Baedeker advises on tipping at the Blue Grotto

Found in an 1889 edition of Badeker's Southern Italy this description of the Blue Grotto at Capri:

Blue Grotto. — A visit to the Blue Grotto from the Marina at Capri, where suitable light boats will be found, occupies 1 3/4 to 2hrs. The best light is between 10 and 12 o'clock. The authorised fare for the trip (there and back) is 1 1/4 fr. for each person, but almost no boatman will undertake it without an additional fee of 1-2 fr. The skiffs are not allowed to take more than three passengers. If the wind blows strongly from the E. or N. access to the grotto is impossible.The Blue Grotto is situated on the N. side of the island, about l 1/4 m. from the landing-place of Capri.

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Innkeeper John Fothergill lampooned

Found - in A Bunch of Blue Ribbons.A Volume of Cambridge Essays [Collected by I. Rose. London: Chapman & Hall, 1933] a satirical poem lampooning the celebrated innkeeper John Fothergill. Fothergill wrote a best-seller Diary of an Innkeeper and was known to Oxford students for his inn at Thame, frequented by, among others, most of the prominent members of  the Brideshead set. Oddly, he is unknown to Wikipedia but has a good entry in the DNB. His Diary was republished fairly recently by the Folio Society. A Bunch of Blue Ribbons was a sort of counter blast to a recent work Red Rags -a record of pet hatreds and aversions by bright young students at Oxford and Cambridge. This poem is in a chapter called A Sob Sister defends Oxford by Christopher Saltmarshe (a Cambridge poet also unknown to the all-knowing Wikipedia):

I am giving below a disgraceful and insulting lampoon which fell into my hands. The subject is an inn-keeper, whose name is dear to the immediate generation of Oxonians, which learnt to appreciate him as a host, an epicure and a gentleman. As an example of the depths of scurrility to which the enemies of Oxford can stoop I, as an old Cantab., believe these verses to be unparalleled.

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Baja, the ancient Baiæ – worth a detour?

Found in Baedeker's Guide to Southern Italy and Sicily ((9th Ed., Leipzig 1887) a loose flyer/2 sided handout, entitled To Tourists. Baedeker's are often a repository of travel ephemera and this one yielded an opera ticket for the Metropolitana in Siena and a map of Naples supplied by the grand looking Parker's Hotel, also a dinner menu that notes the hotel had formerly been known as the Tramontano*. The leaflet, in perfect English and by one GPB, attempts to lure visitors to the ancient town of Baiae (now known as Baja.) Baedeker is rather dismissive of it (see below) so it may have needed some publicising. The leaflet reads thus:

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An indignant Susan Hill answers her critics

A cri de coeur from the 18 year old debut novelist Susan Hill on the perils of sensationalist journalism and pre-publication hype can be found in the Autumn 1960 issue of the Coventry-based arts magazine Umbrella. On first reading 'A Sudden Smash of Fame' this seems an  unusually vehement complaint  for a teenaged first time author to make, but perhaps not when we consider that 1960 was the year of the ‘Lady Chatterley Trial’.

Hutchinson had accepted Hill’s debut novel The Enclosure while she was still an eighteen year old pupil at Carr’s Hill School in Coventry. Somehow the papers had sniffed out the story and all hell broke loose. The Daily Mail (quelle surprise) was the worst offender. The young author was accused of having written a ‘sex-ridden sensational novel’ ‘(Hill’s words) and the press generally was condemned for  exploiting a teenager’s naïf responses to questions from hard-bitten reporters anxious for a salacious story, and of making things up. For instance, from an innocent refusal of a cigarette one reporter had written that Hill disliked smoking. When, in reply to a question on whether she liked the novels of Francoise Sagan, Hill had replied ‘I like her style very much, but not her themes ‘, this appeared as ‘I think her themes are trite---she is finished’.

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The return of the Italian Restaurants 1961

From 'Minder' circa 1982 - Arthur Dailey leaving Otello's

Found in The Good Food Guide 1961-1962, this review of an Italian restaurant in Soho. It shows  how restaurants reflect London's recent history, and although this was the beginning of the swinging 60s it was written only 15 years after WW2 ('war wounds are healing.'). Otello Scipioni died recently aged 91 and the restaurant is now called Zilli. He also owned the grander Italian restaurant Villa dei Cesari near the Tate Gallery.  As the 60s progressed the Italians came to dominate the catering scene - Italian trattorias being a great hangout for the beautiful, the rich and the famous. Fortunes were made. Note the GFG's feedback system -- the names at bottom being unpaid food enthusiasts who had written in - the bit about singing waiters is probably a quote from one of them them. Longo Intervallo = long gap.

