The Richest Man in the World

We know who the richest man in the word is today. A few years ago, before he gave away most of his money it was William Gates Jr. Back in the sixties it was Paul Getty. Today, it is Mr Elon Musk, But who was the richest man in the world back in 1947. Rockefeller, Howard Hughes ?  They were extremely rich, but not as rich as the Nizam of Hyderabad, otherwise known as Mir Osman Ali Khan.

In 1947, just months before India gained its independence, the Nizam ( or ruler) of India’s largest state ( the size of England and Scotland combined and heir of the great Mogul empire which once bestrode India ), was, according to Kenneth Mills of Today ( Photo World), who obtained an audience with the great man , worth £500m. Today that would be worth around $210.8bn.Actually, at the time of this meeting, no-one was quite sure how wealthy the Nizam was. Let Mr Mills explain:

The value of his fortune increases from hour to hour, and investigators find caches of precious metals and jewels tucked away and forgotten, which upsets all calculations. Experts from Britain were once called in and after several months of counting they failed to agree. Finally, they settled on five hundred million pounds—with a hundred million either way as a safety margin. 

The enormous Falakuma Palace, official residence of the Nizam, is a treasure house. British airmen recall the time when all the flat roofs of the royal compound shimmered with millions of pearls, when the Nizam thought they might lose their lustre and ordered an airing. The rooms of the Palace are choc-a bloc with gold plate and cases full of jewels. There is the solid gold plate service for 150 people. There is the Jacobs diamond, cut to the shape of a camel, one of the largest diamonds in the world, used as a paperweight by the Nizam; the egg-diamonds set egg-like, not only in shape but in size; the largest emerald collection known; and all along the walls gold is stacked, in bars, in coins, and large keg-shaped blocks. Once, when the Nizam had his servants take down some tapestries of which he had tired, scores of boxes filled with gold coins were found behind them.

But the ruler of Hyderabad no longer lives in his great palace…(but in) King Kothi, his private residence…King Kothi is a rambling collection of about a dozen ill-assorted buildings. A high wall surrounds the residence and there are guards from the Nizam’s own 100,000 strong army continuously on patrol. Inside is shabbiness cheek-by jowl with the inevitable fairy-story wealth. In one of the yards stands a gaudy Rolls-Royce, which some British statesman presented to the Nizam at his accession. It has been rusting for years. The royal elephants contentedly munch hay day after day, year after year. They are never used. For the Nizan drives in an ancient Ford tourer or uses an old Humber.

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Some of the best things ever said

Extracts from The 637 best things anybody ever said ( 1982) by Robert Byrne.

 Everyone should believe in something; I believe I will have another drink.  

Unknown.

The trouble with born-again Christians is that they are an even bigger pain the second time around.

Herb Caen.

I have a new philosophy. I’m only going to dread one day at a time.

Charles Schulz

Life is what happens when you are making other plans

John Lennon

I’m not afraid to die. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

Woody Allen

The best way to get praise is to die

Italian proverb

There is no such thing as inner peace. There is only nervousness and death.

Fran Liebowitz

For three days after death hair and fingernails continue to grow but phone calls taper off

Johnny Carson

One murder makes a villain, millions a hero

Beilby Porteus

There is no money in poetry, but then there is no poetry in money, either

Robert Graves

The only reason some people get lost in thought is because it’s unfamiliar territory

Paul Fix

Only the mediocre are always at their best

Jean Giraudoux

I’m going to speak my mind because I have nothing to lose

S. I. Hayakawa

I live in the crown of jollity, not so much to enjoy company as to shun myself

Samuel Johnson.

For every ten jokes thou hast got an hundred enemies

Laurence Sterne

Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow

Oscar Wilde

He who laughs, lasts

Mary Pettibone Poole (c 1938)

The affair between Margot Asquith and Margo Asquith will live as one of the prettiest love stories in all literature.

Dorothy Parker (in a review of a book by Margot Asquith.)

Like all self-made men he worships his creator

Unknown

Egotist: A person more interested in himself than in me.

Ambrose Bierce

A narcissist is someone better looking than you are

Gore Vidal

Don’t be humble. You’re not that great

Golda Meir

Somewhere on this globe, every ten seconds, there is a woman giving birth to a child. She must be found and stopped.

Sam Levenson

A vegetarian is a person who won’t eat anything that can have children

David Brenner

Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are their own.

Aristotle

The reason grandparents and grandchildren get along so well is that they have a common enemy

Sam Levenson

Sex drive; a physical craving that begins in adolescence and ends at marriage..

Robert Byrne

Last time I tried to make love to my wife nothing was happening, so I said to her “ What’s the matter, you can’t think of anybody either ?”

