Martin Fone's Blog, page 301
March 24, 2017
What Is The Origin Of (120)?…
A watched pot never boils
Have you ever put something in the microwave, set the timer on and then stood with growing impatience as the dial seems to take an age to get to zero? Of course, whether we look at the dial or not, the time will take just as long to pass but it does seem to perceptibly slow down if all you are doing is waiting for something to happen. Our phrase reflects this, although it uses a degree of poetic licence because the pot will boil. It will do so in its own time and the idiom cautions patience.
Benjamin Franklin, the well-known American polymath, may well have coined the phrase or, at least, was the first to commit it to print. From 1732 to 1758 Franklin, under the pseudonym of Richard Saunders or Poor Richard, published an annual almanac which was full of folksy household tips, puzzles, commentaries on the weather and improving aphorisms, many around the need for industry and the evils of sloth. Our phrase never made it into Poor Richard’s Almanack, as it was called, but when Franklin used it he gave his nom de plume a name check.
Franz Mesmer, whose surname gave rise to the term mesmerising, was kicking up a storm with his theory of animal magnetism, whereby energy was transferred from animate to inanimate objects. When he was the US ambassador to France, Franklin was commissioned by Louis XVI to write a report about the sensational theory. In 1785 he published it. It was not a totally dry exposition on the subject because, inter alia, it included an account of the trials and tribulations of waiting for one’s breakfast. “I was very hungry; it was so late. A watched pot is slow to boil, as Poor Richard says”. Not an exact match but the sense is there and for an author being self-referential is never a bad thing.
It was another sixty years before the idiom we use today appeared in print, courtesy of one of my favourite authors, Elizabeth Gaskell. In her Mary Barton, published in 1848, she wrote, “What’s the use of watching? A watched pot never boils, and I see you are after watching that weathercock”. These days we are more likely to use kettle than pan but the sense remains the same.
Pots and kettles appear in another phrase in common usage, the pot calling the kettle black. This is used to call someone who has been guilty of hypocrisy. The sense is fairly obvious – in the old days kettles and pots would be heated over a naked flame and the bottoms of the vessels, at least, would char over time. The idiom first appeared in Thomas Shelton’s 1620 translation of Cervantes’ Don Quixote, “You are like what is said that the frying-pan said to the kettle, avant, black-browes.”
A favourite variant of mine appeared in 1639 in John Clarke’s Paroemiologia Anglo-Latina, “the pot calls the pan burnt-arse”. It was left to William Penn in his Some Fruits of Solitude in reflections and Maxims to provide the definitive usage and to make crystal clear its sense. He wrote, “for a covetous man to inveigh against Prodigality, an Atheist against Idolatry, a Tyrant against Rebellion, or a Lyer against Forgery or a Drunkard against Intemperance, is for the Pot to call the Kettle black”.
Time for a cup of coffee, methinks, if I have the patience to let the kettle boil.
Filed under: Culture, History Tagged: Benjamin Franklin, Elizabeth Gaskell, Franz Mesmer, Mary Barton, origin of a watched pot never boils, origin of the pot calling the kettle black, Poor Richard's Almanack, Richard Saunders, William Penn
March 23, 2017
Everything Is Possible For An Eccentric, Especially When He Is English – Part Five
John Tallis (1676 – 1755)
Sometimes, when the world gets too much to bear, it is tempting to retreat to the comfort of your bed. But rarely do any of us go to the extremes of John Tallis who lived in the Worcestershire village of Buscot and is not to be confused with the distinguished cartographer of the same name. His strange behaviour appears to have started in 1724 when he was forty-eight.
Tallis had a room specially built which had only one window, consisting of four panes which were triple glazed to minimise the amount of fresh air that might enter the chamber. The following year he retired to bed to minimise his contact with the air which he deemed to be potentially injurious to his health. His attire was extraordinary – on his head he wore an elaborate construction which a contemporary described “as large as a large beehive”. It is estimated that it contained as much as 84 yards of flannel on top of which were perched ten linen caps and a further ten flannel ones.
