John Buchan parody

Clovelly-Kepplestone was a private boarding school for girls in Eastbourne, Sussex. It flourished from 1908 until 1934 and was familiarly known to staff and pupils as "Clo-Kepp". There is a very comprehensive piece on it at Wikipedia. The annual school magazine of which we have the 1930 issue has a frontis of the charismatic Miss Frances Browne the 'principal' of the school (see below). The magazine is of a high order full of news of old girls and poetry, essays and humour from past and present Clo-Keppians.

The following John Buchan parody is a good example. The brief was to write a piece with the context of rain outside, a man and wife inside and an unexpected visit by a friend. The 3 subjects were Wodehouse, Edgar Wallace and John Buchan. We did the Wodehouse a few posts back and will do the Wallace only on demand.The authors are given as Phyllis Inglis (née Kay) C-K and O.G.C.

    The night was wild and rainy and reminded me of the time when old Hatiron and I were engaged in that business of the Forty-second Psalm. My wife, who was busily employed in the stitching and repairing of one of my shirts, torn during the day's shooting at Clan Haggis, remarked upon the persistently bad weather we had been experiencing of late, and wondered, the streams being then in spate, whether I should not take a week off to try the mettle of the fish in the Ben Slioch burns.

Filson Young Quote

If happiness were really attainable through the doctrine of 
everyone for himself, the world would at once become a 
very happy place. (English Review, London 1918)

N.N. Sen on Man Ray

A contemporary review of Man Ray's movie L'Étoile de Mer by N.N. Sen in the first issue of the  literary journal Experiment (Cambridge, 1928). It was edited by William Empson, Hugh Sykes Davies, Humphrey Jennings and William Hare (Lord Ennismore) and Jacob Bronowski.

 N.N. Sen (Nikhil N. Sen) was a friend of Mulk Raj Anand (mentioned in an earlier posting on curries) and moved in the same circles in London in the 1920s. Not much is known about Sen; however, Anand mentions him extensively in his Conversations in Bloomsbury (1981). The Open University site has this on him:

It appears that Sen was already in London when Anand arrived in 1925. Like Anand, Sen was a student at University College, London. He was also a poet and an art lover. According to Anand, Sen studied in the British Museum Reading Rooms and the two often lunched together in University College lower refectory, the Museum Tavern or at Poggiolis in Charlotte Street. Sen's girlfriend was Edna Thompson, who was a student of literature; other fellow students included Mr. Topa and Parkash Pandit. Sen apparently worked at Arthur Probsthain’s Oriental Bookshop in Russell Street, and found work for Anand in Jacob Schwartz’s Ulysses Bookshop.

Furthermore, Sen already knew several members of the 'Bloomsbury Group' when Anand arrived in Britain. Indeed, it was Sen who introduced Anand to Bonamy Dobree, Gwenda Zeidmann, Jacob Schwartz, Harold Monro, Edith Sitwell, Laurence Binyon and Leonard Woolf. Together they met T. S. Eliot, Aldous Huxley and D. H. Lawrence, and they would go to the British Museum with Laurence Binyon. Like Anand, Sen was frustrated by the orientalist views of some members of the Bloomsbury Group and would often argue with Eliot and Lawrence.

Man Ray's film is readily available at ubu.com and on YouTube with added music. It lasts 17 minutes and stars Alice Prin (Kiki of Montparnasse) and Robert Desnos (who wrote also the script.) Ray is seen below with Dali.

L'ÉTOILE DE MER

A POEM AS SEEN BY MAN RAY
     Two figures move on an open road–one sees them as through a haze–a man and a woman. Seems like a distant memory–as though one was trying to receive an old scene.

This haziness continues throughout the whole piece. A similar effect was used in one of Otto Mathieson's films, where the actor sees his whole life pass before him just before he dies.

  One remembers the distortion in Dr. Calighari, the whole production was distorted as seen by a madman's eyes.

  This hazy effect might be used effectively to suggest distant, long-forgotten memories–where uncertain shadows loom out from an old situation. Except for a short while when the hero of the piece is shown in a contemplative mood, the whole film is hazy.

  The man and the woman walk up a flight of stairs and enter a room. The woman undresses and stretches herself in a bed, the man bids farewell and leaves her.

A delightful comedy touch, effective because it is so unexpected.

  I am not so acquainted with the poem that Man Ray has translated into a picture or a series of photographs interposed amongst a series of moving pictures. There is little or no narrative. The only subtitles used are a play of words–

"Sybille," says the hero, "Si belle."

UK Ginseng shops 1971

From The Alchemical Almanac and Handbook of Herbal Highs (1971)  See 3rd Ear Band. An interesting list of long lost alternative 'head' shops. The epicentre of Ginseng seems to have been Portobello Road. 

Emperor Ginseng is obtainable at

LONDON

Alchemy, 253 Portobello Road W 11

Etcetera Portobello Road W 11

Forbidden Fruit

   295 Portobello Road W 11

   Kensington Market W8

   Kings Road (Beaufort St) SW7

Frozen North 85 Kings Road SW3

Gas 12 Great Western Road W11

B P 185 Portobello Road

EDINBURGH

Cockburn St Market, 21 Cockburn St

Piggies Boutique 83 Clark Street

LEICESTER

The Record Shop, Village Square

Malcolm Arcade, Silver St

NORWICH

Head in the Clouds, 13 Pottergate

OXFORD 

Usbornes, Little Clarendon St

PRESTON

White Rabbit, 2 Fleet Street

PORTSMOUTH

Spice Island, 30 Osborne Road, Southsea

MAIL ORDER 

Frendz 307 Portobello Road W11

OZ 19 Gt Newport ST WC1

I once met... Marty Feldman

The funny thing with Marty Feldman is that he came up to me -it was at Swiss Cottage, London and asked me the way somewhere.

