Wit and Wisdom from the Royal Family, as told to Thomas Blaikie

At a Tuesday audience Tony Blair raised the subject of what he called ‘the Golden Jubilee’. ‘My Golden Jubilee,’ the Queen gently corrected.

An escort commander allowed his horse to block the crowd’s view of the Queen too often. From inside the carriage, the Queen said, ‘ Actually, Captain, I think it’s me they’ve come to see.’

In 1958 the practice of presenting debutantes at Court was finally dropped. It was really too absurdly snobbish and outdated. But Princess Margaret took a different view.’ We had to put a stop to it’, she said.’ Every tart in London was getting in .’

Queen Mary often asked,’ How’s your poor mother ?’or ‘How’s your poor daughter ?’In fact, she used this adjective’ poor’ so frequently that people began to wonder to whom it did not apply. Eventually, someone crocked it. ’Poor’ meant anybody who wasn’t royal.

The Chairman of the Milk Marketing Board was showing the Queen around an artificial insemination unit when her eye was caught by something unpleasant in a jar.’ What’s that?’, she inquired. ‘It’s a cow’s vagina, ma’am.’ The Queen didn’t blink. ‘Ask a silly question!’, she said.

Awkward conversation was being made at Buckingham Palace during the State Visit of General de Gaulle and his wife. Somebody asked Madame de Gaulle what she was most looking forward to in her retirement, which was imminent. With great elaboration, not speaking English much at all, she replied, ‘A penis.’ Consternation reigned for some time, but it was the Queen herself who came to the rescue.’ Ah, happiness’, she said.

Queen Mary’s visits to country houses were dread by their owners. It was understood that if she took even a glancing interest in an antique it was hers. In this manner, she acquired, among other things, a priceless Queen Anne cupboard. She was not without scruples, however. So that the whole thing might be looked upon as a swap, she sent the people in return, something equivalent—a tin tray which, as she explained in the accompanying letter, ‘ I bought myself from a stall in Benares.’

When she was Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher was troubled to find that, at a reception, both she and the Queen were wearing green. She sent a note round the next day: would it be an idea if the two ladies` wee to confer about their outfits in future? When the reply came it said, ‘The Queen does not notice what other people are wearing .’

When Hugh Scanlon of the TUC lunched with the Queen in the 1960s, he managed to project a roast potato from his plate on to the floor. It looked as if his hostess had not noticed and, what was more, one of the corgis was approaching and would surely consume it. But the corgi, taking its time, made a lengthy inspection, and then waddled away.’ It’s not your day, is it?’, remarked the Queen.

A Labour minister in Harold Wilson’s government, called to Balmoral for a Privy Council meeting, felt uncomfortable when he saw that all the other ministers were in appropriate Scottish wear and he wasn’t. But the Queen was charming. Pointing at his chest, she commented, ‘How useful a string vest is.’

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Upper class jokes

Taken from Best Upper Crust Jokes by Edward Phillips (1974)

Don’t see much of Chauncy de Pugh these days, old boy .’

‘ No—he’s become a tremendous snob since he succeeded to the title.’

‘What’s that go to do with it ?’

‘ Well, he refuses to travel in the same car with his chauffeur’.

Noticing that his friend had a very handsome-looking red setter with him, the first nobleman said, ‘ I say, old chap , you’ve got a new dog!’

Yes, relied the second, ‘ I got him for the wife, actually.’

‘By jove, said his friend. ‘ That was a damned good swop.’

Did you hear the one about the very rich aristocrat who bought his son a slum?

He wanted him to have the things he’d missed when he was a child.

A prospective Tory candidate for Parliament was addressing a constituency meeting and was being continually interrupted by a Socialist heckler.

‘ Let me ask you a question’, shouted the heckler.’ Have you ever earned a penny by the sweat of your brow?’

‘Certainly not, answered the nobleman. ‘Our family never perspire ‘.

Remind you of a certain member of the Royal Family ?

Did you hear the one about the neighbourhood that’s so high-class, when the children write rude words on garden walls, they’re in Latin ?

Remind you of a certain former Tory MP ?

An old lady was explaining her duties to the new maid.

‘ Now from time to time’, she said, ‘ you will have to help the butler upstairs’.

‘ Oh, that all tight, ma’am, said the maid’. ‘I like a drink myself occasionally’.

