Author Archives: Jot 101

An Englishwoman writes home from a Rhodesian goldfield in 1936

Black and white lantern Slide of a Gold Mine. Part of Box 288, British South Africa. Boswell Collection. Slide number 43 Gold mine Date: circa 1890s

During the early years of the twentieth century the goldfields of southern Rhodesia, like those in California in the 1840s, attracted prospectors from all over the world but chiefly from the Commonwealth. The mine at Mahaka, abutting the border with South Africa, was one of the biggest and best known and its history is well documented among official papers. What is less well documented is the experience of the gold diggers from Britain who found themselves camping in hostile territory with no guarantee of success. Among an archive of poems and other material at Jot HQ is an entertaining account by a young woman named Jo, who wrote home to her family on June 26^th1936 about her life as a prospector.

Dear Mummie, Uncle Bill, Coo, Tom, Basil, John, Jimmy, Ronnie and the Rest of You !!

It is Sundowner-time 1) , and I am writing this in our little thathed ( sic) hut on he hill in the Mahaka valley—to the tune of the un-ceasing Mill—crushing—crushing on and on, to give men GOLD!!! It sounds good, but oh! Wouldn’t it be lovely to have lots of it in our pockets—little pieces to jingle and say—“ Well—I have the means and the world is MINE—LETS GO !!! “

But I do not care two hoots at the moment, for my days have lately have been a dream; I suppose by now you have heard of our trekking into Lawley’s Concession 2)—into the wilds of wildest Rhodesia. We started off with the lorry loaded with fifteen black n—–, –picks, shovels, axes, guns, dynamite , windlass ( for going down the mines ), Mealie meal ( boys food)3) petrol, oil—oh, and a hundred and one things , then came Oliver’s Doge vanette—with Oliver driving—me and the head of the mining engineers , old Mr Taylor –at the back balanced Tozer—two other mining engineers—my personal boy ( who’s special job is ME ) –all on top of boxes of Gin, Whiskey, Brandy, Orange and Lemon crush, Beer, Stout and- oh, Ginger ale too—for the Brandy !! Also stacks of food –Guns & Ammunition—WHAT A PARTY !!! We had to make the road as we went along –coming to one empty river-bed, Oliver’s car gave up the ghost —we had to sit for over an hour in the boiling sun until by some stroke of luck someone touched a little gadget and off she started again. During that time Tozer was directing the gang of boys in road making in his best Kaffir—really he is a scream !! —but somehow seems to make the natives understand. He really is getting on splendidly and might have been an old Pioneer !! Continue reading →

Arthur Ransome on second hand books

Years before he achieved fame as the author of Swallows and AmazonsArthur Ransome published his first book, Bohemia in London(1907), which is now very sought after, copies Jot 101 Bohemia in London cover in collectable condition fetching £500 or more.

At the time he was working as a poorly paid journalist, but as Bohemia strongly suggests, he was spending most of his salary gathering material for this book by mingling with Bohemian types of all kinds mainly in pubs in and around Chelsea, where he lived. He was also buying second hand books. One of the opening anecdotes of his chapter on bookshops and bookstalls concerns the copy of Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy that he acquired for 8/- from a book dealer in central London. At the time he had just a few shillings in his pocket and was planning to visit a restaurant on the way home to his digs. He ended up spending everything he had on him which meant carrying the two heavy volumes under his arms, going hungry that evening and having to walk home, rather than taking an omnibus or Underground train. Ransome also doesn’t give many details about the edition of the Anatomy, but we can be fairly sure that at 8/- it wasn’t a very early edition and certainly not a first.

The appeal of such an old fashioned tome to someone with an addiction to such treasures reminds us of Lamb’s essay entitled ‘ Old China ‘ in which his sister Mary, in the guise of Bridget, recalls the acquisition of a folio Beaumont and Fletcher that her brother had ‘ dragged home late at night from Barker’s in Covent-garden ‘ to their home in Colebrooke Row, Islington in the early 1800s.

‘ Do you remember how we eyed it for weeks before we could make up our minds to the purchase, and had not come to a determination till it was near ten o’clock f the Saturday night, when you set off from Islington, fearing you should be too late —and when the old bookseller with some grumbling opened his shop and by the twinkling taper ( for he was setting bedwards ) lighted out the relic from his dusty treasures—when you lugged it home, wishing it were twice as cumbersome —and when you presented it to me —and when you were exploring the perfectness of it ( collating you called it )—and while I was repairing some of the loose leaves with paste, which you patience would not suffer to be left till day-break—was there no pleasure in being a poor man ?’ Continue reading →

Topic—-a scarce twentieth century magazine

Found among the Joseph O’Donoghue archive at Jot HQ is this copy (pictured) of Topic: 3—a 16 page miscellany dated May 1960 which was possibly aimed at sixth-formers interested in current affairs. It was produced by the husband and wife team who began the still flourishing Mathematical Piemagazine back in 1950.

