Futility Closet - 024-The World's Worst Poet

Episode Date: September 1, 2014

William McGonagall has been called "the only truly memorable bad poet in our language," responsible for tin-eared verse that could "give you cauliflower ears just from silent reading": Alas! Lord and Lady Dalhousie are dead, and buried at last, Which causes many people to feel a little downcast; And both lie side by side in one grave, But I hope God in His goodness their souls will save. In this episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll sample McGonagall's writings, follow the poor poet's sadly heroic wanderings, and wonder whether he may have been in on the joke after all. We'll also consider a South Carolina seventh grader's plea to Ronald Reagan and puzzle over a man's outrageous public behavior. Our segment on William McGonagall, the world's worst poet, is drawn from Norman Watson's beautifully researched 2010 book Poet McGonagall: A Biography. The best online source on McGonagall is Chris Hunt's site McGonagall Online, which contains extensive biographical materials, a map of the poet's travels, and a complete collection of his poems. South Carolina seventh grader Andy Irmo's 1984 letter to Ronald Reagan asking that his room be declared a disaster area appears in Dwight Young's 2007 book Dear Mr. President: Letters to the Oval Office from the Files of the National Archives. Our post about it ran on Aug. 14, 2006. Thanks to listener Nick Madrid for this week's lateral thinking puzzle. You can listen using the player above, or subscribe on iTunes or via the RSS feed at http://feedpress.me/futilitycloset. Many thanks to Doug Ross for the music in this episode. If you have any questions or comments you can reach us at [e-mail]. Thanks for listening!

Welcome to Futility Closet, a celebration of the quirky and the curious, the thought-provoking and the simply amusing. This is the audio companion to the popular website that catalogs more than 8,000 curiosities in history, language, mathematics, literature, philosophy, and art. You can find us online at futilitycloset.com. Thanks for joining us. Welcome to episode 24. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In today's show, we'll meet William McGonagall, a 19th century Scottish poet so bad he was regularly pelted with rotten fruit. Consider a 7th grader's inventive plea to Ronald Reagan, and puzzle over a man's shocking public behavior. If I asked you to name the greatest poet in the English language, I think many or most people would say William Shakespeare.

If I asked you who is the worst poet in the history of the language, you wouldn't think, or I wouldn't have thought, there'd be that much consensus, but there is. A lot of people think it was a man named William McGonagall who worked in Scotland in the 1900s. And just to give you a taste of what we're in for here, here's probably his most famous poem. This is about a rail disaster. A rail bridge collapsed in Dundee during a storm in 1879 and took the train down with it. And McGonagall wrote this. Beautiful railway bridge of the silvery tay. Alas, I am very sorry to say that 90 lives have been taken away on the last Sabbath And then he goes on and recounts the whole disaster, and it ends this way. fearlessly without the least dismay that your central girders would not have given way had they been supported on each side with buttresses. For the stronger we our houses do build, the less

chance we have of being killed. That's pretty much par for McGonagall. He knows vaguely how to rhyme, but that's about it. I'd give a whole biography of his life, but actually we don't know most of it. He was born either in Scotland or Ireland. His own accounts varied. But we don't know much about the first 50 years of his life. He was born to, his father was a handloom weaver. And as the Industrial Revolution came on, that imperiled weavers everywhere because power looms just started doing this stuff much more cheaply.

So he turned instead first to acting, which did not go well, and then finally to poetry. The interesting thing about turning to poetry is it's not something that came to him gradually. He was struck with basically a lightning bolt of inspiration on one particular day. He was sitting in his room one day in 1877, and he writes, A flame, as Lord Byron has said, seemed to kindle up my entire frame, along with a strong desire to write poetry, and I felt so happy, so happy that I was inclined to dance. Then I began to pace backwards and forwards in the room, trying to shake off all thought of writing poetry, but the more I tried, the more strong the sensation became. It was so strong,