An English nobleman registered at an hotel in Mexico. The receptionist, looking at the register, said pleasantly in English, ‘Ah—-you are a foreigner.’

‘Certainly not’, said the nobleman. ‘I’m English !’

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Don’t ! An Anglo-American edition of 1880

A few years ago we featured a selection of ‘ Don’ts’ from a manual published in the mid twentieth century. This time we are looking at a reprint of an Anglo-American edition dating from 1880 of a best-selling manual of ‘Mistakes and Improprieties ‘ that appeared from the famous publishing house of Field and Tuer. Some of these extracts are accompanied by comments from your Jotter.

At Table

Don’t, as an invited guest, be late to dinner. This is a wrong to your host, to other guests, and to the dinner.

Don’t seat yourself until the ladies are seated or, at a dinner party, until your host or hostess gives the signal. Don’t introduce, if you introduce at all, after the company is seated.

The advice regarding ladies has been redundant for many decades, as sexual equality is now generally recognised.

Don’t tuck your napkin under your chin, or spread it upon your breast. Bibs and tuckers are for the nursery. Don’t spread you napkin over your lap; let it fall over your knee.

What purpose, one may ask, does a napkin serve on someone’s knee ?

Don’t serve gentleman guests at your table before all the ladies are served, including those who are members of your own household.

Regarding the advice of serving  ladies first, this again is outdated.

Don’t eat soup from the end of a spoon, but from the side. Don’t gurgle or draw in your breath or make other noises when eating soup. Don’t ask for a second service of soup.

It’s quite awkward, actually, to ‘eat ‘ soup from the end of a spoon. Try it, if you don’t believe me. I agree fully with the ban on noisy eating, especially the use of the expression ‘ Aaaaaah ‘ to denote pleasure.

Don’t bite your bread. Break it off . Don’t break your bread into your soup.

Good advice. Depositing bits of bread into your soup is the equivalent to ‘ dunking’ biscuits into cups of tea. An abhorrent practice tolerated when children do it, but intolerable when done by adults . Grow up. 

Don’t eat with your knife. Never pout your knife into your mouth. Go into any restaurant and observe. Don’t load up the fork with food with your knife, and then cart it , as it were to your mouth. Take up the fork what it can easily carry, and no more.

Any restaurant ? This may have been the case at Simpson’s or the Savoy in 1880, but visit a ‘ greasy spoon ‘ today and you might see a number of knives in mouths, especially when there is no spoon handy to gather up that lovely Bisto gravy. Mmmmm.

Don’t use a steel knife with fish. A silver knife is now placed by the side of each plate for the fish course.

In the era before stainless steel was perfected for culinary use (c1915) posh knives often has steel blades and silver handles. Naturally, ordinary steel immediately discolours and corrodes when it come into contact with even mildly acidic food. But fish is not acidic, so it is unlikely to affect steel fish knife blades. Moreover, it is very difficult to get a cutting edge on silver, so one would not use a silver knife to cut up meat. But it cannot be denied that special silver fish knives were used in up- market Victorian households.

Don’t eat vegetables with a spoon. Eat them with a fork. The rule is not to eat anything with a spoon that can be eaten with a fork. Even ices are now often eaten with a fork.

Sound and sensible advice in 1880 as it is in 2025. That is except the bit about eating ices with a fork. Cake, yes. But ice cream? Surely, if it is starting to melt, it would drip through the tines of the fork.

Don’t leave your knife and fork on your plate when you send it for a second supply.

This is pretty obvious practical advice. These implements get in the way of the second helping of food, which is an inconvenience to your host or hostess. 

Don’t apply to your neighbour to pass articles when the servant is at hand.

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G. F. Sims once again

Ralph Chubb, Woodcuts ( Andrew Block, 1928). One of 200 copies. Small 4to. Original lilac marbled boards. Slightly marked, but a nice copy. £5.00. Today £200 +

There has been a revival of interest in this poet and illustrator in recent years. Back in the early seventies he was hardly known beyond a select circle of admirers, hence the low price. Chubb ( 1892 – 1960), like his contemporary E. E. Bradford, a parish priest in the Fens, is now a gay icon whose extraordinary life and celebration of ‘ lads love ‘ has attracted many to his work, which has echoes of William Blake, though his verse is nothing like as inspiring. Chubb’s home in Berkshire is still there and the shed in which he printed his books and pamphlets also remains. See a previous Jot for a fuller account of his life and work. It is unlikely that there will ever be a blue plaque to him somewhere in his native Harpenden.

