The Bankhead Gleaner, September 20, 2024

My heart belongs to Dada

Here’s a little caprice, an absurd assemblage to end both the summer and the week. As is almost always the case, this began with something that diverted me while I was looking for something else; in this instance, the distracting agent was a newspaper story that was widely circulated in 1833. Here’s how the tragic outcome of Dr. Dixon, “the African traveller,” appeared in The Times, August 13, 1833. The bold-face emphasis is my own.

"Dr. Dixon was proceeding through the interior of Africa, from the Dahomey coast to meet Captain Clapperton and his companions at Kalunga. The king into whose territory he was about to enter from Dahomey, having sworn to afford him protection and assistance, came out of his principal town to meet him, attended by his sons and chiefs, and desired his eldest son to swear fidelity to the stranger, after the fashion of the country. This is done by drawing a sabre, and making a long harangue, using the most violent gestures and pushing a sword in the face of the person in whose favour the oath is taken; in fact, they show their dexterity by cutting close to the face without actually touching it. Dr. Dixon unfortunately mistook the nature of the ceremony, and thinking the king’s son meant to kill him, drew his sword and thrust it into his body. The doctor would have been sacrificed on the spot, but the king ordered him to be safely guarded, declaring that he could not break his oath though his son had been killed. The next morning Dr. Dixon was sent on his journey under the protection of an escort, but the instant he passed the boundaries of the king’s dominion, thinking the king’s oath no longer binding, they fell on the doctor and killed him.”

Now, this bleak yet satisfying tale of long ago is sure to set post-colonial noggins to nodding; anyone whose requirement of a story is that it roosts upon a moral will have many from which to choose. It doesn’t speak well of me that my main take-away was stylistic, and came from the narrator’s deployment of the catch-phrase “unfortunately mistook.” I can’t say for sure why it leapt out at me; it did, and I wondered how often, in ways reflexive and unconsidered, I must have used “unfortunately mistook” as a kind of signal flare, a way to qualify some about-to-be-revealed outcome as unfortunate or tragicomic. Experimentally, I entered those two words, “unfortunately mistook” in the search engine of the digital newspaper library I routinely use, which is newspapers.com. It indexes (very erratically) papers from the early 18th century through the present day. I was surprised that so common and quotidian a phrase — “unfortunately mistook” — netted fewer than 2000 results and that it seems to have come into popular usage only at the beginning of the nineteenth century; the one earlier example was from 1755. Of course, English offers us all kinds of other ways of expressing that same idea — unluckily believed, made the tragic error of, sadly misapprehended, etc. — but this is my game, and I make up the rules, and I chose to confine my ferreting to this one well-loved adverbial trope: “unfortunately mistook.”

From the many (though not as many as I would have anticipated) I chose a few. What follows is a “found poem” that assembles fifty results of activities the recounting of which benefitted from the application of “unfortunately mistook.” I searched and searched and searched for a title for this piece before settling on “Unfortunately Mistook,” which may have been its own unfortunate mistake; both the title and the enterprise, I should say. I offer it to you on this eve of the equinox with a fond nod to the season that’s left us, and with open arms welcoming the one that’s about to bluster into our midst. (By way of a postscript I append my hands-down favourite song of the season, “Septembre,” which is probably most convincingly sung by its creator, the mononymic Barbara, but is also beautifully sung by Camelia Jordana, with Alexandre Tharaud (a great musical explorer) at the piano. It’s from his “Barbara” tribute album from a few years back. As always, thanks for reading, and cheers, BR

Unfortunately Mistook

the back of his brother’s head for a squirrel

the eyes of a dog for the eyes of a hare; the host for the butler; two beaters for a pheasant:

his own leg for the preacher’s gown.

Officer Jones for a Chinaman; a Russian for a French picquet; the worthy father of the plaintiff for the defendant; Mr. Towner for another gentleman who attended the hanging; Miss Ranson for his unruly daughter:

goose grease for honey.

the hour for another hour, the day for another day, the week for another week,

the year for the year before:

temerity for coldness.

a flask of photographer’s solution for whisky; a bottle of arsenic for magnesia;

a quantity of arsenic, stored in a teapot for nearly seven years, for cream of tartar;

a quantity of arsenic, which had been mistakenly left in a teacup, for flour;

the sheep powder for the curry tin:

the sound tooth for the one that was decayed.

eulogistic praise for ridicule! treachery for faith! a freak of sentimentality for religious zeal! obstinacy for strength! the noise of these men for the voice of public opinion! a special excitement for the calm, settled, well considered temper of a people  whom reflection will guide aright!

syphilitic for vaccine pustules.

the Glengarry Regiment for the enemy; Roman candles for hostile signals; the powder flask for the sugar bowl; the keg he was accustomed to use in conveying ashes from the stove for one that contained about two pounds of damaged powder:

a period for a fly speck.

the word “commendation” for “condemnation,” the word “conquered” for “concord,”the bedroom door for the one opening into the street, the cellar door for that of the bar, the painted glass window of Mr. Miller’s Prince of Wales Hotel for the doorway,  the North Sand Head Light for the Gull Stream Light, the Needles light for that of a pilot boat, the stranger for one of the mechanicians attached to the lighthouse at Adge:

the time of the tide.

the Alhambra in London for the Alhambra in Granada; King Alfonso of Spain for a suspicious looking person; Melle for an abbreviation for Marseilles; the great attention he paid her for a real display of affection; the pump for the grand object of his hopes and wishes:

the movement of his friend’s head for that of a turkey.