On his chest, Tallis kept a frame, across which was stretched a piece of flannel, which he then placed over his face when he felt like going to sleep. His shirts were made of flannel, lined with swanskin, and quilted, although it is not known for sure how many he wore at any one time. There was no heating in the room as he would not allow a fire to be lit. To complete his unusual ensemble, he would position a cork stopper in each of his nostrils – only during the winter, mind – and a piece of ivory in his mouth to reduce the inflow of noxious air. He was wrapped up tightly under a prodigious weight of blankets.
Despite taking to his bed, according to a contemporary account Tallis ate well and drank heartily of wine or ale. Those being more prurient times than they are now, there is no mention of how the output was dealt with. Notwithstanding the encumbrance on top of his head, he was able to sit up but he was resolute in his determination to stay in his bed. When the servants came to make his bed, Tallis simply rolled onto one side and then the other. The only time he left the bed was once a year when the servants moved another bed into the room alongside him enabling him to tumble or be tumbled into it. A correspondent to the Gentleman’s Magazine of 1788 noted drily, “it seems his sweat rots a bed through in a year’s time”. As well as the bed, the headgear was changed annually.
The correspondent was cautioned not to enquire of Tallis why he persisted in his eccentric behaviour, “for all the answer he gives to any inquisitive stranger is that he would not do so if he could help it”. That said, our intrepid correspondent believed that it may have been the result of a strange encounter with an old woman when Tallis was a youth. He caught her stealing part of his fencing and ordered her to put the sticks down. On doing so, the woman cursed him, condemning to remain cold and never to feel the warmth of a fire. From that moment Tallis felt a chill and progressively wore more and more clothes until the only recourse was to stay in bed.
Whatever the cause, he stayed in bed for around 30 years until he met his Maker.
Filed under: Culture, History Tagged: Burcot in Worcestershire, great English eccentrics, John Tallis, man stayed in bed 30 years
March 22, 2017
Two Revolutions
Revolution; Russian Art 1917 – 1932 – Royal Academy
The centenary of the Russian Revolution this year has been marked by the Royal Academy with a retrospective of revolutionary Russian art. It is an enormous, at times bewildering exhibition but I found it rewarding, dashing some of my preconceptions of Russian art and demonstrating how vibrant the art scene was.
Of course, there are images that we associate with Soviet art – none more so than Kustodiev’s colossal Bolshevik of 1920, an enormous peasant waving a red flag striding onwards, trampling underfoot anything in his way. The certainty in the cause is all apparent. And we have the obligatory pictures of Lenin, the most moving being the leader in his coffin. Lenin couldn’t be portrayed dead and so Petrov-Vodkin’s painting has been condemned to a life in storage. It rarely makes a public appearance and, if for no other reason, this makes a trip to the exhibition worthwhile. The heavy hand of State censorship is wonderfully illustrated by Demkov’s kerchief where the portrait of Trotsky has been cut out from one of the corners.
Artists were dragooned to help the cause and so we have paintings extolling the virtues of labour, Stakhanovite men and women glorying in their liberty, freed from selling their lives and labour for profit. Women workers heave bales around and shock workers perform skyline gymnastics erecting buildings. There is a wonderful and rather unsettling picture of a tram conductor – scary, certainly, and one certain to collect her fares! Artists were deployed to design workers’ uniforms, even dainty porcelain and El Lissitzsky’s plans for a worker’s living capsule is utilitarian to the extreme.
Russian artists were quick to embrace the avant-garde movement that was springing up elsewhere in Europe. The revolution offered a new beginning and why not a new beginning for art? The highlight of the show is the room devoted to Malevich – I came across him a couple of years ago at the Tate Modern. The Black Square, the antidote to art, seems rather lost in the exhibition, being hung a little too high for my taste. Malevich’s abstract paintings are one thing but Popova and Rodchenko eschew any form of symbolism, their works full of geometric shapes and concentric circles.
1932 was the watershed for Russian art. An exhibition entitled Fifteen Years of Artists of the Russian Soviet Republic was held – as here Malevich and Petrov-Vodkin had their own rooms – which was intended to be a proud proclamation of the radicalism and progressiveness of artists operating in the liberty that a communist state provided. Rather, though, it was the beginning of the end. Stalin tightened his grip on the state and abstract art was suppressed. What he wanted was more heroic idealism not nonsensical doodlings.
A revolution of sorts was happening at the same time in the rural county of Sussex, at least if you buy in to the thesis of the curator of Two Temple Place’s latest exhibition, Sussex Modernism – Retreat and Rebellion. Artists fled to the rural idyll to get on with their art and their lives, away from the pressures and prying eyes of London. Drawn from nine museums in the county – I was surprised there were so many – we see examples of the Bloomsbury set’s work, more male nudes than you could shake a stick at, wonderfully decorated boxes and furniture – the show stealer was Duncan Grant’s Leda and the Duck Chest (1917) – beautiful lithographs and the wonderful Edward james and Salvador Dali Mae West Lips sofa. The objets d’art have to fight hard to stand out against the exquisite opulence of the venue but in this instance they just about manage it.
Filed under: Art, Culture Tagged: Kazimeriz Malevich, Kustodiev, Mae West Lips sofa, Petrov-Vodkin, Revolution Russian Art 1917 - 1932 exhibition, Royal Academy, Stakhanovite, Sussex Modernism exhibition, The Black Square, Two Temple Place
March 21, 2017
There Ain’t ‘Alf Some Clever Bastards – Part Sixty Seven
Dave Smith (? to present)
Ah, the nineteen eighties. Whether you loved them or hated them, the music of the time was dominated by synthesisers and electronica and one of the developments that made this possible was the creation of the MIDI or Musical Instrument Digital Interface in 1983. It quickly became the universal standard and you would have thought that its inventor would have found the key to a fortune. But you would be wrong as the story of Dave Smith, the latest inductee to our illustrious Hall of Fame, reveals.
The problem with electronic instruments pre-MIDI was that they couldn’t talk to each other. OK, a clever keyboard player could play two instruments at the same time, one with their left and the other with their right but that was pretty much as far as it went. A graduate in Computer Science and Electronic Engineering from UC Berkley, Smith was fascinated by synthesisers, creating Sequential Circuits in 1974 and in 1977 developed the Prophet 5, one of the first analogue polyphonic synthesisers. Sequential Circuits went on to become one of the most successful synthesiser manufacturers ever.
But Smith wasn’t satisfied. He wanted to develop a protocol whereby electronic instruments and synthesisers could communicate, allowing the musician to control a range of instruments from one synthesiser or computer. In 1981 he issued a challenge to the industry to back a universal protocol. To set the ball rolling, he created a rough draft of what it might look like, calling it the Universal Synthesiser Interface. Few came forward to insist but one who did was Ikutaro Kakehashi, the founder of Roland. The two collaborated during 1982, communicating – it seems astonishing to write this these days – by fax and by the time of the National Association of Music Merchants in 1983, Smith was ready to reveal what they had come up with.
By today’s standards the specification for MIDI was pretty rudimentary, consisting of eight sheets of paper and limiting itself to a range of basic set of instructions you might want to send between two synthesisers, like what notes to play and at what volume. But it worked – Smith was able to link up his Prophet 600 synthesiser with a Roland JP-6. A musical revolution had arrived.
MIDI’s development coincided with the development of the PC whose processors were now fast enough using MIDI to sequence notes, control the number of keyboards and drum machines operating at the same time. It also allowed aspiring musicians to operate at home rather than spending time in expensive recording studios. But it didn’t stop there. MIDI technology has been on Mac OS since 1995 and is used in your smartphone, powering the first wave of ring tones. Games like Guitar hero use it. And it has stood the test of time. The basic protocol has been added to but remains the same.
