Martin Fone's Blog, page 288
July 28, 2017
What Is The Origin Of (138)?…
Willy-nilly
This week’s phrase is an is an interesting example of what grammarians call a rhyming-compound which is made up of two discrete words which rhyme with each other. What is also interesting about it is that it has two discrete and very different meanings, one of which has now gone out of fashion. When I use willy-nilly I use it to mean something that is haphazard, almost random and which looks as though there is no over-arching plan behind proceedings. An example of its use adverbially in this context is “the children ran around the garden willy-nilly.”
But the original meaning is completely different. It meant whether you liked it or not, that something was obligatory – the only choice you had was Hobson’s choice. For those of us who know our Latin there is a phrase which is superficially similar, nolens volens, which meant willing (from the verb volo) and unwilling (from the verb nolo). That this may the root of our phrase is given some credence by the Old English sentence in Aelfric’s Lives of Saints, dating from around 1000 CE, “forean the we synd synfulle and sceolan beon eadmode, will ne nelle we.”
We are familiar with will-root but the nill-root is a bit unfamiliar to the modern eyes. The word nill which usually preceded one of the personal pronouns came from the Old English word nyllan which itself was a contraction of ne (no) and willan (will). So nill is the opposite of will and the y at the end of each word is a further contraction, this time of the personal pronoun ye. By the time we get to the 16th century will you, nill you was in common parlance and pops up in Shakespeare’s plays. In The Taming of the Shrew (1596) Petruchio is given the line, “And, will you, nill you, I will marry you” while in Hamlet (1609) the first clown says, “if the man go to this water, and drown himself, it is, will he, nill he, he goes.”
The Oxford English Dictionary attributes the first usage of willy-nilly to the start of the 17th century. Up to this point the phrase was used to indicate that the person had no choice in the matter but over the next century or so it began to take on the meaning of being indecisive, akin to shilly-shally which itself is a reduplication of shall I or shall I not. A form of shilly-shally first appeared in William Congreve’s The Way of the World which was published in 1700; “I don’t stand shill I, shall I, then; if I say’t, I’ll do’t.” That the two were considered synonymous is demonstrated by this passage from The Orange Girl by Sir Walter Besant, published in 1898; “Let us have no more shilly shally, willy nilly talk.”
Of course, one of the hallmarks of indecisiveness is operating without a clear sense of direction or plan. It is relatively easy to see how our phrase could develop its more usual modern sense of randomness, without direction or planning or showing a degree of disorganisation. It has come a long way from its original formation and meaning. There are examples of willy-nilly being used adjectivally to describe something like a set of orders but its usual grammatical form in modern parlance is that of an adverb.
Filed under: Culture, History Tagged: Aelfric's Lives of Saints, nolens volens, origin of shilly-shally, origin of willy-nilly, rhyming compound, Sir Walter Besant, Sir William Congreve, The Orange Girl, The Taming of the Shrew
July 27, 2017
A Measure Of Things – Part Seven
As a regular drinker, I have a mild fascination with the size and measurements associated with alcoholic beverages. I still get into a firkin muddle with them and so to get some clarity (or should that be clarety?) on the subject, I will spend a bit of time explaining the many archaic terms and measurements.
Let’s start with the gallon. In 1884 the British or Imperial gallon was standardised as the equivalent of ten pounds of water at 62 degrees Fahrenheit. This amounts to eight pints and there are four (surprise, surprise) quarts in a gallon, two pints in a quart and twenty fluid ounces in a pint. It wasn’t ever thus and there was a bewildering variety of standards for the gallon. The Winchester or corn gallon was 157 fluid ounces while the Old English Ale gallon was 162 fluid ounces. The Queen Anne Wine gallon was 133 fluid ounces while the Irish gallon was a measly 125 fluid ounces. You can see why they decided to standardise the measure. The question is why it took them so long.