He was in a hurry and when he saw that I recognised him (who couldn't? - it was those eyes) he waved his hands in front of his face as if to say 'forget all that mate, just tell me the way!' I like to think I put him on the right road. That was about 1970.

Oddly enough I saw him again in a mall in Westwood (L.A.) window-shopping with a woman (wife?) early evening in the summer of  1972. I was on holiday. I did not bother him. [Sent in by Barry Cox - for which much thanks.]

Books from the Library of Eileen Gray

Sold on the internet about 2001 - some of the cult designer's books.

Photo (below) of Le Corbusier and his wife taken by Gray at her house E-1027. Designed by Gray and built at Roquebrune Cap Martin in 1929. Oddly Le Cobusier died of of a heart attack while swimming off the rocks beneath E-1027 in 1965.

 Small archive of books from her library and books about her. 21 books in all--9 books from her library dated from 1885 to 1961 and 12 books and pamphlets about her mainly 1970s and 1980s, mainly in English. These books were inherited from the designer Eileen Gray by her niece and executor the English painter Prunella Clough.  Books from Eileen Gray’s library include 1.‘Alice Through the Looking Glass’ (56th thousand) presented to her and her sister Thora from her brother Jim. 2. Whistler's  - The Gentle Art of Making Enemies  (boldly signed by her on the half title)  1904 reprint 3rd ed. 3. Her copy of Walter Pater 1901 edition of ‘Greek Studies signed by her in pencil in 1903. 4.  William James ‘Text Book of Psychology’ 1892 with bold ownership signature. 5. A small leather bound New Testament (about 1890) presented to her by her mother in 1907. 6.  A ‘Works of Browning’ handsomely bound by Sotherans presented to her by her brother Jim on her birthday in 1905. 7. Her own copy of the French wraps edition of Antonin Artaud’s ‘Van Gogh. Le Suicide de la Societé.’1947. First ed. 8. G.Constant Lounsbery. Buddhist Meditiation in the Southern School.1950 Signed presentation copy from GCL to Eileen Gray  ‘in  admiration of her pursuit of beauty.’  9. ‘The Universal Self . A Study of Paul Valery’  by Agnes Ethel Mackay (1961) with a signed presentation to Eileen Gray  from the author ‘with affectionate homage.’ There are also 12 modern books and pamphlets on Eileen Gray collected by Prunella Clough including auction catalogues, a copy of a thesis ‘Eileen Gray, Un Autre Chemin pour la Modernité...Un Idee Choreographique’ in which the author mentions her indebtedness to Prunella Clough. Also the magazine Archithese, August 91 special Eileen Gray issue and an 1994 academic offprint ‘E.1027: The Nonheroic Modernism of Eileen Gray’ which is a signed presentation copy to Ms Clough.

3rd Ear Band

This ad was found in a 1971 catalogue from a London 'head' business called 'Alchemical' - The Alchemical Almanac and Handbook of Herbal Highs.

3rd Ear Band

This music is a reflection of the universe as magic/ play/ illusion simply because it could not possibly be anything else.

Words cannot describe this ecstatic dance of sound or explain the alchemical repetition seeking and sometimes finding archetypal forms, elements and rhythms. Contradictions are their energy force, dualities are discarded in favour of the Tao, each piece is as alike or unlike as trees, grass or crickets. This is natural, magical, alchemical music that does not preach but just urges you to take your own trip.

If you can make it into this music you are adrift in fantastic Bosche - like landscapes, a strange acoustical perfume fills the mind, on some occasions a door seems to open, band and audience appear to float in a new dimension, transcending time and space where nothing exists except this very strange and beautiful music.

All the Third Ear band's albums are available from your local platter place or…through Alchemail.

Soviet Millionaires

Pamphlet from 1943. The pro Soviet text reveals that these are good men, mostly collective farmers, and the millions are in Roubles. A far cry from the current billionaire 'oligarchs'...

SOVIET MILLIONAIRES
A Russia Today Pamphlet
First Edition (1943)
by Reg Bishop

Printed and published by Fairleigh Press (T.U.all depts), Beechwood Rise, Watford, for the Russia Today Society, 150 Southampton Row, London, W.C.1. 14 pages.

THE news that there are Soviet "millionaires" - men and women who have been able to invest a million roubles or more in the country's War Loan - has come as a great surprise and, indeed, with a sense of shock to many people to whom the very word "millionaires" represents an evil influence in society.

Many of these "millionaires" are collective farmers. The emergence of Soviet collective farm millionaires means that Stalin's promise in 1933 that the Soviet Government aimed at making collective farmers well-to-do is on the road to fulfilment.

The very term "millionaire" is misleading, for there are many kinds of millionaires. Before the war one could be a millionaire in sterling, in dollars, in francs or any other currency. The possessor of a million pounds was nearly five times as wealthy as the possessor of a million dollars, and the latter was more than 25 times as wealthy as the possessor of a million francs. The possessor of a million Rumanian lei or Turkish piastres had still less money.

In other words, a rouble millionaire has not the wealth of a sterling millionaire. Even were a rouble millionaire to be possessed of as much money as a sterling one it would still not necessarily be either anti-social or anti-Socialist, because the atmosphere of social inequity which surrounds a millionaire is due not to the measure of his wealth but to the method of its acquisition, and his use of it to exploit others.