And why did Smith not make a fortune? Well, he gave it away. Explaining what may seem on the face of it a baffling decision, he said, “we wanted to be sure we had 100% participation, so we decided not to charge any other companies that wanted to use it”. Very magnanimous. On the other hand, it may have been a sprat to catch a mackerel, making products such as synthesisers more valuable and desirable. But even then, Smith had to sell Sequential Circuits to Yamaha in 1988 to stave off bankruptcy.
He is still making and selling synths with his own company, Dave Smith Instruments. But for eschewing the money that would have come his way through licensing MIDI, Dave Smith is a worthy inductee.
If you enjoyed this, why not try Fifty Clever Bastards by Martin Fone which is now available on Amazon in Kindle format and paperback. For details follow the link https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=fifty+clever+bastards
Filed under: Culture, History, Science Tagged: Dave Smith Instruments, Dave Smith inventor of MIDI, Fifty Clever Bastards, Ikutaro Kakehashi, Martin Fone, Musical Instrument Digital Interface, Sequential Circuits
March 20, 2017
A Better Life – Part Six
The Harmony Society
There was a time when the United States was a place of haven for groups of refugees, fleeing from oppression and persecution. Beneficiaries of this benevolence were a pietist band led by George Rapp who found themselves in hot waters in their native south-west Germany. Putting personal piety above formal displays of religious observance they believed that a child should only be baptised when it was old enough to make its own mind up, confirmation for children was unnecessary and rites such as confession and communion need only occur on a handful of occasions in the year. They refused military service and preferred to teach their children at home. The Lutheran authorities wanted rid of them.
So in late 1804, Rapp and some 400 followers arrived in the States and were able to secure a tract of land in Butler County in Pennsylvania. On 15th February 1805 the Harmony Society was officially constituted, the members pledging to hold all property in a common fund and raising working capital of $23,000. A member would give all their goods and chattels to the society and accept no wages for their work. The quid pro quo was that they would receive care as long as they were members. If they decided that enough was enough, they would get their money back, albeit without interest.
The Harmonists lived a simple life, convinced that Christ would return during their lifetimes, eschewing and practising celibacy – always a mistake for a community, I think, as it made recruiting further members essential for its continued survival. New recruits continued to arrive and after a year’s trial, they would be accepted as members. Before long, the community rose to about 800 in number. Dress was simple, reflecting their German roots, although they wore fine clothing on Sundays and highdays.
The early years were dogged by disagreements and financial crises – the name of the community, Harmony, may have been inapt – but they worked through it and turned a profit from making yarn and wine. But the climate was not ideal for their crops and increasing disputes with their neighbours led them to decamp in 1814 to Indiana to the second Harmony settlement. Malaria nearly wiped out the community but in time they had established a thriving community with 150 log cabins, taverns, shops and mills. Again, though, they had trouble with their neighbours, this time on the thorny subject of slavery – the Harmonists were abolitionists (natch) – and in 1824 they sold up and moved back to Pennsylvania.
Their third settlement, Economy, consisted of 1,000 acres by the river Ohio and was much better situated for manufacturing and trade. They had woollen and cotton mills, a steam operated grain mill and a wine press, also pioneering the manufacture of silk in the States. In their social time may of the Harmonists were accomplished musicians and music played an important part in their life. Celibacy, however, was the elephant in the room and in 1832 many of the younger members, a third of the community, seceded. This meant that the Harmonists were increasingly reliant upon hired labour.
As the century progressed the Harmonists got involved in oil drilling and the expansion of the American railroad. At their height in the 1860s they had assets of around $2m but by the 1890s the impact of celibacy, restrictive membership practices and lawsuits from former members and their offspring left them on the verge of bankruptcy. Their trustee, John S Duss, settled the outstanding debts but with only a few members left, the remaining assets were sold raising $1.2m and the society dissolved in 1905.
