Spice Girls spice labels

Sent in by a loyal jotwatcher this useful and amusing piece about the Spice Girls and Viz the cult British comic magazine. It probably dates from about 1996. Go easy on the nutmeg!

Spice Girls spice labels

Does anyone remember that issue of Viz that appeared at a time when the Spice Girls were at the height of their fame. This particular number featured cut-out ’n’-keep labels which could be stuck onto spice jars. Aping the designs of the famous Schwartz spice bottles, there was one label for four of the Spice Girls—‘Scary Spice’ was left out for some reason.  Was I the only person who actually cut out the labels and used them? I somehow doubt it. Anyway, I’ve still got them, although they are getting a bit grubby. Each label contains a description of each of the spices, together with a recipe contributed by one of the girls.

Victoria presents Basil.

There is no finer sight in a herb garden than a basil flower. Generally used to add colour a dish, Basil is completely tasteless,

Stella Gibbons parodies modernist poetry (1921)

Found in a  University of London College magazine from December 1921 this poem/ parody by the novelist Stella Gibbons. She was 19 at the time and had just begun a two-year Diploma in Journalism at UCL. The course had been established for ex-servicemen returning from the First World War, but attracted several women, including another future novelist - Elizabeth Bowen. After a spell as a caustic book reviewer at The Lady her first book (poetry) was published in 1930, and in 1932 her masterpiece Cold Comfort Farm appeared. This, too, was a parody (of the current 'loam and lovechild' school of rural novelists.) The writers parodied are mostly somewhat forgotten: Mary Webb, Sheila Kaye-Smith, Eden Philpotts - although D.H. Lawrence and Thomas Hardy did not escape her mirth. In this piece modernist poets (T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound?) are mocked..

The Marshes of My Soul
(With  apologies to the latest School of Decoratively- Melancholy Introspectives.)

I.
Brackish …brackish,
The Pools of Weariness, flung in a glimmering chain
Reach the horizon.
And my thoughts, like purple parrots
Brood
In the sick, light trees 
Blowing above those shallow pools
In whorls and whorls
Noiselessly 
Printing a monotonous pattern upon the heavy air
Like watery curves upon the silken robe of a dying Mandarin.

Francine Saigon parodist of Francoise Sagan

Found  - a Keystone file photo from March 9th 1963 of 16 year old  novelist Felicity Moxton. Her book Bonsoir Maitresse: a novel (Pavilion Publications, London 1963) was a parody of Francoise Sagan's bestselling 1954 novel Bonjour Tristesse. It is quite rare but looks like this (the design very much like Francoise Sagan's French paperbacks):-

The back of the press photo reads:

Only 16 years old… is the young English writer Felicity Moxton and in a short time her first book will be to get in all book-shops. Felicity is the daughter of a writer in London. Her first book has the title 'Bonsoir Maitresse' and her pseudonym is 'Francine Saigon'.

Marlowe in Abadan

Another humorous piece from the papers of  'EVOE' i.e. Punch editor E.V. Knox. A Kit Marlowe parody…

Albert Decaris - Tamburlaine the Great (LEC 1965)

MARLOWE IN ABADAN

"Our methods of dealing with Persia have scarcely been those of Tamburlaine the Great," I wrote; and then (remembering a recent dramatic performance) I thought "How very strange if they had been." Something, I suppose, after this sort.


Enter, from underground holes, MR. MOUSSADEK and the BRITISH FOREIGN SECRETARY, with great voluted swords.

THE B.F.S.
Presumptuous bassa, whose begrimed brow
Is all unworthy to salute the dust
That bears the mighty boots of Morrison,*
Down on thy knees and make immediate truce
Ere I shall hew thy carcase into shreds
And post it piecemeal through the entire globe
Till trembling Tartars of the furthest East
And all the Kurds' contributory kings
Shall murmur as they ope the packages
This was the deed of Mighty Morrison.

