Author Archives: Jot 101

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.
Continue reading →

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 →

A Nazi sympathizer on The Black Arts

Major-General J.F.C. Fuller (1878 – 1966) was a celebrated military tactician and theorist, an JFC_Fuller international expert on the use of tanks in warfare who was a strong influence on the German tactician Guderian, but also a Nazi sympathizer who met Hitler, and the only top-ranking officer in the British Army who in 1939 was not invited to join the fight against the Fuhrer. Nicknamed ‘ Boney ‘ by his peers presumably for his combative mien and brilliance as a strategist, and indeed height ( he was only 5’ 4”) Fuller was disliked by many for his high-handedness and argumentative nature. But some of this unpopularity may also have had its origin in his devotion to the occult, on which he wrote articles and books, including a study of Aleister Crowley. Indeed we at Jot 101 first came across his name in the April 1926 issue of The Occult Review, where he contributed a long article entitled ‘ The Black Arts ‘.

In the piece Fuller agued that throughout time people bewildered by the mysteries of life and death have sought meaning and comfort in spiritual systems. Many of the less curious, and less intelligent, he contended, have turned to conventional religions that encourage ‘ pauperization of thought ‘ while the more adventurous and intellectually inclined looked for answers in what others have regarded as evil forces allied to Satan. However, these occult resources, argued Fuller, were not reservoirs of evil at all, but were in the hands of practitioners like Friar Bacon. Paracelsus and Dr Dee, valid paths to enlightenment and truth. Even Isaac Newton and Copernicus, Fuller contends, can be regarded as ‘black magicians’.

And as the age of ‘ strange spells ‘ is succeeded by the ‘Black Age of the steam epoch ‘ the anarchist arises as a rebel against the materialism of Capital; then, according to Fuller, in opposition to the rationalism of a new priesthood of Science ‘ strange forms ‘ arise in opposition—‘ spiritualism, psychical research, theosophy and all the baby prattle of “ higher thought “ ‘. To the rationalist, Fuller argues, these too are ‘black children ‘, but children that will eventually grow into ; strapping boys and girls ‘. Continue reading →

The church in the station

If you were catching a train to or from Denmark Hill railway station in Camberwell, London, any time between 1920 and 1929 you might be surprised to find that one of the waiting rooms Denmark Hill station church waiting room there had been converted to a place of worship. But not any place of worship. Around 19
20 a disused waiting room on the first floor was let to one Mary Elizabeth Eagle Skinner for use as a temple dedicated to her Mystical Church of the Comforter, a religious foundation, which she claimed had ancient foundations, but which she had re-established in 1901.

Little is known about Mary
Skinner ( 1875 – 1929) apart from the fact that she was a Rosicrucian of the Ymir Temple, was married to a schoolteacher, called herself ‘The Messenger ‘, but was popularly known as ‘ mother ‘. Her full-page advert in the April 1926 issue of The Occult Reviewwhich we found at Jot HQ recently , tells us a little more about the teachings of her Church, which were no doubt laid down by herself, she being to all intents and purposes a one-woman band.

One curious newspaper reporter in 1926 described the Temple thus:

One end of the room had been transformed into an altar, painted white and surrounded by the seven colours of the rainbow. Seven steps lead up to the altar, and at the side are two pillars representing Beauty and Strength. Everything is done by symbols, and the badge worn by members is a dove standing in the circle with a seven-leaved branch in its beak’ Continue reading →

Some favourite urban legends

The thing about urban legends ( or urban myths, if you prefer) is whether you can believe that the events actually happened. Some of the occurrences are so astonishing that most people would love to believe that they are true. But there again, it must be easy enough to invent an urban legend. Make up your mind about the following ‘ stories ‘ that are adapted from Rodney Dale’s book It’s True…It happened to a friend(1984). We at Jot HQ are inclined to believe that most are true.

No such thing as a free ticket.