In all countries the law smiles upon the acquisition of wealth, but in all countries legal barriers are erected against certain methods of becoming wealthy. In a capitalist country, a man who acquires wealth by robbing a bank or by selling shares for non-existent gold-mines is arrested, tried and sent to gaol if found guilty. In the Soviet Union, a man who becomes wealthy by robbing a bank is also sent to gaol, but the socialist nature of the Soviet State requires it as equally immoral to acquire wealth by the exploitation of the labour of others, or by speculation; that is to say, buying in the cheapest market to sell in the dearest.

These methods are held to imply as great, or even greater, moral obliquity as robbing a bank, hence, whereas it is reasonable to suppose that in a capitalist country millionaires have acquired their status by means of the exploitation of others, or by tricky, though strictly legal, financial manipulations, in the Soviet Union the millionaire has acquired his roubles by his own toil and by services to the Soviet State and people.

The first person to be publicly acclaimed as a millionaire was one, Berdyebekov… [the whole of the text can be found at http://cominternist.blogspot.com/2010/06/soviet-millionaires.html]

E.P.B. Linstead 'Harrods'

E.P.B Linstead was minor British poet. Full name Edward Philip Basil Linstead, he was born in 1909. No notice of death so he is probably still around walking on Wimbledon Common every morning aged 103. He is listed as becoming a director of a real estate firm in Wimbledon -Pentaberk Limited- at age 81. His wife or sister Mildred Linstead was also on the board a few years later. Not much on net except lists of his  books one of which is about Sierra Leone Morning at Mount Auriol (1948). There is also a novel Awkward for Joseph and this 1950 book Disorderly Poems - a slim volume of which Harrods is the first poem. It is slightly  Betjemanesque, with an echo of Auden ('buses going on unurgent errands') but there is also a proclamatory tone than you hear 5 years later in beat poetry...a short poem follows this showing Linstead in surreal mood like a Beresford Egan drawing or an oil by Edward Burra - Jelly-Cheeked Gentlemen.

Harrods 1943 When nothing whatever was happening in Hans Crescent On one long afternoon of 1927 sunlight, Swing doors ushered us to cool, to shadowed departments, To secure linen-cupboard, close upholstery odours –Reposed stabilised airs, sweet leather-scents of handbags– Guests we came to palaces of immense peace, thick-piled, Where wide pianos stood in lakes of varnished light And under the glaze of a spell lay galleries of hushed china –China which skated, slid, scraped plate-glass when we touched it. Our saliva condensed, dripped at the sight of salt heaped shell-fish; From fish-slabs tribute waters flowed to ferns ever-dripping– Waters fresh-condensed from almost atomised fountains. Mountainside mists fell over wire-twined flowers; Carnations rose from moistures, maidenhairs, Azaleas breathed as from Surrey nighttime gardens –From all conservatories, steam-warmed, of the warm past Or all former Conservative garden parties (When servant night brings privacy to the paths Owners' cigar-lights glow from the high terrace And from tiered lawn to lawn fall the aubretias To Mrs. Edward Laxton1 by her dark well-hoed border Amongst the rising mould-smells, the mild rose-smells). Tinily price-ticketted timepieces chime five o' clock ; We climb the wooden-rodded, green-rigged stairs To the secure wide sunlit first-floor tearooms Which overlook Putney buses going on unurgent errands. Soft roes we want–on salted watercress couches –Fresh wet stems with the tingle of innate pepper. –We clear our throats, speak thickened as we eat eclairs : French-pastry-muffled, we sip, sip, excellent tea, As saucers clink to the sweet restaurant music And tongue-tips lick creamed cheeks at the last violin mouse-squeak.     1 A rose.

Jelly-Cheeked Gentlemen

Jelly-Cheeked Gentlemen in Shaftesbury Avenue

Voluble and sorrowful on tolerable booze,

Fresh from a rendezvous, a frolic at the Monico

Pirouette skilfully on patent leather shoes.

The Tibbald

The Tibbald was a small restaurant not far from the British Museum (London) in Theobalds Road. It is mentioned in a published 1926 letter by the poet John Freeman to Martin Armstrong as a place to meet. Tibbald was (is) how locals pronounce the name of the road. Info from an annotation by Sidney Hodgson to Freeman's Letters (1936).As an antiquarian bookseller, Sidney Hodgson supplied Freeman with rare books.

Chinese 'thirst for knowledge' (1886)

From Book Lore: A Monthly Magazine of Bibliography November 1886 [London]. The Chinese thirst for knowledge in 2013 now manifested by their massive book digitising programmes. Not adepts in the art of war? - the view from 1886.

    The Chinese aptitude for rapidly acquiring knowledge is not so well recognised as it deserves. These patient, plodding people, with their cool, calculating minds, and simple tastes, are more than a match for European workers, no matter what business or profession they elect to follow. A correspondent of the Daily News, writing on the Chinese Question, which is at present forcing itself to the front in North Australia, states that on a recent occasion he took the chaplain's Celestial class, and found that their "hunger and thirst after knowledge, and the startling rapidity with which they got on, was something fearful to contemplate."

The Chinese have libraries in every town and most villages and their reading is of a solid and substantial character. Novels and religious works are everywhere excluded ; the former as too frivolous, and the latter as raising undesirable controversies between sects, which are as numerous there as anywhere else. It seems to us that we have much to learn from the inhabitants of the Flowery Land, adepts in everything except, unfortunately for them, the art of war.

The Girls of Radcliff Hall

A record of a book that sold about 5 years ago - current whereabouts unknown.

The Girls of Radcliff Hall, by 'Adela Quebec'- i.e. Lord Berners. Berners  took the title from the name of the notorious lesbian novelist Radclyffe Hall. A roman a clef, privately printed about 1935. It sold for £1400.