Filed under: Culture, History Tagged: beliefs of Harmonists, Butler County, Economy in Pennsylvania, George Rapp, Harmony in Indiana, John S Duss, Pietism, The Harmonists, The harmony Society
March 17, 2017
What Is The Origin Of (119)?…
Left in the lurch
This is not a happy situation to be in because it means that you have been sorely let down by someone who has left you with a difficult situation to deal with. In modern-day idiomatic usage it often describes a situation in the workplace where someone has resigned and left their boss to pick up the pieces.
From an etymological perspective, the interesting word in the phrase is lurch. We are familiar with it as a verb, used to describe a violent and sudden movement, either forwards, backwards or sideways. Ships buffeted by the waves are prone to lurching, I find. In it modern form lurch as a noun describes that rather alarming motion but it is not that sense which is used in our idiom. Rather it relates to a game popular in the 16th century in France called lourche or possibly l’ourche. Although the rules are now lost it was thought to have been a dice game, possibly similar to backgammon.
The Oxford English Dictionary posits that the game’s name was German in origin and offers as possible roots lorstch, lurtsch, lorz and lurz. More germane to our enquiries is the Teutonic expression lurz warden which means failing to achieve some objective in a game. There is a similar expression in French, demeurer lourche, which describes a situation where one loses disastrously. In cribbage circles, or perhaps that should be oblongs, a lurch occurs where the winner has pegged out before their opponent has even got halfway round the peg board. A comprehensive defeat for the loser in anybody’s language.
The expression seems to have hopped over la manche by the end of the 16th century. Thomas Nashe was a disputatious fellow and had a running battle with Dr Gabriel Harvey. His pamphlet, Have with you to Saffron-Walden, published in 1596 was his final shot in what had been a four-year literary dispute. In it is to be found this passage, “whom he also procured to be equally bound with him for his new cousens apparence to the law, which he neuer did, but left both of them in the lurtch for him”. Clearly, the idiom has its current meaning, the two cousins being discomfited by the actions of the bounder.
Another invidious position to be left in is holding the baby. There are other variants such as holding the bag or holding the can. In each of these circumstances the person left holding the object is the only one remaining to face the music. Bag seems to have been the earlier variant, emerging during the 18th century and was originally to give somebody the bag to hold. When the authorities were in pursuit of a gang of criminals, the thieves would pass the loot to an innocent or the doziest of the gang who would then have their collar felt. The more modern variants are simply a passive transition of the original phrase. Holding the baby has a similar sense, although here one or more of the child’s parents have sought to escape their parental responsibilities. The phrases, of course, these days are used figuratively.
In American financial slang a bagholder is someone who is left holding worthless shares and thus suffers a financial loss. Better, perhaps, than having your collar felt for holding stolen goods but the origin of the idea is the same.
Filed under: Culture, History Tagged: Have with you to Saffron-Walden, origin of left holding the bag, origin of left in the lurch, the game of lourche, Thomas Nashe, what is a bagholder
March 16, 2017
The Streets Of London – Part Fifty Five
A301, Waterloo Bridge, WC2 to SE1
For me, one of the most iconic scenes of London is to be seen from Waterloo Bridge at night. The bridge, strategically positioned on a bend of the river, offers a panoramic view of the city with all the famous sights and, regrettably, some of the modern excrescences lit up. It is the best vantage point to get an appreciation of the size and scale of London and made the trudge across it to catch my train to leafy suburbia a pleasure.
The bridge runs from Lancaster Place on the northern bank to the South Bank where the National Film Theatre and Queen Elizabeth Hall are to be found and in the series of London bridges lies between Blackfriars Bridge to its east and Hungerford to its west. It takes its name from the battle of Waterloo which gives a clue to its age. Bridges, relatively speaking, are a fairly recent phenomenon across the capital’s main river, reflecting the burgeoning population and the creeping of the city westwards. Save for London bridge, before the 19th century, the easiest way to cross the Thames was by boat.
