A daily delivery of sayings, thoughts, findings and happenings from rambles in life's byways. If anything at all links what follows, it is this, from Puck, in A Midsummer Night's Dream, 'Lord, What Fools These Mortals Be!', joined with that great Lancashire expression of incredulity, 'Well, I'll Go To The Foot Of Our Stairs!'
October 31
Bored with Halloween? Try some of my top trivial instead!
1) Bristol is east of Edinburgh.
2) Bristol, Torquay, Tunbridge Wells, Kampala, Weybridge, Seattle, Sheffield, Lisbon, Durham and Rome are built on seven hills.
3) Herman Melville lived in Southport.
4) The 1985 edition of the 'Encyclopaedia Britannica advises readers, 'For Wales, see England'.
5) The original Jack Russell was called Trump.
6) The US Confederate Navy surrendered in Liverpool.
7) FC Barcelona's colours were borrowed from Merchant Taylor's, Crosby.
8) Juventus (founded on tomorrow's date in 1897) got theirs from Notts County.
9) The geographical centre of the British is Dunsop Bridge in Lancashire.
10) Cutting toenails on a Friday or Sunday is unlucky.
More top trivia very soon!
October 30
Today, for no reason other than that it occurred to me, we celebrate command and something less of the subtleties of the English language, beginning with the playwright, Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816), celebrated author of such as 'The Rivals' and 'The School for Scandal'. Sheridan was a terrible man: drinker, gambler, womaniser, debtor, serial betrayer and double dealer. But he was also a terrific wit: and we might - almost - excuse him some of it for his response when he was called upon to apologise after accusing a fellow MP of lying to the House of Commons. Sheridan, who was a member for Stafford, naturally, a rotten borough, didn't hesitate: 'I said the honourable gentleman is a liar it is true and I am sorry for it. The honourable gentleman may place the punctuation where he pleases.'
Less easily impressed critics have pointed out that Sheridan had a history of apparently spontaneous but well-rehearsed replies, but that surely doesn't detract from the cleverness.
Non-native speakers, unsurprisingly, have often had more difficulty with the subtlety, nuances and ambiguity of the language. Michael Curtiz, the Hungarian-born Hollywood film director, was renowned for it, most famously for his crisp command when it was time for the riderless mounts in 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' to be set loose on the set, 'Bring on the Empty Horses', and his reply to David Niven (who used it as the title of his second memoir) and Errol Flynn when they were teasing him: 'You think I know fuck nothing. But let me tell you, I know fuck all'.
Laughing at foreigners trying their best to communicate in the native tongue is a perhaps understandable but not necessarily attractive native trait; but surely the last laugh is with Curtiz for making Hollywood's finest ever effort, that magical mix of flawed good, bad bad, crackling wit and high romance, 'Casablanca'. And there again, Sam Goldwyn, another legendary Hollywood figure enjoyed his efforts as much as anybody else: 'Include me out', 'Two words, impossible,' and 'Definitely maybe.'
Finally, some words of encouragement for all those in peril on Budget Day, from Groucho Marx: 'Look at me - I worked my way up from nothing to an extreme state of poverty.'
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October 29
As the day progresses, you might find it helpful, as I so often do, to recall these wise words (of very many) from Honore de Balzac: 'Irony is the essence of the character of Providence.'
Balzac was introduced to this truth at an early age while he was being put regularly into what amounted to a detention cell at his school for disobedience (in reality boredom) while his father, a Government official, was writing a treatise on crime prevention disdaining prison as a means of reform.
He went on to write more than 100 books: I have a special interest in one, 'Le Lys dan la Vallee,' as it is where the hero's mistress, an English aristocrat named Lady Arabella Dudley, tells him that 'Lancashire is the county where women die of love'. I was so impressed by this arresting assertion that I wrote a book with the same title, dealing with the lost mystery and romance of my native heath, from Southport's claim to have inspired the boulevards of Paris to Carnforth Station's leading role in that most tear-jerking of British films, Brief Encounter. Among much else, I asked various Lancashire women if they agreed about the love and the dying without ever really ever establishing the truth of it, although one bride-to-be in Blackpool did tell me she thought it was from the cold or too many chips.