A Surrey couple had their car stolen from their front drive. Four days later when it reappeared, the owners found two theatre tickets on the front seat and a note which read: ‘ Sorry. We had to take your car in an emergency. Please accept the tickets with our apologies.’ A few days later they used the tickets and returned to find their home stripped, even to the curtains.

This is surely a familiar trope. Conan Doyle used elements of it in two Sherlock Holmes stories, notably ‘The Red Headed League’. More recently, sports stars, usually footballers, are often burgled when the criminals are certain that they will be away from their homes on award-ceremony evenings.

Get rich quick

A man advertised ex-government trousers at a ridiculously low price. The orders rolled in, the man became wealthy, but did nothing. He still did nothing when those who had ordered trousers complained. Only when solicitors became involved did the man buy a pair of trousers and forward them to the customer. Most who had sent him money did not bother to pursue the matter. The low cost of the trousers meant it was not worth their while to go after the fraudster, who became very rich.

Ponzi scheme ?

Placebo effect

A hospital in Edinburgh used its ECT machine for over two years, reporting beneficial effects, before discovering that there was something wrong with the power supply and the machine had never worked.

Do as you are done by.

Rodney Dale

The owner of a stately home not open to the public was somewhat annoyed when he saw a car and caravan turn into his drive, park on the verge, and disgorge a family, which proceeded to unpack all the apparatus necessary for preparing a meal. He did not complain but instead took the number of the car and somehow managed to obtain the address of the offenders. Months later he loaded his car with his own equipment and family, drove to the suburban home of the transgressors, and held a pic–nic on their tiny drive. Lord Montague of Beaulieu tells a similar story. Continue reading →

Movie trivia

Anthony Perkins was not on the set when the famous shower scene was filmed in Psycho. The director, Alfred Hitchcock, went into the shower to deal the fatal blow.

Peter Sellers produced a film at a cost of £6,000 starring Britt Ekland, Lord Snowdon and Princess Margaret ( as Queen Victoria) and presented it to the Queen on her thirty-ninth birthday in 1965.

C. Fields once sold a story line which he had written on the back of an envelope for $25,000.

The first public appearance of a movie was at the ‘Koster and Bials’ Music Hall in New York on 23 April 1896.

The first animated film was Gertie the Dinosaur(1909), drawn by Winsor McCay.

Robert Mitchum could read and write by the age of three.

Warren Beatty was once a rat-catcher

Dirk Bogarde’s father was art correspondent for The Times.

In Emma Hamilton, a film set in 1804, Big Ben manages to strike, although it wasn’t built for another fifty years.

The first person to appear naked on the screen was Hedy Lamarr

The first film with a story was The Great Train Robberyin 1903. Continue reading →

Charles Morgan to Arthur Bryant

Found –an interesting signed presentation from Charles Morgan to the historian, Arthur Bryant. It reads – “Arthur Bryant, more about the froggies from his old friend & admirer, Charles Morgan 7.7.49.” It was in a copy of his 1949 book The River Line.

Morgan had been awarded the French Legion of Honour in 1936 and was elected a member of the Institut de France in 1949. In his time Morgan enjoyed an ‘immense’ (Wikipedia) reputation during his lifetime, particularly in France.

The River Line became a play but was originally written as a novel in 1949 and concerned the activities of escaped British prisoners of war in France during World War II.

The inscription is interesting given Morgan’s high standing in France and his professed love for the French. He is still admired there but has become a slow seller in Britain. The inscription possibly panders to Bryant’s tastes and views, notably to the right. Bryant had written a book in 1940 which he had to rapidly repress (see Bookride) due to its failure to condemn Hitler.

Advice to Theology students

This comes from a piece of paper I’ve never been able to throw out, as it intrigued, even shocked me so much (‘classics not worth the paper they are printed on’ indeed). If this becomes a jot, hooray! I shall be able to dispose of the paper, at least. It is online advice to Theology students, which I printed off for myself. I thought it revealed an interesting (to say the least) attitude of the theologian to what might be called popular (normal, even?) religious feeling, response or attitudes. By searching on ‘Childs Martin Danker’ for the acceptable books, lo and behold I came across the whole document I had excerpted from here dated 2009 and entitled ‘Theological Statements Guide’. However, no bibliographic details for Childs etc. are given there. So I can’t be much wiser.

