While I have fallen silent due to blockage of the inspirational funnels in my cranium – about which more later – the media has been merrily obsessed with MPs and their expenses. I have been following all the details with far more intensity than is advisable for a sensible person. Today, I wish simply to leap to the defence of the Tory Sir Peter Viggers, who claimed £1645 for a floating duck island. This seems to me to be a legitimate and imaginative use of taxpayers’ money, quite unlike such abuses as moat-cleaning, mortgage interest, and food – except food for ducks, which is fine.

An eighteenth-century subscription library in London* divided its readers into four categories: the Sedate, the Historian, the Theatrical Amateur, and the Gay and Volatile.

If I can destroy the blockage which has made Hooting Yard fall silent in recent days, I shall devise a quiz so you can work out which type of reader you are.

*NOTE : Not the London Library (see above).

There is always a risk, at Hooting Yard, of creeping monomania. A bee finds its way into my bonnet, and buzzes about. Fortunately for readers, and for my own sanity, the bee tends to buzz off after a few hours or days and things get back to normal.

That by way of preamble to a note which might lead some to think this place has become AntiFry Central. The Most Intelligent Life-Form In The Known Universe was interviewed on BBC’s Newsnight yesterday – mercifully briefly – about the MPs’ expenses hoo-hah. He claimed that everybody, including himself, fiddled their expenses, that it was nothing to get worked up about, and that making a fuss about it was “bourgeois”. (This while suited and booted in black tie for some event he was attending.) Oh, how we vomited here at Haemoglobin Towers!

I have a new heroine, however. Back in the studio, discussing the same topic, the MP Kate Hoey referred contemptuously to “that actor, whoever he is” and how he was talking twaddle. Gold star for her.

Call me a hypochondriac if you will, but I fear I have succumbed to a highly dangerous syndrome so baffling to medical science it has not yet been given a proper name. Boffins in their underground labs have taken to calling it “bonkers”, for the chief – and so far only – symptom is that victims finds themselves agreeing with Peter Hitchens. The terrifying thing is that it can be a progressive illness, where at first one nods in perplexity that the columnist’s words match one’s own thoughts, almost anomalously, until towards the end the patient has to be carted away, raving. Yesterday I had a definite twitch of the early stage condition, when I read this:

Stephen Fry, in an interminable article in a London lifestyle magazine, complains that he doesn’t like being called a ‘Quintessential Englishman’.

Glad to hear it. No danger of that happening to him here. In this column, he  is regarded as a Quintessential Left-wing Luvvie, swollen by years of fashionable flattery into absurd prominence.

I’d also like to popularise the description once given of him in The Dictionary Of National Celebrity: ‘A stupid person’s idea of what an intelligent person is like.’

I’ve been longing to say this since he (an educated man with a duty to take the side of the civilisation that sustains him) rallied to the defence of the coarse barbarian oaf Jonathan Ross.

I am having to stop myself from copying out vast swathes of Ruskin’s Fors Clavigera for your entertainment and edification. How can you not love a writer who refers in passing to looking something up “in one of my thirteenth-century Bibles”? Here, in any case, are a few lines from Letter XXIII, The Labyrinth:

[H]aving been obliged to write too young, when I knew only half truths, [I] was eager to set them forth by what I thought fine words. People used to call me a good writer then; now they say I can’t write at all; because, for instance, if I think anybody’s house is on fire, I only say “Sir, your house is on fire;” whereas formerly I used to say , “Sir, the abode in which you probably passed the delightful days of youth is in a state of inflammation,” and everybody used to like the effect of the two p’s in “probably passed,” and of the two d’s in “delightful days”.

I do like them… probably too enthusiastically.

You will be pleased to hear that I have been indefatigable, over the last couple of days, in my mermaid research. In a bunker deep underground, I was able to view several hours of footage from various demonstrations, hoping to spot a committed member of the social justice movement, in other words a mermaid, being clubbed senseless, possibly even to death, by a brutish copper or two. Well, when I say that is what I was hoping to see, I do not mean that I was excited by the prospect of watching a semiaquatic being being roughed up by the forces of law and order, rather if that is what I did see it would confirm mermaids’ status as committed members of the social justice movement. Are you still with me? This isn’t particularly complicated stuff, but I am having some difficulty explaining myself. Though I must say it was fun to write a grammatically correct sentence containing two adjacent “being”s. Anyway, to my infinite regret the footage was shaky and blurry and I couldn’t make anything out in detail, so I am still unable to reach a definitive mermaid conclusion. What I do have, courtesy of OSM, is a photograph of a gathering of mermaids, perhaps protesting in favour of world peace or against capitalism. Neither George Galloway nor Annie Lennox, say, is visible in the picture, so it’s hard to be sure what exactly the mermaids are making a fuss about. Careful study of the photo will be necessary, through a microscope, which I shall have to borrow from my next door neighbour, a somewhat perplexing individual with cake-crumbs in his beard. He is often reluctant to respond to my urgent hammerings at his door, so please be patient and I will return to this important topic when I have something concrete to report.