Foreword by the "Bishop of Brixton" 8vo., original printed wrappers. 100 pages. 'Well of Loneliness' spoof. Printed in a small edition possibly as low as 100. Very uncommon as copies were reputedly destroyed by a few of those in his coterie who were parodied and it was cheaply produced - it has the appearance (probably intentional) of under counter erotica / smut of the time. Cecil Beaton was especially incensed by his portrayal and wanted the whole edition pulped, but it is said that he deserved his treatment by Berners. Grey printed wraps slightly soiled, spine slightly faded and slightly rubbed; overall about very good  with no chips or nicks. 

Signed presentation from the author to Lady Harrod. The inscription reads: "To Billa with love from the Authoress and Gerald Berners. Xmas 1940.' Wilhelmine 'Billa' Harrod was married to the economist Roy Harrod and co - authored the Shell Guide to Norfolk with  John Betjeman, to whom she had been briefly engaged. Berners was a close friend of Billa and she often stayed at his country house near Oxford - 'Farringdon.' He stayed with the Harrods in Oxford particularly at a time when he had according to Mark Amory his biographer 'a mania for teashop life...' Billa would accompany him to endless tea rooms.  Billa and Berners are both the basis for characters in Nancy Mitford's 'The Pursuit of Love' -- Fanny Logan and Lord Merlin, respectively.

Letter from Padraic Colum to Lady Glenavy 1964

Blue airmail folded letter from Wood's Hole, Mass, USA 16 July 1964. About 100  handwritten words. About an invitation to speak at the unveiling of a plaque for George Moore in Dublin. Mention of Monk Gibbon and Austin Clarke...'You are benefiting a generation who will look back to George Moore and George Russell as inspiring figures.'

Beatrice Elvery, Lady Glenavy (1881 - 1970). Irish artist and literary host,friend of Katherine Mansfield on the fringes of Bloomsbury and in the circle of Shaw, Lawrence and Yeats. She modelled for Orpen and painted 'Éire' (1907) a landmark painting promoting the idea of an independent Irish state.

P. G. Wodehouse parody (1930)

Clovelly-Kepplestone was a private boarding school for girls in Eastbourne, Sussex. It flourished from 1908 until 1934 and was familiarly known to staff and pupils as "Clo-Kepp". There is a very comprehensive piece on it at Wikipedia. The annual school magazine of which we have the 1930 issue has a frontis of the charismatic Miss Frances Browne the 'principal' of the school. The magazine is of a high order full of news of old girls and poetry, essays and humour from past and present Clo-Keppians.

The following P. G. Wodehouse parody is a good example. The brief was to write a piece with the context of rain outside, a man and wife inside and an unexpected visit by a friend. The 3 subjects were Wodehouse, Edgar Wallace and John Buchan. The Buchan comes soon but the Wallace only on demand.The authors are given as Phyllis Inglis (née Kay) C-K and O.G.C. 

P. G. Wodehouse.

    " Listen old thing ! " said I to the wife, " clean the ears and cluster round old top.  Something whispers to me that rain is descending upon the Smith housetop."

    We Smiths are like that, always jumping to the obvious conclusion–and mind you, it's useful and all that if you know what I mean.  No dilly-dallying with the dashed fact.

    " Yes, dear," said the skirted half.

    " Dashed nuisance, what? "

    " Nuisance ? "

    " Yes–pitta-pat, pitta-pat, you know."

    " Er–yes."

    " Well, what I mean is this drip-drip-drip business gets into a fellow's nervous subconscious after a bit, if you apprehend the footling idea."

    " Oh, shut up ! "

    " Eh? "

    " Shut up ! "

    " Shut up ? "

    " Yes, shut up."

    " Right-ho ! "

    We Smiths are like that–always ready to fall in with any little notion touring about the wife's brain.  Give and take, if you follow me ; fifty-fifty,–in fact, dash it all, live and let live, what !

    At this point the thingumyjig opened and what's-'is-name blew in on Greeves' announcement of the priceless ass's name.

    " Hello ! "  I said.

    " Hello !  old mollusc !  Just back from the East."

    " What-ho ! "

    " Thought I'd look you up."

    " Posh idea.  Strew yourself upon yonder couch," said I, passing him the Gold Flake.

    " Been here and there? " said he, lighting up the Gold Flake.

    " Hither and thither," said I passing him America's shame, and shoving the jolly old syphon across.

    " Doing this and that ? "

    " Oh yes, and one thing and another."

    And so on, niph-naphing about the parotid past, till upon the witching-hour of midnight the old fruit raised the carcase into the perpendicular and oozed away.

    " Bed, what-ho ! " said I, making a dash for the Vi-Spring–" the Smith mind is overwrought.  Rest is essential."  And pouring myself into my pyjamas, I dozed off.

Guernica Exhibition London 1938

  A 4 page flier / brochure for the New Burlington Galleries October 1938 exhibition. 60 preparatory sketches paintings and studies by Picasso. List of patrons (including Virgina Woolf, McKnight Kauffer, E M Forster and organisers (E L T Mesens, Herbert Read etc.,) Quotes on back page from newspapers about the bombing at Guernica. Mesens again! Patrons mainly the great and the good among British writers, poets and bohemians inc Ruthven Todd ('the Reverend Todd.')

