The Emily Chesley Reading Circle

During the later years of his life, Flannigan developed a Hughsian obsession with nasal hygiene. Not content with the nose-nugget-removing capacity of the Personal Digital Assistant, circa 1897, Flannigan developed other more robust technologies, including The Nasalator, Flannigan’s Fingerless Rhinal Rectifier, and The Sinus Weasel (not to be confused with the FIannigan Phlegmenantrix.)

On New Year’s Day, 1901, Flannigan ushered in a new century with an invention he had been tinkering with for some time that combined all four previous nose-hygiene products, and which continues to be used to this day. (Though not as Flannigan had imagined it.) Based on the simple pumps he had worked on at the start of his career in the tin mines of Cornwall, the Pump-Action Nasal Cavity Irrigation System was a state-of-the-art nose-cleaning device.

Two hoses were held by the cleansee, positioning their ends in the nostril opening. The operator of the device (bow-tie not mandatory) waited until the cleansee was ready, at which point, the operator would shout, “prepare for the injection!” (giving the cleansee once last chance to remove the hoses). The operator then vigorously depressed and raised the MegaPlunger, providing the delightful pump-action necessary to help the cleansee eliminate potentially embarrassing nasal discharge.

Flannigan had learned from his past errors (see the Fully Invasive Earwax Remover and Mind Control Device), and the MegaPlunger did not drive the water with enough pressure to destroy the sinuses outright. However, there was enough force to fully engorge the cleansee’s nasal cavities with the sanitizing solution (a pleasing mixture of water, eucalyptus and carbolic acid), such that jets of liquid shot out of the cleansee’s:

a) ears
b) eyes
c) mouth, and in rare (fatal) occasions:
d) forehead.

Flannigan managed to create a prototype of this device before the disastrous (and tragic) test of his Nostril-Stretching and Nose-Hair Clipping Device later that month. Thought not successful as a nasal hygiene product, it has found some use, slightly adapted, in the modern era. Nowadays, it is known as “The PowerBong”.

–”Scholarship” by The Squire

Flannigan’s cold streak in Winnipeg continued unabated. Faced with not only the rejection of his Breast-Pads for Hideous Women, but outright hostility, and several public groinings, Flannigan turned his inventive mind to the question: “how can I get thumped in the ol’ marbles and keep down me lunch?”

The Apparatus For The Prevention Of Getting Kicked In The Nuts, was actually badly misnamed. In fact, wearers of Flannigan’s invention (dubbed the “Testinator” by several Exchange District wags) were much more likely to be assaulted in the nether-regions. This is because the apparatus gave its wearer a sense of security. It should be noted that this was a false sense of security, as parts 5, 2, 7 and 4 were constructed of stiff leather instead of some harder material. (Flannigan had used copper in his prototype, but had rejected the metal after his test run at Portage and Main, stating, “I can’t say I enjoyed the effects of super-chilled metal next to me dangly bits. I’m sure the public will reject it also.”)

Sales were predictably flaccid.

–Scholarship by The Squire

From 1875 through 1877, Michael Flannigan was not only experiencing a dearth of decent ideas for inventions (this is the period in which he invented both the Magneto-Electric Genital Clamp and Flannigan’s Follicle Restorer), he was also living in Winnipeg. One wonders if it is the lack of good ideas, and the tragic failure of even passable ideas (such as the Big-Ass Pipe), rather than his locale that informed the only invention he patented in 1876: Breast-Pads for Hideous Woman.

In his patent application, Flanngan states:

“Be it known that I, Michael Flannigan, a citizen of the Dominion of Canada, residing at Winnipeg, in the Province of Manitoba, have invented a new and useful device to make repulsive females less stomach-turning, called Breast-Pads for Hideous Women, of which the following is a specification…

“Note: though the extra padding may help, there is no way to actually disguise the hideousness of the women hereabouts, so the inventor recommends that this device is used in combination with the Big-Ass Pipe, the Particulate Breathing Apparatus or Flannigan’s Amplified Re-Breathing Technology. Copious amounts of sloe gin and whiskey may also help.

“If neither of these methods of employing the device are successful, after a slight adjustment to the coarsetron (c) the pads may be worn over the face. (Figure 2).”