A. E. Coppard, Silver Circus (Cape, 1928) Special edition of 125 copies on hand-made paper, signed by the author, bound in full velum with a green leather lettering piece, gilt. Fine copy of this scarce book.   £10.00.   Today £200 +

A hundred years ago, at the advent of the craze for modern first editions, Coppard was King of the Pile. Articles were written on him and his rather enigmatic short stories. Most of his books seemed to be printed in tasteful ‘ special editions ‘. All the experts agreed that here was an author worth investing in. Though his reputation waned somewhat in the late ‘thirties, he was still admired in the late sixties, when some of his short stories were televised. Fast forward to the noughties and Gen Z has blank faces at the mention of his name. Still, for all this, he is still arguably the most famous person to hail from Folkestone.

Note: Sims offered five other copies of Coppard titles, nearly all ‘ special ‘ editions, priced at between £7.00 and £15.00. Don’t expect them to rise much in value in the future, though.

Frances Cornford, Travelling Home and other poems. Illustrated by Christopher Cornford. ( Cresset Press, 1948) . First edition. Fine in d.w. £1.50. Today £20

Baron Corvo, “ Lytel Seynt Hew”. Contained in The Universal Review edited by Harry Quilter, September- December 1888. Pp 585 -591 contain this poem by the “Rev. Frederick Rolph”, each page being decorated by one of his drawings. Thick 4to, original red cloth, gilt.    £12.50.

C. Day Lewis, Ten Singers. An Anthology. Fortune & Merriman, 1925. First edition. The Poet Laureate’s first publication—a scarce anthology published in the early days of the Fortune Press. Printed on hand-made paper and bound in hand-made paper wrappers. Fine Copy.  £7.50.  Today £ 25.

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Beatnik poetry parody by AI 1962 and 2024

I asked ChatGPT to come up with a parody of a Beatnik poem,

within seconds this appeared, daddy-o (daddy – AI -o!) :

Jazz snaps, bongo thumps,

man, l’m real gone

like milk, like fog,

cat’s got whiskers, but who’s got time?

Reality’s a broken jukebox,

spinnin’ static and cigarette smoke,

dig it, daddy-o — the universe yawns

A good effort. I dig it. However in the book Science Shapes Tomorrow (1962) they asked a computer

(probably the size of a house) to write a Beatnik poem, having fed it 500 words

usually used by Beatnik poets’ and it came up with this:

Auto beatnik poem number 41: insects.

All children are small and crusty. 

And I can saw all dragons. 

And all pale, blind, humble Waters are cleaning,

And flying woefully is like closing sweetly,\

A insect, dumb and torpid, comes off the daddyo,

How is a insect into this fur?

The 2024 is probably better as a parody, AI by its mimetic nature being adept at parody – but the one from 62 years ago is a fine effort.

At that time what has now become Artificial Intelligence was called ‘Machine Thinking.’ In the book they say that a thinking machine must be able to learn by experience, to be flexible in the way it takes in its information. The machine ‘will have to come far closer to our almost miraculous five senses which feed our brains with information. Great steps are being made in this direction… The third ability is the machine must be able to break free from logic, produce for themselves new and original ways of working with the data inside them.’ The fourth is interesting – the machine must be able to recognise when it is being brilliant – ‘it would be sad if a machine hit by chance, for example, on a successor to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and then did not recognize that this was a more valuable statement than printing out that the Earth is round.’ This is quite a demand – even now, surely, it is the human who recognizes when the machine is being brilliant. This could change..

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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Floating Voters

Found – this manuscript poem by E.V.Knox (1881 -1971) one-time editor of Punch , serious humorist, poet, parodist and satirist (known as ‘Evoe’). It was probably published in Punch and possibly just after the Second World War… seems rather topical…The plaque above is outside his house in Frognal, London NW3…

A LAST WORD TO THE FLOATERS 

O scum of the Electorate

Whose vacillating heart is

Unclaimed by the protectorate

Of either of the Parties,

Politely let me woo you,

However plain your features,

And say some home truths to you

You nasty looking creatures.

Unless you vote sincerely

Unprompted by the devil

The sides may come out nearly,

Aye more, precisely level.

And where would England be then

If indolence so trumpery

Exposed her to the heathen-

A by word for Mugwunpery?