I imagined that a pen was in my right hand and a voice crying, write, write. So he wrote. His first effort was a poem to his best friend called An Address to the Reverend George Gil Fillon, which he wrote and then took down the street to the weekly news, the local newspaper, and they actually published it. It begins like this. Reverend George Gil Fillon of Dundee, there is none can you excel. You have boldly rejected the confession of faith and defended But McGonagall didn't waste any time. In the same year that he decided to write poetry, 1877, he immediately applied for patronage from Queen Victoria. He began by writing a poem to her. Here's one stanza from that. Most lovely Empress

of India and England's generous Queen, I send you an address I have written on Scotland's bard, hoping that you will accept it and not be with me too hard, nor fly into a rage, but be as kind and condescending as to give me your patronage. Rage runs with patronage. He received this reply. General Sir Thomas Biddulph is commanded to thank Mr. McGonagall for sending the enclosed lines, which, however, the Queen regrets must be returned, as it is not usual for Her Majesty to receive manuscript poetry, which is just a flat rejection. But he took it as her blessing.

He took it as her blessing? Yes. He was very eager to believe that she wanted to patronize him. In fact, the following year, in June 1878, he walked 60 miles to Balmoral Castle, which is one of the residences of the British family in Scotland, with this letter and showed it to the duty policeman there. And he writes in his autobiography, he returned with an answer as follows. Well, I've been up at the castle with your letter, and the answer I got for you is that I cannot be bothered with you.

So he walked 60 miles home again. But even then, began printing his poems as penny sheets and proclaiming himself on them, poet and tragedian to the queen. So he just decided that he had her blessing and he was now, she was his patron. But they didn't sell, perhaps not surprisingly. He couldn't sell these penny sheets. So the next thing he tried was to actually give public performances of his poetry. And this tended to be met with wild applause. And it's not clear whether he understood that So the next thing he tried was to actually give public performances of his poetry. And this tended to be met with wild applause, and it's not clear whether he understood that this was ironic. McGonagall's great gift was... Self-delusion?

Yeah. Being able to overlook criticism, I guess, would be a charitable way of saying it. That's a nicer way of saying it, yes. Which, given the mountains of vitriol that were just heaped on him constantly, was probably a blessing, I guess. And gradually he became well-known in Dundee as a bad poet, and became sort of a figure of fun generally. Here's a letter he wrote to the proprietor of Lasky's Grocery.

Mr. Lasky, my dear friend, I must tell you so far you've always treated me in a friendly way, but I'm sorry to inform you that I received rather foul treatment in your office in Commercial Street yesterday afternoon when I called to sell my latest effusion, which is enclosed. Well, sir, my poem was severely criticized by the eldest of the two men that were there. He condemned it in the reading of the first two lines. Then the youngest one called me an ass and said my poem was very ungrammatical and mocked me about going to see the queen and so forth until I felt very aggravated. This is going to get much, much worse. We'll see in a second, but it's already at this early date, he's becoming well-known in Dundee as a terrible poet.

But he pressed on. He kept writing, he kept publishing. And in fact, going abroad, he visited London in 1880 to seek his fortune and was there roundly insulted and snubbed, but wrote poems even about that. Oh, mighty city of London, you are wonderful to behold, but your treatment towards strangers, I think, tis rather cold. But you are very kind to them, while they have plenty of gold. He went even farther abroad from there. In 1887, he visited America, where he spent three days approaching theaters and music halls in New York, where he writes, most of them laughed, yes, laughed at me. Here's the beginning of a poem about New York City. Oh, mighty city of New York, you are

wonderful to behold. Your buildings are magnificent, and truth be it told, they were the only thing that seemed to arrest my eye because many of them are 13 stories high. There's an interesting point here. I'm getting a lot of this from a wonderful biography by Norman Watson that was published in 2010. Altogether, McGonagall published about 270 poems, and it's natural to ask, was one of them worse than the others? Was there a very worst poem that he wrote? And Watson says, yes, there was, actually. It was written around this time. While McGonagall was in New York, he received a letter from a fellow, Scott, and his wife,

whose infant daughter had recently died. So they were grief-stricken, and they reached out to him and asked him to compose four sacred lines that they could engrave on her tombstone. And McGonagall thought about this and wrote the following. Here lies little Mary Jane. She neither cries nor hollers. She lived but one in 20 days and cost us $40. Oh, that's horrible.