Rodney Dangerfield

The only really indecent people are the chaste

J. K. Huysmans

I hate women because they always know where things are

James Thurber

The heaviest object in the world is the body of the women you have ceased to love

Marquis de Luc de Clapiers Vauvenargues

A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her.

Oscar Wilde

It is better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all

Samuel Butler.

Marriage is not a word but a sentence

Unknown

I tended to place my wife under a pedestal

Woody Allen

What scares me about divorce is that my children might put me in a home for unwed mothers

Teressa Skelton.

It is better to be a coward for a minute than be dead for the rest of your life 

Irish proverb.

Nobody has bet enough on a winning horse

Overheard at a track by Richard Sasuly

There is nothing so absurd but some philosopher has said it

Cicero

A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.

George Bernard Shaw

A piano is a piano is a piano–Gertrude Steinway

Unknown

Every journalist has a novel in him, which is an excellent place for it.

Russell Lynes

Every novel should have a beginning, a muddle and an end

Peter de Vries

Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today

Herman Wouk

Any ordinary man can…surround himself with two thousand books…and thenceforward have at least one place in the world in which it is possible to be happy

Augustine Birrell.

Studying literature at Harvard is like learning about women at the Mayo Clinic.

Roy Blount jun.

‘Twas a woman who drove me to drink, and I never had the courtesy to thank her for it.

W. C. Fields

I drink to make other people more interesting

George Jean Nathan.

I’d rather have a free bottle in front of me than a prefrontal lobotomy

Unknown

I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me.

Hunter S. Thompson

To be continued.

R. M. Healey

Contradictory quotations—for versus against ( arranged alphabetically)

[Above Martha Graham and Charles Baudelaire]

ACTORS AND ACTING

For

Acting is the expression of a neurotic impulse

Marlon Brando

Against

The better the actor the more stupid he is

Truman Capote

I am not paid to think

Clark Gable

AMERICA

For

A thousand years hence, perhaps in less, America may be what Europe is now…the noblest work of human wisdom, the grand scene of human glory.

Thomas Paine

Against

The organisation of American society is an interlocking system of semi-monopolies notoriously venal, an electorate notoriously unenlightened, misled by mass- media notoriously phony.

Paul Goodman, The Community of Scholars |(1962) 

The difference between Los Angeles and yoghurt is that yoghurt has real culture

Tom Taussik, Legless in Gaza ( 1982).

The worse country to be poor in is America.

Arnold Toynbee

ANIMALS

For

It is easy to understand why the rabble dislike cats

Baudelaire, Mon coeur mis a nu (1887)

People with insufficient personalities are fond of cats. These people adore being ignored.

Henry Morgan

Against

I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who haven’t got the guts to bite people themselves.

August Strindberg, A Madman’s Diary.

ARCHITECTURE

For

Less is more

Mies van de Rohe

Against

Less is only more when more is no good

Frank Lloyd Wright, The Future of Architecture ( 1953)

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Now and Then

This was a literary magazine published sporadically by Jonathan Cape to promote their own new books.

The idea of such a magazine is unusual, to say the least. Your Jotter is not familiar with any other periodical of this type ( though doubtless there must be one or two) , and it is certainly sneaky to design a magazine to look almost exactly like an independent  literary review, rather than a book promotion. The name of the publisher does appear on the cover of the Winter 1936 issue, which we found in our archive at Jot HQ, and in the case of The Book of Margery Kempe, the name ‘ Jonathan Cape’ appears under the blurb in an advertising panel in this issue , but in every other advert in the magazine  the publisher’s name is absent, as indeed it is in every review of the books. This is surely misleading to everyone reading the magazine except those who were familiar with it and its aims. A casual reader picking up  a copy of Now and Then from a bookstall back in 1936 would conclude that here was yet another literary review and only on close inspection would he or she perhaps be suspicious of its independence. The inclusion of the words ‘Jonathan Cape’ on every advert and in every review would have immediately given the game away. However, any reader sufficiently impressed by a review to seek out the books in a store might easily be offended at being taken in by a blatant piece of puffery. I wonder if Jonathan Cape lost any customers this way. Few would have expected a reputable and long established publisher, such as John Murray, to indulge in such chicanery. But the comparatively recently founded Jonathan Cape, which had begun in 1921, was evidently keen to boost its sales.  

The trick, which  probably began in the company’s marketing department, originated with the first issue of Now and Then in the 1920s, but was further enhanced in the ‘thirties when it adopted the art deco cover style of  Geoffrey Grigson’s New Verse, with its trendy sans serif font. Up to this point Now and Then had used the conventional roman font for its cover. However, the main text and back cover remained resolutely Roman throughout its existence. 