Toni Del Renzio: Piano, a Surrealist Prose Poem for Art Hodes (1945)

Late surrealist poem found in 1945 magazine Piano Jazz, published by The Jazz Sociological Society, Neasden, London. Toni del Renzio (Antonino Romanov del Renzio dei Rossi di Castellone e Venosa 1915 - 2007) was part of the small club of British surrealists most of whom seem to have fallen out with one another. Roger Cardinal in his Guardian obituary notes:

 "Del Renzio was also something of a poet, and one evening in 1944, E.L.T. Mesens and his followers sabotaged their enemy's reading at the International Arts Centre - objects were thrown, and del Renzio and Ithell (Colquhoun) had to duck behind a piano." Take it away Toni--

Piano of tumultuous melody pouring through the milky way in staccato spurts of harsh lyricism alight with the ecstasy of the blues and the stomp and the rag beautiful twists of primitive innocence more marvellous than civilisation.

Piano of mercury and arsenic flowers dissolve in the promises of reefers and alcohol which steadies and firms the sensitive hands of love long-fingered with desires hollow-palmed with hopes slender-wristed with the sending practice of the boogie surprise.

Piano of fireflies sinking in the dark warm swamp of memory where the images of what was are convulsed into the shaking outline of what must be and what will be when the gutted lie in streamers across the barricades of the night and in the distance can be heard the feminine song of a well-licked clarinet.

Skeleton piano of terrors and fears.

Iron piano of inescapable fates fanning paths of hazard.

Stone piano of social neglect beneath the skies of benevolence and other hateful qualities.

Great piano of palpitating heart.
Piano master of all we want and can ever hope to obtain.

Piano ill-used by many whites of the disgusting nature of Bach and Beethoven and filthy Brahms that only the blacks were able to demonstrate anew its wonderful possibilities.

Piano in the despairing desert of coercion and war where only the bitter songs of the dead are sweet street marches of revolt.

Piano sprouting everywhere with greenwood and rare flowers in which enormous bees seek the honey distilled into the nectar that only jazzmen drink at midnight.

Piano which we hear gently treated and subtly tortured in the quietest blues only to be vigorously and strangled noisily in the interior landscape rented by Art Hodes who gives back to the blacks their own way of playing.

Piano athwart the future like the bloody clouds of absurd and strangely moving tears of a bereaved mother beaten by herself about her full bosom.
Piano instrument of giants and dwarfs these latter being the greater and the faster legends of docking and riverboats love beneath stairs beneath the waters of the muddy river lamented by the slowest blues on wax.

Piano tyrant and poet mechanical Rimbaud.

Piano liberal thump of every nuance of a tortured brain in which nestles the tapeworm of ambition Promethean endeavour to spit in the face not only of that priest and his onanism but of the hideous god himself who must have emasculates sing his masses and his too gentle passion.

Piano shouting the lice of New York and the scabs of New Orleans the yellows and the browns and the blacks but above all the blues.

Piano whose each note is the vibration of one of my nerve-chords which sends its jerky message to my head and twitches the whole body like a clumsy imagination and awful miner of deposits of poisonous ores in the depths of a woman's and man's joint sufferings which but for your clanging rhythm might have just become death.

Piano more lovely more lovable than a suicide.
Mad piano neither to be bought or sold.
Mad mad mad piano play if you can without your suffering master.

Piano of fine falling crystal rain in the smoke and steam and in the stench of cigars and bad gin and sweat trickle and tremble shimmering haze of percussion as black fingers and white fingers hammer black notes and white notes.

TONI del RENZIO.

Celebrities' Choice 1966

24 page pamphlet, published by the National Book League, London 1966.  The favourite books of such diverse celebrities as John Lennon, Julie Christie, J. Paul Getty, Joyce Grenfell, Philip Larkin, Harold Pinter, Margery Allingham, Joan Sutherland, etc. John Lennon had chosen some interesting books. he has divided them into up to the age of 11 (Alice, Wind in Willows), teens (Brave New World, Animal Farm, 1984, Sartre, Steinbeck, Thurber), from the age of 20 (De Sade, Heller, A.A. Milne, Alan Watts), current reading (Thomas Stanley, Pre-Roman Britain).

Harold Pinter chose 2 Becketts, a Donne, a Dostoyevsky, a Joyce, and Kafka's The Castle. Philip Larkin  plumped for Barbara Pym.

Coffee Log / Coffee Universities

One of many Nescafe cake recipes (John Bull magazine, London  1958). Instant coffee is still used for cake flavouring...in fact in some kitchens that is what is now kept for.

Below that is the actual editorial matter which would have compelled Nescafe to advertise - to the right it shows 3 early coffee houses including the Turk's Head in Cambridge - so popular that nearby pubs suffered. One Cambridge professor declared that a man could pick up more useful knowledge in a coffee-house than at university - a claim I have heard made for the original Peet's in Berkeley!

Coffee Log

One swiss roll, Nescafé mocha icing, browning or brown colouring, chopped pistachio nuts, sprig of holly or a robin. Beat in sufficient browning to make the Nescafé mocha icing similar in colour to tree bark. Cut a slice off the swiss roll and mash it with a fork, form into shape of a small stumpy branch. Place on top of the swiss roll near to one end fixing it with a little icing. Spread the surface with icing and cover the round joins at each end of the roll with icing. Mark with a fork to resemble tree bark. Decorate with pistachio nuts and holly or a robin.

    MOCHA ICING.–2 level teaspoonfuls Nescafé, 2-3 oz. margarine, 2 level tablespoonfuls cocoa, 8 oz. icing sugar, 2 tablespoonfuls hot water. Beat all the dry ingredients to a cream gradually adding the water.