The firkin takes its name from the Middle Dutch word vierdekijn which means a fourth or a quarter and this gives a clue to its size. When used in the context of beer or ale, it denotes a quarter of a barrel. But it was not until 1824 that the amount of beer represented by an imperial beer or ale firkin was standardised. It represented 9 imperial gallons or 72 pints and most pubs to this day buy their beers in this quantity. From around the mid 15th century an ale firkin was 8 gallons, moving up to 8.5 gallons in 1688 and settling at 9 gallons in 1803. The beer firkin was always 9 gallons until the adoption of the imperial gallon measurement.
Then we come to the pin or polypin. Real ale aficionados who are holding a party and are reluctant to settle for the modern-day equivalent of the Watney’s Red Barrel Party Seven – what fun we had trying to open those blighters in the seventies – will go to their local brewers or offie to secure a polypin of their favourite hooch. This is the equivalent in volume to half a firkin or 4.5 gallons or 36 pints – enough to lubricate the whistle.
The next measure we need to get our heads around is the kilderkin and this rather strange word again owes its origin to the Dutch. It means a small cask and in volume a kilderkin is the equivalent of two firkins or half a barrel – in other words, 144 pints. Until the adoption of the imperial measures, ale kilderkins and beer kilderkins reflected the differences in the quantity measured by their respective firkins. Beer festival organisers tend to order their stock in kilderkins in an attempt to ensure there is enough to go round. They often fail miserably in my experience.
The daddy of the beer measures is the barrel which, as you might have worked out by now, equates to 36 imperial gallons or 288 pints. To complete the set we have a tun which is the equivalent of six barrels or 216 imperial gallons, the butt which is half a tun and the hogshead which equates to a quarter of a tun or one and a half barrels or three kilderkins.
Phew! After all that it is surely time for a pint.
Filed under: Culture, History, Science Tagged: definition of a firkin, definition of a kilderkin, definition of a polypin, imperial gallon, volume of a beer barrel, volume of a butt, volume of a hogshead, volume of a tun, Watney's Red barrel Party Seven
July 26, 2017
Gin o’Clock – Part Twenty Six
Boodle’s Club, still going, was founded in 1765 and it moved to its current premises on St James’ Street in London in 1782. It took its name from its head waiter, Edward Boodle. The gin which bears the name of this famous London institution was first created in 1845 and went on to shape what is now known as the modern London style of gin. Reputedly it was Winston Churchill’s favourite gin.
Truth be told, this gin has had a rather chequered history. It was originally produced by Cock Russell & Co and then fell into the hands of James Burroughs Ltd whose most well-known gin in its stable is Beefeater. It then ended up being owned by Seagrams in 2000 but in the following year its assets, were sold to a number of companies with Pernod-Ricard taking over Boodles. There was another change of ownership in 2012 when Proximo Spirits of New Jersey. By this time the gin had disappeared from the UK market, although it has always been distilled here.
Fortunately for British gin drinkers, Proximo struck up a deal with our old friends, G & J Greenall of Warrington to continue distilling the hooch and to return it to the shelves of UK retailers. And so since 2013 we have been able to discover it again and enjoy its unique taste.
The British version of Boodles’ British Gin London Dry – there is a stronger version at 45.2% ABV available in other parts of the world – comes in a squat dumpy bottle with a silver screw cap and weighs in at an acceptable 40% ABV. The label at the front is navy blue in colour, bears the original distillers name of Cock Russell and Company and proclaims the fact that it was established in 1845. The label at the back has a pale blue colour with black lettering and advises that it consists of “100% grain neutral spirits” and that it is “fashioned with a proper balance of traditional herbs and botanicals without the addition of citrus.” It also comes with the rather strange advice that to appreciate its fine flavour, it should be used sparingly. That’s hardly likely to happen!
Boodles’ has carved out a unique position amongst London Dry Gins by not having any citrus flavouring specifically added to the distillation process. If you like your gins with a touch of citrus, then this is not one for you. You could add it by slipping a slice of lemon or lime into your glass or use a citrusy based mixer but that sort of defeats the purpose.
