POETS Day! Apes in Hell

You find out the strangest things by virtue of reading introductions to books.

Illustration by Rene Sears

The work week’s nearly done and you’re spending these last few hours doing what exactly? Trying to look busy? Surreptitiously scanning restaurant reviews? Checking game times? Texting your friends about restaurants and game times? Cut it out and cut out. Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday.

First, a little verse.

***

I’ve mentioned before that I’m an introduction reader if the introduction is relatively short or obscenely long. My theory is that I might as well read a short one and that a long one indicates something in the book requiring the long introduction; something I might otherwise miss. My experience shows mid-length ones to be fumbling, fawning, and filled with ten dollar praise of the sort grad students fuss out over beloved former teachers. If I like the book, I’ll read those after. It’s a slapdash theory, but it’s served me and I’m fixed in my habits.

Christian Lorentzen wrote the Introduction to the NYRB Classic edition of Take a Girl Like You by Kingsley Amis, and I’m a little ticked off at him. He’s funny and drops some whispered-about biographical info, though he’s writing about Amis and the info is about infidelity so it was loud whispering to begin with, but entertaining. I’m not going to work out the chronology, but Harper’s claims Lorentzen as a contributor, as do the London Review of Books and others. This intro is a small sample size, but I’m content to dub him one of the good guys and read what I come upon in the future. Still, he ticked me off. I’m pretty sure he gave away the ending of the book.

Not so terribly that I won’t read. I’m pretty, not totally, sure he spoiled it. Lorentzen gives a who’s who of the characters, outlines the conflict central to the plot, and then tells us the ending is “genuinely shocking.” But given the build up as explained there’s only one genuinely shocking ending. If he’s pulled a feint and one of the mains out of nowhere joins the priesthood, reveals himself as the Lindbergh baby, grows a trunk: fine. The ending isn’t spoiled. But given where the story, by his touching on it tells, is going… Dammit.

He didn’t put me off the book. Lucky him, Amis is funny; a wiz writing internal dialogue and contrasting it with behavior contrary but in line with social harmony—snide thoughts behind spoken niceties, etc.

If I hadn’t read the introduction, I might have skipped straight to chapter one. If I’d done that I’d have torted myself twice. First, by not having the wherewithal to tut-tut the dedication, “To Mavis and Geoff Nicholson.” Lorentzen gave me the dirt on that: “Geoff was his former student, and Mavis his mistress. Amis led a complicated life.” Second, I wouldn’t have been baffled by the epigraph:

Where shall I go when I go where I go?

Go, gentle maid, go lead the apes in hell.

He leaves it there uncredited. It’s actually two quotes. The novel’s working title was Song of the Wanderer, and “Where shall I go…” is a pull from the lyrics of a 1926 or 27 Neil Moret song, “Song of the Wanderer (Where Shall I Go?)” made famous at various times by a list of people, none of which I’ve never heard of. That was easy enough to find. Bafflement came from the second part. Even now that I’ve read all about the whens and wheres, I can’t make satisfactory sense of why.

WorldHistory.net was extremely helpful, and I should highlight and thank them as they were the source informing me of the existence of most of the instances I’m referencing in this piece. They say, “The obsolete phrase to lead apes in hell expresses the fancied consequence of dying a spinster.” There was shame in spinsterhood. It’s a squandering of resources or some such, but the phrase was meant as a threat: “Get married, have children, or face the consequences.” From what I’ve gathered searching around the web, mothers led their children in heaven. That was the foundational obsolete saying. It doesn’t seem diametrical to me, but apes and hell are antonymical enough. Enough, it proves, to catch on and make a short run of common parlance. “You’ll go blind.”

The first known written occurrence of the phrase comes from the great trendsetter, George Gascoigne (~1539-1577), author of the first original English poem in blank verse. His “apes in hell” comes to us via prose, in his A Hundreth sundrie Flowres bounde vp in one small Poesie (1573.) The book is a monster with no theme as far as I can tell from the table of contents and as much random reading as I could tolerate using the archive.org flipbook viewer (not much). It’s got prose, poetry, translations, fiction, and essays. The apes appear in a section called “A pleasant discourse of the adventures of Master F.I.” in an episode where F.I. is adjudicating what seems to be a divorce or annulment proceeding pressed by a husband against his wife of twenty-one years, Lady Pergo. For seven years of marriage she wouldn’t “yéeld vnto his iust desires,” seven more she “spent in séeking to recouer his lost loue.” The final seven they didn’t have much to say to each other. She pled with F.I.,

“Nowe, of you worthy Gouernour I would be most glad to heare this question decided, remembring that ther was no difference in the times betwene vs: and surely, vnles your iudgement helpe me, I am afraide my marriage wilbe marred, and I may goe lead Apes in hell.”

