Portrait of Chief Tecumseh

Chief Tecumseh 20 x 16 inches  Acrylic on Panel 2019

Chief Tecumseh (1768 - 1813),  one of the most celebrated Native American chiefs, was born in a Shawnee village in what is now Ohio to Pukeshinwa, a minor war chief of the Kispoko band.  Tecumseh’s name means “blazing comet”, “shooting star,” or something to that effect.  It is commonly, but erroneously believed that he was born in Chillicothe, Ohio.  It is more likely that his birthplace was Old Piqua on the Mad River in west central Ohio.

In 1774 when Tecumseh was still a small child, his father Pukeshinwa participated in the Battle of Point Pleasant, the major engagement of Lord Dunmore’s War.  Scotsman James Murray, the Earl of Dunmore was the royal governor of Virginia and hoped to extend the colony’s territory westward into the Ohio Valley.  This was permitted by a treaty recently made with the Iroquois.  But the Shawnee tribe, which actually lived in the area, was not consulted and objected to abandoning land they considered ancestral hunting grounds.  To lay claim to the territory and to protect the white settlers who had already moved there, the English/Virginians mounted an invasion.  They approached from two directions.  Lord Dunmore himself commanded the force that departed from Fort Pitt (now rechristened Fort Dunmore), located at the confluence of the Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers, the source of the Ohio River and the site of modern Pittsburgh.  Another force of 1000 men led by Colonel Andrew Lewis, a veteran of the earlier French and Indian War, came from the southeast and made its way down the Kanawha River, a tributary of the Ohio River flowing through the central part of what is now West Virginia.  The Shawnee found few allies in their opposition to the Virginians, but mustered a fighting force of maybe 500 men commanded by Hokoleskwa, or Cornstalk.  Cornstalk, hoping to avert the meeting of the two Virginian armies, attacked Colonel Lewis’ force before it could cross the Ohio River.  On October 10, 1774, at Point Pleasant a day-long battle consisting  mostly of hand-to-hand combat raged.  The Virginians suffered over 200 casualties, with 75 men killed, but the Shawnees were eventually driven from the field with greater losses.  Among the dead was Pukeshinwa.  Chief Cornstalk acknowledged defeat and signed a treaty ceding control of the Ohio River to the Virginians, paving the way for white settlement of Ohio and Kentucky. 

During the American Revolution Cornstalk maintained neutrality, even as many of his people sought to use the war between white men as an opportunity to exact vengeance and reclaim lost lands.  When, in the autumn of  1777, he visited Fort Randolph, now Point Pleasant, West Virginia, to parlay, he was arrested without cause or authorization by the fort’s commander.  Some soldiers in the fort, outraged by the murder of a militiaman by some unidentified Indians, brutally murdered Cornstalk, his son, and two other Shawnees.  This was a great loss not only to the Shawnee, but to the white men who had admired Cornstalk and had been impressed by his dignity, judgment, and oratorical ability.  Patrick Henry,  governor of a now independent Virginia, was outraged and put the assassins on trial.  However, their fellow soldiers would not testify against the killers and the guilty men were shamefully acquitted.

There is a legend that Point Pleasant, West Virginia, was supposedly cursed by Cornstalk before his death, though there is no contemporary account of this.  At any rate, the area has long been a place of misfortunes and disasters.  In late 1966 and throughout 1967 there were a large number of sightings of a large man-like, red-eyed anomalous flying creature dubbed the Mothman.  Never satisfactorily explained, it was seen as an omen of disaster, a harbinger of the collapse of Point Pleasant’s Silver Bridge, which spanned the Ohio River, connecting Point Pleasant WV and Gallipolis OH.  The disaster, which occurred on December 15, 1967, resulted in the death of 46 people.  It is connected by some with the Mothman appearances and the curse of Cornstalk.

It was the death of his father and the assassination of Chief Cornstalk that colored Tecumseh’s whole life and spawned his inimical attitude toward the white man.  After the death of Pukeshinwa, his wife Methoataske joined Shawnees that journeyed West to settle in Missouri.  Her son Tecumseh was left to be raised in the family of his older sister.  He was taught to be a hunter and a warrior by his older brother Chiksika.  They lived first in a village of Chillicothe (in Ohio) under Chief Blackfish, who had defied Chief Cornstalk and refused to accept the terms of the treaty he had made with the Virginians.  After the murder of Cornstalk, Blackfish had made raids upon white men living in Kentucky and had captured the famous frontiersman Daniel Boone.  Boone, though, a great hunter, was admired by the Shawnee and actually made a member of the tribe, even as he was kept a prisoner.  After a few months, Boone escaped when he found out that Blackfish was planning an attack upon Boonesborough.  (This was a village Boone had founded, one of the first permanent white settlements west of the Appalachian Mountains).  Blackfish laid siege to Boonesborough in September 1778, but despite the advantage of numbers, the siege was woefully ineffective, and he was unable to defeat Boone’s force, which consisted of only a dozen white men, but more than 400 Indian allies.   In retaliation for the attack on Boonesborough, Kentucky militiaman raided Chillicothe in spring of 1779 and left Blackfish with a leg wound that would eventually cause his death.

Subsequently, Tecumseh’s family settled in another Shawnee village, which, worse luck, was destroyed in 1780 by forces under the commander of the Kentucky militia, George Rogers Clark.  Tecumseh  was witness to the Battle of Piqua, a large Shawnee settlement of 3000 persons.  The fierce battle and the din of artillery frightened the 12-year old boy and he fled.  He would never be frightened or run away again.

The family of Tecumseh next moved to Sanding Stone, but Clark followed and attacked the village in November 1782.  Next they relocated to another Shawnee village near what is now Bellefontaine, Ohio in west central Ohio. 

At the end of the Revolutionary War many Shawnee were still determined to evict the white man from their country.  At age 15 Tecumseh joined a band of fellow Shawnee warriors who attacked flat boats proceeding down the Ohio River and became a bane to river traffic.  By 1788 Tecumseh, who began to show leadership skills, headed his own guerrilla band.  Mentored by his older brother Chiksika, he joined him in journeying south to join the Chickamauga Cherokee who were waging war against the new United States of America.  On the trip south Tecumseh fell off his horse and broke his leg.  It never mended properly and he sported a limp for the rest of his life.  During his two years with the Cherokee, Tecumseh took a wife.  She bore him a daughter, but he did not stay with them.

Tecumseh and Chiksika were a small part of a widespread uprising of Native American tribes that instigated the Northwest Indian War, lasting from 1785 to 1795.  In the treaty with Great Britain granting its independence, the United States was given sovereignty over Ohio and  Illinois, what was then called the Northwest Territory.  But its authority was not accepted by the Indian tribes.  President George Washington ordered military action to subjugate the Northwest Territory.  The native tribes, though, were able to unite as never before and were still aided by the mischief-making British who sought to undermine the new nation they had reluctantly acknowledged.  The ill-trained United States Army, a collection of ragtag militias, and its uncertain Indian allies were at first an ineffectual fighting force, but after 1792, when General “Mad” Anthony Wayne took charge of the army, the tide turned. 

In September of 1792 Tecumseh’s brother Chiksika was killed in a raid.  Tecumseh filled his place and assumed leadership of a band of Shawnee and Chickamauga raiders.  Back in Ohio, he participated in many of the battles of the Northeast Indian War, including the last one, the Battle of Fallen Timbers on August 20, 1794.   Near what is now Toledo, Ohio, United States forces under General Wayne, supported by Kentucky militiamen, 3000 men, faced warriors of the Indian confederacy and a company of British troops, about 1300 men, on land recently ravaged by a tornado.  Although the battle lasted only an hour and only about 75 men were killed, it was a decisive victory for the United States.  The subsequent Treaty of Greenville (which Tecumseh refused to sign or honor) and further treaties affirmed American control over the Northwest Territory.   Indian tribes ceded most of Ohio and areas of Indiana for what amounted to $20,000 in goods.  There was peace in the area for a time.

Tecumseh married and in 1796 had a son who would be reared by Tecumseh’s sister when the marriage failed.   Tecumseh nurtured his grievance against the white man and hoped for the opportunity to fight against them again.

It would be Tecumseh’s younger brother Lalawethika who would now have a profound impact upon his life.  Lalawethika, as a young man, was an aloof and troubled introvert, a failure and an alcoholic.  Somehow he turned his life around and became a prophet, assuming the name  Tenskwatawa, meaning “open door.”  He preached that the Indian should reject the outsiders and return to a traditional way of living, eschew the customs of the white men, their manner of dress, as well as firearms and alcohol.  No more should he give away his lands.  He also subscribed to the view of earlier Native American prophets, that if the Indian remains uncorrupted by the Europeans and their ways then the Great Spirit will send an apocalypse to wipe them out.  The Prophet Tenskwatawa set up a settlement for his followers near what is now Greenville, in southwest Ohio.  Tecumseh was skeptical at first, but joined the group when Tenskwatawa accurately predicted the solar eclipse of June 16, 1806.

Tenskwatawa, a fanatic, was a stern and brutal leader who demonized anyone who did not accept his teaching.  He caused tensions not only between the Native Americans and the white settlers, but among the Shawnee themselves.  The Shawnee chief Black Hoof, once a fierce warrior who had fought against the Americans at the Battle of Fallen Timbers, realized that it was futile to make war against the white man and that survival was contingent upon accepting his culture.  His best efforts to preserve peace, however, were being undermined by Tenskwatawa’s radicalism.  In 1808 he demanded that Tenskwatawa and his people move away.  They did and settled just north of what is now Lafayette, Indiana, at the confluence of the Wabash and Tippecanoe Rivers.  The settlement was called Prophetstown (by Europeans).  The community was a great success and attracted not only Shawnees, but members of the Delaware, the Potawatomi, and many other tribes.  Its size, 3000 inhabitants, soon became a source of alarm to the white settlers.  Of concern as well was Tecumseh himself, the obvious military leader of the community, and his professed scheme of forming a pan-Indian alliance that would expel the white man from the country.