It uses nutmeg, rosemary and sage amongst the nine botanicals that give the grain spirit its flavour – no other gin, to my knowledge, does this but with so many coming on to the market it is difficult to be categorical on the point. The other botanicals are juniper (natch), coriander seed, angelica root, angelica seed and caraway seed. The gin is made in a vacuum still which allows the spirit to retain more of the texture and taste of the botanicals.
So what is it like? It is a clear spirit and to the nose the smells of juniper and coriander are to the fore. In the mouth it is smooth and surprisingly sweet with a clean, long and slightly peppery aftertaste. It makes for a very smooth drink and, dare I say it, quite moreish. After all, warnings are to be disregarded. If you like your gins to be juniper prominent and for the other botanicals to complement and allow the juniper to shine, then this may well be one for you. As an added bonus, it is reasonably priced. I picked up my bottle for just £20.
Filed under: Gin Tagged: Boodle's Club, Boodles' British Gin London Dry, Cock Russell & Company, Edward Boodle, G & J Greenall of Warrington, James Burroughs Ltd, Proximo Spirits of New Jersey, Seagrams
July 25, 2017
The Streets Of London – Part Sixty One
Prescot Street, E1
This street runs parallel to Alie Street, although it is nearer to the river, and links Mansell Street to the west and Leman Street to the east. It formed the southern perimeter of the erstwhile Goodman’s Fields. It is now a rather boring, run-of-the-mill sort of street in that nether land that is the border of the City of London and Tower Hamlets.
We take it for granted now that all buildings have some form of identification in the form of a number. If you stop and think about it, you realise that the practice must have started somewhere and that somewhere was Prescot Street. Hatton’s New View of London, published in 1708, noted that “In Prescott Street, Goodman’s Fields, instead of signs the houses are distinguished by numbers, as the staircases in the Inns of Court and Chancery.” It was only later in the 18th century that the numbering of houses had become a well-established practice and it was not until the passing of the Metropolitan Management Act in 1855 that it became mandatory.
The area around Prescot Street in Roman times formed part of what was the Eastern Cemetery, one of four in the city. During its heyday thousands of Roman Londoners made the place their last resting place. There is evidence that after the Romans had left, the site was still used for burial practices but in what we term the Dark Ages and the early mediaeval time, the site reverted to open land and was used as a rubbish dump as well as farm land for pigs and sheep.
It was not until the late 17th century that Prescot Street was developed into a recognisable thoroughfare, part of what seems to have been a piece of large-scale property speculation. The houses were of a very high standard of construction, with large gardens, forming a square with a communal garden in the middle. Despite this attempt at gentrification, by the mid to late Georgian period the area had a bad rep, with numerous brothels and disorderly pubs.
In May 1741 the London Infirmary moved to Prescot Street from Moorfields. Its aim was to treat “sick and diseased manufacturers, seamen in the merchant service and their wives and families “, although it was not somewhere to enter lightly. It was dirty and unhygienic – pest controllers would delouse the wards regularly and as there was little in the way of sanitation, human excrement, dirty dressings and amputated limbs were dumped outside at night. As it was too expensive to have the cesspool emptied regularly, the hospital committee elected to let effluent overflow via a neighbour’s garden into a common cesspool. The first physician, Dr John Andree, was an advocate of cold bathing and so a cold water bath was built in the Prescot Street gardens for the benefit of the patients.
Next door to the Infirmary was a place known as the Lock which treated patients suffering from sexually transmitted diseases. The unfortunates had to pay for their cure but over time it reverted to offering free treatment and for all sorts of ailments. In 1757 the Infirmary moved again, this time to its present site on the south side of Whitechapel Road.
The increase in London’s population and the pressure for living space meant that the gardens and squares of the original Prescot Street were built over and what was an early example of gentrification in the east of London developed a rather hum-drum character which it retains today.
Filed under: Culture, History Tagged: first street in London to have house numbers, Goodman's Fields, Hatton's New View of London, London Infirmary, Prescot Street E1, Roman Eastern Cemetery
July 24, 2017
Motivated By Curiosity And A Desire For The Truth – Part Thirty One
What happens when three Christs meet?
