Richard Carter of Gruts has kindly drawn my attention to this splendid passage from an autobiographical sketch by Thomas Henry Huxley:
I was born about eight o’clock in the morning on the 4th of May, 1825, at Ealing, which was, at that time, as quiet a little country village as could be found within half a dozen miles of Hyde Park Corner. Now it is a suburb of
From Necropolis : London And Its Dead by Catharine Arnold:
“One of the most spectacular monuments [in Kensal Green cemetery] is the £3,000 tomb of Andrew Ducrow, an Egyptian extravaganza that The Builder dismissed as ‘ponderous coxcombry’. Ducrow (1793-1842) was a showman, ‘the Colossus of Equestrians’, who wrestled with lions, re-enacted scenes from Napoleonic battles, and could lift four or five children using nothing more than his teeth.”
We are not told if the children in question were pious Victorian orphans, but I expect they were.
John Fernely, a successful Victorian dauber who lived in Melton Mowbray, charged ten pounds to paint a portrait of a horse, but only seven pounds for a portrait of a cow. Were these costs fair? Would you have been prepared to pay more for a cow picture than a horse painting? If not, why not? What do you think was going on in Fernely’s head when he set these prices? Comments please.
Reviewing a new biography of Peter Mark Roget by Nick Rennison, Steven Poole notes “Roget studied medicine at
Here are twenty-one suggested ways of arranging the books on your bookshelves.
1. By author’s last name, 2. By title, 3. By subject, 4. By size, 5. Horizontally, 6. By colour, 7. By hardbacks and paperbacks, 8. By publisher, 9. By read/unread books, 10. By strict order of acquisition, 11. By order of publication, 12. By number of pages, 13. According to the Dewey Decimal System, 14. According to the Library of Congress System, 15. By ISBN, 16. By price, 17. According to new and used, 18. By enjoyment, 19. By sentimental value, 20. By provenance, 21. By still more esoteric arrangements.
Taken from The Book On The Bookshelf by Henry Petroski, where you will find a splendid little essay on each arrangement. Petroski also wrote a marvellous book about pencils, called The Pencil.
Yesterday I listened, belatedly, to a Little Atoms interview with Jonathan Meades. (It’s available for download here – the second one, dated
The entry devotes a paragraph to de André’s kidnapping by Sardinian bandits in 1979, which is interesting, but I thought I’d draw your attention to two other things, mentioned in passing, that particularly intrigued me.
De André’s first wife was named Puny. This is a superbly Hooting Yardish name, isn’t it? I do not think it will be too long before a character named Puny turns up in a piece of prose here, perhaps one that features heroic infant Tiny Enid. I recall that somewhere or other I refer to a book or film entitled I Was Puny Vercingetorix, and though puny there was intended as an adjective rather than as a first name, I may have to revisit that in the light of my new knowledge.
The other thing that made me slap my forehead with glee was the title of de André’s second album – or rather, the contrast between it and the titles between which it was bracketed. (Forgive those two ‘between’s, I can’t think offhand of a more felicitous way of putting it.) The first album was called Volume One, and the third was dubbed Volume Three. Yet for some extraordinary reason, the title of what a lesser artist would have called Volume Two was instead Tutti morimmo a stento, or We All Died Agonizingly.
That’s the thing about Jonathan Meades, he provides you with new and unexpected avenues to explore, even when he’s just picking a piece of music.
Here’s a reading list.
A Short Introduction to the History of Human Stupidity, Walter B Pitkin (1934)
Über die Dummheit, Leopold Löwenfeld (1909)
Aus der Geschichte der menschlichen Dummheit, Max Kemmerich (1912)
The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity, Carlo M Cipolla (1988)
Understanding Stupidity, James Welles (1986)
References to these titles can be found in the invaluable The Power of Stupidity, an essay (with handy diagram) by Giancarlo Livraghi.
“Daumer plied [Kaspar] Hauser with a succession of substances, gauging each time his strong and hypersensitive reactions. Anything might throw the boy into a fit, cause cramps or compulsive shivers, or plunge him into a sudden unconsciousness. Daumer wondered at the odd succession of the boy’s sensitivities. Thunderstorms, the full moon, brandy, loud noises, quiet noises, squeezed cheese, bright daylight, beer, cats, spiders, snakes, flowers and grape juice – all these things powerfully moved him. He was also found to dislike beards, the colour black, and comedy.”
From Savage Girls And Wild Boys : A History Of Feral Children by Michael Newton
The ever-astute Hooting Yard reader OutaSpaceman was much stirred by yesterday’s item on the Silos Of Concern. When he had finished reproaching me for reading the Guardian – claiming it makes me “huffy†– he very helpfully wrote to tell me that it is possible to fry an egg in a silage pit. Naturally, I asked for further details, to which he replied as follows:
Choose your silage pit.
Dig down about 2 feet. (Deeper the hole quicker the frying time)
Crack egg into hole.
Wait and observe the egg, turning if necessary, till it is cooked to your taste.
Retrieve the fried egg and marvel.
ON NO ACCOUNT ATTEMPT TO EAT THE EGG.
It will probably be poisonous or, at least, shot through with rotting grass.
I read this with some consternation. Important questions were screaming in my head. What criteria should I use to make my choice of silage pit? Could I dig using any old spade or did he recommend a particular kind? Would I need a metal or plastic or wooden spatula to turn and retrieve my egg, or would any kind do? What did he suggest I do with the uneaten egg once I had stopped marvelling? Could it be fed safely to any barnyard animals? If so, which ones?
