Some favourite urban legends

The thing about urban legends ( or urban myths, if you prefer) is whether you can believe that the events actually happened. Some of the occurrences are so astonishing that most people would love to believe that they are true. But there again, it must be easy enough to invent an urban legend. Make up your mind about the following ‘ stories ‘ that are adapted from Rodney Dale’s book It’s True…It happened to a friend(1984). We at Jot HQ are inclined to believe that most are true.

No such thing as a free ticket.

A Surrey couple had their car stolen from their front drive. Four days later when it reappeared, the owners found two theatre tickets on the front seat and a note which read: ‘ Sorry. We had to take your car in an emergency. Please accept the tickets with our apologies.’ A few days later they used the tickets and returned to find their home stripped, even to the curtains.

This is surely a familiar trope. Conan Doyle used elements of it in two Sherlock Holmes stories, notably ‘The Red Headed League’. More recently, sports stars, usually footballers, are often burgled when the criminals are certain that they will be away from their homes on award-ceremony evenings.

Get rich quick

A man advertised ex-government trousers at a ridiculously low price. The orders rolled in, the man became wealthy, but did nothing. He still did nothing when those who had ordered trousers complained. Only when solicitors became involved did the man buy a pair of trousers and forward them to the customer. Most who had sent him money did not bother to pursue the matter. The low cost of the trousers meant it was not worth their while to go after the fraudster, who became very rich.

Ponzi scheme ?

Placebo effect

A hospital in Edinburgh used its ECT machine for over two years, reporting beneficial effects, before discovering that there was something wrong with the power supply and the machine had never worked.

Do as you are done by.

Rodney Dale

The owner of a stately home not open to the public was somewhat annoyed when he saw a car and caravan turn into his drive, park on the verge, and disgorge a family, which proceeded to unpack all the apparatus necessary for preparing a meal. He did not complain but instead took the number of the car and somehow managed to obtain the address of the offenders. Months later he loaded his car with his own equipment and family, drove to the suburban home of the transgressors, and held a pic–nic on their tiny drive. Lord Montague of Beaulieu tells a similar story. Continue reading →

Movie trivia

Anthony Perkins was not on the set when the famous shower scene was filmed in Psycho. The director, Alfred Hitchcock, went into the shower to deal the fatal blow.

Peter Sellers produced a film at a cost of £6,000 starring Britt Ekland, Lord Snowdon and Princess Margaret ( as Queen Victoria) and presented it to the Queen on her thirty-ninth birthday in 1965.

C. Fields once sold a story line which he had written on the back of an envelope for $25,000.

The first public appearance of a movie was at the ‘Koster and Bials’ Music Hall in New York on 23 April 1896.

The first animated film was Gertie the Dinosaur(1909), drawn by Winsor McCay.

Robert Mitchum could read and write by the age of three.

Warren Beatty was once a rat-catcher

Dirk Bogarde’s father was art correspondent for The Times.

In Emma Hamilton, a film set in 1804, Big Ben manages to strike, although it wasn’t built for another fifty years.

The first person to appear naked on the screen was Hedy Lamarr

The first film with a story was The Great Train Robberyin 1903. Continue reading →

Charles Morgan to Arthur Bryant

Found –an interesting signed presentation from Charles Morgan to the historian, Arthur Bryant. It reads – “Arthur Bryant, more about the froggies from his old friend & admirer, Charles Morgan 7.7.49.” It was in a copy of his 1949 book The River Line.

Morgan had been awarded the French Legion of Honour in 1936 and was elected a member of the Institut de France in 1949. In his time Morgan enjoyed an ‘immense’ (Wikipedia) reputation during his lifetime, particularly in France.

The River Line became a play but was originally written as a novel in 1949 and concerned the activities of escaped British prisoners of war in France during World War II.

The inscription is interesting given Morgan’s high standing in France and his professed love for the French. He is still admired there but has become a slow seller in Britain. The inscription possibly panders to Bryant’s tastes and views, notably to the right. Bryant had written a book in 1940 which he had to rapidly repress (see Bookride) due to its failure to condemn Hitler.

