Harold Nicholson and Desmond McCarthy—the terrible twosome

Maybe I haven’t looked hard enough, but the only photos I’ve seen that feature Harold and Desmond have also included other Bloomsberries, notably Vita Sackville West. I’m not a fan of Bloomsbury and could only bear to watch ten minutes of one episode of the current TV drama, Living in Squares, but I don’t think either man was part of the Virginia 'n Duncan inner circle, as it were, and I don’t think the two were great friends. But there must be some reason why they were snapped together. Perhaps it was another bookfest organised by the Times or Sunday Times, as was the case with the Read and Spender press photo. This one, from the Graphic Photo Union,  bears identifications in pencil on the reverse . Desmond died in 1952, aged 75, a year after being knighted for services to the critical essay and the amusing anecdote, so the photo was probably taken around the mid 1930s.

Some of the most entertaining and scathing remarks on MacCarthy and Nicholson can be found in Virginia Woolf’s published Diaries. I have the volume for 1931 – 36. Here, for instance, are her views on Desmond:

Thursday, 3rd September 1931
‘…Oh, I was annoyed at Desmond’s usual sneer at Mrs Dalloway---woolgathering. I was inspired to make up several phrases about Desmond’s own processes, none of which, I suppose, will ever be fired off in print. His worldliness, urbanity, decorum as a writer; his soft supple ways. His audience of teaparty ladies & gentlemen. His timidity. How he wraps everything in flannel…His perpetual condescension.His now permanent stoop in the back. His aloofness---in the bad sense. I mean, he never takes a nettle by the leaves: always wears gloves…’

And Nicholson:

August 12, 1934
‘…Vita thinks Harold is getting soft & domestic, because he talks of grandchildren & wants to have a butler to brush his clothes & a spare room…’

[R.M.]

Coded Diaries etc.,

I had been reading about nicknames coined by Swinburne for some of his contemporaries - Fuxton Boreman for Buxton Forman and Soddington Symonds for John Addington Symonds when this piece arrived about a diary of that period with sexual code. Of course Pepys used a mixed language code and Anne Lister (1791–1840) the wealthy Yorkshire landowner, mountaineer and traveller kept coded diaries which chronicled the details of her daily life, including her lesbian relationships. RH who obviously  possesses a good size archive of ephemera and manuscript material sent in this. He is our third contributor and we could use many more who want to share their collections with a waiting world.

Pepys used a code when describing sexual activity and I think and Boswell did too. The sexologist Krafft-Ebing went Latinate when describing what he felt was a sexual perversion. And now we know that in his sex diaries Maynard Keynes used the letters C. A. W. to denote particular sexual activities—though the editor of the diaries cannot, even with the help of Oxford don, Professor Diarmid Macculloch, arrive at any sound conclusions as to what they denoted. All this suggests that many more of the unpublished diaries that the industrious J. S. Batts listed in his superb British Manuscript Diaries (1976), may also have contained codes to denote sexual activity.

I say this because I think I have discovered a monogram, which in the context of bedtime, denote sex in a diary I own, the yet unpublished ‘Travel Journal of Sir George Arney’, which dates from 1834. Arney, an English lawyer from Salisbury, who emigrated to New Zealand to become its second Chief Justice in 1858, spent several month touring Germany, Bohemia and Austria aged 24 —mopping up German literature, praising the music of Beethoven and being rude about the bribery system and continental inns. 

Arney was a passionate fellow, with a roving eye for a pretty face,and was liable to erupt into a violent outburst when recording the conduct of the bad mannered and the plain ignorant, whether English tourists or foreign upstarts. Accompanying him was his new wife Harriett, with whom he was totally besotted. In fact, a more uxorious husband can hardly be imagined. Often, while recording everyday sight-seeing, Harriett’s name is shortened to an elaborate monogram, but the same monogram is also used when Arney wishes to note sex with his wife. On one particular occasion, as we see here (next to the monogram) he is more explicit ---‘I put it in‘. [RH]

Mass Observation Class Codes etc.,

Mass Observation was founded in 1937 by the anthropologist Tom Harrisson, the poet Charles Madge and the film-maker Humphrey Jennings. Their aim, stated in a letter to the New Statesman, was to create an "anthropology of ourselves" - a study of the everyday lives of ordinary people in Britain.

Harrisson team of observers, diarists and investigators first big project was their study of the life and people of Bolton (the Worktown Project). Investigators went into a variety of public situations: meetings, religious occasions, sporting and leisure activities, in the street, in pubs and at work, and recorded people's behaviour and conversation in as much detail as possible. The material they produced is a varied documentary account of life in Britain. A great deal of it is now held at the University of Sussex.

 Mass Observation continued to operate throughout the Second World War and into the early 1950s, producing a series of books about their work as well as thousands of reports. Gradually the emphasis shifted away from social issues towards consumer behaviour and consumer research In 1949, Mass Observation was registered as a limited company.

 Sussex University gives a key to various 'M-O' codes

“Directs”: responses on a theme elicited directly by M-O investigators from members of the public

“Indirects” = responses on a theme elicited by a M-O investigators in the course of an informal conversation with a member of the public

“Overheards” = snatches of conversation gathered by a M-O investigators without the person being aware of being recorded

“Follows” = descriptions of a person’s behaviour while being followed by a M-O investigator (used mostly in pre-war work)

A simple system of coding was used for visual identification of social class:

A “Rich people”
B “The Middle Classes”
C “Artisans and skilled workers”
D “Unskilled workers and the least economically or educationally trained of our people"

Thus “F30B” refers to a thirty year old middle class woman (F=female) and “M20D” refers to a twenty-year old unskilled man. This code is listed at the beginning of the M-O publication War Factory (1943).

In our recent M-O posting about the Selby Oak by-election the 'inv' notes of an election worker: 'His speech, manner and appearance indicate class V, but he appears to have a position of some importance in the aircraft industry and drives a Vauxhall car.' Possibly a misprint for C or a new category not decoded by Sussex. 

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.