John Henry Newman, b. 1801. Anglican clergyman, leader in the Oxford Movement, later converted to Roman Catholicism. He was the author of Apologia Pro Vita Sua (A Defense of One’s Life) in response to author Charles Kingsley (The Water Babies) who wrote an anti-Catholic article in a magazine which Newman interpreted as not only an attack on Catholic doctrine but also an impugnment of Newman’s honesty and character. Kingsley was a friend of many Victorian literary figures including George MacDonald. And MacDonald, in addition to be a strong influence on C.S. Lewis, was also cited as an influence on poet W.H. Auden.

Auden: “To me, George MacDonald’s most extraordinary, and precious, gift is his ability, in all his stories, to create an atmosphere of goodness about which there is nothing phone or moralistic. Nothing is rarer in literature.”

Sir Mountstuart Elphinstone Grant-Duff, author and statesman, b. 1829.

Wystan Hugh Auden, poet, b. 1907.

More about Wystan and Mountstuart here.

Nice relationship linking, but I don’t know where Mr. Elphinstone Grant-Duff comes into the picture. Maybe he knew all those Victorians, too. Maybe they called him “Stu” for short.

Also born on this date: Erma Bombeck, b.1927, d.1996.

“My theory on housework is, if the item doesn’t multiply, smell, catch fire, or block the refrigerator door, let it be. No one else cares. Why should you?”

Have you any idea how many children it takes to turn off one light in the kitchen? Three. It takes one to say, “What light?” and two more to say, “I didn’t turn it on.”

Mothers have to remember what food each child likes or dislikes, which one is allergic to penicillin and hamster fur, who gets carsick and who isn’t kidding when he stands outside the bathroom door and tells you what’s going to happen if he doesn’t get in right away. It’s tough. If they all have the same hair color they tend to run together.

Everyone is guilty at one time or another of throwing out questions that beg to be ignored, but mothers seem to have a market on the supply. “Do you want a spanking or do you want to go to bed?” Don’t you want to save some of the pizza for your brother?” Wasn’t there any change?”

When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, “I used everything you gave me”.

Ansel Adams, American photographer, b. 1902. Adams is famous for his many photographs of American landscapes, especially our national parks. He was not succesful in school, so he was homeschooled, or tutored as it was called then, by his father and his aunt. He taught himself to play the piano and to read music, and then took lessons with hopes of becoming a concert pianist. However, he also began taking photographs as a teenager, and eventually photography became his life’s work.

Nicolaus Copernicus, Polish astronomer, b. 1473. Copernicus revolutionized astronomy by placing the sun instead of the earth at the center of our planetary system.

David Garrick, actor, playwright, theatre manager, b.1717. Garrick was, by all accounts, an extraordinary Shakespearean actor. He is buried in Westminster Abbey, and there is a statue of him there with these lines underneath it:

To paint fair nature by divine command,
Her magic pencil in her glowing hand,
A Shakespear rose: then, to expand his fame,
Wide o’er this breathing world, a Garrick came.
Though sunk in death the forms the Poet drew,
The actor’s genius bade them breath anew;
Though, like the bard himself, in night they lay,
Immortal Garrick call’d them back to day;
And till Eternity with pow’r sublime
Shall mark the moral hour of hoary Time,
Shakespear and Garrick like twin-stars shall shine,
And earth irradiate with a beam divine.

Can you imagine what it would be like to be paired with Shakespeare himself as a “twin star”? Garrick must have been some actor. It’s a pity that the art of stage actors (and singers before the age of recording) doesn’t last past their deaths.

Louis Slobodkin, sculptor and Caldecott Award winning illustrator and author of children’s books, b. 1903. Mr. Slobodkin was a sculptor until his late 30’s when he began illustrating the books of his friend, Eleanor Estes. He illustrated several of her Moffat books and also my favorite, The Hundred Dresses. (If you want to teach children about compassion without preaching at them, read The Hundred Dresses.) He won the Caldecot Award for his illustrations of James Thurber’s story, Many Moons about a sick princess who asks to have the moon to make her well.
Rebecca Writes about Louis Slobodkin.
Carol Reid’s website dedicated to all things Slobodkin.
A Semicolon review of Slobodkin’s picture book, One Is Good, But Two Are Better.

Thomas Robert Malthus, b. 1766. “Population increases in a geometric ratio, while the means of subsistence increases in an arithmetic ratio.” Some still consider this ratio problem to be insoluble, a conundrum of impending doom for humanity; others have come to see an opposing problem.

Anne Manning, English writer, b. 1807. Wikipedia says she wrote a book called The Household of Sir Thomas More, “a delightful picture of More’s home life told in the form of a diary written by his daughter Margaret.” Eldest Daughter, who detests More, should get a copy of this book for April Fool’s Day.

Dorothy Canfield Fisher, American author and essayist, b.1879. For children, she wrote Understood Betsy, the story of an orphan girl who lives with her relatives around the turn of the century. You can read it online with illustrations here.