Why sixth-formers? Well, Mathematical Pie was the brain child of Richard Collins, a Maths teacher at the Gateway School, Leicester, and his wife, and was distributed for a time by the staff of the Mathematics department at the school. Appearing approximately four times a year, it was an entertaining compilation of highly visual mathematical puzzles designed to appeal to children in their early to mid teens. Many of the problems seemed to focus on contemporary issues, such as aviation and space-travel, but clearly the puzzle setters, who included academics as well as schoolteachers, intended to cover as wide a range of subjects as possible.

Early in 1954 Collins and his wife moved to Doncaster—probably to a new school. They continued with Mathematical Pie, but in the late fifties decided to start another magazine with a similar format but this time devoted to teaching a slightly older readership about current affairs. The reasons for this new venture could be many, but judging from the content of Topic: 3, the couple were possibly concerned about the implications of the Cold War, tensions in the Middle East and, perhaps more of interest to schoolchildren, the Space Race, which had become a hot topic by 1960.It is possible that while Collins continued to edit his mathematics magazine, Mrs Collins played a major role in the new venture. We don’t really know, as Topic: 3 doesn’t mention the name of an editor. Jot 101 Topic 3 front cover 001

The reason why this particular copy of Topic:3 was found among the O’Donoghue archive can be found on page ten, where an article entitled ‘ Angry Young Men ‘ bears O’Donoghue’s name. By this time the author would have been around 30 years old ( we don’t know exactly when he was born). It would seem that after having been awarded his post-graduate teaching qualification (see earlier Jot) he had begun to teach English, although we don’t know if he was still a schoolteacher in 1960. His analysis of the Angry Young Man trend in contemporary drama and the novel is an astute and well-written appraisal of such writers as Kingsley Amis, John Wain, John Osborne, Richard Hoggart, Raymond Williams Colin Wilson and Arnold Wesker. From an examination of the newspaper clippings found in his archive at his death, it is very obvious that O’Donoghue was passionately interested in the movement and shared some of the beliefs held by its protagonists. Continue reading →

I once met…Bamber Gascoigne

I considered interviewing quizmaster and TV presenter Bamber Gascoigne, who has died aged 87, sometime in 2000 when I was contributing features for Book and Magazine Collector.I had read somewhere that he was very interested in colour prints and had written a book about identifying prints of all kinds. Bamber_Gascoigne

I approached him and he was happy to meet me, so we arranged a date. Unfortunately, it had decided to rain heavily that day, so when I knocked on the front door of his beautiful Georgian terraced house on the Thames at Richmond I was soaked to the skin. I seem to recall that I actually asked for a towel to dry my hair and not only did he oblige, but he also thrust a bottle of beer into my hand, which was equally welcome in the circumstances. For a keen quizzer like myself, meeting the former presenter of ‘University Challenge’, could possibly have become the sort of ordeal that appearing on ‘Brain of Britain’ and ‘Mastermind’ had been a few years earlier ( I had failed to get on ‘University Challenge’ while at University). Continue reading →

Trader and Sheila Faulkner in 1950s Chelsea

We don’t know whether the Australian actor and flamenco dancer Trader Faulkner ( 1927 – 2020) acquired a copy of The Good Time Guide to London not long after he arrived in London from his home in 1950, probably accompanied by his mother Sheila, a former ballerina. But we do know that the couple moved into a houseboat named ‘” Stella Maris “moored off 160, Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, sometime in the early fifties. The Guide, which was specifically aimed at foreigners new to the metropolis, had a section on Chelsea.

‘…this is Chelsea, undisputed artists’ quarter of London. You can wear what you please, and nobody will give a damn. Though the painters and the designers, the ballet dancers and the actors ( my italics) may be outnumbered by the sober citizens, it is their spirit which dominates. Without it, Chelsea would lose the greatest part of its attraction…Cheyne Walk and Cheyne Row is where many an ambitious London dreams of buying a house some day…’

The same Guide also featured a section on ‘Ballet ‘, most of the contents of which would have been familiar to the Scottish-born Sheila, who under her given name of Sheila Whytock, had danced with Pavlova and had been in the audience when Diaghilev’s Ballet Russe had performed at Covent Garden in 1911. Three years later she and her English husband John Faulkner , a silent film star ( and inventor of a fridge and an elastic sided shoe ) , nearly two decades her senior, emigrated to Australia where in 1927, aged 56, he fathered Ronald, whom he nicknamed ‘ Trader ‘ after seeing him exchange some of his illicitly distilled whisky for marbles. Continue reading →

The World in 1943 according to Everybody’s Pocket Companion

The world has certainly changed since 1943. Everybody’s Pocket Companion, a handy paperback of some eighty pages compiled by someone called A. Mercer during the Second World War, dishes out a variety of ‘ useful ‘ facts on astronomy, geography, chemistry and sport, among other topics. While some things remain the same, the world’s political geography has altered considerably since the booklet was published. Here are a few examples:

EUROPE

Albania was annexed by Italy in April 1939. It became a communist state after the War and is now a sovereign nation again.