The first bridge on the site was opened in 1817 as a private venture by the Strand Bridge Company and to use it you had to pay a toll. The bridge was 2,456 feet long and was made of granite with nine arches. Some Londoners soon found that the streets weren’t paved with gold and by the 1840s Waterloo Bridge had become the prime spot for suicides, a fact immortalised by Thomas Hood in his poem about the suicide of a prostitute, The Bridge of Sighs. Samuel Gilbert Scott’s death in 1841 was less intentional, the American daredevil hanging himself when his stunt went wrong.
By 1878 the bridge was taken out of private ownership and the toll system was abolished. The demolition of the old London Bridge in the 1880s which increased the flow of the Thames revealed some structural defects in the piers of Waterloo Bridge. Its days were numbered. Declared unsafe in 1924 and demolished in 1937, the decision was made to build a new bridge in 1939. The choice of designer, Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, was an odd one because he was no engineer and the design he came up with was difficult to implement. The structure was clad in Portland Stone which cleans itself when it rains and each pier of the bridge had a number of jacks which could be used to level the bridge to prevent damage from scouring. It is 24 metres wide with three spans of 75m between two of 72m.
The bridge was partially opened on 11th March 1942 and work was completed in 1945. There are two fascinating facts about its construction – firstly, a large proportion of the workforce were female – there was a war on, don’t you know? – and to this day the bridge is known as the Ladies’ Bridge and, secondly, it was the only Thames bridge to have been damaged by German bombers.
The foundation stone for the modern bridge was cut out of a stone from the first and some of the original material was sent to, doubtless, grateful parts of the Commonwealth. Two of the stones are to be found in the Commonwealth Avenue Bridge in Canberra and some in a monument to Paddy the Wanderer (a dog) in Wellington. The current bridge received Grade II listed status in 1981.
Filed under: Culture, History Tagged: Samuel Gilbert Scott, Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, The Bridge of Sighs, the Ladies' Bridge, The Strand Bridge Company, Thomas Hood, Waterloo Bridge
March 15, 2017
Book Corner – March 2017 (2)
The Trials of the King of Hampshire – Elizabeth Foyster
Over the last few weeks I have been musing about where eccentricity ends and lunacy starts and have been swayed by the argument that it is a class and wealth issue. Our betters, aristos and those with pots of money, are able to get away with standards of behaviour that would see us mere mortals carted off to an asylum. But, occasionally, the distinction is more than a moot point as the tragic and gothic tale of the 3rd earl of Portsmouth shows.
The subject of Foyster’s book is the splendidly named John Wallop – one of his traits which cast doubt on his sanity was his frequent assaults on his servants and his predilection for seeing children and pets beaten. One poor footman broke a leg. Portsmouth went to see him, not to offer tea and sympathy but to jump on it again, breaking the limb a second time. He seemed to derive some sexual gratification from being bled by young girls in the neighbourhood who were instructed to use a lancet for the purpose. He took great delight in visiting people on their death-bed and was a regular attendee of funerals – black jobs, he called them – where his behaviour often caused the mourners distress.
Why the distinction between eccentricity and lunacy was more than moot in the case of the 3rd earl of Portsmouth was down to inheritance and money, what else? From an early age he was different from others and, particularly, his siblings. Instead of going off to Eton and Cambridge like the other brothers, Portsmouth was home schooled, spending some time holed up with Jane Austen’s father, before Jane was born. The novelist did meet him later at a function, claiming that he “surpassed” the behaviour of other gentlemen, perhaps not a terribly high bar, and the poet Byron described him as a “prize fool of an earl”. But was he mad?