A Sitwell Parody

Edith Sitwell by Roger Fry

Not sure where this came from but it is most likely to be from the voluminous papers of 'Evoe' - i.e. E. V. Knox. The poem parodied Colonel Fantock (from Troy Park, Duckworth 1925) is actually one of Edith Sitwell's finest, but 'Evoe' has picked up on her and her brothers' snobbery, haughtiness and pretentions. The full  original poem can be found here. It contains some beautiful lines and has elements of tragedy, or at least pathos:

 I was a member of a family

Whose legend was of hunting -- (all the rare

And unattainable brightness of the air) --

The parody dates from the early 1950s when it seems the Sitwells had become ubiquitous in British cultural life, possibly to a slightly  annoying extent in the way that some British celebrities (with vast tribes of twitter followers) are 60 years later.

THE THREE SITWELLS EXPLAIN HOW THEY

TRIUMPHED OVER OPPOSITION.

Osbert, the Author of "England Reclaimed", begins:

To us sad children in whose veins there ran
The violet blood of the old Angevin Kings
(1154 to 1216).
So that we all had Visi-Gothic faces
And seemed unreal in theatres and places –

Edith, the Author of "Troy Park", goes on:

I was a member of the family,
And from those tombed lords we inherited
A liking for wind-music – all the rare
Impetuous rapture of the trumpet blare.
I often think that cornet players only
Know what it is to be left entirely lonely.

Sacheverell, the Author of "All Summer in a day", breaks in:

The dulness of our life was terrible.
It had the remote air of a legend
Printed beneath a faded photograph
Of some one whom we did not wish to know.

Bloomsbury lampooned (1925)

Confident that art and brains
end with them (and Maynard Keynes)
the school of Bloomsbury lies here,
greeting the unseen with a sneer.

From Lampoons by Humbert Wolfe (Benn 1925) a collection of humorous epitaphs of (mostly) living writers.

Of Galsworthy he writes:

Ash to ash, to earth the earthy,
was not spoken by John Galsworthy.
Like his books the soul of John
goes marching on, and on, and on.

It is interesting to note that as early as 1925 Bloomsbury
was recognised as a 'school' and its members a rather contemptuous, haughty crowd...Humbert Wolfe is somewhat forgotten and almost uncollected, except his Circular Saws-- wanted only in its dust jacket, designed by Evelyn Waugh.

Walt Whitman Parody

From a Ignes Fatui, a Book of Parodies by Philip Guedalla
(Oxford 1911) Parodic poems and playlets written while Guedalla was at Rugby and Balliol College, Oxford. Some of the parodies are of slightly forgotten authors like W.E. Henley and Maeterlinck (a piece that sounds like  Beckett's Godot) but he also lampoons Macaulay, Swinburne, Kipling, Baedeker, Omar Khayyam, Hardy, Shakespeare and Shaw. Here is his Whitman squib - at the time Whitman's reputation was still breaking in England.

Canzonette to Democracy

I sing the song of me mendacious and the lies of
me mendacious:

I see God give the Land to the People, and the
grasshoppers on the Land,

I see double! Libertad, Americanos, Libertad I
cry. (No, I will not keep quiet.)

I want Eight, Votes for Women, brilliantine, a half blue, one Man one Pub., Home Rule for Wales and a National Theatre.

Allons, camerados, let us tax the foreigner; let's
tax him in Paumanok, Manhattan, Oswego and Illinois, but especially in Illinois.

I care nothing, or comparatively nothing for 
Second Chambers, Revising or otherwise. I 
am not a Peer: are you?

How hot you all look, the En Masse, the Tout
Ensemble: I too am hot from my unkempt
hair-thatch to the ten curling toes, each self
-contained with its individual nail.

O Columbia, how hot I am!

[Oxford 1910]

The tone is reminiscent of Rick the 'people's poet' from The Young Ones but it passes the first test of parody - i.e. you know who is being parodied...not sure what 'Eight' was however.

