Author Archives: Jot 101

Facts found in fiction

Mytton-Mermaid-Hotel-Atcham-Salop-Shropshire

Can information found in fiction be trusted? By definition much of it is imaginary, but some of it can sound very convincing. However most factoids are quickly proved or disproved online (but not so easily in the case of Le Carre, and with mixed results with Borges). Three examples from recent reading…

In Jorge Luis Borges’s short story Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (in Ficciones, Grove Press 1962 page 19) he refers to a book that had appeared ‘in the library catalogues of Bernard Quaritch’ – A General History of Labyrinths by Silas Haslam. Quaritch is a real bookstore and is still trading, but the book is imaginary and cannot be found in any library (despite some wag’s entry at GoodReads with an Amazon ‘buy’ button.) However 6 pages later in a footnote Borges writes – ‘Russell (The Analysis of Mind 1921 page 159) conjectures that our planet was created a few minutes ago, provided with a humanity which “remembers” an illusory past.’ A fairly typical Borges conceit? No, the book exists and the conjecture is indeed on page 159, although as an idea, logically possible, it is swiftly dismissed by (Bertrand) Russell*.

Nicola Upson’s Fear in the Sunlight (2012) is a ‘cosy’ detective novel featuring the real life crime fiction writer Josephine Tey (1896-1952) as a sleuth and sapphist. She is in 1930s Portmeirion solving a murder, while Alfred Hitchcock is casting a film. A couple of women friends, driving down to join her, stay at the Mytton and Mermaid hotel just outside Shrewsbury. Nicola Upson describes this as a half way house for people driving from London to Portmeirion (on the Welsh coast) then a full day’s journey. She states that it was bought for this purpose by Portmeirion’s architect and owner Clough Williams Ellis. TRUE! Clough actually bought it and redesigned it in the early 1930s. It is still there on the banks of the Severn – serving a good afternoon tea, according to tripadvisor.

In Le Carre’s Agent Running in the Field (2019) the aging spy worries that he will be soon sent to the Retirement section ‘…who will offer me tantalizing openings in the arms industry, private contracting or other laying-out places for old spies such as The National Trust, the Automobile Association and private schools in search of assistant bursars…’ But can old spies just walk into jobs at the A A and the NT? Is that greying bursar at the exclusive boarding school an old spook who has handed in his Biretta? They have served their country and may deserve further employment; certainly after WW2 openings were made in many businesses for old soldiers, especially wounded ones, so it’s hard to hold up the LIE card confidently…

Portmeirion is now a 5 hour drive from London, without stopping and in good traffic. The Mytton and Mermaid is just over half way and would still make a good stop off. It is haunted by an eccentric former owner ‘Mad’ Jack Mytton, or so they say.. Continue reading →

E.V. Knox on oysters

Still-Life-Cornelis-de-Heem-oil-painting

Cornelis de Heem (via Ocean’s Bridge with thanks)

Found – a typed manuscript with inked corrections in the hand of its author ‘Evoe’ i.e .E.V. Knox. Probably a contribution by him to Punch, or possibly read out by him at a feast or function. He attended many and was often called upon to entertain. No date, but posssibly late 1940s, the annotations being in biro. In format and sound it has echoes of the British Grenadiers song (‘..some talk of Alexander and some of Hercules..’) or Lear’s The walrus and the Carpenter. Take it away Evoe–

Of Fishes and Food

OYSTERIA

The oysters of Great Britain

Were bought to Julius Caesar;

He bolted them in unbitten

And smiled like Mona Lisa.

The Emperor Augustus

Preferred them put in patties.

His cook, whose name was Justus,

Could never serve him satis.

The Emperor Tiberius,

A man debased and selfish,

Was never wholly serious

Except about these shellfish.

Continue reading →

Rowling’s Professor Binns on Saki

Found among the Haining Archive at Jot HQ is this typewritten letter dated 6^thJune 1984 from the Classical historian H(ugh). W. Stubbs (1917 – 2012) of Exeter University, who was the model for J. K. Rowling’s Professor Binns in the Harry Potter novels. While at Exeter University in the early eighties reading French, Rowling had chosen Ancient History and Culture as a supplementary subject and had attended some of Stubbs’s soporific lectures. Though not a charismatic speaker, Stubbs was far from boring as a person. In the letter he dilates on the joys of Saki, among other topics.

