High School Basketball

Nine times the Space that measures Day and Night [ 50 ]
To mortal men, he with his horrid crew
Lay vanquisht, rowling in the fiery Gulfe
Confounded though immortal: But his doom
Reserv'd him to more wrath; for now the thought
Both of lost happiness and lasting pain [ 55 ]
Torments him; round he throws his baleful eyes
That witness'd huge affliction and dismay
Mixt with obdurate pride and stedfast hate:
At once as far as Angels kenn he views
The dismal Situation waste and wilde, [ 60 ]
A Dungeon horrible, on all sides round
As one great Furnace flam'd, yet from those flames
No light, but rather darkness visible
Serv'd onely to discover sights of woe,
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace [ 65 ]
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes
That comes to all; but torture without end
Still urges, and a fiery Deluge, fed
With ever-burning Sulphur unconsum'd:
Such place Eternal Justice had prepar'd [ 70 ]
For those rebellious, here thir Prison ordain'd
In utter darkness, and thir portion set
As far remov'd from God and light of Heav'n
As from the Center thrice to th' utmost Pole.
O how unlike the place from whence they fell!

Leo High School lost to Seaton on the hardwood last night 95-66. The Basketball team had more than a tough night on the fabled third-floor gym surface, as the Mother Elizabeth Seaton Bees stung the Lions mightily with steady 3-point, 2-point cannonades and wholesome foul shooting.

Between the freshman and sophomore games, I treated some of the gents to comestibles at the Fan Stand on the first floor - Chris MsS#$%^ (Leo 2015), "Hickey, you think we'll take the varsity?"

God only knows.

I missed the varsity game entirely because my daughter called for me to to jump start the automobile battery in her conveyance that only days ago I recommended she replace.

The jump-start worked and her Chevy is sitting outside of my window catching the last leaves of 2011. It will stay there until the lovely fruit of my seed coughs up some cash for a battery.

I read the scores before turning in. God spoke and Seaton swept.

My thoughts turned to Milton, old crabby blind Jack, who also had daughters, Oliver Cromwell's Latin Minister. Latin was still the lingua franca of diplomacy, Puritan bigotry notwithstanding.

John Milton is arguably the greatest voice in English. Less the Steven Spielberg ( give 'em what they want) huckster and showman that Bill Shakespeare happened to be, and far less funny that Geoff Chaucer, Milton spoke past human vanity and proudly humbled himself before the Three Persons of ontological certainty - the Alpha and Omega Trio.

Milton was a sponge of human tongues and unlike dusty dopes like John Dewey and Noam Chomsky applied language to its actual purpose - to seek Truth. Milton sought to not justify God, but to justify God's Ways to Man. Huge difference. Like I noted above above, Milton was Cromwell's Latin Minister. Oliver Cromwell beheaded Charles I with the full agreement of a very frightened Parliament and built a Taliban state of England that any Islamic Brother would embrace - in practice if not theology. Warty Ollie burned witches, killed Catholics, banned plays, songs, and books and made Jihads on Scotland and Ireland that rocked the Casbah. Burning the Cathedral full of Papists in the Irish town of Drogheda north of Dublin, Cromwell ordered his Iron Sides troopers to sing hymns and when questioned about barbecuing the kids along with their elders remarked, "Nits breed lice."

That gent would have made a fine Planned Parenthood president.

Milton was the Latin Minister of a very progressive government of bigots, but no bigot himself. In fact, though a devout Puritan, Milton counted many Italian Cardinals as his boon chums. Milton was schooled not only in Latin, but Greek, Hebrew, Italian and French. He was tasked principally with defending and justifying Cromwell's regicidal government to the world of men, but his life sought to make sense of God's Plan.

All things, not some, are ex Deo. The Fall of Man was and could only be a consequence of the Fall of angels. Satan, formerly Lucifer, is the first community activist.

