Reading over the list of pitchers, the professor sees names such Charles Hebden, Al McGee, Jack Humphrey, Spencer Talus ...
The professor's finger stopped on the name Spencer Talus. "Ah-hah!" he said, and he gave Fergie a nudge in the ribs. "This fourth name on the list has got to be the robot! Talus is the name of the iron man in a fairy-tale poem by an old writer named Edmund Spenser. My, my! Aren't they the clever ones!"
John took a post-graduate course on Spenser during his time at the University of Chicago - some 50 years ago. Much more recently, Andrew Hadfield has compiled his list of his top ten favorite Spenser facts and conjectures. We found this nugget interesting:
His first wife, Machabyas Childe, is something of an enigma. She married Edmund Spenser on 27 October 1579 in St. Margaret’s Church, Westminster — a grand venue, which later witnessed the weddings of Samuel Pepys, Sir Winston Churchill, and Harold Macmillan. It is now the church of the House of Commons. Despite my best efforts I can find no other woman called Machabyas in early modern England and I have asked the Dutch and Huguenot Churches for help. She died at some point before 11 June 1594, when Edmund married Elizabeth Boyle.
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