A Website by Frank Key
In Strange Newes of the intercepting certaine Letters and a Convoy of Verses, as they were going Privilie to victuall the Low Countries, his 1593 pamphlet attacking Gabriel Harvey, Thomas Nashe devised the following nicknames for the target of his matchless invective:
Gaffer Iobbernoule
Gamaliel Hobgoblin
Gilgilis Hobberdehoy
Gregory Habberdine
Gabriel Hangtelow
Timothy Tiptoes
Braggadochio Glorioso
Infractissime Pistlepragmos
The picture above is a still from Alan Bridges’ 1985 film The Shooting Party, based on Isobel Colegate’s novel of 1981. James Mason plays Sir Randolph Nettleby, landowner, enthusiastic bird-shooter, and budding pamphleteer. John Gielgud’s character is giving him some pamphleteering tips, having had his tract on animal rights printed by an “anarchist in Dorking”. Earlier, Gielgud has been marching about the field brandishing a placard in an attempt to disrupt the bird-shoot. Intriguingly, the name of Gielgud’s character is Cornelius Cardew. Mere coincidence, or was Isobel Colegate gently teasing another upper class Englishman given to protest and to the brandishing of placards? And are there any other instances of fictional characters being given the names of English Maoist avant garde composers?
Fond as I am of inconsequential yet somehow intriguing facts, I was delighted to learn from today’s paper that the mother of soon-to-be-a-gaolbird Lib Dem MP Chris Huhne used to be the voice of the speaking clock.
Today is the first day of the Muggletonian Great Holiday, celebrated on the third, fourth and fifth of February each year. On those three days in 1652, the tailor John Reeve (1608-1658) received his commission from God, and was told that his cousin Lodowicke Muggleton (1609-1698) was to be his “mouth”. Reeve learned that he and Muggleton were the two witnesses referred to in Revelations 11:3, and that God had empowered them to pronounce upon the fate of individuals. As Muggleton wrote in his 1663 tract The Neck of The Quakers Broken, “He hath put the two-edged Sword of His Spirit into my Mouth, that whosoever I pronounce cursed through my Mouth, is cursed to Eternity”.
It was long thought that, of all the sects which sprang up in the English Civil War period, only the Quakers survived into the twentieth century. During the 1970s, however, one Philip Noakes came to light in Kent, a living Muggletonian in possession of a huge archive of material covering the sect’s entire history.
The Muggletonians believed that human reason was unclean. This led them to reject physical science. They refused to accept the laws of gravity or the rules of mathematics, and they considered astronomy to be wrong. The stars, they said, were only as big as God made them appear from earth. In later years, Muggletonians banned hot air ballooning, because the balloons would crash into the sky, a solid band around the earth.
Portrait of Lodowicke Muggleton by William Wood, circa 1674 (NPG)
NOTE : My thanks to Andy Hopton, whose 1988 essay in Small Press Gleanings is my source – and was my introduction to the sect.
Last April I posted a plea for help. For thirty years I had been incapable of deciphering part of the lyric of Capitalist Music’s titanic masterpiece “Jane’s Gone To France”. Several readers tried, but failed, to work out what on earth the great Steve Bloch was harping on about, and were equally as baffled as me.
Now, out of the blue, someone called Matt has added to the comments on that post, and provided the answer. And of course, when you listen to the song again, knowing what Matt has told you, it seems absolutely clear, and indeed obvious.
I doubt that any of you care very much, but this has made me happy. Thank you, Matt.
This morning I received an email from PayPal containing – among other things – this curious claim:
It had never before occurred to me that, when seeking to identify birds’ eggs, the first port of call should be a PayPal customer services person. However, now I know, and I shall be bombarding them with all my birds’ egg identification quandaries. You should do likewise.
ADDENDUM : While you’re there checking your birds’ eggs, don’t forget to give alms to the Hooting Yard Fighting Fund. (I’m not sure yet who or what we’re fighting, but don’t you worry about that.)