During the fall of 1895 Michael Flannigan made several trips to Woodstock to lay plans for one of his most successful inventions, The Oxford Curd Gird. Woodstock was famed for its dairy cattle, and the sight of these majestic bovines inspired Flannigan as he piloted his Flannigan Flyer down the bucolic lanes of Oxford County.

He became somewhat of a cow aficionado, and made extensive sketches of the beasts in his spare time. He also noticed that indigenous wildlife seemed quite calm around them. On one such occasion, Sir Harold Bjornwowgnwha (a noted anti-naturalist of mixed Welsh and Norwegian ancestry) was unable to get close enough to a flock of geese to dispatch them.

And so the Gentleman’s Apparatus for the Destruction of Autochthonic Wildlife was born.

Though there was initial enthusiasm for the new “Decow” in the indigenous fauna eradication set, problems emerged. First of all arguments about who would get the coveted front position led to the dissolution of life-long hunting partnerships and in one unfortunate instance, and exchange of buckshot at point-blank range. Flannigan tried to rectify this by instituting the “gut flap” (#9 on the patent papers, pictured above.)

Alas, this was not enough to mollify the “backenders”, especially after the incident in Campbell’s Field, where the unfortunate Cecil Bufrompé was “serviced” by a passing bull, and then later “milked” by a strapping and debauched farmhand from Strathroy.

Flannigan tried to integrate this as a feature (#19 on the patent papers), but even the most jaded huntsmen were unimpressed.

–”Scholarship” by The Squire

The Meaningless Slaughter of the Light Brigade

By William Thudworth St. John-Smith

Now gather around children,
Don’t be afraid
To hear a great tale
Of bold plans unmade
And the meaningless slaughter of the Light Brigade

This is a simple story
Not a rant or tirade
About 673 men
Both bold and unafraid
Who were unfortunately attached to that Light Brigade

At the Battle of Balaclava
Our story is played
When some movement was noticed
On the Slav’s barricade
The call went out to the fine Light Brigade

It was Lord Raglan’s order
That Captain Nolan relayed
To tell Lord Cardigan
Not to be delayed
“Move forward with haste the great Light Brigade”

“Where are we to charge?”
Cardigan asked quite dismayed
“What direction do we take?
What plans have been made?
Where do I point my fighting Light Brigade?”

“There! You dumb git!”
Nolan’s scorn was conveyed
“There are your guns
They are plainly displayed!
M’Lord, you must advance the brave Light Brigade”

But Nolan pointed the wrong way
Because his horse had sashayed
Cardigan should have realized
But instead he obeyed
And thus sealed was the fate of the Light Brigade

What a fine sight they were
What a splendid parade
Men in fury hats
Polished brass and brocade
Doomed was the fine wardrobe of the Light Brigade.

For they were soon to find
That cannon balls are made
Of stuff somewhat sturdier
Than jackets of suede
Those poor proud bastards in the Light Brigade

“Charge men!” shouted Cardigan
And they all hoorayed
For they were ignorant of the fact
That just ahead were arrayed
A hundred cannon pointed at the Light Brigade.

At a gallop they rode
The valley ahead they did invade
The Russian gunners saw them coming
They weren’t the least bit afraid
They would make short work of the Light Brigade.

Beautiful and terrible was the charge
Order and perfection was portrayed
Then it all got really messy
With the first Russian cannonade
It was the beginning of the end of the Light Brigade.

Some men screamed defiance
But mostly they preyed
As they were blown apart by shot
And some by grenade
A bloody mess was being made of the Light Brigade

Young Michael was pierced
Poor Johnny was pureed
Old Winston lost his head
And Nigel was souffléed
‘Twas not a good day for the Light Brigade

Corporal Nigitt was split
His innards were splayed
Swithins too was gutted
And Lockner was spayed.
They rued the day they joined the Light Brigade.

Smithers lost his way
When his mount’s head was waylaid
Carson’s cranium was opened
And the contents were sprayed
These are but a few losses of the Light Brigade.

For 400 or more did fall
Under that Russian cannonade
A few made it across
But none could have stayed
And retreat was called for the Light Brigade.