Satan organizes all beings and goes Alinsky on God and his stooges -Michael, Gabriel & etc. - and agitates for reform which means Satan should be God. Satan is brilliantly energetic, but goes nowhere. Satan is really, really, really frustrated that he is not God the Omnipotent Creator of Satan and everything else; therefore, Satan can only attack God through Man, whom God loves. What Satan, for all of his energy and talent, can not grasp, nor accept is that he is not God. He therefore turns away from everything that is God. Satan is the Anglicized word from the Hebrew for op poser הַשָׂטָן ha-Satan.

Opposition.

Paradise gets Lost and Satan manages to have God's beloved creatures Adam and Eve oppose God's Will. However, poor old Satan is confounded by the fact that God's Will trumps the best laid plans and all of the opposition research in the Devil's trick bag. God Planned this opposition by Satan and eventually Man only to have Paradise redeemed.

When I read the scores of the Seaton debacle, all I could think of was Milton's wonderful scene of the fallen demons on the fiery landscape of what soon would become Hell. Satan was also the first Construction/Real Estate Magnate - He and Beelzebub, raised Hell.


Is this the Region, this the Soil, the Clime,
Said then the lost Arch-Angel, this the seat
That we must change for Heav'n, this mournful gloom
For that celestial light? Be it so, since he [ 245 ]
Who now is Sovran can dispose and bid
What shall be right: fardest from him is best
Whom reason hath equald, force hath made supream
Above his equals. Farewel happy Fields
Where Joy for ever dwells: Hail horrours, hail [ 250 ]
Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell
Receive thy new Possessor: One who brings
A mind not to be chang'd by Place or Time.
The mind is its own place, and in it self
Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n. [ 255 ]
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be, all but less then he
Whom Thunder hath made greater? Here at least
We shall be free; th' Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence: [ 260 ]
Here we may reign secure, and in my choyce
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav'n.
But wherefore let we then our faithful friends,
Th' associates and copartners of our loss [ 265 ]
Lye thus astonisht on th' oblivious Pool,
And call them not to share with us their part
In this unhappy Mansion, or once more
With rallied Arms to try what may be yet
Regaind in Heav'n, or what more lost in Hell? [ 270 ]
So Satan spake, and him Beelzebub
Thus answer'd. Leader of those Armies bright,
Which but th' Onmipotent none could have foyld,
If once they hear that voyce, thir liveliest pledge
Of hope in fears and dangers, heard so oft [ 275 ]
In worst extreams, and on the perilous edge
Of battel when it rag'd, in all assaults
Thir surest signal, they will soon resume
New courage and revive, though now they lye
Groveling and prostrate on yon Lake of Fire, [ 280 ]
As we erewhile, astounded and amaz'd,
No wonder, fall'n such a pernicious highth.
He scarce had ceas't when the superiour Fiend
Was moving toward the shoar; his ponderous shield
Ethereal temper, massy, large and round, [ 285 ]
Behind him cast; the broad circumference
Hung on his shoulders like the Moon, whose Orb
Through Optic Glass the Tuscan Artist views
At Ev'ning from the top of Fesole,
Or in Valdarno, to descry new Lands, [ 290 ]
Rivers or Mountains in her spotty Globe.
His Spear, to equal which the tallest Pine
Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the Mast
Of some great Ammiral, were but a wand,
He walkt with to support uneasie steps [ 295 ]
Over the burning Marle, not like those steps
On Heavens Azure, and the torrid Clime
Smote on him sore besides, vaulted with Fire;
Nathless he so endur'd, till on the Beach
Of that inflamed Sea, he stood and call'd [ 300 ]
His Legions, Angel Forms, who lay intrans't
Thick as Autumnal Leaves that strow the Brooks
In Vallombrosa, where th' Etrurian shades
High overarch't imbowr; or scatterd sedge
Afloat, when with fierce Winds Orion arm'd [ 305 ]
Hath vext the Red-Sea Coast, whose waves orethrew
Busiris and his Memphian Chivalry,
While with perfidious hatred they pursu'd
The Sojourners of Goshen, who beheld
From the safe shore thir floating Carkases [ 310 ]
And broken Chariot Wheels, so thick bestrown
Abject and lost lay these, covering the Flood,
Under amazement of thir hideous change.
He call'd so loud, that all the hollow Deep
Of Hell resounded. Princes, Potentates, [ 315 ]
Warriers, the Flowr of Heav'n, once yours, now lost,
If such astonishment as this can sieze
Eternal spirits; or have ye chos'n this place
After the toyl of Battel to repose
Your wearied vertue, for the ease you find [ 320 ]
To slumber here, as in the Vales of Heav'n?
Or in this abject posture have ye sworn
To adore the Conquerour? who now beholds
Cherube and Seraph rowling in the Flood
With scatter'd Arms and Ensigns, till anon [ 325 ]
His swift pursuers from Heav'n Gates discern
Th' advantage, and descending tread us down
Thus drooping, or with linked Thunderbolts
Transfix us to the bottom of this Gulfe.
Awake, arise, or be for ever fall'n. [ 330 ]