In those days, to be declared insane required a public trial. Portsmouth endured two, the first shortly after his forced marriage to Mary Anne, in 1814. This was at the instigation of his younger brother, Norton Fellowes, who sought to annul the marriage. The attempt failed but in 1823 another attempt was made. The trial was a cause celebre and was to be the longest and costliest insanity trial in history, racking up costs of 2 guineas a minute. What seemed to tip the balance against Portsmouth was that he shared his marriage bed with his wife and her lover. To modern eyes, he was cruelly treated, abused physically and mentally by his wife and her paramour but to his contemporaries, his seemingly laissez-faire attitude to Mary Anne’s infidelities was proof positive of derangement. The court found that Portsmouth was mad, a verdict which annulled his marriage, disinherited his heir who was almost certainly not his, and meant Newton was in pole position to inherit the title and a vast annual fortune of £18,000 onn his death. Mary Anne was required to pay £40,000 towards the cost of the trial and fled the country.
Surprisingly, Portsmouth was reasonably well treated afterwards, being allowed to reside at the family home near Basingstoke, Hurstbourne Park. He had a throne erected in one of the rooms and styled himself the King of Hampshire. He lived a further thirty years. Newton duly inherited the title but enjoyed it for less than a year.
Foyster’s book is an entertaining and well-researched piece of work, although at times its rather thematic approach to Portsmouth’s strange and disturbing story does serve to confuse rather than enlighten the narrative. And she shies away from attempting to diagnose what was wrong with Portsmouth. Nonetheless, it is an invaluable insight to life amongst the upper classes and how unusual character traits were dealt with.
Filed under: Books, Culture, History Tagged: 3rd Earl of Portsmouth, Elizabeth Foyster, Hurstbourne Park, Jane Austen, John Wallop, Lord Byron, The Trials of the King of Hampshire
March 14, 2017
I Don’t Want To Belong To Any Club That Will Accept People Like Me As A Member – Part Thirty Three
The Blue Stockings Society
It’s a man’s world, sang James Brown. Not any more, matey. But it is true that a quarter of a millennium ago, women weren’t supposed to worry their pretty little heads with the likes of Latin and Greek, the stuff of a gentleman’s education. What was good enough for them was mastery of such things as embroidery and knitting. Not all women were consigned to a life of ignorance. Anna Barbauld was persuasive enough to get her father to teach her some Latin and Greek but even she thought that a formalised education system was unnecessary for the fairer sex. Instead, “the best way for a woman to acquire knowledge”, she opined, “is from conversation with a father, or brother, or friend.”
It was this rather curious view that underpinned the formation of the Blue Stocking Society in around 1750, a rather loosely organised group of well-to-do women who shared an interest in mutual self-improvement, fortified by tea, biscuits and other light refreshments. Political talk was verboten – after all, women wouldn’t have the vote for another 150 or so years – but literature and the arts were fair game. There were no qualifications for entry, although the women were from the better sorts as they did not have to earn a living skivvying, and no subscription fee was levied. They met at the house of Mrs Montagu in the north-west corner of Portman Square in London. As well as Montagu, other stalwarts were Mrs Vesey, Miss Boscowen and Mrs Carter.
The society gets a name check in Boswell’s Life of Johnson. “About this time (1781) it was much the fashion for several ladies to have evening assemblies where the fair sex might participate in conversation with literary and ingenious men, animated by a desire to please”. Surprising as it might seem because he always strikes me as a bit of curmudgeon, Samuel Johnson was keen to please as were the likes of Horace Walpole and Mr Pulteney.
One of the learned gentlemen in attendance was the rather curious Benjamin Stillingfleet, to whom, according to some accounts, the Society owed its name. One contemporary account suggested that he was somewhat unconventional in his dress, wearing grey or blue stockings rather than the normal black. Such was the excellence of his conversation and contributions to the Society’s soirees that when he was absent the assembly mourned his absence, saying “we can do nothing without the blue stockings”.
Charming as that story may be it is more likely that the name owed its origin to the tradition of the Society de la Calza, a 15th century Venetian group of academics who wore blue stockings as a symbol of their membership. Either way, these days blue stocking has rather derogatory associations as a descriptor for a literary or intellectual female.
Not everyone was enamoured by this well-meaning attempt to educate females. Thomas Rowlandson published a rather grotesque print of a group of harridans having a set-to, entitled Breaking Up Of The Blue Stocking Club. Nevertheless, several of the women members were encouraged to publish literary works and the Society flourished until the beginning of the 19th century. By then there had been a sea change in opinion when as the Reverend Sydney Smith could ask in 1810 “why a woman of forty should be more ignorant than a boy of twelve”. Perhaps their work had been done.
Filed under: Culture, History Tagged: Benjamin Stillingfeet, Blue Stocking Society,
March 13, 2017
Everything Is Possible For An Eccentric, Especially When He Is English – Part Four
Jack Mytton (1796 – 1834)
Born at Halston Hall near Oswestry, Jack inherited the gaff and the revenue from 132,000 acres of land in Shropshire and North Wales at the age of two when his father popped his clogs. This meant that money was never a concern but Mytton showed from an early age that he was a restless and troubled spirit. Expelled from Westminster school and Harrow, he spent some time at Cambridge University where he was the life and soul of the party, shipping in some 2,000 bottles of port to see him through his time there. Naturally, he left without a degree.
After a brief spell in the army, in 1819 Mytton decided to turn his hand at politics. He hit upon a wonderfully effective electioneering stunt – offering the constituents of Shrewsbury £10 each (a prodigious amount at the time) to vote for him. He was elected but he found the political grind a bore, attending parliament for just thirty minutes before giving up his seat.
Having exhausted the normal sources of employment for a gentleman, Mytton settled down to a career of eccentricity. He liked to experiment. He wondered whether a horse pulling a carriage could jump a tollgate. A wrecked carriage and some cuts and bruises ensued. He would drive deliberately at ruts in the road to see what would happen. Invariably, his carriage was overturned. In 1826 for a bet, which he won, Mytton rode his horse into a hotel in Leamington Spa, ascending the staircase and from the balcony jumped over the diners in the restaurant below, still seated on his horse, making his exit via a window. Astonishingly, no one was injured in the caper. Want a cure for hiccups? Set your night shirt alight to give yourself a fright. It worked!
Mytton was surrounded by animals, having some 2,000 dogs of various types, mainly hunting breeds. His favourites were fed on steak and champagne and some were decked out in livery and other fancy costumes. His horse, Baronet, was given free range of Halston Hall and was often to be found stretched out in front of a roaring fire.
A keen huntsman – he had 150 hunting breeches, 700 pairs of handmade hunting boots, 1,000 hats and 3,000 shirts – Mytton would often go out hunting. Often though, he felt so warm during the heat of the chase that he would strip off and follow the petrified fox in the buff. At night he would leave his bed, stark naked, armed with his favourite gun and fire off at the local ducks.
A visit to Halston could be an experience One evening he entered the drawing-room riding a bear. All went well until he spurred the bear to go faster. The creature took umbrage and bit him on the leg. It was later killed after biting a servant. After entertaining a local parson and doctor who then went on their way, Jack donned a highwayman’s mask, surprised his guests firing shots into the air and was amused as they fled in terror. One benefit was that Mytton was so careless with money that he left bundles of it around the estate which guests were free to make off with.
Mytton was a prodigious drinker, quaffing eight bottles of port a day together with copious quantities of brandy. Inevitably, his lifestyle caught up with him and the money ran out, dying in a debtors’ prison in Southwark “a round shouldered, tottering old-young man bloated by drink, worn out by too much foolishness, too much wretchedness and too much brandy”.
Mytton’s ghost is said to haunt the Mytton and Mermaid in Atcham on his birthday, 30th September, and he is commemorated in Shropshire by the Jack Mytton Way, one of the longest bridleways in the country.
Filed under: Culture, History Tagged: eccentricities of Jack Mytton, great English eccentrics, Halston Hall, Jack Mad Jack Mytton, Mytton & Mermaid ghost, the Jack Mytton Way
