Scholasticus Hardassus

This is Carl Linnaeus, the famous Swedish naturalist and taxonomist, who invented the binomial system of naming organisms we still use today (eg 'homo sapiens' or 'rattus rattus')

He seems a genial, easy-going sort of chap, doesn't he? 

Well, now. In 1756, Linnaeus fell out with one of his protégés, Daniel Rolander, who refused to show him some plant samples from his expedition to Suriname, which Linnaeus felt he had a right to see. 

In response, Linnaeus... broke into Rolander's rooms (or possibly just barged in, it's not clear, but entered by force at any rate) and stole the samples. 

Then, he used his influence to black-ball Rolander from any further appointments at Stockholm University, essentially wrecking his career. 

And then... he found a tiny, ground-dwelling bug - this one, in fact -

...and gave it the scientific name 'Aphanus Rolandri', or 'Ignoble Rolander'. 

What I'm saying is... do not cross Carl Linnaeus.  Carl Linnaeus is not messing about.

A Likely Story.

This is Evelyn Cheesman. She was a British entomologist, collector and traveller, who was the first female curator at London Zoo, and collected around 70,000 specimens for the Natural History Museum from across the South Pacific, during a lifetime of long solo expeditions, the last of which she made at the age of 73. If you want to read more about her - and really, at this point, how could you not? - here's a good place to start.

Anyway, in one of her many books about her adventures, 'Time Well Spent', she talks about the types of knowledge that indigenous people were prepared to accept from a foreigner and a woman, and that which they were not. To summarise, she says they were prepared to accept facts about things they'd never seen before - cameras, for instance - but not about things familiar to them.

"I am thinking now of the people on Malekula, New Hebrides, who did not know that a caterpillar changed into a butterfly. That new idea was too much to swallow from a stranger. One serious old man made a speech purporting to assure me that, even if this irregular sort of thing took place in my country, I need not expect it to occur on their island."

"You have been in Afghanistan, nhi-ka"

Wonderfully, the Tariana language of the Amazon has different grammatical tenses that indicate where you got the evidence for what you are saying: Whether you saw it, detected it non-visually, were told about it, inferred it... or assumed it. 

So, according to the fieldwork of the linguist Alexandra Aikhenvald, here are five ways to report on the culinary activities of your father's younger brother:


Nu-nami karaka di-merita-naka
My younger uncle is frying chicken' (I (the speaker) see him)

Nu-nami karaka di-merita-mha
'My younger uncle is frying chicken' (I smell the fried chicken, but cannot see this)

Nu-nami karaka di-merita-pida-ka
'My younger uncle has fried chicken' (I was told recently)

Nu-nami karaka di-merita-nhi-ka
'My younger uncle has fried chicken' (I see bits of grease stuck on his hands and he smells of fried chicken)

And my favourite:

Nu-nami karaka di-merita-si-ka
'My younger uncle has fried chicken' (I assume so: he gets so much money he can afford it, and he looks like he has had a nice meal)

My younger uncle.

Aikhenvald goes on to say that Tariana speakers use the second of these tenses when reporting their dreams, since they did not really 'see' them. Unless... they belong to the highest caste of shaman, known as yawi, whose dreams are taken to be true. (Yawi are also believed to be capable of turning themselves into jaguars. So I suppose I can see why you'd let them tell you their boring dreams.)

Inventory

This is G. K. Chesterton and his wife Frances, nee Blogg. They were a devoted and happy couple, and Frances was largely responsible for managing the chronically disorganised Chesterton's life. (He famously once sent her a telegram reading 'Am in Market Harborough. Where ought I to be?')

When they were engaged, Gilbert sent Frances a letter beginning '...I am looking over the sea and endeavouring to reckon up the estate I have to offer you.' You can read all twelve items he came up with here, but here are the first six. The sixth is my favourite.