Advice to Theology students

This comes from a piece of paper I’ve never been able to throw out, as it intrigued, even shocked me so much (‘classics not worth the paper they are printed on’ indeed). If this becomes a jot, hooray! I shall be able to dispose of the paper, at least. It is online advice to Theology students, which I printed off for myself. I thought it revealed an interesting (to say the least) attitude of the theologian to what might be called popular (normal, even?) religious feeling, response or attitudes. By searching on ‘Childs Martin Danker’ for the acceptable books, lo and behold I came across the whole document I had excerpted from here dated 2009 and entitled ‘Theological Statements Guide’. However, no bibliographic details for Childs etc. are given there. So I can’t be much wiser.

“N.B. Popular and devotional literature and most works written for laypersons are not acceptable for this assignment. Many popular commentaries are written by nonspecialists who may be articulate speakers or well-known in other fields, but whose exegesis and comments are often technically uninformed. This applies to the material in the “Exposition” section of the old version of The Interpreter’s Bible. Many reprints of older works are useful, if used carefully, but many of the so-called classics are not worth the paper they are printed on. A discussion of acceptable older and more recent works are found in the bibliographic resource guides by Childs, Martin, Danker, etc. The student is responsible for finding and using suitable resources. If in doubt the student is encouraged to ask the professor, who can be reached at…

Laurence Olivier’s Stage Fright

Laurence_Olivier_with_Joan_Plowright_1960

Laurence Olivier_with Joan_Plowright in ‘The Entertainer’

Sorting papers recently I found an EPCA Newsletter (European Personal Constructs Association - PC Psychology deals with personality and attitude change) from 1998. It had a book review quoting Laurence Olivier on his stage fright.

"With each succeeding minute, it became less possible to resist the terror. My cue came, and I went in to that stage where I knew with grim certainty I would not be capable of remaining more than a few minutes ...".

The book itself The Person Behind the Mask: a Guide to Performing Arts Psychology (London, Ablex 1997) was written by Linda H. Hamilton. She had been a ballet dancer from age 8 to 26, then became a Clinical Psychologist. Her book cites research conducted over one year at the University of California's Health Program for Performing Artists, when 25% of patients had psychological problems including "severe anxiety and/or depression, personality disorders somataform disorders, psychoses and suicidal behaviour (p84)". The reviewer goes on to say that the book "deals in some detail with the characteristic problems of public self-display e.g. unrealistic weight requirements, debilitating injuries which hamper performance or prevent it altogether, and stage fright and points out that it is time the professions themselves woke up to the need to pay attention to their own occupational realities".

Some lesser known quotations

Dorothy Baker

After over fifty years of varied reading the Liberal party leader Viscount Samuel (1870 -1963) collected around a thousand quotations for his own use. In 1947 the Cresset Press decided to publish about half of these arranged under several heads. We at Jot HQ were sufficiently impressed by the noble lord’s wide reading and discernment to select what we feel were some of the most perceptive of these pieces of wisdom.

It seems to me that we all look at nature too much, and live with her too little.
OSCAR WILDE

The question of common-sense is always “ What is it good for?”—-a question which would abolish the rose and be answered triumphantly by the cabbage.
J.R.LOWELL

Keats is an example of literature untouched by science
A.N.WHITEHEAD

It is just when ideas are lacking that a phrase is most welcome
GOETHE

Of what use is freedom of thought if it will not produce freedom of action?
JONATHAN SWIFT

Absence of occupation is not rest.
WILLIAM COWPER

Great learning and great shallowness go together very well under one hat.
F.W.NIETZSCHE

The depths of the fathomless loyalty that is in the heart of the dog.
LORD DUNSANY

Crime is the anti-social form of the struggle for existence
ENRICO FERRI

No, Sir; we had talk enough, but no conversation; there was nothing
discussed.
Dr SAMUEL JOHNSON Continue reading →

More gags from an Edwardian joke book

Edwardian joke book pages 001 In an earlier Jot we selected at random some pretty witty items from an Edwardian comic’s gag book composed of clippings from newspapers and magazines. Here are some more. Astonishingly, most sound so very modern in their style of humour. None of them contain puns.

He—Last night I dreamt that I died. What do you suppose waked me up ?

She—The heat probably.

IN THE CHEMICAL LABORATORY.—“ Professor, what has become of Tom Appleton ?. Wasn’t he studying with the class last year?”

“ Ah, yes. Appleton—poor fellow! A fine student, but absent-minded in the use of chemicals—very. That discolouration on the ceiling—notice it?”

”Yes”

“That’s him.”

