Gremlin?

Dorset war artwork is preserved (Rod Minchin, Western Morning News, March 17, 2015) reports on the successful conservation of a characterful mural painted in 1942 by Flight Sgt Sidney Beaumont of 263 Squadron. The logo is similar to one painted by Sgt Beaumont on his Westland Whirlwind aircraft.

The Imitation Game

Further to the post That is All You Need to Know, we just went to see The Imitation Game, the historical thriller based on Alan Turing's central role in the cracking of the German Enigma code in World War 2.

Invasion Exmouth, 189—

I just ran into an episode set in Exmouth, in Fred T Jane's 1895 future-war novel Blake of the "Rattlesnake": Or, The Man who Saved England : a Story of Torpedo Warfare in 189—., which imagines Britain in ocean-going conflict with a French-Russian alliance.

The Wiles of the Wicked

Small world: while Googling the geography of a recent walk (see Microclimate) I ran into a novel with a local setting in part, William Le Queux's 1900 The Wiles of the Wicked. It's a mystery thriller, distinctly far-fetched in some major aspects, that's nevertheless very readable, and intriguing in the puzzle its narrator has to solve. It concerns a man who calls himself Wilford Heaton:

Dazzle

Just purging my camera, I found this photo I took a while back in a department store in Exeter.

I don't normally photograph dresses in shops, but this one struck me because its zones of mismatched patterns are highly reminiscent of the dazzle camouflage (a.k.a. razzle dazzle or dazzle painting) used on World War One ships: as Wikipedia puts it, "not by offering concealment but by making it difficult to estimate a target's range, speed and heading".

It wasn't until I was reviewing the photo that I read the label, and found, Googling, that it's part of the Anya Madsen Copenhagen range for larger-sized wearers. Is the design meant to disguise the wearer's outline, to make it difficult to estimate the wearer's range, speed and heading? But whether intentional or not, the resemblance of this migraine-inducing design to the camouflage system - see more images - is striking.

Camoupedia ("A blog for clarifying and continuing the findings that were published in Camoupedia: A Compendium of Research on Art, Architecture and Camouflage, by Roy R. Behrens, Bobolink Books, 2009") has examples of precedent for the use of dazzle camouflage in mainstream fashion: see Dazzle Camouflage Swimsuits, Dazzle Swimsuits Déja Vu, and Vaccination Camouflage and More Swimsuits. The blog Evil Mad Scientist has noticed similar: Dazzle Camouflage in Fashion.

Olympic with Returned Soldiers, Arthur Lismer, 1919
Wikimedia Commons

Observer (Auckland NZ), Volume XXXVIII, Issue 20, 19 January 1918
via Papers Past, National Library of New Zealand

- Ray

Standing room only

A minor enduring meme of the 20th century has been the idea that the entire population of the world would fit on the Isle of Wight. Depending on assumptions, population growth appears to have made this obsolete around 1970, hence the title of John Brunner's 1968 dystopian SF novel Stand on Zanzibar.  I haven't been able to trace the precise origin of the Isle of Wight version of the meme, but the earliest citation I can find at this instant is to 1886:

... when we remember that the whole human family, every man, woman, child  on earth this day, could comfortably stand on the Isle of Wight ...
The Three First Chapters of Human History, The Very Rev. H Martyn Hart, Dean of Denver, Colorado, The Quiver, p239, 1886

Any advances welcome!

A number of early 20th century citations stem from a source a decade later, in the address of Sir John Wolfe Barry on his assumption of the Presidency of the Institution of Civil Engineers:

One is apt to get lost with these figures of millions of our fellow-subjects, and to think for an instant that our own is the culminating epoch of the world's history, and that over-population stares us in the face. This is a merely parochial idea, the absurdity of which can be realised when we remember that the population of the world can stand upon the Isle of Wight.
- Sir John Wolfe Barry, Minutes of Proceedings of the Institute of Civil Engineers, Volume 127, Session 1896-97, Part 1. Speech given November 1896.

One particular expression of the meme was the rather odd fantasy novel All Moonshine (Richard Whiteing, 1907). The narrator of All Moonshine goes to sleep while obsessing about war and world population, particularly focusing on a statistic he has seen ...

" It has been calculated that, at four persons to the square yard, the entire population of the globe, standing shoulder to shoulder, could find room and to spare in the Isle of Wight."

... and wakes up to a strange phenomenon, the populations of the world coming to visit the Island and play out their conflicts in astrally projected form, the narrator meanwhile falling in love with one of the astral visitors, the South Sea woman Nykie. It's highly polemical, both anti-war, and dismissive of the dangers of overpopulation. The reviewer of the Boston-based The Independent (a journal whose religious roots gave it a mystical leaning) loved it ...