Most of the letter is taken up with Haining’s 1983 edition of stories by Saki and with the editor’s Preface in particular, but Stubbs is also good value on supernatural literature in general, as well as philology and folklore. There are also a few acerbic asides on Chips Channon ( ‘ that horrible man ‘ ) on the horror anthologies ( ‘ a singular repulsive series ‘) edited by Christine Campbell and on the American academic Langguth ( ‘ abysmally ignorant ‘ ). Stubbs himself seems to have taken a keen academic interest in the supernatural genre. He tells Haining that in the 1950’s he corresponded with Peter Penzoldt, author of a pioneering study, The Supernatural in English Fiction(1952).

On Saki Stubbs answers various points made by Haining. Firstly, he tackles the famous Saki story ‘Sredny Vashtar’. Continue reading →

Walking without anything to listen to..

There was a comedy on BBC radio recently about a man who was transported back from today to early Victorian times. As I recall, he missed modern dentistry, and he also missed having something to listen to on his many walks. In James Runciman’s book of essays Joints in the Social Armour (Hodder 1890) he has this solution for the bored walker:

…then you find the advantage of knowing a great deal of poetry. I would not give a rush for a man who merely pores over his poets to make notes or comments on them; you ought to have them as beloved companions to be near you night and day, to take up the parable when your own independent thought is hazy with delight or even with sorrow. As you tramp along the whistling stretches amid the blaze of the ragworts and the tender passing glances of the wild veronica, you can take in all their loveliness with the eye, while the brain goes on adding to your pleasure by recalling the music of the poets. Perhaps you fall into step with quiver and the beat of our British Homer’s rushing rhymes, and Marmion thunders over the brown hills of the Border, or Clara* lingers where mingles war’s rattle with groans of the dying. Perhaps the wilful brain persists in crooning over the Belle Dame sans Merci; your mood flutters and changes with every minute you derive equal satisfaction from the organ- roll of Milton or the silver flageolet tones of Thomas Moore. If culture consists in learning the grammar and etymologies is of a poet’s song, then no cultured man will ever get any pleasure from poetry while he is on a walking tour; but, if you absorb your poets into your being you have spells of rare and unexpected delight.

*Possibly a reference to a poem by Robert Browning Red Cotton Nightcap Country or Turf and Towers (1873) about the love of a desperate man for a woman called Clara..

Laughing at Poetry

Laughing at Swinburne In the April 24^th 1942 issue of John O’London’s Weekly can be found a perceptive view by the essayist Robert Lynd on the subject of risible poetry written by good poets. He takes his cue from an incident a century before when Thomas Wakley, the founder of the Lancet, stood up in the Commons to mock some puerile lines from ‘Louisa’ by the Poet Laureate, William Wordsworth.

Lynd then goes on to wonder whether ‘absurdities were so common in the older poets as they came in the period that followed the French Revolution. Shakespeare and Milton seem never to have descended to such unconscious ludicrousness as Wordsworth. I do not think that any of the older poets ever wrote a line that parodies itself so easily as Swinburne’s :–

Swallow, my sister: O Sister

Swallow.

‘One of Swinburne’s loveliest poems, ‘Before a Mirror ‘, Lynd continues, ‘begins with a verse of extraordinary nonsense –at least, containing extraordinary nonsense—and yet who can fail to be moved by it:– Continue reading →

eBikes: some Jottings

Ever heard of electric bikes? When it comes to ebikes I’ll be the first to ‘fess up that I was quite sceptical in the early days.

Way back in the late Nineties and early Noughties (when I first heard rumours about these fancy new-fangled bits of tech) I figured that they were most likely just a bog-standard pedal bicycle with a big old lawnmower engine welded on to the back end. Practical? Possibly. But I didn’t really feel that they were going to have the “Cool factor” that I craved.

But, fast forward a decade or so, and I began hearing more details about them and I thought to myself okay, maybe, they’re closer to motorbikes. Take off the petrol motor and replace it with an electronic motor? I reckoned that they’d probably look like those impossibly futuristic-looking bikes in the film, Tron. Very, very cool but, unfortunately, with a decent chance of getting me wrapped around a large oak tree.

Fast forward a bit further and I decided to do some detailed research on these intriguing new bikes and found they’re actually really incredible. Whilst they can absolutely do all that standard pushbike stuff, they can actually do a huge amount more.

Interested? Want more? Okay, let’s have a quick look to whet your appetite a bit more.