Hell of place you got there!

Fallen is not damned. The Leo motto is Facta Non Verba -Deeds not Words. Our Deeds fell short . . .way short . . .29 points short of a tie and thirty of win.

Fall seven times and get up eight. Christ could not have Restored Paradise if he stayed down on the third fall. Christ never tanked a fight. He fell three and with some help climbed up for a crucifixion and death that justified God's Ways to Man.

Paradise Lost is no Color Purple, or Kite Runner, but needs to be read, studied and taught.

The Men of Leo Boxing - Faith, Pride, Work, and Success

Mike Joyce and the boxing men of Leo Catholic High School.
Located on the southside of Chicago this school has been a safe and supportive place for young men to get a quality education for 86 years. © a bob milkovich short

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Film & Animation

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milkovich Photograpahy leo catholic high school
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Remembering a Hero - Dr. Terry Barrett, The Leo Alumni, Veterans Everywhere and Cpl. John Fardy, Medal of Honor Hero

I scanned in haste - apologies all around - click on the photo and zoom in for a better view.
On Monday, I received a treasure. Miss Adams, the executive secretary for Leo High School handed me a package from Dr. Terry Barrett. It was his book The Search for the Forgotten Thirty-four: Honored by the U.S. Marines, Unheralded in their Hometowns?

The back cover of this book features the grave marker that was replaced by Dr. Barrett, The Marine Corps, The Medal of Honor Foundation and especially the Leo Alumni Association behind the leadership of Vietnam U.S. Army Hero - Jim Furlong ( Leo '65). Until August 15, 2011, passersby had no idea that beneath the well-managed sod of Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in south suburban Alsip, lay the bones of a Medal of Honor Marine - John Peter Fardy. With a heads up from Dr. Barrett, Jim Furlong and Mark Lee ( Leo '85) sparked the energy to do honors long overdue.

It was Terry Barrett's research on heroes forgotten here at home, though their actions in defense of America were the highest and most noble sources for a study of valor, that brought all of us together and offer some fair tribute.

Dr. Barrett's book is now available to us all. I read the entire 612 pages over two nights and re-read Chapter 18 several times. Beginning on page 255, the story of Cpl. John Peter Fardy is laid out with painstaking attention to detail. Dr. Barrett unearthed records and family members to capture some of John Fardy's soul. That soul is magnificent. John Fardy smothered a Japanese grenade with his body in order to protect the squad of Marines he was leading in the fight for Okinawa. Barrett notes early in the book that of the 82 Marines awarded the Medal of Honor during WWII, 27 hurled themselves on live grenades, like Leo's John Fardy (Barrett 155).

A psychologist, as well as a Marine, Dr. Barrett explains that there is no training in the Marin Corps Manual for throwing one's self on a grenade. He explains with exacting detail how a Marine in combat might react to a grenade tossed into his foxhole - he might try and throw back, or he might leap from the hole, or in the worst scenario, keep fighting if he cannot reach the missile.