'Walt Whitman, Inciting the Bird of Freedom to Soar'
by Max Beerbohm 1904

E.V. Lucas remembered

Sent in by a sharp-eyed jotter this aside on the slightly  forgotten writer and belle-lettrist E.V. Lucas (not to be confused with E.V. Knox who was known as 'Evoe.')

Portrait of E.V. Lucas by the
Canadian artist J. Kerr-Lawson

R .G .G. Price revealed some jaw dropping facts about E. V. Lucas (1868-1838) light essayist, biographer of Charles Lamb and lover of dogs, cricket and long country walks, in his excellent History of Punch (1957). On page 194 we find the following remarks on his fellow Punch stalwart:

'More than any other Punch man, he adopted a mask for his work…His literary personality was light, charming and kindly. He appeared as a lover of Georgian week-end cottage life, a bit of a scholar, a bit of a dog lover and a stalwart defender of what he considered the better human impulses. In private he was a cynical clubman, liking to entertain peers to sumptuous meals with champagne and brandy, very bitter about men and politics and the decadence of modern art. He was a great ‘trouncer ‘ of outspoken books  and was rumoured to have the finest pornographic library in London….’ 

Eh ? Anodyne E.V., author of At the Shrine of St Charles and of Quaker stock, is ‘rumoured to have the finest pornographic library in London.’ Well, in 1957 Lucas had been dead for 19 years , which meant Price was safe from litigation,  but some of his friends and fellow Punch men, might have objected. But they didn’t, as far as I know, and this rather astonishing slur (if you wish to call it that) remains unchallenged to this day.

Incidentally, what happened to Lucas’s curiosa ? 

Thanks H. This library never surfaced to my knowledge and its existence may be apocryphal. On the other hand it could be gathering dust in an attic or warehouse somewhere. The claim of 'having the finest collection of erotica in London' has been made of others - I have heard it made of a fringe member of the Bloomsbury Group.

Among his many works probably the most interesting and valuable is the fantasy The War of the Wenuses. Translated from the Artesian of H. G. Pozzuoli a book he wrote with Charles L. Graves (Arrowsmith, Bristol, 1898.)

 Noted by Locke and by Currey, who writes: 'A fine parody of H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds. Earth is invaded by beautiful Venusian women. "A 'Punch-style' parody in which the natives of Venus, young ladies, invade earth (in giant crinolines) in a quest for sartorial improvements, devastating all males with the dreaded 'mash' glance.'

E. V. Knox ("Evoe.")

A rare photo of 'Evoe' added from our archives. Edmund George Valpy Knox (1881 - 1971), comic writer, poet and satirist who wrote under the pseudonym 'Evoe'. He was editor of Punch 1932-1949, having been a regular contributor in verse and prose for many years. He was married to the daughter of the Winnie the Pooh illustrator E.H.Shepard. Mary Shepard in her turn illustrated Mary Poppins. His daughter from an earlier marriage was the Booker prize winning novelist Penelope Fitzgerald - known in the family as 'Mops' and author of a book on the gifted Knox family.

There are a few recorded quotations  by  Evoe. One that would never be said these days was (from memory) 'the room smelled as if nobody had been smoking in it..' A snatch of verse that still has some currency are the last two lines of a parody of John Masefield (The Everlasting Percy) published in his slim 1926 volume Poems of Impudence:  

When I was young I was so wicked,
I used to ride without a ticket,
And travelled underneath the seat
Down in the dust of people's feet....
I have a flapper on the carrier.
Some day I'm going to marry her.

Working for Punch he was obliged to provide golfing humour and this quote from him is quite well known: 'Golf is played with a number of striking implements more intricate in shape than those used in any form of recreation except dentistry.'

About the Long Hole (E.V. Knox)

    From the papers of Edmund George Valpy Knox (1881 - 1971), comic writer, poet and satirist who wrote under the pseudonym 'Evoe'. He was editor of Punch 1932-1949, having been a regular contributor in verse and prose for many years. The typed paper has yellowed and it appears to be from the 1940s, possibly earlier.