“N.B. Popular and devotional literature and most works written for laypersons are not acceptable for this assignment. Many popular commentaries are written by nonspecialists who may be articulate speakers or well-known in other fields, but whose exegesis and comments are often technically uninformed. This applies to the material in the “Exposition” section of the old version of The Interpreter’s Bible. Many reprints of older works are useful, if used carefully, but many of the so-called classics are not worth the paper they are printed on. A discussion of acceptable older and more recent works are found in the bibliographic resource guides by Childs, Martin, Danker, etc. The student is responsible for finding and using suitable resources. If in doubt the student is encouraged to ask the professor, who can be reached at…

Laurence Olivier’s Stage Fright

Laurence_Olivier_with_Joan_Plowright_1960

Laurence Olivier_with Joan_Plowright in ‘The Entertainer’

Sorting papers recently I found an EPCA Newsletter (European Personal Constructs Association - PC Psychology deals with personality and attitude change) from 1998. It had a book review quoting Laurence Olivier on his stage fright.

"With each succeeding minute, it became less possible to resist the terror. My cue came, and I went in to that stage where I knew with grim certainty I would not be capable of remaining more than a few minutes ...".

The book itself The Person Behind the Mask: a Guide to Performing Arts Psychology (London, Ablex 1997) was written by Linda H. Hamilton. She had been a ballet dancer from age 8 to 26, then became a Clinical Psychologist. Her book cites research conducted over one year at the University of California's Health Program for Performing Artists, when 25% of patients had psychological problems including "severe anxiety and/or depression, personality disorders somataform disorders, psychoses and suicidal behaviour (p84)". The reviewer goes on to say that the book "deals in some detail with the characteristic problems of public self-display e.g. unrealistic weight requirements, debilitating injuries which hamper performance or prevent it altogether, and stage fright and points out that it is time the professions themselves woke up to the need to pay attention to their own occupational realities".

Some lesser known quotations

Dorothy Baker

After over fifty years of varied reading the Liberal party leader Viscount Samuel (1870 -1963) collected around a thousand quotations for his own use. In 1947 the Cresset Press decided to publish about half of these arranged under several heads. We at Jot HQ were sufficiently impressed by the noble lord’s wide reading and discernment to select what we feel were some of the most perceptive of these pieces of wisdom.

It seems to me that we all look at nature too much, and live with her too little.
OSCAR WILDE

The question of common-sense is always “ What is it good for?”—-a question which would abolish the rose and be answered triumphantly by the cabbage.
J.R.LOWELL

Keats is an example of literature untouched by science
A.N.WHITEHEAD

It is just when ideas are lacking that a phrase is most welcome
GOETHE

Of what use is freedom of thought if it will not produce freedom of action?
JONATHAN SWIFT

Absence of occupation is not rest.
WILLIAM COWPER

Great learning and great shallowness go together very well under one hat.
F.W.NIETZSCHE

The depths of the fathomless loyalty that is in the heart of the dog.
LORD DUNSANY

Crime is the anti-social form of the struggle for existence
ENRICO FERRI

No, Sir; we had talk enough, but no conversation; there was nothing
discussed.
Dr SAMUEL JOHNSON Continue reading →

More gags from an Edwardian joke book

Edwardian joke book pages 001 In an earlier Jot we selected at random some pretty witty items from an Edwardian comic’s gag book composed of clippings from newspapers and magazines. Here are some more. Astonishingly, most sound so very modern in their style of humour. None of them contain puns.

He—Last night I dreamt that I died. What do you suppose waked me up ?

She—The heat probably.

IN THE CHEMICAL LABORATORY.—“ Professor, what has become of Tom Appleton ?. Wasn’t he studying with the class last year?”