That's, I suppose that's the worst poem by the world's worst poet. That may be the worst poem ever written. Yeah, it is horrible. So things did not work out for him in New York, so he retreated back to Scotland, but things were getting rapidly worse there. He really was going through a terrible amount of just vitriol and public hostility and just being a figure of fun in Dundee. I'll give two examples of that. In 1888, he appeared in highland dress to recite his poem, The Battle of Bannockburn.

And one account runs, as soon as he reached the top of the ramp, a jute bag struck him from above. It was filled with soot. He couldn't retreat. The baron was at his back and said, you've got to go on. If you don't go on, they'll wreck the place.

McGonagall never got around to saying his Bannockburn. His soot-stained figure was assaulted by various missiles, including tins, rotten eggs, and old boots. His act ended when a brick hit him in the stomach and knocked him out cold. Oh, that's just mean, though. I've often thought this story would make a good movie, but it's hard to tell if it would play as a comedy or a tragedy, because the same story works both ways yeah i suppose it depends more on him like was he just deluded or was he just thought that by perseverance he could get people to accept him it's hard to know it's hard to tell in fact we'll get into it in a second um towards the end uh it was really wearing him and his last years in dundee he was appearing uh at circuses

in the years 1888 and 1889 for about 15 shillings a night, and they'd let him perform his poetry, but he'd have to endure getting things literally thrown at him while he did it. These are four particular dates in Watson's book. On December 21st, 1888, at Transfield Circus in the Nethergate, he came under a withering fire of potatoes, apples, and rotten eggs. A well-aimed cabbage hit his head before his third and final retreat ended the show. On December 28th, which is a week later, bags of flour and eggs rained around and he sought sanctuary behind the scenery. On January 30th, 1889, he was struck by bouquets of vegetables, bags of soot and flour, and a ham bone. He gave up when a liquid bombshell hit him on the eye and On this last one, he managed to stay on stage for only three minutes.

So, things were bad enough now that in August 1889, the Majesties of Dundee took the extraordinary step of banning any more public performances by him because it became a threat to the public order. There were almost going to be riots. He was so bad, and it was people having so much fun baiting him. So that ended his career as a performance poet, which meant he had to find some way of making money.

He considered emigrating to Ireland or to Australia, but at this point his health was poor, and the economic prospects, particularly in Australia, dissuaded him from going. So he moved with his wife first to Perth, Scotland, but found that he couldn't sell his poems there and wasn't getting any invitations to perform them. So in 1895, he and his wife finally moved to Edinburgh. By 1900, he was destitute and again supported by friends, and he died broke in 1902 and was buried in an unmarked grave. Three things about McGonagall. One, he was, from this historic standpoint, ironically successful. He had no talent as a poet and was roundly derided at the time,

but today he's famous around the world, he's loved in his way, and all his books are still in print, which almost no other poet from his era can say. That's true. He was so immune from criticism that I think if he were alive today and knew this, I think he'd actually be proud of that. The second thing is, it strikes me that it does seem shameful that we're willing to deride someone for a lack of talent, even though he's basically a good person. All the accounts of McGonagall, he wasn't driven by vanity. He wasn't pretentious or full of self-regard. That's not why people responded to him the way they did.

People who knew him remembered him as a good and worthy person. One said, a native goodness and a strong sense of decency and right conduct revealed themselves in his speech and bearing. So he was a good person and in that sense didn't really deserve the pillorying he got. Oddly, his speech and his prose seemed to be good. It was only the poetry itself that seemed to be just disastrously terrible, which raises the last question, was Ian on the joke? And my notes say, how long do you have to be pelted with eggs

before you begin to suspect this is not a compliment? It's hard to believe that someone could be that reviled during his lifetime and not realize it. Yeah, that is, I mean, it sounded like he had this absolute passion for writing poetry yeah you're right like like you wouldn't catch on at some point yeah uh and watson actually says the answer to that question is yes he thinks it started out innocently he genuinely did want to