After the governor of the Indiana Territory, William Henry Harrison, negotiated another treaty, the Treaty of Fort Wayne, that ceded more Indian land to the white man, Tecumseh was outraged, especially since this involved land belonging to tribes some of whose members were part of the Prophetstown community.  He rightly protested the methods of negotiation: Indian representatives were often plied with alcohol before treaty talks and were frequently personally bribed.  He regarded signers of the treaty as traitors to their race and excoriated them.  Using his considerable skills as an orator, Tecumseh sought to persuade his fellow Indians to acknowledge that they were a single people, not just a collection of discreet tribes, that they all held the land in common ownership — and, most importantly, they should resist the white man.

In August of 1810 Tecumseh, with an entourage of 400 warriors, dressed in war paint, confronted Governor Harrison at his plantation-like home Grouseland at Vincennes, on the Wabash River in southwestern Indiana.  Tecumseh (who did not speak English) demanded that he rescind the Treaty of Fort Wayne and other treaties through which the Indians were compelled to cede land.  Remarkably unintimidated, Harrison, a proud Virginia aristocrat, argued that he had no business interfering with relations between the United States government and individual tribes, that the Indian tribes did not constitute a single nation, that the terms of the treaties concerned only the signatories, that the tribes in question were satisfied with the terms and resented his unwelcome interference.  Tecumseh made an eloquent response that Harrison did not understand.   Tecumseh’s people became agitated and seemed to threaten violence.  Harrison was forced to draw his sword and his guards brandished  their weapons.  A chief of the Potawatomi, Winamac defused the tense situation and urged the Indian warriors to leave in peace since they had come in peace.  (Tecumseh would later call him a “black dog” for taking the white man’s side).  Tecumseh, with a parting shot, told Harrison he would seek an alliance with the British if the Treaty of Fort Wayne was not nullified.

There were further talks between Tecumseh and Harrison, but they were fruitless. Tecumseh  insisted that he wanted only peace, but his actions invited suspicion.  Harrison, remaining unimpressed and unsympathetic, felt that Tecumseh was merely spoiling for a fight.

Tecumseh traveled south to try to recruit to his side the so-called civilized Indian tribes, the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw,  Creek, and Seminoles, who tended to favor at least some assimilation into European culture.  It was a failure.  Although Tecumseh was indeed a persuasive orator, he possessed an abrasive arrogance that turned off some Native American leaders.   In particular the great Choctaw chief  Pushmataha strongly rebuffed his scheme and argued the cause of the United States government.  Only  a break-off faction of the Creeks, the so-called Red Sticks, were receptive to his message of resistance and war.  The Red Sticks would incite the Creek War of 1813, which involved the United States and Great Britain, but which was primarily a civil war among the Creeks.  The Red Sticks were eventually defeated by state militias commanded by Major General Andrew Jackson and Choctaws led by Pushmataha at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, in east central Alabama, on March 27, 1814.  The Creeks were forced to cede more territory to the United States government and, later, most of the tribe was transported across the Mississippi to be settled in Indian Territory.

William Henry Harrison secured approval from the Department of War  to take military action against the Shawnee when it was learned that they had formed an alliance with the British and had smuggled in firearms from Canada — in contradiction to Tenskwatawa’s former prohibition on using white man’s weapons.  Knowing that Tecumseh was absent, Harrison marched a force of 1000 men to Prophetstown to intimidate the Shawnees into abiding by the peace.  He arranged to parlay with Tenskwatawa on November 6, 1811.  Instead of going to the conference, Tenskwatawa, in direct contradiction to Tecumseh’s orders, launched a preemptive strike upon Harrison’s force.  Tenskwatawa commanded 500 warriors of the Shawnee and other tribes, but the prophet was no general and exercised imperfect control over his diverse forces.   The attack was foiled when Harrison’s army held its ground.  Harrison lost 62 men, the Indians probably less.  Tenskwatawa had promised his people that a spell he had cast would render the red men invincible.  It hadn’t worked.  Tenskwatawa blamed his wife for the ineffective spell and promised to cast another, while urging his men to make another attack.  They, however, would have none of it.  Instead, the Indians abandoned Prophetstown.  Harrison’s forces burned it to the ground and destroyed stored food supplies — but did spare an elderly Indian woman who had been left behind.

This engagement, though hardly decisive, was the beginning of the end for Tecumseh’s confederation and his dream of expelling the white man from Indian lands.  It was later ballyhooed as the Battle of Tippecanoe when the presumed military hero William Henry Harrison ran for President in 1840.  (He even called himself “Old Tippecanoe”).  The battle resulted in Tenskwatawa losing prestige and enraging his brother.  It’s a moot question how important a role he would continue to play in the Indian Confederation.  Scorned and ostracized, he moved to Canada.  Nature did come to Tecumseh’s aid, though,  when the New Madrid earthquake of December 1811 and the appearance of the great Comet of 1811, visible in the fall of that year, were interpreted by some as signs that Tecumseh was fulfilling the will of the Great Spirit.

In June of 1812 the United States and Great Britain formally took up arms and the conflict with Tecumseh, a British ally, merged with this war.  When a British force Under Major-General Sir Isaac Brock invaded the Northwest Territory from Canada, Tecumseh, with 400 warriors, joined it.  At the siege of Fort Detroit the appearance of Tecumseh’s Indians created great alarm.  The impression that there was a greater force than there was caused the fort commander, Brigadier General William Hull, to surrender Detroit in August 16, 1812.  (Hull, a hero of the Revolutionary War, was court-martialed for cowardice and sentenced to death, but President Madison commuted the sentence to dismissal from the service).   Tecumseh was either made a brigadier general in the British army or at least regarded as such.  He did not, however, wear the British uniform, although the most famous depiction of him shows him doing so.

In April 1813 British forces, supported by Tecumseh and his strong supporter Wyandot Chief Roundhead with their 1250 warriors, besieged Fort Meigs.  The fort in northwestern Ohio across the Maumee River from the site of the Battle of the Fallen Timbers, had been newly constructed and was commanded by William Henry Harrison, now a Major General in command of the Army of the Northwest.   Harrison’s forces suffered heavy casualties, but the British were unsuccessful in taking Fort Meigs and raised the siege on May 7th.  Afterwards, American prisoners, who were supposed to be exchanged, were being killed by the Indians. It is reported that Tecumseh, who apparently disapproved of unnecessary cruelty (unlike, sadly, most of his race), berated the British commander, Major-General Henry Proctor, for not stopping it.  He put an end to it himself, supposedly telling Proctor, “I conquer to save, you to kill.”  This act is seen as evidence to support the later contention that Tecumseh was a “noble savage.”

On September 10, 1813 American naval commander Oliver Hazard Perry scored a victory at the Battle of Lake Erie and accepted the surrender of an entire British squadron.  He reported to Harrison, “We have met the enemy and they are ours.”  This disaster, from the British perspective,  left control of the lake in the hands of the Americans and imperiled General Proctor’s position and supply lines.  The British commander, therefore, decided to withdraw to Canada and not risk any further engagements. Like the British soldiers who served under Proctor, Tecumseh had little use for him and strongly disagreed with the decision.  Tecumseh wanted to press the fight against the Americans and retake tribal lands, but he reluctantly followed the British in their retreat.  He and his ally Roundhead could do nothing else.  But at Tecumseh’s insistence, the British, with their troops ill-fed and demoralized, did make a defensive stand, at Moraviantown, an Indian settlement on the Thames River in southwestern Ontario. 

General Proctor had only 800 troops, supported by 500 Indian warriors.  Harrison, who was in pursuit of the British, commanded a force numbering over 3700 men, including 1000 cavalry, mostly Kentucky volunteers under Colonel Richard Mentor Johnson, a member of the House of Representatives.  He had support as well from the United States Navy on nearby Lake Erie.

After dawn on October 5, 1813 the British attempted to draw a line of battle around a single 6-pound canon they had, while Tecumseh’s forces more astutely assembled in a swamp.  At the first charge of the Americans the British forces either threw down their weapons or fled, having the opportunity to fire their canon only once.  The Indian forces fought valiantly on, but futilely.  Both Tecumseh and Roundhead were killed.  When word was received that their chiefs had been lost, the Indians gave up the fight.  The Americans had won the battle.

There were differing reports as to casualties, but they were light, a handful of Americas and few dozen of the enemy.  Harrison’s forces captured almost 600 British soldiers, though.  Despite the scale of combat the Battle of the Thames was a pivotal engagement in the War of 1812 and a decisive engagement in the war against the Tecumseh confederation.
 
How Tecumseh came to his death is not known, but there were several who claimed to be his slayer and several contradictory accounts of his death.  Colonel Richard Mentor Johnson, while on horseback, had fired a fatal pistol shot at an Indian who was attacking him with a tomahawk.  He boasted that this had been Tecumseh, although the dead man was more likely a Potawatomi brave.  The reputation for being the man who killed Tecumseh was helpful to Johnson in his election to the Vice Presidency of the United States in 1836.

After the battle Harrison marched back to Fort Detroit.  There he received the surrender of demoralized Indians that had opposed him.  He simply told them to go home.  With the death of Tecumseh the Indian Confederation had collapsed, never to be resurrected.  The conclusion of the War of 1812 found the United States of America in control of the Northwest Territory  with most of its Native American inhabitants soon to be banished beyond the Mississippi River. 

While William Henry Harrison was immediately proclaimed a hero for his defeat of the British and the Indian Confederation, he quarreled with President Madison and resigned his commission as major general. 
Later, apologies were made and Harrison was awarded a gold medal by Congress.  Continuing in public life, William Henry Harrison ran unsuccessfully for President as a Northern Whig in 1836, but he and his running mate John Tyler won in landslide against President van Buren and Vice President Richard Mentor Johnson in 1840. Harrison, the wealthy southern aristocrat, portrayed himself in the campaign as a humble frontiersman and used the log cabin as a symbol of his candidacy.  He particularly emphasized his military career and his role as the heroic vanquisher of Tecumseh.  “Tippecanoe and Tyler, Too” is still remembered as his winning campaign slogan.  At his March 4th inauguration the hale and hardy 68-year-old refused to wear a hat or an overcoat as he delivered a long, two-hour address in cold, miserable weather.  Later, on March 26 he was caught in a heavy rain and came down with a cold which worsened to what doctors thought was pneumonia.  Medical treatments, which included bloodletting, only exacerbated his weakened condition, which was probably due to typhoid from the bad drinking water in Washington.  William Henry Harrison died on April 4, 1841 after only a month in office, serving the shortest term of any American President.  He was succeeded by his Vice-President,  John Tyler.  Harrison left a large family and one of his grandsons,  Benjamin Harrison, would be elected the 23rd President in 1888.

Tenskwatawa remained in Canada for some time after the defeat of Tecumseh.  At the request of the government, he return to the United States to assist in the removal of the Shawnee people to a new reservation in Kansas, near Kansas City.  Though unable to regain his stature as a revered prophet, he lived there until he died in 1836 at the age of 61.   George Caitlin, who specialized in Native American subjects, painted his portrait from life in 1830. Although he had exercised considerable influence for a time, he was generally regarded not only by the white men but by most of his own people as a charlatan and an opportunist.

In death Tecumseh became a legendary figure.  With his Indian Confederation no longer in existence and no longer a threat, white people found it comfortable to admire him.  For example, a judge of the Ohio Supreme Court, Charles Robert Sherman, named his son, the future Civil War general, “William Tecumseh Sherman.”  Although Chief Tecumseh was a great orator, the speeches attributed to him are mostly bogus.  A political as well as a military leader in more than a tribal sense, Tecumseh was unique among Native American chiefs in the 19th Century.  He possessed a vision that was more than parochial, a world-view that was vaguely modern.  While his ambitions failed, they can be regarded as, if not noble, at least understandable and worthy of sympathy.

As part of the Tecumseh legend, it has been theorized that he put an Indian curse on William Henry Harrison and his Presidential successors.  The curse demands that Presidents elected in years ending in zero (every 20 years) will die in office.  Curiously, the curse has been accurate: William Henry Harrison (1840) died of illness. Abraham Lincoln (1860) James Garfield (1880), and William McKinley (2000) were all assassinated.  Warren G. Harding (1920) died of a heart attack and Franklin D. Roosevelt (1940) passed away of a cerebral hemorrhage.  John F. Kennedy (1960) was also assassinated.  The curse eventually lost its potency, though.  Ronald Reagan (1980) was shot by a would-be assassin, but survived, and George W. Bush (2000) was unharmed when a dud grenade was thrown at him, a little-known assassination attempt made in the Republic of Georgia in 2005.  Only Zachary Taylor, who was elected in 1848 and died in office, does not fit the pattern.  However compelling the supposed curse, there is no evidence whatsoever that either Tecumseh or Tenskwatawa was connected with it.

Portrait of Lillie Langtry

Lillie Langtry 20 x 16 inches, Acrylic on Panel  2019

Lillie Langtry (1853- 1929) Emilie Charlotte Le Breton, called “Lillie” because of the whiteness of her complexion, was born on October 13, 1853 on the island of Jersey, one of the English Channel Islands, located only 14 miles from the coast of Normandy.  Her father, the Very Reverend William Corbet Le Breton, the dean and rector of Jersey, and mother Emilie Martin had 7 children, Lillie, being the 6th and the only daughter.  Mrs. Le Breton was a noted beauty; Lillie, a statuesque redhead, would take after her.  Dean Le Breton, despite his station, was a notorious ladies man and the father of several illegitimate children, for which reason his wife eventually left him in 1880.

Lillie received a good education from her brothers’ tutor, a French governess chosen for her despairing of reigning in her somewhat rebellious spirit.  A lovely young woman, Lillie received several offers of marriage which her father turned down.  At a ball Lillie met Edward Langtry, an Irish gentleman and landowner whose family were in shipping.  She was less attracted to the man, a boring chap, than to the fact that he owned a  a 100-foot schooner called the Red Gauntlet, a means of escape from her cloistered life in Jersey.  Edward, born in 1847, had been married before, to Jane Price, sister of the future wife of Lillie’s older brother William.  But Jane had died in 1871.  On March 9, 1874 Lillie, at age 20, married Edward Langtry, with her father, perhaps reluctantly, presiding over a simple service.

Langtry was very shy with few social skills.  His weak features, walrus mustache, stout build, and diffident manner led most to regard him as a characterless sort of person.  Like his father, he was a yachtsman and wished to be regarded as a sportsman, but woefully lack the color and dash needed to carry off the part.  Whatever personality he had was eclipsed by that of his vivacious wife.   During the Langtry’s first year of marriage they lived in Jersey and spent a lot of time with Edward’s yacht, the Gertrude, a 60-ton yawl, a two-masted sailing boat that participated in many regattas.  Under pressure from Lillie’s family, Edward cut back on his yachting activities, even selling his beloved Red Gauntlet.  Lillie’s family came to dislike Edward thoroughly and estranged themselves from the Langtrys.

While the Langtry’s were staying at Southampton, a port on the south coast of England, Lillie became ill with typhoid.  After she recovered, doctors recommended that she have a change of air.  Edward obligingly took her to London, where the air was decidedly worse, but which provided an environment much more exciting for a young woman.  In 1876 the Langtrys rented a flat in Eaton Square, Belgravia, an expensive district in central London.

In spring of 1877 the Langtrys were invited to an exclusive reception at the Belgravia home of Sir John and Lady Sebright.  The invitation came from Thomas Heron Jones, the 7th Viscount Ranelagh, a rakish military officer whose illegitimate daughter Alice had just married Lillie’s brother Clement.  At that time Lillie was very depressed and was in mourning for her younger brother Reginald, who had died in a riding accident.  Consequently, she appeared at the party wearing only a simple black dress, no jewelry, and her hair simply done.  The contrast with the other ladies, elaborately gowned and jeweled bedecked, was striking.  Despite Lillie’s attempt to be inconspicuous, her charm and beauty attracted considerable attention.  Frank Miles, a wealthy young artist, had previously seen her at the theater and, inspired by her beauty, he had sought to meet her.  He was able to do so and made several sketches of her that very night.  John Everett Millais, a respected artist in his late 40s, was impressed, too, and sought to paint her.  In a single evening Lillie Langtry, hitherto unaware of the impact of her person and her beauty, had become a star of high society.

Championed by Lord Ranelagh and Frank Miles, Lillie quickly became the rage of London.  The Langtrys were invited to all the “best” parties and met all the “best” people.  No one cared for Edward: he was just a tag-a-long.  People, though, were captivated not only by Lillie’s looks and personality, but by her intelligent conversation and by her refreshingly outspoken opinions.  Her little black dress became a trademark.  (Never had a woman traveled so far in society with so little wardrobe).   The famous would pay court to her; she met Frank Miles’ Irish boarder from Oxford, Oscar Wilde, who would become her good friend.  She dined with Lord Randolph Churchill, Winston’s father.  Leopold, the King of the Belgians, came to call on the Langtrys just to see her.  Prime Minister Gladstone, who met her when she was posing for Millais, became a friend and mentor.  She even aroused the interest of the 36 year old Prince of Wales,  who, to the horror of his mother Queen Victoria, had already become notorious as a womanizer.

At a dinner party held on May 24, 1877, Edward, Prince of Wales arranged to sit next to Mrs. Langtry.  This was a fateful night for Lillie.  Although she was scared to death to meet him, Prince Edward was immediately captivated by her.  Lillie soon became mistress to the heir to the British throne.  Princess Alexandra of Denmark, Edward’s wife, who had become accustomed to his infidelities, graciously accepted Lillie’s position.  Even Queen Victoria allowed Lillie Langtry to be presented to her.  Society, too, accepted Mrs. Langtry as the Prince’s companion, while the dull husband Edward faded into the background. 

Comfortable in her position, Lillie did not demure to breech propriety.  She called the Prince “Bertie-wertie” in public.  Once she made him drink champagne with a flea swimming in the drink.  On another occasion she put ice down the back of his collar.  She became famous for engaging in spirited high jinks such as sliding down stairs sitting on a silver serving tray.  Such antics, though, were common at exclusive parties at that time, but some thought she went too far.

Artists were at her feet and queued up to paint her.   Frank Miles’ sketches of her became popular postcards.  John Everett Millais, who was also a native of Jersey, executed the most famous portrait of her, entitled  A Jersey Lily.  The title was soon assumed by Lillie herself, but, ironically, the flower depicted in the painting was, in fact, a Guernsey lily.  The portrait, when exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1878, created a sensation and mobs came to see it, a simple picture of what seems, to the modern eye, an ordinary-looking woman in a sombre black dress.  Edward Poynter and Edward Burne-Jones also painted her.  Many photographs would  be taken of what the age would soon regard the apotheosis of feminine beauty.

Adolphus Rosenberg, a newspaperman, had claimed that Edward Langtry intended to divorce his wife, naming the Prince of Wales, among others, as co-respondents, but that he was being bribed to halt the action by being offered a diplomatic post abroad.  Langtry testified in court, denying the accusations, but no doubt was humiliated to do so.  Rosenberg was found guilty of libel in this case (and in a separate case involving  a former mistress of  the Prince of Wales) and sent to prison for 18 months.  Scandal, though, did not tarnished the Jersey Lily, but merely made her a more intriguing celebrity.