Why, damned to all perdition,

A land without a master,

Foredoomed to Coalition

And weltering in dienster:

This home of Kings and fighters

And Constitution-shapers

Depends on you, you blighters,

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The Bus stops at Binham Lane

A lost classic of ‘thirties dormitory suburbia ?

When a comparatively recent book becomes hard to find one is tempted to wonder exactly why. If it isn’t a private press production in a limited edition, or wasn’t the victim of a fire that devoured most copies in a publisher’s warehouse, or wasn’t withdrawn from publication due to a law suit, or bought up by the author who didn’t want readers to buy it, then one is entitled to ask why it is so scarce . There is only one copy ( at some point there were two, but one was sold) of The Bus Stops at Binham Lane by Stacey W(illiam) Hyde, published by Jonathan Cape in 1936, on abebooks. This particular copy is in only fair condition and lacks its dust jacket, but the vendor wants a cool £29 for it. Does he know something about the book that we don’t ?

Perhaps he read a review of it by L. A. Pavey in the Winter 1936 issue of Now and Then in which the reviewer praises the author for a remarkably shrewd eye for the idiosyncrasies of a couple newly displaced from one established piece of suburbia into a brand new estate development built on fields and country lanes on the edge of a town. Hyde’s general theme is the effect on those who began their post-war life in the heart of the country but who ended up ‘ in a Calvary of estate development and jerry-building’ to a place with (to quote Hyde himself)

‘homes strung out interminably along the white skewers of their concrete roads; there were no churches among them, no schools, no parks, shops only in isolated pairs, no pubs, no halls, no libraries, no cinemas—nothing to indicate that a people…had come to live among the immemorial quietudes of Binham fields’.

 If we put aside the town-planning issues temporarily and focus on the sociological ones, it’s possible to imagine why The Bus Stops at Binham Lane is regarded as an important record of how the displaced inhabitants of new housing estates were obliged to make the best of their ‘ bleak sort of wilderness ‘. If we return to the town-planning issues and perhaps view them with a sociological eye , the book could be read alongside such classics as William Clough-Ellis’s Britain and the Beast , C.E.M. Joad’s The Untutored Townsman’s Invasion of the Country (1946), or for that matter, the Shell Guides of the ‘thirties and their temporary replacements of the forties , the Murray’s Architectural Guides, which cast a baleful eye on the ribbon development and the new arterial roads that disfigured so many of  the outer suburbs of London. Needless to say, many of these issues were also addressed by John Betjeman in his early poems as well as in his excellent First and Last Loves. At a slightly later date, the late great Ian Nairn highlighted them in his pioneering Outrage and Counter Attack.  

In his book-length diatribe Joad discusses the rise of what he calls ‘ dormitory England’ and here he uses the same objections in 1949 as Hyde had used in 1936.

This ‘England of the factory and the spreading dormitory suburb’, Joad complains,

…is a lonely England and lacks almost all those places of meeting in which human beings have traditionally gathered, known their neighbours and felt the stirrings of civic consciousness. There are no assembly halls, no theatres, few churches, no civic centres; in many garden cities there are no pubs or very few. There are only those awful isolating cinemas where the inmates sit hand in hand, absorbing emotion like sponges in the dark…These spreading suburbs have no heart and no head…’   

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Book Collecting for Fun and Profit by Bill McBride. An American perspective (1).

Mr McBride, an American dealer based in Hartford, Connecticut, published his pocket-sized guide to book collecting and dealing for  $9.95 in 1997, but twenty six years later, things in the second hand book world haven’t changed that much, except perhaps that the Internet now plays a much bigger part in the whole business.

This Jot is a commentary on what McBride has to say on collecting and dealing from an American standpoint, though it should be emphasised that throughout the Western world there is very little difference in how collectors and dealers regard books today compared with how such a book maven as Slater ( see previous Jots) saw the business back in 1892.

Let’s start with McBride’s first piece of advice.

Rule One: buy what you like.

‘ Books can be proven to be good investments, but the wisdom to know what to buy seems clearest only in hindsight: “ twenty-five years ago, if you had bought such-and-such a book, it would be worth a hundred times its original price.”. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to pick the ones that will perform that well out of the millions of new books published in English, world-wide.’