A hundred or so made it back
But most behind stayed
As scattered bits and pieces
Where the charge they had made
And that was about it for the Light Brigade.

Damn Cardigan, and Raglan
Nolan Too Be Flayed
For their blind obedience
And there loyalties mislaid
To so misuse the mighty Light Brigade.

Now gather around children,
As the first stanza is replayed
You’ve heard a great tale
Of bold plans unmade
And the meaningless slaughter of the Light Brigade

–”Scholarship” by Thuder

William Thudworth St.John-Smith (1835 - 1906)

(From The Complete Oxfjord Compendium of Not-So-Good Poets, 1974)

William Thudworth St.John-Smith, Poet of Spidgy-on-the-Thames, was actually not born in the hamlet that celebrated his name. St. John-Smith (pronounced SinJin-Smith) was in fact born down river in the even lesser known area of Ludlow Marsh.

A scholar, a noted diplomat, and a true man of his age all went to school with St. John Smith. Unfortunately little of their talent seems to have rubbed off. The great literary critic Roger DeMaid is said to have died while reading St. John-Smith’s poetry. It is, however, still a subject of great debate as to whether DeMaid’s last word “Bad” referred to St.John-Smith’s poetry or the pressed duck sandwich he had eaten an hour before his death. While there is little argument that St. John-Smith’s poetry was indeed “Bad”, there is also mounting evidence that Roger DeMaid died of botulism.

If there is any common characteristic of St. John Smith’s poetry it is a fixation with violence, death and putrefaction. This can be seen in some of his earliest poems such as:

Ode to a dead carp on the river bank

Oh carp! Oh carp!
Thy pungent odor airing.
Oh carp! Oh carp!
One skyward eye staring.

Once you were a fine fish
That frolicked in the foam
Now you are a fetid carcass
A place the flies call home.

A fine dinner you might have made
With some thyme and lemon and mint
Now you only feed the maggots
Your flesh is the color of flint

Many a brave man has lived
Many born to noble rank
Yet they’ve all ended up, more less
Like this fish on the river bank.

In 1853 the young St. John-Smith was swept up in the excitement of the Crimean War. He joined the Expeditionary Force as a correspondent for the London Sentinel Telegraph and Shopping News. It was there that St. John Smith penned his most nearly memorable poems. These include “The Sun on the Dead Cossack’s Brain”, “The Meaningless Slaughter of the Light Brigade” (Which was more historically accurate than the other poem about the Light Brigade but unsuccessful for the same reason), “Ode To Johnny the Brave”, and the lighthearted “Oh What To Do With A Turk’s Severed Foot.” This final poem had some success as the lyric for a British marching song of the period.

St. John-Smith returned to England after the war to accept a teaching position at Oxford. He was unceremoniously drummed out of the university four years later when it was discovered that his credentials came not from Eton but from the E. Tonne School for Girls, an unremarkable technical school located near Spidgy-on-the-Thames.

The Oxford embarrassment pretty much destroyed what little creative gift William Thudworth St. John Smith possessed. Little survives of his life from here on. It is known that he emigrated to Canada in 1865 and had a somewhat successful life as a peanut farmer in Perth County near London in Upper Canada.

In a bizarre final act, St. John Smith died at the age of 71 when he was beaten to death with harp at a Dominion Day band recital in Mount Brydges, Canada. The murder, which was committed by an insane women, was completely random.

St. John-Smith may have been completely forgotten if not for the people of Spidgy-on-the-Thames who erected a statue to him in 1908. It is not known for sure why the people of Spidgy adopted St. John-Smith as their poet. The only known reference to the hamlet in his poetry comes from “A Day On The River”

Rowing on the river
Enjoying the sweet spring air
There are some dead fish up ahead
and Spidgy is over there.

One theory has suggested that the statue was sponsored by some of the old matrons of Spidgy who remembered with fondness “that strapping boy who used to hang about the E. Tonne School.” In any event the statue stood until an errant Nazi buzz bomb destroyed it and most of Spidgy in 1944. The place is now known as Spidgy Park.