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Heffers—a life in books

Everyone who has ever lived or studied at Cambridge knows Heffers. It’s the big cheese bookseller in the city and is an international brand too. Around 1996 the company, which then employed around 300 people, issued a brief history, which has been useful in compiling this profile.

The Heffer family originally came from Grantchester, celebrated by Rupert Brooke and now the home of well-known storyteller Jeffery Archer. In 1876 William Heffer opened up a stationery shop in Fitzroy Street, just east of the city centre, where his success with a sideline of hymn books, bibles and general school books, convinced him that he ought to focus more on bookselling. Further success resulting from 25% discounts for cash and an expansion into academic and general titles, made it possible for Heffers to relocate to the city centre in Petty Cury.

Heffer then became a printer—and books printed by the company from the early twentieth century until 1987, when a management buy-out created the Black Bear Press-- can often be found, especially locally. Following William’s death in 1928 the company, with its three distinct areas of operation, was steered forward by son Ernest, and grandson Reuben, who became an influential figure in University and city life. Further success, especially internationally, followed the appointment as General Manager in 1964 of Cambridge graduate John Welch, who had no experience of bookselling and was not even a family member.

Heffers remained in Petty Cury until the late 1960s, by which time the decision of the City Council to redevelop the street, and the continuing expansion of Heffers as a business, made it necessary for the company to relocate once again. This time the decision was made easier by the offer by Trinity College of premises in Trinity Street once occupied by a grocer. The site was redeveloped from scratch and today, the design of the shop that has been called ‘one of the first and largest custom-built bookshops in the country’ is admired internationally for its bold simplicity.

Doubtless over the decades many students have supplemented their grants by working the odd Saturday at Trinity Street, but few have gone on to achieve the success of children’s writer Pippa Goodhart, the prizewinning author of over ninety books. Having, like the founder, grown up in Grantchester, she got a Saturday job with Heffers at the age of 16, then after University and teacher-training, returned to the shop when she failed to find a post as an infant teacher. For five years she managed the Heffers children’s bookshop, but moved to Leicester to start a family. It was here that she began to write for children, never imagining that her work would end up being sold in the very bookshop she had managed years before. Her life has gone full circle now with a move back to Grantchester.

Recently retired Newsnight anchor Jeremy ‘Paxo’ Paxman is another Heffers habitué. He was spotted not long ago by one blogger who had to ‘stare him down when he was pretending not to know where the queue started. He got behind me’, adds the blogger.

Berwick Sayers on annotation 2

Berwick Sayers by Juliet K Pannett

The second and last part of Berwick Sayers masterly work  Annotation in Catalogues (1948). Sayers was, like Casanova, a prince among librarians and also a man with many other interests - he wrote poetry, music, fiction and a book on the black composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. He also wrote a travel book Over some Alpine Passes. Memories of 1908. His life was commemorated in a work published a year after his death The Sayers memorial volume : essays in librarianship in memory of William Charles Berwick (1961.) He also wrote much on librarianship, including some dryish titles like: Report on the hours, salaries, training, and conditions of service of assistants in British municipal libraries (1911.)

He wrote a comprehensive history of Croydon and his life was spent there, mostly at Croydon Library. Croydon is a large London outer suburb of some importance - one time residents include: Flower Fairies creator Cicely Mary Barker, singer Desmond Dekker, Raymond Chandler, Emily Blunt, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, A. Conan Doyle, Amy Winehouse, Kate Moss, Tracey Emin, D.H. Lawrence, Alfred Russell Wallace, Brit-pack artist Sam Taylor-Wood, Katie Melua, Kirstie MacColl, Roy Hodgson, billionaire Philip Green, Noel Fielding (Mighty Boosh) Victorian sexologist Havelock Ellis, Jeff Beck and Emile Zola.

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Berwick Sayers on Annotation I

A  pamphlet for librarians that is still relevant in the days of the web. People still need to know how to annotate information in catalogues. As Berwick Sayers says, annotation is elucidation - but he is down on the annotator who adds information needlessly. A real offender is a cataloguer who in noting the plot of a novel gives away the whole story.  Internet booksellers  break B-S's rules every day. For example, if the information is obviously there already do not annotate-- we do not need to know that Wood's British Trees is 'a handbook to trees growing in Great Britain' or Harrison's The Boys of Wynport College is a 'a schoolboy story.'