We have had some very remarkable literary works published in England since I sent my latest article to The Independent. One of the most remarkable is the novel called "All Moonshine," written by Richard Whiteing and published by Messrs. Hurst & Blackctt, of London. I have called this book a novel because it presents itself to the reading world merely as such, but the name of novel would certainly not prepare the reader for such an extraordinary literary production as that which Mr. Whiteing has given to the world. It is at once a dream-story, a love-story, a poetic allegory in prose, and a rapturous anticipation of of a time soon to come when mankind is to be freed from the devastations of the war spirit. It is sometimes a satire, sometimes a prose-poem, sometimes a fairy tale, and the reader absorbed in its pages finds himself unable to say in which of these fields of literary production the author makes the greatest success. The love-story, which runs thru and keeps together the whole narrative, is in fact a continuation of a novel, “The Island,” written by Mr. Whiteing some years ago. For Mr. Whiteing's present purposes the gods annihilate both time and space, but not to make two lovers happy—rather to help them in the accomplishment of a magical work which is to make the whole world happy by reestablishing the reign of peace. The critic is spared all the trouble of raising questions as to possibilities or probabilities when dealing with the dream-story, which proclaims itself to be "All Moonshine". The reader will find  himself carried away by the story in all its moods and and will fancy many a time that he is actually looking on sonic of the marvelous scenes which the author causes to pass, panorama-like, before his eyes. All the brilliant peculiarities of Whiteing's style, peculiarities which have made for him a distinct reputation, are shining thru the pages of this book. The author is now humorous, now melancholy, now sarcastic. now grimly severe, and in each mood he seems to find the same felicities of expression. “All Moonshine" may, of course, be classed among what used to be called novels with a purpose, but in many even of the most successful and famous novels which used to be described by that name the reader sometimes found that the purpose over-shadowed or almost extinguished the story and that he was only reading a tract put into allegorical form. This fault cannot certainly be found with Mr Whiteing's new story, because we feel from first to last the deepest interest in the hero and the astral Nyleia [sic], notwithstanding the devotion which they both display to the promulgation of the arts of peace, and notwithstanding also the magical means by which the crusade for peace is supposed to make its way. Richard Whiteing has indeed long been recognized as a man not merely endowed with great talents, but with that gift which must be called genius, and I feel well convinced that "All Moonshine" will give the world of readers another reason for admitting him to that limited circle of living authors on whom such praise is fittingly bestowed.
- The Independent, Volume 63, page 1420, 1907

... but the NY Times Saturday Review was less impressed:

The first in point of importance is Richard Whiteing's " All Moonshine," published by Messrs. Hurst & Blackett, and distinctly a noteworthy book, though it must be confessed It is also an exasperating one. Mr. Whiteing in his typical manner of "No. 5 John Street" leads us through a story which obviously does not mean very much to him, and consequently cannot mean very much to us, for the sake of showing us his point of view on some serious Question and for the sake of teaching us some sort of lesson ... Who could hope to reconcile us to a book the action of which takes place almost entirely in a dream — and it is another relic of childish taste that we resent dream books nearly as bitterly as books with evident morals — the heroine of which is a South Sea Islander in her astral form, and all the rest of the characters astrals, too? Who could make us read with conviction thumb-nail sketches of all the world as seen by the dream-hero ...
- New York Times Saturday Review of Books and Art, further citation details unfindable

All Moonshine (Richard Whiteing, pub. Hurst and Blackett, 1907, Internet Archive ID allmoonshine00whitgoog).

The Island, mentioned by the first reviewer, is Whiteing's 1888 satirical fantasy in which the narrator, disaffected with London life, flees civilization and is shipwrecked on Pitcairn Island. There, guided by Victoria, the Chief Magistrate's daughter (the same character who later appears as "Nykie" in All Moonshine) he compares the Edenic socialistic lifestyle with Western culture, and departs a wiser man. In the light of recent revelations about the culture and mores of Pitcairn, the book's idyllic picture makes horribly ironic reading. See The Island, Or, An Adventure of a Person of Quality (Richard Whiteing, pub. Tauchnitz, 1888, Internet Archive ID islandoranadven01whitgoog).

The Island has an immediate sequel, No. 5 John Street (1899, Internet Archive ID nojohnstreet00whitgoog) in which the situation is reversed. The narrator of The Island, Lord —, having died, his friend is asked to report back to the Pitcairn islanders on life in London, experiencing a deal of London low-life in the process.

- Ray

Just chatting

Clare, who's researching World War One topics, just drew my attention to this article: Of Lice and Men: Trench Fever and Trench Life in the A.I.F. by Dr. M. Geoffrey Miller.

It's a good article in itself, but one that also leads into a wealth of superb material. Up one level, and you get to The Medical Front, a compendium of texts on "all medical aspects, military and civilian, of the Great War". And this is just part of the GWDPA: the Great War Primary Document Archive, whose intention is "to present in one location both primary and relevant secondary documents between 1890-1930".

However, returning to Of Lice and Men, one point of interest was the reference to "chats" and "chatting" ...

There are three varieties of lice; head lice, or 'nits', (pediculus capitis), pubic lice, or 'crabs', (Phthirius pubis), and body lice, or 'chats' (pediculus corporis)
...
Accordingly the soldiers had to attempt to remove the lice as best they could. This removal, a procedure known as "chatting up" was usually by hand, picking out the lice from the clothes, or with the flame from lighted candles run up and down the seams of the clothes. (This was the origin of the verb "to chat" as the soldiers made the removal of their lice into a social event).

... and part of this rang etymological alarm bells with us both.

"Chat" for "louse" is fine. I suspected it might be Anglo-Indian, but it turns out not:

1699 B. E. New Dict. Canting Crew, Chatts, lice.
1725 in New Canting Dict.
1819 J. H. Vaux New Vocab. Flash Lang. in Mem., Chats, lice.
- Oxford English Dictionary

"Chatting up" checks out likewise, as a couple of contemporary references show:

Then they gave us hot water and soap and a clean towel, and told us to go to it. This was an advancing signal-corps company that was chatting up after the retreating Boche.
- The Literary Digest, Volume 59, page 42, 1918
"Chatting-up," searching for " them " by divesting oneself of tunic, shirt and even breeches. This informal parade used to take place frequently among the men in the trenches during the summer months.
- The Athenaeum, 1919 

But the statement that this is the origin of the verb "to chat" is completely untrue. "Chat" goes back to Middle English in a couple of similar obsolete senses, but even the modern sense dates back to the 1500s.

3. intr. To talk in a light and informal manner; to converse familiarly and pleasantly.
1551 R. Robinson tr. T. More Vtopia sig. ✠viiv, I muste commen with my wife, chatte with my chyldren, and talke wyth my seruantes.
- Oxford English Dictionary

"Chatting up" in the delousing sense, by the way, has no connection with the modern sense of "flirting with". The OED's first citation for this sense is much later, and seems to be a modern development, first cited to the 1960s, on an obsolete meaning of "chat" equivalent to "chat up".

1916  C. J. Dennis, Songs Sentimental Bloke 19, I tried to chat 'er, like you'd make a start Wiv any tart.
- Oxford English Dictionary

- Ray

A Bit of Blue Stone

Bournemouth, the Square and Gardens from Mount Dore
EM Haslehust, 1915. Wikimedia Commons

A bit of a milestone; further to the previous two posts, I just finished Maxwell Gray's final published work, the title story of her 1923 collection A Bit of Blue Stone.

The story A Bit of Blue Stone (dated 1922) is set largely in Bournemouth in the closing years of World War One, a romance between two people whose lives have been blighted by the war.

In a warm September, Lancelot Hughes, a young serviceman on leave from the front, largely recovered from a wound and shell-shock, is visiting Bournemouth to see his mother herself convalescent from overwork as a VAD nurse, and his more seriously traumatised brother George, permanently discharged after the loss of an eye and severe shell-shock. Lancelot and his mother's conversations turn to an idyllic time they remember, a family outing to Alum Bay, Isle of Wight, where Lancelot was attracted to a girl called Violet Kendal who they'd helped when she dislocated her ankle.

To Lancelot's surprise and pleasure, he encounters the now older Violet, who is staying with her Aunt Maria and cousin Rose. The two families become acquainted, and conversation turns to George, whose doctor considers to have a delusion of being jilted due to his disfigurement. Rose reacts strangely to this - evidently she did he a friendship with George - and the receipt of a letter reveals the truth: that George's jealous officer In France, a failed suitor of Rose, had withheld the correspondence between the two. Rose and George are reunited. Lancelot and Violet also find themselves in love; but Lancelot has to return to the front, and leaves with Violet his "mascot", a chunk of blue stone given him by another soldier whose life he saved, for safe keeping.

Lancelot eventually returns to Bournemouth a year after the end of the war, but after initial delight at being reunited, it appears increasingly that his feelings toward Violet have cooled. This turns out not to be the case; the problem is that Violet's father, Colonel Kendal, has forbidden their marriage due to Lancelot's circumstances. His medical history - shell-shock and "heart strain" - is limiting his job prospects, and coupled with a general decline in family fortunes (including the need to help George and Rose) his only option is a job overseas, which is bound to be detrimental to his health. Regretfully, he says marriage is not an option.

After Lancelot leaves, Violet becomes curious about the "mascot" Lancelot still has left with her. It's wrapped in a sheet of paper saying "Try Sparkes" (a London jeweller) and as she's in the process of helping Mrs Hughes sell some jewellery to bankroll Lancelot's travel overseas to his job, she suggests to him that it might be an asset worth selling. He agrees. Rose goes to the Charing Cross shop, and rapidly finds that the "bit of blue stone" is a large uncut diamond from the Kimberley mines, and an American customer at Sparkes, Josiah P Goldridge, is prepared to buy it for thousands of pounds.

This alters everything. Lancelot needn't go overseas. He can afford to complete his interrupted Oxford studies and have enough left over to provide a starting income; Colonel Kendal retracts his objections. Violet and Lancelot meet again in Bournemouth, and sail off into the sunset, presumably to the Isle of Wight. Mrs Hughes, watching them depart, says, "They are going to the Land of Heart's Desire."


View Larger Map - Bournemouth front as described by MG: pan left and zoom for the
Isle of Wight (in distance), pan right for Purbeck Hills.  

To some extent, A Bit of Blue Stone is predictable. The blue stone's titular presence makes it pretty certain to have some plot significance, which ultimately amounted to a deus ex machina that bailed the main characters out of all their problems. But it is a very nice evocation of the landscape of Bournemouth, with its chines and its views of Purbeck and the Isle of Wight, in a distinctive era when it was a significant centre for wartime convalescence: see, for instance, Bournemouth Town Hall (formerly the Mont Dore Hotel). It's also rather nice to see an upbeat ending to Maxwell Gray's works, which toward toward the end of her life had become at best wistful, and at worst embittered and reactionary.

Check out the 1915 Blackie guide Bournemouth, Poole & Christchurch (Sidney Heath, illust. EM Haslehust, Internet Archive ID bournemouthpoole00heatrich) for a nice illustrated account of Bournemouth at the time of A Bit of Blue Stone.

I don't know if MG had visited Bournemouth at the time - as an invalid, she well could have. But it's well possible she could have consulted the Ward Locke guide A Pictorial and Descriptive Guide to Bournemouth, Poole, Christchurch, Avon Valley, Salisbury, Winchester and The New Forest Covering the Years 1914/15. It's not online, but I was interested to recover a snippet suggesting it to be a popular location for authors at the time, many of the titles suggesting that (like pre-war Brighton in Brighton Rock) that it had a considerably seamy side:

... Tess of the D'Urbervilles contains one of the most picturesque and accurate descriptions of Bournemouth. It is perhaps most fully depicted in Adrian Savage by Lucas Malet, and is visited and described in Allward by E.S. Stevens, Sinister Street by Compton Mackenzie, The Seamy Side by Besant and Rice, Jill-all-Alone by Rita, and in Tracked Down by Headon Hill. It is further seen in W. B. Maxwell's war-time romance A Man and his Lesson. Among other recent novels in which Bournemouth appears are: The Race Before Us, Guy Thorne; Zitta Sees Herself (Boscombe), E. M. Delafield; The Sins Ye Do, Emmeline Morrison; A Bit of Blue Stone, Maxwell Gray; Tyranny, Holloway Horn; Ring Up the Curtain, J.C. Nevill; Barbara Justice, Diana Patrick; Blinkers, H.A. Vachell; Mr. Justice Maxell, Edgar Wallace.

For me, it's not the end of the Maxwell Gray story. I've finished the planned task of reading her major book works chronologically. But she was not just a novelist; there are many more articles and poems in magazines and journals. The project continues...

Ray

A Devon Estuary, by HM Tomlinson

Via an unconnected search, I just ran into this chapter from HM Tomlinson's 1922 Waiting for Daylight. It's not the Exe estuary - there isn't a lighthouse - but the landscape it evokes is similar. I've been unable to find which, if any, guide-book described which estuary as "this dreary expanse".

---

XXXI
A Devon Estuary

September 11, 1920. "This dreary expanse, the guide-book explains, "will not attract the tourist." The guide was right. I was alone to that degree beyond mere solitude when you feel you are not alone, but that the place itself is observing you. Yet only five miles away long lines of motor-cars were waiting to take tourists, at ruinous prices, to the authentic and admitted beauty spots. There was not, as the polite convention would put it, a soul about. It was certainly a dreary expanse, but the sunlight there seemed strangely brilliant, I thought, and, what was more curious, appeared to be alive. It was quivering. The transient glittering of some seagulls remote in the blue was as if you could glimpse, now and then, fleeting hints of what is immaculate in heaven. Nothing of our business was in sight anywhere except the white stalk of a lighthouse, and that, I knew, was miles away across the estuary whose waters were then invisible, for it was not only low tide, but I was descending to the saltings, having left the turf of the upper salt marshes.

You felt that here in the saltings you were beyond human associations. The very vegetation was unfamiliar. The thrift, sea lavender, rocket, sea campion, and maritime spurge did not descend so low as this. They came no nearer than where the highest tidal marks left lines of driftwood and bleached shells, just below the break of the upper marshes. Here it was another kingdom, neither sea nor land, but each alternately during the spring tides. At first the sandy mud was reticulated with sun-cracks, not being daily touched by the sea, and the crevasses gave a refuge for algæ. There was a smell, neither pleasant nor unpleasant, which reminded you of something so deep in the memory that you could not give it a name. But it was sound and good. Beyond that dry flat the smooth mud glistened as if earth were growing a new skin, which yet was very tender. It was spongy, but it did not break when I trod on it, though the earth complained as I went. It was thinly sprinkled with a plant like little fingers of green glass, the maritime samphire, and in the distance this samphire gave the marsh a sheen of continuous and vivid emerald.

The saltings looked level and unbroken. But on walking seaward I was continually surprised by drainage channels. These channels serpentined everywhere, and were deep and wide. Sometimes they contained nothing but silt, and sometimes they were salt-water rivers. I came upon each canyon unexpectedly. The first warning was a sudden eruption from it, a flock of dunlin, a flock which then passed seawards in a regimented flight that was an alternate flash of light and a swift shadow. Dunlin, curlew, oyster-catchers, or gulls, left a gulley just before I knew I was headed off again. In one of these creeks, however, the birds left me more than their delicate footprints to examine. They left there a small craft whose mast I had long taken to be a stump projecting from the mud. A young man in a brown beard, a brown shirt, and a pair of khaki trousers was sitting on its skylight. He hailed, and showed me how I could get to him without sinking up to more than the knees in this dreary spot.

"Stay here if you like," he said, when I was with him. "When the tide is full I'll pull you round to the village." It was a little cutter of about fifteen tons, moored to the last huge links of a cable, the rest of which had long been covered up. I thought he was making holiday in a novel way. "No," he replied, "I'm living here."

It seems (I am but paraphrasing his apology) that he returned from Cambrai, bringing back from France, as a young officer, some wounds and other decorations, but also his youthful credulity and a remembrance of society's noble promises to its young saviours. But not long after his return to us the sight of us made him feel disappointed. He "stuck it," he said, as long as he could. But the more he observed us the worse he felt. That was why he gave up a good position a second time on our account. "What was the good of the money? The profiteers took most of it. I worked hard, and had to give up what I earned to every kind of parasite. London was more disagreeable than ever was Flanders. Yet I think I would not object to sweep the roads for a community of good people. Yes, I thought nothing could be worse than the dead in the mud. But I found something worse. The minds of the living who did not know what I knew in France were worse to me. I couldn't remember the friends I'd lost and remain where I was with such, folk about me. It was more awful than that German--did you ever meet him?--who lay just the other side of the parapet for weeks and weeks."

His only companion now is a paraffin stove, which does not, perhaps, require a gas-mask to aid in its companionship, though about that I won't be sure. The only conversation he hears is that of the curlews subdued, cheerful, and very intimate voices, having just that touch of melancholy which intimacy, when it is secure and genuine, is sure to give, however jolly the intimacy may be. He said that at first he was afraid he could not live on what little money he had, and must earn casually, after buying the boat, but "it's easier to live than I thought. There's not nearly as much worry needed as I used to suppose. It is surprising how much one can do without. I was rather scared at first when I got rid of my sense of duty. But, after all, it is not so hard to be free. Perhaps the world already has more soft and easy people than is good for it. I find one benefit of this life is that, being free of the crowd, I feel indifferent about the way the crowd chooses to go. I don't care now what the public does--that's its own affair, and I hope it will enjoy it." After a silence he said "That sounds selfish, I know. And I'm not sure yet that it isn't. Anyhow, if one could help one's fellows one would. But is it possible to help them? When did they last listen to reason? The only guides they will listen to are frauds obvious enough to make an ass lay back his ears. Well, I think I'll wait here till the crowd knows enough to stop before it gets to the edge of the steep place--if it can stop now."

I asked him what he read. "Very little. I fish more than I read. You'd think it would take only a week to learn all there is here. I should have thought so once. I see now that I shall never thoroughly know this estuary. It's a wonderful place. Every tide is a new experience. I am beginning to feel right again." In the boat, going round to the village, he learned I was a writer, rested on his oars, and drifted with the tide. "I'll give you a job," he said. "Write a book that will make people hate the idea that the State is God as Moloch was at last hated. Turn the young against it. The latest priest is the politician. No ritual in any religion was worse than this new worship of the State. If men don't wake up to that, then they are doomed." He began then to pull me towards humanity again.

-  A Devon Estuary, Chapter XXXI, Waiting for Daylight, Henry Major Tomlinson, 1922 (Internet Archive waitingfordaylig00toml).