–”Scholarship” by Thuder

An afterword:
Though it seems impossible, there is one more poem in the William Thudworth St.John-Smith body of work, transmitted to us by the Seer of Ivey in his Posthumous Poetry.

(1894, One-With-A-Little-Light-On Press)

Long-overlooked by Chesleyan scholars, this modern fairy tale is arguably one of Chesley’s most influential works.

Chesley wrote this sometime in the spring and summer of 1894, while she was travelling in the UK with her uncle, the infamous cranial traumatist (and inventor) Michael Flannigan.  Like her spectacularly unsuccessful BUNGYWASH FABLES, THE PENURIOUS PANIC POOKIE OF PORTH is somewhat inspired by the work of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, AKA, Lewis Carroll. [1]

As with many of her children’s tales, the story follows a young girl transported to a strange land, where she encounters a host of colourful and seemingly nonsensical characters.   The protagonist is Dorothy Bestley, an orphan living with her uncle and spinster aunts in County Perth, Ontario.  One day, a powerful snowstorm whisks her and her pony, Bragi,  off  the ground and deposits them in the Place of Porth.  Initially disoriented, Dorothy soon discovers that as an outsider, she is only one who can save the Place of Porth from the evil machinations of the Penurious Panic Pookie. [2]

The pookie lives in the Golden City, where he controls the spending habits of its denizens through the use of fear, intimidation and something called “the Fical Pol”.  Upon arrival, Dorothy’s pony crushes Baron Fudgestick, a thinly disguised stand in for Chesley’s arch-enemy (at this time), Quentin Farkmee.   When she picks up Fudgestick’s tiny wand of silver, a starving horde of tiny mustachioed soldiers ask her to save them from the penury of the pookie.  If she can insert the silver wand into the heart of the Golden Circle, and fill its circumference, then the pookie’s power can be broken.  Unfortunately, the silver wand is much too small to fill the Golden Circle as it is, so she must follow the Road of Iron and complete many tasks so that the silver wand is properly engorged.

Riding away on Bragi, Dorothy soon discovers that in many places, the Road of Iron is washed out.  At the first break in the road, she meets Stuffing, a lamb who has been shorn of all his fleece by the Pookie, and who desperately wants it back.  She asks Stuffing to tag along, suggesting that once the Pookie’s power has been broken, he can be “refleeced”.  Soon they meet Busy, a giant, industrious rat, who has had all of his workman’s tools stolen by the Pookie.   He joins them so he can get his tools back and so get his manufactory working again.  Finally, they meet Craven, a banker who was so frightened that he would run out of money, he has given it all to the Pookie for safe keeping.  This foursome (plus the pony Bragi [3) then go on to have a series of adventures in which they are all terrorized and frightened by the Pookie until eventually, they discover the Pool of Confidence.  They all have a jolly, rollicking bath together, and Dorothy's silver wand grows to gigantic proportions; her new friends recover their fleece, tools and money respectively.  When the Pookie returns to steal them back, Dorothy inserts the wand into the Golden Circle, thus breaking the Pookie's power.   As the Pookie shrinks away, it says ominously, "you've got me this cycle, but I'll be back!"

Dorothy then awakes back in Perth County, only to discover that it was all a hallucination brought on by bad peanuts fed to her by her uncle. [4]

Pookie is clearly an allegory about the Panic of 1893 and the ensuing economic depression that set in afterward, with Stuffing representing the farming classes, Busy the out-of-work employees of the industrial sector, and Craven the entire banking industry who’s pant-staining fear led to the closure of many banks, a general credit crunch and millions of middle-class people abandoning their Victorian houses as they could no longer pay the mortgage.  The Road of Iron refers to the “railroad” bubble — a period of irrational enthusiasm which led to overbuilding and bad financing.   Ironically, this bubble was supported by bimetallism, or pegging the dollar to both gold and silver, thus explaining why the Fudgestick’s “silver wand” is so tiny. [5]

While the publisher was quite excited about the book, it was not well received by the public.  In particular, the “bathing” scene, where Dorothy is forced to sit on the engorged wand of silver to keep it from floating away incensed many as “blatantly naughty”.  However, copies did find its way into public libraries across the continent; in Chicago, one Frank L. Baum took out the book and never returned it, as it was one of his favourite things to read during his lonely nights on the road as a travelling salesman. [6] The similarities between Pookie and The Wizard of Oz are too direct to miss.  As an allegory, it is possible that Baum’s work is even better than Chesley’s, though as a work of imaginative fiction, Pookie displays a greater facility with language, more inventive wordplay (similar to Lewis Carroll’s work), and a series of incidents which can be interpreted on several levels, many of which are quite salacious and disturbing.