He also points out a fault of which many cataloguer is now guilty - giving irrelevant details about the author: for example, if a man writes a book on The Fertilisation of Soils it is of no consequence to the reader to know that "the author was Chancellor of the Exchequer." There are of course different rules for sellers; a librarian is not trying to get someone to buy the book. B-S's rules however apply to the world of Wikipedia where they are often broken - giving opinions, recommendations, irrelevance, shallow research and, conversely, faults that '..arise from too great a devotion to this work. The introduction into catalogues of fine writing or elaborate language is an abuse greatly to be deprecated.'

In the case of undesirable books B-S notes that drawing attention to them by 'danger notes' is self-defeating - "to say that a book is 'not written for girls' schools' must really be frightfully tantalising to any normally built schoolgirl."  To be continued with info on the life and writings of the great librarian-- a book on card indexes, mountaineering, songs, poems and a history of his borough Croydon..

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Losing his marbles…

Sent in by a loyal jotwatcher. We have had many heavily annotated review copies, some angrily, some with further scholarship, praise or damning criticism.The Hon. Michael  Foot was a good customer at our West End shop and was much liked. He spent money, which is always endearing. He could get behind a cause and was in his way a powerful man...one of the 'great and the good' - like the late, lamented Tony Benn. Thanks for emailing this in:

This letter was discovered in Michael Foot’s review copy of William St Clair’s Elgin Marbles (1998), which was inscribed to the reviewer by the author. Judging by the angry-looking pencil marks  in the margin, Foot was mainly interested in Chapter 24,which focused on the cavalier way in which British Museum ‘cleaners’ under the direction of the egregious Lord Duveen, rightly condemned by St Clair as an  ‘unscrupulous art dealer’, damaged for ever the surface of most of the Marbles back in the mid ‘thirties.

The publication of St Clair’s exposé—particularly  his accusations that  a cover-up by the PR department and curatorial staff of the Museum-- over the past few decades, prevented the scandal emerging much earlier, caused a huge rumpus at the time. Worse still, the subsequent further threats and bullying of external experts and the Press that followed the publication of the book, reverberates even today. St Clair was particularly incensed by the sneering review of his book by one Ian Jenkins, a supposed ‘expert’ at the BM, who referred to the author as an ‘ amateur’ and who stated quite erroneously that only ten percent of the Marbles had been damaged.

The whole truth has yet to be exposed.

Ponge’s Museum of Street Cries

Found - an American press cutting from Adams County News April 1914:

Armed with a recording gramophone, M. Ponge, a schoolmaster in Paris, spends his leisure hours lying in wait for street cries in populous quarters. He is preparing a museum of speech, which he will leave behind him for the instruction of future ages. When he hears the Parisian equivalent of 'Milk' or muffin man, he pounces on them and compels them to sing or ring bells into his receiver. He has already collected most of the well-known street cries.

The story appeared in British and American newspapers between 1911 and 1914 in various forms, The Daily Telegraph's Paris correspondent even specifying that he had recorded the Parisian flower men selling mimosas and 'the shrill  tenor who pieces together again "marble alabaster and porcelain."' One commentator noted '…well every man to his humour; but we are not visiting any museums to hear street cries, thank you.'

Spokane Daily Chronicle Nov 4 1911 reports:

The intention is to obtain registers of all forms of speech in France including the various patois of different regions, villages and cities, and also popular songs and street cries. Among other things registered by M.Ponge are songs of children dancing in circles and the cries of sellers of fish and vegetables, together with the talk going on between sellers and buyers. The museum is to have a scientific character, since microphotographs of the impressions made by the voice in its various forms are to be preserved, and a complete  'phonetic chart' of French vocal utterances is aimed at.

Monsieur Ponge's innovative audio museum appears not to have happened - but we salute him as a far-thinking researcher and hope these sounds are still to be found somewhere.

* Some light googling shows this work by him:Le Musée de la Parole / Alfred Ponge (Michon et Gibeau , Paris 1911). His work seems to have been taken up by Ferdinand Brunot at the University of Paris thanks to support from Pathé.