---

The context of this chapter was Tomlinson getting his head together after experience of the Great War during 1914-1917, when he was a war correspondent in France for the Daily News. As mentioned in Jonathan Atkin's 2003 A war of individuals: Bloomsbury attitudes to the Great War (page 229) he was removed from the job for being too "humanitarian" in his coverage:

When I was recalled from France that spring I ceased to be a war-correspondent because Lord Northcliffe's representative on the Newspaper Proprietors' Association, so I was informed by my own newspaper, had objected to me as a "humanitarian".
- H. M. Tomlinson, Fred D Crawford, 1981

Waiting for Daylight is an account of Tomlinson's reaction to the war and its aftermath, told as a chronological series of 33 short essays.

Henry Major Tomlinson is one of a number of highly prolific authors of the early 20th century who are now scarcely remembered. As Wikipedia says, "He was known for anti-war and travel writing, novels and short stories, especially of life at sea". Six of his works are on Project Gutenberg (see search):

• London River (1921) is an evocative account of the East London docklands, now long-destroyed by war and redevelopment;
• The anthology Modern Essays (1921) contains one Tomlinson piece, Bed-Books and Night-Lights;
• Nonsenseorship (1922), a collection of polemical essays on various aspects of prohibition and censorship, contains his satire A Guess at Unwritten History, which extrapolates from the use of censorship to suppress critical thought during World War 1 to a state-dominated far future.
• Old Junk (1918) is an anthology of Kipling-eque short stories and essays.
• The Sea and the Jungle (1912) is "the narrative of the voyage of the tramp steamer Capella from Swansea to Santa Maria de Belem do Grao Para in the Brazils".
• Waiting for Daylight (1922) - as described above.

Eldritch Press has a detailed bibliography of his works: H. M. Tomlinson 1873-1958. The intro says of him:

Henry Major Tomlinson grew up in the East End of London, the great seaport (described in London River, destroyed in the Blitz). He became a shipping clerk, a journalist, a war correspondent, a newspaper editor, and a travel writer and novelist. He was greatly affected by the futile slaughter of World War I. His first book was ignored at the time but has been frequently reprinted since for a small, discerning audience such as yourself; his other works have not remained popular, at least in the United States. Deaf, bald, he always wore the black bowler hat of an East End clerk.

Professional writers should not read Tomlinson. No doubt any who try will throw away their keyboards in disgust when they compare their own frail abilities. His style and thinking must have been influenced by Emerson and Thoreau but is really that of the King James Bible, Homer and Shakespeare. His subject matter is often natural history or the foolishness of mortals who do not always realize the transcendental reality behind a common glance. His accounts of the sea, travel, and the Great War have not been surpassed. He is one author who produces quotable paragraphs on each page and can be read with pleasure again and again. It is time today to acknowledge his greatness.

Eldritch Press also has online Tomlinson's 1953 A Mingled Yarn: Autobiographical Sketches. The date would normally give me pause regarding copyright issues, but EP states that all the works on its site are either public domain or used by permission).

- Ray

When That Man Is Dead And Gone

Further to the previous post, here's a similar video by cappnonymous - "a brief contrapuntal study in audio-visual propaganda" - which juxtaposes, to ironic effect, footage from Leni Riefenstahl's 1934 Triumph des Willens and the 1941 cover by Al Bowlly and Jimmy Mesene of Irving Berlin's 1941 When That Man Is Dead And Gone.

An anti-Hitler satirical song ...

Come on now, we're going to celebrate.
He's the guy that's spreading hate.
His account is overdrawn.
And his chances are in pawn.
Some fine day the news will flash
Satan with the small moustache
Is asleep beneath the lawn.
When that man is dead and gone-
What a day to wake up on!
What a way to greet the dawn!
When a certain man is dead and gone!"

... it was nevertheless a fine jazz composition, and covered by other well-known artists such as Mildred Bailey (YouTube) and Glenn Miller (YouTube). It was rather a twist of fate that When That Man Is Dead And Gone was Bowlly's last recorded song; he was killed by a Luftwaffe parachute mine at his home in 1941. His legacy was an iconic list of recordings that are still being referenced today.

- Ray
Thanks to Trebots of kalebeul for jogging my memory in a comment to the previous post; I saw the cappnonymous video last year, but had forgotten it.

Guernica - Kaigenrei

While finishing my tax, I've been listening to the 80's Japanese band Guernica. They did strange but often compelling stuff: avant-garde and often atonal cabaret/electronica with Jun Togawa as vocalist, all with retro 1920s-1930s styling reflecting the Westernised element of the pre-WW2 Japanese imperial era.

At the moment my favourite piece is the one embedded above and below in two versions: 戒厳令 (Kaigenrei in Romaji), whose title appears on the web variously as Martial Law in English or Belagerungszustand in German. The chorus section from 0:55 to 1:38 recalls early 20th century totalitarian or patriotic anthems - I think it's a brilliant tune. But although it seems very familiar, I can't find it on Musipedia. The version below is a powerful slower-tempo arrangement for conventional orchestra, sung in German with a lot of Sturm and Drang.



This seemed a strange conceit until I realised that Guernica's lyricist Keiichi Ohta wrote the lyrics in German originally. The song is about the repression and fear of living under totalitarian rule, with strong allusions to Nazism, judging by these lyrics I found (the German is a little fractured in places):

Die Autobahn in der Nacht
Durchfaehrt im heftigen Regen
Der Asphalt wird das schwarze Plastik
Den Tropfen der Frontscheibe
Warnt das Autoradio vor Kreis
Die Belagerungszustand reisst die Nacht.
Ach, Ach, Belagerungszustand
Ploezlich erscheint das schwarze Beiwagenmaschine.
Der schwere Ton des Offizerscheibes
Hilfeschrei eines reinen Maedchens
hoert man hinter "Gesperrt" hevor.
Die Belagerungszustand reisst die Nacht,
Ach, Ach, Belagerungszustand

Die Sirene heult jetzt in der ganzen Stadt.
Wie Mantel Totenengels
Der Regen Faelt auf den roten Backstein,
Wie die traurige Traene deren,
die nach Hoelle gewhen. Wie traurige Traene.
Die Voegel singen die Fried und die Freiheit, aber
klingt es leider hoffnunglos.
Das Gebeht der Frauen zum heiligen Kreuze
weckselt ja mit dem Fluch ueber schwarze den Teufel.

