“To have read nothing by Bulwer-Lytton can give a man a solid sense of accomplishment.”

Peter De Vries, The Prick Of Noon (1985)

We know that the important thing about any televised foopball match is the demented wittering of the commentators. The 2010 World Cup has, in that sense, reached its climax with just a week of matches played. For I do not believe any commentator, however bonkers, will be able to better the stupendous words declaimed during tonight’s France v. Mexico tie:

“For a moment there, he looked like a baby gazelle who’d just plopped out of the womb.”

“It is bootless to pine after knowledge irretrievably buried in oblivion. Otherwise we might fairly have wished to have stood beside King Nebuchadnezzar when he so unadvisedly uttered that proud vaunt which ended in his being condemned to a long course of vegetable diet.”

William Bodham Donne, Old Roads And New Roads (1852)

Someone drew to my attention that all this business about Kaká and Dunga and Crouch could be related to the World Cup, so I embarked upon a spot of research. What I found was some spectacular nonsense (splendidly dealt with here – note particularly the closing paragraph) and some spectacular sense (note particularly the correct, Molesworthian spelling of foopball).

“A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose” is perhaps Gertrude Stein’s most memorable utterance. It first appeared in the 1913 poem Sacred Emily (published in 1922 in the collection Geography And Plays) as “Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose”, the first Rose being a proper name. There are other lines in the poem of which I am very fond, including:

It is rose in hen… Weeds without papers are necessary… Humming does as humming is… Electrics are tight electrics are white electrics are a button…  A very reasonable berry… A coral neck and a little song so very extra so very Susie… Cow come out cow come out and out and smell a little… Websters and mines, websters and mines… Cunning piler… Thimble of everything.

ADDENDUM : For more about Gertrude Stein and cows, go here.

“The antiquarian may take his stand upon Mam-Tor, the mother rock, when the moon sheds her silvery light o’er Loosehill Mount, and, carrying his mind back into the past some 230 years, hear the bugle’s note as it sweeps through the Wynnats Pass, and is taken up by the Peverel Castle and transmitted onwards through the Vale of Hope, calling the hardy dalesmen to their midnight rendezvous, there to be instructed in the science of war, so as to enable them to protect their homes and families against the marauding myrmidons of a cruel, heartless, and unreliable king; or if the antiquarian seeketh a knowledge of the High Peak folk-lore, and feareth neither pixie or graymarie, he can, on a spring night, just as the moon has entered her last quarter, and the first note from the belfry of the chapel in the frith has proclaimed the arrival of midnight, take his stand upon Blentford’s Bluff and peer into the dark and sombre depths of Kinder, when he will hear the hooting of the barn owl on Anna rocks, the unearthly screech of the landrail as he ploughs his way through the unmown grass in search of his mate, the scream of the curlew and chatter of the red grouse as they take their flight from peak to peak, and see the fairy queen come forth from the mermaid’s cave in a shimmering light, followed by her maids, who dance a quadrille to the music of the spheres, and hear the wild blast of the hunter’s horn heralding the approach of the Gabriel hounds as they take their rapid course across the murky sky, and become lost in the unfathomable depths beyond the Scout.”

Robert Ottiwell Gifford-Bennet, M.D., Senior Acting Physician To The Devonshire Hospital And Buxton Bath Charity, Buxton And Its Medicinal Waters (1892)

Thanks to my son Ed, I have discovered just how easy it is to fritter away the hours here.

Should you find yourself spending far too long there, bear in mind, as I now do, these wise words from Peter De Vries, in The Prick Of Noon (1985): “I too believe in every kind of experimentation, freedom for the artist to shovel on reds and greens and oranges and purples in any quantity and as higgledy-piggledy as he wishes. But somewhere he’s got to draw a line.”

“Clicking the link would have been a letdown” noted Glyn Webster in the email to which he attached this screenshot:

He may be right, and life is too short to follow up every damned link thrown at us by Google. But I confess I am very intrigued. In a world of fluffyheads, pseudoscientists, conspiracy theorists, theocratic nutters and whatnot, who would have thought that the greatest and most dangerous enemy of Reason is poultry? This calls for proper investigation, before the majestic achievements of the Enlightenment are brought crashing to the ground by vengeful and unreasonable hens. Fear not – Mr Key is on the case!

I suppose one can take a crumb of comfort from the doubt implicit in the question mark appended to the caption. Nevertheless, until I am able to bring you further revelations, keep a beady eye on any poultry you come across. Meanwhile, I shall begin by looking up what Diderot had to say about hens, to discover if he had any inklings of the threat.

UPDATE : Hmm, this could prove significant. In D’Alembert’s Dream (1769), Diderot has Bordeu say this : “But here’s a strange fact which countless educated people will tell you is true but which is false, namely, that in the poultry yard of the archduke they’ve seen a disgusting rabbit who used to act as a cock and service around twenty shameless hens who were happy with the arrangement. The people will add that they have been shown some chickens covered with fur which were the products of this bestiality. You can be sure they were ridiculed.”

Clearly my next step must be to conduct a rigorous survey of the poultry yards of archdukes.

This is Hadrian Beverland (c.1651-1716), accompanied by “a wanton woman”. Beverland was a theologian of sorts and a classical scholar of great erudition. His book detailing the sexual abnormalities of the ancient world was described as “abominable and scandalous” and “an abortion from depraved brains” by the authorities of Leyden University, and he was banished from Holland. He spent much of the rest of his life in London and is buried in the churchyard of St Paul’s, Covent Garden.