“ Ah, yes. Appleton—poor fellow! A fine student, but absent-minded in the use of chemicals—very. That discolouration on the ceiling—notice it?”

”Yes”

“That’s him.”

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A letter from Lady Charlotte Wheeler-Cuffe (1867 – 1967), plant-hunter extraordinaire

During her twenty-four years in Burma with her husband, an engineer in government service, Lady Charlotte Wheeler-Cuffe (nee Williams) became an intrepid plant-hunter, whose discoveries included various species of rhododendron. On her husband’s retirement in 1922 the couple retired to his ancestral seat at Lyrath, near Kilkenny, and it was here that Lady Charlotte planted some of the exotic plants she had gathered over the years. While in Burma Lady Charlotte had corresponded with friends, including another keen plantswoman, Baroness Prochaya, who also lived at Lyrath and professional botanists, one of whom was Frederick Moore, head of the Botanic Gardens at Glasneven, near Dublin, and on her return to Ireland it would seem that the correspondence continued.

This typewritten letter dated August 1923, which we found in the Jot 101 archive, seems to have been unposted, as it contains corrections in ink and lacks the name of the intended recipient, is addressed to a botanist from Horsham who was writing a book. In the letter she reports that she had just sent this botanist a blossom of Lilium lowii, which she had originally discovered nearly eight years earlier:

‘ In November 1915 I was travelling with my husband…in the Southern Shan States and finding some dried stalks and seed pods of a lily (growing on the edge of a wood and facing north, on limestone, at an elevation of somewhere about 5,000 ft) dug them up and brought them back to Maymyo, where we were stationed. There they flowered the following summer, and next autumn I sent some of them home to Glasneven, where Sir F Moore had always been most kind and helpful to me in my amateurish efforts at plant collecting …Sir Frederick wrote to me the next year saying that the lilies were L.lowii, which had been in cultivation in Europe but lost for many years, as its habitat was not known. The first place I found it was near Loilem (lat.20, long 20), but I afterwards discovered it in many other similar places and got quite a lot of bulbs into the Botanical Garden at Maymo, the summer headquarters of the Burma Govt., where I worked during the war.

This lily and L.sulphureumoften grow naturally together, in open woodland in the Shan hills; and in damper places a yellow and brown one, which I believe to be L.nepalensis. I have watercolour drawings of both these, if you would care to see them. Other lilies I have found in Burma are: a beautiful pure white one, growth like sulphureum but quite different bulb ( small and white, whereas sulphureum is large and purplish).This white lily grows in the extreme north eats of Burma, on the China frontier at about 6,000 feet and further up the passes ( about 11,000 ft) there is a lovely spotted pink and white lily which was, I think, first found by Miss Malet, who was up at the frontier post of Hpimaw with her brother. ( she sent it to me at Maymo and I had it blossoming there a year at least before Mr Farrer found it ; but I believe it has been named Nomocharis farreri).Mr Kingdom Ward found a beautiful crimson lily on Imaw Bum , a 13,000ft. mountain near Hpimaw; and I got a lovely flaming scarlet one in the Ruby Mines district, but failed to bring it home. It was very similar to the scarlet Korean lily and may have been imported via China, as it was in a village and the Lashi people eat the bulb. There is another edible lily bulb in the Chin Hills with a white blossom: but this I have not seen as I was only there in early spring, but I hope to get some bulbs sent home this winter.’
Continue reading →

London Life: a magazine for fetishists

The front and back covers of London Life, which appeared from 1920 to 1960, should suggest the dominant theme of this magazine. In the three issues from the early 1940s that we found at Jot HQ recently scantily clad young ladies feature prominently on two of the covers, while the third shows a lovely young thing in full pout. Between the covers images of more scantily clad ladies in the form of photos and line drawings jostle for attention with feature articles on such topics as corsets and shoes, paint-on stockings, and ear-rings. There are also serials featuring Tilda, ‘ the world’s most glamorous girl ‘.But most of each issue is dominated by correspondence from alleged ‘ readers ‘ discoursing on every aspect of dress fetishism from a penchant for corsetry , high-heeled shoes and long gloves to the pleasures of transvestism.