- lyrics from this Guernica fan page

There's another video here - Martial law - Belagerungszustand / Guernica - which brings out a powerful irony to the song by juxtaposing the pageantry of Nazism to these downbeat lyrics that portray its dark side. I don't know if the anthem section is a genuine Nazi tune - if not, it's a superb pastiche of one. But if it is, its upbeat and disturbingly inspirational flavour is completely subverted by Belagerungszustand's lyrics. Loose partial translation:

The siren now wails over the whole city
Like the mantle of the Angel of Death
...
The birds sing of peace and freedom, but
the sound is sadly hopeless.
The homage of women to the holy cross
becomes the curse of the black devil.

If you read Japanese, the official Guernica site is here. If you do, I'd be delighted if you could feed back any information on the background to Kaigenrei if you see any. What was its inspiration? Why did a Japanese songwriter choose to write a song in German? Is that compelling catchy anthem a real Nazi tune or a pastiche?

Addendum I like this one too: Denrisou karano Manazashi (which means something like "Gaze from the Ionosphere") I haven't the least idea what the lyrics are about, but it has a Weill-like urgency and atonality to it.



- Ray

Mrs Miniver

I just ran into an erudite eggcorn - Mrs. Minerva for the wartime film Mrs. Miniver - and had some mild bibliographic surprises on Googling the background. Mrs Miniver, you may well know, was a classic World War II tear-jerker with a strong propaganda element. What Went the Day Well? did in portraying rural working-class England and This Happy Breed did in portraying urban working-class England, Mrs. Miniver did for middle-class England.

What I didn't realise was that it was loosely based on a 1939 book of the same name, based in turn on a series of Times newspaper articles by "Jan Struther". They told from the viewpoint of the fictional Mrs. Caroline Miniver an account of the daily life of her middle-class family - she and her husband Clem, and their children Vin, Judy and Toby - in the pre-war years.  Partially autobiographical, the articles drew on the life of the author, Joyce Maxtone Graham (the pseudonym came from her birth name, Joyce Anstruther). They were immensely popular, though with a few dissenters:

There were a few people who hated Struther's miniaturist approach, finding it twee and offensively irrelevant. When her columns came out in book form just after war began, E M Forster's review in the New Statesman was sneering and snobbish. Rosamond Lehmann said in The Spectator that the effect of waiting for the next Mrs Miniver column was like being locked up in Borstal while anticipating a visit from a particularly condescending Lady Bountiful.
- Secretly in love with a refugee: Musings on chrysanthemums concealed a complicated life, The Telegraph, 21 Nov 2001.

Skimming the reviews of reviews, it seems that Forster's complaint was that Mrs Miniver purported to be a kind of classless Everyman, but actually hankered after the privilege and values of the upper class; and Lehmann's was that it was just so nauseatingly and relentlessly nice, a view echoed by a Times correspondent:

Sir, I too have been hoping for another article by Mrs. Miniver, but for quite a different reason from your other writers. I pay a tribute to her creator when I say that I always think of Mrs. Miniver as a real person, and I hate her with an immense hatred. She is always so smug, so right, such a marvellous manager, and things always go so well for her. Well, nothing goes on like that forever: something horrible must be going to happen to the lady soon, and I want to know her reactions.

I have no doubt that Clem will become an A.R.P. warden, Vin will join up, Mrs. M., assisted by her daughter, will cope in a wonderful manner with refractory billettees and run the hospital supply depot in the manner born, and Toby will join the Boy Scouts. It would be so much more helpful if Mrs. Miniver would tell us how she would be behave if her husband had an affair with a pretty A.R.P. worker, if her son refused to join up, and if some of the workers at the hospital rose up in revolt and told the lady exactly where she got off. I expect that she would cope with it all in a slightly hurt and surprised manner. No, I think the only thing for Mrs. Miniver is a direct hit from a bomb, and I am quite certain that within a month Clem would marry again a young and pretty, untidy woman, who never by any chance said or did the correct thing, and they would be enormously happy, and so should I.
Yours truly, MF Savory, 24 Arundel Court, Worthing.
- Letters, The Times, Oct 12, 1939

Despite such malcontents, the popularity continued with the bestselling book compilation, which was also, by all accounts, highly influential in ways more than mere popularity.

The columns were first published in book form in 1939, shortly after the outbreak of war. Struther stopped the regular newspaper columns that year, but wrote a series of letters from Mrs. Miniver, expanding on the character's wartime experiences. These were published in later editions.

The book became an enormous success, especially in the United States, where Struther went on a lecture tour shortly after the book's release.

The U.S. was still officially neutral, but as war with Nazi Germany intensified in Europe, the tribulations of the Miniver family engaged the sympathy of the American public sufficiently that President Franklin D. Roosevelt credited it for hastening America's involvement in the war. Winston Churchill is said to have claimed that it had done more for the Allied cause than a flotilla of battleships. Churchill is further quoted by Bernard Wasserstein in his book, "Barbarism and Civilization," as saying that the book (and later the film) was worth "six divisions of war effort."

In 1942, when the film came out, Roosevelt ordered it rushed to theaters.
- Wikipedia, Mrs. Miniver, 20:50, 28 July 2011 revision

Struther was a versatile author. I've known the name Jan Struther from childhood, as the author of the hymn lytrics to Lord of All Hopefulness and When a Knight Won His Spurs, but for some reason always assumed it to be male Dutch name. Her works would normally be well in copyright, but by agreement with the Maxtone Graham family, the Collected Works of Jan Struther is online in a special Internet edition at Mary Mark Ockerbloom's extensive A Celebration of Women Writers site.