This is an amusing parody of British golf writing with a nod towards Wodehouse... 

Straight in front of him, and as far as his eye can reach, the traveller who stands on the teeing-ground of our tenth hole, observes the illimitable undulating scenery of the veldt. Perhaps a solitary vulture wheels overhead in the heavens, and along the central track may be discerned a few bleaching bones of caddies and the broken shafts and skulls of drivers and brassies. Far away to the left is a strip of woodland, and beyond that the sluggish inexorable river. What secrets it bears in its massive bosom or in the murky ooze of its heart! A bad pull (to be more explicit) will take you nicely over the edge, and many a stout golfer has gone home at evenfall with an empty creel owing to his rash refusal to carry a landing net and play with amphibious balls.

 To the right hand may be seen a series of wicked-mouthed bunkers, each with its little colony of human toil. Bogey for the long hole is six, and it is believed to have been done in four. There is no doubt at all that it has been done in twenty-five, but then that was the day when I hit the ladies' sand-box with my drive, and (after my caddy had replaced the divot with a couple of tintacks and some glue) had to play my second (with a mashie) from twenty yards behind the tee. 

I Once Kept a Diary (E.V. Knox)

  From the papers of Edmund George Valpy Knox (1881 - 1971), comic writer, poet and satirist who wrote under the pseudonym 'Evoe'. He was editor of Punch 1932-1949, having been a regular contributor in verse and prose for many years.This piece is probably from the 1950s after his editorship. In the archives is a good pic of him, at present unfindable (will upload soon) - for the moment this below. He was married to the daughter of the Winnie the Pooh illustrator E.H.Shepard. Mary Shepard in her turn illustrated Mary Poppins. His daughter from an earlier marriage was the Booker prize winning novelist Penelope Fitzgerald - known in the family as 'Mops' and author of the book below on the gifted Knox family.

This is a very amusing parody of British rural diarists such as Parson Woodforde, Francis Kilvert etc., n.b.- a 'pyghtle' is a small piece of land, a small farm or croft - a word still heard in Suffolk..

I once kept a diary...
but only once. And only for one month. I found it too sad. For some unaccountable reason it took on the semblance of those terrible rustic diaries of a hundred and fifty, or two hundred years ago.

  Jan. 1 - New Year's Day. Overcast and damp morning. A part of the paddock fencing torn down by last night's wind ... For dinner, neck of pork, pease pudding and a boiled Rabbit. Tib, my wife, complained of the ague. Recd. from Jas. Smedley £0 0s 0½d, the Ha'penny being bad. Walked out with my dog Nap to see the fire at Bugge Mill. Flames burning very Fiercely ... The children caught a Colick. Sir Chas. Morton dyed.

  Jan. 2 - West and rainy.

  Jan. 3 - Sleete.

  Jan. 4 - Attended Inquest on Sir Chas. Morton. Heard of the great rioting in Manchester. This growing Worse. Sharp frost in eveg. Took jalep for my Gout.

  Jan. 5 - Hail.

  Jan. 6 - Frost returned, being very Bitter. Sold 7 Bushels of Wheat to A. Ridley, who had no money to paye. 4 persons killed on the Birmingham Railway.

  Jan. 7 - Ate for dinner on ½ chine of Beef, a mincemeat tart and 3 Bath chaps ... Sir Chas. Morton now is said was Poisoned. Dranke 1 gallon gin. Tib, my wife, in bed with influenza.

  Jan. 8 - Thaw began. Very cold.

Jan. 9 - A whale being washed ashore at Whipley, this was cut up and given to the poor. Drove my horse Hob in the cart to see this, and coming back he lamed a forefoot ... Quarrelled with Jno. Martin about the pyghtle... Jas. Donovan Esqr. died.

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.

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.

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.