There is always something to do. There are hungry people to feed, nαked people to clothe, sick people to comfort and make well. And while I don’t expect you to save the world, I do think it’s not asking too much for you to love those with whom you sleep, share the happiness of those whom you call friend, engage those among you who are visionary, and remove from your life those who offer you depression, despair, and disrespect.
-Nikki Giovanni, poet and professor (7 Jun 1943-2024)
with Anu Garg
with Anu Garg
It is the people who scream the loudest about America and Freedom who seem to be the most intolerant for a differing point of view.
-Rosanne Cash, singer-songwriter and author (b. 24 May 1955)
I should dearly love that the world should be ever so little better for my presence. Even on this small stage we have our two sides, and something might be done by throwing all one's weight on the scale of breadth, tolerance, charity, temperance, peace, and kindliness to man and beast. We can't all strike very big blows, and even the little ones count for something.
-Arthur Conan Doyle, physician and writer (22 May 1859-1930)
with Anu Garg
The first step in a fascist movement is the combination under an energetic leader of a number of men who possess more than the average share of leisure, brutality, and stupidity. The next step is to fascinate fools and muzzle the intelligent, by emotional excitement on the one hand and terrorism on the other.
-Bertrand Russell, philosopher, mathematician, author, Nobel laureate (18 May 1872-1970)
with Anu Garg
In the first painting, Tom has come into his fortune on the death of his miserly father. While the servants mourn, he is measured for new clothes. Although he has had a common-law marriage with her, he now rejects the hand of his pregnant fiancée, Sarah Young, whom he had promised to marry. She holds his ring and her mother holds his love letters.[5] He pays her off, but she still loves him, as becomes clear in the fourth painting. Behind Tom, the administrator of the estate steals a coin from the money bag Tom holds.
Evidence of the father's miserliness abounds: his portrait above the fireplace shows him counting money; symbols of hospitality (a roasting jack and spit) have been locked up at upper right; the coat of arms shows three clamped vises with the motto "Beware"; a half-starved cat reveals the father kept little food in the house, while a lack of ashes in the fireplace demonstrates that he spent even less money on wood to heat his home.
A servant hanging mourning crepe accidentally uncovers a cache of gold coins. The engraving (right), which is reversed left-to-right compared to the painting, shows the father went so far as to resole his shoes with a piece of leather cut from a Bible cover. An account book has an entry of the miser's joy of getting rid of a bad shilling.
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In the second painting, Tom is at his morning levée in his new London home, attended by musicians and other hangers-on, all dressed in expensive costumes. Surrounding Tom from left to right: a music master at a harpsichord, who was supposed to represent George Frideric Handel or Nicola Porpora; a fencing master; a quarterstaff instructor; a dancing master with a violin; a landscape gardener, Charles Bridgeman; an ex-soldier offering to be a bodyguard; and a bugler of a fox hunt club.
At lower right is a jockey with a silver trophy showing Tom's racehorse "Silly Tom." In the background left are more hangers-on, including a poet, a wig maker and a hat maker. The quarterstaff instructor looks disapprovingly on both the fencing and dancing masters. Both masters appear to be in the "French" style, which was a subject Hogarth loathed. Upon the wall, between paintings of roosters (emblems of cockfighting), there is a painting of the Judgement of Paris.
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The third painting depicts a wild party or orgy underway at a brothel. The prostitutes are stealing the drunken Tom's watch. On the floor at bottom right is a night watchman's staff and lantern — souvenirs of Tom's 'wild night' on the town. The scene takes place at the Rose Tavern, a famous brothel in Covent Garden. The prostitutes have black spots on their faces to cover syphilitic sores.
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In the fourth, he narrowly escapes arrest for debt by Welsh bailiffs (as signified by the leeks, a Welsh emblem, in their hats) as he travels in a sedan chair to a party at St James's Palace to celebrate Queen Caroline's birthday on Saint David's Day. Saint David is the patron saint of Wales. On this occasion he is saved by the intervention of Sarah Young, the girl he had earlier rejected. She is apparently a dealer in millinery and pays the bill.[6]
In comic relief, a man filling a street lantern spills the oil on Tom's head. This is a sly reference to how blessings on a person were accompanied by oil poured on the head. In this case, the "blessing" being the "saving" of Tom by Sarah, although Rakewell, being a rake, will not take the moral lesson to heart. In the engraved version, lightning flashes in the sky toward White's gambling club[7] and a young pickpocket has just emptied Tom's pocket. At the lower right, urchins are gambling. The painting shows the young thief stealing Tom's cane, and has no lightning.