An early recording session, Germany 1899

The Enchanted Forest

Came across a book about the New Forest in Hampshire - The Enchanted Forest by Gladys Mackenzie Forbes (Mate & Sons, Bournemouth circa 1930). It is attractively illustrated in black and white by the young artist Jacynth Parsons and is written in a sort of poetic, evocative prose that was popular at the time in nature writing. This piece is about the gypsies who had long been in the New Forest and is a somewhat romanticised view of their world. This is the New Forest of Augustus John and and Juliette de Bairacli Levy both of whom had befriended the forest dwelling gypsies.

Green-Wood Fires

Aromatic sweet scented smoke hangs in the windless air like a grey-blue curtain, and mingles itself with the autumn mist. A stream sings lazily along, and the mist changes its singing into plaintive sadness, as it also does the sharp thin music of distant children's voices. A dog's bark has a note of mystery, and all things seem far away and unreal.

Down in a sleepy sheltered hollow is a picturesque encampment of gay coloured gypsy vans, yellow, green, gold, and crimson, decorated with the brooms and rush baskets, by which the gypsies make a living, and looking like distorted giant toadstools against the glory of the woods. Each van has its own graceful plume of smoke, which gradually widens out, until it is lost in the blue grey curtain. In the centre of the ring of vans, is a large fire, made from the green-wood, gathered by the gypsy children, who are far afield after still more fuel, it is their voices which vie with the streams faint song.

Over the communal fire from crossed sticks, hangs a large black pot whose steam has the most inviting odour. Near the fire, women are busy with a culinary duties, and almost in silence the men are tending the animals, lean horses, and small sturdy donkeys, while several nondescript dogs group themselves hopefully around the simmering pot. Obviously the gypsies have only just arrived, yet already the hollow has an air of home, and is fragrant with green-wood smoke, and the good smell of savoury food. When darkness falls, the campfire will glow redly, and its smoke have an even  sweeter scent. One leaves the homely hollow, and the gay caravans, reluctantly, and with a tiny pain of regret.
To very few of us, for even a short time, is it made possible to live in such a simple, sane, and happy way.

Young Gypsies by Augustus John

Paul Nash bookplate for art collector Samuel Courtauld

Found - a loose bookplate by Paul Nash  for the industrialist and art collector Samuel Courtauld. Produced around 1930, it measures a sizeable 13 by 9.5 cms, probably intended mainly for art books and livres d'artistes. The writer and broadcaster Lance Sieveking writes in his autobiography The Eye of the Beholder (Hulton Press, London, 1957) -'Sam Courtauld and Paul met at a dinner party I gave at Number 15 The Street, and Courtauld persuaded Paul to design a book plate for him. The result was one of the most charming he ever made.' The engraving is said to be the only one initialled by Paul Nash on the block. The bookplate is quite scarce as, presumably, it is mostly found in books held at the Courtauld Institute; few have entered the used book trade.

The woodcut is British Surrealist in style with an echo of Cubism and Vorticism - both movements had earlier attracted Nash. Samuel Courtauld's family fortune came from the textile industry (rayon), hence the bobbin and threads. The French flag refers to the origins of the name Courtauld, a French Huguenot family whose early descendant was the celebrated goldsmith Augustine Courtauld. The Courtauld textile industry was based in Braintree and Halstead in Essex. The view through the frame shows what appears to be a Martello Tower - these are closely associated with the  East Anglian Coast.

English Books in Paris

Found in a mid 1930s American detective thriller, tipped in at the front (for exchange purposes) this flier for  the Gibert Joseph (or Joseph Gibert) bookshop at 26 Boulevard St. Michel in the 5th arrondissement of Paris. It is still there at the same address with many books in languages other than French. The English language section is adequate but there are few rarities as there were in the past.

The curious thing in this ephemera is the notice 'Free Entrance' -- I can think of only one bookshop in the world that charges entry ($5) and that is run by a much arrested, deranged and violent bookseller in New Hampshire U.S.A. Possibly this is a mistranslation. The phone number has been changed by hand which might enable someone in the know to date it quite accurately. It looks like the 1950s. Until the advent of Shakespeare and Co.,  Gibert was the main source of used English books in Paris. Interestingly it also caters for the four other most wanted languages there, mostly because these are the nearest countries, although there has long been a large Russian community in Paris.