The Irish Free State was designated a Dominion governed by a Governor-General. It later became a Republic with a President.

Lithuania’s, capital was Kovno. It is now Vilnius and the old capital is now spelt Kaunus.

ASIA

Alexandretta’s,capital was Alexandretta. This now forms a part of modern SE Turkey.

China’s, capital was Nanking, which is now spelt Nanjing. Beijing is the current capital, thanks to Mao Tse Tung.

Malaya’s capital was Singapore. The capital of the ‘ Malay States ‘in 1943 was Kuala Lumpur. Malaya and the Malay States were amalgamated and became Malaysia, with Kuala Lumpur as the new capital. Singapore is now a separate entity. Continue reading →

The Man who tapped the Secrets of the Universe

We’re not talking here about such major scientists as Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Heisenberg, Paul Dirac or even Steven Hawking. The man in question is the self-taught American Walter Russell (1871 – 1963 ), who in addition to being a successful painter and sculptor was also, according to a pamphlet by the religious writer Glenn Clark, a ‘ super genius ‘ who knew the ‘hidden secrets of the Universe’.

A copy of this pamphlet, which once belonged to the ballerina Sheila Faulkner, was found at Jot HQ. In it Mr Clark, a former teacher of English at an obscure liberal arts college, was one of many published by ‘ The Malecaster Park Publishing Company ‘ of St Paul, Minnesota. Others Clark titles published by Malecaster Park include What Would Jesus Do?, I Would Lift Up mine Eyes, The Thought Farthest Out and The Secret to Power in Business.

This particular pamphlet, which sold for 50 cents in the U.S. and bears the UK price tag of 3/9d, seems to have been a particularly big seller. First published in 1946 in an edition of 25,000, it had sold solidly for nine years and by 1955 had reached its sixth printing. This is not entirely surprising. After all, who wouldn’t want to discover the Secrets of the Universe on the way to achieving those very American goals of ‘ Health, Wealth and Happiness’.

However, the main reason why so many people bought the book was that they wanted to know more about the multifarious career of Russell, who began as a $8 a month hotel bell boy, found fame as a popular painter and sculptor who owned a hotel-sized mansion, became inter aliaa sort of business guru who lectured on the secrets of success to IBM employees and gained a reputation as an all-round visionary thinker. In addition, he promoted some scientific theories that on examination have elements in common with those of the quantum physicists, such as Dirac and Bohr, who had challenged the Relativity of Einstein in the 1920s. Continue reading →

London’s lost Soho?

In his Tatler and Bystander column ‘Standing By’ for May 6^th1953, which we found in the Jot 101 Jot 101 Soho lost Shaftesbury avenue plan archive recently, journalist D. B. Wyndham Lewis declared:-

Soho died in 1886, somebody should whisper to a Sunday paper minx recently trying to lash herself into a colourful frenzy over “ London’s Montmartre “. Soho was killed and tossed on the refuse dumps at Barking Creek when they drove Shaftesbury Avenue bang through the heart of it, sweeping away all those shady, romantic little courts and by-ways, nooks and corners celebrated in the New Arabian Nights and elsewhere; not to speak of the fabulous little foreign restaurants of the legendary shilling banquets, vin compris.

Out of sympathy for an American friend who came over not long especially to buy cigars in the Rupert Street shop formerly kept by Mr Godden, tobacconist, alias Prince Florizel of Bohemia, playboy (ret.) we pointed out the most likely site in the western half of this uninviting street, but without much conviction. Another historic house on our friend’s list, the one in Denmark Street where the duped and furious Casanova shook Miss Genevieve Charpillon “ like a bundle of rags” ( see the Memoirs), was likewise drawn blank, together with a few ex-Embassies in Soho Square, and our friend was left marvelling at the mental processes of the L.L.C. and the capricious way it sticks up its blue memorial-plaques.

So we took him to County Hall to see—and hear—the L.C.C.