Continue reading →

A letter from Lady Charlotte Wheeler-Cuffe (1867 – 1967), plant-hunter extraordinaire

During her twenty-four years in Burma with her husband, an engineer in government service, Lady Charlotte Wheeler-Cuffe (nee Williams) became an intrepid plant-hunter, whose discoveries included various species of rhododendron. On her husband’s retirement in 1922 the couple retired to his ancestral seat at Lyrath, near Kilkenny, and it was here that Lady Charlotte planted some of the exotic plants she had gathered over the years. While in Burma Lady Charlotte had corresponded with friends, including another keen plantswoman, Baroness Prochaya, who also lived at Lyrath and professional botanists, one of whom was Frederick Moore, head of the Botanic Gardens at Glasneven, near Dublin, and on her return to Ireland it would seem that the correspondence continued.

This typewritten letter dated August 1923, which we found in the Jot 101 archive, seems to have been unposted, as it contains corrections in ink and lacks the name of the intended recipient, is addressed to a botanist from Horsham who was writing a book. In the letter she reports that she had just sent this botanist a blossom of Lilium lowii, which she had originally discovered nearly eight years earlier:

‘ In November 1915 I was travelling with my husband…in the Southern Shan States and finding some dried stalks and seed pods of a lily (growing on the edge of a wood and facing north, on limestone, at an elevation of somewhere about 5,000 ft) dug them up and brought them back to Maymyo, where we were stationed. There they flowered the following summer, and next autumn I sent some of them home to Glasneven, where Sir F Moore had always been most kind and helpful to me in my amateurish efforts at plant collecting …Sir Frederick wrote to me the next year saying that the lilies were L.lowii, which had been in cultivation in Europe but lost for many years, as its habitat was not known. The first place I found it was near Loilem (lat.20, long 20), but I afterwards discovered it in many other similar places and got quite a lot of bulbs into the Botanical Garden at Maymo, the summer headquarters of the Burma Govt., where I worked during the war.

This lily and L.sulphureumoften grow naturally together, in open woodland in the Shan hills; and in damper places a yellow and brown one, which I believe to be L.nepalensis. I have watercolour drawings of both these, if you would care to see them. Other lilies I have found in Burma are: a beautiful pure white one, growth like sulphureum but quite different bulb ( small and white, whereas sulphureum is large and purplish).This white lily grows in the extreme north eats of Burma, on the China frontier at about 6,000 feet and further up the passes ( about 11,000 ft) there is a lovely spotted pink and white lily which was, I think, first found by Miss Malet, who was up at the frontier post of Hpimaw with her brother. ( she sent it to me at Maymo and I had it blossoming there a year at least before Mr Farrer found it ; but I believe it has been named Nomocharis farreri).Mr Kingdom Ward found a beautiful crimson lily on Imaw Bum , a 13,000ft. mountain near Hpimaw; and I got a lovely flaming scarlet one in the Ruby Mines district, but failed to bring it home. It was very similar to the scarlet Korean lily and may have been imported via China, as it was in a village and the Lashi people eat the bulb. There is another edible lily bulb in the Chin Hills with a white blossom: but this I have not seen as I was only there in early spring, but I hope to get some bulbs sent home this winter.’
Continue reading →

London Life: a magazine for fetishists

The front and back covers of London Life, which appeared from 1920 to 1960, should suggest the dominant theme of this magazine. In the three issues from the early 1940s that we found at Jot HQ recently scantily clad young ladies feature prominently on two of the covers, while the third shows a lovely young thing in full pout. Between the covers images of more scantily clad ladies in the form of photos and line drawings jostle for attention with feature articles on such topics as corsets and shoes, paint-on stockings, and ear-rings. There are also serials featuring Tilda, ‘ the world’s most glamorous girl ‘.But most of each issue is dominated by correspondence from alleged ‘ readers ‘ discoursing on every aspect of dress fetishism from a penchant for corsetry , high-heeled shoes and long gloves to the pleasures of transvestism.

Compared with what can be found on the Internet today this material is pretty mild, but in 1932 the magazine was deemed too audacious for the Irish government, who banned it. However, during the war against Hitler ( who is mocked in one issue) a more sensible British government doubtless felt that it provided much-needed glamour for demoralised troops.