Scott Fitzgerald 'forced sale' book list

Scott Fitzgerald wrote this list (found in a literary journal -
no longer sure which) when he was broke in about 1936. His friend/ lover Sheilah Graham (she described herself as "a woman who loved Scott Fitzgerald for better or worse until he died") wrote in College of One:

He expected to realize $25 from nine autographed Mencken books (some firsts); $5 from Tarkington's Seventeen (autographed); $5 from Dos Passos” Three Soldiers (with autographed card); two books by Charles Norris (autographed), $15; $2 from Jurgen(autographed); $3 from Emperor Jones (first). “400 books,” he wrote, “range 10c to $1.50, average 40c. Probable value of library at forced sale $300.

He seemed better when we were back in Hollywood. The books he loved were still in his apartment...

It appears that Scott in the end did not need to sell them -- although most of the authors he was trying to sell are no longer seriously collected, with his association the 400+ books would probably now fetch a million dollars or more. Who knows?

The Native Matchlock - Tiger Hunting in India

A slightly  bloodthirsty story (to our squeamish modern taste) but with an amazing moment of suspense straight out of Kipling or Conrad. A real life account - the author was almost certainly Lieutenant Colonel J. W. Wray. The manuscript was in an envelope with 3 other chapers addressed to him at 'The Croft, Guildford' and he is known to have written With rifle and spear : reminiscences of Lt.-Col. J.W. Wray. Copac gives his dates as 1851-1924 and record this book as being published by The General Press, Ltd.,. They estimate the date as 1925. Certainly these accounts mention rifles and spears, Wray was a dedicated game hunter. The manuscripts came from a couple of very old soldiers Basil and Russell Steele.

No copies of the book are available and it has not been digitised. Web archives reveal he was in the 108th Foot Regiment and he was a member of the Northumberland and Northern Counties Club. Punch mentions him and his wife in 1916 - the victim of a Pooter like misprint: 'Mrs. Wray entertained the recruiting staff, numbering £21, to tea at Brett's Hall, Guildford, on Thursday.' They add 'Sterling fellows obviously'.

The photo, supplied merely to give atmosphere, is actually of Franz Ferdinand von Österreich-Este in Rajasthan 1892, Wray's adventure is probably from a decade later. The game of "fly loo" needs reviving, especially with global warming - a game for very hot days, played for high stakes.

THE NATIVE MATCHLOCK

    One desperately hot day, in one of the hottest Stations of India, with the thermometer standing at anything between 105 and 115 degrees in the shade and life a burden, we in the Mess were trying to forget our mid-day miseries by playing "Fly Loo" after Lunch. "Fly Loo" is about the only game that can be played in that temperature as it requires no exercise of intellect or fatiguing effort of any kind. All that the players have to do is to sit round the table each with a lump of sugar in front of him and he whose lump of sugar a fly first seats itself wins the game and becomes the possessor of the stakes which, of course, are quite nominal. The excitement is intense and the simultaneous shouts of claimants dispel all forebodings of heat apoplexy and the consciousness of discomfort which are inseparable  from the stifling atmosphere.

    During one of these entertainments, a Mess Waiter whispered to me that a villager was outside and wanted me urgently.

    I slipped away from the excited players unobserved and unquestioned as it was for too hot, and the game too absorbing for any of them to interest themselves in other people's affairs, and I was glad of this for I knew that it meant news that I had been expecting for some days of a large tiger, and selfish as it may seem I was anxious to go after him alone, as the jungle, which he had been monopolizing for some time past was not big enough for more than one gun.

Francis King

Francis King (4 March 1923 - 3 July 2011), acclaimed novelist, poet, critic and editor. President Emeritus of International PEN and appointed  CBE in 1985. He came out in the 1970s and wrote his autobiography 'Yesterday Came Suddenly' in 1993, after the death of his long-term partner.

3 photos of him with his cat in London by the US photographer Miriam Berkley. The envelope is dated 1991. The Daily Telegraph obituary said 'he was naturally reticent, concealing his inner turbulence from friends who saw only a witty and equable companion with exceptionally good manners.

Honey Water formula

Typed pages from the working papers of Aytoun Ellis's for his book Essence of Beauty. Published by Secker in 1960. A litre of brandy?

Fragrant waters have been in use for thousands of years, Theophrastus mentioning them nearly 400 years before the Christian era.

Oldest of all, if one excepts rose-water from this category, is HONEY WATER (which) there seems little doubt, was used in this country from an early date but it was in the reign of JAMES II that it really became popular, George Wilson making it for the King to such a formula as the following:

100 Honey

100 Coriander fruit

9 Clovers

6 Nutmegs

6 Gum benzoin

6 Storax

6 Vanilla pods

10 Yellow lemon rind

-----

243

-----

The directions were to:

"...bruise the cloves, nutmegs, coriander-seed and benzoin, cut the vanilla pods in pieces, and put all into a glass alembic with a litre of French brandy, and after digesting 48 hours, distill.

To one litre of the distillate add:

150 Damask rose water: 150 Orange flower water:

0.1 Musk: 0.1 Ambergris.

Grind the musk and ambergris in a glass mortar, and afterwards put all together into a large matrass and let them circulate three days and three nights in a gentle heat; let them cool.

Filter and keep the water in bottles well stoppered."

Whether the King used Wilson's preparation for his hair or his complexion is uncertain but it certainly had some merit and reveals the perfumer as knowing a great deal about his craft.

    In that age of quackery when many harmful ingredients were being used, it is interesting to see in his recipe a rational approach to the subject. With such innocuous ingredients the HONEY WATER could not have harmed His Majesty even if it had found its way into his mouth. A very different case was that of a Belgian singer, M. Zegler, less than a century ago when, during a performance of William Tell at the Royal Italian Opera House, some of his make-up trickled into his mouth. Being a deadly poison it cost him his life.