The online text of Mrs. Miniver, still very readable apart from its value as a period social document, has a good biographical intro reproduced from the Virago edition. She was a good poet too, both on serious and comic topics; I very much like her 1936 The Modern Struwwelpeter, which first appeared in Punch. It updates Heinrich Hoffman's 1845 book as a new set of cautionary rhymes including the story of Disobedient David, who fiddles with electric light and is driven away by demons, never to be seen again; Anthony, the Boy Who Knew Too Much, who gets an appropriate comeuppance for his spoilsport griping during a conjurer's act; and The Dreadful Story of Janet, who likes trying on clothes in shops so much that she gets to do it permanently...

For a more structured online biography, see the Orlando Project, and there a deal of background at Jan Struther's Mrs. Miniver Family Internet Edition, an official site by Struther's son Robert Maxtone Graham. Struther's grand-daughter Ysenda Maxtone Graham published a print biography, The Real Mrs Miniver, in 2001.

Struther got the name "Miniver", by the way, from the heraldic and ceremonial fur. A number of accounts tell the story: how James Fleming of The Times asked Struther to come up with a name beginning with "M", and how she wandered the streets looking for inspiration.

Just then I noticed a man carrying a big bundle of skins out of one of the furriers' warehouses. I wondered what kind of skins they were and what country they came from. Then I remembered that vair was one of the furs in heraldry, and I tried to see how many of the others I could recollect. There was vair and counter-vair and potent and counter-potent and ermine and erminois; and I had a sort of idea that there was another one whose name I couldn't remember for several minutes. When I luckily did remember it, I went straight back to Printing House Square and said to Mr. Fleming, "Look here, what about calling her 'Mrs. Miniver'?" He chewed the stem of his pipe sardonically and said : 'That's not half bad.' Knowing Mr. Fleming's genius for understatement, I took this to mean that he approved ..."

This anecdote appears in several places, usually in the context of expressing her general frustration at being identified with Mrs. Miniver. See The Truth about Mrs. Miniver (Jan Struther, English (1939) 2(12): 347-355); A Pocketful of Pebbles (Jan Struther, 1956); and Under the Reading Lamp: Jan Struther tells us about the origin of "Mrs Miniver" (WJ Hurlow, Ottawa Citizen, Sep 27, 1946).

- Ray

Bug-hunts and militarism

It's not often that films resurrect political controversies that accompanied books published decades ago, but this was the case with Paul Verhoeven's Starship Troopers, which had its UK terrestrial TV premiere on Friday night. The film is based on Robert Heinlein's 1959 novel of the same name, which depicts a future war between humans and alien "Bugs". The book won a Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1960, and has been massively influential. In fiction and film, it originated the now-familiar "Space Marine" genre; and as a book, it has long-running popularity in the US military, being on the reading lists of various services and military academies.

The controversy concerned the politics. Robert Heinlein was one of a number of US science fiction authors with libertarian/right-wing leanings, and the book (through extensive in-book polemic and lectures) argues for a system of government that critics described as promoting militarism (Dean McLaughlin called it "a book-length recruiting poster") or even amounting to fascism. Heinlein's society is admirable in many respects - there is no racism or sexism, and it is definitely meritocratic. But its peculiarities include a two-tiered citizenship, in which only military veterans are allowed to vote or hold public office (in Heinlein's view, a means to ensure that some rights in society should only come if you have proven responsibility). See Wikipedia for more detail on the contraversies.

With Heinlein, the description "armchair general" springs readily to mind. Although he served in the US Navy, he was invalided out with tuberculosis and spent World War 2 as a civilian. Other science fiction writers who had seen active service were incensed enough to write ripostes with a different spin on the same scenario: Joe Haldemann's The Forever War and Harry Harrison's Bill the Galactic Hero. I find both far better reading than the fairly didactic original. Joe Haldemann, who was drafted into the Vietnam War, during which he was wounded, writes tellingly about personal loss and the culture shock of returning veterans, exploring this through the device of time dilation in faster-than-light travel. Round trips to and from military engagements take a short time from the traveller's viewpoint, but decades and even centuries from the viewpoint of Earth. Soldiers therefore return to find loved ones long-dead, and encounter even more radical social changes (at one point, the veteran hero finds he is called "the old queer" by new recruits, because while he has been away homosexuality has become the norm, in order to counter disastrous overpopulation).

Harry Harrison, who served in WW2 as a gunsight mechanic and gunnery instructor, took a different tack: satire. Bill the Galactic Hero is a comic dig at militarism and imperialism; it focuses largely on the extended pointless ritual of military life that its dim farmboy conscript encounters. A Vietnam veteran said to Harrison, "That's the only book that's true about the military." The satire tackles the creations of other authors too, such as the sanitary problems of planet-sized cities (Harrison's "Helior" is recognisably Trantor from Asimov's Foundation Series). There are also allusions to Joseph Heller and, I think, EM Forster's A Passage to India (the amusing defence tactics at Bill's court-martial appear modelled on the trial of Dr Aziz, and Felix Grant commented to me a while back that the description of the trooper Tembo - "He had lovely, purplish-black skin that made Bill a little jealous, because his was only a sort of grayish pink" - uses a phraseology that appears to allude to Fielding's remark about the white races being "pinko-grey").