It is because of this fact THE PENURIOUS PANIC POOKIE OF PORTH was one of the first books which was burned in the great Victorian Park Bonfire of 1905, though it was hardly the only novel penned by Chesley to add fuel to that memorable fire.

Notes:

[1] Chesley actually met Dodgson in the summer of 1893 while accompanying her uncle, who had been invited to the UK for a barmy lecture tour at the behest of the British Society of Insane Inventors (later known as the Mad Society of Mad Scientists Society Gobble Bobble Rachamach). The tour was to have profound literary consequences. While in Bigone-on-Tyne, explaining how the Pornograph had come to be stolen by another inventor, an aging Charles Dogdson was keen to show the famous creator of the “Introspection Wheel” one of his own devices — the Nyctograph, a device for taking notes in bed (or while under the influence of mind-altering substances, as he often was.) While discussing the vagaries of patent law, Dogdson invited Flannigan over for tea.

“Would ye’ mind if I brought along me darlin’ niece?” Flannigan asked.

“Of course, of course,” said Dogdson, his eyes sparkling in anticipation, “I shall have my camera at the ready.” (Dogdson was a camera enthusiast, and borderline pervert who like to take pictures of young girls.)

Dogdson was somewhat disappointed to find that Emily was fully grown (and spectacularly, if the journals of the 7th Regiment are to be believed). He was delighted, however, to find a fellow-traveler in speculative literature. While her uncle rifled through Dogdson’s notes describing the Nyctograph (which is uncannily similar to Flannigan’s 1894 Automatic Pen) the two writers shared a pipe of something that Flannigan’s friend, Gunter Gruntz, would no doubt have recognized if he wasn’t thoroughly decomposed.

[2] This probably comes from ” Púca”, which in old Irish is a shape-changing fairy who terrorizes humans but doesn’t kill them.  Also, Emily’s journals mention something called “pookie” — an hallucinogenic mushroom used in the brewing of “happy” tea.

[3] Bragi is the Norse god of poetry.  In the book Chesley only gives Bragi very few lines of dialog, but they are all in her trademark Gaelic Haiku, such as:

Craven is a banker
without a pound or sou
— irony is not cheap.

[4] Perth County peanuts are notoriously toxic, and may have contributed to the insanity of Clara Wilton Smigglesworth, the Mad Woman of Mount Brydges, who later killed William Thudworth St.John-Smith, Poet of Spidgy-on-the-Thames (who immortalized Chesley’s father in such poems as “Ode to Johnny the Brave”).

[5] A monetary system only slightly more unstable than one which trades credit on unsecured debt.

[6] In a letter he told his long-time friend and later illustrator, William Denslow (W. W. Denslow), “the bathing scene really is quite gripping, if you catch my drift.”

The Afrikaans of East Nissouri
(1899, Beaverton Press)

Without a doubt, Afrikaans was Emily Chesley’s “breakthrough” novel, if any one book of hers could be considered so. Like so many of Chesley’s works, this book anticipated much that would happen in the 20^th Century, not only in terms of science and geopolitics, but in literature as well.

Afrikaans is probably one of the first “post-modern” stories. In structure, it is similar to some of Milan Kundera’s works; the interweaving of character, story, and internal dialogue are years ahead of anything written at the time. In plot, the book is pure Chesley.

The main story takes place in Southwestern Ontario, circa 1899. (The year that the book was actually published, by Dog’s Leg Press, in Mitchell.) The Boer War is raging, and the British set up a “concentration camp” in East Nissouri. Minnie Chesterton is a lonely school-marm who lives on the outskirts of “Flattown”, which is probably modeled after Thamesford. She passes by the concentration camp every day, where she notices the figure of Karl, who follows her every move. Eventually she plucks up the courage to talk to him, and they have an illicit affair through the fence.

