Archive for the 'Things I Have Learned' Category

You would be surprised how often I am asked by readers if it possible to somehow experience the mystic woohoohoodiwoo conjured up by the Woohoohoodiwoo Woman in the deep dense weird woods, without actually having to enter the deep dense weird woods for a moonlit encounter with the Woohoohoodiwoo Woman herself. In part, your surprise would be that anybody could manage to articulate that question on an empty stomach. Until now, my standard answer has been “No, it is not possible to somehow experience the mystic woohoohoodiwoo conjured up by the Woohoohoodiwoo Woman in the deep dense weird woods, without actually having to enter the deep dense weird woods for a moonlit encounter with the Woohoohoodiwoo Woman herself,” although depending on how much time is at my disposal I might just say “No” or even slap the importuning reader about the head with the outer packaging from a carton of smokers’ poptarts.

I say “until now” because, thanks to David Thompson, I have learned of the activities of a certain Erial Ali. Click on this link, scroll down, slowly, slowly, and be engulfed in mystic woohoohoodiwoo!

“He was an expert in many subjects and intervened widely in others. Among his contributions to learned journals were papers on meteorology, navigation, surveying, anthropology, archaeology, painting, photography, the use of spectacles by divers, ultrasonic whistles, diet fads, currency reform, visions, corporal punishment, the ideal length of rope for hanging people, the flashing of signals to Mars, and dozens of other topics. Almost as numerous were his inventions, ranging from advanced scientific instruments to gadgets for personal convenience. At the age of thirteen he designed a steam flying machine, followed by an hour-glass speedometer for bicycles, and, in later life, a periscope for seeing over the heads of crowds. It was used for viewing processions, of which he was particularly fond, in conjunction with a wooden brick, wrapped in cloth and tied to a string so that it could be lowered to the ground for standing on.”

I know what you’re thinking. Did Dobson and Blötzmann spawn some kind of love-child (perhaps using a technique concocted by the latter)? But no. Apart from anything else, that would be chronologically incoherent, like a leech doctor with a brain scanner. It is in fact Francis Galton, as described in Eccentric Lives And Peculiar Notions by John Michell (1984). There is a touch, too, of Joost Van Dongelbraacke, the suburban shaman. Michell notes that Galton

“was strongly religious, but the only type of worship that appealed to him was the spontaneous variety he had seen among the Africans. He considered that their chants, dances and fetish worship expressed the genuine religious spirit of the natural man. As usual, he put that belief to practical test. Looking round for the least worshipful object he could find, he hit upon the comic figure of Mr Punch, and forced his mind into believing that it possessed divine powers. The experiment succeeded. He came to experience ‘a large share of the feelings a barbarian entertains towards his idol’, and for a long time he was unable to look at Mr Punch’s grotesque features without a feeling of reverence.”

Photograph and Bertillon record of Francis Galton (1893)

A Very British Dude * explains proper mustard:

“Listless and radioactive yellow, [American mustard] does not add to the celebration of all that is good and holy in your mouth. The “Actions on” ingesting Proper Mustard are as follows. Your sinuses should clear instantly; your brain should be invigorated and you should develop a nose bleed. English Mustard delivers and it is thus the correct Mustard.”

* I am charitably assuming this is a deliberate oxymoron. The alternative is too horrifying to contemplate.

That fellow on the cover bears a striking resemblance to the noted mezzotintist Rex Tint, during one of his “episodes”.

Last week I quoted the views of Colonel Sibthorp, M.P. for Lincoln, on the Great Exhibition of 1851. And lo!, now I have come across him again, for Colonel Charles de Laet Waldo Sibthorp has a chapter entire to himself in the late John Michell’s splendid book Eccentric Lives And Peculiar Notions (1984).

“During his many years in the House of Commons, Colonel Sibthorp made his name as the most conservative Member of Parliament ever known, setting a standard of reaction, nationalism and xenophobia unrivalled in parliamentary history. He opposed every change and innovation, regarding even the mildest reform as a fundamental attack on his idol, the English Constitution of his youth.”

Prior to his election, asked if he would support reform, he replied:

“On no account would I sanction any attempts to subvert that glorious fabric, our matchless Constitution, which has reached its present perfection by the experience of ages, by any new-fangled schemes which interested or deluded individuals might bring forward, and those who expect any advantages from such notions will find their visions go like a vapour and vanish into nothing.”

“As his indignation flourished,” says Michell, “so did his powers of oratory. His emphatic speeches against anything new or foreign delighted the House of Commons and made him their popular favourite. The things he disapproved of were always ‘Humbugs’ , and his repetitions of this and other familiar terms of abuse were greeted with roars of parliamentary laughter. His dress was as old-fashioned as his opinions, usually consisting of a bottle-green frock-coat and wide white trousers hoisted high above his top-boots in the Regency manner. His wispy beard, tall white hat and antique quizzing glasses on a cord distinguished him from all other Members…

“Colonel Sibthorp was obviously very loyal to the Monarchy, but in his eyes Queen Victoria had committed one terrible blunder: she had married a foreigner. He always referred to such people as ‘hypocritical foreigners’, implying that they were not merely unfortunate but in some way sinister through having been born outside Britain. Prince Albert, he allowed, had some admirable qualities, but his character was permanently impaired by the fact of his foreign birth…

“The coming of the railways provided Colonel Sibthorp with the subject which grew obsessive during his later years. Beginning with the announcement that he had no intention of ever riding in the ’steam humbug;, he opposed all railway bills in principle and detail. The new ‘degrading form of transport’, he foresaw, would bring all sorts of disasters to its patrons, from moral ruin to wholesale slaughter. He kept an eye on the newspapers for reports of railway accidents, and accused the steam companies of playing down the gory details of crashes…

“Christopher Sykes, who has written affectionately about Sibthorp, says that Dostoievski used to read English parliamentary reports, and took Colonel Sibthorp as his model for Lebedev, the character in The Idiot who proclaimed that the network of railways spreading across holy Russia was the baleful ’star called Wormwood’ prophesied in the Book of Revelation.”

“The haddock… amongst marine animals, is supposed, throughout maritime Europe, to be a privileged fish : even in austere Scotland every child can point out the impression of St Peter’s thumb, by which, from age to age, it is distinguished from fishes having, otherwise, an external resemblance. All domesticated cattle, having the benefit of man’s guardianship and care, are believed, throughout England and Germany, to go down upon their knees at one particular moment on Christmas Eve, when the fields are covered in darkness, when no eye looks down but that of God, and when the exact anniversary hour revolves of the angelic song, once rolling over the fields and flocks of Palestine.”

Hargrave Jennings, Curious Things Of The Outside World, Last Fire (1861)

“Following the approved practice, two large vases, containing ‘a representative sample of contemporary items’, were deposited in the pedestal [of Cleopatra's Needle, on Thames Embankment]. ‘The mere list of these objects,’ declared the Saturday Review, ‘must provoke a smile.’ It was certainly well-calculated to have this effect, for, among them, were a Bible, a translation of the hieroglyphics on the column, a portrait of the Queen, a standard set of weights and measures, a Whitaker’s Almanack, a Bradshaw’s railway-guide, a Post Office directory, a ‘Mappin’s shilling razor’, an ‘Alexandra feeding-bottle, as used in the Royal nurseries’, and ‘photographs of twelve pretty Englishwomen’. Altogether, a mixed assortment.”

Horace Wyndham, This Was The News : An Anthology Of Victorian Affairs (1948)

Is all that stuff still there, entombed in vases beneath the Needle?