I am pleased to say that OutaSpaceman wrote back with commendable promptness. This is what he had to say:
1. Age is the primary criteria. The longer the pit has been filled and festering the better.
2. A peat cutter is probably the best implement to use as this will give the hole good clean corners and prevent side collapse. (On no account should a shovel be used because of the contamination risk i.e. I’ve never shovelled excrement with a spade)
3. My own preference is for a stainless steel spatula with a wooden handle. Hygiene being the prime advantage of this utensil and the opportunity for reuse after a comprehensive sterilisation. Wooden spatulas carry the risk of contamination from prior use and the very real threat of combustion. Plastic spatulas will melt.
4. The uneaten egg should be placed on a clay pigeon trap and shot at by an untutored, unsupervised ten year old child. Feeding animal protein to, in the majority, vegetarian creatures is an unnatural practice. That’s how we got BSE.
If any other readers have any silage pit-related recipes, please send them in. We could have the makings of a Christmas bestseller.
“In a lecture delivered at the Royal Institution, Dr Conolly, of the Hanwell Lunatic Asylum, speaking of the moral treatment of the insane, stated as the result of the experience of his whole life, that distorted views on religious subjects are the cause of at least two-thirds of the cases of mania in ladies, especially those belonging to the upper classes. Touching with all reverence on the proper study of religious books, Dr Conolly lamented that morbid brooding over subjects of theology and points of doctrine is such a fruitful cause of mental diseases… Although Dr Conolly’s remarks pointed generally to the impropriety and danger of persons – ladies especially – abandoning themselves to self-guidance, and over-prolonged contemplation on subjects of religious controversy, he severely commented upon the injurious effects of those poisonous literary emanations appearing without authority, and dignified most improperly by the name of ‘religious’.â€
I have to say that some of the greatest pleasures of my life have been found in morbid brooding about abstruse points of theological doctrine. Still, now I know better, don’t I? The quoted passage is from Things Not Generally Known by John Timbs (1858), where you can also read about such matters as insensibility of the brain, dread of eclipses, unpopular improvements, and the Death of the Beetle and the Giant. Clearly a work which had a profound influence on the out of print pamphleteer Dobson.
Thanks to Scribal Terror.
I must apologise to readers for the distinct lack of recent posts. I have been preoccupied with a number of matters which have left me, bafflingly, bereft of fresh insights into the world o’ Hooting Yard. I expect my pea-sized yet pulsating brain will soon generate further reports from that fool’s paradise, but in the meantime readers may like to send in suggestions for areas of investigation.
One of the Heaven’s Gate suicides, the followers of Marshall Herff Applewhite (“Doâ€) and Bonnie Lu Nettles (“Tiâ€) who hoped to join a spaceship trailing in the wake of the Hale-Bopp comet in 1997, was the brother of Nichelle Nicholls, who played Lieutenant Uhura in the original Star Trek series.
Unlike the guinea pig, which is neither from
Mao Tse-Tung never brushed his teeth nor took a bath or shower. A factotum was employed to rub him down with hot towels when he became grubby.
More soon…
Those of you who enjoy listening to the Hooting Yard On The Air podcasts, be warned. Following an important meeting chaired by Mrs Gubbins, the programmes will shortly be recalibrated, and you will no longer be able to listen to them on such equipment as iPods and mp3 players. Instead you will need to obtain a 1952 Zenith Radio Hat. I am sure you will agree that your listening pleasure will be distinctly enhanced.
From Much Depends On Dinner : The Extraordinary History And Mythology, Allure And Obsessions, Perils And Taboos, Of An Ordinary Meal by Margaret Visser:
At the end of the seventeenth century, John Evelyn wrote a book on salads, called Aceteria (things in vinegared dressing): A Discourse of Sallets, in which he extols the reign of lettuce over the salad bowl. “And certainly ‘tis not for nothing,†he wrote, “that our Garden-Lovers, and Brothers of the Sallet, have been so exceedingly Industrious to cultivate this Noble Plant, and multiply its Species; for… by reason of its soporiferous quality, lettuce ever was, and still continues the principal foundation of the universal tribe of Sallets, which is to cool and refresh, besides its other properties,†which include inducements to “morals, temperance, and chastity.â€
Did any British star of stage and screen ever have such a marvellous name as Googie Withers? Say it… Googie. Withers. Googie Withers. Here at Hooting Yard, we salute Googie, still unwithered, for today is her ninetieth birthday.
Sir Thomas Browne tells us, in Pseudodoxia Epidemica:
There is found in the Summer a kind of Spider called a Tainct, of a red colour, and so little of body that ten of the largest will hardly outway a grain; this by Country people is accounted a deadly poison unto Cows and Horses; who, if they suddenly die, and swell thereon, ascribe their death hereto, and will commonly say, they have licked a Tainct. Now to satisfie the doubts of men we have called this tradition unto experiment; we have given hereof unto Dogs, Chickens, Calves and Horses, and not in the singular in number; yet never could find the least disturbance ensue. There must be therefore other causes enquired of the sudden death and swelling of cattle; and perhaps this insect is mistaken, and unjustly accused for some other. For some there are which from elder times have been observed pernicious unto cattle, as the Buprestis or Burstcow, the Pityocampe or Eruca Pinnum, by Dioscorides, Galen and Ætius, the Staphilinus described by Aristotle and others, or those red Phalangious Spiders like Cantharides mentioned by Muffetus. Now although the animal may be mistaken and the opinion also false, yet in the ground and reason which makes men most to doubt the verity hereof, there may be truth enough, that is, the inconsiderable quantity of this insect. For that a poison cannot destroy in so small a bulk; we have no reason to affirm. For if as Leo Africanus reporteth, the tenth part of a grain of the poison of Nubia, will dispatch a man in two hours; if the bite of a Viper and sting of a Scorpion, is not conceived to impart so much; if the bite of an Asp will kill within an hour, yet the impression scarce visible, and the poison communicated not ponderable; we cannot as impossible reject this way of destruction; or deny the power of death in so narrow a circumscription.