In cities, do social meetings abound? and what are their purposes and character? Are they most religious, political, or festive? If religious, have they more the character of Passion Week at Rome, or of a camp-meeting in Ohio? If political, do the people meet on wide plains to worship the Sun of the Celestial Empire, as in China; or in town-halls, to remonstrate with their representatives, as in England; or in secret places, to spring mines under the thrones of their rulers, as in Spain? If festive, are they most like an Italian carnival, where everybody laughs; or an Egyptian holiday, when all eyes are solemnly fixed on the whirling Dervishes? Are women there? In what proportions, and under what law of liberty? What are the public amusements?…In country towns, how is the imitation of the metropolis carried on? Do the provincials emulate most in show, in science, or in the fine arts? In the villages, w hat are the popular amusements? Do the people meet to drink or to read, to discuss, or play games, or dance? What are the public houses like? Do the people eat fruit and tell stories? or drink ale and talk politics or call for tea and saunter about? or coffee and play dominoes? or lemonade and laugh at Punch? Do they crowd within four walls, or gather under the elm, or spread themselves abroad over the cricket-field or the yellow sands?… In the manners of all classes, from the highest to the lowest, are forms of manners enforced in action, or dismissed in words? Is there barbarous freedom in the lower, while there is formality in the higher ranks, as in newly settled countries? or have all grown up together to that period of refined civilization when ease has superseded alike the freedom of the Australian peasantry, and the etiquette of the court of Ava? What are the manners of professional men of the society, from the eminent lawyer or physician of the metropolis down to the village barber?
from Harriet Martineau, How To Observe : Morals And Manners (1838)
Items removed from the house included baby carriages, a doll carriage, rusted bicycles, old food, potato peelers, a collection of guns, glass chandeliers, bowling balls, camera equipment, the folding top of a horse-drawn carriage, a sawhorse, three dressmaking dummies, painted portraits, pinup girl photos, plaster busts, Mrs Collyer’s hope chests, rusty bed springs, the kerosene stove, a child’s chair (the brothers were lifelong bachelors and childless), more than 25,000 books (including thousands about medicine and engineering and more than 2,500 on law), human organs pickled in jars, eight live cats, the chassis of the old Model T with which Langley had been tinkering, tapestries, hundreds of yards of unused silks and fabric, clocks, 14 pianos (both grand and upright), a clavichord, two organs, banjos, violins, bugles, accordions, a gramophone and records, and countless bundles of newspapers and magazines, some of them decades old.
from the Wikipedia article on the Collyer brothers, brought to my attention by R., to whom many thanks.
Now here’s a quandary. Hooting Yard strains every sinew to pretend that certain “celebrities” do not actually exist. We simply ignore them. They are banished from our mental purview, dumped into a gigantic imaginary dustbin, the lid of which is clanged shut.
Badgers, on the other hand, we consider splendid creatures, always worthy of a few lines here and there. We don’t go overboard, we don’t babble on and on and on about badgers, but we take note of their doings, and bring you interesting badger news when appropriate.
What to do then, when a non-existent “celebrity” and badgers collide? It is with a heavy sigh that I bring you this four-month old headline which has only just been transmitted to the Hooting Yard news hub substation…
Gordon Ramsay’s Dwarf Porn Double Found Dead in a Badger Den in Wales
A badger
Courtesy once again of Mike Jennings, here is the first known illustration of the Goliath bird-eating spider, made by Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717). She has a ship named after her, but not (as far as I know) a spider.
Perhaps this lighthouse is on the tip of Porridge Island! That sea monster has probably had a sniff of the greasy doings…
Exciting sea-monster-attacks-lighthouse film still from Chilling Scenes Of Dreadful Villainy
Yesterday we learned about greasy doings, a regional dish from Arizona. I was keen to know more, thinking I might knock together a bowlful for my breakfast. Alas and alack, my tireless research yielded only thin pickings. On the other hand, among those pickings was this intriguing item, from Momus ; or, The Laughing Philosopher, Number LVII : The Humours Of A Steward’s Entertainment which appeared in The Westminster Magazine : or, The Pantheon Of Taste Volume 5, Issue 2, June 1777:
He received me with all that exuberance of civility which amounts to just nothing at all, and told me he was transported to see me ; adding “That he expected a few more friends, and that we should dine like Princes, as he had trout, venison, pines, melons, iced cream, claret, Madeira, &c. &c.”
