Good advice, yes? It comes from one of the many Gilded Age books I read on the jail tablet, but for once I forgot to note the author and book. Still, words to live by, especially in polite company.

But I did remember to chronicle wit and wisdom from the host of authors and other quotable notables I discovered while passing the time as a guest of the state. You’ve already met my friend Ms. Eleanor Hallowell Abbott (see post, “Worrisome Hats”) but I found many of her contemporaries equally adept at turning a worthy phrase.

We’ll start with someone you may know from his characters like Peter Pan and Wendy, the Scottish author/playwright J.M. Barrie (1860-1937). (BTW, do you know why Peter Pan is always flying? Because he lives in Never Land….) Sir James (he became a Baronet in 1913) wrote over three dozen books and plays, even an opera libretto (Ernest Ford’s Jane Annie in 1893) co-authored by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Despite my Scottish heritage, I found Barrie’s written attempts at his native brogue almost indecipherable, yet his proper English is sublime, evidenced by this fetching line from his 1888 novella When a Man’s Single: A Tale of Literary Life: “He yawned like a man glad to get to the end of a sentence, or sorry he had begun it.” (I aspire to pen such deft description.)

A lesser-known but equally gifted Gilded Age scribe was Anglo-American Coningsby Dawson (1883-1959). Born in England to expat parents, he was educated at Oxford then returned to Massachusetts and immediate success with his 1913 novel A Garden Without Walls, that offers this existential aphorism: “Most grief arises from a thwarted sense of one’s importance.” (Take that, Dr. Freud!) Or this lovers’ warning from 1923’s The Kingdom ‘Round The Corner: “The end of all passion is futility.” Oh Romeo, wherefore art thou?

What first struck me about Dawson’s novels was that he might be a she, for in both mentioned books the narrator (a dashing young man of means) remains forlornly loathe to commit to any of the dynamic, rich, single beauties who throw themselves at him, thus his adventures inevitably end with our hero empty-handed at the proverbial altar. I was proven quite wrong on finding out that Dawson fought on the front lines in WW1 as a Lieutenant in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, was wounded twice, and came back to America to write his true-to-life collection The Glory in The Trenches (which as of this post I confess remains unread.) Side bookworm note: his forename “Coningsby” is likely a nod to the eponymous protagonist of Benjamin Disraeli’s 1844 political roman-a-clef.

Sparing you another quadrant of quotes, I’ll reference just one more author whose work I enjoyed from behind the walls. E. Phillips Oppenheim (1866-1944) must have been the James Patterson of his day, cranking out more than 100 novels in a prolific career. His stories, per Wikipedia’s bio, featured “glamorous characters, international intrigue and fast action…and were viewed as popular entertainments,” and he was featured on the cover of Time in 1927. From the tablet I devoured a half-dozen of his books, my favorite by far being 1910’s The Lost Ambassador aka The Missing Delora, an espionage thriller with a nifty final twist; but I’d recommend any Oppenheim volume for a satisfying summer read.

OK, for now enough literary lionizing, so let’s wrap it up with a keeper from the Bard himself, aptly quoted in Rev. T.P. Wilson‘s charmingly puritanical short novel Working In the Shade (1880), and originally from The Merchant of Venice: “How far that little candle throws its beams, so shines a good deed in a naughty world.” Amen to that.

This post is dedicated to my one-of-a-kind Godmother, Betty Thompson (1926-2023), a journalist, author, and 30-year executive publicist for the United Methodist Church. Betty, originally from Augusta GA (“also home to James Brown,” she would add) proffered a rare blend of southern sass and worldly wisdom, and was the best writer/editor I’ve ever known. One of her many claims to fame was being seated, alphabetically, next to Bishop Desmond Tutu at a World Council of Churches conference and charming him with her down-home wit. She is greatly missed by many.