I should like to relate that I came across the quote while reading 'La Lys dans le Vallee,' a heated tale of a young man with a platonic love for an older woman who falters and dies when he takes a lover, in the original French, instead of in an essay on Lancashire by AJP Taylor; sadly, tant pis, as I believe it is expressed over there.
It's a fine essay, though, in which the great historian also argues persuasively for the superiority of Lancashire people over those from the other side of the Pennines, praising the Lancastrian love of whimsy, fostered by the gentle south-west wind. He slightly qualifies the local distaff side urge to die for love by opining that in his view they were more likely to say, 'Come on, lad, let's get it over,' but then he was a little dry, even if he came from Birkdale. I suppose I ought also to mention that Balzac's North Country authority, his English mistress, Jane Dudley, later the Countess Guidoboni-Visconti, no less, was from Wiltshire, which is some distance from the land of the Red Rose.
As it happens, I later learnt that Taylor borrowed the latter line from Harold Brighouse's splendid play, 'Hobson's Choice', where a talented but timid cobbler is taken in hand, and up a convenient alleyway (for a kiss, thank you) by Maggie, the commanding daughter of his employer, the said Hobson. The 1954 film of the play, starring Charles Laughton, John Mills and Brenda de Banzie, is a delight.
But to return to what guidance the past has to offer for navigation through life, I refer you to TS Eliot, one of its most distinguished travellers; he used to tell of an encounter with a London taxi driver who had recently had the distinguished philosopher Bertrand Russell as a fare. 'At the end, I said to him, " What's it all about, then, Lord Russell? And do you know, he couldn't tell me."'
See the Books section for more on 'Lancashire, Where Women Die of Love.'
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October 28
Today we celebrate the crowning of Ladislaus the Posthumous as King of Bohemia in 1453. Should you be scratching your head as to how that worked, exactly, I'm happy to tell you that Ladislaus was the posthumous child of Albert of Habsburg. Sadly, his life was not a happy one, despite all attempts to make it so, as he became caught up in a bewildering morass of central european rivalries and died at the age of 17, either from poison or the bubonic plague.
But his is one of those many suffixes that enliven the dullest histories. I give you: Sigurd the Stout, Ivar the Boneless, Sigrid the Haughty, Eadric the Grasper, Thorfinn the Skullsplitter, Ingvar the Far-Traveller, Theophylact the Unbearable, Louis the Sluggard, John the Abandoned, John the Beer Jug, Ivalyo the Cabbage, Vasili the Cross-Eyed, Alfonso the Fat, Manuel the Grocer-King, Wilfred the Hairy, Henry the Fowler, Basarad the Little Impaler, Frederick the Quarreller, and my personal favourite, Charles the Affable, whom I prefer to Charles the Simple.
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October 27
Emily Post, the American expert on etiquette was born on this day in 1872. She would not have approved of Evelyn Waugh, who, among very much else, made a habit of giving precise but wrong directions to any stranger who might ask, including, on one occasions, a clearly agitated man who explained he was running late for his train and wanted to know the way to the railway station. Nor, I feel, would Mrs Post have warmed to Lord Glasgow, the 19th century aristocrat of a dyspeptic turn who once, infuriated by some imagined failing, threw a servant out of the window at Crockfords, his London club. When the Secretary remonstrated with him, his lordship merely muttered, 'Put him on the bill'. Other servants were also often at risk, as it was his practice when hunting to elect one of them quarry if a fox was not to be found.
As is usual, rather better manners are to be found among the servants. The butler to the 16th Duke of Norfolk, for example, was once umpiring a game at his cricket-mad master's splendid Arundel ground; called upon to decide whether the Duke had been run out, he declared, with aplomb matched only by finesse, 'His Grace is not in'. After being appointed manager of the England tour to Australia in 1962-63, the Duke announced to the team at their first meeting, over dinner, naturally: 'I wish this to be an entirely informal tour. You will merely address me as "Sir" '. I once interviewed his son, the 17th Duke, a man of rather different stripe, who told me, 'I am - pompous arse, you might say - Earl Marshal of England'.
Perhaps my favourite example of politesse, though, comes, as its should, from a king: George II, who responded to the dying request of his wife, Queen Caroline, that he should marry again, with sobs between every word: 'Non - j'aurai - des - maitresses'.