The Pan Bookshop, Fulham

A bookmark of the much loved Pan Bookshop in Fulham, London. In late 1997 its landlord accepted a high offer from a grocer and the bookshop 'went dark' (or is it that only for restaurants?) after 32 years trading. The shop's blog is still up and has many commiserations in the comments field - 'best bookshop in London,' 'irreplaceable' and a fulsome piece from Vogue food writer Arabella Boxer (cook books were one of its specialities.) One customer writes: " I will refuse to step foot in whatever shop might replace it - heavens forbid another Carluccio or Starbucks or bar serving caperinias - I would launch a hunger strike if I thought it would do any good."

It seems that by the mid 1990s the area (now known as 'The Beach') was moving away from book culture to cafes, food and delis. The book mark is probably from the 1970s as the 01 number was current then. The Pan Books pink symbol is interesting and one imagines at some point it was full of Pan paperbacks (now quite collectable) although latterly it was owned by Macmillan. Macmillan blamed "tough market conditions, a decline in the overall trading of independent bookshops combined with an expensive high street location in Chelsea" for the closure.

The Devil’s Hoof- Marks

Another chapter from this fascinating forgotten work Oddities: A Book of Unexplained Facts (Allan, London 1928) by R.T. Gould. The illustration is from an Edwardian novel (possibly Quiller Couch or Baring Gould.) Info on the polymath Rupert Thomas Gould (1890 – 1948) can be found at the foot of this post..

THE DEVIL'S HOOF-MARKS

  A Scottish minister once preached a sermon upon the text "The voice of the turtle is heard in our land".* He was literally-minded, and unaware of the fact that the "turtle" referred to is the turtle-dove, and not that member of the Chelonia which inhabits the ocean and furnishes the raw material of such "tortoise-shell" articles as are not made of celluloid. In consequence, the deductions which he drew from his text were long remembered by such of his hearers as were better-informed.

* Canticles ii. 12. 

  "We have here", he is reported to have said–"we have here, my brethren, two very remarkable signs and portents distinctly vouchsafed to us. The first shall be, that a creature which (like Leviathan himself) was created to dwell and abide in the sea shall make its way to the land, and be seen in the markets and dwelling-places of men; and the second shall be, that a creature hitherto denied the gift of speech shall lift up its voice in the praise of its Maker."

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Bookplate of Chesterton of Kensington

Found in a copy of Bella Duffy's Madame de Stael (Eminent Women Series, W.H. Allen, London 1887) a bookplate of one E. Chesterton of Kensington. This is almost certainly a close relation of G. K. Chesterton, the writer, novelist and creator of the immortal Father Brown. He was from Kensington and a member of the family who owned the Kensington estate agent Chesterton's - which still flourishes in London's white hot property market of 2014.

The illustration seems to be by E. Chesterton (a man) and is reminiscent of the style of Lucien Pissarro. The quotation is from one John Wilson, whom Holbrook Jackson, in his Anatomy of Bibliomania, notes was a London bookseller. Modernised, it reads thus:

“Oh for a book and a shady nook,
Either indoors or out,
with the green leaves whispering overhead,
or the street cries all about.
Where I may read at all my ease
both of the new and old,
For a jolly good book whereon to look
is better to me than gold” 

London Night and Day 1951

London Night and Day, illustrated by Osbert Lancaster, edited by Sam Lambert (Architectural Press, 1951)

Surely one of the most entertaining of the plethora of books brought out in the wake of the Festival of Britain. The coloured cover illustrations and the vignettes in black and white were by Osbert Lancaster, a friend of John Piper—the same John Piper who is named in a section devoted to the Festival, to which he contributed, among other things, a superb semi-abstract panorama. If you hadn’t been informed that Lancaster had designed the cover, you would have attributed it to Piper, whose style of portraying shop fronts is showcased in Buildings and Prospects, which had appeared just a few years earlier. Lancaster’s style is identical. Was Piper concerned that he was being flagrantly copied by Lancaster? Probably, but according to his biographer Frances Spalding, the two men were friends.

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The Sensational Story of the Christie Case

Found - a sensationalist paperback The Christie Case (Gaywood Press, London circa 1958). A rare non-fiction pulp by Ronald Maxwell - one of the youngest journalists following the case. The book begins:

The Christie case was more than the stories below the headlines for me.It was the story behind the headlines and it took many sleepless nights and long-drawn days to unfold as I followed closely upon the greatest manhunt of modern days, culminating in the final arrest of a man named John Reginald Halliday Christie, in whose flat the partly clothed bodies of four women were found strangled. In the small garden behind the flat, there were uncovered the skeletons of more women, who were still not identified weeks after the discovery.