1st. A Straw Hat. The oldest part of this admirable relic shows traces of pure Norman work. The vandalism of Cromwell's soldiers has left us little of the original hat-band.

2nd. A Walking Stick, very knobby and heavy: admirably fitted to break the head of any denizen of Suffolk who denies that you are the noblest of ladies, but of no other manifest use.

3rd. A copy of Walt Whitman's poems, once nearly given to Salter, but quite forgotten. It has his name in it still with an affectionate inscription from his sincere friend Gilbert Chesterton. I wonder if he will ever have it.

4th. A number of letters from a young lady, containing everything good and generous and loyal and holy and wise that isn't in Walt Whitman's poems.

5th. An unwieldy sort of a pocket knife, the blades mostly having an edge of a more varied and picturesque outline than is provided by the prosaic cutler. The chief element however is a thing 'to take stones out of a horse's hoof.' What a beautiful sensation of security it gives one to reflect that if one should ever have money enough to buy a horse and should happen to buy one and the horse should happen to have stone in his hoof--that one is ready; one stands prepared, with a defiant smile!

6th. Passing from the last miracle of practical foresight, we come to a box of matches. Every now and then I strike one of these, because fire is beautiful and burns your fingers. Some people think this waste of matches: the same people who object to the building of Cathedrals.

Spellbound

I've just seen a wizard in Starbucks.

I assumed the book he was reading, Transcendental Magic by Eliphas Levi, was either a history of magic or possibly a novel. But no, it turns out it's a book written in 1855 about transcendental magic, and how to do it.

At one point, it made him laugh.

He also invented the petard.

This is Sir Robert Watson-Watt, who described himself in his autobiography as:

'a sixth rate mathematician, a second rate physicist, a second rate engineer, and a bit of a meteorologist, something of a journalist, a plausible salesman of ideas, interested in politics, liking to believe there is some poetry in my physics, some physics in my politics.'

He may have been a little modest there. Watson-Watt is generally credited with the invention of radar; and certainly with the system of detecting aircraft with it, and the chain of radar stations on the south coast of England, which is often cited as the reason the British won the Battle of Britain; which in turn is often cited as the turning point of the war. Imagine what he might have achieved if he'd been a fifth rate mathematician...

Anyway, I bring him to your attention today because later in life he was stopped for speeding by a policeman, using a radar gun. I think it's safe to say the irony was not lost on him.

ROUGH JUSTICE

by Robert Watson-Watt.

Pity Sir Robert Watson-Watt,
strange target of this radar plot

And thus, with others I can mention,
victim of his own invention.

His magical all-seeing eye
enabled cloud-bound planes to fly

but now by some ironic twist
it spots the speeding motorist

and bites, no doubt with legal wit,
the hand that once created it.

And so, all you courageous boffins
who may be nailing up your coffins,
(particularly those whose mission
is in the realm of nuclear fission)
pause and mull fate’s counter plot
and learn with us what’s Watson-Watt.

Hidden fires.

Sat opposite this chap on the train at the weekend. Balding, glasses, fawn jacket over quiet check shirt, doing the Independent crossword. Maybe not one of life's hellraisers.

But now, if you didn't spot it immediately, have another look at the gap at the top of his shirt... 

Do judge a book by its cover, that's very much what the cover is there for. But don't judge a man by his fawn jacket... 

But not least.

This is Cuthbert Lempriere Holthouse. Doubtless you've always wondered what Cuthbert Lempriere Holthouse looked like - well, he looked like this.

The object he is holding is the last ever of the original Wooden Spoons, in the sense of a mocking award for finishing last. It began as a tradition amongst the Mathematics faculty at Cambridge University, from at least 1803 until 1909, of awarding a wooden spoon to the student who graduated with the lowest passing mark. The spoons got bigger and more elaborate over time, culminating in this one, which was converted from a rowing blade, as it was apparently Cuthbert's devotion to the college boat which cost him greater academic success. 


