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The below story is from Jaime De Angulo titled ‘Don Gregorio and His Straw Hat’. This is re-typed by me from my copy of Bob Callahan’s anthology ‘A Jaime De Angulo Reader’ (1979) - a wonderful put-together of De Angulo’s work by poet, anthologist, and publisher (Turtle Island Foundation, Berkeley); Bob Callahan. I have not edited the text and tried to replicate it's formatting as best as possible. To me it's a great sample of the powerful and eccentric spirit of de Angulo.
The following, was crafted between 1948 and his death in 1950, upon de Angulo’s decline with prostate cancer. This was a period of great literary focus for de Angulo, moving back to his ranch in Big Sur and fruited a lot of his posthumously-published poetry, fiction and nonfiction works. Robert Duncan, friend and poet, was hired as a live-in secretary, to help with typing during these months of poor health and is responsible for the original typings of the Don Gregorio stories and much more of de Angulo’s work. Don Gregorio and the Straw Hat is a story of de Angulo’s youth, whilst his family lived in Paris and before his moving at age eighteen to America. A part of a greater series of stories centered around his father, and this period of his childhood.
This excerpt is taken from pages 63-68 of Bob Callahan’s ‘A Jaime De Angulo Reader’ (1979) and includes at the start Callahan’s introduction. Callahan had previously published the texts for Don Gregorio and the Straw Hat and the other stories in the Don Gregorio series in Coyote's Bones: Select Poetry and Prose of Jaime de Angulo (1974) through his publishing house, Turtle Island Foundation. Enjoy!
Don Gregorio
On the recommendation of Ezra Pound, Peter Russell first published these Don Gregorio sketches in his magazine Nine back in the early fifties. Little need be said concerning these charming pieces, save that Don Gregorio resembles here rather intriguingly that other earlier Don, and that we find here also some possible source for those remarkable eccentricities which helped to define Mister de Angulo’s very own character.
- Bob Callahan ➹
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Don Gregorio and the Straw Hat
That summer we were vacationing in Trouville, which in those days of the mid-90’s was a fashionable seaside resort. My father’s current fad at that time was the Kneip Cure, which enjoyed a great vogue in those days among the devotees of health and rational living. One of the tenets of the Cure was to eat slowly and chew the food thoroly–-in fact you shud masticate every morsel no less than a dozen times before swallowing it. My father took this, as everything else, literally; there he sat at his meal, whit his head turned sideways to the open book of the moment, conscientiously masticating each piece twelve times. He ate alone, and his meal lasted from five to seven o’clock. The rest of the family, my mother, my sister, my brother and i, trooped in at six o’clock and were finished by half-past six. My father was never able to make any of us masticate properly, altho he tried.
Another tenet of the Cure was to walk barefoot in the grass before the morning dew had evaporated. This, my father did every morning. Both he and i were early risers, always up at dawn (i was about six or seven, then). So we sallied forth, both barefoot, and walked a mile or so out of town to where there were some lush green cow pastures, he walking ahead with his long strides and i trotting behind like a faithful dog.
My father never wore a hat. In those days a hat was as necessary a part of a man’s costume as were his trousers, and to go out bareheaded was as unusual as to go out without his pants, and almost as shocking. But my father cared not a fig for public opinion (to which he referred, contemptuously, as la vanidad mundana); he did not affront it; he did not ignore it; he simply did not see it. He never realized that he was an odd, an eccentric character. But my poor mother did! Doña Ysabel was a paragon of conventional correction (or maybe we thot so because of the contrast with Don Gregorio?).
That summer, however, my father was much bothered by the glare of the sunlight; and on that particular morning as we were returning on bare feet from those dewey meadows, he made an important decision; he wud buy a straw hat!
So, we turned into the town in a quest of a hat-shop. The morning was just getting along and people were leisurely shopping here and there. We found a hat shop and went in. There was a demoiselle behind the counter and my father explained in his grammatically correct but atrociously pronounced French that he desired a straw hat with a very wide brim. The demoiselle smile and said “Oui, Monsieur, certainement” and disappeared and soon returned with several trim canotiers, those stiff little hats they used to wear in summer in Europe and in New York but i never saw one in the West. My father’s face fell. No, no, no, he cried, that was not at all what he wanted (and indeed, he wud have been a figure of fun in one of the little monkey hats, he with his prophet’s face and flowing beard!). He wanted a hat with a large brim, a very wide brim.