write good poetry but came to see how it was being received and sort of learned implicitly to play into that and and to pretend to be worse than he was at least his way of making a living yeah i was gonna say so the only way he could really make any money at it was to be the brunt of a joke right i mean which may be the case i mean there's no way to know really but there's an account uh toward the end of his life he gave a performance in 1897 that was attended by the sc journalist Neil Monroe. And this was just basically a setup. I don't think this is the only time this happened where a group of people invited him to do a reading just so they could jeer and mock him, you know, after each poem. Which, if he isn't in on the joke, that really is mean.

That's just cruel. Well, that's how this reads. This doesn't sound like someone who was playing it up as a character. Monroe writes, There was not the slightest evidence that he suspected any irony in the ovation. I already felt a little sorry for the poor old man and wished I hadn't come. The party were getting successfully more and more drunk as the night wore on, and they made a big show of presenting him with something. So he readied himself for that,

and it turned out it was just a sausage decorated with ribbons. They were just openly mocking him. And Monroe says, I felt painfully ashamed of myself. He writes, it was pathetic to see the instant disillusionment of one who a moment before was unsuspicious at the fact that he was merely a laughingstock for a convivial company of dubious taste. There was a tremor in his voice when he protested that he felt hurt and insulted by such a presentation as certainly no other poet in history had been offered. It took a little while and much diplomacy to soothe him down. So, I guess you can make up your own mind. That doesn't sound to me like someone who's playing up being a buffoon for money.

But what I come away with is this is, and I don't mean this facetiously, it's kind of an inspiring story. He got this inspiration in 1877 to do something that he had absolutely no talent for and kept at it until the end of his life, 25 years, despite gigantic, continual, constant discouragement of every possible description. You know, it's hard because it makes me think of there have been other writers or artists in general who had to persevere before anybody recognized their worth, right? And like even J.K. Rowling, like how many publishing houses rejected the first Harry Potter novel? That's right.

And if she hadn't persisted, you know, then she never would have experienced the success that she ended up having. People love her writings. So how does a person know? Yeah, when do you experienced the success that she ended up having people love her writings so how does a person know yeah when do you stop when do you you know how do you know mcgonigal would have said he watson says he regarded it if you know if he was writing poetry that was getting published and if people were attending his readings that's success isn't it yeah yeah um he wasn't able to see that a lot of it was sort of sarcastic or mocking. Yeah. But it's hard also quite to see what's wrong with that. So anyway, I've come to sort of, it's true that he can't write poetry at all,

but his perseverance is admirable. And maybe if he couldn't be a great poet, he still managed to turn his career into something inspiring. We'll have a link to an online collection of William McGonigal's works in our show notes at blog.futilitycloset.com. This episode is brought to you by Harry's. For a lot of us, shaving is a pain. It's uncomfortable. If you don't have good blades, it can be painful. You get nicks, cuts, and razor burn. And blades can be outrageously expensive. You can pay $32 for an eight-pack, plus you have the inconvenience of going to the drugstore and then unlocking that little plexiglass cabinet. That's how the folks at Harry's feel about shaving, too. So they've

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Go to harrys.com now, and they'll give you $5 off if you use the coupon code CLOSET with your first purchase. That's h-a-r-r-y-s.com, and enter coupon code CLOSET at checkout for $5 off and start shaving better today. On May 9th, 1984, the White House received this letter. Dear Mr. President, my name is Andy Smith. I'm a 7th grade student at Irmo Middle School in Irmo, South Carolina. Today my mother declared my bedroom a disaster area. I would like to request federal funds to hire a crew to clean up my room.

I'm prepared to provide the initial funds if you will provide matching funds for this project. I know you will be fair when you consider my request. I will be awaiting your reply. Sincerely yours, Andy Smith. Ronald Reagan wrote back, Dear Andy, I'm sorry to be so late in answering your letter, but as you know I've been in China and found your letter here upon my return. Your application for disaster relief has been duly noted, but I must point out one technical problem.

The authority declaring the disaster is supposed to make the request, in this case your mother. However, setting that aside, I'll have to point out the larger problem of available funds. This has been a year of disasters, 539 hurricanes as of May 4th, and several more since, numerous floods, forest fires, drought in Texas, and a number of earthquakes. What I'm getting at is that funds are dangerously low. May I make a suggestion? This administration, believing that government has done many things that could better be done by volunteers at the local level, has sponsored a private sector initiative program calling upon people to

practice volunteerism in the solving of a number of local problems. Your situation appears to be a natural. I'm sure your mother was fully justified in proclaiming your room a disaster. Therefore, you are in an excellent position to launch another volunteer program to go along with the more than 3,000 already underway in our nation. Congratulations. Give my best regards to your mother, Ronald Reagan. So this week, I'm giving Greg a lateral thinking puzzle, and he will have to try to solve it using only yes or no questions. We got several nice

puzzles sent in by listener Nick Madrid, who sent in a crop that he says most of them he came up with himself. Okay. Very impressive. So here's one of them to try. Thanks, Nick. Yep. In a public place, a man deliberately exposes a portion of his anatomy to a horrified crowd of men, women, and children. Several children burst into tears and one outraged father almost tackles the man. After the incident, the man is dismissed from his job. He receives hate mail and a local newspaper brands him a monster. But there is never any suggestion that he should be prosecuted, and the police are never involved. Why not?

That's a good puzzle. I don't know what the answer is. I like the puzzle, though. All right, read just that crucial first beginning part again. In a public place, a man deliberately exposes a portion of his anatomy to a horrified crowd of men, women, and children. Okay. That's probably the best way to go after this one.

So he's not guilty of a crime then? That is correct. All right, let's try for the anatomy. Is it above the waist? Yes. Is it above... I'm lost already. Is it part of his arms or hands?

No. Is it part of his anatomy that's normally hidden? No. No. His head? Be more specific. Part of his head. Yes.

Part of his... He exposes part of his head. Yes. Really? Yes. Before a horrified crowd. Yes. But it's not normally hidden?

Correct. Okay. Can I be more specific? I mean, about the part of his head? Yeah, if you want. His eyes? No. His mouth?

Part of his mouth? Something. I'm on the right track, apparently. Yeah, it's hard for me to... You can't get more specific than that? Well, I guess it's not part of his mouth, but... All right, something involving his face. Yes, yes.

And so when the crowd is horrified, are they reacting to a facial expression? No. To what you might call a gesture? No. Or making a face, you know what I mean? It's not an expression or an emotion that he's... Right, it's not. Huh.

Okay. And you say he exposes part of his anatomy. Yes. Oh, read it again. I'm sorry, just that first part again. In a public place, a man deliberately exposes a portion of his anatomy to a horrified crowd of men, women, and children. Do you want to hear the rest? No.

Okay. Does it involve shaving no or like removing hair from his face somehow i don't know why that would horrify you but maybe it's historical so that's not it it's not shaving um altering his appearance yes um yes but i'm not sure in the way you're thinking. Because that would expose parts of your face that were hidden before. That's not what you're going for. That's sort of what I'm going for, but I think not quite in the way you're thinking. But I don't want to say no and mislead you.

Okay. When you say expose it, does he use a tool or an implement of any kind? No. Do I need to know what he's's wearing that might help is a hat involved well what he's wearing isn't essential but it's not essential to solving the problem but if you twigged onto it it might help you understand it but it's not essential did this actually happen during either the time period i don't believe it actually happened or the geographical location no does the man's occupation important?

Yes. If you remember, part of the clue says that he lost his job. Oh, my God. He's dismissed from his job because of this. Okay, but it's not illegal. It's not illegal. He's dismissed from his job because it horrified or upset people. Yes.

All right. That's exactly right. He's dismissed from his job because it horrified or upset people. Yes. All right. That's exactly right. And his job normally involved interacting with these people in a way that didn't expose this body part and didn't horrify them. Correct. So that's why his boss fired him.