‘ Almost impossible’, perhaps, but not impossible. McBride is talking about new books. But if the author in question  is an established figure with a world-wide reputation (perhaps he or she is a Nobel prize winner) the possibility of that author’s latest novel or collection not rising in value is a no-brainer. If you had bought, for example, a first edition of Philip Larkin’s High Window when it appeared in 1974 you could put your house on it rising in value considerably within twenty years, even if you didn’t know that it would be the poet’s final collection.

But new novelists? Yes, ‘almost impossible ‘.In the same year (1997) that McBride’s guide appeared someone called J. K. Rowling brought out Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone , following its rejection by a number of leading publishers of children’s fiction. Each year literally thousands of new books for children are published in the UK. No-one could have predicted that Ms Rowling’s book would turn out to be the international sensation that it became. Bloomsbury obviously had faith in their new author, but not faith enough to bring out more than a smallish edition. The book received mainly rave reviews for the originality of its plot and characterisation. The edition sold out and a new edition was reprinted. Fans of the book couldn’t wait for the next Harry Potter story and they didn’t have to wait long. Readers who had bought the debut novel  because they liked stories about schoolboys defying their parents and adults and getting mixed up in magic in a special school for magicians found, twenty years later, that their  pocket money had bought a book worth many thousands of pounds. They had bought what they liked and had ended up with a good ‘investment ‘. 

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The Strawberry Hill Press

Strawberry Hill, the ‘Gothick‘ pile near Twickenham, which dilettante Horace Walpole began to build in 1749, continues to fascinate lovers of architecture and design. No only is it the first building of its kind, and as such was responsible for inspiring the taste for Gothic architecture, but it was the brainchild of a man whose life and work has been the subject of so much scholarly attention. Indeed, the Lewis Walpole Library at Yale began as a private collection devoted to Walpole and today it houses the biggest holding of Walpoliana in the world.

Much of the interest in Walpole among bibliophiles focuses on the Strawberry Hill Press, which was launched by the collector and connoisseur in 1757. The works which issued from it are sought after by collectors around the world and have always commanded high prices. Your Jotter was reminded of this when in leafing through Austin Dobson’s A Bookman’s Budget ( 1917) he came across a sub-chapter entitled ‘The Officina Arbuteana’.

In it Dobson discusses the two Strawberry Hill Press books he owned. The first was An Account of Russia as it was in the Year 1710 by the British Ambassador at the time, Charles Lord Whitworth. This is what Dobson classes as mainly ‘politico-statistical’ which he declares to be largely ‘dull and dry’, but he does admit that the anecdote supplied by Walpole in his Introduction is noteworthy. It concerns a remark made by Catherine I to Whitworth on the dance floor that referred obliquely to some relationship the couple had had when the Czarina was much younger.

The other, distinctly more interesting book, was in fact the first work to issue from the Press. This was Odes by Mr Gray (1757), ‘printed at Strawberry Hill, for R. and J. Dodsley in Pall Mall.’ Walpole thought these rather ‘ obscure ‘poems written in Greek ‘ sublime ‘, while Dobson noted that as later reprinted in English as ‘ The Progress of Poetry’ and ‘ The Bard’ they contained ‘ thoughts that breathe and words that burn’ which have ‘passed into the commonplaces of the language’.

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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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Cycling on the ‘Continong’ in 1906

Two things that jump out from a cursory glance at The Continong by the pseudonymous Anar de la Grenouillere, F.O.N.S., of which a file copy of the fourth edition of 1906 was found at Jot HQ the other day, is first the rather forced facetious tone of its advice to travellers to France, and secondly the predominance of references to cyclists.

In 1894, when The Continong  first appeared, the motor car had only been around for a handful of years and so presumably the author did not feel it necessary even to acknowledge its existence. But by 1906, when many more manufacturers were producing cars, this rise in traffic is not acknowledged in this ‘revised and updated ‘edition. Touring France for the English speaker was still all about railways or, in Paris, ‘buses and trams  ( though not the Metro, although this had been established by 1906)  possibly walking, horse-drawn ‘cabs’ but most of all, cycling. Compared to the four pages devoted to railways and three on cabs and cabbies, the author provides fifteen pages of advice for cyclists.

