Monday, November the 1st, 2004

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Writer's Block

Even Dobson, the indefatigable pamphleteer, occasionally suffered from writer's block. Whenever he was assailed by this pernicious malady, he took the advice of the country-and-western singer Tad Chew (distantly related to his amanuensis and printer, Marigold). Chew once wrote a song about the moon, and Dobson would dig out the old 78 and give it a few spins on the phonograph. He would then sit down at his escritoire and force himself to scribble sentences of a lunar kidney, caring not a jot whether or not they made any sense. So, for example, he would write:

There are a few phosphorescent fancies about the moon, like ignes fatui, which we may dispose of. Those of them that are mythical are too evanescent to become full-grown myths; and those which are religious are too volatile to remain in the solution or salt of any bottled creed. Like the wandering lights of the Russians, answering to our will-o'-the-wisp, they are the souls of still-born children.

Or, gulping lukewarm tap water as he worked, he may scrawl something like:

Ecclesiastical history will declare how, as early as the close of the fourth century, the women who were called Collyridians worshipped the Virgin Mary as a moon goddess, and judged it necessary to appease her anger, and seek her favour and protection, by libations, sacrifices, and oblations of cakes (collyridæ). This is but a repetition of the women kneading dough to make cakes to the Queen of Heaven, as recorded by Jeremiah; and proves that the relative position occupied by Astarte in company with Baal, Juno with Jupiter, Doorga with Brahma, and Ma-tsoo-po with Boodh, is that occupied by Mary with God.

If he was feeling particularly fraught, Dobson would even scribble this:

A fine circumstance occurred in the shipwreck of the Santiago, 1585. The ship struck in the night; the wretched crew had been confessing, singing litanies, etc., and this they continued till, about two hours before break of day, the moon arose beautiful and exceeding bright; and forasmuch as till that time they had been in such darkness that they could scarcely see one another when close at hand, such was the stir among them at beholding the brightness and glory of that orb, that most part of the crew began to lift up their voices, and with tears, cries, and groans called upon Our Lady, saying they saw her in the moon.

Page after page of such verbal pap spewed from Dobson's pencil, until he was overcome by cramps, at which point he would take the accumulated papers out to a field and cast them unto the winds, in the night, under the gleam of that mighty silver orb.