Psychologist Barret details the five steps necessary in taking any action ( Sensation, Perception, Recognition, Conclusion, Decision and Action). Jim Furlong and Mark Lee were made aware of John Fardy, recognized that his valor was unheralded, concluded that this would not stand, decided to get into the fight and honored John Fardy. Leo's motto is Deeds Not Words - Facta Non Verba.

In Chapter 18 there is a great subheading to some beautiful paragraphs - it is a quote from a man who lost some of leg to a Viet Cong grenade, Jim Furlong -" We Will Get This Done" ( Barrett, 282).

Click my post title and get this book.

Thackeray on Swift and Steele: My Morning's Oxymoron:Deeds Not Words in Writing

Facta Non Verba - Deeds Not Words is the motto of Leo High School. It is also a weltansschwang - a world view developing a human temperament and moral code.We can admire the talents and achievements of people without necessarily acting or aping their methods and motivations.

There are some genuinely nasty people breathing our air, folks, and many of them achieve the pinnacle of success and notoriety. Our age of group think censors opinion and inclinations of individuals who might deviate from the group. Most of group think stems from fear of embarrassment or worse. Why must Lady Gaga be accepted as a paragon of talent and taste? I'll let that one dangle.

This morning's task for your Blogger Boy is a return to the opinion of my favorite writer in the English language - not the greatest as that must be Shakespeare and not the most popular as that would be Dickens - William Makepeace Thackeray - author Vanity Fair and arguably the best historical novel of all time The History of Henry Esmond. Thackeray and Charles Dickens were contemporaries, acquaintances and rivals. Dickens is widely read and Thackeray merely admired today and that is unfortunate. Both Dickens and Thackeray travelled in and wrote about America before the Civil War: Dickens hated America and Americans ( called us 'spitting bipeds') and Thackeray loved this wild and youthful land and its people. In fact, Thackeray wrote a sequel to Henry Esmond set in Colonial/Revolutionary - The Virginians.

Thackeray lectured in America and was greeted with wild enthusiasm from Boston to Cincinnati. One of his lectures The 18th Century Humorists ( Addison, Pope, Swift, Steele, Goldsmith, and Congreve) is the source of my theme today - Facta Non Verba.

Thackeray could admire a great writer and still find him repulsive. For Thackeray a writer was no different than a baker, shoemaker, or banker. Each made money from the sales of his product. Thackeray was no better a man because of product - his books, essays, and poems. However, what a writer crafted should help his fellow man in some small way. Here is Thackeray's critical turn of mind.

Humor of the Human Heart - Thackeray's Template:

BESIDES contributing to our stock of happiness, to our harmless laughter and amusement, to our scorn for falsehood and pretension, to our righteous hatred of hypocrisy, to our education in the perception of truth, our love of honesty, our knowledge of life, and shrewd guidance through the world, have not our humorous writers, our gay and kind week-day preachers, done much in support of that holy cause which has assembled you in this place, and which you are all abetting,—the cause of love and charity, the cause of the poor, the weak, and the unhappy; the sweet mission of love and tenderness, and peace and good will toward men? That same theme which is urged upon you by the eloquence and example of good men to whom you are delighted listeners on Sabbath days is taught in his way and according to his power by the humorous writer, the commentator on every-day life and manners.
. . . I have said myself somewhere, I do not know with what correctness (for definitions never are complete), that humor is wit and love; I am sure, at any rate, that the best humor is that which contains most humanity, that which is flavored throughout with tenderness and kindness. This love does not demand constant utterance or actual expression, as a good father, in conversation with his children or wife, is not perpetually embracing them or making protestations of his love; as a lover in the society of his mistress is not, at least as far as I am led to believe, for ever squeezing her hand or sighing in her ear, “My soul’s darling, I adore you!” He shows his love by his conduct, by his fidelity, by his watchful desire to make the beloved person happy; it lightens from his eyes when she appears, tho he may not speak it; it fills his heart when she is present or absent; influences all his words and actions; suffuses his whole being; it sets the father cheerily to work through the long day, supports him through the tedious labor of the weary absence or journey, and sends him happy home again, yearning toward the wife and children.
This kind of love is not a spasm, but a life. It fondles and caresses at due seasons, no doubt; but the fond heart is always beating fondly and truly, tho the wife is not sitting hand-in-hand with him or the children hugging at his knee. And so with a loving humor: I think, it is a genial writer’s habit of being; it is the kind, gentle spirit’s way of looking out on the world—that sweet friendliness which fills his heart and his style. You recognize it, even tho there may not be a single point of wit, or a single pathetic touch in the page; tho you may not be called upon to salute his genius by a laugh or a tear. That collision of ideas, which provokes the one or the other, must be occasional. They must be like papa’s embraces, which I spoke of anon, who only delivers them now and again, and can not be expected to go on kissing the children all night. And so the writer’s jokes and sentiment, his ebullitions of feeling, his outbreaks of high spirits, must not be too frequent. One tires of a page of which every sentence sparkles with points, of a sentimentalist who is always pumping the tears from his eyes or your own. One suspects the genuineness of the tear, the naturalness of the humor; these ought to be true and manly in a man, as everything else in his life should be manly and true; and he loses his dignity by laughing or weeping out of place, or too often.