This clipping raises several points. Are we to take seriously the assertion that the ancient bricks and mortar that comprised part of old Soho demolished around 1884 – 6 to make way for the new thoroughfares of Shaftesbury Avenue, Charing Cross Road and Piccadilly Circus, ended up as building waste at Barking Creek ? It is possible, of course, that this material was deemed unsuitable for re-use and instead carried by barges down the Thames to the Creek. But surely it is much more likely that the brick was crushed and used on-site to provide a substratum for the new roads, or used as ballast for new foundations nearby. Or failing that, transported to other sites, for instance in West Hampstead or Cricklewood, for the same purpose. There couldn’t have been a vast amount of building waste in any case. Soho is not a large district of London and only a smallish section was demolished. Continue reading →

The Care of Books

Jot 101 care for books bookworm

Found at Jot HQ the other day—The Private Library—an attractively bound volume of 1897 by the antiquarian A(rthur) L. Humphreys, author of How to Write a Village History, Old Decorative Maps and Charts and the Berkshire Book of Song, Rhyme and Steeple Chime.

Among the various interesting things he has to say about books in general is his section on ‘The Care of Books ‘. These observations may be listed in a number of sub-headings which could appear thus:-

1) Anecdotes by Andrew Lang.

‘…( Sir Walter ) Scott was very careful; he had a number of wooden dummies made, and, when a volume was borrowed, he put the dummy in its place on the shelf, inscribing it with the name of the borrower. He also defended his shelves with locked brazen wires. ‘ Tutus clausus ero’ ( “ I shall be safe if shut up “) , his anagram, was his motto, under a portcullis…Housemaids are seldom bibliophiles. Their favourite plan is to dust the books, and then rearrange them on fancy principles, mostly upside down. One volume of Grote will be put among French novels, another in the centre of a collection of sports, a third in the midst of modern histories…The diversity of sizes, from folio to duodecimo, makes books very difficult to arrange where room is scanty. Modern shelves in most private houses allow no room for folios, which have to lie, like fallen warriors, on their sides.’

2) Heat and dust as enemies of books.

‘Mr Poole , a very experienced American librarian…made an experiment in the upper gallery of a library, and found that—“ while the temperature of the floor was 65* Fahr., that of the upper gallery was found to be 142*. Such a temperature dries up the oil of the leather and burns out its life. Books cannot live where men cannot live.”

In London particularly dust, smoke, and soot get at books and do great damage. To have the top edges gilded is an excellent way to prevent dust getting into the leaves. Books which have roughly trimmed tops harbour dust much more readily, and it is with great difficulty removed from such…Books should not be either swung together

or beaten together. The carpet in a library should not reach the wall, or right to the cases, but should fall short so as to be removed when required to be cleaned…’ Continue reading →

The BBC Christmas Schedules for 1932

Following on from a recent Jot exploring what the BBC were offering as TV entertainment for Christmas 1932 — half an hour from 11 pm onwards showing either a singer crooning into a microphone, female dancers prancing about in special costumes, or a short poem or play – we at Jot HQ thought it might be interesting to examine what listeners could expect to enjoy throughout the rest of the festive season.

First, we should explain that in the ‘thirties the Radio Times, though ostensibly a guide to radio schedules, was also a kind of feature magazine in which along with the programme information could be found other entertainment in the form of short stories or feature articles. In this particular issue we find material by well-known authors which, in most cases, had little or anything to do with the actual programmes. For instance, in this special Christmas number we find a tale by Compton Mackenzie entitled ‘ New Lamps for Old ‘, a new Lord Peter Wimsey story from Dorothy L. Sayers called ‘ The Queen’s Square, a satirical skit by Winifred Holtby entitled ‘ Mr Ming Escapes Christmas’, a memoir from popular travel writer S. P. B. Mais , a comic confection by D. B. Wyndham Lewis and a rather tiresome faux medieval dramatic piece by Eleanor and Herbert Farjeon. There were also a couple of ‘poems ‘and some similarly light features by a handful of lesser known writers.

It must be said that while the writing sometimes fails to impress, the illustrations that accompany it are usually charming in the best traditions of the Radio Times. For instance the cover ( see earlier Jot ) of the magazine is characteristic art work from book illustrator Edward Ardizonne, while some superb illustrations from the gifted illustrator John Austen , who was to become a favourite of the Radio Times, decorated the borders of the Farjeon piece. Other notable illustrators included Mervyn Wilson, Roland Pym and Clixby Watson. It goes without saying too that the adverts ( some full page) are no less captivating, most notably the wonderful back cover colour advert for Bovril by Alfred Lees featuring the ghost of Jacob Marley. Continue reading →

Richard Hoggart and the Culture Wars of the sixties

I just missed being taught by Richard Hoggart at my University, which is a pity, since I was very
impressed by his arguments in The Uses of Literacyand would have enjoyed listening to him discussing some of the ramifications of his book in lectures and seminars. Never mind.