To their credit, the people at Jonathan Cape did not choose many of their own authors as reviewers. In this Winter 1936 issue, only Muriel Stuart could be classed as such. Most of the others were under fifty, although there were few older , well-known authors , such as Winston Churchill, William Beach Thomas  and Grant Richards.  Most were well known literary figures , although one or two, such as short story writer and novelist L. A. Pavey, James Curtis, a screenwriter and novelist, best known for ‘They Drive by Night’, and Muriel Stuart, a poet and writer on gardening, were less eminent.

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Autograph collecting (some notes)

There is a story behind every autograph. Idly fossicking about online I have retrieved a few such stories and added some of my own. It needs courage to be an autograph hound so much respect to those who have hunted down celebs and obtained signatures. The best collection I ever bought (about 2000+ inc Walt Disney, Ian Fleming, Bogart and Bacall, the Dalai Lama, Frankie Lyman (and the Teenagers) Tony Hancock and Lester Piggot) was from a very minor celebrity who was able to get into receptions and first nights etc., He had written jokes for the likes of Bob Monkhouse. The greatest groupies and name droppers are often slightly famous themselves and a minor name will often have accumulated a few major names. The most common type of autograph story usually ends ‘and he was a really nice guy…we had a good chat’. It seems to come as a surprise that celebrities are not monsters, although great scorn is reserved for those who refuse autographs. A star cannot disappoint his fans. Graham Greene had a good line when refusing to autograph a book–something along the lines of ” I would like to but it would devalue those I have already done and I don’t want that to happen, sorry.’

Rudyard Kipling received a note from a fan saying ‘…I hear you get paid $5 for every word you write. Enclosed is $5, please send me one word. Kipling replied with the one word “Thanks.” It is hard to imagine now how besieged Kipling was by autograph collectors–in this age only JK Rowling comes near to his fame.

George Bernard Shaw was more generous (and wittier). To fans writing to ask for his autograph he would often reply “Certainly not! George Bernard Shaw.”

The painter Utrillo could, after a few free drinks. be induced to sign canvasses that he had not painted. Caveat emptor!

Damien Hirst sometimes signs things (books, tee shirts) as David Hockney. They still have value as he is known to do this and, in its way, it is quite witty.

James Ellroy (above) signed every one of 65,000 first-edition copies of his 1996 memoir My Dark Places. You can buy a copy on ABE for $5, where there are over 180 signed copies for sale with a few over $100. As the signing progressed his signature degenerated to an unreadable, minimalist scrawl. One optimistic dude manages to make a virtue of this: “…wildly scrawled signature, as frantic and vigorous as the author’s crackling prose. £45”

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More gems from Scorn with Extra Bile edited by Matthew Parris (1998)

Pop music

This man has child-bearing lips

Joan Rivers on Mick Jagger

You have Van Gogh’s ear for music

Billy Wilder on Cliff Osmond

Wood Green shopping centre has been committed to vinyl

New Musical Express on the pop group Five Star

Bambi with testosterone

Owen Gleiberman on Prince in Entertainment Weekly.

Television and movies

A vacuum with nipples

Otto Preminger on Marilyn Monroe

It’s like kissing Hitler

Tony Curtin on kissing Marilyn Monroe

The face to launch a thousand dredgers

Jack de Manio on Glenda Jackson in Women in Love

As wholesome as a bowl of cornflakes, and at least as sexy.

Dwight Macdonald on Doris Day

This was Doris Day’s first picture; before she became a virgin

Oscar Levant on Doris Day in Romance on the High Seas.

A face unclouded by thought

Lillian Hellman on Norma Shearer

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Association copies

Hedda Hopper

Having pre-booked an event on ‘ association copies ‘ at a book fair, not knowing exactly what this would entail, I was looking forward to a scholarly disquisition on the subject ranging over the centuries, from the sixteenth to the twentieth. Perhaps I’d be shown association copies containing comments and marginalia by genuinely important figures such as Charles Darwin or Samuel Johnson, or perhaps J.M.W Turner or Oscar Wilde. So imagine my disappointment when I discovered that the event would consist of one of the dealers visiting three of the stalls at the Fair, including his own, and picking out a book from each of the stalls  to illustrate the three type of ‘association’ copies. O, well, I thought, the three young people who had also booked looked excited by the prospect, so perhaps I’d wait to see what might happen.