This story is interposed with the “alternate reality” of the near future, in which the Afrikaans not only beat the British Empire, but took it over. In this dark future, Chesley anticipates a number of 20^th Century atrocities: gas warfare, totalitarianism, and genocide. And in this future, Karl is not a downtrodden prisoner, but a homicidal maniac who rules all of Southwestern Ontario.

The story is resolved in a devastating choice faced by the figure of Minnie, who is central to both stories.

–”Scholarship” by The Squire

Note:
This novel came out of an earlier short story, The Afrikaners of East Nissouri, which was unpublished until 2002, when it appeared in Would That It Were.

The remarkable career of Richard Maurice Bucke ended suddenly on the cold morning of February 19, 1902. In his 65 years, Bucke had been many things to many people: an innovative doctor of psychiatry, a prospector, a confidant and literary executor to Walt Whitman, but to Emily Chesley, Bucke was a mystic with one foot. Actually, half a foot.

Bucke’s semi-mono-pedal condition dated from the time when he went to prospect for silver in California (1857). His prospecting crew became lost in the mountains and was forced to survive as best they could. Frostbitten, and near death, Bucke was the lone survivor to make it to a mining camp, shy a foot and several toes. But it was not his lack of a full compliment of piggies, nor was it how he managed to survive with no food in such harsh conditions that interested Emily. (1) No, she was fascinated by Bucke’s ideas about human consciousness.

Following his adventures in the west and a formal education in Montreal and then Europe, Bucke returned to Ontario, where he entered the field of psychiatric medicine. In 1877, Bucke became the superintendent of the London Asylum for the Insane - coincidentally, the asylum was built very near to the homestead where he had been raised.

Bucke was a pioneer in medicine. At a time when the insane were kept in physical restraints and force-fed alcohol, Bucke advocated a more progressive approach to the treatment of the mentally ill. In 1879 he published his psychiatric speculations in Man’s Moral Nature. His thesis was that a person’s moral sense was mediated via the sympathetic nervous system and that this innate moral sense was becoming prevalent in society. In 1883 he published the authorized biography of Walt Whitman - with whom he was friends and who, he believed, exemplified the high moral sense he described in his first book. (2)

Emily read the book in 1894, after meeting Bucke for the first time. Emily was accompanying one of her volunteers from the CU, Bidy “McBritches” Brennan, to the asylum. Bidy had been acting strangely, and Bucke diagnosed syphilis, which made sense given Bidy’s occupation - a housemaid in the Reverand P.E. Derasty’s vicarage. Though the outcome of Bidy’s case was not a happy one (3), a great literary friendship developed between Bucke and Emily.

Bucke believed in three types of consciousness in humans: simple self-awareness, moral consciousness, and a third profoundly deep consciousness that he called “cosmic consciousness.” He believed the third level of consciousness had only been attained by a few dozen individuals: the likes of Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Dante, Walt Whitman, Francis Bacon, William Blake, as well as Bucke himself of course. He thought this third level of consciousness was attainable by everyone.

This concept fascinated Emily, and to it, she added the notion that human evolution was geared towards the species developing this third level of consciousness. This is the idea she explored in her 1918 book, The World Wide Waste. In the story the human species is diverted from their genetic destiny by the presence of a “pernicious electronic device” fancifully termed, IntraVision. The population of the world is hypnotized by the pseudo-entertainment form, which encouraged incipient dreams of banality called “real theatre”, not the kind of self-awareness necessary to achieve the third level of consciousness.

Emily would often invite Bucke to tea (brandy) at the rambling mansion on Princess Ave. (4) Bucke enjoyed Emily’s company and was as intrigued by Michael Flannigan. Both were unique individuals, though he confided to Emily once, as she reports in her journal: “I think your uncle may be a few wheels short of a gear.” Despite this, Bucke tried one of Flannigan’s devices at his asylum, and always took an interest in the dotty old Irishman’s ingenious contraptions. (5)

Flannigan, from Emily’s reports, took great delight in the celebrated doctor’s interest. So it is not a surprise that the inventor bequeathed the patent and a working prototype of The Flannigan Foot Replacement Device to Bucke. Because of legal difficulties, the papers and prototype did not arrive at Bucke’s house until the late afternoon of February 18, 1902, more than a year after Flannigan’s death. The package remained unopened until the early hours of the next day, when Bucke put on the prosthetic feet with delight. They fit perfectly (Flannigan had adapted one for Bucke’s partially toed condition.)