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In the fifth, Tom attempts to salvage his fortune by marrying a wealthy but old and ugly spinster at the St Marylebone Parish Church. In the background, Sarah arrives, holding their child while her indignant mother struggles with another repudiated lover and her mother. It looks as though Tom's eyes are already upon the pretty maid to his new wife's left during the nuptials.
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The sixth painting shows Tom pleading for the assistance of the Almighty in a gambling den at White's club after losing his reacquired wealth. Neither he nor the other obsessive gamblers seem to have noticed a fire that is breaking out behind them.
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All is lost by the seventh painting, and Tom is incarcerated in the notorious Fleet debtors' prison. He ignores the distress of both his angry new wife and faithful Sarah, who cannot help him this time. Both the beer-boy and jailer demand money from him. Tom begins to go mad, as indicated by both a telescope for celestial observation poking out of the barred window (an apparent reference to the longitude rewards offered by the British government) and an alchemy experiment in the background.
Beside Tom is a rejected play. Another inmate is writing a pamphlet on how to solve the national debt. Above the bed at right is an apparatus for wings, which is more clearly seen in the engraved version at the left.
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Finally insane and violent, in the eighth painting he ends his days in Bethlem Hospital (Bedlam), London's infamous mental asylum. Only Sarah Young is there to comfort him, but Rakewell continues to ignore her. While some of the details in these pictures may appear disturbing to 21st-century eyes, they were commonplace in Hogarth's day. For example, the fashionably dressed women in this last painting have come to the asylum as a social occasion, to be entertained by the bizarre antics of the inmates. In the engraving the name of the prostitute Betty Careless is shown carved into the rail of the stairs.[8]
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How simple life becomes when things like mirrors are forgotten.
-Daphne du Maurier, novelist (13 May 1907-1989)
Neither genius, fame, nor love show the greatness of the soul. Only kindness can do that.
-Jean Baptiste Henri Lacordaire, preacher, journalist, and activist (12 May 1802-1861)
The higher up you go, the more mistakes you are allowed. Right at the top, if you make enough of them, it’s considered to be your style.
-Fred Astaire, dancer, actor, singer, musician, and choreographer (10 May 1899-1987)
If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers.
-Thomas Pynchon, novelist (b. 8 May 1937)
The butterfly flitting from flower to flower ever remains mine, I lose the one that is netted by me.
-Rabindranath Tagore, philosopher, author, songwriter, painter, educator, composer, Nobel laureate (7 May 1861-1941)
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.
-Annie Dillard, author (b. 30 Apr 1945)
The enemy is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on.
-Joseph Heller, novelist (1 May 1923-1999)
We understand death for the first time when he puts his hand upon one whom we love.
-Madame De Stael, writer (22 Apr 1766-1817)
How Did You Die?
Edmund Vance Cooke
Did you tackle that trouble that came your way
With a resolute heart and cheerful?
Or hide your face from the light of day
With a craven soul and fearful?
Oh, a trouble's a ton, or a trouble's an ounce,
Or a trouble is what you make it,
And it isn't the fact that you're hurt that counts,
But only how did you take it?
You are beaten to earth? Well, well, what's that?
Come up with a smiling face.
It's nothing against you to fall down flat,
But to lie there -- that's disgrace.
The harder you're thrown, why the higher you bounce;
Be proud of your blackened eye!
It isn't the fact that you're licked that counts,
It's how did you fight -- and why?
And though you be done to the death, what then?
If you battled the best you could,
If you played your part in the world of men,
Why, the Critic will call it good.
Death comes with a crawl, or comes with a pounce,
And whether he's slow or spry,
It isn't the fact that you're dead that counts,
But only how did you die?