Jot 101 Richard Hoggart pic

Today the hot subjects of the chattering classes are the Culture Wars, especially those being played out on social media. Hardly a day goes by without some academic or TV presenter being arraigned on Twitter for his or her remarks on cancel culture or identity issues. Back in 1961, however, there were different sort of Culture Wars raging in the columns of newspapers and magazines and Hoggart was one of the commentators whose words carried weight.

So Hoggart’s review of Richard Wollheim’s Fabian pamphlet Socialism and Culture (1961) in the New Statesman, though seemingly passé in today’s overheated political climate remains a perceptive commentary on a raging issue of the time which has implications today for the qualities of intellectual debate in newspapers, on social media and the inherent values ( or non-values) of those producing TV. It is also interesting as being, probably, the last critique on cultural life in which those horrible terms ‘ high brow’ and ‘low brow’ are used, in this case, in a derogatory way.

Hoggart takes issue with the crude, unintelligent and lazy discrimination used by some commentators on social culture in the past that identified ‘ lowbrow ‘ culture with that enjoyed by the ‘ lower orders ‘ ( presumably the working class ) and ‘ mass culture ‘ with that enjoyed by the ‘ 80 per cent who have not been to a grammar school’ ( presumably most of the working class plus a section of the lower middle class).

‘ The crucial distinctions to-day are not those between The News of the World and The Observer, between the Third Programme and the Light Programme, between sex-and-violence paperbacks and ‘ egghead ‘ paperbacks, between Bootsie and Snudge and the Alan Taylor lectures, between the Billy Cotton Band Show and the Brains Trust, between the Top Ten and a celebrity concert, or between ‘ skiffle ‘ and chamber music. The distinctions we should be making are those between the News of the World and the Sunday Pictorial, between ‘ skiffle ‘ and the Top Ten; and for ‘ highbrows’ between The Observer and the Sunday Times, or in ‘ egghead ‘paperbacks, between Raymond Williams and Vance Packard.
Continue reading →

A Christmas number of the Radio Times

Next year the BBC will be a hundred years old. To celebrate this momentous anniversary Jot 101 is looking at the Christmas 1932 number of the Radio Times,which can be found in your Jotter’s private collection.

The issue in question is the ‘ Southern edition ‘,which gives a flavour of the Corporation’s output, although it seems to exclude Northern England and Scotland.

Obviously, the festive period was a chance for the BBC to broadcast some of its best wireless programmes, but the magazine is also significant in that it tells us about the latest development of the period, which was Television. In the UK (other countries seem to have been more advanced in this area) the BBC were committed to the Baird system of ‘ low definition ‘ Television. This used a rather primitive method of revolving discs to scan an image of performers standing between two sets of photo-electric cells. Because the apparatus was comparatively rudimentary the result was a distinctly blurred image. The performers also needed to apply heavy make up and adopt a certain costume in order to convey their presence across the ether. Television broadcasting using this basic system began in August 1932, essentially as an experiment. Radio was king at the time and Television was relegated to a mere half hour of ‘ entertainment ‘ tagged on to the end of the day’s programmes at around 11 pm.

The TV fare offered by the BBC for this half hour was pretty basic and usually consisted ( in late 1932 at least) of a short dramatic reading and some singing or dancing. On December 27^th, for instance, viewers were treated to a ‘Christmas Puppet Play ‘ entitled ‘Robinson Crusoe’ in which a certain Nell St John Montague was accompanied by a dancer called Priscilla Sarsfield. On the following evening ‘Donald Peers, Collins and Annette ( a Song and Dance Trio)’ did their thing accompanied by the dancer Rosemary Reynolds. Continue reading →

Some pubs in Festival of Britain London and the same pubs seventy years on

The Prospect of Whitby

1951 Here ‘ we can sit on a balcony built over the edge of the Thames and watch the barges slip down on the tide and the big ships come and go while we drink beer and sample the cooking for which this pub is famed. It’s not what you call smart and elegant, but it is old established and generally crowded.

It has survived and now boasts of being the oldest pub in London ( est. 1520), though there are other contenders. Customers can still sit out over the Thames, though with the Docks having closed, most of the craft are tourist boats going to and from Greenwich. The food is hardly noteworthy, being mainly homely steak and ale pies, chicken pies and roasts. There are few veggie options, according to one customer, but there wouldn’t have been any in 1951!

The Eagle, City Road

The public house, once run by the Salvation Army and immortalised in the ditty:

‘Up and down the City Road,

In and out ‘The Eagle’

That’s the way the money goes.

Pop goes the weasel’.

