c. Backwater Ballads, by “Jay Bray” (Wetlands Press, 1961), our magnum opus: a cycle of 360 tales set in the Backwater National Wildlife Refuge, our birthplace, at all periods of its history (i.e., 1600–1960: 1 tale for each year, each degree of the cycle, and each day of the ideal year, of which our actual calendars are but the corrupt approximation). The tales are told from the viewpoint of celestial Aedes Sollicitans, a freshmarsh native with total recall of all her earlier hatches, who each year bites 1 visitor in the Refuge and acquires, with her victim’s blood, an awareness of his/her history. The 1st is the Tayac Kekataughtassapooekskunoughmass, or “90 Fish,” King of the Ahatchwhoop Indians. The 9th is Captain John Smith of Virginia; the 10th Henry Burlingame I, my own foster father’s great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather. The 360th (and the 1st to give himself to her unreservedly) is the Author, whom in return she gratefully “infects” with her narrative accumulation.
Compare these with the Defendant’s impostures. And having compared (and subdued the indignation that must follow your comparison!), let us arrange a meeting, either in your office or here in Lily Dale — where in your other capacity you can satisfy yourself with the progress of LILYVAC II on the NOVEL project — prepare our briefs, file our suit, and, companions-in-arms such as the world has never RESET He shall pay.
Were we not so sleep-ridden, we could not close without a word on the success of our fall work period; the 1st phase of the 3rd year (V) of the 5-year NOVEL plan (see Enclosure #2). But we must rest, rest for the prodigious labors of the coming spring, when in any case Ms. Bernstein will submit to the Foundation our full and confidential ½-annual report. Then let us together RESET JBB 3 encl.
(ENCL. 1)
Jerome Bonaparte Bray
General Delivery
Lily Dale, N.Y. 14752
March 4, 1969
“J.B.,” “Author”
Dept. English, Annex B
SUNY/Buffalo
Buffalo, N.Y. 14214
“Dear” “sir”:
Enclosed (so that you cannot pretend not to know us) are printouts of letters from us to His late Majesty George III of Maryland and to Mr. Todd Andrews of the Tidewater Foundation — who also acts as our attorney, and from whom, in that latter capacity, you will presently be hearing.
We know very well that August 5 of this year will be the 3rd anniversary of 1st publication of “your” “novel” G.G.B. and that therefore on that date the statute of limitations will run on actions against you connected with that “work.” 5 months hence! But it is your time, not the statute, that runs out. Only the press of other business (and our absolute need for rest at this season) has kept us from bringing you sooner to account. But our eye has been upon you as yours has been upon the calendar.
Nearly 7 years have passed since the true Giles delivered to our trust the Revised New Syllabus of his ascended father Harold Bray, Grand Tutor of the universal University. 4 years ago tonight we roused from the profoundest torpor of our life to read that Tutor-given text, and to commence the great work of expunging from it the corruptions and perversions of the Antitutor and false Giles, your Goat-Boy. Like you, he believed he had triumphed over Truth, not knowing that his nemesis but awaited the proper hour to sting!
With tonight’s Worm Moon (which by summer will become a Conqueror indeed) that hour is come. We ourselves must return for a time yet into rest; indeed we can scarcely hold pen to paper for drowsiness; must count on another to post this ultimatum. But justice now is hatched and stirring: when you next hear from us (a month hence, if you have not by then made the reparations our attorney will demand) we shall be fully awake and at work on our grand project. Do not imagine that because your thefts are of gn_t-like inconsequence by comparison with our Revolutionary NOVEL, they will go unpunished. For as our noble forebear, while conquering Europe and administering the Empire, could attend with equal firmness to such details as correcting our namesake’s American marriage, so we, while supervising the Novel Revolution, will not fail to attend also to your exposure and ruin.
B.
cc. T. Andrews
2 encl.
(ENCL. 2)
Enclosure #1
On board the Gadf_y III, Lake Chautauqua, New York, 14 July 1966
To His Majesty George III of England
Tidewater Farms, Redmans Neck, Maryland 21612
Your Royal Highness,
On 22 June 1815, in order to establish a new and sounder base of empire, we abdicated the throne of France and withdrew to the port of Rochefort, where 2 of our frigates — new, fast, well-manned and — gunned — lay ready to run Your Majesty’s blockade of the harbor and carry us to America. Captain Ponée of the Méduse planned to engage on the night of 10 July the principal English vessel, H.M.S. Bellerophon, a 74-gunner but old and slow, against which he estimated the Méduse could hold out for 2 hours while her sister ship, with our party aboard, outran the lesser blockading craft. The plan was audacious but certain of success. Reluctant, however, to sacrifice the Méduse, we resolved instead like a cunning wrestler to turn our adversary’s strength to our advantage: to reach our goal by means of, rather than despite, Your Majesty’s navy; and so we addressed to your son the Prince Regent the following:
Isle of Aix, 12 July 1815
In view of the factions that divide my country and of the enmity of the greatest powers in Europe I have brought my political career to a close and am going like Themistocles to seat myself on the hearthstone of the British people. I put myself under the protection of English Law and request that protection of Your Royal Highness, as the most powerful, the most trustworthy, and the most generous of my enemies.
Having sent our aide-de-camp before us with this message and instructions to request from the Prince Regent passports to America, on Bastille Day we put ourself and our entourage in the hands of Commander Maitland aboard Bellerophon and left France. Alas, Your Majesty’s own betrayal and confinement on the mischievous charge of insanity should have taught us that our confidence in your son and his ministers was ill placed, more especially as it is with the Muse of the Past that we have ever gone to school for present direction. When therefore we learned from Admiral Sir George Cockburn that our destination was to be, not London and Baltimore, but St. Helena, like a derelict student we applied in vain to our old schoolmistress for vindication:
On board Bellerophon, at sea
…I appeal to History. History will say that an enemy who waged war for 20 years against the English people came of his own free will, in his misfortune, to seek asylum under her laws. What more striking proof could he give of his esteem and his trust? But what reply was made in England to such magnanimity’? There was a pretense of extending a hospitable hand to that enemy, and when he had yielded himself up in good faith, he was sacrificed.
Our maroonment on that desolated rock, under the boorish Cockburn and his more boorish successors, we need not describe to 1 so long and even more ignobly gaoled. We, at least, had the consolation that our exile was both temporary and as it were voluntary: we needed no Perseus to save us; we could have escaped at any time, and waited 7 years only because that period was needed for us to exploit to best advantage our martyrdom, complete the development of that stage of our political philosophy set down in the Memorial of St. Helena, and execute convincingly the fiction of our death in 1821; also for our brother Joseph in Point Breeze, New Jersey, our officers at Champ d’Asile in the Gulf of Mexico, and our agents in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Barataria, Bloodsworth Island, and Rio de Janeiro to complete the groundwork for our American operations.