For a confirmed agnostic the world of religion is a confusing and mystifying place. There are so many faiths competing for our attention that the obvious question is how do you know you are backing the right horse. Of course, there is just the chance that there is an omnipotent being up there who has control over your immortal soul and being a cautious sort of chap, I don’t want to find that out when it is too late to mend the errors of my ways. I have a fond image of representatives of all the major religions crowding around my death-bed intoning their own versions of their creed simultaneously, rather like a DJ sound system clash in a reggae club in the late 70s.
The bedrock of the Christian faith is monotheism – one God, one Jesus etc. Over the last millennium or so groups have formed eagerly anticipating the second coming of Christ, all to be sorely disappointed, at least as far as we know. From time to time some deluded soul pops up claiming to be the reincarnation of Christ. For the enquiring mind, the obvious question is what would happen if two or more so-called Christs met each other. Fortunately, we have a clue from a rather bizarre experiment conducted by psychologist, Milton Rokeach, in 1959.
The starting point is to gather a number of schizophrenics who think they are Christ. Rokeach got his hands on three, Clyde Benson, Joseph Cassel and Leon Gabor, and forced them to live together at the Ypsilanti State Mental Hospital in Michigan. As for methodology, he chose to replicate the apparently successful technique adopted several years earlier where two women who believed they were both the Virgin Mary were put together and one of them as a result of them chatting together realised the extent of her delusional behaviour, was cured and discharged. But men, it would seem, are made of sterner stuff.
As you might expect, when they first met each other, the three Christs argued as to who was the real deal. Arguments became heated and on occasions, instead of a cheek being turned, blows were traded. Over time, though, the three patients began to tolerate each other and to prefer each other’s company. Each developed an elaborate explanation as to why the others were not the real McCoy. Clyde believed that his companions were dead and that they had been taken over by robots, whereas Leon and Joseph thought that their comrades were either crazy or had been duped. Leon came nearest to the truth by recognising that they were in a mental institution so the others, although, interestingly, not he, must be crazy. Rokeach tried to manipulate Leon’s behaviour by taking over the character of his imagined wife – an episode which caused Leon great emotional distress.
Rokeach abandoned the experiment in 1961 without curing the patients of their delusions or even getting any useful insights into the nature of schizophrenia. Towards the end of the experiment, none of the men showed the remotest interest in resolving the question as to who was the real Christ and, in fact, would go out of their way to avoid any conversational topic which might have strayed, however inadvertently, into matters religious. Anything for a quiet life!
The person who displayed the most delusional behavioural characteristics was Rokeach himself who seemed to relish playing the role of God in trying to manipulate his patients’ behaviour. Over time he realised how unethical his experiment was and in his 1981 edition of his book, The Three Christs of Ypsilanti, he wrote, “while I failed to cure the three Christs of their delusions, they had succeeded in curing me of mine – of my God-like delusion that I could change them by omnipotently and omnisciently arranging and rearranging their daily lives”.
Filed under: Culture, History, Science Tagged: DJ sound system clash, Leon Gabor, Milton Rokeach, monotheism, the Three Christs of Ypsilanti, what happens when three Christs meet, Ypsilanti State Mental Hospital
July 23, 2017
Hobby Of The Week
Every man should have a hobby but occasionally it can get out of hand as this story I stumbled across this week involving a now retired banker, Nick West, from Clevedon in North Somerset shows.
I have heard of tegestologists – collectors of beer mats – and labeorphilists – collectors of beer bottle labels – but West has gone one further – he has a collection of 9,000 beer cans. His interest was whetted in 1975 when his wife (stupidly) bought him a book on beer. Of course, collecting cans has its up-side as he had to consume the contents of each can before consigning them to the shelves.
So hooked did West become that he had to make several alterations to his house to accommodate his ever-growing collection. But following his and his wife’s retirement and a decision to downsize living accommodation, Nick has called time on his collection.
Shame really but I’m sure he will be open to offers!