Which leads to the Verhoeven film. It didn't do well in the box office, probably because it wasn't clear what the director was trying to achieve. Verhoeven retained most of the details of Heinlein's book, but subverted it by adding a strongly satirical edge, kitting out the militaristic Earth culture with identifiably Nazi trappings. The result is a film that manages to work on its own terms as an action story, while making you distinctly uneasy that the heroes come from a society that's deeply creepy by our standards (essentially a USA that has gone over the edge into a cheery fascism). This essay by Owen Williams - The Provocateur Auteur: Paul Verhoeven and the Reception of Starship Troopers (1997) - discusses the film and reactions to it, and Verhoeven himself describes his intentions in this interview, Big bugs! Big bucks! Director Paul Verhoeven rides "B-movie" Starship Troopers to a timely comeback. I think I'll get out the video: it looks worth re-watching in the light of this background. There are plenty of clips on YouTube.

Addendum: Felix Grant just reminded me of All My Sins Remembered, another Joe Haldeman novel worth finding. As described in this this review, it's a paste-up of several standalone stories by Haldeman about an interplanetary undercover operative, Otto McGavin. Initially adventurous in tone - the science-fictional equivalent of James Bond, complete with Q-style gadgets - the story darkens. As revealed by McGavin's periodical hypnotic audits, he carries an increasing psychological burden from traumatic experiences, personality implants that he abhors, and the tension between his unprincipled work and his "Anglo-Buddhist" upbringing, leading to his complete breakdown. The Forever War could be criticised as, ultimately, pulling its punches; All My Sins Remembered doesn't.
-Ray

Great War Dust Jackets

Lily has updated the shop window to an autumn scheme: a collection of hardbacks notable for their colourful vintage jackets. In connection with that, Alan Hewer kindly provided us with some background about dust jackets, which didn't come into widespread use until the late 1800s. Nowadays, in book-collecting circles, they're viewed as integral to the book, but this wasn't the case prior to the 1950s, making vintage ones rare (and in many cases worth more than the book itself). There's more on this at Alan's website, Great War Dust Jackets, which focuses on his collection of jackets for books about World War I, often with striking cover artwork, published between 1914 and 1939. I've put a link on our main links page too.
      If this topic interests you, there are a number of other good online collections: for instance, the New York Public Library's Digital Gallery collection of Dust Jackets from American and European Books, 1926-1947, Tom Swift Dust Jackets, classic crime fiction jacket artists, and so on - just Google "dust jackets".
      Jackets are even a matter of controversy. Book buyers have to look out for facsimile jackets, often very well-made - but even with real ones, opinion is divided: is it acceptable that the jacket merely match the title and edition, or must it must be with its specific original book? See Dust-jackets: the debate at the Rare Book Society site.

White Magic

Rather quiet in the shop today - autumn setting in - so I had a chance to finish reading White Magic, the early autobiography of stage magician Jasper Maskelyne. As you can see from the Channel 4 microsite, Magic at War, Maskelyne's name resurfaced in recent years for the interesting accounts of his WWII exploits in the field of camouflage (notably his vanishing the Suez Canal and hiding Alexandria harbour by creating a duplicate).
      White Magic precedes all of this, and covers the broader story of Maskelyne's family, from the Royal Astronomer Nevil Maskelyne via Jasper's grandfather and father (both stage magicians, the former also having been the inventor of a range of coin-operated slot machines and an early variable-spacing typewriter). Most of the book, however, is devoted to Maskelyne's own recollections of his pre-War career.
      It's interesting stuff - but, as is often the case with with showpersons' memoirs, some of it grades well into the fanciful ("Devil Worship in London" - "I attend a Witches' Sabbath" - child sacrifice in France, and so on). This is a bit of a problem with most Maskelyne accounts. Military historian and magician Richard Stokes maintains a website, Jasper Maskelyne, Master of Make-Believe, for a meticulous critique of the Maskelyne story, originally a 21-article series written for the Australian magic magazine Geniis Magic Journal. His research shows that the general view of Maskelyne comes largely from David Fisher's 1983 book The War Magician, which reworked, with additional material, Maskelyne's own ghost-written 1949 memoirs, Magic - Top Secret.
      Stokes documents the many chronological errors and unsubstantiated elements, concluding that Maskelyne's wartime role has been highly embroidered, both by chroniclers and by Maskelyne himself. In Confessions of a Ghost-Hunter, Stokes furthermore presents solid evidence for the identity of the ghost-writer, a Frank S Stuart who specialised in sensational reportage. Nevertheless, it all makes good reading: The Scotsman wrote of White Magic, "This book is almost as fascinating as an actual display of skilful conjuring". Perhaps the telling of a good yarn should be viewed as a performance in itself - as long as it's not taken as reliable history.

- Ray

Pope and Wain's Cat Scouts

The co-authors of The Cat Scouts, a scarce children's book written by Jessie Pope and illustrated by Louis Wain, make an interesting partnership.

The Cat Scouts, written in 1912, is somewhat gung-ho, all about the merits of discipline and bravely putting up with hardship (the cat on the left is not about to be murdered, but released after punishment for playing marbles on duty). But Pope's style came into full flow with her WW1 pro-war poems, such as The Call and Who's for the Game? The anti-war poet Wilfred Owen, who knew first-hand that the trenches were far from the jolly game she portrayed, wrote a pointed dedication to her on the first draft of his Dulce et decorum est. The subject of World War 1 poetry is a very large topic; read Where death becomes absurd and life absurder for a good overview. One redeeming feature for Jessie Pope, though, was her recognition of the significance of Robert Tressell's The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists and brokering its publication, even if its first edition appeared in her bowdlerised version that trimmed much of the socialist content and turned it into a more conventional "working-class hardship" story.

Wain's work, of which The Cat Scouts is typical, comes across as twee by present standards, though he has a following (see Catland) and he deserves credit for a major role in fostering a positive attitude toward cats in Britain in the late 19th century. Much of the interest nowadays is in the pathological aspects of his art. In later life, he developed schizophrenia, and its manifestation in his work - cats becoming increasingly threatening and psychedelic until they lose all resemblance to cats - is classic in the neurological field. See Cats Painted in the Progression of Psychosis of a Schizophrenic Artist. This Cat Fanciers' Association article, Louis Wain - Cat Artist, has a good short biography and bibliography.

- Ray