Continue reading →

Harold Wilson’s playlist for Desert Island Discs

Found – Harold Wilson’s handwritten playlist for Desert Island Discs from about 1969. In the end never appeared on the show, although his wife Mary did..Only the list remains. Bought at Hansons Auctions in May 2019 in a large sale of books, papers and objects from his estate. These included some of his pipes and a novelty HP Sauce bottle. It was in the news. No real shocks here, certainly no rock or pop and not even a crooner.. The Stanley Holloway Yorkshire Pudding piece (‘a poem in a batter’) is an amusing recitation of just less than 3 minutes that they might have played in its entirety. It is possible that the whole thing could be recreated using the actor Jason Watkins currently playing Harold Wilson in the Crown. But who would play Roy Plomley?

Huddersfield Choral Philharmonic ‘Behold I tell you a mystery..’
followed by ‘The Trumpet Shall Sound
40 Years On sung by anyone
First movement Italian Symphony
Tchaikovsky Symphony number five second side i.e. 3rd movement (part of it anyway)
Schubert Symphony (crossed out)
Radetzky March Last night of the proms or Black Dyke
I’ll see you again George Metaxa (name crossed out)
Stanley Holloway – How the first Yorkshire pudding was made
England arise the long long night is over
This is my lovely day George Metaxa and… (all crossed out)
Danny Kaye: Candy Kisses
Mine eyes have seen the glory ( Not Mormon Tabernacle Choir)
Poor wandering One: Pirates of Penzance D’Oyly Carte version
Liddel’s Abide with me Clara B.. (crossed out)
The Day thou gavest, Lord is ended
RESERVES: As time goes by and Dvorak 8th Slavonic dance

The Perfect Christmas eighty seven years ago

Sealing Wax Set

More advice taken from Rose Henniker Heaton’s

The Perfect Christmas (London, 1932.)

Presents for Schoolgirls

Stuffed Comic Animal

Extra long-legged Doll

Own Tea-Set

Fitted Pencil Case

Note-paper with initial

Book (if carefully chosen).

Watch or Clock

Purse with money in it ( notempty)

Bright Scarf

Hockey Stick

Autograph Album

A Diary and Confession Book.

A ticket for herself and a friend ( to be chosen by herself) for a play

Travelling Photo Frame

Umbrella.

Sealing-wax Set.

Jewel Case with secret drawer

Gramophone Record

Chocolate Drops covered with hundreds and thousands.

Presents for Schoolboys

A pair of Handcuffs (most popular).

A Silver Watch

A Knife

A set of Meccano

A Kodak (with year’s upkeep).

Fountain pen

Book on their special subject

Pistol with caps

Small rifle Continue reading →

More gleanings from Ian Fleming’s 1946 book catalogue

The catalogue issued in 1946 (previous Jot) by the directors of Elkin Mathews Ltd of Takeley, Elkin Matthews book catalogue 1946 001 near Bishops Stortford, probably contained descriptions of books and manuscripts by one of the directors, Ian Fleming, an avid book collector. It’s tempting to imagine the future creator of James Bond trawling through some of the items in the catalogue in search of likely material.

We don’t know what language skills his fellow directors, B. K. Muir and C. H. Muir had, but we know that before the Second World War Fleming attended universities in Munich and Geneva to work on his language skills and visited Moscow in 1933 while working for Reuters. It is likely that he was responsible for translating some, if not all, of the foreign language manuscripts being sold by Elkin Mathews.

First, he may have examined a letter from the disciple of Karl Marx and founder of the Social Democratic Party, A. Bebel (1840 – 1913), which was written in German in 1893.In it Bebel complains that ‘since the abolition of the ban very few intellectuals and university folk have joined the party, or if they have done so, have abandoned it later on, out of fear or for reasons of social ambition’. He attacks the evolutionary socialist Rodbertus, who was opposed to Marxism and the University- Socialists.

This letter of ‘great importance ‘ was priced at 9 guineas.

There is also a holograph MS of Maxim Gorki’s “From my Diary” consisting of 12 folio pages in Russian and priced at a bargain £40—more than a month’s salary for a British University lecturer in Russian in 1946.

