Gustave Doré

THE LETTER DESCRIBES AN ITALIAN ISLAND.

What strikes one is extreme age, and the twisted, broken, writing in pain, and such as Gustave Doré, and love to draw.

End of section To the editor of Routledge's Christmas Annual From The Bibliography of Oscar Wilde by Stuart Mason This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.

Pages 66-68.

[laughs]

Also during the rest of the credits, we are treated to Gustave Doré's illustrations from Dante's Inferno.

Yes, yes.

These will keep popping up.

the only show of resistance it made to being drawn on board was to extend its wings and utter loud discordant cries once on deck its grace and majesty vanished it showed no fear and the hook still fastened in its beak did not seem to annoy it but no landsman could have been more awkward than was the albatross on the smooth rocking-deck it staggered and waddled clumsily and tried in vain to lift itself with its wings it showed considerable temper and snapped furiously at all who approached and the captain's dog which came trotting up full of curiosity over the strange visitor received a terrible blow from the hooked beak which sent him howling with pain to the most distant corner of the deck as the officer was desirous to preserve the beak breast wings and feet of this magnificent creature as souvenirs he ordered the sailors to kill it although he states that it impressed him as though he were commanding the execution of some royal personage the albatross is an expert swimmer and floats on the waves like a piece of cork riding in undisturbed serenity over the lofty foaming crests of stormy billows it is not however a good diver and is obliged to subsist on whatever food comes to the surface It might be called the vulture of the seas, for dead fish, floating carcasses of whales, and other sea refuge form its main diet.

the habits of the albatross during the breeding season are still partially veiled in mystery as the desolate mossy headlands of tristan da cunha inaccessible island and other lands lying far to the southward where the albatross makes its nest are visited only at rare intervals the island of tristan is circular and almost entirely volcanic and on the summit of its cliffs which rise a thousand feet above the sea on broad dreary plains of dark gray lava the albatrosses gather some time during november and prepare themselves nests selecting some space free from the tussock grass the bird scrapes together a circle of dried grass and clay in which it lays one egg about the size of a swan's white with a band of small brick-red spots round one end but few naturalists have been able to visit these great breeding warrens and none have determined how the albatross lives and feeds its young during its absence from the ocean it is certain that the great bird rarely leaves its nest for there is a wicked little robber gull ever on the watch to break and eat the egg should the mother bird desert it for a moment the young when hatched are snow-white and covered with a soft woolly down a traveller once climbed up the dangerous precipice of tristan da cunha and saw these young helpless things lying in the nests while several hundred pair of parent birds were stalking awkwardly about they all snapped their beaks with a great noise and ejected from them an offensive oil their only means of defence the same traveller visited the place five months later when he found all the young albatrosses sitting in their nests as before but the old birds had all disappeared it is supposed that an albatross may be a year old before it can fly and as the parents depart some time in april for their ocean hunting grounds and are never seen to return until the breeding season again comes round it is astonishing what feeds and supports the young until they are able to hunt for themselves naturalists wonder over this point and advance many different theories but as yet no facts have been discovered in regard to the diet of the young and helpless bird the albatross was formerly regarded with superstitious reverence by sailors who considered this majestic companion which came around the ship in desolate icy seas as a bird of good omen and to kill one was considered a crime that would surely be punished by disaster and shipwreck Coleridge, the English poet, has written a wonderful poem on this superstition called The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, to which Gustave Doré, a French artist, has drawn a series of illustrations picturing the lonely frozen ocean and the majestic lordly albatross which the unhappy sailor shot with his crossbow, thereby bringing misfortune and death on the goodly ship and his crew.

Section 7 of Harper's Young People, Volume 1, Issue 25, April 20, 1880.

This is a LibriVox recording.