Bess Streeter Aldrich, b. 1881. Nebraska author of A Lantern in her Handand many other books and short stories. I read a description of her writing as “cheerful realism.”

Robert Newton Peck, author of Soup and others in the series, b. 1928. At his website, Peck says that the character Soup was based on his best friend, Lester Wesley Vinson. Soup grew up to become a minister. Peck also says a lot of other things that indicate to me that he’s read and agrees with Malthus.

“Earth, our beautiful planet today has only one problem. Excess human population. This dreaded disease, human pregnancy, is the mother lode which spawns disease, poverty, litter, crime, animal annihilation, and war. Not to mention traffic, or din. Because of this mire of people, which I dub peoplution, our animals are dying.”

It sounds just like the propaganda I heard when I was in high school. Nevertheless, the Soup books are lots of fun.

Chaim Potok, b. 1929. Rabbi and author of The Chosen and My Name is Asher Lev. “I would prefer to say that the universe is meaningful, with pockets of apparent meaninglessness, than to say it is meaningless with pockets of apparent meaningfulness. In other words I have questions either way.” (Potok in Christianity Today, September 8, 1978)

Ruth Rendell, b. 1930. Author of detective fiction and also other non-detective fiction using the pseudonym, Barbara Vine. “I think that most writers have these two opposing feelings co-exist. One, this is the most wonderful work of art since War and Peace, and also this is the most awful trash, and why did I ever write it?” I feel that way about almost everything I write–especially the latter feeling. Does that mean I’m a real writer?
Here’s a post from Cathy of Poohsticks on Ruth Rendell. I read Tree of Hands by Ms. Rendell last year, but never got around to reviewing it. It was a rather disturbing story, but worth the time.

Galileo Galilei, scientist and astronomer, b. 1564. The Catholic Encyclopedia on Galileo and his conflict with the Inquisition.

Jeremy Bentham, eccentric philosopher, b. 1748.

Susan B. Anthony, women’s rights advocate and abortion opponent, b. 1820. “Guilty? Yes, no matter what the motive, love of ease, or a desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent, the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed. It will burden her conscience in life, it will burden her soul in death; but oh! Thrice guilty is he who, for selfish gratification, heedless of her prayers, indifferent to her fate, drove her to the desperation which impels her to the crime.”
Frederica Matthewes-Green on Susan B. Anthony, Pro-Life Feminist.

Lucy Beatrice Malleson, author of murder mysteries using the pseudonym Anthony Gilbert, b. 1899. Her most popular detective character was “beer-drinking Cockney barrister Arthur G. Crook, an overweight detective like Nero Wolfe, who drives in Rolls Royce and comes on stage when it is time to solve the case.”

Norman Bridwell, author of Clifford the Big Red Dog, b. 1928. Scholastic Clifford website with games and stuff for kids.

John Ruskin, b. 1819. Known as a literary and art critic, Ruskin lived a rather tragic life. He was a friend of the Pre-Raphaelites, Rossetti, Morris, Meredith, and Swinburne, and his wife left him and married the painter Millais. He fell in love with a young Irish girl, but she would not marry him and she later died. He lost his faith in Christianity, suffered from mental illness, and finally re-embraced the Christian faith of his youth, although he refused to believe in hell. Maybe this rejection had something to do with the fact that during episodes of mental illness he had horrendous visions of himself battling with Satan.

Henry Walter Bates, b. 1825. Naturalist, entomologist, and evolutionist. He wrote The Naturalist on the River Amazons, published in 1863. Has anybody out there read it?
If you’d like to know more about this pioneer in entomology, here’s a good article from The New Yorker, August 22, 1988, about Bates’s life and travels along the Amazon.

Jules Verne, b. 1828. In a letter: “I must be slightly off my head. I get caught up in all the extraordinary adventures of my heroes.”

Digby Mackworth Dolben, b. 1848. English poet, he was rather a character. He wrote love poetry to another (male) student at Eton and then considered conversion to Roman Catholicism and went around wearing a Benedictine monk’s habit. He drowned in a rather mysterious accident at the age of nineteen before he could go up to Oxford.

Kate Chopin, b. 1851. American author of The Awakening.

Martin Buber, b. 1878. Jewish philosopher and teacher. In 1938 he left Germany and went to live in Jerusalem. He wrote the book, I and Thou about the relationships of people to people and persons to God. “Egos appear by setting themselves apart from other egos. Persons appear by entering into relation to other persons.”

John Grisham, b. 1955. OK, I’m not really terribly intellectual at all. Of all the authors who have birthdays today, the only two I’ve read are Jules Verne (Around the World in Eighty Days and John Grisham. Which Grisham novel do you like best? Do you agree with me that his novels have not gotten better but rather the opposite? I did enjoy The Firm and The Client and, my favorite, The Rainmaker.

Edited slightly and reposted from February 8, 2006.