Unfortunately, Bucke neglected to read the instructions that Flannigan had written out on the back of an old bit of sausage wrapping. The prosthetic feet had two settings: normal walking and “extra sproingy”. Yes, Flannigan had found yet another use for his patented “spring-wound rotary propulsion thingy.”

Emily speculates about Bucke’s last moments in her memoir:

One can only hope that dear Richard was in the third level of consciousness as he opened the door and took that first fateful step onto his porch. The paper claims that he died because he slipped on ice, but it must have been uncle’s prosthetic feet that caused it - I know because I found them later that day, hanging in a maple tree in front of Richard’s house like a signal of doom.

I can imagine the dreadful sequence of events, the sounds: the door creaks with the cold as he opens it, and his breath rises in a plume of steam as he takes his first step. Then the spring-wound rotary propulsion thingy engages, and his left foot rockets up with enough force to propel the Flannigan Flyer in a pinch! A woosh of surprise comes out of Richard as his leg launches high into the air, kicking the ceiling of the porch, and then the dreadful smack as his head slaps into the ground, causing what the medical examiner called “an extreme and explosive cranial hemorrhage.”

Emily never shared her suspicions with the authorities, and mourned the death of a Canadian original alone. (6)

Notes:

1) Though Emily did write in her journal: “one wonders what desperate means Richard might have employed to survive so long in the wilderness. It makes you think, especially, that he means something when he utters the axiom: ‘one foot does not a cannibal make.’”

2) Whitman came to visit Bucke in London, Ontario in 1880 - the same year that Emily and Michael Flannigan arrived in town.

3) See the excellent monograph: “Bidy Bites Back: The Genesis of Emily Chesley’s ‘Cannibalistic Chore’”.

4) Emily was never invited to the Bucke household, apparently because Bucke’s wife, Jessie — whom, it must be noted did not have a nautical background — did not “like the cut of that slut’s jib.”

5) The Flannigan “Bebebebebebeb” Inhibitor (circa. 1897) never really worked as well as Bucke had hoped, and several designs of the device were a little too invasive for his progressive therapies.

6) In addition to his other achievements, Bucke was elected a charter member of the Royal Society of Canada, and was the president of national and international societies. In 1882 he helped found the “Cottage Medical School” in London, Ontario, which evolved into the Faculty of Medicine at Western University, now The University of Western Ontario. There he served as Professor of Nervous & Mental Diseases until his accidental death.

Initially developed as a possible container for a new gas he was emitting from his laboratory, the Mammary Sympathizer is one of Michael Flannigan’s least-understood inventions. What is well understood is the stir it caused in the London Public Library, circa 1893. (1) A London Free Press report of the time captures the event well:

A most astonishing predicament confronted Miss Shapely Bottom, the night librarian at the Public Library, a week ago last Thursday. While helping an elderly lady dissect the meaning of one of Mr. Darwin’s less comprehensible rantings, a Mr. Michael Flannigan, of 45 Maitland Street, produced a most obscene item from within the folds of his coat.”It was most embarrassing,” said the mortified Miss Bottom later. “It looked quite like a . . . a . . . well, you know.”The item in question most definitely resembled an extremely well-developed bosom. When questioned by the authorities, the slightly confused — and it must be stressed, Irish man — explained:”I only intended to suggest that Miss Bottom try out my new device.”

We did not ask what the use of such an offensive item might be.

–”Scholarship” by The Squire

Notes:

1) This “local stir” was quite a serious affair for Flannigan and his neice, Emily Chesely. It became known as the “Library Bosom Affair” during the ensuing civil suit in which Miss Shapely Bottom accused Flannigan of causing her “accute sexual distress.” The suit was eventually dropped, but not until Flannigan’s reputation was further sullied and he was forced to leave town for some time.