All tastes were catered for by the correspondents, including in one instance, a sort of male transvestism in which the correspondent recalls the experience of wearing a corset borrowed from a friend:

‘ He asked me if I would like to be laced, and suggested a comfortable tightness at first, and as it was a beautiful evening, we decided to go for a walk after I finished dressing. We went quite five miles, and I shall never forget how comfortable I felt; no sign of fatigue, and on my return I requested him to lace me in much tighter—and it was quite a thrill seeing what a small waist I could achieve. Needless to add that I have now spent some coupons on a pair of my own, and although I don’t wear them daily, I particularly delight in walking in them, and have become quite a tight-lacing fan.
Yours truly,
“LACED.” Continue reading →

O Rare Amanda !

In June 1973 Bevis Hillier, connoisseur of English porcelain and friend and biographer of John Betjeman, wrote a piece in The Times concerning an archive of manuscripts, published books, letters and photographs of Larne’s best loved citizen and arguably Britain’s worst writer, Amanda McKittrick Ros, that had come onto the market. The collection, assembled over many years, mainly from members of her family, by journalist and founding member of the British Communist Party, Eric Mercer, had been sold by him to the bookseller A.F.Wallis just before he died in 1972 aged 89, and Wallis now wanted £4,500 for it.

Forty-six years ago this was a tidy sum for a writer mainly known for her comedy value. Back in the 1920s, when smart Oxford undergraduates like Betjeman and Waugh took part in competitions to discover who could read out passages from Ros’s novels and poetry without laughing, such an archive might have fetched more. But even in 1973, years after her star had faded somewhat, £4,500 for such a unique collection seems a bargain today, especially when we learn that the MS of Enemies of Promise by the minor writer Cyril Connolly was up for sale at the same time for a cool £2,000 !

Few would dispute that Ros has ever been truly fashionable, but her books, all of which were originally privately printed, are still collected and first editions, especially of her verse, are hard to come by, mainly because of their small print-runs. But no publisher in 2019 would dare bring out large editions of her books partly because she is still not well known enough and partly because we have become rather po-faced about ridiculing people who evidently had no talent, whether as writers or marathon runners. Continue reading →

Anarchy magazine, 1963

We at Jot 101 only have this copy of Anarchy, issue number 27 ( May 1963) as a guide to what this notable magazine was all about. We do know that it was founded by Colin Ward in 1961 and ran under his editorship until 1970 and that regular contributors included committed anarchists like Nicolas Walter and Harry Baecker. A check list printed on the back of the front cover gives some idea of the political tone of the magazine. Each issue had a theme. The copy we have focuses on ‘Youth ‘, and this seems to have been a prominent talking point in earlier issues, along with calls to oppose capitalism, challenge educational values and generally practise non-violent disobedience and dissent. But Colin Ward was a great advocate for adventure playgrounds, so issue 7 was wholly devoted to this. There were also issues devoted to ‘ Technology, science and anarchism ‘, ‘ De-institutionisation: conflicting strains in anarchism ‘, and ‘ The work of David Wills ‘.

It would be revealing to compare the intellectual level of Anarchy with that of Class War, the agitprop mouthpiece of anarchism in the eighties and onwards run for a time by Ian Bone, who recently became a media bad guy when he cornered the children of Jacob Rees-Mogg and told them that their dad was a ‘horrible’ person. Both magazines have in common the basic tenets of anarchism—anti-capitalism, dissent, ‘ do-it-yourself ‘, and us-versus them—but the violent undercurrent ( ‘Kill the Rich’) that characterises Class War is notably absent from Anarchy, which specifically rejected violent confrontation in favour of powerful arguments that challenged orthodoxies in society. Some of these in this ‘Youth ‘ issue are certainly worth reading.

One of the most perceptive pieces is ‘ The Young One ‘ by Nicolas Walter, which focuses on Cliff Richard, arguably the most popular male singer of a bunch that included Adam Faith, Marty Wilde and Billy Fury, all three of whom Walter saw as genuine working class rebels. In contrast, Cliff, though also working-class, stands apart from his peers as distinctly conformist:

‘ Sometimes he looks like the politician who finds out what most per cent of the voters thinks before he thinks. But he really doesn’t like smoking, drinking, chasing girls and so on. His secret is simple—he has no secret. His personality is simple—he has not personality. He is, as Colin MacInnes once said of Tommy Steele, “ every nice young girl’s boy, every kid’s favourite elder brother, every mother’s cherished adolescent son “ . He is a non-hero of our time, an innocent idol. Continue reading →

A Victorian Dictionary of Blunders c 1888

This is a useful pocket guide to some extent, but is frequently supercilious and downright patronising. Often the compiler treats the reader as if they were a halfwit, especially in the matter of pronunciation.’ Reindeer is pronounced rain-deer ‘ it advises. ‘ Salver is pronounced sal-ver, not sar-ver’, apparently. Then it warns readers not to confuse one word with another with a similar spelling. Thus ‘ corpse ‘ should not be confused with corps. Nor should anyone write continential ( which doesn’t exist as a word ) when they mean continental ? Has anyone ever done that ?