I wrote “seems to be a divorce or annulment proceeding” but it’s also possible this is a farce and she’s suing her husband for performance. I’ll update if I find a more tolerable way to read on. The salient take away is that the phrase “lead apes in hell” was in use in 1573.

Fake Shakespeare confirms that the phrase wasn’t just a one off by Gascoigne then repeated by his admirers. In the 1605 play The London Prodigall, once attributed to William Shakespeare but on consideration not, the author lets on that “apes” was a proverb, and an old one at that.

from The London Prodigall from 1605
Fake William Shakespeare (probably not 1564-1616)

– Lancelot. What is it folly to loue Charitie?
– Maister Weathercocks. No mistake me not syr Lancelot,
But tis an old prouerbe, and you know it well,
That women dying maides, lead apes in hell.
– Lancelot. Thats a foolish prouerbe, and a false.

Actual Shakespeare used the phrase in dialogue twice. First, in or around 1591.

from The Taming of the Shrew
@realWilliamShakespeare (1564-1616)

Katherine: What, will you not suffer me? Nay, now I see
She is your treasure, she must have a husband,
I must dance barefoot on her wedding day
And, for your love to her, lead apes in hell.
Talk not to me. I will go sit and weep
Till I can find occasion of revenge.

Again, in or around 1599.

from Much Ado About Nothing

Leonato: You may light on a husband that hath no
beard.
Beatrice: What should I do with him? Dress him in my
apparel and make him my waiting gentlewoman?
He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he
that hath no beard is less than a man; and he that is
more than a youth is not for me, and he that is less
than a man, I am not for him. Therefore I will even
take sixpence in earnest of the bearherd, and lead
his apes into hell.

Sir John Davies wins. He included the phrase in his poetic dialogue “A Contention Betwixt a Wife, a Widdow, and a Maide.” In either 1601 or 1602, the poem was performed at the house of Richard Cecil in from of Her Royal Majesty Elizabeth I, The Virgin Queen. If I’ve got it right, Davies wrote knowing she would be in the audience. I have to buy a finer hat to tip.

He was a favorite of the queen. In 1598, a fellow lawyer made him mad over some slight so he hired two goons with swords to follow him into an Inns of Court dining hall and glower away anyone who’d stop him from trouncing his offender with a cudgel. That got him disbarred for a while. A year later he dedicated a poem to Elizabeth. She un-disbarred him, or leaned on those who did, and set him up for a seat in Parliament to boot. He was risking a good bit setting a wife and widow on a defender of maidenhood in this work.

It’s a long poem, but this excerpt gives the sense: the maid claims innocence and purity, the wife lives in the hoped for moment, and the widow reaps rewards. They’re all snippy with each other.

II. A Contention
Betwixt a Wife, a Widdow, and a Maide
Sir John Davies (1569-1626)

Maid. The maid is ever fresh, like morne in May:
Wife. The wife with all her beames is beautified,
Like to high noone, the glory of the day:
Widow. The widow, like a milde, sweet, euen-tide.

Wife. An office well supplide is like the wife.
Widow. The widow, like a gainfull office voide:
Maid. But maids are like contentment in this life,
Which al the world haue sought, but none enioid:

Go wife to Dunmow, and demaund your flitch.
Widow. Goe gentle maide, goe leade the Apes in hell.
Wife. Goe widow make some younger brother rich,
And then take thought and die, and all is well.

Of course there’s fawning subtext meant to flatter Herself. Davies was daring, not foolish. He included bits like the below before getting to the apes above.

Wife. Why marriage is an honourable state.
Widow. And widdow-hood is a reuerend degree:
Maid. But maidenhead, that will admit no mate,
Like maiestie itselfe must sacred be.

And of course, as it would be genuinely shocking if she didn’t, the Maid gets the long speech closing the disagreement before the kumbaya final stanzas.

Maid. Not Maids? To spotlesse maids this gift is giuen,
To liue in incorruption from their birth;
And what is that but to inherit heauen
Euen while they dwell vpon the spotted earth?

The perfectest of all created things,
The purest gold, that suffers no allay;
The sweetest flower that on th’ earths bosome springs,
The pearle vnbord, whose price no price can pay:

The Christall Glasse that will no venome hold,
The mirror wherein Angels loue to looke,
Dianaes bathing Fountaine cleere and cold,
Beauties fresh Rose, and vertues liuing booke.

Of loue and fortune both, the Mistresse borne,
The soueraigne spirit that will be thrall to none;
The spotlesse garment that was neuer worne,
The Princely Eagle that still flyes alone.

She sees the world, yet her cleere thought doth take
No such deepe print as to be chang’d thereby;
As when we see the burning fire doth make,
No such impression as doth burne the eye.

In short, you find out the strangest things by virtue of reading introductions to books. It’s a good practice.

[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com]