Upon his asking me if I would take a walk over the grounds before dinner, I duly gave my assent. While we were making a complete conquest of America, by the side of a filbert-hedge, a servant came to announce Mr. and Mrs. Allsop. In consequence of this information, my Steward, whom I shall call Rackum, ordered him to shew them into the garden-parlour. Then turning to me, he said, “’Tis very disagreeable, Sir, to mix with such low people ; but as they have had interest enough with my Lord to procure places, I am obliged to treat them with decency. Allsop’s father was nothing higher than a Cook in the Duke of N——-’s kitchen ; and indeed, so great a propensity has the whole family to greasy doings, that this fellow’s elder brother keeps an Eating-house not a hundred miles from Porridge Island.”
Briefly diverted by the thought of a conversation taking place by the side of a filbert-hedge – note to self : engineer such a chinwag, soon! – I had to concede that this did not sound like Arizona circa 1777. Further research reinforced the point, as I discovered that, according to The 1811 Dictionary Of The Vulgar Tongue by Francis Grose, Porridge Island was “an alley leading from St. Martin’s church-yard to Round-court, chiefly inhabited by cooks, who cut off ready-dressed meat of all sorts, and also sell soup”. Far, far away lies Arizona, then.
It is always possible that one of the elder Allsop’s customers, delighted with his greasy doings, obtained the recipe and then took it with him when he sailed across the Atlantic for a new life in the New World. Settling, eventually, in Arizona, he may have established a New Porridge Island and fed early Arizonapersons with greasy doings.
It was when I was imagining this putative person crossing the Atlantic that I wondered if, as well as being an alleyway in London, Porridge Island might have been one of the mythical islands travellers once believed to exist in that mighty ocean. There is an excellent book by Donald S Johnson, entitled Phantom Islands Of The Atlantic : The Legends Of Seven Lands That Never Were (1994), so I checked to see if Porridge Island was one of them. But no. Mr Johnson tells us about the Isle of Demons and Frisland and Buss Island and Antillia, the Isle of Seven Cities and Hy-Brazil and Saint Ursula And Her Eleven Thousand Virgin Companions and the Islands of Saint Brendan, but there is not a jot of porridge to be found. Ah well, it was merely a momentary fancy on my part.
You will note that I chose to insert “and” between all those islands, rather than using commas and saving “and” to connect only the penultimate and final items. This was a wholly conscious decision, because I like “and”. I like “and” in spite of W G Sebald. Perhaps I should explain. My go-to-guy for all things Sebald, Richard Carter, drew my attention to a collection of Maxims (PDF) reportedly uttered or muttered by the late lamented. Among these is:
Use the word ‘and’ as little as possible. Try for variety in conjunctions.
I cannot agree. “And” holds – or can hold – such promise! There’s more! There are other possibilities! There is further information! And… and occasionally, I suppose, it is better to draw a veil over the next trowelful of twaddle to occur to me as I stand beside a filbert-hedge, and to shut up.
If you are wondering what to have for lunch today, and you happen to find yourself in Arizona, might I suggest you try that most delicious-sounding of snacks, Greasy Doings? It is just one of many regional specialities detailed on the Porcineograph, which Ptak Science Books rightly calls a “semi-magnificent map”. Click on its semi-magnificence for a larger version.
Rummaging around on the BBC iPlayer, I discovered a programme new to me, a studio discussion show called The Big Questions. Well, I’m not sure about the size of the questions, but some of the answers made me laugh.
Asked to name a single coherent objective of the Occupy movement, one of the guests replied “We’re against all the injustice in the world”. He sounded like a plaintive seven-year-old whining that life isn’t fair. Perhaps I’m being too harsh. For some unexplained reason he was wearing one of those silly masks, so for all I know perhaps he was an upset seven-year-old.
A bit later on a woman who appeared to be something to do with the Church of England opined that the government should be responsible for origami.
I think this show may be unmissable.
I am indebted to Mike Jennings for further useful illustrative material from The Universe or The Infinitely Great and the Infinitely Little by F A Pouchet M.D. (1882). In this picture, we see gnomes of German legend laying bare the skeleton of an ichthyosaurus. As Mr Jennings so rightly says, “the mind boggles… well, mine doesn’t boggle so much these days, but yours might”.