You could also buy a letter from the Swedish Nobel prize winner Selma Lagerlof ( who she ?,Ed ) for £2 10s,a ‘ very fine letter ‘ from the Nazarene painter J.F.Overbeck dated 1852 for 10/- less and ( a real bargain, this) ten letters from the German impressionist painter Liebermann, a victim of Nazi prejudice, for £2 15s. A single letter from the gifted German draughtsman A. von Menzel, to which were attached ‘ ‘three fine pen-and-ink drawings’, could be yours for £20. Continue reading →

The Golden Urn

Found — all 3 issues of The Golden Urn the rare magazine produced at Fiesole by Bernard Berenson, Logan Pearsall Smith and his sister Mary Pearsall Smith (later Mary Berenson.) Of some value – we have catalogued it thus:

8vo. pp 151. Numbers 1, 2 and 3 complete – all published (1897-1898). Rebound in one volume. Number 1 contains ‘Orlando’ a ‘Self-appreciation’ by the then young Bertrand Russell ( a vaguely philosophical cri de coeur unattributed in the text). Rebound with original illustrated front wrappers, each with an urn design, bound in. Red buckram binning lettered gilt at the spine. Genuinely rare and seldom appearing in commerce. The introduction sets the mood–“The Golden Urn is published by certain people of leisure and curiosity, who thought it worth while to print for their own entertainment some impressions of art and life, some experiments in letters. Appreciation, untrammelled thought, scholarship, its editors will welcome… questions of aesthetics will be discussed… it will appear on unfixed dates and entirely at the pleasure of its editors; it is privately printed and will not be for sale. copies however will be sent – not without a feeling or, at least, an affectation of diffidence – to a few fastidious people.” The elegant fantasy piece in the third issue ‘Altamura’ was a collaboration between Pearsall Smith and Berenson and burlesques the life and ideals of an artists retreat not unlike their own circle at Fiesole. The last piece in the magazine is an amazing extensive list by Mary and Bernard Berenson of the greatest Italian Renaissance pictures in the world (Sacred Pictures) with their locations in every country, some in private hands in America and England – “..the study of them are regarded as acts of piety, and very helpful, though not exactly necessary, to Salvation.”

Berenson, of course, went on to become the 20th century’s most important art critic and art expert, Pearsall Smith’s became an important and admired anthologist whose Trivia books are still read and sought after.Each issue has his (and possibly the Berenson’s) favourite passages from Shakespeare and the Romantics. Berenson’s list of Italian paintings is referred to online as ‘famous’ — it is certainly a labour of love and the fruit of deep research and would have been very hard work in a pre-technology era.

Harold Murray—-the life of a jobbing journalist in the early twentieth century

Found in a pile of books here at Jot HQ a battered, library copy ( ‘ with all the stamps ‘, as the abebook dealers say ) from Exeter City Library of Kaleidoscope , an old journalist’s snapshots (Exeter, nd but c 1947) by Harold Murray. Printed in Exeter by W. Chudley & Son, it would seem to be self-published, but unlike most books of this type, it is actually worth reading.

Wikipedia, alas, has no information on Murray. He claimed to be of ‘ Scottish origin’, and was born in an ‘ old parsonage in the Fen country ‘ (possibly near Peterborough). As for his year of birth, recollections of having seen in 1884 a zoetrope at a bazaar and of being a cub reporter at the time of the Boer War, suggests that he first saw the light of day sometime in the eighteen-seventies. As for his published works, abebooks does feature Kaleidoscopealongside the author’s biographies of two nonconformist preachers, Dinsdale T.Young and Campbell Morgan, along with a collection of Murray’s stories for Boys’ Own Paperand a life of the famous evangelist preacher Rodney ‘Gypsy’ Smith (1860 – 1947). The ‘ by the same author ‘ panel in Kaleidoscope suggests that Murray ‘s main interest was religious evangelism, though this doesn’t come across strongly in Kaleidoscope, which is essentially a hotchpotch of anecdotes about all the many famous, and not so famous, people and places he had encountered in his rather hectic career as a jobbing journalist.

It isn’t easy to establish if Murray was attached to particular newspapers for any length of time, if he was a freelance for much of his life, or if he did other things when he wasn’t writing. He seems to have been enchanted by the idea of writing for a living from his earliest days. FromKaleidoscope it seems obvious that he wished to be seen as someone who was, in the words of Wyndham Lewis, ‘ not for sale ‘ and it doesn’t appear that he was ever troubled by the insecurity of the freelancer’s life. At one point he remarks that he liked writing about hotels because, until twenty years ago, he had spent so much of his life living in them. This might suggest that for a while he was married, with a house and perhaps a family, and that a divorce or separation obliged him to return to living in hotels and boarding houses. But it might equally suggest that Murray, like Gipsy Smith, preferred the life of a wanderer from place to place. He certainly got around.

All journalists need to have good memories, but Murray’s was more powerful than most. Kaleidoscopeis a wealth of wonderful anecdotes going back to the 1890s. In fact there are so many that one must be selective. The more interesting recollections from the point of view of the history of popular entertainment relate to music hall and early cinema: Continue reading →

A survey of homosexuality in the theatre

Encore magazine cover 001 Six years before homosexual acts between consenting adults were legalised Encore, the ‘little magazine’ devoted to contemporary theatre, published in Jan-Feb 1961, a perceptive item by ‘Roger Gellert’ entitled ‘A Survey of the Treatment of the Homosexual in some plays’. Gellert was the pseudonym of the one-time Third Programme announcer John Holmstrom, who left the BBC to become a playwright and theatre critic, only to return as an announcer on Radio Three and a contributor to Test Match Special.

Encorewas just the sort of publication that you might expect to find such a radical item. It advertised itself as ‘ the voice of vital theatre ‘ and was edited by Clive Goodwin (1932 – 78 ), who in the previous year had also published essays on Arden, Pinter, Arthur Miller, Ionesco, Wesker, Negro Theatre and ‘ Billy Liar’. Goodwin, incidentally, was an actor and writer who was married for a short while to the tragic pioneer of Pop art, Pauline Boty.

Gellert’s approach to a subject that was still a ‘ problem ‘ for theatregoers in Western culture was to emphasise that to the ‘ bisexual ‘ Shakespeare, to Marlowe and the Restoration dramatists, homosexuality was regarded as something to be accepted and laughed at, rather than condemned as immoral. Then, after two hundred or more years of ‘ silence’ on the subject, the whole issue, according to Gellert, was resurrected with the staging of Mordaunt Shairp’s play of 1933, The Green Bay Tree, in which the audience is invited to laugh once more, this time at the extraordinary camp utterances of the gay protagonist, Mr Dulcimer, a sort of aesthete of the Oscar Wilde type, who grooms an innocent boy for his own amusement , but is shot dead as punishment for his decadence.

As Gellert argues, The Green Bay Treeis a shallow ‘entertainment ‘rather than a serious comment on the plight of homosexuals in society. That more sympathetic attitude emerged in the post war years with such plays as William Douglas Home’s Now, Barabbas, in which a rather pathetic ex-schoolmaster serving time for sex crimes pesters a young prisoner. Gellert also credits Arthur Miller’s View from the Bridge,Philip King’s Serious Charge, Lilian Hellman’s The Children’s Hourand Robert Anderson’s Tea and Sympathy, for airing serious issues around homo sexuality, though he accuses the latter of doing so at a ‘ very shallow level’. Continue reading →

Edith Allonby—-the novelist who had to commit suicide to get published

‘I have found another way… ‘So wrote fantasy novelist Edith Allonby (1875 – 1905) in a note Edith Allonby photograph found on her lap following her suicide, aged just thirty, in December 1905. When discovered she was sitting in a comfortable chair dressed in a silk evening gown with fresh flowers in her hair. By her side was an empty bottle of phenol (carbolic acid), the poison of choice (bleach was another) for many suicides in the UK at that time, due to its availability and quick, but painful, action.

For Allonby, a schoolmistress from Cartmel, Lancashire whose two previous works of ‘ satirical fantasy ‘, Jewel Sowers (1903) and Marigold
(1905), both set on the imaginary planet of Lucifram, had not sold well, there seemed little choice. In her suicide note she explained that after four years of labour on her latest book , a spiritual fantasy about life and death that she claimed had been given to her by God, her publisher Greening had rejected the manuscript, as had other publishers. ‘I have tried in vain ‘, she wrote,’ …yet shall The Fulfilment reach the people to whom I appeal, for I have found another way…’

That way was an act that would make her posthumous book a sensation at the time, for Greening did change their minds about its publication once the author was dead. It came out in a limited edition, which makes it and her previous two novels, scarce and valuable items today. It is possible that originally all the publishers to whom it was shown simply found the subject matter of The Fulfilmenttoo difficult to deal with. The author herself admitted that her book contained ‘either truth or page upon page of blasphemy ‘. Today, we are more open minded on spiritual matters. [R.M.Healey]

Edith Allonby The Fulfillment 1905 cover

Mad about Whistler

Blickling sutcliffe letter 001 That’s the English Rex rather than the American James McNeill. This covering letter, which was rescued from the archives of the booksellers Eric and Joan Stephens, was sent on 22 September 1968 from the National Trust property Blickling Hall, Norfolk, by the artist and Rex Whistler fan, John Sutcliffe. This letter bears a characteristic scraper board design by Whistler as a sort of letterhead. That’s how much Whistler meant to Sutcliffe.

The letter explains that despite owning ‘about 100 books either illustrated by R.W. or with illustrations of things of his or with dust wrappers by him’, Sutcliffe still needs a number of items to complete his collection. He also wants some post-war illustrations by John Minton and Keith Vaughan. The most coveted items on the wants list are marked with asterisks and include Mildred(1926), Lady Cynthia Asquith’s Treasure Ship(1926) and Edith Olivier’s As Far as Jane’s Grandmother’s(1928). Later priorities are the rare Edward James booklet Your Name is Lamia, which was printed by the author in 1933 in an edition of just thirty copies, and two books by Edith Olivier and Dorothy Wellesley, for which Whistler designed the dust jackets. Sutcliffe also asks Eric and Joan to look out for certain issues of periodicals—mainly from the thirties– devoted to design and decoration. These periodicals include The Architectural Review, The Artist, The Studio, The Connoisseur and Decoration. It is not explained whether or not Whistler contributed to these publications.

Little is known about John Sutcliffe, apart from the fact that he seems to have been a graphic designer who revised James Lees Milne’s original NT guide to Blickling Hall and wrote a ten-page pamphlet on the Hall’s Library in 1971. It may be that he worked at the Hall while writing these two works. He doesn’t appear to have lived there at any time. As an artist he co-exhibited at the 1967 Lynn Festival and there is at least one work by him among the art collection at the Hall. If he is the John Haddon Frowde Holman Sutcliffe who is listed as working for Read & Sutcliffe of King’s Lynn as an artist, then his name suggests that his parents were artists too, or at least art lovers. As we know, David Haddon and Holman Hunt were nineteenth century artists of some eminence.

But all this is less interesting to us at Jot HQ than the fact that John Sutcliffe was a fanatical collector of work by arguably the most gifted illustrator of the twentieth century. [RR]

A fascinating book catalogue of 1946

We found this rare and second hand book catalogue in our pile of ephemera the other day. It Elkin Matthews book catalogue 1946 001 was issued by the well-established book dealer Elkin Mathews Ltd in July 1946, just a year or so after the close of the Second World War.

It is interesting in several respects—not least because it lists books from the libraries of ‘Stephen Hudson’, the novelist and patron of the arts whose real name was Sydney Schiff (1868 – 1944) ,the novelist and playwright John Galsworthy, the acclaimed thriller writer Coulson Kernahan ( 1858 – 1943), the fin de siecle writer Arthur Symons and Sir Hugh Walpole, the popular novelist and book collector. It is also revealing in that among the list of three directors published we find the name of Ian Fleming, who was to create James Bond a few years later. Fleming was a keen bibliophile, whose special interests included firsts of the most crucial works of modern civilisation (TV, atomic fission, birth control, motor cars and penicillin). One can imagine that before the list went out he would have selected several titles for his own collection.

Naturally, many of the items described in the catalogue are presentation copies from the authors and from friends and admirers; some contain pencilled annotations by the owners. For instance, at 4 guineas, a price which reflects the growing reputation of the author at this time, there is a copy of Betjeman’s exceedingly rare poetry pamphlet Sir John Piers (n.d.) with the poet’s corrections. Equally appealing and priced at 3 guineas is a first edition of Edward Dowson’s Decorations in Verse and Prose(1899) with a presentation inscription from Leonard Smithers to Arthur Symons: “ in memory of our friend the author “.

A number of the items listed had already been sold and this fact can be revealing.

For instance, an otherwise unremarkable copy of E. M. Forster’s Aspects of the Novel

(1927) was marked as sold, presumably because it came from the library of the popular philosopher C. E. M. Joad, at that time one of the most famous personalities on radio. He was, of course, much later on, prosecuted for fare evasion, an offence which effectively ended his career. Continue reading →

Book bargains in 1908

Before we report on the bargains available in May 1908 at Edward Baker’s Great Bookshop in John Bright Street, Birmingham (contrast it with Birmingham City Centre today, where there is not a single second hand bookshop ), let us examine what Mr Baker was prepared to give for top-end first editions in 1907 as advertised in The Bookman for May of that year.