He made various attempts to gain permission to return to his homeland, and when these failed he developed a persecution mania to which he gave vent in a series of pamphlets. These take the form of letters to him from the fictitious Perin de Vago, together with Beverland’s responses. Beverland was particularly exercised by a certain Tempest, “that curst flatterer” and “prophanest Reprobat” who “tried to make a Tennissball of a Foreigner”. Tempest sent “Girrls into the Fiels, who with a wanton eye could move olds mens entrails” and “Wensches with Linnen Oisters and Orang Appels who breathe life into Deathmen”. “Alackaday,” he complained, “only for loaking fresh in a frosty evening you must be suspected to be a Deboche.” Others apart from “the Gnat Tempest” were scheming against him, and “If the Mystery of the Plot lies hidden in the bottom of Hell, it will not only be difficult to draw it out of the Dunghill, but also dangerous to disturb the Dragons, Snakes and Hornets. Let them Lices who suk their livelyhood out of our carcass glorys in their guile. You avoid their Companye.”

Towards the end of his life Beverland prepared a catalogue of his collection of paintings for sale, in which he included this verse:

(The Song of the Borts of pray,) I have no Wife / The Devil Upon Two Crutches / Chear! Chear! / Hier / Carry me to Hell. / I do not know my L. where Hell is: But if it may please your L. I carry you to the Devil. / Go unto the Devil Tavern. / What upon Crutches! / I am very Old, if it may please your L. / No Old Devil can please me. Have you no younger Devils in Hell? / Yes, Long Brown, who carries little Davits upon his Shoulders: / What is become of little Gibson?

George Eliot said that a happy home life was a necessity for her to write. It seems the same was true for Dobson, who churned out all those innumerable out of print pamphlets while living in domestic bliss with Marigold Chew. But was happiness indeed the spur for his indefatigable pamphleteering? Quite the opposite was the case with Emanuel Swedenborg, as we learn from Eric John Dingwall. In Very Peculiar People : Portrait Studies In The Queer, The Abnormal And The Uncanny (1950) Mr Dingwall has a paragraph which ends superbly:

“As the years went by Swedenborg became more energetic than ever. His passion for women still tormented him, for, since the rejection of his suit by the young Emerentia Polhem about 1717, he apparently contracted no other alliance. There is no doubt that his failure to win her hand had affected him deeply, but he quickly steeled himself against allowing emotion to upset his work. He promptly published a pamphlet on the manufacture of tinplate.”

What this might indicate about the home life of our own dear Dobson is worthy of speculation.

Mr Key’s puny pea-sized brain is empty today, so while we wait for it to be refilled with coruscating insights, might I suggest that you go and read Jimmy Goddard, Tony Wedd, and the Star Fellowship? This is fascinating stuff, as those of who you recall Cosmic Friends will know only too well.

His feast day is not until September, so there is no reason why I should be mentioning St Joseph of Cupertino today, other than mere whim. You can read about him here, to which I would add these observations from Some Human Oddities : Studies In The Queer, The Uncanny And The Fanatical by Eric John Dingwall (1947):

“At the age of eight it was reported that he had his first ecstasy : and his behaviour at school, where occasionally he used to sit agape and motionless and with his eyes raised to heaven, earned him the nickname of ‘Open Mouth’… he was admitted to the Capuchin Order in August 1620. At first he was destined to work in the refectory, but the result of his frequent fits of absence of mind and ecstatic states on the crockery was disastrous, and Joseph added to the irritation caused by his breakages by wearing the pieces round his neck…  the accounts of his childhood, lack of education and later mental development suggest that he was not far from what today we should call a state of feeble-mindedness. Bishop Bonaventura Claver said that he was idiota.”

Ah God! to see the branches stir Across the moon at Grantchester! I confess that I know little of Rupert Brooke, other than a few of his more famous lines of poetry. But had I been asked, I would have said – with the gleam of certainty – that he was killed in action in the First World War.

Not quite. In 1915, he was on his way to the Dardanelles, and would almost certainly have been slaughtered at Gallipoli alongside tens of thousands of others. Before he got there, however, he was bitten on the lip by a gnat, and died of blood poisoning.

“The small bones of poultry, preserved in a hole in a wall, the medullary channel being left intact, will immediately cure tooth-ache, they say, if the tooth is touched or the gum scarified therewith, care being taken to throw away the bone the moment the operation is performed. A similar result is obtained by using raven’s dung, wrapped in wool and attached to the body, or else sparrow’s dung, warmed with oil and injected into the ear on the side affected. This last remedy, however, is productive of an intolerable itching, for which reason it is considered a better plan to rub the part with the ashes of young sparrows burnt upon twigs, mixed with vinegar for the purpose.”

Pliny The Elder, The Natural History (AD 77-79)

I have not yet borrowed a copy of Michael Drayton’s Poly-Olbion from the London Library, but I will do so shortly. Could this exceedingly lengthy work become a Hooting Yard On The Air Christmas Special, a broadcast I suspect would be longer than the three hours devoted to Christopher Smart’s Jubilate Agno? We shall see…

Meanwhile, here is the title page of the copy held by Warwickshire County Council: