King Kong’s Vital Statistics

Found in Mostly Monsters by John Robert Colombo (Ontario 1977). A curious work of 'found' poems mainly from monster books and movies. For example, this piece extracted from Gustav Meyrink's 1915 novel The Golem:

But this I know-
That there is something here
In our quarter of the town...
Something that cannot die,
And has its being within our midst.
From generation to generation
Our ancestors have lived here
In this place,
And no one has heard more tales
About this reappearance
Of the Golem-
Happenings actually experienced
As well as handed down-
Than I have.

Another 'poem' is taken from a publicity handout for Merian Cooper's 1932 movie King Kong:

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Boon Haw’s Tiger Balm Car

Aw Boon Haw was the founder of the Tiger Balm fortunes.  His splendid sports car is shown in Carveth Wells 1940 book North of Singapore. 75 years later it is on display in the Tiger Balm mansion Haw Par Villa in Singapore. Aw Boon Haw used to drive the car (a customised Humber) around Singapore, a tiger head on the radiator, fangs protruding, wire whiskers. Red bulbs were in the eyes, and the horn sounded like a tiger’s roar. Great publicity - way before Shell's  "tiger in your tank."

There is a story of a road rivalry between Boon Haw and Sultan Ibrahim of Johore. Sultan Ibrahim was a sportsman and hunter. The incident took place when the Sultan, enraged at being overtaken by Boon Haw in his famous Tiger Car. Sultan Ibrahim shot at the Tiger Car on Bukit Timah Road. It was considered lese-majesté to overtake royalty even on foreign roads*. Notwithstanding, the British colonial administration forbade the Sultan thereafter from visiting Singapore ever again except for purpose of going to and from the Singapore airport.

* This tradition of royal road rage still persists among plutocrats - for example Aristotle Onassis's biographer notes that he detested anyone who overtook his Porsche...

Aerophobic Germany

From Pilgrimages to the Spas in pursuit of health and recreation; with an inquiry into the comparative merits of different mineral waters: the maladies to which they are applicable, and those in which they are injurious by James Johnson M.D. (London 1841). A fresh air fiend Britisher attacks unhealthy Germans...

Aerophobia. From one end of Germany to the other, among all ages, ranks, and professions, an AEROPHOBIA, or dread of fresh air, universally prevails ! If you take a seat in the diligence or eilwagen, your German neighbour in the corner closes the windows immediately, lest a breath of pure air should enter the vehicle. On arriving at the hotel, half poisoned by the disoxygenated atmosphere of the coach, and enter your chamber, you find all the windows securely fastened, and the air of the apartment a mass of heavy mephitic vapour, like that which issues from a long unopened tomb. If you descend to the spies-saal, where the air is still farther vitiated by the fumes of tobacco, and throw open a window, you are stared at by the ober-kellner, the under-kellner, and every "GAST" in the "HAUS," as a person deranged. I had long puzzled my brains to account for this aerophobic phenomenon, and, at last, traced its cause to the GERMAN STOVE that black brewery of mephitism, which, bearing a mortal antipathy to the fresh air of Heaven, imbues every one who sits near it with the same prejudice. In fine, the German exhibits as great a horror of oxygen, as he does a mania for azote! [Azote = Nitrogen]

And what is the consequence of this? Why, that the Germans are ten times more susceptible of colds, rheumatism, face-aches, and tooth-aches, than the English, who live in a far more variable, wet, and ungenial climate. This aerophobia is one of the causes too, of that sallow, unhealthy aspect which all Germans, who are not forced to be much in the open air, exhibit. It is no wonder that they swarm like locusts round their numberless spas, in the Summer, to wash away some of those peccant humours engendered by their diet, and fermented by their stoves.

A Mussolini Howler

Mussolini by Marinetti

From a book of  of schoolboy howlers collected by Colin McIlwaine and published in London in 1930. Most howlers are short and many are online already ('a polygon is a dead parrot') , some rather odd ('A Molecule is a girlish boy') and some very silly ('The highest peak in the Alps is Blanc Mange'.) This is the last entry in the book and one of the longer howlers.