The pub still dispenses ‘ good cheer , excellent draught ‘Worthington’ beer, to be exact. City Road used to be the centre of the tailoring trade, and towards the end of a week the little tailors often found it necessary to put their pressing iron—or “ weasel”—into pawn with the Salvation Army publicans until pay day. You can see a “ weasel“ on show in the bar to this day.

It’s still there, but rather more glamorous than it was in the fifties. Its website doesn’t mention its colourful past, so one must go to Know Your London for its history, which includes spells as a Music Hall, where Marie Lloyd performed. Earlier on in its life, the Eagle was mentioned by Dickens in his Sketches by Boz.

The George, Borough.

Just down from London Bridge station, with its’ waterfront façade of warehouses, behind which lie rows of mean streets and little homes which suffered heavily in the Nazi blitz bombing of London’, is the Borough. On the left going southwards can be found a ‘historic gem’ of an inn, the George, once ‘a terminus for stage coaches’. As we enter the coachyard we really do jump back a century. It’s not mere a question of the setting …Who is this Sam Wellerish figure, a real ostler ? And bless my heart, there’s Mr Pickwick himself about to take coach to Dingley Dell. All right, it’s no hallucination. We just happen to have arrived when the admirers of Charles Dickens use the coachyard as a stage to act scenes from his works ‘

Continue reading →

Amber and Cameos in post-war London

The Good Time Guide to London is a book of surprises and delights. Earlier Jots have focussedmainly on its evocative descriptions of the now disappeared Docklands and the disreputable world of seedy nightclubs and ‘ dives ‘. But the book is also a handy guide to the world of old books and antiques in post war London. In one antiquarian bookshop ‘ near Davis Street ‘ a friend of the Guide writer picked up a book that interested him and asked the price, ‘thinking that a few guineas would be plenty to pay.” That will be £1,500 “, murmured the assistant, without turning a hair.

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Our friend put that volume down as if he had been shot.’ One wonders what that book could have been that cost the equivalent of a quarter of a million quid today. And which shop might charge such a sum? That incident occurred in Mayfair. Chelsea and Kensington were the places to go for antiques before the trade expanded. In 1951, before the serious antiques arrived in Portobello Road, you were more likely to find the serial killer John Christie ( of nearby Rillington Place ) strolling along in search of victims than a French ormolu clock or a Georgian wine glass.

Unsurprisingly, two at least of the dealers mentioned in the Guide have now disappeared. One is a shop in Bond Street selling ‘ rare old amber ‘. This was the premises of S.J. Phillips, who boasted ( I seem to recall ) that it was the only shop devoted to amber in Britain. Your Jotter must have passed it twenty or more times, but did not go in, which he now regrets. The family that owned it produced the famous and very eccentric pure mathematician Dr Simon P. Norton, subject of that fascinating book, The Genius in My Basement. He lived in Cambridge, and until his death of a heart attack in 2019, was a campaigner against cars and a veteran champion of local transport systems. Wedded to a diet consisting of little else but pasta and oily fish, he worked on huge numbers, having earlier in his life achieved perfect scores in two Maths Olympiads. S.J. Phillips moved a few years ago to smaller premises in Bruton Street, just around the corner from their former Bond Street site, which is now occupied ( I think) by yet another posh frock shop. Continue reading →

The Moon is Up—an anthology for older people

With commentaries by Dorothy Saunders. Jot 101 older Moon is Up cover 001

Anthologies are not rare publications; they have appeared regularly for two hundred years or more. However an anthology of prose and poetry accompanied by commentaries on the material anthologised is pretty unusual in English. The well read Dorothy Saunders first brought out The Moon is Up, an anthology on the subject of old age, as a private publication for her friends and family in 1954. A year later a commercial publisher, Phoenix House, were impressed enough to take it on themselves, and a copy of this book is what we found among the piles of volumes at Jot HQ the other day.

One supposes that the publisher saw in this book something unusual—commentaries that outnumbered in words the actual passages anthologised—and these commentaries, though not particularly intellectually demanding, possess a certain appeal in their commonsensical and occasionally perceptive flavour. Saunders was obviously a philosophical and reflective person—the sort of woman you might turn to for comfort at a moment of personal crisis—a serious illness or injury, perhaps—but her reflections generally lack the wow factor. For instance, responding to passages from Walter de la Mare, Wilfred Scawen Blunt and Gerald Bullett she has this to say:

‘ When we were in love we walked on air, exalted, and that is why we sometimes long to be in love again. With no specific object in mind we desire to live once more in that exquisitely heightened climate of the senses. Young men in battle, I have been told, have known this sharpened view of life…Mere existence gains depth and colour when its tenure is precarious…’

Hardly revelatory! Saunders also seems to be very conventional in her views of work/play.