Compared with what can be found on the Internet today this material is pretty mild, but in 1932 the magazine was deemed too audacious for the Irish government, who banned it. However, during the war against Hitler ( who is mocked in one issue) a more sensible British government doubtless felt that it provided much-needed glamour for demoralised troops.

All tastes were catered for by the correspondents, including in one instance, a sort of male transvestism in which the correspondent recalls the experience of wearing a corset borrowed from a friend:

‘ He asked me if I would like to be laced, and suggested a comfortable tightness at first, and as it was a beautiful evening, we decided to go for a walk after I finished dressing. We went quite five miles, and I shall never forget how comfortable I felt; no sign of fatigue, and on my return I requested him to lace me in much tighter—and it was quite a thrill seeing what a small waist I could achieve. Needless to add that I have now spent some coupons on a pair of my own, and although I don’t wear them daily, I particularly delight in walking in them, and have become quite a tight-lacing fan.
Yours truly,
“LACED.” Continue reading →

O Rare Amanda !

In June 1973 Bevis Hillier, connoisseur of English porcelain and friend and biographer of John Betjeman, wrote a piece in The Times concerning an archive of manuscripts, published books, letters and photographs of Larne’s best loved citizen and arguably Britain’s worst writer, Amanda McKittrick Ros, that had come onto the market. The collection, assembled over many years, mainly from members of her family, by journalist and founding member of the British Communist Party, Eric Mercer, had been sold by him to the bookseller A.F.Wallis just before he died in 1972 aged 89, and Wallis now wanted £4,500 for it.

Forty-six years ago this was a tidy sum for a writer mainly known for her comedy value. Back in the 1920s, when smart Oxford undergraduates like Betjeman and Waugh took part in competitions to discover who could read out passages from Ros’s novels and poetry without laughing, such an archive might have fetched more. But even in 1973, years after her star had faded somewhat, £4,500 for such a unique collection seems a bargain today, especially when we learn that the MS of Enemies of Promise by the minor writer Cyril Connolly was up for sale at the same time for a cool £2,000 !

Few would dispute that Ros has ever been truly fashionable, but her books, all of which were originally privately printed, are still collected and first editions, especially of her verse, are hard to come by, mainly because of their small print-runs. But no publisher in 2019 would dare bring out large editions of her books partly because she is still not well known enough and partly because we have become rather po-faced about ridiculing people who evidently had no talent, whether as writers or marathon runners. Continue reading →

Anarchy magazine, 1963

We at Jot 101 only have this copy of Anarchy, issue number 27 ( May 1963) as a guide to what this notable magazine was all about. We do know that it was founded by Colin Ward in 1961 and ran under his editorship until 1970 and that regular contributors included committed anarchists like Nicolas Walter and Harry Baecker. A check list printed on the back of the front cover gives some idea of the political tone of the magazine. Each issue had a theme. The copy we have focuses on ‘Youth ‘, and this seems to have been a prominent talking point in earlier issues, along with calls to oppose capitalism, challenge educational values and generally practise non-violent disobedience and dissent. But Colin Ward was a great advocate for adventure playgrounds, so issue 7 was wholly devoted to this. There were also issues devoted to ‘ Technology, science and anarchism ‘, ‘ De-institutionisation: conflicting strains in anarchism ‘, and ‘ The work of David Wills ‘.

It would be revealing to compare the intellectual level of Anarchy with that of Class War, the agitprop mouthpiece of anarchism in the eighties and onwards run for a time by Ian Bone, who recently became a media bad guy when he cornered the children of Jacob Rees-Mogg and told them that their dad was a ‘horrible’ person. Both magazines have in common the basic tenets of anarchism—anti-capitalism, dissent, ‘ do-it-yourself ‘, and us-versus them—but the violent undercurrent ( ‘Kill the Rich’) that characterises Class War is notably absent from Anarchy, which specifically rejected violent confrontation in favour of powerful arguments that challenged orthodoxies in society. Some of these in this ‘Youth ‘ issue are certainly worth reading.