The corrected pronunciation of some words is questionable, to say the least. We are told that with ‘ abdomen’ , the emphasis should be on the second syllable, not the first . With ‘ mediocre ‘the first syllable should feature a short ‘e’. Today, there is no agreement on these two examples. In other instances the suggested pronunciation is bonkers. The word ‘retch ‘ according to this book, should be pronounced ‘ reach’. ‘Rabies has three syllables ‘we are informed, and should be pronounced rar bee ez. Sheer madness! Even if the word has a foreign derivation, by 1888 its place in the English language should have been assured. Disappointingly, it has nothing to say about the vexed question of whether ‘poor ‘ should be pronounced poo-er, as some grammarians insisted, or ‘pore’. Ghost-writer M. R. James famously derided those who favoured the latter pronunciation in his story ‘The Mezzotint ‘. But doubtless the Provost of Eton was a bit of a snob. Nor does the Dictionary suggest how ‘economics ‘ or ‘controversy ‘ should be pronounced. It ought to come down heavily on two of the worst solecisms of our own time, ‘less’ for ‘fewer’ and ‘reticent’ for reluctant, but it doesn’t. However, it is good to see that in 1888, 34 years before the BBC was founded, and many years before newspapers had a role in forming popular opinion, we are told that the plural of ‘medium’ is ‘media’. It is also interesting to note that back in 1888 common speech was as plagued as it is today with the ubiquitous ‘ you know ‘. ‘All these “ you knows “ would be better left out ‘ advises our author. Quite.

Disappointingly, and indeed, rather predictably, the booklet perpetuates the grammatical correctness of the gendered pronoun, as in the correction to ‘I do not think anyone to blame for taking care of their health’. ‘Their’ should be ‘his’, it advises, rather chauvinistically. Today, you don’t have to be a feminist to prefer the use of the gender-free ‘their‘ in this case.

All in all, A Dictionary of Daily Blunders contains almost as many blunders masquerading as truths as it does corrections to perceived blunders. No wonder the author, who also compiled A Handy Book of Synonyms,wanted to remain anonymous.

[R.M.Healey]

A month in the life of a RADA student in 1934: The journal of Nancy Seabrooke

Nancy Clara Seabrooke (1914 – 1998) does not figure hugely in the history of the British theatre and TV. Her biggest claim to fame was being the most patient understudy in the annals of British theatre– shadowing the role of ‘Mrs Boyle’ in Agatha Christie’s record-breaking Mousetrapfor 15 years (6,240 performances), and actually appearing as her for a fraction of these performances, before retiring in 1994. On TV she was a bit part player, appearing in single episodes of Danger Man, The Grove Family, Maigret and No Hiding Place. Double Exit(1950) was her first TV movie. She was Deputy Stage Manager of the play ‘The Irrregular Verb to Love’ (1961), which starred fellow RADA student Joan Greenwood. There is no record of any appearance by Seabrooke on the silver screen.

Her journal, which covers the period April 18^thto May 19^th1934 while she was a twenty-year-old final year student at RADA, occupies the whole of a slim exercise book, and is written in a large, round, artistic hand in fountain pen and pencil. At the outset Seabrooke confesses that she had decided to begin it after acquiring a Victorian example in a second–hand shop. She says nothing about whether she plans to continue her journal well beyond the month. For all we know, it may have been part of a series, though no evidence of this has come to light.