“Mermaids are committed members of the social justice movement.” – David Tuffley.

Is this a blindingly obvious truth? Or is it arrant nonsense? It has a certain Radio 4 Today programme “Thought For The Day” ring to it, but actually it comes from a po-faced dissection of Bob Dylan’s Desolation Row, to which Mick Hartley links.

Mr Hartley thinks Mr Tuffley, of Redland Bay, Australia, is talking twaddle, but I’m not so sure. For one thing, Mr Tuffley’s location suggests he lives next to the sea, and thus may from time to time have seen, conversed with, or otherwise had traffick with mermaids. As far as I can ascertain, Mr Hartley is a Londoner, and thus is unlikely to be familiar with such semiaquatic beings, other than at those times they splash and cavort in the Thames.

I note that Harriet Harman’s latest Equalities Bill has not a jot to say about mermaids, and this may indeed have led to a justified sense of grievance, even of victimhood. But for the time being I shall reserve judgment. I plan to view footage of marches and demonstrations, seeing if I can spot any mermaids among the more common students, crusties, and beardy higher education lecturers. I shall report back when my researches are at an end. Ah, but when is research ever at an end?

A letter to The Times, from “C.L.S.”, 16^th August 1871:

Sir, – On Monday last I had the misfortune of taking a trip per steamer to Margate. The sea was rough, the ship crowded, and therefore most of the Cockney excursionists prostrate with sea-sickness. On landing on Margate pier I must confess I thought that, instead of landing in an English seaport, I had been transported by magic to a land inhabited by savages and lunatics. The scene that ensued when the unhappy passengers had to pass between the double line of a Margate mob on the pier must be seen to be believed possible in a civilized country. Shouts, yells, howls of delight greeted every pale-looking passenger, as he or she got on the pier, accompanied by a running comment of the lowest, foulest language imaginable. But the most insulted victims were a young lady, who, having had a fit of hysterics on board, had to be assisted up the steps, and a venerable-looking old gentleman with a long grey beard, who, by-the-by, was not sick at all, but being crippled and very old, feebly tottered up the slippery steps leaning on two sticks. “Here’s a guy!”  “Hallo! You old thief, you won’t get drowned, because you know that you are to be hung,” etc., and worse than that, were the greetings of that poor old man. All this while a very much silver-bestriped policeman stood calmly by, without interfering by word or deed; and myself, having several ladies to take care of, could do nothing except telling the ruffianly mob some hard words, with, of course, no other effect than to draw all the abuse on myself. This is not an exceptional exhibition of Margate ruffianism, but, as I have been told, is of daily occurrence, only varying in intensity with the roughness of the sea. Public exposure is the only likely thing to put a stop to such ruffianism ; and now it is no longer a wonder to me why so many people are ashamed of confessing that they have been to Margate.

Alan Bristow, whose obituary appears in today’s Guardian, was clearly quite a character. Here was a man who once threw Douglas Bader into a swimming pool (pity it wasn’t a pond, I sighed) and called him a “tin-legged git”. I was particularly struck by one little detail, maddeningly not expanded upon, one of those asides that have you clamouring for more information.

Bristow survived into old age to die at 85, just a decade after licensing for production a patent “water bed” for cows…

What? What what what? It is sometimes said that Hooting Yard is “odd” or “wacky”, but the “real world” is infinitely more strange.

Bear with me while I quote once again from Fors Clavigera by John Ruskin, but this is wonderful. One’s only regret is that there is no illustration of the work described.

[I]t happened that on the very day on which I published my last letter, I had to go to the Kensington Museum ; and there I saw the most perfectly and roundly ill-done thing which, as yet, in my whole life I ever saw produced by art. It had a tablet in front of it, bearing this inscription, –

“Statue in black and white marble, a Newfoundland Dog standing on a Serpent, which rests on a marble cushion, the pedestal ornamented with pietra dura fruits in relief. – English. Present century. No. I.”