The story began when a coloured man named Beresford Brown decided to fix the wireless in the kitchen of the ground floor flat at number 10 Rillington Place, Notting Hill, London W 11. That was on Tuesday, March 24, 1953. Beresford Brown intended to share the kitchen of the flat – which had recently been vacated by John Christie – with other tenants of this dingy, two storey house. By accident, the man tapped against the wall, and there was a hollow sound. It intrigued him. He tore away a strip of wallpaper and discovered a small hole in the partition which his action had exposed. Through the hole, in the small cavity inside, he saw a woman's leg. Shaken with horror, he looked closer. There, in the dark hollow, he could see well enough to distinguish the outline of a partly clothed body. In his brief glance it up in the fact that there were two bundles behind the body. 

… He ran excitedly into the street in search of the police, it was not difficult to find a constable in this part of the Royal Borough of Kensington... within minutes, the whole apparatus of Scotland Yard been set in motion in motion and the hunt had begun...

How to be Happy on the Riviera 4


The concluding part of a posting of a complete book How to be Happy on the Riviera by Robert Elson W. (Arrowsmith Ltd., 11 Quay Street, Bristol, 1927).The appendix has a wealth of information, much of it aimed at the long stay vacationer and the expat or 'remittance man' (similar to the trustafrian of our time). The address and name of the British Consul in Monte Carlo (G W Hogg) the address of the British Library and the Anglo-American Library (in the Grand Hotel building.) There was even a weekly paper for the British abroad,The Cote D'Azur,that came out on a Friday. There is good advice for those who 'winter abroad' -- Hyeres is suggested for those who like it quiet, Monte Carlo for those who want it lively (but the bathing is poor). Also invaluable advice for the journey there, that might still hold true:-
"Don’t trust the time-tables as to there being a restaurant-car on any train southward from Paris (except the Calais–Méditerranée); bring a tea-basket with you and be prepared to grab things from the buffets at the Gare de Lyon and at Marseilles, or you may go foodless."

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Political and Royal gossip 1920s

Lady Elvery by William Orpen

A good letter, over 20 closely written pages. Indiscreet, gossipy ('The Prince of Wales was blotto..') from the inner circles of power and privilege in the mid 1920s. The recipent was Beatrice Elvery, Lady Glenavy (1881 - 1970). Irish artist and literary host, friend of Katherine Mansfield and friend of Shaw, Lawrence and Yeats. She modelled for Orpen and painted 'Éire' (1907) a landmark painting promoting the idea of an independent Irish state. The letter is from her husband Charles Henry Gordon Campbell, 2nd Baron Glenavy (1885–1963) politician and banker in England and Ireland.

Quite a good little show at the Londonderry's the other night. Great strong retainers at the door in short kilts of the Stewart tartan created an atmosphere of sex appeal, much fortified by the magnificent bosoms of the Marchioness Curzon which are said to have only reached their full bloom for the first time this season.

Eire by Beatrice
Elvery (1907)

The white face of Elinor Glynn, a a long green velvet gown, made our RC aboriginals visibly insecure: her walk is so sensuous as to suggest unimagined pleasures in love and is enhanced by some minor pelvic obstruction which necessitates a few swings with the right leg before she can take a step. Her daughters, married to a pair of peers or better, offer a pleasant contrast of blackheads and anaemia. Lady Jowett was escorted by Eddie Marsh who is still holding up wonderfully together...........We bumped into Gladys Cooper fresh from the theatre in full make up, on Londonderry's arm and a bodyguard of four young men........

On asking Lady Jowett how she explained Baldwin's remaining in public life she said the Baldwin family had a firm hold on the British public's imagination ever since she said, when asked whether she found it (illegible) to have so many children imposed upon her by her husband that 'each time she closed her eyes and thought of England'...........

On Friday McGilligan, Hogan and Fitzgerald went to dinner with the King. Everything gold including the forks.

But the king forgot it was Friday: the soup was a meat soup so the R.C's couldn't eat it and in the end, after a huge long dinner all they had was a bit of sole. a few peas and an ice cream. They rushed back here at midnight and gorged themselves on rolls and butter and tea. They said the Prince of Wales was blotto........

[Later he goes to a party at Buckingham Palace and his take on the queen's breasts is hilarious....  He spends a lot of time with Mark Gertler and Mary Hutchinson. The letters ends on a scrap of 'Irish Free State Delegation' paper.] I am writing to keep myself awake while Ramsay Macdonald meanders on about things he doesn't understand.....