Mussolini is an ugly man. He wears the shirt of the Madonna, and when he smiles he makes people weep. He has been killed four times. The first time they wounded him in the nose, the second time in the forehead, but he himself they never wounded. He is a phenomenon, a thing that comes only once in 1000 years. He hardly ever sleeps, but shuts his eyes for 10 minutes, then goes and has a good wash and returns to work as fresh as a rose. He is a man of mystery. He can do everything and knows everything and loves playing the saxophone with his family. Galileo was charged with High Treason because he said that Mussolini moved round the sun, and not the sun around Mussolini.

Kenny Everett on the Ouija Board

From a paperback called I've Seen a Ghost - True Stories from Show Business by Richard Davis (Granada, London 1979). A series of mostly tall, real ghost stories from British stars of the time -Jon Pertwee, Roy Hudd, Pat Phoenix, Vincent Price, Bob Monkhouse, Rula Lenska etc.. There are the usual actor's superstitions and tales of ghosts seen in old theatres...the one from Kenny Everett could be filed under 'more things in heaven and earth' or Kenny was simply blagging - which seems unlikely as there is no joke or punchline. Also it is worth noting that this was before the time of proper mobile phones...

It happened when we were staying at Pete Asher's house in Surrey, near Rosper. It looks rather like a Chinese house – all made of paper walls and bits of stick. And it was by a lake, an 8 acre lake with two islands on it. All very deserted, it was.

We had a cameraman and his assistant staying with us, and we decided to have a go with the Ouija board.  Well, the cameraman got a message through from his girlfriend; he said "that's odd - she's not dead". And she said by means of the Ouija board that she'd died that day. She'd taken a load of pills and she was in Bicester Mortuary. He couldn't believe this. He thought we were messing around, though I don't think any of us would have been quite as cruel as that. So he rang her dad, and her dad picked up the phone and he was in tears, because she had just taken a load of pills and he had taken her to the mortuary. The cameraman had been with us for two days; the phone hadn't rung and there was no way he could have known.

How to become a spy (in 6 easy lessons)

Found in a 1963 Central Office of Information booklet Their Trade is Treachery. Of some rarity and value - a top online bookseller describes it thus:

In the wake of the Profumo Affair the COI "produced a lively booklet as part of their educational campaign to improve the awareness of middle and lower grade officials and members of the Armed Forces of their responsibilities in regard of security matters" (Gladden, Civil Services of the United Kingdom: 1885-1970, p.166). Includes accounts of notorious cases, tricks of the trade, and helpful advice, "Spies are with us all the time. They are interested in everything, defence secrets, scientific secrets, political decisions, economic facts, even people's characters in order to recruit more spies" (from the preface).

Towards the end of the book after a piece called 'How not to become a spy (in 6 not so easy lessons)' they offer this tongue in cheek advice:

How to become a spy (in 6 easy lessons)

1. Let it be known to your friends, casual acquaintances, and strangers that you have secret information, or are in a job where you may be able to obtain it one day. This should attract treasonable propositions or threats, which it may or may not be possible to resist.

2. Think you are cleverer than you are. Be conceited. Tell yourself that you are capable of handling any regular association with Iron Curtain officials without informing your superior officer or local Security officer. If the Iron Curtain man is a diplomat, convince yourself that it's only your fascinating personality, wit, and friendship that attracts him. If you can believe that, you can believe anything. You're on your way.

3.Develop a few vices, especially abroad, so that with luck you can be compromised and blackmailed.

4. If you cannot manage a vice or two, just be foolish. If you can't be foolish, be incautious.

5. Accept favours and hospitality from Iron Curtain officials… When in return they ask some harmless service in exchange for good money, accept at once. This encourages them, and, if you pursue  the matter to a logical conclusion,  you should land yourself safely in prison one day.

6. If you do not fancy prison especially in cold weather, persuade yourself that if you become a spy you will never get caught. You will, of course, but one must not start with a defeatist attitude.

The Politesse of Valdré

An interesting an uplifting anecdote of true impulsiveness found in John Julius Norwich's 1990 Christmas Cracker. Viscount Norwich was a jotter before jotting was invented - an Ur jotter. Respect. His Cracker booklets are sent to a few thousand of his closest friends and consist of information and wisdom culled from his library and also presumably sent to him by loyal correspondents.

Vincenzo Valdrati or Valdré (1742-1814) was an Italian painter-architect who came to England in the 1770s and designed, inter alia, several of the state rooms at Stowe before settling in Ireland where he became Architect to the Board of Works. From Howard Colvin's superb Biographical Dictionary of British Architects I learn that "while at Stowe he attended a wedding and when the bridegroom failed to appear, he was so moved at the bride’s distress that he chivalrously offered himself as a substitute – and was accepted."

The Crazy Quilt Murders (1938)

The Crazy Quilt Murders by H.W. Sandberg (Phoenix Press N.Y. 1938)

Rare book (no copies for sale anywhere online) from the Donald Rudd collection of detective fiction. The plot is summarised thus:

When Benjamin Markley willed his nephew Sam a crazy quilt, it seemed like merely one more of his eccentrics on a par with the proviso that Markley legatees spend three days together in Sam's country cabin.

But the Markleys stopped laughing when the three days were blighted by a series of murders more puzzling than any Sam, a mystery writer by profession, had ever imagined. And the colorful crazy quilt enabled Sam to stop the murders before he himself was added to the growing list of victims… 

Everything in life must perforce follow a pattern. Life, death, the very thoughts that idle in your brain at this moment, are guided by a logical, if sometimes confusing, pattern. Witness the crazy quilt; modest or gorgeous, seemingly possessing neither rhyme nor reason, yet behold, you find in it a beginning, a body, a conclusion, the very essence of a pattern.( Sam Markley)

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The Art of Dancing by Anna Pavlova

Found in the first issue of The Dancing Annual (1923) from the Mayfair Press in London. Anna Pavlova had been living in London for over 12 years and this appears finely written, possibly ghosted, with some vehemence towards a style  ('the lowest slang of dancing') that was prevalent in the early 1920s and has never strictly gone away...

The Art of Dancing by Anna Pavlova

To me, the fascination of dancing lies in this: you can express with it so many moods, and so many beautiful thoughts and poems.

People imagine that self-expression in dancing is only for those who, through many long years of training, have arrived  at the perfection of their art in its highest forms of drama, poesy, or tragedy.  But though this is true, so far as it goes, it does not mean that all those who are not expert ballet dancers are for that reason unable to enjoy some share of its pleasures.

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Fairies at Work and Play

From Fairies at Work and Play by Geoffrey Hodson. Published by the Theosophical Society in 1925 (and still in print) the book is a sort of Varieties of Religious Experience anthology of meetings with and sightings of fairies, elves,devas, sylphs, 'mannikins', gnomes and brownies. All the observations are by Geoffrey Hodson (1886-1983) who wrote many other religious and occult works in a long and productive life.

Dancing Fairies
Lancashire, 1921

We are surrounded by a dancing group of lovely female fairies. They are laughing and full of joy.

The leader in this case is a female figure, probably two feet high, surrounded by transparent flowing drapery. There is a star on her forehead, and she has large wings which glisten with pale, delicate shades from pink to lavender; in rapid movement, however, the effect of them is white.

Her hair is light golden brown, and unlike that of the lesser fairies, streams behind her and merges with the flowing forces of her aura. The form is perfectly modelled and rounded, like that of a young girl; the right hand holds a wand.

Although her expression is one of purity and ingenuousness, her face is at the same time stamped with a decided impression of power. This is especially noticeable in the clear blue eyes, which glow like flame, and have all the appearance of a living fire. Her brow is broad and noble, her features small and rounded, the tiny ears are a poem of physical perfection. There are no angles in this transcendently beautiful form. The bearing of head, neck and shoulders is queenly, and the whole pose is a model of grace and beauty.

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Too cool names

Found in a HarperCollins paperback Cool Names for Babies (2007 reprinted from Mother & Baby magazine) a list of names that are 'too cool' - in fact it's the last chapter. Have added a few..

What makes a name too cool? Trying so hard that coolness is its main, and maybe its only, merit. Being so aggressively hip that poor little Kool willl bend under the expectations of grooviness created by his name… the line of what constitutes too cool a name seems to get redrawn every day [but] these choices will probably be on the wrong side of it for a long time to come..

ARMANI
BABE
BRANDY
BREEZE
BUCK
CALIFORNIA
CHARDONNAY
CHEYENNE
Henri Cartier Bresson 1954
CONGO
CROCKETTB
DESIREE
DUKE
FREE
HARLEY
KEROUAC
KOOL
MAVERICK
MINGUS
PORSCHE
PRINCE
RAMBO
RIBENA
RIDER
SCORPIO
SINBAD
SUGAR
TALON
THOR
TIGER
VICE
VULCAN
WILD
YOGI
ZAPPA

Rook fuddling made easy

To Fuddle Rooks
Cocculus Indica berrys 2 Ounces. 4 Glasses of Geneva. Crush the Berries & steep them & the Liquor together for 2 Days, then steep barley in that Liquor & lay it where the Crows frequent.

Evidently from the spelling and paper used (a scrap rescued from an autograph collection), this is an eighteenth century recipe. Because it mimics the effects of alcohol, unscrupulous brewers often used Cocculus Indica berries to adulterate beer. Unfortunately, the berries are rather poisonous. The scientist Frederick Accum exposed the scandalous practice in his groundbreaking work,Death in the Pot; a treatise on the adulteration of food (1820).

Consider your rooks (or indeed crows) well and truly fuddled !! Or dead.[RH]

Shackleton’s Phantom Guide

Came across this article in the Winter 1948 Occult Review by the intrepid cinematographer J.C. Bee-Mason, a war photographer in France, Belgium and Russia, and cinematographer to Ernest Shackleton on his last expedition south and other Arctic expeditions. He was obsessed with bee-keeping (hence the hyphenated “Bee” in his name) and filmed documentaries about bees.There is quite a bit about him on the web including his belief that if you ate a hundred pounds of good honey every year you would live to 100. Sadly JCB only made into his early 80s. Part of the interest in the piece is the acknowledged influence of Shackleton's experience on some lines in T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land:

Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
- But who is that on the other side of you?

This phenomenon  has been called by the author John Geiger the 'third man factor' - the experience of people at the very edge of death who feel the presence of an incorporeal being who encourages them and guides them to safety. Geiger tells the stories of 9-11 survivors, mountaineers, astronauts, explorers and prisoners of war who have reported this feeling…

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A problematical squib by Chesterton

Triolet of the Self-examining Journalist

My writing is bad
And my speaking is worse
I have lost all I had
My writing is bad,
It’s dreadfully sad
And I don’t care a curse
My writing is bad
And my speaking is worse.

G.K. Chesterton
Feb. 27.1912.

Here’s a literary puzzle to gnaw on. In his introduction to volume ten of G. K. Chesterton: the Collected Works, Denis J Conlon maintains that addressing a meeting of the Distributist League at Gatti’s Restaurant in London on January 11, 1934, Chesterton summed up what he called his moral, mental and spiritual condition in an ‘ impromptu triolet ‘. Conlon prints this squib, which in every respect but one, is identical to the one printed above. In the later version the third line has become ‘They were all that I had ‘.

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Teenage Testament 1960

Found among some papers bought from the late John Rolph, a memorable man, publisher with the Scorpion Press and latterly a bookseller in his rambling shop at Pakefield, Lowestoft. He had published several Royston Ellis poetry pamphlets including the great-looking Rave (1960). Ellis's statement, written when he was 18 is a cri de coeur from teenland--the teenager at the time had only just been invented, before that in what is now known as 'the age of deference' you went uncomplainingly from boy to man, from girl to woman, wore sensible clothes, plastered down your hair and behaved yourself. The document  is a carbon copy with a note by JR 'given to me by Royston 1960.' It appears to be unpublished.

                                 Teenage Testament

With the on-coming Spring the teenage has burst into bud once again. But this year there is no getting rid of it with weed killer. Teenagers look like being the prize blooms featured in every newspaper, magazine, television programme and family discussion.

Throughout the country youngsters are being interviewed for their views on life, love, manners, religion....In fact, everything that will give the outsider an idea of what makes teenagers tick. A so-called typical teenager romps into the public eye and is immediately condemned and criticised by earnest religious bodies as being 'not a fair representative'. A learned youngster states his views and straightaway teenagers accuse him of being out of touch.

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Mein Skunk

Found in an old Australian newspaper:

Maurice A. Hammoneau, of Brook-lyn, N.Y., bookbinder extra-ordinary,puts bindings on books to harmonise with their subject matter. Thus Hammoneau will encase a volume on reptiles in snake-skin, or dress a book on music in ivory piano keys. For Hitler's Mein Kampf, Hammoneau chose skunk skin.-Sideshow, N.C. Canberra Times, Monday 29 April 1940

On the Hitler skunk theme a novelty firm produced a complete ceramic trio set featuring the Hitler Skunk, Mussolini Pig and Tojo Rat. These are shown in the 1944 catalogue of Johnson Smith and Co.

“Some of the groups into which mankind is divided…”

An interesting illustration from an Odham's home learning book from circa 1938 Everybody's Book of Facts. The illustration is by modern standards somewhat racist, even xenophobic. Why the English woman is wearing a cocktail dress whereas all other nations are in traditional or peasant costume is a mystery.To be consistent the English illustration should have shown a farmworker in a smock with a  crooked stave. Even in the late 1930s this illustration would have raised a few eyebrows or at least a laugh...the author one F.L Bradley is 'quite interesting' on the subject of the location of the 'cradle of civilisation' suggesting  the Gobi Desert in Turkestan, farther Pomerania,Java,Brazil, Scandinavia, Honduras, South Africa, the Congo, Ceylon, North America 'and even the Arctic.' He notes 'the place most favoured by modern scholars is Mesopotamia, the present day Iraq, for it is there the oldest remains of stone buildings have been found, and not far off in the Caucasus the first metal work...' He concludes:

Eduard Stucken is of the opinion that the cradle is to be located, not in Mesopotamia, nor in the legendary continent of Atlantis, but in a sixth continent, that of Oceania, which has been broken up into the present archipelago of Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia by vast upheavals of Nature. The inhabitants of the east coast of this shattered continent are thought to have found a second home in America (there was possibly sea-borne commerce between the empire of the Incas and Polynesia), while the inhabitants of the west coast took ship for farther India, Mesopotamia, and Madagascar. Not only the affinity of language between the Egyptians, the Sumerians,the Polynesians, and the South Americans, but also the custom of building pyramids have been cited in support of this theory. Words which were written on tablets in cuneiform script 6,000 years ago are still used in the Antipodes.

To give but one example, the Sumerian word kud means to part, the Maori word koti means to cut, the Peruvian word kutu means to break a thread with the teeth, and the Mexican word kokota means cutter.
The former inhabitants of Oceania who had fled from their homeland may originally have settled in Siam or in the Sunda Islands. That the Sumerians and the ancient Egyptians were particularly noteworthy seamen has not been established, but the fact that many Sumerian words are still used in America and Polynesia compels one to look for other links. Another point to be noticed in this connexion is that finds have been made on the Peruvian coast which are reminiscent of ancient China. Incidentally the Sumerians were acclaimed as the forefathers of the Turks at the Pan-Turkish Congress held at Stamboul in 1936. It may be that the cradle of civilization was in the Tarim basin in Central Asia, where Sven Hedin, the eminent Swedish traveller, has located an age-old centre of culture in what is now a desert. Possibly, when inner Asia began to assume its steppe formation before the dawn of history, the Turkish and Mongolian peoples spread from here to all points of the compass.