At the time in which she began her journal Seabrooke was commuting to London from her home not far from the small village of Newdigate, south of Dorking, Surrey, and the events she describes are concerned as much with her home life in the country as they are with her other, more glamorous, existence as a RADA student. Several things emerge from the journal. She seems to have been fascinated by Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, particularly Ben Jonson and John Webster (she even named her cats Beaumont and Fletcher), was an avid playgoer in London, notably at The Old Vic, and was in awe of many leading actors, especially John Geilgud, to whom she writes a fan letter. She also seems to have been the editor ( or assistant editor ) of the news-sheet The Rada News and was writing a ‘ satire ‘ and some ’sonnets’. Having at the outset vowed that she would steer away from introspection, she devotes a good deal of her journal to tormenting herself over a certain Joseph, on whom she clearly had a crush, although the affection seems to have been one-way. Continue reading →

Eating healthily the Focus way

In an earlier Jot we looked at the June 1928 issue of Focus, a pocket monthly magazine, published in London, which was devoted to alternative medicine, healthy eating and what today we might call ‘New Age’ concerns. Little is known about this publication, apart from the fact that the publishers were the fringe medicine outfit C.W.Daniel. However, from the issue of December 1928 we now discover that although Focushad begun life just two years before, the publishers had decided to close it down and replace it, starting in January 1929, with a quarterly periodical to be called Purpose.

Readers of Focuswere left to imagine what the successor might turn out to be. All that was said was that the aims of the new magazine were to be the same as ever, that is to say, the promotion of ‘the ethics of mind and body’.

As for this final issue of Focus, it was the usual eclectic mixture of articles on philosophy, literary philosophy ( with H.G.Wells and Tolstoy examined), left-field speculations on medicine ( the common cold revisited) and metaphysics , and longest of all these, a fascinating item on healthy eating that focussed on daily menus. All this supplemented by a solid twenty pages of adverts for radical books, a directory of vegetarian boarding houses and ‘Nature Cure Establishments‘ . Continue reading →

Pop trivia

The last note of ‘ She’s Leaving Home’ on Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album lasts 43 ½ seconds—the final bit being at a high frequency audible to dogs but not to most human beings.

Paul McCartney produced the Bonzo Dog Doodah Band’s ‘ I’m the Urban Spaceman’ single under the pseudonym Apollo C.Vermouth.

The Beatles’ second film Help was dedicated to Elias Howe, inventor of the sewing machine

Names of real bands:

Grab, Grab the Haddock

Impaired Penile Throttle Condition

Stitched Back Foot Airman

I Spit on Your Gravy

You’ve Got Foetus On Your Breath

The Savoy Hitler Youth Band

Deep Freeze Mice

The longest running group in the world were the New Christy Minstrels, who were originally formed in 1842 as The Christy Minstrels. They disbanded in 1921, but reformed in 1961 as The New Christy Minstrels. Continue reading →

Focus—a magazine for the alternative lifestyle

Utopian fiction— as purveyed by H. G. Wells, Ford Madox Ford and Aldous Huxley ; the vegetarian movement, calisthenics and other health –promoting practices, including naturopathy and hydrotherapeutics, and psychoanalysis—were all increasing in popularity among the chattering classes of England in the years that followed the end of WW1. And Focus,which advertised itself as ‘to the point in matters of health, wealth and life’, was one of the magazines that catered for this new demand.

Rooting through the archive at Jot HQ we found two copies of this ‘little’ magazine ( it was only the size of a prayer-book) and one of the first things that struck us was the high proportion of adverts in them. In the issue for June 1928, out of its sixty pages a quarter were adverts. And these ads told you a lot about the magazine’s readership. Perhaps the most interesting advert was for the famous Stanboroughs Hydro, near Watford. Here among 200 acres of parkland the Hydro offered cures of all kinds, including Electric Baths, Ionisation, Diathermy, Phototherapy, Artificial Sunlight, Massage and X –Rays. Incidentally, Stanborough is still there. Other adverts were for similar health farms , such as Uplands, the ‘Nature Cure’ retreat near Hereford. This establishment offered such regimes as the Exclusive Milk Diet and way-out psycho therapies, such as Auto-Suggestion by the Coue method. Focus also gave space for the alternative life-style gurus, such as Dr H Valentine Knaggs (1859 – 1954), whose self-help booklet, Blood and Superman,was less to do with the influence of Nietzsche and more to do with the purity of the blood stream in the attainment of the higher faculties. Other titles from Knaggs included The Mischief of Milk(1920), The Salad Road to Health (1919), and the Right and Wrong Uses of Sugar (1923). Such warnings seem amazingly prescient to us in 2019. But as if to prove that Focus
was not the whacky reservoir of alternative medicine that some of its content appeared to suggest, the editor also included an article by the Swiss nutritionist who popularized muesli, Dr M. Bircher-Benner ( 1867 – 1939) entitled ‘Into the Interior of the Atoms, ‘ a survey of the latest discoveries in particle physics, and in particular the recent theories of Niels Bohr, which was illustrated by an amazing diagram of the electron paths of a radium atom.