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October 26
Today in 1919, Edward Elgar's Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85, his last notable work, was given its first performance at Queen's Hall, London. Sir Edward's lesser known works include possibly the first football anthem (1898), 'Bang the Leather for Goal', a tribute to his favourite team, Wolverhampton Wanderers (he used to cycle the 40 miles from Malvern to watch them at Molineux). Sadly, although set to a recitative from 'Caractacus' (also 1898), it never really caught on, probably because it lacks a second line.
This is not a problem with a chant I have always admired for its typically robust, chauvinist and slanderous wit, the one that celebrates Tottenham Hotspur's richly gifted Korean player, Son Heung-min: 'He shoots he scores, he'll eat your Labrador!'
Collectors of curiosities might be interested to know that Sir Edward also wrote an arrangement for Jack Hylton's dance band. Jack, who doubled as a noted impresario, was the man who first brought the renowned if unconventional concert pianist, Eric Morecambe, and the light tenor and unique playwright, Ernie Wise, together.
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October 25
Remembering today, on its anniversary, that glorious but inglorious, incompetent but somehow inspiring, at the same time acme and nadir of British arms, The Charge of the Light Brigade. Not quite so well known as Raglan, Cardigan and Nolan is the remarkable Private John Vahey of the 17th Lancers. The company butcher and enthusiastic toper joined the Charge informally after leaving the now unguarded guard tent where he was being held on a charge of drunkenness with another enthusiast, 'because why the devil should we be out of the fun?'
Still wearing his bloody butchering apron - the job came with free rum - Private Vahey mounted a loose horse now minus its Russian rider and, armed only with his butcher's cleaver, first tried to join the Heavy Brigade, who spurned his offer and then jeered as he set off after the Light Brigade, arriving just as their trumpets sounded the Charge. 'Setting our teeth hard, off we went pellmell across the valley as hard as ever horse could lay foot to ground.'
We now have only Vahey's word for what happened to him during the Charge: he claimed that he killed large numbers of Russians with his cleaver before hearing the retreat sounded, making it back with a young wounded Hussar across his horse. Whatever, he was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal (after, naturally, in the British way, being charged with leaving the guard tent without permission).
He died in India six years later in India, where he had swopped to grave-digging for drink ration. He was buried in one he had dug himself.
Now see the Books section for The Book of Jacks.
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October 24
Today, in an attempt at relevance, we discuss the importance of principles, as illuminated by two of last century's more interesting thinkers. First, Groucho Marx, who coined or borrowed this apercu whose practice you might find wearily prevalent: 'These are my principles, and if you don't like them, I have others'.
Second, Tommy Cooper, failed illusionist and fabled ruminator, in a heated discussion with a barman over some small change: 'You don't understand: it's not the principle, it's the money.'
Readers of my book, So Last Century (see the Home Page) will recognise Tommy Cooper in Gus Pinner, leading character in my story of the 1914-18 war, a music hall star who travels to the trenches.
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October 23
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October 22
And today, for no particular reason, we remember that great actress, Sarah Siddons, 1755-1831, peerless tragedian and stage electrifier, who never visited Leeds again after a member of the audience took against her dramatic prevaricating with some poison and advised her to 'just get on and drink it!'
Surely coincidentally, and as it happens, Queen Victoria never returned to Leeds, either, after being presented with the bill by the hotel where she took luncheon.
As for other 'helpful' audience interjections, it is often told of how, when Pia Zadora, a young starlet of uncertain quality, was appearing on Broadway in a production of Anne Frank's Diary, the arrival on stage of Nazi soldiers was greeted with the cry, 'She's in the attic!'
Respect for the truth, however, narrowly compels me to note that this did not, in fact, happen.
Things were also quite robust in the Music Hall. One lady soprano of a certain age and genteel appearance found her attempt to introduce culture into straitened lives being continually thwarted by boos and catcalls before she could even begin. At last, a man shouted loudly from the back, 'Give the poor cow a chance!' The hall finally quietened and prepared to listen. Before beginning her first aria, the soprano smiled graciously and confided, 'Thank goodness there's one gentleman in tonight.'
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