MDMD(11): The Jenkin's Ear Museum

[Dave Monroe]

"Awakening from a sort of Road-Trance, he finds
himself before the Jenkin's Ear Museum, dedicated to
the eponymous Organ whose timely Display brought
England in against Spain in the War of '39." (M&D, Ch.
17, p. 175)

Apparently, I'm the only patron to have checked this
out in its fifty years here.  From Odell Shepard and
Willard Shepard, Jenkins' Ear: A Narrative Attributed
to Horace Walpole, Esq. (New York: Macmillan, 1951),
"To Whom it May Concern," pp. v-xiv ...

"I, William Cole, an obscure English clergyman, am
writing these words in mid-November of the year of Our
Lord 1782 and the sixty-eighth year of my age.  They
are meant to go with and to vouch for a strange
narrative, herein called 'Jenkins' Ear,' a true copy
of which I am now handing on to those readers as yet
unborn for whom it was mainly intended.  I believe it
to be the work of the Honorable Horace Walpole,
youngest son of England's first Prime Minister ...."
(v)

"'Jenkins' Ear' was brought to my door exactly
twenty-seven years ago, on the fifteenth day of
November, 1755, by Mr. walpole's man-servant,
Louis.... By his masters's direction he asked for, and
got, my written assurance taht the bundle had reached
me in good condition, with its several seals of wax
unbroken." (v)

"The bundle, when at last I had it open, proved to
contain a manuscript extending to nine hundred and
seventeen demy quarto leaves of excellent paper
written only on one side." (v-vi)

"... during almost three decades of hard and frequent
use the holograph of 'Jenkins' Ear' has been so marred
by deletions, additions, corrections, and occasional
sharp rejoinders as to render it, for any eyes but
mine, well nigh illegible.  My sole and insufficient
excuse for suchj intrusion i that in more tha one
place, as the reader will see, Mr. Walpole seems to
expect and even invite it....  I soon found myself
shortening interminable sentences, inserting marks of
quotation where I knew he was using the words of other
men, adding necessary punctutaion, and changing
neologisms such as 'smuckle' and 'serendipity' and
'womanagement' into words that can be found in Dr.
Johnson's Dictionary." (vi)

"Eventually it irritated and angered me to the point
where I began to wreak my wrath upon the manuscript
itself." (vii)

"... I have come to realize that much of what i once
took for gratuitous insult is only the play of Mr.
Walpole's sometimes bewildering humor ....  Therefore
I have sepnt sevral weeks in making a fair copy of the
manuscript as it came to me, neither adding nor
subtracting nor changing one word or mark of
punctutaion." (vii)

"My thought goes forward to those who will read
'Jenkins' Ear' when I am dust, and I cannot but ask
how much of it they will understand.  Mr. Walpole has
everywhere assumed that they will be closely
acquainted not only with the history of our time, its
politics and society and manners and leading
personages, but also with him, with his villa, his
friends and servants, even his little dog....  Now it
is easily possible, and greatly to be hoped, that
twentieth-century readers will be much better informed
than we are, but it does not follow that their
knowledge will be about us.  Conceivably, they may
have other preoccupations ...." (vii-viii)

"The Ear itself ... is not imaginary but a tangible
object which I myself have seen and, somewhat
reluctantly, handled.  Its astonishing influence in
human affairs--precipitating our war with Spain in
1739, contributing to the downfal of Sir robert
Walpole's Peace Ministry, facilitating the rise of
prussia as a military power, enabling the followers of
the exiled James Stuart to perpetrate the Jacobite
Rebellion of 1745, and thus rendering inevitable the
embroilment of Europe and the Western World--is a
thing which the twentieth century may forget without
escaping its consequences.  Indeed it may be that
those consequences, increasing vast and dire, will not
be exhauted until the sea is dry and the heavens crack
and human history is rolled up as a scroll.  At the
very least ... the Ear is a theme for historic and
prophetic meditation as deep as the ancient myth of
teh Apple of Discord or evn the lie that was told in
the Garden of Eden." (viii)

"Jacobitism--that is, the belief that the House of
Stuart is entitled by Divine Right to the Throne of
England ..." (ix)

"My tendency is to accept constituted authority, and
this in my lifetime has been represented for me by my
ecclesiastical superiors and by three King Georges,
all of the House of Hanover." (ix)

"That is the attitude of a Hanoverian Tory.  Nor mr.
Walpole, by inheritance if not by reasoned conviction,
is a Whig.  He feels that th real power should rest
not with the King but with Parliament, yet for
Parliament, although he has long served as a member,
he has no high regard.  authority of any kind he is
wont to decry and deride." (ix)

"But now to proceed.  In addition to the things in
'Jenkins' Ear' which future readers may not understand
there may be some which they cannot believe...." (ix)

"the general truth of this document is proved to my
satisfaction by its congruity with facts of which I
have independent knowledge." (x)

"These, then, are real people ... and their familiar
names and characters could not fail of a persuasive
effect." (x)

"Needless to say, I do not believe that Mr. Walpole
saw a unicorn by moonlight in his garden, or that the
ghost of th late Alexander Pope appeared there and was
driven thence by a gesture which no gentleman could
conceivably make.  These things and others of like
sort are the figments, I take it, of a wildly
irresponsible imagination ...." (xi)

"And yet the very presence of these incredible
assertions in 'Jenkins' Ear' has, surprisingly, the
effect of validating the narrative in its main tenor. 
They show, i mean, taht it was written in a mood of
intense excitement which no ordinary event could have
caused.  The same effect is given by the frequently
breathless and headlong mode of expression wherein
every fault and felicity of Mr. Walpole's usual
writing is inflated, exaggerated, exalted, to meet
some momentous occasion.  Hitherto his friends have
known him as an amusing embroiderer of the truth, and
here to be sure he embroiders still, but upon what a
magnificent fabric!  In these pages he calls himself,
justly, a carver of cherry-stones, but for once it is
the terrene globe that he chisels." (xi)

"Mr. Walople is not waht i would call a probable man,
and the list of his incongruities if drawn up would
make him look almost incredible.... this document
reveals him as both harsh and tender, brilliant and
foolish, timorous and brave, vain of his outward
advantages but unaware of his inward virtue, and a man
who even while jesting at reputation still hopes and
believes that his name will live forever.
   "Mr. Walople has laid many a trap for posthumous
fame." (xiii)

Wow.  And recall, of course, from Thomas Pynchon, "Is
it O.K. to be a Luddite?," New York Times, October 28,
1984 ...

"This is one of several interesting similarities
between 'Frankenstein' and an earlier tale of the Bad 
    and Big, 'The Castle of Otranto' (1765), by Horace
Walpole, usually regarded as the first Gothic novel.
For one thing, both authors, in presenting their books
to the public, used voices not their own. Mary
Shelley's preface was written by her husband, Percy,
who was pretending to be her. Not till 15 years later
did she write an introduction to 'Frankenstein' in her
own voice. Walpole, on the other hand, gave his book
an entire made-up publishing history, claiming it was
a translation from medieval Italian. Only in his
preface to the second edition did he admit
authorship."

http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/18/reviews/pynchon-luddite.html

But, so far as I can tell, Walpole/Cole/Shepard and
Shepard's Jenkins' Ear IS a faux found manuscript, a
la, and avant la lettre, Umberto Eco's The Name of the
Rose at al. ...

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