Ecological disaster in fiction

M. P. Shiel. The Purple Cloud (1901). Poisonous gas.
Arthur Conan Doyle. The Poison Belt (1913) The Earth passes through a poisonous ether.
J. J. Connington. Nordenholt's Millions (1923) Agricultural disaster
S. Fowler Wright. Deluge (1928). Flood.
Philip Wylie. When Worlds Collide (1932). Dying sun on collision course with Earth. (Film: When Worlds Collide, 1951). Also a rock band...
John Wyndham. The Day of the Triffids (1951) Venomous Plants.
Isaac Asimov. Caves of Steel (1954) Overpopulation.

William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson. Logan's Run (1967). Overpopulation; destruction of those over 30.
Lee Tang. The Wind Obeys Lama Torus. (1967). From India. Overpopulation.
John Brunner. Stand on Zanzibar. (1968). Young adult novel on overpopulation.
James Blish. A Torrent of Faces (1968) World ravaged by over population.
Fred and Geoffrey Hoyle. The Inferno (1973). Cosmic radiation
David Brin. Earth. (1990). Black hole.
Margaret Atwood. Oryx and Crake. (2003) Genetically engineered virus.
Cormac McCarty. The Road. (2006) Unexplained devastating cataclysm.

John Christopher. The Death of Grass (1957). Ecological disaster due to a mutated virus killing cereal crops.
Robert Silverberg. Masters of Life and Death (1957). Overpopulation.
J. G. Ballard. Billennium (1962) population
J. G. Ballard. The Drowned World. (1962). Flood.
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Cat's Cradle (1963) Ice-9
J. G. Ballard, The Drought (aka The Burning World) 1965.
Harry Harrison. Make Room! Make Room! (1966). (Film: Soylent Green, 1973). Overcrowding, dystopia -set in 1999.

I Am Jonathan Scrivener

Valancourt Books have valiantly republished Claude Houghton's forgotten bestseller I Am Jonathan Scrivener (1930). This prompted us to dive into the fathomless archives where somewhere we have the manuscript.

“So remarkable in truth is this novel that I cannot understand why it is not universally known and admired.” - Hugh Walpole (1935)


“I Am Jonathan Scrivener remains a tantalizing, highly diverting philosophical novel of rare elegance and wit.” - Michael Dirda (2013)

Valancourt sum up the plot thus:

James Wrexham is thirty-nine, lonely, and stuck in a dead-end job when he comes upon an advertisement for a position as secretary to Mr. Jonathan Scrivener. Much to his surprise, he is hired at a lavish salary despite never even meeting Scrivener, and he is told to take up residence at once in the flat of his new employer, who has suddenly disappeared. Mystified by Scrivener’s strange conduct and desperate to learn something about him, it seems Wrexham will get the answers he seeks when Scrivener’s friends begin to visit the flat: Pauline Mandeville, an ethereal beauty, Francesca Bellamy, a widow who may be responsible for the death of her husband, Andrew Middleton, a disillusioned alcoholic, and Antony Rivers, a handsome playboy. But as each of them unfolds his story about Scrivener, it seems that none of them are describing the same person, though all are obsessed with finding him. Why has he hired Wrexham, and why does he seem to have thrust this unlikely group of people together? Is Scrivener engaged in an inscrutable experiment, or could he be laying some kind of trap? 

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Rushdie blurb for T.C. Boyle

Salman Rushdie (billed here as winner of the 1981 Booker Prize) blurb on the back cover of the jacket of T. Coraghessan Boyle's Water Music (Gollancz, London 1982):

"Water Music goes over the top and also round the bend. It is a book in the worst possible taste, serves no useful purpose and is crammed with disgusting, filthy ideas. Its title will make Handel turn in his grave. It stinks of gin and Africa. It also bubbles, or should I say Boyles, with life, language, comedy, energy and other forms of weirdness.Gulp it down, it beats getting drunk."