The first type of association copy, we were told, was when a book bore the signature of a famous person, plain and simple. No presentation and no annotations, just the signature on a flyleaf, or whatever. In this case it was the signature of the future George V on a book about the monarchy. So far, so boring. Our guide moved on .The next type of association copy, we were told, was one containing an inscription  presented by someone associated with the book in question . In this case it was the illustrator Arthur Rackham inscribing a book he had illustrated to someone close to him. I can’t remember who this was. The third and last type, and in theory, the most appealing, was a book containing a comment of great interest by its author on someone to whom it had been presented. In this case it turned out to be a very barbed comment by the bitchy Republican showbiz ‘ celebrity gossip’ and failed actress  Hedda Hopper ( aka Elda Furry ) on her arch enemy, the  liberally-minded  Democrat and gifted actress Olivia de Havilland .I cannot recall the actual words used by Mrs Hopper, but they undoubtedly elevated the art of sarcasm to a new level of bitchiness. Unlike the other two association copies, I did find this particular one appealing, in a rather perverse way, but was less impressed by the four figure price attached to it, especially as both protagonists are rather forgotten figures today.  

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Gilbert Harding’s Treasury of Insult

Gilbert Harding

When we last discussed the late great broadcasting personality Gilbert Harding we focused on how his studied rudeness was in most cases utterly defensible. He ensured that those people who annoyed him and were duly given the treatment they deserved, were the same kind of people that were likely to annoy most other thinking people. Thus he became a sort of hero to many who could only fantasise about emulating  Harding’s rudeness. 

There is a general perception today that Harding  reserved this brutal honesty for TV and radio appearances, but like so many ‘ celebrities ‘ of our own times, he added to his earnings by bringing out books that encapsulated the Harding personality. In a previous Jot we looked at a book of his musings on the inanities of everyday life. This time we are going to pick some of the best bits from Harding’s Treasury of Insult (1953), which is not so much an anthology of invective as  a distinctly superior miscellany of quotations and anecdotes from the sixteenth century to the nineteen  fifties. .

Some of the extracts are prefaced by a piece of Harding scorn. Others need no such introduction. We will begin with what we now call the ‘ hospitality sector’. Harding’s love of dining out and his attraction to pubs was almost wholly responsible for his corpulence, which led to his suddenly death in a taxi aged just 54 ?

We could start with Dr Tobias Smollett, the eighteenth century novelist:

‘The bread I eat in London is a deleterious paste, mixed up with chalk, alum and bone ashes; insipid to the taste and destructive to the constitution. The good people are not ignorant of this adulteration; but they prefer it to wholesome bread because it  is whiter than the meal of corn; thus they sacrifice their taste and their health, and the lives of their tender infants to a most absurd gratification…I shall conclude this catalogue of London dainties, with that table-beer, guiltless of hops and malt, vapid and nauseous; much fitter to facilitate the operation of a vomit, than to quench thirst and promote digestion…’

As Smollett pointed out, shoppers and diners knew about adulteration, but it took a German chemist, Dr Frederic Accum, to tell the whole shocking story in his classic expose, Death in the Pot (1820). Nowadays, of course, we much prefer wholemeal bread to the white loaves made by the infamous Chorleywood process that gave us ‘Mother’s Pride ‘, which though it contained none of the deleterious additives detailed by Smollett and Accum, doubtless tasted little better than eighteenth century white bread. 

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John Langdon-Davies: poet, Conscientous Objector, pro-Anarchist (1897 – 19 71)

The Complete Self-Educator (nd. but c1939), a copy of which we found in the archives at Jot HQ the other day,  was one of those doorstep self-help books that Odhams brought out in the late thirties. We have already discussed various aspects of a companion volume in previous Jots. The Complete Self-Educator, however, is a different kind of multi-author book altogether and a much more challenging one. It sought to give the average intelligent reader a grounding in the principles of a number of important academic disciplines, including biology, medicine, physics, chemistry, economics, psychology, philosophy and logic.

Some of the writers were prominent experts in their field—people like Professor Erich Roll( psychology) and Max Black ( philosophy). Others, like Stephen Swingler, who later become a Labour minister, were relative newcomers who had published work in areas not altogether related to the subjects on which they were invited to write. One of these tyros was John Langdon- Davies, who had published books on Spain and women in society, but whose topic for the Complete Self- Educator was ‘The English Common People’.

Among the rather conventional fellow contributors Langdon-Davies stood out as a bit of a maverick. Born in Zululand, when it was part of South Africa, he came to England as a young boy and went on to attend Tonbridge School, which he hated. He was not, it must be said, officer cadet material. When he was called up in 1917 he declared himself a Conscientious Objector and as such served a short prison sentence. Declared unfit for military service, he lost two of the three scholarships for St John’s College Cambridge that he had gained at school. At Cambridge he tried to live off the remaining scholarship, but was obliged to abandon his studies. As a result, he switched his attention to the fields of archaeology and anthropology and ended up with diplomas in these disciplines. While an undergraduate Langdon-Davies did, however, manage to publish a volume of poems, The Dream Splendid, which received some favourable reviews. 

After the War Langdon-Davies embraced leftish politics, promoting the cause of women with his book A Short History of Women and embracing the anarchist cause in the Spanish Civil War with Behind the Spanish Barricades. His opposition to Nazism, fascism and ‘scientific racism’ can be gleaned from the opening paragraph of ‘The Story of the Common People’.

‘…English history is what it is because geography and geology made England what it is. We can go further than this, and say that geography and geology have made the Englishman himself what he is…’

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The Complete Philanderer

Jot 101 Rex Stout picPart one

We have seen in a recent Jot how that great Sci-Fi pioneer and social satirist, Philip Wylie, was at base a misogynist. Here is the detective writer  Rex Stout (1886 – 1975) writing in the same Bedroom Companion offering tips on how a young tyro amorist could  achieve a series of notches on his bedpost.

Stout divides his advice into four categories: Equipment, Method, Raw Material, and Keeping Score.

‘As for equipment, the first rule is, travel light. Keeping your baggage at a minimum increases your mobility, helps to maintain financial solvency, and prevents your abanding valuable stores and ammunition to the enemy in case of emergency evacuation…I knew one fellow, a Lithuanian who operated on the Grand Street sector, otherwise a sound technician, who went so far as to advocate carrying one’s own mattress….and a man out west somewhere ( I never met him) who suggested an air mattress was obviously an impractical dreamer. Had he ever, I wonder, outraged his lungs—indeed his entire diaphragm—by inflating an air mattress to the required buoyancy? If he had, what was he good for then? He might reply that he also carried an automobile tire pump. I retort, what are we, gallants or garage mechanics?.

After stipulating the quality and colour of the amorist’s clothing ( a suit in grey, a shirt of whatever colour  and shoe laces that don’t have food spilt on them) Stout then suggests that no hat be born, though if the wearer does take one it must on no account bear the amorist’s initials. Rings are also strictly forbidden. Continue reading →

Roy Miles – the Man who introduced Russian Paintings to the West

Jot 101 roy Miles

Discovered in a July 1991 copy of Boardroom Magazine, a glossy brochure covering ‘News, Views & a Taste of the Good Life ‘ is a large feature on the celebrity art dealer Roy Miles, then at the height of his fame ( or notoriety ).

Interleaved with the profile of Miles by one Alison Becket are a number of promotional items, including an invitation to attend Mr Miles’s ‘ Russian Summer Show ‘ at his gallery in Bruton Street, Mayfair, a mocked up page from the Mail on Sunday of October 1990 advertising a show by the Russian expressionist painter Sergei Chepik and other reproduced pages from the Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Times promoting Chepik and highlighting the fact that such famous people as Mrs Thatcher ( who was given a painting by Chepik) and Eddy Shah ( remember him?) had come to see works by the ‘ Russian genius’.

On the front cover of the magazine we are shown a photograph by Lord Snowdon no less of Mr Miles resplendent in dark suit, spotted tie and slicked back hair staring straight at the camera. Above this image we find the description that firmly nailed the dealer in the eyes of a certain type of wealthy art collector as ‘the Man Who Introduced Russian Paintings to the West ‘. By ‘ Russian Paintings ‘ of course, we are not talking about Malevich, Tatlin and the Suprematists. They would not have appealed at all to the former Prime Minister whose favourite poem was ‘Elegy in a Country Churchyard’, and probably not to Mr Miles’s other clientele. No, the Russian paintings that Miles brought over to the UK were firstly Soviet Social Realism and then as a total contrast, the subversive and sometimes nightmarish depictions of torture and oppression that Chepik began painting as an exile in Paris from 1988 as his protest towards the Soviet regime.

Born in 1935 to a prosperous , art-loving middle-class family in Liverpool, he appreciated art and indeed won a prize for a watercolour aged ten. At the same time he was making money by selling Dinky Toys to his fellow schoolboys. He had arrived in London by the late fifties and for a short time worked for an antique dealer. Continue reading →

More anecdotes of famous writers and two others

Jot 101 howlers pic of Cecil Hunt

( extracted from Fun with the Famous by H. Cecil Hunt (1928)

 

Sir James Barrie

 When asked to give his recipe for successful writing, his  reply was typical of the man, and, of course, it was scribbled on a crumpled sheet of tobacco wrapping:

 

Journalism: 2 pipes      = 1 hour

2 hours      = 1 idea

1 idea        = 3 paragraphs

3 pars         = I leader.