If you are within striking distance of Shrewsbury, aged between 11 and 19 – oh, distant days – and want to get in touch with your artistic side, check out the Summer Artschool, run by that enterprising group, Participate Contemporary Artspace. It runs from July 31st until August 11th 2017 and successful participants will receive the Bronze Arts award which is recognised by colleges and universities. For more details http://mailchi.mp/291644f1df2d/participate-summer-artschool-creative-opportunity-for-11-19-year-olds
For the ardent horticulturalist, going away for a holiday during the peak growing season can create a bit of a dilemma. Fortunately, I had no such concerns and dunked my pumpkins in a shallow bowl of water whilst I enjoyed the sun in Costa Blanca. The plants survived their studied neglect and I have now been rewarded with a profusion of yellow flowers. All male at the moment but days of pumpkin sex won’t be too far away!
Filed under: Art, Humour, News Tagged: collection of beer cans, growing pumpkins, labeorphilists, Nick West of Clevedon in North Somerset, Participate Contemporary Artspace Shrewsbury, pumpkin pollination, Summer Artschool, tegestologists
July 22, 2017
Sporting Event Of The Week (5)
When I’m in foreign parts I can sit for hours and admire the agility of chaps as they shin up coconut trees. Feet with rock hard skin, strong leg muscles and a head for heights seem to be the order of the day.
I was pleased to learn this week that George Iona from the Cook Islands has been proclaimed the first world champion coconut tree climber, scaling an eight metre tree in just 5.62 seconds, a hundreth of a second faster than the pre-competition favourite, Fiapa’i Ellio, from American Samoa. The event was held in the garden of the Tahiti Museum and the sixteen contestants had two attempts to post their best time.
The favoured method was to wear a loop of rough rope around the ankles to get a better grip on the tree’s trunk.
Now there’s an Olympic sport, if I ever saw one. No coconuts were disturbed during the competition which seems a bit of a shame – there is nothing like fresh coconut milk.
And the other World Championship that piqued my interest was the Snail Racing Championship held in Congham, Norfolk last weekend. The competition has been going since the 1960s and the gastropods are put in a circle and the one that reaches the perimeter the fastest is the winner. This year’s champ is Larry the Snail who reached the finishing post in 2 minutes 47 seconds, overcoming the challenge of Uslime Bolt, and getting its muscular foot on the trophy – a vase full of lettuce leaves (natch)!
Filed under: Humour, News, Sport Tagged: climbing coconut trees, Congham in Norfolk, Fiapa'i Ellio from American Samoa, George Iona of Cook Islands, Larry the Snail, Tahiti Museum, Uslime Bolt, World coconut tree climbing championship, World Snail Racing Championship
July 21, 2017
What Is The Origin Of (137)?…
Through the grapevine
I can’t say that soul music floats my boat but I do like Marvin Gaye’s 1968 version of the Gladys Knight and the Pips’ original, I heard it through the grapevine. When we hear things through the grapevine, we use the phrase to indicate that we received the information informally or via an indirect route, not straight from the horse’s mouth. But why a grapevine?
The clue to understanding the phrase is provided by its original manifestation, the grapevine telegraph. In today’s world of instant communications, it is hard to credit how revolutionary the introduction of the telegraph was. First demonstrated in public in 1844 when Samuel Morse sent a message from Washington to Baltimore, it changed for ever the way and the speed with which people in different communities and, eventually, nations and continents could communicate with each other.
In contrast to telegraph wires that ran straight and true and delivered their message accurately and shortly after their despatch, the figurative grapevine telegraphs were unreliable, often garbling their message and implanting half-truths. Rather like the grapevine itself, there were many knots and twists and turns but the message was eventually delivered. It relied on word of mouth rather than, for the time, cutting-edge technology.