Drawing of young girl - about 1800

Not sure where I got this (junk shop in Munster Road, Fulham?) but it shows a young girl, presumably Jewish (see the Star of David outline behind her head and the style of hair - echoes of the world of George Eliot's novel Daniel Deronda.)  Could it be by Blake or Flaxman? Possibly it is a print that has been hand-coloured. The clouds are dramatic and somewhat foreboding...info welcomed.

Scent of Danger - essence of tuberose

Part of a collection of press cuttings. This incident is (so far)  UBI  i.e. unknown by internet probably because it is from the defunct UK newspaper The Daily Herald (1960). The sum quoted for the final value of distilled essence of tuberose lilies would now be about £40,000,000. Distilled essence of tuberose lilies is restricted to very high end perfumery due to the expense….

New Bohemians

Obtained from the poet and writer Jeremy Reed and unpublished in this form. Transcribed from his  handwritten  purple ink manuscript. Probably from about 2008/9. [Somewhere we have more of this inc writings about new bohos such as Pete Doherty.Will find. Wilde's attitude is reminiscent of a later writer Norman Douglas who told Elizabeth David 'Always do as you please and send everybody to hell and take the consequences. Damned good rule of life...']

Bohemians / New Bohemians / Jeremy Reed

   Every generation produces its own variations of bohemianism, a term first used in the nineteenth century to describe the antisocial lifestyles of marginalized and impoverished artists, writers, musicians and actors who lived outside of the mainstream and endorsed antiestablishment political or social viewpoints, as part of a cutting edge ethic aimed at undermining conventional society. The willingness amongst bohemians to embrace frugality or voluntary poverty, as a serious affront to capitalism, was in many ways, the beginnings of decadence, a movement spearheaded by the likes of the notorious nineteenth century French poet, Charles Baudelaire, author of Les Fleurs du Mal, (1852), as an exponent of terminal ennui, the original slacker and as an antagonist to the idea of being a useful member of society. Baudelaire's seminal influence as an edgy reprobate who couldn't care less for society, and who took refuge in opium to cushion himself from reality, [and who shaved his head to empathize with the idea of the poet as criminal] was the dangerous template taken up by the likes of Oscar Wilde, whose novel The Picture of Dorian Gray was to come directly out of the notion of bohemianism. In Wilde's case his lifestyle was to lead to being convicted and sentenced to two years hard labour in 1895, on account of homosexual offences, combined with a hedonistic attitude, deeply offensive to his mainstream contemporaries. Wilde, who with little income, but a great deal of style, and dressed in a slinky astrakhan coat, undermined the social hierarcy not only with the disarming wit of his plays, but with a contempt for almost everything but art and beauty, no matter the personal cost. Wilde's expression in The Picture of Dorian Gray, that dares to place beauty before class and received notions of morality, as an absolute aesthetic priority, typifies the bohemian disdain for social orthodoxy. 'I admit that I think that it is better to be beautiful than to be good. But on the other hand no one is more ready than I to acknowledge that it is better to be good than to be ugly.'

Theatre programme for Simon Gray's Cell Mates

The original  1995 theatre programme for the short-lived Albery Theatre's production of Cell Mates signed by cast member Stephen Fry. The play also starred Rik Mayall. It has 36 pages.

Fry's involvement - or rather, almost immediate non-involvement - in the production was the focus of much media rumpus at the time, although he now recalls the episode with philosophical good humour. The whole episode is covered elsewhere in some detail and the playwright Simon Gray later published an account of events in his diary, Fat Chance.

Peter Baron - 'Who?' (1927)

Peter Baron was the pseudonym of thriller writer Leonard Worswick Clyde (1906 Nov 21 - 1987 Nov 16). He wrote 4 now scarce crime / detective novels. The dust jacket pictured is from his 1927 novel 'Who?' The artist of this striking jacket is unknown and very little is known about Worswick Clyde. Hubin's Bibliography of Crime Fiction, 1749-1975 lists the following:

Who? [1927]
Jerry The Lag (US: Murder In Wax) [f|1928]
The Poacher [1929]
The Opium Murders [f|1930]

Answering Machine Hacking and other papers (late 1980s)

An odd and weirdly topical collection. [Beadle collection- paranoia, revenge and general weirdness] called Alternative Inphormation Unlimited (USA). 45 loose printouts hole-punched and contained in a store-bought plastic ring binder. Publications from the late 80s and early 90s by an organisation called Alternative Inphormation Unlimited and concern wire tapping and other forms of telephone exploitation and subversion.

Each paper is several pages in length and many are illustrated with technical diagrams. All publications state that they are sold 'FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY'. Alternative Inphormation Unlimited's slogan was 'Keeping You Informed of Big Brother.' Contents read thus:



Answering Machine Hacking - How it's done and how to stop it; AT & T & BOC Routing Codes!!!; Beige Box - How to build and use a lineman's handset; Black Box - Complete schematics and instructions; Blue Box - Uses and applications; Blue Box - C64 home computer; Brown Box - Why pay Ma Bell for extra services such as a 3 way calling and touch tone service?; Bug Detection on Home Telephones; Bull Shitting the Operator; Call Forwarding Box; Call-Waiting Phone Tap; Cellular Telephones and Tapping Cellular; Clear Box; CNA List - Customer name & address no's used by Ma Bell. Those secret No's revealed; Converting a Tone Dialler into a Red Box; Dial 900 §'s For Free - How to; Free Phone Calls to Any Point in the World!; Gold Box; Illegal Access Code and How to Get Them!; Infinity Transmitter; Legendary Ether Box! - Snatch phone calls out of thin air! The ultimate wireless phone tap!;Listening In!!; Miniature FM Transmitter; Monitoring Phone Calls with a TVRO; Obtaining Unlisted Phone §'s; Pay Telephones; Phantom Phone Phucker!; Phone Phucking - The art of; Phone Phreaks Guide to Loops; Phone Utility for the C64/128 - The amazing rainbow box program!! the only program you'll ever need to make free long distance phone calls; Poorman's Voice Changer! - $30 device better than $250 units; Red Box - Complete guide to; Red Box - Build a; Remote Pay Phone Phreaking; Silver Box Phone; Snooper Extension Phone; Taping Telephone Conversations; Telephone Ear Piercer! The ultimate defence tactic for obscene fone calls!; Tons of Tones - The complete guide as used by Ma Bell!!; Two Minute Bug; Voice Controller; Voice Paging - Free; War Games Autodialler; Watergate Surveillance Package! Taps and Bugs.

Michael Jackson's 48 Laws of Power

In June 2011 at auction in Los Angeles someone paid $15000 for a self-help book annotated by Michael Jackson. It was The 48 Laws Of Power by Robert Greene (Viking 1998) a book that can usually be bought on Amazon for $10.  Bonham's catalogue entry goes thus:

"... a number of pages with passages underlined and annotated in various pens by Michael, providing an insight into his view of the world, with comments such as 'Make yourself respected, a God Demands Worship' and 'No more talking silence is more powerful', and 'you create your own circumstances even in the manner in which you are treated and looked upon', and 'deer are special because they hide if they walked the streets like dogs no one would care' + 'the moon comes every night so people don't care to look to the heavens Haleys Comet,the fact it comes once in a lifetime makes it important...'

 A useful work, somewhat cynical and ruthless for a self help book with ideas taken from Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, Gracian, Talleyrand, Bismarck and also various 'con artists.'

It is really for one aspiring to wealth and fame and it is odd that Michael was so inspired by it. The author has gone on to write the 50th Law (10 lessons in Fearlessness) with the rapper named 50 cent.

MJ's lawyer Bob Sanger is on record as saying '..he loved to read. He had over 10,000 books at his house.' At one session in an LA bookstore he spent $6,000 on books and allowed anyone in his entourage to take books. Marvellous man. I like to think that was in Book Soup, my favourite LA shop.

The Penny Universities - coffee quiz

From a publicity leaflet for  The Penny Universities  a history of the coffee-houses. 'Penny University' is a term originating from the 18th-century coffee houses in London, England. Instead of paying for drinks, people were charged a penny to enter a coffeehouse. Once inside, the patron had access to coffee, company, various discussions, pamphlets, bulletins, newspapers, and the latest news and gossip. Reporters called "runners" went around to the coffeehouses announcing the latest news. No need for a runner in modern java joints- all you need now is the Wi-Fi code… I do not have the answers, the only one I can get is 5 (clue the R of the L)

1. Who was the famous physician who experimented with coffee as a possible antidote to melancholia and alcoholism ?
2. What was the "wooden oracle", referred to by Pepys and where was it ?
3. How did the Royal Society come into being ?
4. Who gave Nell Gwyn her first part on the stage and who wrote the play ?
5. A great poem grew out of coffee-house gossip. What was it and who wrote it ?
6. Who was Angier and what was "Angier's Fume" ?
7. Who was the privateering doctor whose adventures inspired Robinson Crusoe ?
8. Which notorious coffee-house in Covent Garden was kept by an old Etonian ?
9. A fantastic instance of wagering through the medium of an insurance policy concerned the sex of a distinguished diplomat. Who was he and what was the outcome ?
10. Who was the Aberdeen tailor who turned quack and was knighted ?

Mulk Raj Anand 'Curries' 1932

An early work on the subject. The author gives the names of two London suppliers of all the ingredients used in the book - Stembridge in Cecil Court  and C.A. Naidu in Lexington Street, Soho. Anand begins with a tribute to Norman Douglas "...with that subtle irony and happy wit characteristic of him, Mr. Norman Douglas once declared that 'Curry is India's greatest contribution to mankind.' Those whose lucky star has bought them under the spell of Mr. Douglas will understand the sense in which that epigram is true. I laughed heartily when I read the statement...'

Mulk Raj Anand also quotes Aleister Crowley:-

'...Curries with their vast partitioned platter of curious condiments to lackey them, speak for themselves. They sting like serpents, stimulate like strychnine; they are subtle, sensual like Chinese courtesans, sublime and sacred, inscrutably inspiring and intelligently illuminating, like Cambodian carvings.'

Here is a simple recipe from Anand


DAL (LENTILS)
1/2 lb. lentils
1/2 oz. butter
1 small onion (sliced)
1/2 teaspoonful of black pepper
1/2 teaspoonfulred pepper
1/2 teaspoonful powdered turmeric
Salt to tatse.

Carefully pick the stones out of the dal and soak for about an hour in a panful of cold water. Put it to boil in a panful of boiled water. Sprinkle in some salt and turmeric and stir. When the lentils are tender, fry the sliced onion in melted butter with black and red pepper in a different pan. Pour this fried mixture into the pan containing the dal to the consistency of porridge over a gentle heat. Take care while putting in the butter to keep the lid partly on so that the liquid does not fly back to your face and hands.

A simple dal that might be improved with frying a small amount of cumin seeds and some chopped garlic. The orange dal needs no soaking, but some lentils require much longer than an hour and stones can still be found.