‘ A man who can truthfully say : My work is my hobby, in an exceedingly lucky fellow , for most people have little choice of the way they earn their daily bread in this machine age, and only a minority have interesting and congenial jobs ‘. Continue reading →

Great Restaurants of the World

No 3: The Colony, New York City

In the days before Michelin starred restaurants there were places where the well heeled went to eat —not only for the food, which was obviously excellent, but perhaps not always the most innovative—and of these the Colony, at the intersection of Madison Avenue and Sixty-First Street in Manhattan, became by 1948, when a biography of it was published by Iles Brody– arguably the best known in the world. Indeed, the owners of the Colony called their eating place ‘the greatest restaurant in the world.’

The Colony began in 1920 as a small and rather seedy and ‘disreputable ‘ bistro that served good food to customers of the night club above it, many of who were men who brought their mistresses. Then in 1922 its two chefs, Glen Cavallero and Hartmann, plus Head Waiter, Cerutti, brought out the owner, one Joe Pani, for $25,000 and set about making the new Colony a swanky resort of the rich and famous. Despite the quality of the food, takings were poor for the first few months. The Colony could not shake off its reputation as a ‘ cat house ‘. However, before too long, without any help from Gordon Ramsay, things began to look up thanks to the presence at one of the tables of famous society hostess Mrs Vanderbilt. The multi-millionaire Vanderbilt, encouraged by his wife, came to see what the fuss was about and later brought his sixteen-year old daughter. Word got about and before too long the Colony became a regular haunt of New York Society. Within three months the daily takings grew from one hundred dollars to ten times that amount. By 1927 – 8 the restaurant cleared over half a million dollars yearly. By this time the Colony had moved to the more ‘ aristocratic ‘ Sixty-first Street, just around the corner.

There were problems though for a high-class restaurant that sold ‘ liquor’ at a time of Prohibition, but the chief barman had a cunning ruse. He kept his wines and spirits in an elevator and when he was alerted to the imminent arrival of Federal agents he simply ran the elevator car to the top story. And when agents disguised as customers enquired pf the liquor that was being served at table they were informed that it was brandy, but of superior quality to the stuff that was habitually confiscated. A few tots freely donated to the same agents convinced them to keep their mouths shut regarding this blatant violation of Federal law. Continue reading →

Oddities of London

Abstracted from The Good Time Guide to London(1951)

The statue of George IV in Trafalgar Square shows the king, without boots or spurs, riding a horse without saddle or stirrups.

True. Incidentally, Sir Francis Chantrey’s bronze of 1829 was originally made for Marble Arch.

On the floor of the entrance hall of the National Gallery is a mosaic of Great Garbo.

True .The Bloomsbury set mosaic artist Boris Anrep was commissioned to provide a number of art works for the Gallery based on specific themes and featuring a number of contemporary figures. On the half-way landing the actress Great Garbo appears as Melpomeme in ‘ The Awakening of the Muses ‘.

On October 23^rd, 1843, a few days before the statue of Nelson was erected, 14 persons ate a rump steak dinner on the top of Nelson’s column

True .Doubtless Punch ( founded 1841) would have had something witty to say about this matter. Continue reading →

Destroyed manuscripts— horror stories to chill the blood

1280px-George_Hamilton_Gordon,_4th_Earl_of_Aberdeen_by_John_Partridge

Found at Jot HQ, the pamphlet published by Winfred A. Meyers ,a well known dealer in autograph letters and manuscripts, containing the talk she gave at the ABA Book Fair at Albemarle Street, London, in 1961 on ‘ How to Collect Autograph Letters and Manuscripts ‘.

Meyers sets off by making a good case for collecting autograph letters from a historical point of view. She argues that a letter or set of letters may help a ‘professional’ scholar piece together episodes in the life of a particular person, possibly solving a puzzle that has perplexed other scholars for years; letters can also immediately connect an amateur with the author of a work in that person’s library. So far, so good. These are obvious benefits of collecting autograph letters. Meyers then comes to the horror stories of letters and historical documents lost, irretrievably damaged through neglect, or deliberately destroyed. What she tells us is indeed a litany of terrible losses:

‘…it is amazing after what has befallen letters and documents in the not so distant past, how much has survived. The rats that gnawed the letters from Elizabeth’s favourite courtier, at Belvoir Castle; the parish registers that turned into solid glue in the wet cellars of another stately home; Somerset House in 1840 sending the Exchequer Accounts of Henry VIII and the Secret Service Accounts of Queen Elizabeth to the waste paper merchant: the old India Office turning out the records of the Indian navy to the paper mills; the French Revolutionaries destroying and dispersing the papers of the Monarchy, and the restored Monarchy destroying the papers of the French Revolutionaries; the British army destroying the White House papers in 1812; the Southern States destroying their records before the advancing Union Army in the Civil War; the Sinn Feiners’ destruction of Dublin Castle records; the salvage drives and bombing of two wars; the mouldering records in a pigsty at Arundel Castle; the toy-drum and lampshade-makers’ part; Cassandra Austen tearing up the letters of her sister Jane, and George Washington’s widow tearing up all George’s letters to her and a terrible story I just heard of a collection of Emily and Charlotte Bronte letters that were torn up only last week…’