One of the most perceptive pieces is ‘ The Young One ‘ by Nicolas Walter, which focuses on Cliff Richard, arguably the most popular male singer of a bunch that included Adam Faith, Marty Wilde and Billy Fury, all three of whom Walter saw as genuine working class rebels. In contrast, Cliff, though also working-class, stands apart from his peers as distinctly conformist:

‘ Sometimes he looks like the politician who finds out what most per cent of the voters thinks before he thinks. But he really doesn’t like smoking, drinking, chasing girls and so on. His secret is simple—he has no secret. His personality is simple—he has not personality. He is, as Colin MacInnes once said of Tommy Steele, “ every nice young girl’s boy, every kid’s favourite elder brother, every mother’s cherished adolescent son “ . He is a non-hero of our time, an innocent idol. Continue reading →

A Victorian Dictionary of Blunders c 1888

This is a useful pocket guide to some extent, but is frequently supercilious and downright patronising. Often the compiler treats the reader as if they were a halfwit, especially in the matter of pronunciation.’ Reindeer is pronounced rain-deer ‘ it advises. ‘ Salver is pronounced sal-ver, not sar-ver’, apparently. Then it warns readers not to confuse one word with another with a similar spelling. Thus ‘ corpse ‘ should not be confused with corps. Nor should anyone write continential ( which doesn’t exist as a word ) when they mean continental ? Has anyone ever done that ?

The corrected pronunciation of some words is questionable, to say the least. We are told that with ‘ abdomen’ , the emphasis should be on the second syllable, not the first . With ‘ mediocre ‘the first syllable should feature a short ‘e’. Today, there is no agreement on these two examples. In other instances the suggested pronunciation is bonkers. The word ‘retch ‘ according to this book, should be pronounced ‘ reach’. ‘Rabies has three syllables ‘we are informed, and should be pronounced rar bee ez. Sheer madness! Even if the word has a foreign derivation, by 1888 its place in the English language should have been assured. Disappointingly, it has nothing to say about the vexed question of whether ‘poor ‘ should be pronounced poo-er, as some grammarians insisted, or ‘pore’. Ghost-writer M. R. James famously derided those who favoured the latter pronunciation in his story ‘The Mezzotint ‘. But doubtless the Provost of Eton was a bit of a snob. Nor does the Dictionary suggest how ‘economics ‘ or ‘controversy ‘ should be pronounced. It ought to come down heavily on two of the worst solecisms of our own time, ‘less’ for ‘fewer’ and ‘reticent’ for reluctant, but it doesn’t. However, it is good to see that in 1888, 34 years before the BBC was founded, and many years before newspapers had a role in forming popular opinion, we are told that the plural of ‘medium’ is ‘media’. It is also interesting to note that back in 1888 common speech was as plagued as it is today with the ubiquitous ‘ you know ‘. ‘All these “ you knows “ would be better left out ‘ advises our author. Quite.

Disappointingly, and indeed, rather predictably, the booklet perpetuates the grammatical correctness of the gendered pronoun, as in the correction to ‘I do not think anyone to blame for taking care of their health’. ‘Their’ should be ‘his’, it advises, rather chauvinistically. Today, you don’t have to be a feminist to prefer the use of the gender-free ‘their‘ in this case.

All in all, A Dictionary of Daily Blunders contains almost as many blunders masquerading as truths as it does corrections to perceived blunders. No wonder the author, who also compiled A Handy Book of Synonyms,wanted to remain anonymous.