So the demoiselle went back and returned with soe more canotiers… the brim of these was surely all of a quarter-inch broader, in fact they were daringly wide brimmed… Just then, my father’s eye lit on a pile of gardener’s hats put away on a top shelf. “Ha!” he exclaimed triumphantly, that was what he wanted.
The demoiselle’s eyes were wide with horror. “Mais, Monsieur, ce sont des chapeaux de jardinier!” (Now, observe; she said they were gardener’s hats, not garden hats. A tremendous difference in social classification!) My father’s answer was, “It is all equal to me! I want one of those hats! Give me one of those hats!”
She climbed on a short ladder and she brot them down. I thot she was going to burst into tears. As a final plea to my father to be reasonable, she said: “But Sir, they cost only six pennies.” “Eh bien, tant mieux! All the better!” said my father, and he crowned himself with a gardener’s hat. He really did not look bad at all in it. It fitted his noble face. The demoiselle’s look of on-the-verge of tears changed to a slightly admiring one. But my father’s eternal utilitarianism had to spoil the picture again. He demanded to have ribbons sewn on to the hat so he cud tie them under his chin against the wind. Now the demoiselle’s smile changed to plain laughter. She rummaged under the counter and produced scissors, needle and thread, and a wide red ribbon. In a few deft movements she had two ribbons sewn on to the hat; my father crowned himself again; and she herself tied the scarlet bow-knot under his beard. She was laughing. Her laughter did not at all annoy my father. He simply remarked to me: “Pero, que amable es!” and we sallied forth into the street, my father barefoot and with his new hat, and me trotting behind him.
We were now going home, and there were quite a few people on the streets. Just then, coming in our direction, but on the other side of the street, we saw my mother. Doña Ysabel was short and somewhat corpulent; tightly laced in her corsets and wearing very high heels; she always dressed carefully in the correct mode of the day, but without any ostentation. So there she came as usual walking very erect with her short steps, holding her train in one hand and her parasol in the other. As i said, we saw her; and she saw us at the very same instant. She stopped abrupt for perhaps five seconds. Then she whirled around, and fled up the street.
“Ysabel! Eh… YSABEL!” my father yelled in stentorian tones, taking long strides.
Passers-by stopped and turned around, staring, and shopkeepers came to their doorsteps. “Ysabel, Eh, Ysa-BEL!!” But Doña Ysabel was fleeing up the street, almost at a run. At the corner she turned into another street. My father stopped. He turned to me. “Pero, que le pasa, esta loco (what is the matter with her? Is she crazy?).
- Jaime de Angulo ➹
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| Music Division, The New York Public Library. (1930 - 1950). Jaime de Angulo Retrieved from https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/aae18503-f085-e88d-e040-e00a180622ca |
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And just like that, I feel just perfectly eccentric!
There are two articles worth linking to, for a thorough exploration of de Angulo’s life and works (published online), if you don’t have access to any of his books. These are written in the Spanish language and will need to be opened in Google Chrome to be translated to English. These were written by a Victor Fuentes (Professor, University of California, Berkeley) and are the most elaborate and generous articles (for a figure, mostly unknown and whose body of work is scarce in circulation) on de Angulo that I have found online. Please enjoy them if you’re interested, here - for his life and legacy, and here - for some more detailed dissection of some of his works. Discovering his story and his work (and life) with Native Californian tribes, of course I was hooked, but nothing will - need it be said - compare to reading Jaime de Angulo's work for yourself.
A figure with an unpronounced grace in his eccentricism; with a love for life, the land, and its people. I would recommend nothing more than finding your own copy of Bob Callahan’s ‘A Jaime De Angulo Reader’ (1979) or requesting mine next time I see you. For us; today's folk, on the brink of potentially incurable planetary misuse and an ever-increasing integration with digital technology (get the f*ck off my blog!); we can maybe take some reverence in Jaime de Angulo’s life and work as a reminder of the beauty and significance of life on this planet! Hoorah, and peace to all!
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