Title Tale

By EMILY V. WEDGE

TITLES are teasers. And the task of a title is enormous. Thereby indeed hangs the tale. Upon it may rest the fame and fortune of a writer, the enlightenment of a reader, the bread and butter of a bookseller, the lift, in the life of a librarian.

Beginning with the intention of making life easier for my fellow librarians and continuing with the zest of the amateur detective, I have collected almost two thousand titles of books which were drawn from literary sources. People are notoriously choosy when they are getting something for nothing, and authors in the act of title-lifting are doubly so. Some of them, such as the late Stephen Vincent Benét, have gone so far as to invent authors with five-foot bookshelves just for the purpose of pillaging their pages for titles. Mr. Benét’s artifice merits detailed description.

In the course of culling titles for my collection, I came upon Mr. Benét’s Tales Before Midnight.On one of the preliminary pages of the book appears the source line for the title, generously given by the author: —

Fortunately for the revelation of what later turned out to be an almost perfect piece of dissembling, the above quotation was not sufficient to meet the minimum requirements of the book. I therefore began a search for the works of Mr. John Cleveland Cotton — patiently, at first, then anxiously, then with that unique combination of intense fervor and skepticism which comes over librarians loath to meet their Waterloo. I searched every imaginable bibliography, literary history, and book of quotations from cover to cover. By this time, the mystery had doubled. In another spot I had caught Mr. Benét alluding to a volume entitled Diversions of Historical Thought, which proved to be as much a will-o’-the-wisp as Mr. Cotton.

At last, as a desperate measure, I called Mr. Benét himself to account for Mr. C. With obliging promptness he wrote: —

“My sins have again found me out. I regret to say that I am the only author of John Cleveland Cotton and that neither he nor his works exist outside my pages. Mr. Cotton is also the author of ‘Diversions of Historical Thought.’ Apologetically, STEPHEN VINCENT BENÉT.”

But by this time the leader of such a chase had taken on definite characteristics in the mind of the chaser. It was impossible to believe that all there was to Mr. Cotton was a line of prose or poetry (it could have been either) and two formidable titles of imaginary books creat ed solely for the convenience of Mr. Benét. Another petition brought more enlightenment: —

“You will find a quotation from Cotton at the head of a story of mine called ‘The Curfew Tolls’ in a volume called ‘Thirteen O’Clock.’ At one time, upon request, I wrote a short biographical sketch of Cotton which I sent to some librarian at the New York Society Library — not the New York Public Library. I did not, unfortunately, keep a carbon copy — I now wish to goodness I had. It was quite a nice sketch, if I do say so myself, and contained a poetical extract. Had I known that Mr. Cotton was to assume the proportions in my life that he has, I certainly would have had the sketch mimeographed for distribution. . . . I do assure you, in all humility, that Mr. Cotton was not created to annoy and disturb hard-working librarians — it was just for my own amusement. But I seem to have started something — and I have a horrid fear that he will next appear in Bartlett. Perhaps, eventually, it will be discovered that he wrote my books — I fear, a fitting revenge.”

Inquiry revealed that Mrs. Frederick King of the New York Society Library had also encountered Cotton and had pursued him for another reason. When Mrs. King found in the front of Mr. Benét’s book the Cottonism: “Tell your tale before midnight; it is later than you think,” she believed she had at last found the origin of the famous sundial motto which has long eluded librarians. But she, too, was not satisfied with merely one line. Furthermore, she wanted to see the gem with her own eyes, in its original setting. So Mrs. King set off in pursuit of Mr. Cotton. In due time, she too was forced by exhaustion to appeal to Mr. Benét.