Our phrase first appeared in print in a political dictionary in 1852, only eight years after Morse had unleashed the telegraph. The lexicographer wrote “By the Grape Vine Telegraph Line…we have received the following.” In times of turmoil, such as civil war, there is a need to keep a line of communication going, no matter how ramshackle and unreliable. Amongst the soldiers rumours would spread like wildfire through unofficial channels. As Major James Connolly noted in his Three Years in the Army of the Cumberland in a diary entry for 1862, “we get such news in the army by what we call the grape vine, that is grape vine telegraph. It is not at all reliable.”
The availability of information through this unofficial and variable channel proved invaluable to the Unionist cause during the American Civil War as John G Nicolay and John Hay noted in their Abraham Lincoln: A history, published in 1888, “one of the most important and reliable sources of knowledge to the Union commanders in the various fields, which later in the war came to be jocosely designated as the grape-vine telegraph.” Information and rumours often came through communication channels that slaves had developed. This has led some to think that the grapevine is a reference to one of the crops that the slaves were forced to tend. Possibly but I rather like the simple association with the shape of the vine. It certainly wasn’t the Grapevine in Greenwich Village which was a popular meeting place for Union officers and Confederate spies as the phrase predates the Civil War.
Telegrams, at least for ordinary working people, became a thing of dread in the 20th century as they were the means by which the military informed families that their loved one had been killed or lost in action. Although the last telegram was sent in the UK in 1982, our variant of the grapevine, the jungle telegraph, is still rumbling along. It first appeared in the 1870s and is a phrase resonant of the far-flung parts of the empire and the sound of drums passing information from one point to the other.
The Australian variant is the bush telegraph and it may have had a very specific reference to the means by which convicts on the run passed on information about police movements. The Australian writer, Morris, noted in 1878, “the police are baffled by the number and activity of the bush telegraphs.” It was also the name of a popular Australian radio station, so I heard on the grapevine.
Filed under: Culture, History Tagged: I Heard it through the grapevine, last telegram in the UK, Marvin Gaye, origin of bush telegraph, origin of jungle telegraph, origin of through the grapevine, Samuel Morse
July 20, 2017
Quacks Pretend To Cure Other Men’s Disorders But Rarely Find A Cure For Their Own – Part Fifty Seven
Magic Foot Drafts
As old age approaches, the incidence of aches and pains, a bit of arthritis here and a touch of rheumatism there blight my daily life. Stoically, I grin and bear it and usually the niggle will disappear as quickly as it came. For those who are afflicted with more prolonged bouts of rheumatism, the prospect of a panacea that will restore harmony to your body must be appealing. Naturally, there was a ready supply of quacks and chancers ready to prey on the gullible.
The Magic Foot Draft Company, operating from Jackson in Michigan, were actively promoting in the early years of the 20th century a cure for rheumatism in the feet. Their modus operandi is now painfully familiar – extensive advertising extolling the benefits of their product and a money back guarantee. “Don’t take medicine but try Magic Foot Drafts, the great Michigan external remedy which is curing thousands,” the advert, featuring its corresponding secretary, Frederick Dyer, screamed. Reading on, whatever form of rheumatism wherever situated “all yield quickly to those wonderful Drafts which have brought comfort to hundreds of thousands” – note the rapid increase in numbers from the headline – “including cases of thirty or forty years’ standing” (or not, if you had trouble with your feet). “They are curing where doctors and baths and medicines fail.”
What they were, these miraculous drafts, were plaster strips which were made out of oilcloth and coated with pine-tar. These you applied to the soles of your feet and they were supposed to draw out the uric acid. To avail yourself of these plasters all you had to do was to send your name and address and you would receive a pair of drafts to the value of $1. If you were satisfied with the results, all you then had to do “was send us one dollar. If not, keep your money. We take your word and trust you for a square deal.”
Presumably, they anticipated that most would persevere with the drafts and send for more with their all-important cheque. If you didn’t communicate with them, you were on their mailing list and they would soon follow up with a chaser. Some may have just then paid their dollar and put the whole thing down to experience. For those who were not sure that the drafts were working, the follow-up letter would explain that complicated cases or the incorrect application of the plaster would not yield overnight results. Some chronic cases may require up to six applications.
