January 2011

He is called Mickey Sans Culotte in France, Miki Kuchi in Japan, Topolino in Italy, Musse Pigg in Sweden, and Mikel Mus in Greece. He is known to have made an English queen late for tea; to have rescued an American toy-train manufacturer from receivership; to have an emblem, an oath, a handshake, and a song of his own; to be used as a charm to ward off evil spirits among primitive African tribes; and to appear on watches, soap, radiator caps, and innumerable cereal boxes. He is, of course. Mickey Mouse.

His creator, as everyone knows, was Walt Disney, who died on December 15, 1966. Disney made a considerable number of Mickey Mouse cartoon shorts; although immediately popular, they did not make much money in American movie houses. But when Disney shipped his mouse abroad, put him on television, and allowed his cheery countenance to adorn over 5,000 different products, Walt made a fortune.

In the chapel of the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis there is a plaque:

Most people who read these words are somewhat puzzled: how was it that an American naval officer was killed fighting in Korea in 1871? Not many today are aware that long before 1950 the United States waged a brief but bloody war in that unhappy land.

Cantering up on his white charger, Washington stared at Lee with un expression so wrathful thai few of his aides would ever forget it.

”What is the meaning of this, Sir?” the red-faced commander-in-chief demanded.

Lee turned his glance aside and began to mutter something none of the witnesses could quite make out. Before he had finished, Washington whipped out his sword, waved it aloft, and with a violent curse, shouted to the retreating American troops to stand and fight. The rout was stemmed.

So reads one description of the dramatic climax of the Battle of Monmouth on June 28, 1778. How true is it?

The President, Members and Judge Advocate being sworn: The Judge Advocate prosecuting in the name of the United States of America, the Court proceed to tlie trial of Major-C,eneral Lee, who appears before the Court, and the following charges are exhibited against him:

First: For disobedience of orders, in not attacking the enemy on the 28th of June, agreeable to repeated instructions.

Secondly: For misbehaviour before the enemy on the same day, making an unnecessary, disorderly and shameful retreat.

Thirdly: tor disrespect to the Commander-in-C’Jiief, in two letters dated the 1st of July and the 28th of June.

Sometimes a quiet book about high and far-off times of long ago takes on disturbing overtones; as if, while he follows the story of things past, the reader begins to hear a faint but insistent cry from the street outside the window—a newsboy, perhaps, crying an extra, saying that something ominous is going on even though his words cannot at first be made out. Reading about a terror that vanished generations ago, we find it taking shape beside the armchair.

For an example of this, read William Irwin Thompson’s thoughtful little book, The Imagination of an Insurrection: Dublin, Easter 1916 .

In a way, this is a book of literary criticism. It is also a sketch of the famous Easter uprising in Dublin, which was quickly suppressed with shootings and hangings but which somehow touched off something that could never be suppressed. Most of all, the book is a study of the place of imagination in the making and understanding of history.

It depends on whose imagination is being touched. History does not really contain any inevitabilities. It is just full of booby traps for the stupid. British imagination in 1916 could think of nothing for a Padraic Pearse except the hangman’s noose; a few years later, it could think of nothing for Michael Collins but the Black and Tans; and today, as a partial but inescapable result, there is no British Empire. We still have a chance, over here, if we have enough imagination to see how to grasp it.

There was Dublin in 1916, and there was Watts in 1965, with fire in the streets, guns going off, and men being killed. An uncommonly gifted and perceptive writer named Budd Schulberg saw it all on television —the thing does have its uses, now and then—and had enough imagination to see that it compelled him as a writer to try to find out just what was going on in his own corner of the country. He came up with, at last, the most improbable answer you could think of. He went down into Watts, found an empty room amid the ruins, and opened a free school for writers.

Mount Washington ranks high among America’s most popular peaks, even though there are scores of others (nearly all of them in the West) that are far higher in altitude. Its New England location, its ease of ascent, and the stunning view from its top have given it a longer and fuller history than perhaps any other lofty American mountain. Today its most learned chronicler is Frank Alien Burt, of Brookline, Massachusetts. Grandson of the man who in 1877 started Among the Clouds , the daily summer newspaper published at the summit for thirty-one years, Mr. Burt has gathered all of his Mount Washington lore into an absorbing book, The Story of Mount Washington , published by Dartmouth Publications in 1960. AMERICAN HERITAGE is grateful to him for the use of his book as a basic source for the accompanying article on the cog railway, and for the compilation of the following sampler of Mount Washington history.

Imagination and History From Dublin to Watts Easter Sunday, 1873