Jonathan Swift was recently raped by Hollywood with Jack Black's portrayal of Lemuel Gulliver. Dr. Swift, by Thackeray's measure was an absolutely miserable prique. The great Joseph Epstein, in a very recent edition of New Criterion, assessed Nobel Prize winner Chicagoan Saul Bellow in much the same way. Click my post title for Epstein's wonderful study of a literary giant and a human midget. But first read Thackeray on old Jack Swift!


Jonathan Swift *

If I do not love Swift, as, thank God, I do not, however immensely I may admire him, it is because I revolt from the man who placards himself as a professional hater of his own kind; because he chisels his savage indignation on his tombstone, as if to perpetuate his protest against being born of our race—the suffering, the weak, the erring, the wicked, if you will, but still the friendly, the loving children of God our Father; it is because, as I read through Swift’s dark volumes, I never find the aspect of nature seems to delight him, the smiles of children to please him, the sight of wedded love to soothe him. I do not remember in any line of his writing a passing allusion to a natural scene of beauty. When he speaks about the families of his comrades and brother clergymen, it is to assail them with gibes and scorn, and to laugh at them brutally for being fathers and for being poor. He does mention, in the Journal to Stella, a sick child, to be sure—a child of Lady Masham, that was ill of the smallpox—but then it is to confound the brat for being ill and the mother for attending to it when she should have been busy about a court intrigue, in which the Dean was deeply engaged. And he alludes to a suitor of Stella’s, and a match she might have made, and would have made, very likely, with an honorable and faithful and attached man, Tisdall, who loved her, and of whom Swift speaks, in a letter to his lady, in language so foul that you would not bear to hear it.

In treating of the good the humorists have done, of the love and kindness they have taught and left behind them, it is not of this one I dare speak. Heaven help the lonely misanthrope! be kind to that multitude of sins, with so little charity to cover them!

For Thackeray, a kind man should be emulated by his fellow creatures, while a louse could be admired. The kindest man of 18th Century British Literature, in Thackeray's estimation was Captain Dick Steele: playwright, wit, essayist, soldier and patriot.

