“Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Public domain. (buy now)

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Today is Midsummer Day, and the feast day of John the Baptist.

It’s the birthday of journalist and novelist Pete Hamill, (books by this author) born in Brooklyn, New York (1935). He was an alcoholic for many years, but at a New Year’s Eve party in 1972, he looked into a glass of vodka and decided it would be his last. He’s published several novels, including Flesh and Blood (1977), Forever (2003), and North River (2007). He’s a journalist at heart, though, and has written columns for New York newspapers throughout his career.

He said, “The best newspapermen I know are those most thrilled by the daily pump of city room excitements; they long fondly for a ‘good murder’; they pray that assassinations, wars, catastrophes, break on their editions.”

In 1897, Henry James leased Lamb House, a villa in Sussex. He bought it a few years later and lived there until his death in 1916. One of his frequent visitors was his close friend the novelist Edith Wharton. In A Backward Glance (1934), Edith Wharton (books by this author) wrote about a day trip with Henry James (books by this author) to Bodiam Castle, near Lamb House: “Tranquil white clouds hung above it in a windless sky, and the silence and solitude were complete as we sat looking across at the crumbling towers, and at their reflection in a moat starred with water-lilies, and danced over by great blue dragonflies. For a long time no one spoke; then James turned to me and said solemnly: ‘Summer afternoon — summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.'”

An outbreak of dancing plague, also known as St. Vitus’ Dance or epidemic chorea, began on this day in 1374 in Aachen, Germany. From Aachen it spread across central Europe and as far away as England and Madagascar. Dancing mania affected groups of people — as many as thousands at a time — and caused them to dance uncontrollably for days, weeks, and even months until they collapsed from exhaustion. Some danced themselves to death, suffering heart attacks or broken hips and ribs. Most outbreaks happened between the 14th and 17th centuries, though there are reports of dancing mania as far back as the 7th century. The 1374 outbreak was well-documented by several credible witnesses who reported that dancers sang, screamed, saw visions, behaved like animals, and experienced aversions to the color red and to pointy-toed shoes.

At the time, people believed the plague was the result of a curse from St. Vitus or St. John the Baptist, and so they prayed to the saints and made pilgrimages to their shrines. Exorcism was another treatment option, as was isolation, and many communities hired musicians to accompany the dancers in the hope that it would help them overcome their compulsion; it usually just resulted in more people joining the dancing. Scientists today are still at a loss to explain it, putting it down to economic hardship, ergot poisoning, cults, or mass hysteria.

In 1440, England’s King Henry VI founded Eton College. The first class was made up of 70 highly qualified boys whose tuition was paid for through an endowment from the king. Henry founded King’s College, Cambridge, the following year, and graduates of Eton would proceed to King’s College, though that direct line no longer exists. The earliest records of school life at Eton are from the mid-16th century, and they describe a rigorous program: boys slept three to a bed, rising at 5 a.m. and chanting their prayers while they dressed. Studies began promptly at 6 o’clock and concluded at 8 p.m. Two meals a day were provided, except on Friday, which was a day of fasting, so no one ate. Friday was also set aside as “flogging day,” the day when the week’s corporal punishments were meted out.

Eton lays claim to around 450 famous alumni, among them Aldous Huxley, Ian Fleming, Cyril Connolly, Henry Fielding, Percy Shelley, George Orwell (known then as Eric Blair), and Thomas Gray. David Cameron was the 19th British Prime Minister to have graduated from Eton, and Princes William and Harry also attended. Fictional OEs (“Old Etonians”) include Lord Peter Wimsey, Bertie Wooster, Lord Greystoke (AKA Tarzan), James Bond, John Steed (from the Avengers), Sebastian Flyte (Brideshead Revisited), and Captain Hook.

The Duke of Wellington is often quoted as saying, “The Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton.” In response, George Orwell wrote, “Probably the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton, but the opening battles of all subsequent wars have been lost there.”

Today is the birthday of the Irish playwright George Shiels, born near Ballymoney, in County Antrim. He immigrated to North America when he was a young man, and worked on the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railroad. An on-the-job accident in 1913 left him confined to a wheelchair, so he returned to Ballymoney to open a shipping company with his brother. He also started writing poems and stories of his Canadian adventures.

He produced a few plays in Ulster, including Away from the Moss (1918) and The Tame Drudge (1920), and after a couple of years, he caught the eye of Dublin’s Abbey Theatre. This began a long relationship with the Abbey, beginning with the staging of Bedmates in 1921. He became one of Ireland’s most popular playwrights in the first half of the 20th century, and his name could almost guarantee a full house. But for quite some time, no one could attend a Shiels play in his hometown of Ballymoney: One director had spiced up his production with swearing, and Shiels refused to allow his plays to be staged there for many years after that.

His best-known plays include The New Gossoon (1930), The Passing Day (1936), and The Rugged Path (1940).

Today is the birthday of Argentine novelist and essayist Ernesto Sábato (books by this author), born in Rojas, Buenos Aires Province (1911). His parents were Italian immigrants, and Sábato embarked on a career in science. He earned a doctorate in physics, and worked in atomic radiation labs, but he walked away in 1943, disillusioned with the way he saw the new discoveries being used. He became a writer, and though he only wrote three novels—The Tunnel (1948), On Heroes and Tombs (1962), and The Angel of Darkness (1974)—he became one of Argentina’s most beloved and respected authors. In 1984, he won the prestigious Cervantes Prize for Literature.

He was diagnosed with lesions on his retinas in the 1970s, and his doctors advised him to give up reading and writing. This didn’t stop him from accepting the request of Argentina’s President Raúl Alfonsín. Alfonsín asked Sábato to compile a record of atrocities committed during the country’s seven-year military dictatorship. Sábato produced a 50,000-page document called Nunca Más (“Never Again”), which contained evidence of at least 9,000 people who had been “disappeared” under the dictatorship. The project changed Sábato’s future writings; he became more pessimistic about human nature. He believed that technology had outstripped spirituality, leaving the human race bereft. In one of his last books, he wrote, “Only those capable of envisaging utopia will be fit for the decisive battle, that of recovering all the humanity we have lost.”

He died in 2011, less than two months before his 100th birthday.