Matt Roth: "A
couple of years ago, I mentioned coming across an anecdote in Craik’s “Life of
Jonathan Swift,” in which the failing Swift is said to have seen himself in the
mirror and remarked, ‘Poor old man!’ https://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?A2=nabokv-l;6c6b60.1003
Today
I came across a similar account in John Boyle’s Remarks on the Life and
Writings of Dr. Jonathan Swift, this time accompanied by a letter from one
of Swift’s relatives. Responding to an inquiry about the ‘poor old man’
remark, the writer says that he believes “there may be some truth in it,” and
then goes on to give a view of Swift’s everyday existence, including the
following odd detail: “His
servant shaves his cheeks, and all his face as low as the tip of his chin, once
a week: but under the chin, and about the throat, when the hair grows long, it
is cut with scissors” (141). This
is, of course, the beard style known as a Newgate Frill, which JS mistakenly (I
believe) calls a Newport Frill in Canto Four of PF. It’s circumstantial
evidence at best, but the concatenation of details here (poet, mirrors, poor old
man, newgate frill) bolster my inclination to believe that when John Shade left
out two syllables in “Poor old man Swift, poor ------, poor Baudelaire,” he had
himself in mind."
Jansy M ello:: Matt Roth
strikes again by bringing to light a wonderful set of
sophisticated connections (Swift, the newgate frill, the poor old man in a
mirror...) I had never suspected Shade to feel like a "Poor old Shade," but it
makes sense.
Today, while I was abbreviating the names of
Kinbote, Gradus and Botkin (the set of guys who threatened peaceful Wordsmith
and John Shade), I realized that their initials indicated
the KGB.