Yes. Or his employer, whoever. Yes. All right. Was he an entertainer? Maybe very broadly defined. I don't know how to say it. Like a public speaker? Like someone who makes presentations to what you would call an audience?

No. The people who are horrified, would you call that an audience? Probably not. Bystanders? All right, let's go back to his face. I think I was just making the most progress. All right, let's go back to his face. I think I was just making the most progress.

Exposed to a portion of his anatomy that's somewhere like on the lower part of his face. Yes, yes, yes. But not exactly his mouth. Not specifically his mouth. I won't pursue that. Exposed. The lower part of his face, yes. Exposed to his chin. Yeah.

His cheeks. His jaw. Possibly, yeah, yeah. But it's not just that he opened his mouth. Correct. Lost his jaw. You get to a point where you can tell that you need to turn a corner and I can't find the corner. Yeah, I'm trying to think what kind of hints might be helpful to you.

I'm trying to think what kind of hints might be helpful to you. You could go back to what his occupation is or what would have been covering his face that he took off to remove, to expose. Okay. Is he a criminal? No. Was it a mask or some concealing device of some kind? No. Okay. And not clothing as such.

Not clothing as such. But something was hiding the lower part of his face. Yes. Hiding would be the good word? Well, I mean... Concealing. That's not... Hiding from view.

Hiding from view, although that's not the main purpose of what was on his face. That's an incidental thing that it does. What could have been on his face that he could have removed, the lower portion of his face? Well, hair or clothing or a mask or... That he could easily remove without an implement. This is going to be obvious. Broadly in the category of he's an entertainer. Broadly defined.

obvious broadly in the category of he's an entertainer broadly defined and some not okay not an implement that he was holding or using in some way that happened to be hiding his face correct i mean he's not he doesn't use an implement in any way but makeup or some kind of not makeup but you're on the closer track. Not makeup. But some... What else might an entertainer have on the lower part of his face that he could remove easily without an implement? A false whiskers or beard or something? Yes, yes, yes.

Was that what it is? Yes, that's what it is. And remove that and that horrified... Yes, yes. Really? Exactly, yes. That's key. And just fired for removing it yes they were horrified because they recognized his identity suddenly no okay so he's an actor broadly defined okay and was wearing false whiskers or a false beard yes

and they removed them accidentally or they removed them deliberately? Deliberately. Deliberately removed them. That's why he was fired. Did it deliberately to reveal his own identity? No. Well, not probably the way you're thinking. Was he, would you call this a disguise? Was he impersonating someone else? Yes.

A specific other person? Yes. I'm sorry, just after you used an actor, and I can't remember what you said. I said broadly defined. Very broadly defined. He's not a criminal. Okay. I'm horrified.

Several children burst into tears. One outraged father almost tackled him. Is there a backstory here I need to get? Like why he removed the... No. No. Okay, so he was wearing false whiskers and... Think about the time of year.

Oh, oh, oh. I don't know if I ever would have gotten that he was playing santa claus yes and removed his whiskers and children burst yes it just was kind of a mean spirited prank okay and showed that he wasn't actually santa claus that's good and a perfectly fair puzzle i just i knew there was one detail that i just wasn't getting thank you that was thanks nick that was actually very creative. If anybody out there has puzzles that they'd like to hear us possibly try to use, you can send them to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. That's another episode for us. If you've been enjoying our podcast and would like to help support it, please take a moment

to recommend our show to others who might also like it. You can also click the donate button in the sidebar of the website. If you're looking for more Futility Closet, check out our book on Amazon.com or visit the website at futilitycloset.com where you can sample over 8,000 captivating diversions, perfect for filling 5 minutes or 50. captivating diversions, perfect for filling five minutes or 50. You can see our show notes at blog.futilitycloset.com, where you can post comments or questions, listen to past shows, and see the link mentioned in today's episode. You can also email us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Our music was written and produced by Doug Ross. Futility Closet is a member of the Boing Boing family of podcasts. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.