But Focus was nothing if not eclectic. In the same issue we find a piece by Patrick Braybrooke, who as well as being the father of Neville, who became a prominent literary figure in the neo-romantic movement of the 1940s, was also an authority on G. K. Chesterton, H.G.Wells and Thomas Hardy. In part six of his series of features on ‘ Philosophies in Modern Fiction’ Braybrooke examines the philosophy of Chesterton, which he sees as being inimical to a rational view of society, but which instead promoted an essentially humanitarian sense of wonder towards the ‘ picturesque, the glories of the old legends (and ) the glamour of the Middle Ages’. In this, Braybrooke suggested, he opposed ‘any superman ideas ‘.This invocation of the idea of ‘ superman ‘ was probably a dig at the atheistic, ‘ progressive ‘George Bernard Shaw, whose play ‘Man and Superman’ dealt with the philosophical implications of Nietzsche . It is likely that Braybrooke saw Chesterton’s old school Catholicism both as a corrective to these notions and part of the movement towards the attainment of a simpler, alternative lifestyle which was underpinned in his case by religious faith. Continue reading →

Neurasthenia cured by electricity

Used as early as 1829, the ‘ medical ‘ term neurasthenia to describe nervous weakness was quickly taken up in America forty years later when neurologist George M. Beard formally introduced the concept of ‘ nervous exhaustion ‘.

With symptoms that included anxiety, headache, palpitations, high blood pressure and mild depression, neurasthenia became associated with the pressures suffered by middle-class businessmen, politicians, and others sold on the American Dream. Indeed, it was nicknamed ‘Americanitis ‘ and claimed President Roosevelt among its sufferers. William James, Proust, Wilfred Owen and Virginia Woolf were also neurasthenic. By the 1920s it had definitely become a fashionable condition among certain groups in Western society ( it was virtually unknown among the labouring classes, assembly workers and shop assistants) and its popularity engendered a whole industry of quack cures. In an earlier Jot we learned that the regular imbibing of a nerve tonic could banish neurasthenia. Mrs Woolf swore by lengthy ‘rest cures ‘. But in this advert from a January 1921 issue of the British magazine The Review of Reviewswe are shown how electricity administered through the Pulvermacher Appliance might be the answer.

But before the poor sucker, sorry, sufferer , was asked to shell out to The Pulverbacher Electrologial Institute ( established 1848) of Ludgate Hill, London, he/she was asked the following questions:

Are you nervous, timid or indecisive ?

Do you lack self confidence?

Do you dread open or closed spaces?

Are you wanting in Will Power?

Are you ‘fidgety’, restless or sleepless?

Do you blush or turn pale readily?

Do you shrink from strange company?

Are you subject to sudden impulses?

Do you crave for stimulants or drugs? Continue reading →

An early review of Pound’s Personae (1909)

340px-Ezra_Pound_by_EO_Hoppe_1920 It’s often enlightening to read very early reviews of major writers, especially modernist writers. In 2019 we have the benefit of knowing how certain ‘ big names ‘ developed and influenced others, while the innocent reviewer of an early work has only the words on a page. A gifted reviewer may sense that a writer under review is destined for greatness, but most reviewers are hacks and care little. In the case of Ezra Pound, the anonymous review of his third collection, Personaethat appeared in The Literary Worldof August 15^th1909, suggests that the reviewer was already an admirer of his first two collections, A Lume Spento(1908), which had been privately printed in Venice in a tiny edition of just 150 copies, but which Pound had persuaded the London bookseller Elkin Matthews to display in his window—and the follow up, A Quinzaine for this Yule—also in a tiny edition. A London Evening Standardreviewer described the former as ‘wild and haunting stuff, absolutely poetic, original, imaginative, passionate and spiritual’. It seems that the Literary World reviewer was of a similar mind:

No one can lay the charge of being invertebrate against Mr Pound. His poems are marked by a singular ‘ backbone ‘ and energy. He draws largely on old romance for his themes, but imbues every theme with a certain spirit of high-handed courage. The ‘ Ballad for Gloom ‘ is striking; ‘ Mesmerism ‘is a clever imitation of Robert Browning at his jerkiest. We quote from a poem, ‘ For E.McC, that was my counter-blade under Leonardo Terrone, Master of Fence’.