After a couple years, the liaison between the Prince of Wales and Lillie Langtry cooled, for neither seemed constitutionally suited to fidelity in such matters.   Lillie had no difficultly attracting men, even those of the highest rank.  In April 1879 Lillie had a brief affair with Prince Louis of Battenberg, a naval officer who would eventually become the Royal Navy’s First Sea Lord and the father of “Lord Louie” Mountbatten, uncle of Prince Philip, Queen Elizabeth’s husband.  In July 1879 Lillie had an affair with the 18-year old Earl of Shrewsbury.   She had ideas of running away with him, but they came to naught.  A longer-lasting romantic relationship was forged with Arthur Clarence Jones, an illegitimate son of Lord Ranelagh.  When Lillie became pregnant, it was probably Jones who was the father.  However, Lillie led Prince Louis to believe that he was the one so that she might wheedle a little money from him.  She did and Prince Edward, who remained her friend and supporter,  helped her financially as well.  While she went into confinement in Paris, her husband was got out of the country for a time so that he might never know that his wife was giving birth to a child that was not his.  A daughter was delivered to Lillie on March 8, 1881.  Named Jeanne Marie, she was left with Lillie’s mother to be reared.

The Langtrys lived lavishly and were running into debt.  Edward Langtry’s income had dried up, for his properties in Ireland were costing him money instead of providing income.  With the Prince of Wales no longer paying the bills, the Langtrys were indeed in financial straits.  In October 1980 Lillie sold many of her possessions to forestall her husband declaring bankruptcy.  It was not enough.  In 1881 Lillie separated from her husband, although he, still not knowing of her child, adamantly refused to grant her a divorce.

Lillie was not content to rely upon lovers for her living.  She desired a more reliable source of income.  Her friend Oscar Wilde, who would become one of England’s most successful playwrights, suggested that she try her hand at acting, since she certainly possessed the requisite popularity and star quality.  Under the tutelage of experienced actress Henrietta Hodson, she studied drama.  She appeared with Hodson in a small amateur production on November 19, 1881.  It went well and, after some further coaching, Lillie Langtry made her London debut at the Haymarket Theatre in a leading role in Oliver Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer, a comedy written more than a hundred years before.  The public loved her, even if all the critics did not.  The Prince of Wales promoted her and attended her performances.

By early 1882 Lillie Langtry was touring England with her own theatrical company.  Later in the year Lillie booked a tour of the United States through American impresario Henry Abbey, a theatrical manager and producer who had just arranged an American tour for the celebrated French actress Sarah Bernhardt.  Lillie Langtry arrived in New York in October and was met there by Oscar Wilde, who was in America lecturing on aestheticism (a philosophy that literature and art should exist for its own sake and not necessarily serve some social or moral purpose).  While performing in New York Lillie fell in love with one Fred Gebhard, a 22-year old playboy and sportsman of a wealthy and socially prominent family.  Henrietta Hodson, who was accompanying and mentoring Mrs. Langtry, disapproved of Gebhard.  She and Lillie quarreled about it, resulting in a bitter separation.  Gebhard instead accompanied Lillie Langtry on her tour.

The Langtry American tour was a huge success, more profitable than that of the Divine Sarah Bernhardt.  Critics were dubious when she tackled such fare as Shakespeare’s As You Like It, but the adoring public was forgiving of any deficiencies she might have had as an actor.  Lillie, though, was not so vain of her talents that she did not strive to improve her acting skills.  Upon returning to Europe in 1883 she spent six weeks at the Conservatoire de Paris to receive instruction in acting technique.  By 1889 she was confident enough to assume the role of Lady MacBeth in a production of Shakespeare’s MacBeth.

While in America again in 1888 she and Fred Gephard bought adjoining farms in northern California, Lake County, north of Napa Valley.  Lillie turned her property into a winery, and while she eventually sold it (in 1906) Langtry Farms still produces its own rich, full-bodied red wine. 

One of Fred Gephard’s hobbies was thoroughbred racing and he got Lillie interested in it.  In 1885 they brought a stable of American horses to England.  In 1888, though, an effort to transport a string of race horses across America resulted in tragedy.  In Pennsylvania the car holding the horses derailed, rolled down an embankment, and burst into flames, killing a human and 14 of the 17 horses.  Despite the setback, Lillie continued as a stable owner and made herself knowledgeable in matters concerning the turf.  She imported horses from as far away as New Zealand and had some winners, such as the Australian chestnut stallion Merman, who had a splendid career, winning the Ascot Gold Cup in 1900.  To be near her stables in Suffolk in southern England she took as her residence Regal Lodge in the town of Kentford.  She lived there until 1919.

By 1891 Lillie Langtry’s relationship with Fred Gephard soured.  Living together for nine years, each hoped that they would eventually marry, but Edward Langtry would not consent to a divorce.  At a racing event in April 1891 Lillie met another sportsman with a great deal of inherited wealth, a man to take his place.  George Alexander Baird was an avid horseman and stable owner,  He was even an amateur jockey, riding under an assumed name.   Lillie and Baird became friends and then lovers.  Baird was kind and generous, but also erratic, jealous and violent, especially when drunk.  Their relationship was tempestuous.  Once he beat Lillie up but, to compensate, gave her a 200-foot, three-masted  luxury steam yacht, which he renamed the White Ladye. 

In March 1893 while Lillie was sailing the Mediterranean on the White Ladye she heard the news that Baird had died in New Orleans of pneumonia.  He was only 31.  He had been in America to set up possible boxing matches between English prize fighters Charley Mitchell and Jem Hall and the current heavy-weight champion, American “Gentleman” Jim Corbett.   He did arrange a match between Hall and future champion Bob Fitzsimmons, a Britisher, but Hall, his man, lost.  Disappointed, Baird went out drinking  — too much — and fell ill the next morning.  He died on March 18, 1893.  Lillie would no longer use the yacht he had given her, and sold the White Ladye in 1897.

During her trips to America, Lillie Langtry became a US citizen.  Using her citizenship, she successfully obtained a divorce from Langtry in May of 1897.  Edward, though, refused to accept the decree.  Since their separation he had been living in obscurity, apparently sailing and fishing and little else.   The divorce increased his depression and his drinking.  While crossing on a ferry from Ireland to England he fell and sustained a head wound.  He eventually ended in a hospital and then an asylum where, after several days, he died.  It was October 15, 1897 and he was 49.

It was thought that Lillie might now marry Prince Louis Esterhazy, an Austrian general and another horse racing enthusiast.  The newspapers were counting on it, but instead,  Lillie chose as her second husband Hugo Gerald de Bathe, son and heir of a baronet and former general.  They were married on July 27, 1899.  Hugo was 28, Lillie was not quite 46.  Soon after the wedding de Bathe volunteered to fight in the Boer War.  He was made a lieutenant in a horse brigade.  When his father died in 1907, he inherited many properties and became the 5th Baronet de Bathe.  Much to her pleasure, Lillie assumed the title Lady de Bathe.

Lillie Langtry was perhaps the first modern star and international celebrity.  She was famous for her private life, her love affairs being fodder for the press, and she was famous for her professional career, her acting achieving a popularity well beyond what it might have otherwise merited.  She was regarded by the world as a new kind of royalty.  She always traveled in style, if not on a yacht then in a luxurious private railway car.  She was given and acquired many residences.  There were fabulous jewels as well as gowns made for her by the House of Worth, the top couturier of the time.  Like the modern star, she was not averse to seeking profits, even making paid endorsements of products such as soap.  Lillie was a canny businesswoman.

From 1901 to 1903 Lillie Langtry was the manager of the Imperial Theatre in London after she refurbished it with the financial backing of a friend, Edgar Israel Cohen, whose many business interests included Harrod’s department store.  In 1903 she returned to United States to star in The Crossways, a play which she co-authored.  There were later tours of America in 1906, 1912, and 1917.  At one point she toured with the young and soon to be legendary American stage actor Alfred Lunt.  She even starred in a silent motion picture made there in 1913.  She maintained not only her verve and vitality, but her looks, owing, she claimed, to her habit of daily physical exercise.

During her travels Lillie Langtry acquired many friends and fans.  Her most ardent fan was eccentric Westerner Roy Bean (1825-1903) who had set himself up as a judge in a Texas town on the Pecos River called, coincidentally, Langtry, but named after George Langtry, a railroad engineer and work crew foreman who was not related to Lillie’s husband.  In the 1880s and ‘90s Bean glorified his role as purveyor of “Law West of the Pecos” that he administered from his saloon named the Jersey Lily in honor of lillie Langtry.  He decorated its walls with magazine pictures of  the actress he idolized.  He even built an opera house in the hopes that one day Lillie Langtry would perform in it.  Legend portrays the colorful Bean as a hanging judge, but there is no evidence he hanged more than one man.  He was, in fact, a lenient judge and a kind-hearted man, although his ethics were a little suspect (he pocketed all the fines he imposed rather than forwarding them to the government).  Lillie Langtry heard about Judge Roy Bean during one of her later trips to America and made a point of stopping at Langtry, Texas, on a train trip from New Orleans to San Francisco.  Unfortunately she arrived in Langtry a little late.  The original Jersey Lily had burned to the ground in 1896 and the Judge had drunk himself to death in 1903, the year before.  Langtry residents, though, received her like royalty and presented the actress with the late Roy Bean’s six-shooter.  Lillie, an ever gracious star, was appreciative and donated money and books to the local school. 

In 1917 Lillie retired from the stage at age 64.  In 1919 she sold the Regal Lodge.  She and her husband left England to reside elsewhere, but in different places.  Their separation was amicable and they occasionally met socially.  But Hugo lived in Venice, while Lillie, independently wealthy, resided in a villa in Monaco, a tiny principality on the French Riviera.   There she gambled at the famous casino, danced with gigolos, and otherwise devoted herself to reading and gardening.  She lived only with a woman companion. 

Lillie Langtry, Lady de Bathe, aged 75, died of pneumonia on February 12, 1929.  Condolences were sent to her family by King George and Queen Mary of  England.  (Her lover Prince Edward had died in 1910).  She was buried in the graveyard of the church in Jersey where her father had preached.

After breaking with Mrs. Langtry, Henrietta Hodson married her long-time lover, Henry Labouchére, theater owner, magazine editor, campaigner against public immorality, diplomat, and Member of Parliament. Labouchére’s major legislative achievement was the Labouchére Amendment to the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885, which criminalized male homosexual relations.  Oscar Wilde, whom Labouchére had dismissed as “an effeminate phrase maker,” was convicted in 1895 of violating this law and sentenced to two years hard labor.

Fred Gephard married in 1894 and again in 1907.  His wealth squandered, he ended up trying to support himself selling wine.  He died at the age of 50 in 1910.

Lillie’s daughter Jeanne Marie, who always sought to distance herself from her mother, married Scottish politician Sir Ian Malcolm in 1902.  Their daughter Mary Malcolm was, from 1948 to 1956, an announcer for BBC television, one of the first women to do so.  A son, Victor, was the first wife of British film actress Ann Todd.  Jeanne, Lady Malcolm died in 2010 at the age of 92.

In addition to a 1909 novel, All at Sea, Lillie published a memoir, The Days I Knew, in 1925.  Although heavy into name-dropping, her autobiography is hardly the controversial, scandalous tell-all book common today.  It leaves much to the imagination.  In it she never even acknowledges that she was the mistress of the Prince of Wales!  Many biographers have taken on her fascinating life, and there have been many films in which her character appears.  Lillie,  a highly successful BBC miniseries from 1978, all of  672 minutes in length, covers the entirety of her life with reasonable accuracy and stars the luminous Francesca Annis as Lillie Langtry.   

Portrait of Harriet Quimby

Harriet Quimby  20 x 16 inches Acrylic 2019

Harriet Quimby (1875-1912)  was an aviation pioneer and the first American woman to become a licensed airplane pilot.  She was born in a small town in Michigan at a time when the sole form of aviation was the hot-air balloon.  After the failure of the family farm, the Quimbys, nevertheless well-to-do, moved to San Francisco area.  As a child, Harriet was a strong-willed tomboy.  An adult Harriet, independent and intent on supporting herself, worked as a stage actress and then secured positions on several San Francisco newspapers as a journalist.  In 1903 she moved to New York City and got a job as a writer and photographer for Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly.  In a few years she became its  theater critic.

In 1906 Harriet, who had a taste for adventure, took the opportunity to ride in a race car and, loving it,  purchased her own automobile — still very much a novelty.  Aviation, though, would become her passion.  In October 1910 Harriet Quimby attended an aviation competition  held at Belmont, New York, and became fascinated by this new and still experimental form of transportation.  (The first flight of a heavier-than air ship had been made by Wilbur and Orville Wright on December 17, 1903).  There, Harriet made the acquaintance of pilot who had competed in the events,  John Moisant.  Moisant, born in Illinois in 1868 of French Canadian descent, had acquired some wealth from sugarcane plantations in Central America.  By 1909 he had taken up aviation as a hobby and learned to fly in France.  While still a novice, he had flown across the English Channel on August 17, 1910, the first to do so with a passenger — accompanied as well by his pet, a small cat named Mademoiselle Fifi.

Full of enthusiasm for airplanes, Harriet decided to take flying lessons along with Moisant’s sister Matilde at an aviation school John and his brother Alfred were  operating on Long Island, New York.  Unfortunately, on December 31, 1910, John Moisant, while competing at an aviation event in Louisiana, was thrown from his plane by a gust of wind while attempting a landing.  He died, falling 25 feet and breaking his neck.  The two women were nevertheless undeterred and decided to go ahead with their plans to be fliers.   (Harriet got her newspaper to pay for her lessons!)  On August 1, 1911 Miss Quimby passed her test and was awarded an aviator’s certificate of the Federation Aeronautique Internationale via the Aero Club of America.  (Based on the Aero Club of France, it was founded in 1905, if not earlier, to promote aviation and to award pilot licenses, which were necessary for participation in most aviation demonstrations and sporting events).   Harriet became the 37th licensed American airplane pilot, but the very first woman.   Matilde became the second American woman to receive a pilot’s license.  (In March 1910, Frenchwoman Elise Raymonde de Laroche became the first female pilot internationally).

After getting her license Harriet Quimby joined Moisant International Aviators, which employed a team of pilots to perform in air exhibitions all over the country.  Flying was still a dangerous enterprise, but very profitable, for the public were obsessed with airplanes and flight.  For her debut, Miss Quimby flew over Staten Island at night for 7 minutes with 15,000 (or 20,000) spectators watching.  Her efforts netted her  a cool $1500 (this, at a time when a working man would be lucky to make $400 a year).

Harriet naturally attracted attention and press coverage because of her gender.  Not lacking in feminine appeal, she had flare and pizzazz and knew how to present herself.   Although petite, Harriet cut a fetching, if not dashing figure in a flight suit of her own design, a bright plum-colored satin, wool-lined jump suit — blouse, hood, and knickerbocker pants tucked into high laced boots, set off by some antique jewelry and, of course, aviation goggles.  Her fair, flawless complexion earned her the nickname of the “China Doll” and the “Dresden China Aviatrix.”

While flying, Harriet continued to write articles for  Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly, many of them, not surprisingly, about aviation and woman’s place in it.  She also authored several screenplays for short films produced at Biograph Studios in New York in 1911.  The films featured major actors such as  Blanche Sweet and were all directed by the legendary D. W. Griffith.  Griffith’s wife, Linda Arvidson, had been a friend from Harriet’s time as an actress on the stage in San Francisco.  In 1909 Harriet had a small part in one of Griffith’s shorts, which starred Linda Arvidson and also featured Mary Pickford in a bit role.

While flying in Mexico in ceremonies honoring the inauguration of President Francisco Madero in November 1911, Harriet Quimby got the idea of flying across the English Channel.  Frenchman Louis Blériot had flown the Channel in July 1909, but no woman had thus far done it.  By spring she was ready to make the flight.  On April 16, 1912 Harriet took off from Dover, England with the intention of landing in Calais on the other side of English Channel.  She had never flown over water before and had never relied upon a compass.   It was a dangerous passage even for an experienced pilot.  Harriet, though, was all but fearless.  The flight was not without difficulty.  Running into a cloud bank she lost her way, but an hour later she able to land 25 miles from Calais on a beach in Herdelot, France.  The natives, realizing her accomplishment, bore her in triumph on their shoulders.  However, the feat was barely recorded — bad timing.  Only two days before, the RMS Titanic had sunk, struck by an iceberg in the North Atlantic.  The enormity of the disaster, the loss of 1500 passengers, was only just realized and preoccupied the press, otherwise very interested in accomplishments in the field of aviation.

In September of 1911 pilot Cal Rodgers had made the first cross country flight in a biplane called the Vin Fiz Flyer.  The Armour Meat Company was now marketing a new grape soda they dubbed Vin Fiz and they used Rodgers and his image to market it.  When Rodgers was killed in a crash in April 1912 after flying into a flock of birds, the company searched for another endorser.  They decided upon Harriet Quimby.  Her flight-suited image would adorn Vin Fiz advertisements and enhance her status as a celebrity.

On July 1, 1912 Harriet Quimby participated in the Boston Aviation Meet at Squantum, Massachusetts.  She was flying a new plane, a two-seater Bléliot monoplane.  The organizer of the meet, William Willard, was her passenger.  She flew her plane to the Boston light in the harbor and returned to circle the airfield.  At the altitude of 1000 feet the plane, for some reason, pitched forward with the result that Willard was ejected, falling to his death in the sea.  Harriet righted the plane, but only for a moment.  It pitched forward again and, despite having some sort of seat restraint, she was tipped out of the plane as well and fell to her death.  The plane crashed surprisingly intact on the muddy beach.  Spectators found Harriet’s lifeless body on the beach as well.  Although much debated, it has never been determined what caused the tragic accident.

Harriet Quimby was only 37 when she died.  She had been a pilot for less than a year, yet she made a huge mark on the history of aviation.  She was an inspiration to those who came after and is still remembered as a heroine and female role model.        

Her friend Matilde Moisant broke what was then the altitude record (1200 feet) during an airshow on September 1911.  However, she crashed her plane on April 14, 1912, two days before Harriet was to make her historic flight across the English channel.  Matilde recovered from her injuries, but never flew again.  She lived to the age of 85, dying in 1964 in California.

Portrait of Leif Erikson

Leif Erikson 18 x 24 inches Acrylic 2019

Leif Erikson (970 - 1020)  is considered to be the first European to set foot on the North American continent, doing so hundreds of years before Christopher Columbus opened up the Americas to exploration and colonization.  (There are numerous other claimants to this achievement, but none widely accepted). 

Leif’s grandfather Thorvald Ásvaldsson was exiled from Norway in about 960, during the reign of King Haakon the Good.  Apparently he had killed several people and as punishment was exiled to Iceland, a large island to the west that had been discovered by Thorvald’s great grandfather’s brother and was now a thriving Norse settlement.  Accompanying Thorvald was his 10 year old son Erik the Red (red referring to the color of his hair and beard).  

Around 982 Erik the Red was sentenced to three years in exile for killing the man who had slain several of his thralls (slaves).  He consequently left Iceland and sailed west, reaching  a huge land mass that had yet to be thoroughly explored or successfully settled.  He spent his three years in exile there and when he returned to Iceland he promoted settlement of the land that he called “Greenland” (the name stuck).    With arable land in Iceland running out, he was able to attract many potential colonists and led a fleet of 25 ships to Greenland.  Although only 14 of the ships reached Greenland, two permanent settlements were established there on the southwest coast.  Its population soon reached a few thousand individuals.  Erik the Red established himself as the chieftain of the so-called Eastern Settlement and became an honored and wealthy man.

Among the four children of Erik the Red and his wife Thjodhild (a descendant of an Irish king) was Leif, who earned th epithet, “the Lucky.”  Leif grew up in Greenland, but Erik was a mostly absent parent.  Leif was raised by his father’s thrall, Tyrker, who, not Norse, may have been of Germanic, Slavic, or even Hungarian derivation. 

In 999 is when we first hear of Leif Erikson.  He set sail at that time for Norway, but blown off course, he landed in the Hebrides off the west coast of Scotland.  Staying there for the summer, he fell in love with a noblewoman named Thorgunna, who bore him a son.  Marriage with her was not practical, but she did eventually send their son, Thorgils, to Greenland. 

At last arriving in Norway, Leif was presented to King Olaf Tryggvason at his capital of Trondheim and became his hirdman, one of his retinue of warriors and household companions.  It was there that Leif, to please his king, converted to Christianity, renouncing the traditional Norse religion, which featured the gods Thor, Odin, Freyr, and so forth.  King Olaf succeeded in what his predecessor King Haakon had tried but failed to do, convert the people of Norway to the Christian religion, even if Olaf often had to do it forcibly. 

Leif Erikson returned to Greenland in the spring, but on the voyage back home his ship was blown off course and ended up farther west that was intended.  Leif and his men saw a strange uncharted land that had reportedly been glimpsed many years before by an Icelandic merchant named Bjarni Herjólfsson on his voyage to Greenland.  Erikson rescued some shipwrecked seamen who also claimed to have seen this land.  Significantly, the land sighted by Erikson and Herjólfsson was forested.  Greenlanders, who lacked timber, were, therefore, interested.  So was Leif.  Possessed by the curiosity of the explorer, which many Norsemen of the time were amply endowed with, he was determined to find it again.  With the support of the Greenlanders, he mounted an expedition to voyage farther west and explore the newly found land.  He recruited a crew of 35 men and purchased the very boat Bjarni Herjólfsson had sailed in when he had made his sighting.   Erik the Red had been persuaded to join the expedition, but when he fell off his horse riding to the ship, he begged off, deciding the omens were against him.

The Greenland explorers set out in the fall of 1000 or 1001.  The voyage of Leif Erikson was indeed successful.  He made landfall first at what was probably Baffin Island, a rocky, desolate place he named Helluland (flat-rock land).  Continuing south and west he landed on a  country well forested.  He dubbed it Markland (forest land).  This was probably Labrador on the coast of what is now Canada.  Next, two days sailing to the south, he found country where the climate was milder, the landscape lusher, and the waters teeming with salmon.  Here he decided to stop and spend the winter.  Half of his men, though, led by Tyrker, were sent out to conduct explorations.  It was Tyrker who found a welcoming land distinguished by its vines and grapes.  The Norse moved there to winter and named it Vinland  (land of vines).  The settlement built there was later called Leifsbudir (Leif’s booths).  It was probably located on the tip of the northern peninsula of the island of Newfoundland.

With a cargo of timber and grapes, Leif Erikson returned  to Greenland in the spring.  He then followed through with his mission to Christianize the country.  Erikson, perceived as a man of strength, character, and wisdom, was respected and listened to when he brought word of this new religion.  Therefore, he was generally successful in his efforts to convert the people of Greenland to Christianity, (although it is probable Christianity had already taken root there).  His mother was quick to embrace the new religion and had a Christian church built, but his father, Erik the Red, rejected it and stubbornly clung to his belief in the old Norse deities.  (As a result of this religious disagreement between husband and wife, Thjodhild denied Erik her bed).

Vinland was visited by other Norsemen, but problems arouse when contact was made with the native Inuit inhabitants, who the Norse called skraelings.  Many of these encounters were hostile.  Leif’s brother Thorvald first came upon them in 1004.  Armed conflict resulted and Thorvald was killed.  Trade was conducted with the skraelings, but any future settlements were imperiled by their general hostility to foreigners.  It is conjectural how many further Norse settlements were made in America or how far from Vinland they might have been.  It is established that for centuries after Norsemen did make expeditions to Markland, particularly to acquire timber.  It was probably an open secret among mariners that such lands did exists to the west, although after the abandonment of the Norse settlements, no one deemed it worthwhile to travel there.  Christopher Columbus visited to Iceland in 1477 and may have been privy to and inspired by stories of Vinland and lands to the west.

 The last Norse settlements in Greenland were abandoned in the early 14th Century and the onset of the Little Ice Age made the island virtually uninhabitable due to the lower temperatures and the consequent inability to grow crops there.  Other factors, though, are believed to have contributed to decline of Norse Greenland.

It is not certain how many voyages Leif Erikson might have made to Vinland.  After the death of his father from the plague in 1004 he assumed a role as chieftain in Greenland and probably remained there after that time. The date of Leif Erikson’s death is uncertain, sometime between 1019 and 1025.  He was succeeded as chieftain by his son Thorkell.  (The identity of Thorkell’s mother is not known).

Icelandic sagas written in the 13th Century are primary sources for accounts of Erik the Red and Leif Erikson.  But there are some earlier, more reliably historical accounts such as that of Adam of Bremen, a German scholar who wrote in the late 11th Century.   Norse discovery of the New World  would eventually be corroborated by archaeology.  In the early 1960s Norwegian explorer Helge Ingstad and his archaeologist wife Anne Stine uncovered remains of a Norse settlement dated to 1000 AD in the northern tip of Newfoundland at a place known as L’Anse aux Meadows.  It was probably the site of Leifsbudir.  While further archaeological evidence suggest that Vinland was in the Gulf of St. Lawrence area, its location remains a matter of controversy.  Cape Cod, for instance, is believed by some to be the Norse Vinland.   There are, in fact, many theories regarding the extent of the Norse presence in America, some supported by evidence that is intriguing, but others based upon dubious, even spurious assumptions.

Nothing is known of Leif’s appearance.  We know that he had a grandson, but no further descendants have been identified.  Leif Erikson, though, remains an iconic hero, especially to Scandinavians in America.  Sometimes cast as a competitor to Columbus, he maintains the advantage of possessing a reputation that is unsullied  — save for the illegitimate Scottish offspring!

Portrait of Paul Gauguin

Paul Gauguin  18 x 24 inches, Acrylic on Cradled panel, 2019

 Paul Gauguin (1848-1903)  Born Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin, he was an important  post-Impressionistic French painter whose work, though mostly unappreciated in his lifetime,  achieved popularity and critical success after his death and had considerable influence upon 20th Century art. 

Paul was born into a middle class family of social activists.  His father Clovis was a liberal journalist and his maternal grandmother was an author and supporter of the early socialist movement.  When, in 1850, Clovis Gauguin’s newspaper was closed down by the French government, he decided to take his wife Alina and their children to Peru.  His wife’s father was from a Peruvian family of wealth and social standing and could perhaps help them. Unfortunately on the way, Clovis had a heart attack and died.  Nevertheless, Alina Gauguin, with her children, 2  1/2 year-old Marie and 1  1/2 year-old Paul, was well received by her father’s family, whose members included the future president of Peru.  For the next few years the Gauguins would live a life of luxury and privilege.  Paul would be doted on and indulged by servants, an idyllic early childhood that he would never quite let go of.

Unfortunately, the political fortunes of Alina’s family’s  fell and, in 1854, the Gauguins had to return to France, pretty much broke.  Gauguin’s mother supported herself as a dressmaker and left Paul in Orléans to be raised by his paternal grandfather.  Paul was able to attend prestigious schools, including a naval preparatory school in Paris.  Completing his education, Gauguin became a merchant seaman, a pilot’s assistant.  After three years he joined the French navy for a two-year enlistment.  It was while he was in India that he heard of his mother’s death months before.

In 1871 Paul Gauguin returned to Paris and through a family friend obtained employment as a stockbroker.  He was successful and became quite well-to-do.  In 1873 he married Mette-Sophie Gad (1850-1920), a Danish woman, and they had 5 children together.  Gauguin became interested in art and was a regular at the cafes frequented by the Impressionists, who, at that time, were the rebels of the art world.  He began purchasing the work of many of these avant-garde and as yet unheralded artists and came to know most of them personally; Camille Pissarro was a particular friend.  Gauguin himself tried his hand at painting and a little sculpture.  No one seemed to think much of his efforts, but Paul felt compelled to spend more and more of his time with art.  In 1877 he moved from the 9th arrondissement of Paris (on the right bank in central Paris) to a newer, urban area, Vaugirard.   It was a poorer neighborhood, but his 3rd floor apartment had a studio.  Gauguin’s efforts began to bear fruit.  He was beginning to sell his work and was able to exhibit paintings in the Impressionist exhibitions of 1881 and 1882. 

By 1883 stockbroker Paul Gauguin had decided to devote himself to art full time.  He could not have chosen a worse time.  The stock market had crashed the year before and dealers and collectors were buying little art.  In January 1884 Gauguin moved his family to Rouen, where they could live more cheaply than in Paris.  The transition from amateur to professional was a difficult one and it put strains on his family life.   Mette and the children soon moved to Copenhagen in her native country of Denmark.  Gauguin, bringing his art collection, followed in November of 1884.  The restless and frustrated Gauguin got a job selling tarpaulins, but it was an ill-starred venture — Paul didn’t even speak Danish!