The letter also warned against the patient becoming impatient or giving up too easily and just to reinforce the impression of its efficacy, would include glowing testimonials. The letter would end with a hint of menace, “Unless you have already sent your order we shall expect a letter from you very soon, and there will be no failure to send the treatment just as you instruct, so you will have it and keep your recovery going steadily on day and night until every last twinge of pain has left you.” Many would have paid their money for a quiet life.
And did they work? According to Samuel Hopkins Adam in his 1905 expose of the patent medicine business entitled the Great American Fraud, “they [their feet] might as well be affixed to the barn door, so far as any uric acid extraction is concerned.” I guess not, then.
Filed under: Culture, History, Science Tagged: Frederick Dyer, Magic Foot Drafts, rheumatic cures, Samuel Hopkins Adam, techniques of quacks, The Great American Fraud, the Magic Foot Draft Company
July 19, 2017
Book Corner – July 2017 (2)
Victorians Undone – Kathryn Hughes
Biography is a tricky literary genre and one of the key challenges is to find a new angle for your treatment of someone whose achievements and feats of derring-do are familiar to the reader. One of the features of Lytton Strachey’s Eminent Victorians, published in 1918, which made it stand out from the crowd and shock the more genteel reader was his glee in pointing out the physical characteristics and deformities of his subjects. Hughes follows this approach. Her thesis is that standard biographies reveal the life story and achievements of the subject – after all, that is what biography is – but apart from some air-brushed paintings and carefully posed photographs and sniffy remarks from contemporaries, we have little idea of what they were like as human beings.
I had never given this much thought, always believing that Bob Dylan had got it right in It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding), “even the President of the United States must sometimes have to stand naked” – a troubling thought with the present incumbent, for sure. As human beings I took it for granted that they belched, farted, smelt, had runny noses, coughed, sneezed and may have had some minor physical deformity.
I was delighted to read in Hughes’ book that Charles Darwin was a martyr to the wind and always had to leave a meal early so that he could belch and fart to his heart’s content. His digestive system was clearly not the acme of evolution. To make matters worse the scientist suffered from severe acne and blubbery lips which is why he grew his prodigious beard. But do these facts make us think more or less of the man’s achievements? More interesting to me was that his conversations with his hair dresser, a keen dog breeder, helped him formulate his evolutionary theories.
Although I have severe doubts about the validity of Hughes’ underlying thesis that knowing about the physical characteristics of someone enhances our knowledge of them, there is no doubt that this is a rip-roaring read with interesting facts on pretty much every page. Hughes’ style is bright and she writes with considerable verve. What we have is a collection of five essays dealing with the Victorians’ attitude to and preoccupations with the body.
The book opens with the shocking account of the young Queen Victoria’s persecution of Lady Flora Hastings whom she alleged to be pregnant, although she was in the final stages of a painful and mortal stomach cancer. The recent ITV series seems to have omitted that – I wonder why.
Then Darwin and his beard, followed by for me the most interesting, the discussion of George Eliot and her enlarged right hand. Eliot lived on a farm and possible worked in the dairy. Milk maids were sought after because of their fair complexions, their exposure to dairy products gave them a natural immunity to smallpox, a disease which scared survivors and was no respecter of class or position. But the downside of pulling on teats was that your dominant hand increases in size. The tittle-tattle at the time was Eliot’s larger right hand enlarged because she was engaged in manual work in her youth? Tut, tut. Revealingly, her right hand glove, found recently, is the second smallest size so it may all have been a storm in a milk churn.
The book concludes with two Fannies – Cornforth, the courtesan, whose bee-stung lips inspired Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Adams, whose body parts were scattered throughout an orchard in Alton, prompting a discussion of Victorian attitudes to children as sexual objects.
If nothing else, this book shows that the Victorians were humans but then, why wouldn’t they be?
Filed under: Books, Culture Tagged: Darwin's wind problems, Eminent Victorians, Fanny Cornforth, Kathryn Hughes, Lady Flora Hastings, Lytton Strachey, the brutal murder of Fanny Adams, Victorians Undone