Richard Steele **

Steele, as a literary benefactor to the world’s charity, must rank very high, indeed, not merely from his givings, which were abundant, but because his endowments are prodigiously increased in value since he bequeathed them, as the revenues of the lands, bequeathed to our Foundling Hospital at London, by honest Captain Coram, its founder, are immensely enhanced by the houses since built upon them. Steele was the founder of sentimental writing in English, and how the land has been since occupied, and what hundreds of us have laid out gardens and built up tenements on Steele’s ground! Before his time, readers or hearers were never called upon to cry except at a tragedy, and compassion was not expected to express itself otherwise than in blank verse, of for personages much lower in rank than a dethroned monarch, or a widowed or a jilted empress. He stepped off the high-heeled cothurnus, and came down into common life; he held out his great hearty arms, and embraced us all; he had a bow for all women; a kiss for all children; a shake of the hand for all men, high or low; he showed us Heaven’s sun shining every day on quiet homes; not gilded palace roofs only, or court processions, or heroic warriors fighting for princesses and pitched battles. He took away comedy from behind the fine lady’s alcove, or the screen where the libertine was watching her. He ended all that wretched business of wives jeering at their husbands, of rakes laughing wives, and husbands, too, to scorn. That miserable, rouged, tawdry, sparkling, hollow-hearted comedy of the Restoration fled before him, and, like the wicked spirit in the fairy-books, shrank, as Steele let the daylight in, and shrieked, and shuddered, and vanished. The stage of humorists has been common life ever since Steele’s and Addison’s time; the joys and griefs, the aversions and sympathies, the laughter and tears of nature.

The laughter and tears of nature is a precious blessing that is, it seems to me at times, a too easily dispensable set of commodities.

*Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish[1] satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs, then for the Tories), poet and cleric who became Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin.

He is remembered for works such as Gulliver's Travels, A Modest Proposal, A Journal to Stella, Drapier's Letters, The Battle of the Books, An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity, and A Tale of a Tub. Swift is probably the foremost prose satirist in the English language, and is less well known for his poetry. Swift originally published all of his works under pseudonyms—such as Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff, M.B. Drapier—or anonymously. He is also known for being a master of two styles of satire: the Horatian and Juvenalian styles.




**

Sir Richard Steele (bap. 12 March 1672 – 1 September 1729) was an Irish writer and politician, remembered as co-founder, with his friend Joseph Addison, of the magazine The Spectator.

Steele was born in Dublin, Ireland in March 1672 to Richard Steele, an attorney, and Elinor Symes (née Sheyles); his sister Katherine was born the previous year. Steele was largely raised by his uncle and aunt, Henry Gascoigne and Lady Katherine Mildmay.[1] A member of the Protestant gentry, he was educated at Charterhouse School, where he first met Addison. After starting at Christ Church in Oxford, he went on to Merton College, Oxford, then with joined the Life Guards of the Household Cavalry in order to support King William's wars against France. He was commissioned in 1697, and rose up in the ranks to captain of the 34th Foot in 2 years.[2] He disliked British Army life, and left the army in 1705, perhaps due to the death of the 34th Foot’s commanding officer, and with him, his opportunities of promotion. It may then, be no coincidence that Steele's first published work, The Christian Hero (1701), attempted to point out the differences between perceived and actual masculinity.

In 1706 Steele was appointed to a position in the household of Prince George of Denmark, consort of Anne of Great Britain. He also gained the favour of Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford.

In 1705, Steele married a widow, Margaret Stretch, who died in the following year. At her funeral he met his second wife, Mary Scurlock, whom he nicknamed "Prue" and married in 1707. In the course of their courtship and marriage, he wrote over 400 letters to her. They were a devoted couple, their correspondence still being regarded as one of the best illustrations of a happy marriage, but their relationship was stormy. Mary died in 1718, at a time when she was considering separation. Their daughter, Elizabeth (Steele's only surviving legitimate child), married John Trevor, 3rd Baron Trevor.

Steele became a Member of Parliament of the United Kingdom in 1713, but was soon expelled for issuing a pamphlet in favour of the Hanoverian succession. When George I of Great Britain came to the throne in the following year, Steele was knighted and given responsibility for the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London. While at Drury Lane, Steele wrote and directed The Conscious Lovers, which was an immediate hit. However, he fell out with Addison and with the administration over the Peerage Bill (1719), and in 1724 he retired to his wife's homeland of Wales, where he spent the remainder of his life.[3]

A member of the Whig Kit-Kat Club, Steele remained in Carmarthen after Mary's death, and was buried there, at St Peter's Church. During restoration of the church in 2000, his skull was discovered in a lead casket, having previously been accidentally disinterred during the 1870s.