To show to what lengths a writer of Mr. Benét’s stature and inventiveness will go in quest of a title, I quote his reply to Mrs. King in full: —

“I am sorry to say that I cannot trace the quotation ‘It is later than you think’ earlier than Cotton. I had always heard of it as a sun-dial motto, popular in the 18th century. John Cleveland Cotton was born in the village of Little Thatching (Kent) in 1718 and died in great poverty in Dieppe in 1782. The eighth son of a country parson, he early showed literary precocity, and the then Duke of Dover obtained a sizarship for him at the famous old Cordwainers’ School. lie was educated there and at St. Dismas’ College, Cambridge, but his University career, while brilliant scholastically, was marred by irregularities and dissipation. His first book of poems, ‘The Rural Muse,’ won him a brief contemporary celebrity and the well-known reference from Pope,

Nor thou, Stultitia, thy bays refuse
To TICKELL’S Odes or COTTON’S Rural Muse

(omitted from later editions of The Dunciad). But his mock heroic epic, ‘The Spartiad,’ fell flat, and Cotton was imprisoned for debt. Of the next fifteen years of his life we have little record though a search of the Shrewsbury papers would seem to show that he was occasionally employed as a clerk and sometimes as a spy by the British Foreign Office. In 1758, at the age of 40, he suddenly took Orders and his next ten years were spent in retirement, as rector of the village of Siddenfold (Berks). This was, on the whole, the happiest and most fruitful period of his life. He published, in 1761, his long and extremely dull ‘A Reasoned Defence of the Thirty-Nine Articles’ but it was not until the publication of his ‘Diversions of Historical Thought’ in 1764, that he began to win back something of his youthful reputation.

“The‘Diversions’ were widely read and won him the epistolary friendship of Walpole — ‘I have despatched a parcel of books this very morning to my quaint friend, Cotton, the parson an original of the first water.’ Johnson characterized the ‘Diversions’ as a ‘farrago,’ but, on being more closely pressed by Boswell, said ‘Yet there are in them flashes of an abrupt genius. No reasoning man could deny it, though a Scotchman might.’ Unfortunately Cotton’s was not a temperament to endure prosperity. His irregular habits returned and the. drift of his mind toward Gnosticism made it impossible for him to remain in the Church of England. He was unfrocked in 1769 — ‘poor Cotton! had he been but a Bishop, he might have worshipped Flora and Bacchus to his heart’s content, and no notice taken!’ says Walpole cynically — and for some time eked out a bare existence by hack work for the London booksellers. It was under such trying circumstances that he composed his masterpiece, the ‘Noctivigations,’ a favorite bedside book of both Keats and Byron, and, oddly enough, in later years, of Lord Roseberry. The copyright, however, brought him only seven pounds and he was forced to flee to Dieppe to avoid a second imprisonment for debt. Here, the last four years of his life were spent in comparative peace and the receipt of a small pension from Lord Anthony Wimsey, grand-nephew of that Duke of Dover who had befriended Cotton’s youth. Both the ‘Noctivigations’ and the ‘Diversions’ are now out of print, but Saintsbury considers Cotton an important if minor influence on the early development of the Romantic Movement. Other critics rank Cotton even higher. Gerard Manley Hopkins alludes enthusiastically to ‘Grand old Cotton, knotty and full-flavorous, a birchv, beeehy writer!’ and T. S. Eliot compares him favorably with Lancelot Andrewes.

Like ‘The Nunga-Punga Book,’ the ‘Noctivigations’ is not for all tastes. But I should certainly put it on the shelf beside R. L. Stevenson’s ‘The Rising Sun,’ the collected works of John Charteris and the writings of Arthur Pendennis.
Respectfully submitted,
STEPHEN VINCENT BENÉT”

The letter is not dated but is postmarked December 12, 1939.

In Mrs. King’s own words, “The first glance brought a shock of dismay, but the clues came thick and fast. I tumbled at St. Dismas’ College but a learned friend knew there never was a Duke of Dover. The letter makes an excellent information test. Mr. Benét must have had a lovely time writing it.”

One more contact with Mr. Benét, before his titles in my collection were accounted for, revealed — yes! — that Dycer’s Herbal, which christened Mr. Benét’s Young People’s Pride, and The Tragedie of Tamar and D’hermonville’s Fabliaux were all on the same shelf with the works of John Cleveland Cotton — in Mr. Benét’s mind.