Separating from his wife, Gauguin returned to Paris in June 1885, taking with him his 6-year old son (who would eventually have to be sent to a boarding school, paid for by Pauls’ sister).  The upcoming winter was a time of misery.  Paul found no sales, no inspiration, and had to support himself in poverty taking menial jobs.  In the May 1886 at the Impressionist exhibition he showed several paintings, but most of them were old work, and he only made one sale.  Paul was assertive and opinionated, and art seemed to bring out his crankiness.  He made no friends publicly deploring the pointillist work of Georges Seurat that was now in fashion among the avant-garde.  And he quarreled with his friend Pissarro, making an enemy of his former friend, a man he had regularly painted with on Sunday afternoons.

In the summer of 1886 Gauguin stayed at the artist’s colony of Pont-Aven in Brittany.  This turned out to be a success: he finally found a place where he felt at home.  He gave full reign to his flamboyant and aggressive personality, dressing in an outlandish manner to attract attention.  Even if his artwork was not particularly admired, he thought a really neat guy: he made quite a hit there with the younger artists and students.  And his skill as a boxer and a fencer only enhanced his image.

Even as he continued to copy other artists, Gauguin developed his own style.  He would shun the objective representations of Impressionism and embraced a naive style inspired by the art of Asia and Africa — bold colors and lines, often featuring objects of flat color outlined in black.  He rejected the classical elements of painting, eg. correct perspective and proportion, formal composition, and shadings, highlights, and gradations of color.  Objecting to the superficiality of most contemporary art, he incorporated symbolic elements into his paintings.  It was his intent to paint not what the eye sees, but what the mind sees and thus capture the essence rather than merely the appearance of what he chose to paint.

In 1887, with one of his new young artist friends, Charles Laval, Gauguin travelled to Panama to find inspiration in the exotic.  They didn’t find there.  Broke and without jobs, they appealed to the French embassy to pay for their return trip to France.  On the way back, though, he and Laval stopped on the French West Indian island of Martinique and decided to stay.  Sick and living uncomfortably in a leaky hut, Gauguin nevertheless enjoyed himself and found inspiration, mingling with and painting the native inhabitants.  

Gauguin painted a dozen or more pictures during his 5-month stay and with them seemed to hit his stride as an artist.  These, landscapes with figures, scenes of rural life with simple people, informally painted and brightly colored,  epitomized what would be his style.  He exhibited them when he returned to France.  The work attracted the attention of an important Dutch art dealer, Theo van Gogh, who bought some of his work and showed it to his wealthy clients.  Paul become friends with van Gogh’s brother Vincent, who was a struggling artist.  Paul and Vincent corresponded and in his letters to him Gauguin formulated and expounded upon his philosophy of art.

At the suggestion of Theo, Vincent van Gogh asked Gauguin to live and paint with him at Arles in southern France, where van Gogh had gone for his health.  Vincent had rented rooms in a residence known from one of his paintings as the Yellow House.  (The house was damaged during WWII and demolished).  Paul accepted the invitation and arrived at Arles on October 23, 1888.   He soon learned he had made a mistake.  The two may have learned from each other, but there were inevitable conflicts.  Their painting styles and techniques were quite different, for instance, Gauguin did not share van Gogh’s enthusiasm for painting outdoors in all weathers and van Gogh could not adapt himself to Gauguin’s habit of painting from memory.  But van Gogh idolized Gauguin.  He hoped to be treated as his colleague, an equal, but Gauguin, dominating and lecturing, was not comfortable doing so.  Their intense personalities clashed and their relationship deteriorated.  The insecure and emotionally needy Van Gogh desperately hoped that Gauguin would not desert him.  Gauguin, who had chucked his marriage and respectable life to be an artist, chafed at attachments and obligations.  What’s more, Gauguin was naturally quarrelsome, while the sensitive van Gogh’s mental state was delicate at best.

In late December after being cooped up in the Yellow House for days because of rain, the two men quarreled violently.  When Gauguin took a walk, van Gogh chased after him and threatened him with a razor.  Afterwards Gauguin spent the night in a hotel.  Vincent, distraught and apparently having a psychotic episode in which he heard voices, cut off his left ear with the razor.  Although he later would not remember the episode, van Gogh bandaged his head and wrapped up the severed ear, which he delivered to a prostitute that worked in a brothel he and Paul frequented.  He later passed out and was taken by the police to a hospital.  As he recovered, Van Gogh repeatedly asked that Gauguin visit him, but Paul thought it best to leave Arles.  He returned to Paris and never saw van Gogh again, although they did continue to correspond.   (An alternative version of that night’s events has Gauguin being responsible for severing van Gogh’s ear during a physical altercation and Vincent agreeing not to say anything to implicate Paul).

Paul Gauguin hit upon the idea of going to the romantic South Seas, Tahiti, in particular, an overseas territory of France.   There he could leave behind the artificialities of civilization and be free of the demands of modern life.   A successful auction of his work in February 1991 provided the necessary funds for his trip.  After visiting his wife and children in Copenhagen for what turned out to be the last time, he departed for Tahiti on April 1, 1991. 

Gauguin spent his first three months in the capital of Tahiti, Papeete, but the city had already become so Europeanized it no longer had the primitive charm Gauguin was looking for.   Consequently, he moved to a village more than 30 miles from Papeete and lived there, native-style, in a bamboo hut.  This was a productive period with Gauguin executing his best and most representative work, portraits of native girls, scenes of native life, and illustrations of the lost culture and religion of Tahiti.  He also produced many woodcarvings.  Some of paintings were sent  back to France and Gauguin encouragingly heard word of sales.  During his stay in Tahiti, Gauguin contracted a marriage with a 13-year old native girl, whom he used as a model.  He also found time to write a travelogue entitled Noa Noa, which he would publish in 1901 —  however, the truthfulness of some of his accounts is suspect.

Gauguin was plagued by bad health, initially heart problems.  He was broke as well and so felt compelled to return to France, relying as he had before on government charity to pay for his passage. 

He returned to Paris in August 1893.  A show of his work in November 1893 was arranged by his long-time friend Edgar Degas.  Gauguin had bought Degas’ works when he was a collector in the ‘70s.  Now, Degas collected Gauguin’s works and lent him support and approval — even as other artists, Pissarro, Renoir, and Monet, scoffed at his works.

Continuing to produce “Tahitian” paintings, Paul set himself up in a studio in Montparnasse, an artist district in Paris.  He held a weekly salon where he would bedeck himself in Polynesian attire and show off his latest mistress, an exotic teenager from Java.  

A show in November 1994 resulted in sales, but subsequent exhibitions were financial failures.  Even though he had received an inheritance from an uncle, Gauguin was again short of funds.  He had become disillusioned with the European art world that had rejected him and embittered by the critical attacks directed against him and his work.   He yearned to go back to Tahiti.  And with help of friends he secured passage back to French Polynesia in June 1895.  He would never see Europe again.

In Tahiti he was able to support himself with sales of his artwork and enjoyed a comfortable life among the French colonists.  He was able to build a large house in an area outside Papeete where the rich people lived.  He became a journalist and took part in local politics.  He acquired another native wife, a 14-year old who bore him two children.  During his first year back in Tahiti he worked on nothing but woodcarvings.  When he returned to painting, he found himself catering to his fellow colonists rather than the avant garde of Paris.

In April 1897 he was in the process of building a new home, a lavish one, since the land on which his former home was situated had been sold.  Unfortunately, he was hard pressed financially and despaired of paying his debts.  His health was poor.  An injury to an ankle received during a drunken brawl back in France never healed and he had painful leg sores.  (These were long thought to be due to advanced syphilis, but recent examination of Gauguin’s teeth reveal no trace of mercury, which was commonly used to treat syphilis.  Therefore, it seems likely that he did not have the disease).  After finishing what he regarded as his masterpiece, the 14-foot wide tableau Where Do We Come From? What are We? Where Are We Going, he contemplated committing suicide.  But he did not go through with it.  His mood was soon buoyed and his fortunes were restored after several successful shows in Paris.  It seemed critics now liked his work.  And there was a new dealer who guaranteed him a regularly monthly advance.

Paul Gauguin could now fulfill his dream of settling in the more primitive Marquesas Islands, a French colony to the east of Tahiti.  He arrived there in September 1901 and built a fine two-story house in the center of the capital Atuona.  The Marquesas could not have been as he dreamed, though.  Its population had been decimated by European diseases so that only a few thousand inhabitants remained.  The Catholic Church indoctrinated the natives as the government oppressed them and traders exploited them.  Although it was not long before he antagonized the Catholic bishop, the iconoclastic  Gauguin befriended a Protestant pastor who had some medical training and was able to treat Gauguin’s legs.  Gauguin employed several servants and lived with another 14-year old girl who was probably as much nurse as wife.  They had a child together.  With no lack of models, Gauguin set out painting and sending his work back to France.  Back in Europe he had become a mysterious and legendary figure and his exotic art was at last appreciated.

By 1902 Gauguin’s health deteriorated, and he found it difficult to paint.  In addition to heart problems and the leg sores, he came to have vision loss.  He took morphine and  laudanum, but was careful to avoid becoming addicted.  Still full of spirit, though, Gauguin turned his attention to writing, recording reminiscences and penning complaints to the local government.  His criticisms of the constabulary led Gauguin to be charged with libeling a gendarme.  He received a prison sentence of three months.  Although in failing health, Gauguin endeavored to raise funds to go to Papeete to appeal his sentence.  He was very weak, in great pain, and suffering from fainting fits.  On the morning of May 8, 1903 he was found dead, either the victim of a heart attack or of an overdose of drugs he might have administered to ease his pain.

Gauguin’s effects were immediately auctioned off.  Some disappeared, but most of them eventually reached his wife Mete in Denmark.  His paintings increased in value and his reputation as an artist soared after his death.  Recently, one of his paintings was sold for 210 million dollars!  His primitive style has exerted considerable influence upon many early 20th Century artists, Pablo Picasso being the most notable.  He is still remembered in French Polynesia.  There is a Paul Gauguin Cultural Center in Atuona and a Paul Gauguin Museum in Tahiti.  He left descendants in Europe, Tahiti, and the Marquesas, some of whom became artists.