Continue reading →

Some nightclubs and ‘dives ‘ of post-war London

Jot 101 Night club dancing pic

We at Jot HQ know our audience. We know, for instance, that Jots on long-departed restaurants and pubs in London are popular. Presumably, Jots on seedy night clubs and ‘ dives ‘ ( do people still use this word to describe such resorts ?) will also prove popular. People are certainly curious about the London drug culture of yesteryear. They are aware that drugs like opium and cocaine have been around, thought not always easily available, for two centuries or more. They know that S. T. Coleridge and Thomas de Quincey were slaves to laudanum and that Sherlock Holmes was a cocaine addict. They are perhaps not so sure about the history of marijuana consumption in the UK before it became the drug of choice among hippies in the swinging sixties.. One of the most interesting sides of The Good Time Guide to Londonis the candour with which the more disreputable and sleazy pleasures of the flesh— from sex , (the while slave trade and prostitution)— to hard drinking and drug taking are discussed in 1951. This is such a contrast to a guide like Dining Out in London, published in the same year, which merely covers restaurants. In fact, The Good Time Guide to Londonseems to revel in the seamier side of London.

Take the general introduction to the section on night clubs:

‘…In theory all the clubs are for the use only of members and their guests. Some of them stick to this rule, and it isn’t easy to get in without preparation ( though nothing, of course, is impossible). Others are, shall we say, less insistent on the letter of the law. A day ticket is produced from somewhere, or the secretary may discover you are a life-long friend of his…The dives vary a great deal. Some have specialised clienteles—artists, coloured folk, poets or crooks. Some play be-bop all night; others prefer poker. A sniff of marijuana. Not all of them places to go with your wife. Whatever happens, you’ve been warned !’

The writer then proceeds to make notes on individual night clubs, which we shall discuss under various headings:

The Pigalle

‘…just opened in Piccadilly, offers the disturbing attraction of 40 pretty girls, properly dressed to be undressed, accompanied by a really lavish stage show. You can dance between times, and enjoy yourself for the remarkable small sum of 17/6 which you pay for your dinner…Original idea was provided, it is said, by the world famous Tabarin in Montmartre…’

The Society

Sited in Jermyn Street ‘…with its tiny dance floor and its beautifully panelled walls, ( it) is an excellent rendezvous if you are in the mood to appreciate an intimate, relaxed, unmistakably French atmosphere. Here the gypsies will leave their stand to sing just for you; here the rumba-drums mix with the ripple of whispered conversations and subdued laughter…’ Continue reading →

The Ionesco/Tynan controversy of 1958

Jot 101 Ionesco pic

Found among the papers of the academic and writer Joseph O’Donoghue are some press clippings covering the Ionesco/Tynan controversy of 1958. In the history of British drama the debate between the supporters of Eugene Ionesco ( above), Romanian pioneer of the ‘ Theatre of the Absurd ‘on one side, and the defenders of the ‘ realist ‘ theatre proponent , Kenneth Tynan, on the other, that took place in the Arts pages of the Observerin June and July 1958, remains one of the more significant literary debates of the twentieth century, perhaps only rivalled by the Leavis—Snow altercation a few years later.

Essentially, Ionesco, the author of such classic ‘ absurdist’ pieces as ‘ The Bald Prima Donna ‘ and ‘ The Chairs’, argued that theatre should have nothing to do with the social and political issues that concerned the average man in the street. Such writers as Sartre, Osborne, Miller and Brecht were representatives of a ‘ left-wing conformism ‘ and offered nothing ‘ that one does not know already through books and political speeches ‘. Theatre should in contrast promote the artist’s aesthetic and philosophical perspectives, particularly as they reflected the absurdity and futility of existence. The critic should only be concerned with how successful the artist’s methods were in conveying his ideas to the audience.

Tynan’s vision of the theatre was demonstrably opposed to that of Ionesco. To him a play was only successful as art if it effectively reflected the social and political issues of the time. A play should not be an abstract philosophical debate on the absurdity of existence, but should engage with the audience’s experience of everyday life. To Tynan, politics was part of life in which ‘ even buying a packet of cigarettes was a political act ‘. He accused Ionesco of a sort of solipsism in which distortions of reality ( as in Cubism ) become more valid and important than ‘ the external world it is their proper function to interpret’. Continue reading →