Gone while your tastes were keen to you,

Gone where the grey winds call to you,

By that high-fencer, even death,

Struck of the blade that no man parrieth;

Such is your fence, one saith,

One that hath known you.

Drew you your sword most gallantly,

Made you your pass most valiantly,

‘Gainst that grey fencer even death.

Personae was a commercial success and thereafter Pound’s literary career was assured. [RR]

A West African Diary (195) part three

Our visitor to West Africa (see previous Jots) in 1954 travelled by ship from Freetown to Takoradi on the Gold Coast ( now Ghana) in late February. On the 21^stof this month he recorded his impressions of his fellow passengers.

At sea

Dinner time. Is the African a snub? Observations of my fellow third-class passengers reveals it—because I boarded the boat at Freetown, and they from the UK, they are aloof. A Yoruba woman boasted to me that my journey from Freetown to Takoradi was short; and that I should go to England to experience the roughness of the bay. What arrant nonsense! Afternoon of us Africans are sweating profusely. An English woman—Rev! Paterson travelling to Ashanti to stay with Prempeh, king. Gave the sermon this morning. Although I did not attend I hear that she was very frank British Colonial policy. Racial strife in South Africa. Australia’s white only policy ; the erudite class of China and India; and the teeming thousands of these two countries. After supper discussion. Mr ( blank) a law graduate returning home to Nigeria told the story of a young Nigerian doctor who returned home with an English wife. His father did not know of the marriage and therefore resented it. During the party held in the honour of the new arrival, the father refused to mix with the young couple and drank alone. Pretty soon he walked up to his daughter-in-law and called her names. Her husband held her hand. She looked pleasantly on. The doctor’s mother had taken to her grandchild. Meanwhile the news of the Doctor’s marriage spread like wild-fire. And the town resented it. But the wife proved herself capable, and with the help of her husband she won all the women, young and old, on to her side.; old men too were soon admiring her qualities. She is the most popular woman in the town –an Ebo town.

By 2^ndMarch he had reached his destination. On this day we find him witnessing the usual rowdy local elections.

March 2, 1954. Municipal Elections .

Ward 5.

I arrived on the scene at 6.30 a.m. The queue was large—polling starts at 7 a.m. Enthusiastic crowd. C.C.P. vans plough the whole area of ward 5. A van is playing Yoruba records in the Yoruba quarters ; a woman propagandist is really telling the women why they as women should vote C.C.P. The political machinery of the party is efficient—most of the men & women queuing are illiterate, esp. Hausa’s & Fantis…A C.C.P. propagandist speaking Hausa, shouting slogans …C.C.P. candidate’s name—Atta Housaine. Continue reading →

A Victorian joke book

victorian joke book index page 001 Found at Jot HQ the other day a small scrapbook containing pasted in humorous cuttings from magazines and newspapers that once belonged to the late prankster Jeremy Beadle (1948 – 2008). The date 1897 on the cover was very likely the year in which the compilation was begun, since many of the jokes and anecdotes are clearly of a later date. The high quality of much of the material strongly suggests that the compiler may have been a comedian of some sophistication who was prepared to devote a long period in search of the best gags.

The jokes are classified into several groups thus:

Ugly faces, dress-makers and milliners, photographers, tailors, bicycles, tramps and beggars, servant-girls, Irishmen, small boys, babies, mean people, love and love-making, mashers, teachers and scholars, country bumpkins, cats, dogs and other animals, singers and musicians, weddings and parties, married men & women, soldiers and the army, ‘tall’ stories, railways, ships & seasickness, conundrums, puns, ‘new ‘ women, comic rhymes, watches and clocks, definitions, boosey jokes, doctors, shops and shopkeepers, bits of advice, deaf people, hotels and lodgings, actors and the stage, fat people, girls and their doings, ‘ catch ‘ jokes, football, hairdressers , churches & clergymen, mothers-in-law, prisons & prisoners, man & his doings, or unclassifiable jokes, hens and eggs, restaurant, Jews, jokes for twoperformers, swimmers, country yokels, fish tales, patriotic, sailors & ships, dentists.

Some favourites

George III wondering how the apple got into the dumpling is nothing to the small boy who, looking between two uncut leaves of a magazine, said” Mammy, how did they ever get the printing in there?” Continue reading →