PASSING NOTES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24415, 28 September 1940, Page 6

PASSING NOTES

For adequate comparisons wherewith to describe the present ordeal of London we must go to the Apocalypse or to Dante or to Milton, The world’s greatest city of all time is being tried by fire, while the whole world beyond is looking on in breathless suspense and wondering imagination. And well it might. The Rome to which all roads led in the small world of ancient days was but a suburb compared with the London to which now lead all the roads of five continents. If you stand in Piccadilly Circus long enough you will see any person in the wide world you desire to see. For London is Joseph Chamberlain’s “ world’s clearing house,” Emerson’s “ epitome of our times and the Rome of to-day,” Disraeli’s “not a city but a nation.” London’s story is a “ Tale of Two Cities,” the city of London enclosing “ The City.” The name is Celtic, meaning “ Pool Hill ” —the spot where the “ widening ” of the Thames furnished a convenient assemblying place for Roman ships and a “ hill ” for defence. The Roman Caesars made it a wellpatronised site for shipping and enclosed it with a wall, the gates of which are still known as Ludgate, Aldersgate, Moorgate and Cripplegate. This Old London was the Lon don of Wat Tyler and Jack Cade, the London from which John Gilpin set out on his famous ride. This is still “ The City ” where St. Paul’s towers in majesty, and where stand the Bank of England—the “ Old Lady of Threadneedle street ” —the Royal Exchange, the Guildhall, Mansion House, the Tower and the Inns of Court. Crammed with a third of a million workers by day, by night it is a hamlet of barely 30,000 people—mostly watchmen, porters and janitors. And here and only here is the Church of St. Mary-le-Bow, the sound of whose famous bells makes a man a “ Cockney ” from his birth.

Much more than a modern Rome of merchants,., financiers, administrators has London been. As a modern Athens she has inspired most ol what is greatest in English literature and thought. In London Chaucer wrote his Canterbury Tales, Shakespeare his plays, Bacon his Advancement of Learning, Milton and Keats their poetry, Fielding and Dickens their novels, Addison, Lamb and Hazlitt their Essays, and Samuel Johnson his Dictionary. In the Mermaid Tavern in Cheapside Shakespeare and Ben Jonson 1 had theii battles of wits—contests between a quick-moving English man-of-war and a slower and more heavily laden Spanish galleon. Shakespeare found even in the small London of his day a central furnace of modern thought —described as such in the magnificent declamation of the chorus on Henry V’s triumphant entry into London after Agincourt:

But now behold, In the quick forge and working-house of thought. . „ , How London doth pour forth her citizens. A great Londoner was Dr Johnson. “ Sir,” said he to Boswell, “ the man who is tired of London is tired of life, for there is in London all that life can afford.” Johnson saw in London the greatest manifestation of human mentality within his reach.

But nowhere does Johnson reveal a sense of the “spectacle” of London. This was left lo Lamb, who writes upon it so ecstatically: The lighted shops of the Strand; and Fleet street, the innumerable trades, tradesmen, arid customers, coaches, wagon*, playhouses, all the bustle and wickedness round about Covent Garden, the very women of the Town, the watchmen, the drunken scenes, the rattles—life awake, if you awake, at all hours of the night, the impossibility of being dull in Fleet street, the crowds, the very dirt and mud, the sun shining upon houses and pave-, ments, the print shops, the old bookstalls, parsons cheapening books, coffee houses, steams of soups from kitchens, the pantomimes, London itself a pantomime and a masquerade—all these things work themselves into my mind and feed me, without a power of satiating me. The wonder of these sights impels me into nightwalks about her crowded streets, and I often shed tears in the motley Strand for fullness of joy at so much life. But the real interpreter of London was Dickens. When a boy, living with his parents in Camden Town, he would run down to Covent Garden, snatch a few cabbage leaves from the market mud. and sniff them as though all the meaning of London were exhaling from them. Like Mr Weller’s. Dickens’s knowledge of London was “extensive and peculiar.” A lover of London was also the> Irishman. Thomas Moore: Go where we may, rest where we will, Eternal London haunts us still. Said a Dutch newspaper man in a 8.8. C. broadcast last week from London: “ The Englishman is supposed to take his pleasures sadly; but a lengthy association with Englishmen, and especially Londoners, has convinced me—and my present air-raid experiences confirm it—that the Englishman also takes his sorrows cheerfully.” Never in British history has the Londoner brought to his city a greater glory from end to end of the world. And never have greater eulogies been paid to the cheerful wit of the Cockney—for your real “ Bow Bells Cockney ” has long since embraced the whole of London. The very name “Cockney” is a jest. For “cockney” is derived from Middle English “coken-ei,” or “ ock’s egg”—popularity implying an egg small or malformed. In the fourteenth century the word came to mean a “ petted or cockered child ” —just the thing that the Cockney is not. Here spoke the countryman’s antipathy tc the Londoner and to everyone outside his village—as if to say, “ He’s a foreigner, heave a brick at him.” From an early seventeenth century writer are quoted the, words, “ I scorned to let a Bow Bell Cockney put me down.” Small though he be in size, the Cockney comes into his own—if he ever left it—by the nimbleness of wit that seems selfgenerating in all large cities, and by. the physical stamina which brought him such renown ir the hard struggles of the last war.