Gauguin and his colorful life inspired many literary works, among them Somerset Maugham's novel, The Moon and Six Pence.  Gauguin was memorably portrayed in the 1956 van Gogh film biography Lust for Life, with Anthony Quinn, himself an outstanding primitive artist and collector, winning an Academy Award for his performance.

Portrait of William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare  20 x 16 inches, Acrylic, 2019

 William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616)  is considered the greatest dramatist in the English language.  He was born in Stratford-on-Avon, in Warwickshire, central England, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth.  His father, John Shakespeare, was a glove maker and alderman, his mother, Mary Arden, was the daughter of a well-to-do farmer.  He was educated in a local school, where he would have at least learned Latin.  In 1583 when he was 18, William Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway, who was 26 at the time.  The wedding was a rushed affair: Anne was already pregnant, for she gave birth to their first child, Susana, 6 months later.  In 1585, twins, Hamnet and Judith were born.  (Hamnet would die at the age of 11).  The skimpy public record divulges all that is known of the early life of the Bard of Avon.  Little else is known of Shakespeare until, in 1592, when he became part of the theater scene in London.

When Shakespeare began writing plays is uncertain, probably in the early 1590s or before, but his early work did achieve considerable recognition.  He was considered something of an upstart, though, for he was an outsider and a marginally educated man, unlike, for instance, his contemporary and rival Christopher Marlowe who graduated from Cambridge University.  It is not known what acting company first performed Shakespeare’s plays, perhaps several did.  But after 1594 the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, the leading company in London, were the exclusive producers of his plays.  Will Shakespeare was part owner of the company and although its leading player was Richard Burbage, Shakespeare was also one of its actors.  (What roles in his own plays Shakespeare might have assumed is a matter of conjecture).  After the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603, the company, now under the patronage of King James I, was renamed The King’s Men.  Its most famous acting venue was The Globe Theatre, built on the south bank of the Thames in 1599.  (The Globe burned down in 1613, was rebuilt, but closed in 1642 by Puritans who regarded the stage as sinful.  In 1997 a replica of the theater, constructed near the original location, opened.  The campaign to achieve this restoration had been spearheaded not by the English acting establishment, but, curiously, by Chicago-born actor Sam Wanamaker, who, unfortunately, died before his dream came to full fruition.)

At the beginning of his career Will Shakespeare probably collaborated with other playwrights; his plays were no doubt revised by other hands.  Titus Andronicus, a tragedy set in ancient Rome, one of his earliest plays, was likely a result of such collaboration.  Conforming with the prevailing fashion on the stage, Shakespeare wrote a series of histories chronicling the reigns of past English kings, such as  Richard III,  Henry VI, Richard II,  Henry V and others.  He seemed to have cribbed most of his historical information from a single volume of history.  (We know this because he replicated the mistakes found there).  Early works also included comedies, a genre he would develop throughout the decade of the ‘90s.  There was A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with a cast of bucolic fairies, including the mischievous sprite Puck, The Merchant of Venice with woman-lawyer Portia and Jewish moneylender Shylock,  As You Like It and Twelfth Night, which both involved women impersonating men.  (It might be noted that women did not appear as performers on the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage.  Female parts were always assumed by men or boys).

By the end of the 16th Century Shakespeare was composing his greatest masterpieces.  There was Julius Caesar, a study of character and society, much more than a dry retelling of history, and Romeo and Juliet, a tragic tale of adolescent romance in medieval Italy.  But Shakespeare is hailed most for the four tragedies written in the first decade of the 17th Century, Hamlet, a prince of Denmark who is torn by indecision whether or not he should avenge the murder of his father,  Othello, a Moor (Black) driven to become jealous of his faithful wife Desdemona, King Lear, about an aged king who disastrously tries to apportion his kingdom among his daughters, and MacBeth, a medieval noble egged on by his wife to seize the Scottish throne by murdering the king.  Also in his late period Shakespeare returned to ancient Roman history with Antony and  Cleopatra and Coriolanus, and penned the tragi-comedies Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, and The Tempest, as well as working on a few lesser known plays, probably in collaboration with John Fletcher, who would take his place as the company’s chief playwright.

In all, William Shakespeare, over a period of about 25 years, wrote 38 plays, most of them still well-known to the modern public, and many considered classics, if not possessing greatness.  The order in which they are written cannot be definitely determined.  Many of the plays were printed in his lifetime, some of them with dialogue garbled, revised, even reconstructed from memory, surely none authorized by the playwright.  Shakespeare could not have expected that his plays would be preserved for posterity.  But in 1623, years after Shakespeare’s death, two members of  The King’s Men paid great tribute to their friend and playwright, and took it upon themselves to publish a definitive edition of 36 of his plays, in what is known as the First Folio.  A folio book is made from a large sheet of paper folded once, a format used for books of importance.  Earlier additions of Shakespeare’s plays were in the cheaper quarto form, made with paper that is folded twice.  The First Folio was 12 1/2 inches high.  No more than 750 out of an original 1000 printed are existent today.  Later, other folio additions appeared.

William Shakespeare is renown as well for his poetical works,  When the theaters in London were closed down owing to the plague in 1593 and 1594, Shakespeare wrote and published Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece.  These were modeled on the poem Metamorphoses written by the Roman poet Ovid, first published in 8 AD.  These poems, as well as Shakespeare’s plays, reveal how strongly he and other authors of his time were inspired and influenced by the literature of ancient Greece and Rome.  During his life Shakespeare composed a large number of sonnets.  (The sonnet is a poetical form that originated in Italy during the Renaissance.  The English sonnet consists of 14 lines, usually with 10 syllables per line).  Shakespeare shared his poetry only among his friends, but late in life, in 1609, he published a collection of 154 sonnets.  They, like his other poems, were well received by the public and several of his sonnets are remembered today; for example Sonnet 18 “Shall I compare thee to a summer day?”
  
It is assumed that during his career as a playwright Shakespeare took breaks from his sojourn in London to return to Stratford to spend time with his family.  A relatively wealthy man, he lived there in the town’s second largest house.  He wrote his last important plays in 1612 or so, and it is thought that after that he went into a kind of semi-retirement.  He died at the age of 56 on April 23, 1616.  The circumstances of his death are not known, but it is reported that he was in good health up until the end.  He was buried in the Holy Trinity Church on Stratford.  A memorial for him was later established in the Poets Corner in Westminster Abbey in London.

As is not uncommon with great men, William Shakespeare has no living descendants.  His daughter Susanna married a physician named John Hall and his other daughter Judith wed a vintner named Thomas Quiney.  Susanna Hall had a daughter who married twice, but had no children.  Judith Quiney had three children, but none of them married.

That Shakespeare had a profound effect upon dramaturgy would be a gross understatement.  His plays have had an impact not only upon the English stage and upon English literature, but upon the theater in practically every country.  So many lines from his plays, so many expressions that he employed have found their way into the English lexicon.  Many speeches from his plays are in the public memory — Hamlet’s soliloquy, Marc Antony’s funeral oration, Portia’s “The quality of mercy is not strained, “All the world’s a stage,” “This England,” and so forth.  Although the language of his plays is for the most part quite formal, as well as poetic, Shakespeare exerted significant influence upon the development of modern English. 

Thought well of in his lifetime, Shakespeare fell into some disfavor during the late 17th and 18th Centuries.  However, he had his notable champions: John Dryden, who was made English poet laureate in 1688, Dr. Samuel Johnson, whose 1755 dictionary quoted him more than any other author,  the French philosopher Voltaire, and the great German writer  Johanne von Goethe.  In the 19th Century Shakespeares’ stock rose.  Major literary figures such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas Carlyle, the Romantic poets, Victor Hugo, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, and many others were inspired by him.  The public embraced him even as new playwrights such as Ibsen, Shaw, and others redefined the theater.  Into the 21st Century, William Shakespeare retains a god-like stature and, more than that, his plays continue to be performed (and quoted), as well as made into popular movies.

No portrait or drawing of Shakespeare was made during his lifetime and, therefore, what he actually looked like is a moot question.  There is not even a written description of his appearance.  A rather stilted and stylized engraving of Shakespeare appears in the First Folio, published after his death.  It was claimed to be a fair likeness by those who knew the man.  A painted carving of Shakespeare made years after his death adorns the monument for him in Stratford.  It depicts an older man, balding and bearded.  It can probably be taken as a reasonable representation.  Over the centuries many portraits have surfaced claiming to be of Shakespeare and painted from life.  A few might be, but this is wishful thinking and, alas, they are more likely to be portraits of other subjects.

Owing to the paucity of real knowledge about his private life, there have been persistent suspicions that William Shakespeare did not exist as we know him and that he was not the author of his plays.  Several theories have been offered, that Shakespeare wrote in collaboration, that his name was merely a nom de plume for someone else or some group of authors, or that he was conduit for plays written by someone else.  Francis Bacon and Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford have been the two most commonly cited as possible authors of Shakespeare’s plays.  There is intriguing evidence to fuel all these theories, and Shakespeare critics have included many prominent actors and great and thoughtful men.  Nevertheless, the preponderance of evidence suggests that the man from Stratford-on-Avon was the sole author of the Shakespeare canon.  Existent writings of Bacon and de Vere do not resemble Shakespeare’s writing at all.  De Vere was dead while Shakespeare was still turning out plays.  Even if there is sparse evidence of his existence, contemporary figures, such as playwright Ben Jonson knew and spoke of the playwright Shakespeare. And recent computer analysis of the plays concludes that they were the product of a single author and not the result of a group project.  The explanation for Shakespeare’s prolific output, his facility with language, his knowledge of history and mythology, his scholarship unhindered by a lack of formal education, his wisdom and humanity, and his profound understanding of human character can partly be explained by an obvious fact — the man was a genius.