For firsts of Keats’ Lamia and other poems (1820), Endymion (1818) and Poems (1817) Mr B. was prepared to shell out a measly £3 per item. We don’t know what his mark up was, but today Lamia would cost you £15,000 and Endymion£12,000. For Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1866) 25/- was offered. A good copy of that book today is priced at an eye watering £37,000 in abebooks. For Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice(1813) and Sense and Sensibility (1811) he’d give you 15/- per novel, which was 10/- less than he’d offer you for Andrew Lang’s Ballads and Lyrics of Old France (1872). Even second and thirds editions of the Austens would today cost you around £10,000 each. As for a first of Lyrical Ballads(1798), without doubt the most iconic item of Romanticism in English Literature, Mr Baker was prepared to offer a whole £2 !! That’s £1 less than he would give you for George Meredith’sPoems (1851). But there’s worse to come. For that most extraordinarily rare debut collection by William Blake, Poetical Sketches (1783), you’d receive a paltry 25/- , which was 10/- lessthan he’d give you for Swinburne’s Atalanta in Calydon(1865. This is sheer madness.

In relief we turn to some of the bargains that your great grandfather might have acquired in Mr Baker’s emporium had he visited it in 1908. We have omitted those titles that have appeared in previous Jots on Mr Baker’s bookshop.

All are first editions unless otherwise stated.

Oscar Wilde, Dorian Gray (privately printed 1890). 25/- Today £3,700

Charles Dickens, Joseph Grimaldi, two vols (1838) £3. 10/- Today £600

Aubrey Beardsley, The Story of Venus and Tannhauser(privately printed) 25/- Today £300

Malcolm’s History of Persia, 2 vols, large paper 1815 £3 3/- Today £3,500

Barrington’s New South Wales, 1803 30/- Today £2000

Farmer’s Twixt Two Worlds, 1886 15/- Today £350

M. Whistler, Ten O’clock, 25/- Today £450
B. Sheridan, The Rivals, £15 15s Today £850

Mrs Gatty, Book of Sundials, 25/- Today £285

Happy the grandson or granddaughter who might have inherited such books ! [RR]

Drug-induced mysticism

In a pile of magazines here in our archive at Jot HQ we found a copy dated Summer 1964 of the Tomorrow magazine cover 001 magazine Tomorrow, which was devoted to ‘parapsychology, cosmology and traditional studies’. In it a review of Aldous Huxley’s Doors of Perception, which had originally appeared in Asia ten years before, reopens the dispute as to whether an artificially induced state of transcendence is equivalent in quality to a similar state achieved through a religious experience.

The author, Whittall N. Perry, an authority on Eastern mysticism, argued that Huxley’s claim that the consumption of mescaline had enabled him to change his ordinary mode of consciousness and so know ‘ what the visionary, the medium, even the mystic were talking about ‘was an example of the sort of ‘specious logic’ that has persisted among Westerners over the years. Huxley claimed to have attained some sort of Platonic state, whereas Perry argues that he had broken with Platonic teaching on the issue of Being and Becoming by elevating the senses over reason and intelligence through the operation of a drug.

The error comes from confusing the Archetypal and principle realm of Platonic Ideas with the ‘mathematical abstractions’ of modern philosophy, and is what Rene Guenoncalls “ a complete inversion of the relationship between Principal and manifestation” Continue reading →

An intriguing letter from an unidentified friend of W.H.Davies to Ivor Brown

Found in a pile of papers around a year ago at Jot HQ is this draft of a barely decipherable ( hence the gaps and possible misreadings of words ) and incomplete letter written in pencil on the back of a typed Roneoed page headed ‘ The Association of British Chambers of Commerce/5^thOctober, 1942/Parliamentary Bulletin No 462A/Information by question and answer. The draft letter is addressed to ( Ivor ) Brown, author of A Word in your Ear( 1942), a book that explores the history of certain words. The writer cannot be identified from any clues in the letter , though what clues there are might open up paths for Jot fans who are familiar with Cheltenham and the Cotswolds. Any with information are welcome to write in.

Dear Mr Brown,

Allow one old Cheltonian some 15 years your senior to thank you for the pleasure I have got from A Word in your Ear in addition to the pleasure from many similar examples of lexical intercourse. There is much I should like to refer to, one; the fact that Nesh is a not uncommon word amongst the poor country people. As to clout too, my father, a Cotswolder from Daglingworth & like my son, an old Cheltonian , never spoke of Cleeve Hill, but always of Cleeve Court. I much enjoyed the quotation from Betjeman, but have never come across Silver ( ? ). Cheltenham has however produced one fellow poet ( ).Frederick Myers is much underrated for his poetry which is swamped by his Psychical fame. It should be remembered, if only for the lines originally on a grave at Grindelwald , but also on the memorial in Wasdale churchyard on the four men killed on Scafell Pinnacle some 30 years ago:-

On moment stood they as the angels stand

High in the stainless imminence of air;

The next they were not, to their fatherland

Translated unaware.