It was so very right for me, the Kensington people having been good enough to number it “I.,” the thing being almost incredible in its one-ness ; and, indeed, such a punctual accent over the iota of Miscreation, – so absolutely and exquisitely miscreant, that I am not myself capable of conceiving a Number two, or three, or any rivalship or association with it whatsoever. The extremity of its unvirtue consisted, observe, mainly in the quantity of instruction which was abused in it. It showed that the persons who produced it had seen everything, and practised everything ; and misunderstood everything they saw, and misapplied everything they did. They had seen Roman work, and Florentine work, and Byzantine work, and Gothic work ; and misunderstanding of everything had passed through them as the mud does through earthworms, and here at last was their worm-cast of a Production,

From Letter V. Whitethorn Blossom

Mr Key would like to draw to your attention a small exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. Fabiola is a collection of mostly “amateur” portraits of Saint Fabiola, collected over the years by the Flemish artist Francis Alÿs. They are all based on a single source, a now lost 19th century painting, which means they look almost identical – but they’re not, of course. The effect of seeing them all gathered together in a couple of rooms is quite mesmerising. The official gallery page is here, and there is a photograph of an earlier showing in New York here. 

As noted a few days ago, I have now begun reading Ruskin’s Fors Clavigera. Its eccentricity, adverted to by Guy Davenport, has already become apparent. Here is an extract from Letter II, The Great Picnic.

I. That the strength of Hercules is for deed, not misdeed ; and that his club – the favourite weapon, also, of the Athenian hero Theseus, whose form is the best inheritance left to us by the greatest of Greek sculptors, (it is in the Elgin room of the British Museum, and I shall have much to tell you of him – especially how he helped Hercules in his utmost need, and how he invented mixed vegetable soup) – was for subduing monsters and cruel persons, and was of olive-wood.

(My emphasis.)

It may be that my classical education is scanty, but I had no idea mixed vegetable soup was invented by Theseus. I am hoping, with undisguised excitement, that Ruskin keeps his promise and tells me more about this in a subsequent letter.

 

We would all be well advised to familiarise ourselves with this brief illustrated history of pneumatic tubes, for reasons which I trust are crystal clear.

Listeners to Hooting Yard On The Air will be aware of my boundless admiration for the pulp writer Hal K Wells. Many’s the time I have read out on the show one particular quotation from his story Black Pool For Hell Maidens, to wit:

 

Carlin’s deep-shadowed eyes were flaming pools of mad menace.

“I could shoot you both down where you stand,” he rasped, “but that would be a foolish waste of valuable material… I shall turn the two of you over to the Dweller in the pool!”

 Dorothy Lane cried aloud in terror. Carlin’s thin lips writhed in a snarling smile…

“Who, or what, is the Dweller in the pool?” demanded Kent, “And what devil’s work is Carlin doing here anyway?”

“The Dweller in the pool,” Dorothy answered, her low voice trembling, “is my brother, Raoul!” …

Small wonder that the throbbing agony of so many tortured minds should combine to taint the very air with a shuddering miasma of crepitant dread!

That “My brother, Raoul!” gets me every time.

I am pleased to report, via Odd Ends, that another Wells story has been added at Project Gutenberg. In Devil Crystals Of Arret, young Larry faces a six-hour deadline of death, plus rat-men, octopus-bats, eldritch music and tinkling devil crystals! So alluring is the prospect of wallowing in a Wellsian miasma, I have had to put on hold my plan to read the umpteen volumes of John Ruskin’s Fors Clavigera : Letters To The Workmen And Labourers Of Great Britain, a work Guy Davenport suggested is comparable only to Tristram Shandy in its magnificent eccentricity.

The Sun newspaper – yes, The Sun! – once commanded its readers “Go thee to H P Lovecraft and shudder!” Excellent advice, you’ll agree, and I would like to echo it by recommending you do the same with Hal K Wells. A few more of his tales are available online here.

 

“The inhabitants of Southwark considered a particular remedy, such as the use of cat skin as a remedy for rheumatism and chest complaints, as ‘traditional’ when it had in fact been newly introduced to the Borough of Southwark by Belgian refugees during the First World War.”

Religious belief and popular culture in Southwark, c. 1880-1939 by S C Williams (OUP, 1999)