 

Fiction:      8 pipes         = 1 ounce

7 ounces       = 1 week

2 weeks        = 1 chapter

20 chapters   = 1 nib

2 nibs            = I novel

 

Winston Churchill (the novelist)

 

Mr Churchill has a namesake, an American novelist who is his senior by a few years. It is said that when the American writer first published a novel he received a notes from the British Winston Churchill protesting against the unwarranted use of his distinguished and uncommon name. To this protest came this amusing reply:

“Dear Sir, How interesting ! Is there really another Winston Churchill ? Yours truly, Winston Churchill.”

 

Dr Samuel Johnson

 

A characteristic but little known Johnson story must be included, because Johnson means so much in British humour. At a dinner party in London the little man held the table by his brilliant talk and ready wit. During a pause in the conversation he took a rather generous mouthful of hot potato, which he rapidly returned to his plate by the quickest, if not the most polite method. Without a moment’s hesitation he looked round at the circle of somewhat startled countenances, and said quite calmly:

“A fool would have swallowed that “. Continue reading →

 Some celebs of thirty years ago

Things you didn’t know, or perhaps had forgotten, about people once in the news, Jot 101 Tatler cover 001and perhaps still newsworthy, according to Tatler’s Thousand  Most Socially Significant People in 1992.

Michael Portillo ( b 1953)

Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Portillo is occasionally tipped to become Prime Minister. Shrewd, direct, with, as Private Eye puts it, the eyes of an assassin, lips of a tyrant, he gets his hair cut and we all have to read about it. His recreational interests include opera, Trollope and the Michelin Guide, said to be his Bible. He was part of the Omega project ( a blueprint of right wing policy) and backed a bill for hanging.

 

Private Eye doesn’t seem interested in him, now that he has abandoned active politics. Today he earns a living by going on train journeys around the UK and Europe clutching his trusty Bradshaw and a Baedeker. An avuncular figure who looks as if he might be the kind of chap you’d have a pint (or glass of red) with down the pub. One wonders as if he is still pro-hanging. The subject hasn’t yet come up, though while touring Spain he did dilate on the life of his father, a revolutionary during the Spanish Civil War.

Timothy Clifford, former Director of the Scottish National Gallery (b 1946)

‘Dynamic fogey who looks like an arty merchant banker. Rosy-cheeked and Regency clad, he has a ridiculously posh voice and is very well-connected.’ 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 →

Conscious and unconscious erotica

Mark twain pic

Some writers knowingly produced erotica; others unknowingly published smutty material. Here are a few examples

Conscious

Pietro Aretino (1492 – 1556), Sonnetti Lussuriosi(1524)

The Sonnetti Lussuriosiof this poet, gossip and writer of witty plays was a collection of verses and erotic drawings that, like the Kama Sutra, demonstrated positions for sexual intercourse. Though the book proved very popular, it earned the wrath of the Pope, an erstwhile patron of Aretino, along with Emperor Charles V. Aretino lost his papal patronage, but he also was taken to task by the Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral, Dr John Donne, who objected that some of the sexual positions were missing.

Norman Douglas (1868 – 1952), Some Limericks(1928)

The author of Old Calabria and South Wind, also compiled Venus in the Kitchen, a collection of aphrodisiac recipes, and the privately printed Some Limericks. The latter, which has been described as ‘ irreverent, scatological and erotic ‘ , was accompanied by ‘ scholarly ‘ notes that sent up the sort of po-faced critical apparatus so beloved of Ph D candidates.

W S. Gilbert ( 1836-1911) and Arthur Sullivan ( 1842 – 1900) . ‘ The Sod’s Opera’.

The humorous double act that gave us so many wonderful operettas also composed The Sod’s Opera , among the characters of which are Count Tostoff and the Brothers Bollox ( a pair of hangers on) and Scrotum, a wrinkled old retainer. Oddly, there are no records of a public performance, though it would be refreshing if some village Opera society put on their version of it.

 

Anais Nin ( 1903 -77 ) The Delta of Venus.

The friend of pornographer Henry Miller got together with Nin and an army of hard up writers to form a sort of porn factory which turned out several erotic works, some commissioned by an anonymous tycoon. Ms Nin was also a novelist and a prolific diarist.

Felix Salten aka Siegmund Salzmann ( 1869 – 1949) Josefine Mutzenbacher.

The apparently wholesome author of Bambi(1929), a children’s story which recounted the struggle of an orphaned deer, which was later immortalized by Walt Disney, also penned an extremely well received erotic novel that painted a very accurate picture of  the life of a prostitute among the petit bourgeoisie in fin de siecleVienna. Today it is regarded as equal in status in the German-speaking word to our own Fanny Hill. Continue reading →

I once met…Craig Brown

Jot 101 Craig Brown pic 001Around 2002 I was interviewing celebs on their book collection for Book and Magazine Collector while also researching the life of acclaimed poet and critic Geoffrey Grigson. One day I read an interview with the famous parodist Craig Brown, whose brilliant contributions to  Private Eye  had always had me in stitches. Judging from the interview, Brown’s library was dominated by biographies and especially memoirs of living figures in all fields, but with an emphasis on show biz. Interviewing him, I felt, would be a change from talking to rather dour politicians and academics on their first editions. And so it turned out.

 

I discovered that at the time he lived in north Wilts, but when I saw the address I gasped. ‘Broad Town Farmhouse ‘,I read, open mouthed. He only lived in the house that Geoffrey Grigson had bought back in 1945 and where he had died forty years later. I knew that house; I had met Grigson on his death bed in October 1985, just a few weeks before he had died ( see earlier ‘ The Day I Met ‘ on Jane Grigson).

 

I seemed to remember that I got to Broad Town around midday by bus from Swindon. Brown greeted me and looked exactly like the photographs of him —a huge head atop a slim, slight frame. A fitting look for a mischievous gnome of a satirist. When we began to explore his collection he told me that it was not composed of rare tomes bound in leather, but was essentially a working library of mainly twentieth century books that he constantly turned to for inspiration when assembling his parodies. He revealed that his ‘ Diary ‘ pieces for Private Eyewere built around actual quotations from the memoirs of celebs to which he added his own parodic take on their writing style and the personalities they projected in the media. It was obviously a winning formula for such a topical magazine as Private Eye. Perhaps I should have asked him if he was also drawn to parodying authors from the past—literary figures especially—but somehow it seemed churlish to question whether he was equally adept at ridiculing Wordsworth or Dr Johnson.

 

Brown’s shelves  certainly groaned with  memoirs—of current novelist, poets, actors, footballers, TV stars and politicians—but he was also proud of his small collection of self-help books, including titles on cookery by celebs, and works on etiquette. He was particularly fond of a guide to proper conduct which provided advice on what to do if one of your dinner guests dropped dead at the table. Continue reading →

The Monocle Club

 

Jot 101 SPB Mais and The Monocle Club 1950s pic

Wearing a monocle is out of fashion at the moment, though, like the wearing of waistcoats, the trend could make a comeback. The idea of a single lens that could correct defective sight in one eye began with the late eighteenth century quizzing glass; in the late nineteenth century this developed into the monocle that we know today. The list of men and women who over the years wore monocles is short, though it includes some big or biggish names. Comparatively recently we have seen the TV astronomer Sir Patrick Moore, boxer Chris Eubank and wine-lover Johnnie Cradock wear them, but when they were more fashionable we find that the list of wearers includes poet W. B. Yeats, film directors Fritz Lang and Erich von Stroheim, Surrealist Tristram Tzara, Kaiser Wilhelm, Joseph Chamberlain, and earlier in the nineteenth century, Dr Karl Marx and Lord Tennyson. Lesbians who wore monocles, possibly for a certain effect, include Una Lady Troubridge and novelist Radclyffe Hall.

 

One of the wearers who featured in a list drawn up by the travel writer and broadcaster S.P.B. Mais on a page torn out of a pocket diary for 7thJuly 1936, that we at Jot HQ discovered interleaved in a copy of The Toast by the Sette of Odd Volumes ‘Verbalist ‘, Harold Williams, was actor Leslie Banks, who possibly used a monocle to disguise a serious injury to his eye socket caused by a bomb during the First World War. Mais’ list was headed ‘The Monocle Club ‘.  How it got into Williams’ booklet is not known, but it is likely that Mais owned this item and was inspired by the aims of the Sette of Odd Volumes, which was essentially a dining  club composed of like-minded members, to set up something similar for all those who happened to wear monocles. It is also possible that this project never got off the ground, for the Internet, which tells us much about the all-lesbian Monocle night club in ‘ twenties Paris, remains silent regarding what the traditionalist Mais probably envisaged as an all-male outfit. We just don’t know.

 

Of the eleven names drawn up by Mais, only seven are legible; these are David Jamieson, Mais himself, actors Laidman Brown and  Leslie Banks, Grant Richards, Eddie Marsh, and James Agate . To the names of a gentleman whose surname was Moir Mais has added that he was president of the Sette of Odd Volumes, which adds credence to the theory that Mais intended this club to be the model for the Monocle Club. Continue reading →

Patience Strong

Jot 101 Patience Strong Calendat pic 001Found amongst a pile of books at Jot HQ, the pocket-sized ‘Patience Strong ‘Quiet Corner ‘calendar for 1955 with its sepia photographs of ‘ picturesque ‘ spots in England. We had almost forgotten that publishers still used sepia photographs as late as this, but then remembered the lifeless and dispiriting photographs of landscapes and empty streets in Arthur Mee’s ‘King’s England’ series of county guide books. No wonder the county   guides  published by Shell from 1934 were regarded as such a welcome change from these  dreary volumes. Mee’s totally predictable descriptions of towns and villages in each county were matched by Strong’s trite and cliché-ridden verse formatted as prose in her calendar and exemplified  in ‘ The Sunlit Way ‘which accompanied a traffic-free photo of a ‘ quiet corner of old Warwick ‘ on the page for January 1955.

The Sunlit Way

‘May the way that lies ahead be lit with sunny gleams—and prove to be the road to the fulfilment of your dream…And may it lead you to the place where lost hopes are restored—where love is true and life is good and faith has its reward.’

Tumpty-tum …tumpety tum

England’s Treasures (October)

‘All along the roads of England treasures can be seen. Little old world villages with church and pond and green . Gems of beauty—cherish them and guard them jealously—and let no vandal touch the sacred scenes of history.’

Not sure about the scansion there, Patience.

 

The Glorious Month (May)

May is the month of bloom and blossom.

     May is the month of song and light.

Of tulips by the garden path

      And hawthorn hedges, snowy white.

May brings the bluebells to the wood

      And paints the cowslips by the stream.

May makes this sad old bad old world

      As lovely as a poet’s dream.

 

Which poet would that be?
Continue reading →

The world’s greatest bigheads

Jot 101 Bigheads book cover 001

Taken from The Bedside Book of Bigheads by William Cole (1995)

 I think I ought to have the O.M….They gave Hardy the O.M. and I think I am the greatest living writer in English, and they ought to give it to me.

Somerset Maugham.

 

I know everything. One has to, to write decently.

Henry James

 

Roots is obviously great, ranking with the Bible and Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey

Alex Haley

 

I want to be remembered as the greatest writer of this century. I’ve been compared to Plato.

Colin Wilson

 

I‘m perhaps the most gifted actor of my generation.

David Carradine

 

Yes, the Jews have produced only three original geniuses: Christ, Spinoza and myself

Gertrude Stein

 

I’ve given up reading books. I find it takes my mind off myself.

Oscar Levant.

 

With the single exception of Homer, there is no eminent writer, not even Sir Walter Scott, whom I can despise so entirely as I despise Shakespeare when I measure my mind against his….

Bernard Shaw.

 

 

I have astounded the whole world…I triumph not only over the moderns, but over the old masters as well

Gustave Courbet

 

FRIEND: There are only two great painters; you and Velazquez.

WHISTLER: Why drag in Velazquez?

Whistler.

Continue reading →

Autograph Collecting hints

Unknown [Found at Bookride 2010 -our first site, this wise piece about autographs.] Try to avoid forgeries! To my mind the ‘blink’ test is a good start in testing for authenticity. If on very first seeing it the autograph doesn’t feel right don’t touch it. As Malcolm Gladwell details in over 300 pages of his book Blink. The Power of Thinking Without Thinking the unconscious mind often delivers a better answer than more deliberate and protracted ways of thinking. If the seller doesn’t pass the blink test either, drop it like a hot brick. Kenneth Rendell, purveyor of manuscripts to the great and the good, advises avoiding the kind of dealer who brushes you off when probed, he adds: “The real expert will bore you with answers.” I also like what he says about how forgers often fail to get the feel of a signature right -the “flying starts and endings of the pen”.

Avoid signatures that look more like a drawing than writing and ones that seem to have stops and starts. Also signatures in cheap editions of books can be suspect, most forgers will not risk screwing up a signature in a four figure book. Forgers often stick to a plain signature so a date or sentiment is useful (belying the tiresome ‘flat signed’ schtick.) Also beware the desirable signature that is seriously underpriced, you may be lucky but it is often a sign of a grifter at work. If it is very cheap, of course, it may be real but unrated or unrecognised. Age is no guarantee of authenticity, forgers have been around since Heraclitus stood in the river. Ebay is a minefield. Bad Salinger forgeries appeared there after the writer’s death and usually made a few hundred dollars. Like the curate’s egg they were ‘good in parts’ but if it is wrong it’s worthless, if it’s right it’s a few thousand. In one of the online signatures Salinger appeared to have misspelled his own name…a bad start. Continue reading →