The first few pages of this advice are devoted to what to expect on arriving in France. British cyclists are urged to join the TFC (Touring Club de France) which was founded in 1890. For a mere five shillings a year, benefits include a Handbook, and the exemption of duty on their cycles, and for a few extra francs a Year-book containing a list of over 3,000 approved hotels, at which members enjoy a privileged position as to charges, a Year-book for foreign countries and a book of ‘skeleton tours’ for the whole of France and adjoining countries. Incidentally, a compulsory requirement for cycles being ridden in France and elsewhere on the continent was a name-plate ‘bearing the name and address of the owner (and) attached to the machine’. This seems to have been the equivalent of a car licence plate, which back then became a legal required for motor vehicles in 1903. Again, this suggests that cycles were seen as the predominant form of personal transport, at least in France.

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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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When writers attack

We at Jot 101 are always looking for new examples of bilious, scornful or downright libellous remarks. A number of collections have been scoured and selections made, but in Matthew Parris’s Scorn with extra bile ( 1998) we seem to have found a truly impressive collection of insults, including a very well known one from my own uncle, the first Baron Riddlesden ( aka Denis Healey ).

Some of the better insults are, alas, too long for inclusion, but here are some by writers that are equally entertaining, but pithier. There is also a hilarious semi-parody of the somewhat overrated children’s writer A.A. Milne by Dorothy Parker (photo above).

…an umbrella left behind at a picnic.

George Moore on W. B. Yeats.

A church lit but without a congregation to distract you, with every light and line focused on the high altar. And on the altar, very reverently placed, intensely there, is a dead kitten, an eggshell, a bit of string.

H.G. Wells on a book by Henry James.

A hack writer who would not have been considered fourth rate in Europe, who tried out a few of the old proven ‘ sure-fire’ literary skeletons with sufficient local colour to intrigue the superficial and the lazy.

William Faulkner on Mark Twain

I wish her characters would talk a little less like the heroes and heroines of police reports

George Eliot on Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

I cannot abide Conrad’s souvenir shop style and bottled ships and necklaces of romanticist clichés.

Vladimir Nabokov on Joseph Conrad

Tell me, when you are alone with Max, does he take off his face and reveal his mask ?

Oscar Wilde on Max Beerbohm.

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The Library of E. M. Forster

Found in the archives at Jot HQ, this catalogue from Heffers in Cambridge of a large portion of E. M. Forster’s library.

In the introduction by King’s College Librarian, A.N.L. Munby, who knew Forster well, we learn something of Forster’s ancestors, who included his grandfather, Charles Forster, friend and Chaplain of John Jebb ( 1755 – 1833), Bishop of Limerick. Of the books bequeathed by Jebb to  Forster, by far the most valuable was a ‘superb’  copy of Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience, which came down to E. M. Forster in 1904. He in turn donated it to Kings College Library on his eightieth birthday. One book from Jebb that Forster owned at his death was a piece of incunabula dating from 1494. Sacrii Eloquii Celeberrimi Preconis Venerablis dni Alberti Magni Epi Ratisponess Sermones Aurei de Sacrosancto Eucharistie Sacramento had covers bound from a vellum manuscript. 

When Forster left the family home at West Hackhurst, Surrey, for King’s College, Cambridge in 1946, he had to downsize his library. Many books were sold and in his new accommodation on A staircase in the College Forster was obliged to settle on a library totalling 2,500 volumes. So, as new acquisitions were made, other volumes had to be given away to friends or to the College library.

On Forster’s death in 1970 Professor W. H. Sprott, one of his executors, inherited the contents of his rooms, including the library. After King’s College was allowed to purchase five hundred significant items from the library and friends were invited to choose books in memory of the writer, the rest was retained by Sprott. On the latter’s death in 1971 Heffer’s bought this remaining portion of Forster’s library.

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Some artists’ letters from the D’ Offay catalogue

Felicien Rops

Letters written by artists are generally boring. Just read William Blake’s letters. Most of them concern business arrangements with printers and publishers. However, there are a few exceptions. The letters of Samuel Palmer, that great admirer of Blake, tell us so much about his mental state, his religiosity and politics. Those of James Smetham, the Victorian artist, are occasionally mystical and deranged. The unpublished  letters of Britain’s favourite twentieth century artist, John Piper, many of which I have read, are also lively and sometimes controversial. 