More about Spooner and Spoonerisms:

Dear Givis, —When reading your Notes last week, I perused those interesting instances of “Spoonerisms ” which you gave. One anecdote, however, falls rather flat. I refer to the one concerning the two gentlemen who collided at a street corner. One advised the other to “ look where he was going,” and was met with the retort to “ go where you are looking.” I have read that one before. May I point out that in your version you omitted to state that the one who was advised to “ go where he was looking” was cross-eyed. Therein lies the joke. Otherwise, it contains neither joke nor Spoonerism. The retort was merely an instance of ready wit. —I am, etc., Maungatua. If my correspondent “ Maungatua ” will read' over again the Note in

question, he will fin. it distinctly stated that the Bodley librarian with whom Dr Spooner collided “ had a bad squint.” What does this mean but that he was “ cross-eyed ”? As one might say, “ How small the world is! ” Another correspondent writes about Dr Spooner: Dear Civis, —Being a relative of the late Dr W. A. Spooner of “ spoonerism ” fame, 1 was interested in your comments on the subject last Saturday. I had the pleasure of dining at his house a few weeks before his death, and the following anecdote which emphasises his absent-mindedness was told to me. “He was going away for a short holiday, and his wife and one of the college porters accompanied him to the gate, where a cab was waiting. Before getting into the conveyance he handed his wife a ‘ tip,’ and kissed the porter.” In spite of the fact that he kissed the porter, he was not a “spooner” by nature! Could the terms “spooner” and “spooners” have found their birth in this incident I have quoted?—l am, etc., I Wonder. My correspondent has set a poser. The origin of ” —not likely to be the grqve and ’•everend personality of Dr Spooner—is shrouded in the mystery which should rightly envelope such things. The Oxford Dictionary mentions the use of the verb “to spoon ” as in colloquial use as early as 1831, and defines it as “ to make love in a silly, sentimental fashion.” Of suggestion as to origin there is none. We arc therefore left to conjecture with which normal meaning of spoon the noun “ spooner ” is connected. Is it with the nautical “to spoon”— meaning to “run before the wind” or “ to move rapidly on or upon another vessel ”? Or with the eighteenth century use of “a spoon” aa a simpleton, ninny, goose? Or with the fishing term “spoon”—a kind of artificial bait having the form of the bowl of a spoon used in spinning and trolling? You have your choice.

All absences of mind are, of course, not “spoonerisms.” Caricaturists the world over have pictured the typical university professor as a frowsy, unkempt, bespectacled, outside-the-wqrld figure, whose chief characteristic is absence of mind. Anecdotes of the absent-minded professor are legion:, A professor returned from his

lecture. On entering his room he thought he heard a noise, .apparently coming from beneath the bed. He listened for a moment, then called out, “Is there anyone here? ” The answer came “ No,

professor.” “Strange, strange,” muttered the professor, “I was certain I heard someone under the bed.” Another:

A professor who had fallen violently in love with a young lady proposed to her. “ But, professor, how can I? You are already married.” The professor looked at her blankly for a moment, took out his note book, consulted it, and exclaimed, “Why, dear me, so I am I’d forgotten.” There is reason to suspect that the professor, gay old dog, was not so absent-minded as he seemed. Best of all is the story told of Newton: A friend called upon Newton, who was in his study and hot to be disturbed. As it' was near dinner time the visitor sat down to wait. Presently a boiled chicken was brought in and set on the table. As Newton did not appear, after a time the visitor fell to and ate the chicken, replaced the cover, and instructed the servant to prepare another for her master. Just then Newton entered and . apologised for his delay. “ Give me leave to eat a-short dinner, then I shall be at .your service.”

He removed the cover, and turned to his friend with a smile. “ See

what we studious people are. 1 quite forgot I had already dined.” Finally there is the case of the professor who came down to breakfast one morning, kissed his egg and tapped his wife on the head with a spoon. " Civis.