I do not see my book & my son’s as a classic to rank near him, being myself too ( ? ) in verse to be under any illusion. If you can spare a moment with them you may amused by my ( ? ) jingle & by The Dear Inn, which laments the closing of the great coaching inn above Naunton on the Cheltn. – Stow road, done, so it was said, by the squire of Guiting, who disliked his farm labourers frequenting it. My son’s little book was written originally as a Gunner before he got his commission in the R.A. He was my partner here & is now in Egypt. You may like my poem to our dear old friend W. H. Davies, the Welsh poet & ‘Super-tramp’. (I had to do most of his affairs & attended his cremation) as we saw him so often sitting surrounded by his beloved pictures– mainly portraits of himself & his magnificent Epstein hair.
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More good Edwardian jokes

For some reason, puns ( usually by Tim Vine ) often win the best gag contest at the Edinburgh Fringe. We at Jot 101 are at a loss to understand why this should be so. Truly witty people hardly ever use puns to get a laugh. In the following third helping of samples from a small bound collection of cuttings collected by a comedian around the year 1900 there are no puns, just witty, often sardonic, or even zany, asides. They are all the better for that.

Druggist: “ Yes, madam, I remember very well your buying a stamp.”

Lady: “ Well I put it on a very important letter and posted it. It has not been received. I want you to understand that I shall buy my stamps elsewhere if this occurs again.”

“ Excuse me, but it seems to me that I must have met you before. Are you not a brother or near relative of Major Jones ?”

“ No, I am Major Jones himself.”

“ Ah, indeed ! That explains the remarkable resemblance “.

A French lady once said to her husband, who was much given to gesticulation, “ Don’t talk so much, dear, you’ll tire your arms.”

Mr Howland: “I tell you, Maria, you’re worrying over nothing. I can stop smoking any time I want to.”

Mrs Howland: “Well, then, stop now.”

Mr Howland: “But I don’t want to now.” Continue reading →

From Acacia Villa to Xanadu—-English House Names

English House Names, edited by Leslie Dunkling, was the first publication of the Names Society in 1971.The whole project was initiated by a class of mature students which Dunkling was teaching in a Northampton college in 1967. Suggestions were made as to what sort of project the students might like to undertake. House names was the popular choice and before long eager students were trawling the suburban streets of Northampton. This small-scale research topic soon grew into a national one thanks to a letter in the Timesand a feature on BBC and local radio. Academics joined in the hunt and within three years the Names Society, as the research group called itself, had assembled enough data to publish English House Names in 1971.

The first important point made by Leslie Dunkling is that rented homes are ‘almost never ‘ found with names. How true this is today, when there are more rented homes than at any other time in recent history, is open to debate. But back in 1971 it was probably the case. The naming of a house, or the renaming of it, was without doubt the action of a home-owner proud that they had joined the property-owning elite and were thus free to impose their imagination, or lack of it, on their new acquisition. Another interesting discovery by the researchers is that there is a much higher proportion of jokey names ( and I’m afraid there are an awful lot of variations on such hardy perennials as Thisldo, Dunroamin, and Bedside Manor) in the south of England than in any other region. No reason is offered for this. It is also revealing to discover that in 1971 French remained the most popular foreign language for house names, even though some house-owners couldn’t pronounce or even spell the names they had chosen. But in an era of foreign holidays in the sun Spanish was making rapid headway. However, Dunkling rather solemnly noted that ‘house names in German are noticeably few’, as are those in Old or Middle English. Generally, though, any working-class home-owner spurning their native language for a foreign one was regarded by others in their class (according to the research ) as ‘ showing off ‘. Dunkling rightly suggests that such social attitudes deserve further academic investigation. It is certainly worth discovering if attitudes have changed since 1971.

Dunkling assembles the usual suspects—house names that combine elements of the names of the owners, names that recall favourite holiday destinations, that remind the owners of happy incidents in their past, of the time of year in which they moved in, or how much the new home cost. All rather dull, and indeed solipsistic, it must be said. There are houses named after the nearness of certain features ( mainly trees, rivers, mountains ), favourite authors or works of literature ( Lorna Doone, Maigret , Innisfree. We learn, for instance, that Yehudi Menuin named his Swiss home ‘ Chalet Chankley Bore ‘ after one of Edward Lear’s poems. Continue reading →