We could say something similar about the twenty-five letters of Jean Cocteau, that Anthony D’Offay had for sale in his Art and Literature catalogue back in the late 1960’s. The addressee was Madeleine Le Chevrel and most of the letters and postcards to her were written between 1912 and 1925. Cocteau had the rather eccentric habit of composing ‘in a curiously abbreviated style where one word suggests a sentence and a question mark a paragraph’. Thus: (1917) ; Diag. prolonge mon sejour…Rome est lourd, molle, morte, grosse et petite. Le souvenir decourage de vivre. Les soupe, les champagnes, les aphrodisiaques, le cacodilates du Vesuve menent la danse de cette Kermesse enorme ou les eglises, les cuisines et les bordels  sont decore de la meme pacotille splendide. Les femmes sur les balcons se laissant tomber comme de bateaux entre les bras des marins…’ 

That strange word ‘ cacodilates ‘ is certainly new to us at Jot HQ. Some online research reveals that a French chemist named Cadet brewed up something he called Cadet’s fuming liquid in 1757. This turned out to contain cacodylic acid, a poisonous arsenic-containing compound, which today is used in chemical analysis. However, back in Cocteau’s day, it seems that a derivative of this substance was used in France as a stimulant, rather like cocaine.

For such a graphic picture of the young avant-garde artist and writer D’Offay wanted a quite reasonable £185, which is around £7 a letter.

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John Buchan parody by AI and a Clo-Kepp attendee

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Illustration from DALL-E when asked for a book cover for Buchan’s The Three Hostages. It doesnt seem to understand his name..

I asked Chat GPT to come up with a John Buchan parody. The brief was to write a piece with the context of rain outside, a man and wife inside and an unexpected visit by a friend. This had been the brief for a parody found in the annual school magazine of Clovelly-Kepplestone (1930) a private boarding school for girls in Eastbourne, Sussex. It flourished from 1908 until 1934 and was familiarly known to staff and pupils as “Clo-Kepp”. There is a very comprehensive piece on it at Wikipedia.

The Clo-Kepp John Buchan parody, probably by a school girl, is an amusing and well tuned effort:

    “The night was wild and rainy and reminded me of the time when old Hatiron and I were engaged in that business of the Forty-second Psalm. My wife, who was busily employed in the stitching and repairing of one of my shirts, torn during the day’s shooting at Clan Haggis, remarked upon the persistently bad weather we had been experiencing of late, and wondered, the streams being then in spate, whether I should not take a week off to try the mettle of the fish in the Ben Slioch burns.

    I opened The Times, and, glancing casually through its pages, noted with surprise that Flaxman had resigned his post in the Ministry. He was always pretty keen on politics, though strangely recondite in his views on Empire Policy, which he declared was sheer jingoism and inflated proletarianism.  However, it seemed strange that he should leave the Ministry at a time when Burton was intent on seeing that England got what she wanted.

    ” Well, what’s the news ? ” inquired my wife.

    ” Oh, very little,” I replied, ” the usual things ;  I see Flaxman has retired.  I can’t help thinking there must be something to it.”

    Just then the bell rang, and after a moment Breeves came in to ask if we were at home to Mr. Thoughtnot.

    ” Why, Jimmy,” I cried, ” this is a marvellous surprise.”  The last time I had heard of him he had been wandering about Samarkand disguised as a Shiari ; and had you spoken of him in a certain hovel where the mountains dip down beside the valley, which runs towards Tashkent, you would have heard strange things of him.  For Jimmy was a Lawrence in those parts, and there is not a wandering pedlar on the Kirgiz Steppe who will not give a night’s lodging to him who mentions Raskashpol.

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John Buchan and AI

As a lover of the works of John Buchan and one not unconcerned about the precarious future of this planet I consulted ChatGPT using a famous and prescient quote by Buchan from his thriller The Power House (1916).

I asked them this: “John Buchan wrote in 1916 “ ..you think that a wall as solid as the Earth separates civilisation from barbarism. I tell you, the division is a thread,a sheet of glass. a touch here, a push there, and you bring back the reignof Saturn.” Is this still true in 2023?” 

25 seconds later they replied: “The quote by John Buchan is certainly still relevant in 2023, as the line between civilization and barbarism remains thin and fragile. Though the world has made great strides in terms of technological advancements, social progress, and global connectivity, there are still forces that work to destabilize these achievements and push society back towards chaos and conflict. Whether it’s geopolitical tensions, economic inequality, racial divides, or environmental degradation, the challenges facing humanity require us to remain vigilant and work together to maintain and strengthen the bonds of common humanity that hold us together. In short, the quote from John Buchan remains a timeless reminder of the need for vigilance, empathy, and unity in the face of adversity.”