[R.M.Healey]

A month in the life of a RADA student in 1934: The journal of Nancy Seabrooke

Nancy Clara Seabrooke (1914 – 1998) does not figure hugely in the history of the British theatre and TV. Her biggest claim to fame was being the most patient understudy in the annals of British theatre– shadowing the role of ‘Mrs Boyle’ in Agatha Christie’s record-breaking Mousetrapfor 15 years (6,240 performances), and actually appearing as her for a fraction of these performances, before retiring in 1994. On TV she was a bit part player, appearing in single episodes of Danger Man, The Grove Family, Maigret and No Hiding Place. Double Exit(1950) was her first TV movie. She was Deputy Stage Manager of the play ‘The Irrregular Verb to Love’ (1961), which starred fellow RADA student Joan Greenwood. There is no record of any appearance by Seabrooke on the silver screen.

Her journal, which covers the period April 18^thto May 19^th1934 while she was a twenty-year-old final year student at RADA, occupies the whole of a slim exercise book, and is written in a large, round, artistic hand in fountain pen and pencil. At the outset Seabrooke confesses that she had decided to begin it after acquiring a Victorian example in a second–hand shop. She says nothing about whether she plans to continue her journal well beyond the month. For all we know, it may have been part of a series, though no evidence of this has come to light.

At the time in which she began her journal Seabrooke was commuting to London from her home not far from the small village of Newdigate, south of Dorking, Surrey, and the events she describes are concerned as much with her home life in the country as they are with her other, more glamorous, existence as a RADA student. Several things emerge from the journal. She seems to have been fascinated by Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, particularly Ben Jonson and John Webster (she even named her cats Beaumont and Fletcher), was an avid playgoer in London, notably at The Old Vic, and was in awe of many leading actors, especially John Geilgud, to whom she writes a fan letter. She also seems to have been the editor ( or assistant editor ) of the news-sheet The Rada News and was writing a ‘ satire ‘ and some ’sonnets’. Having at the outset vowed that she would steer away from introspection, she devotes a good deal of her journal to tormenting herself over a certain Joseph, on whom she clearly had a crush, although the affection seems to have been one-way. Continue reading →

Eating healthily the Focus way

In an earlier Jot we looked at the June 1928 issue of Focus, a pocket monthly magazine, published in London, which was devoted to alternative medicine, healthy eating and what today we might call ‘New Age’ concerns. Little is known about this publication, apart from the fact that the publishers were the fringe medicine outfit C.W.Daniel. However, from the issue of December 1928 we now discover that although Focushad begun life just two years before, the publishers had decided to close it down and replace it, starting in January 1929, with a quarterly periodical to be called Purpose.

Readers of Focuswere left to imagine what the successor might turn out to be. All that was said was that the aims of the new magazine were to be the same as ever, that is to say, the promotion of ‘the ethics of mind and body’.

As for this final issue of Focus, it was the usual eclectic mixture of articles on philosophy, literary philosophy ( with H.G.Wells and Tolstoy examined), left-field speculations on medicine ( the common cold revisited) and metaphysics , and longest of all these, a fascinating item on healthy eating that focussed on daily menus. All this supplemented by a solid twenty pages of adverts for radical books, a directory of vegetarian boarding houses and ‘Nature Cure Establishments‘ . Continue reading →

Pop trivia

The last note of ‘ She’s Leaving Home’ on Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album lasts 43 ½ seconds—the final bit being at a high frequency audible to dogs but not to most human beings.

Paul McCartney produced the Bonzo Dog Doodah Band’s ‘ I’m the Urban Spaceman’ single under the pseudonym Apollo C.Vermouth.

The Beatles’ second film Help was dedicated to Elias Howe, inventor of the sewing machine

Names of real bands:

Grab, Grab the Haddock

Impaired Penile Throttle Condition

Stitched Back Foot Airman

I Spit on Your Gravy

You’ve Got Foetus On Your Breath

The Savoy Hitler Youth Band

Deep Freeze Mice

The longest running group in the world were the New Christy Minstrels, who were originally formed in 1842 as The Christy Minstrels. They disbanded in 1921, but reformed in 1961 as The New Christy Minstrels. Continue reading →