What were we reading in 1911?
Each month of the Centennial year we will look at a notable book published during 1911, and give you a glimpse of what people were reading while Loyola Marymount University was just getting started.
Our fourth review in the series comes from a guest reviewer, LMU Senior Vice President and Chief Academic Officer Joseph Hellige. (For more information about the entire series, click here!)
How Little We Mortals Know: Review of The Sea Fairies by L. Frank Baum (Chicago: Reilly & Britton, 1911)
“Nobody ever sawr a mermaid an’ lived to tell the tale.”
So says retired Captain Bill Waddle to young Mayre (“Trot”) Griffiths to begin L. Frank Baum’s fantasy of life under the sea. Like most young girls, Trot is full of questions and, now that his seafaring days have been ended by an accident, the peg-legged Cap’n Bill is grateful to spend his days teaching her about life on the sea and regaling her with legends of the world beneath.
Trot is especially curious about those sea fairies known as mermaids and wishes with all her heart that she could meet one. Having heard her wish and wanting to correct the misinformation given by Cap’n Bill, the mermaids Merla and Clia transform Trot and Cap’n Bill into mermaid and merman, complete with scaled tails shimmering pink and green, respectively. The resulting tour through the depths of the deep blue sea is filled with sights, sounds, and adventures that rival those of Baum’s better-known “Oz” series.
The first time my family vacationed at the Hotel del Coronado with our then young daughters, I noticed the framed photographs of L. Frank Baum and the accompanying text about the frequent visits from his home in Hollywood for relaxing and writing. So began my interest in his work and the discovery of just how prolific he was. Shortly after, I picked up a copy of The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus (1902) and read from it nightly to my girls. It remains one of our favorites. It is with the same sense of delight that I discovered and read The Sea Fairies.
In this 1911 novel, Baum paints wondrous word pictures of life among the mermaids and their queen, Aquamarine, who introduces them to King Anko, an enormous, powerful, and patriarchal sea serpent who presides over his kingdom with beneficence. The role of chief villain is played by Zog the Magician, a hideous mixture of fish, animal, and human, who enlists sea devil assistants to capture the visitors and their mermaid escorts. The protagonists learn that sailors believed to have been drowned have actually been enslaved and held captive in Zog’s lair. Among these are Cap’n Bill’s brother, Cap’n Joe. True to the form of this genre, Zog is eventually defeated with King Anko’s help, his prisoners are released, Cap’n Joe is chosen to be their new king, and Trot and Cap’n Bill return to dry land.
As is true of Baum’s other work, The Sea Fairies mixes fanciful children’s fare with social commentary, wry political observations, and light-hearted wordplay that is meant more for us grownups. For example, at one point Trot is confused by King Anko’s account of struggling to untie a painful knot in his enormous tail. When she tells him that she does not understand him, the King thanks her, saying
“People who are always understood are very common. You are sure to respect those you can’t understand, for you feel that perhaps they know more than you do.”
Elsewhere, there are barnacles who love to sing meaningless ditties:
“Please go away and come some other day;
Goliath tussels
With Samson’s muscles
Yet the mussels never fight in Oyster Bay.”
And, snooty codfish, of whom Cap’n Bill says:
“I’ve heard tell of codfish aristocracy but I never knowed ‘zac’ly what it meant afore….but I ain’t sure they understand what they’re like when they’re salted an’ hung up in the pantry. Folks gener’ly gets stuck-up ‘cause they don’t know theirselves like other folks knows ‘em.”
More in Baum’s time than today, the term “codfish aristocracy” was used in reference to ostentatious displays of recently acquired wealth. The reference stems from the organization of New England colonist sailors into a “codfish aristocracy,” whose new-found wealth was acquired from the sea and who rose up against British tariffs on fishing. So important were these fish aristocrats that an effigy of the codfish still hangs in the chamber of the House of Representatives in the Massachusetts statehouse in Boston.
To a well-dressed, though somewhat greedy, octopus Trot shares that up on dry land they call the “Stannerd Oil Company” an octopus, prompting the following exchange:
“Stop, stop!” cried the monster in a pleading voice. “Do you mean to tell me that the earth people whom I have always respected compare me to the Stannerd Oil Company?”
“Yes,” said Trot positively.
“Oh, what a disgrace! What a cruel, direful, dreadful disgrace!” moaned the Octopus, drooping his head in shame, and Trot could see great tears falling down his cheeks.
At another point the protagonists happen on an excited school of mackerel in time to hear the fish proclaim that one of their group, Flippity, has just gone to glory. Turning to their mermaid escort, Merla, Trot asks:
“What does it mean? How did Flippity go to glory?”
“Why, he was caught by a hook and pulled out of the water into some boat,” Merla explained. “But these poor stupid creatures do not understand that, and when one of them is jerked out of the water and disappears, they have the idea he has gone to glory, which means to them some unknown but beautiful sea.”
Of humans who might also be said to have gone to their glory, the villainous sea monster Zog tells Trot and Cap’n Bill,
“The dying does not amount to much. It is the thinking about it that hurts you mortals most. I’ve watched many a shipwreck at sea, and the people would howl and scream for hours before the ship broke up. Their terror was very enjoyable [to me] But when the end came, they all drowned as peacefully as if they were going to sleep, so it didn’t amuse me at all.”
All grand adventures end eventually, and The Sea Fairies is no exception. Baum followed this novel with one sequel and then returned to the “Oz” series for which he had become famous years earlier. Neither Trot nor Cap’n Bill were forgotten, however, and both make appearances in some of the later “Oz” stories. As for their adventure in The Sea Fairies, that, too, was destined to end with them back on earth where they belonged. As Trot says,
“The land’s the best, Cap’n.”
“It is, mate, for livin’ on,” he answered.
“But I’m glad to have seen the mermaids,” she added…
“Well, so’m I, Trot,” he agreed. “But I wouldn’t ‘a’ believed any mortal could ever ‘a’ seen ‘em an’--“
Trot laughed merrily.
“An’ lived to tell the tale!” she cried, her eyes dancing with mischief. “Oh, Cap’n Bill, how little we mortals know!”
“True enough, mate,” he replied, “but we-re a-learnin’ something ev’ry day.”
Indeed!
Interesting Web Resources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Frank_Baum
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sea_Fairies
http://masstraveljournal.com/features/places/boston-cambridge/boston/massachusetts-fish-story
http://www.amazon.com/Sea-Fairies-Dover-Childrens-Classics/dp/0486401820