A good answer. He/she / it is definitely more Bernie Sanders than Logan Roy. I went on to ask it for a parody of John Buchan. In a past Jot we have a very good Buchan parody by a young girl at boarding school in the 1930s. It is many miles better than Chat’s brave effort. As the old unreconstructed Dr Samuel Johnson said (in about 1760) of women preachers: “Sir…(it)is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.” Tune in again soon to see both parodies..

English etiquette by an Indian Harley Street doctor 

Most books of etiquette published seventy or more years ago. have  comic value .If they were written by foreigners anxious to ‘ educate ‘ their compatriots in  the ways of the English there is a strong likelihood that they will be occasionally hilarious. Such a book is English Etiquette, which was published at St Christopher’s, Letchworth, a radical and culturally significant independent school that had established a printing press by the late 1920s. Its author, a certain  Dr R. U. Hingorani, an Indian who was active from 1928 to 1930, according to the records, and appears to have been a Harley Street practitioner around that time. The booklet’s aim was to familiarise Indian immigrants with the customs of the English.

Here is the good doctor’s advice on :

Personal habits

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It is a social crime to lick your fingers when turning over the pages of a book. An educated Englishman values his books as part of his personal property—he looks after them and keeps them clean. If he lends them to a friend it is a personal favour and he expects that friend to return the books in the same condition as they were lent. Licking the fingers while turning over the pages, besides being considered a dirty habit, will, if persisted in, soon spoil the appearance of a book, giving it a ‘dog-eared’ look and detract from its value…

You should never overlook another person’s newspaper or book…It is quite in order to ask for a loan of a newspaper or book but you should wait until he owner has completely finished reading and then politely make your wish known…

In England, as in other countries, an attractive personal appearance is a great asset in any walk of life but to attend to one’s toilet in public is a very bad social error. For instance, finger nails must always be kept scrupulously clean—this is a very important point as dirty finger nails are taken as evidence of a person’s bad upbringing—but they must never be cleaned in public. Ears and nose should always be attended to in private and you must never play about with your fingers when talking to another person…

Another bad error is to talk to a lady with your hands in your pockets. This shows that you are not so accustomed to talk with well-bred ladies and that your primary education has been defective…

European and Far Eastern people lend emphasis to their speech when talking with friends and acquaintances by gesticulating with their hands. This is quite incorrect in English eyes. A person who continually uses his hands in conversation is considered to have had an inadequate education…Pointing with the hands should always be avoided as this is considered a very rude habit…

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Curries in 1924

Talented artist, friend of Beardsley and writer on cookery, G. F. Scotson Clark ( see previous Jots) , was particularly fond of curries which, though they had been the staple of Anglo-Indian families since the late eighteenth century, were only just becoming popular with restaurant customers in the United Kingdom when his first book, Eating Without Fears , appeared in 1924. Here are his views on curries. 

‘ I was brought up on curry. Mine is an Anglo-Indian family. So fond was my mother of curry, that she used to declare she was weaned on it. In our old home one day we would have” Uncle Edward’s “curry, on another,“ Uncle Charles’s”. Uncle Charles was the only member of the family who was a Madrasi. All the rest were Bengalis, and our early recollections of Uncle Charles—when I was about seven or eight years old—are that his curries were infernally hot. The older he got—and he was close to ninety then—the hotter became his curries, until at last no one but himself could eat them. He lived in a curious old house in Bayswater, a house literally walled with books. The doubled drawing-room upstairs was always scattered with papers. He wrote from morning till night, but what he wrote I know not, except that he was the author of a Telegu dictionary in some twelve volumes, which I am sure no one ever read…

There is no necessity for a curry to be hot—hot with pepper to burn the tongue. Too much curry powder, or curry powder insufficiently cooked, is generally the cause of this. At the same time it should be piquant and not like a  stew with a flavouring of curry.

When the gas was cut off by the Gas Board at his small ‘ Bohemian Club ‘in London frequented  by ‘ artists, writers, barristers, soldiers, sailors, the clergy, including two bishops’, Scotson Clark volunteered to cook an Indian dinner using only a chafing dish and a spirit stove. The menu was: 

                                                                    Mulligatawny Soup

                                                                          Kedgeree

                                                                     Curry of Veal and Rice

                                                            with Bombay Ducks, Chutney, and

                                                                    West Indian Pickles

                                                                     Iced oranges

                                                                      Fruit Curry

The complicated  recipe for mulligatawny soup is as follows: 

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