(Were you surprised a maths student named Cuthbert turned out to be such a jock? Me too. Shame on us for our lazy preconceptions.)


The reason the tradition ended in 1909 is apparently because 'the system was changed so that the results were announced in alphabetical order rather than by exam mark.' Though really, if that little manoeuvre successfully rendered an entire graduating class of Cambridge mathematicians unable to work out who had come bottom, I can’t help but think wooden spoons were due all round. 

Great unidexters of history.

Maybe you knew this already, but I've just discovered that Robert Louis Stevenson based the character of Long John Silver on his friend, the physically imposing, charming, and one-legged William Ernest Henley. Henley was also a friend of J.M.Barrie, and it was his daughter Margaret Henley's description of Barrie as her 'friendy-wendy' that inspired at least the name of Wendy in Peter Pan.

So, Wendy Darling's father was Long John Silver. No wonder she took Captain Hook in her stride.

Bonus facts: William Earnest Henley wrote the poem Invictus, which Nelson Mandela found so inspiring, and which gave its name to the film last year.

Captain Hook is described in Peter Pan as 'the only man Long John Silver ever feared' Also, he went to Eton; as did Bertie Wooster, Peter Wimsey, and James Bond.

Throughout 'Treasure Island', Long John Silver is referred to by his fellow mutineers by his nickname... 'Barbecue'. Which, for me, slightly detracted from his menace.

Sibling rivalry.

Christoph Dassler, a worker in a German shoe factory in the early twentieth century, had two sons, Adolf and Rudolf. Adolf trained as a cobbler, and the brothers decided to set up a shoe factory of their own - the Gebruder Dassler Schuhfabrik -  in their mother's laundry, in their home town of Herzogenaurach. As time went on, a rift grew between the brothers; according to one account because Rudolf was the more enthusiastic Nazi; according to another because of an occasion during an air raid when Adolf and his wife got into his air raid shelter to find Rudolf and his family already there, and Adolf said ‘The dirty bastards are back again’ - referring, he later claimed, to the Allied planes. Rudolf wasn't convinced that’s what he was referring to.

Whatever the reason, in 1948 the partnership broke up for good, and Rudolf moved to new premises on the other side of the river, and set up his own shoe factory, which he originally named Ruda (RUdolf DAssler), but then changed, to Puma.

Meanwhile, Adolf renamed the original company, also after himself. Adolf wasn’t generally known as Adolf, though (especially not by 1948, I imagine) - he was known as Adi. Adi Dassler.

The international headquarters of both companies are still located across the river from one another in the small town of Herzogenaurach. Rudolf and Adolf, who never reconciled, are both buried there too, in the same cemetery... as far away from each another as possible. 

Muttonchops and parrots: for those of you who like your Earls of Aberdeen a little racier.

I promise this marks the end of Lord Aberdeen week. More eminent scholars than I have been looking into the whole question of Lord Aberdeen's father-in-law and that dog he invented. So let us instead now briefly examine Lord Aberdeen's great-great-grandfather, and his grandson.

Our Lord Aberdeen, John, and his wife, who called themselves 'we twa', seem to have been beloved wherever they went, sent off by Queen Victoria around the Empire like benevolent supernannies, jollying Ireland along here, inventing brigades of nurses for the Canadians there, and generally adding to the gaiety of nations (although along the way, it seems, spending the family's money like water, especially on fruit farms and pageants, two things to which her Ladyship seems to have been particularly partial).

It was a different story when Lord A's ancestor George Gordon, the third Earl, was in the driving seat. Known as 'Lord Skinflint' and 'The Wicked Earl', he evicted tenants; only granted 19 year leases, and in general, I think we're safe in concluding, ensured there were no fruit farms or pageants for anyone on his watch. He was also quite the ladies man. Here, according to John Doran, is the charming tale of how he met his wife:

"During a stop-over at the Stafford Arms in Wakefield, he was so pleased with the mutton chops served for his supper that he demanded to see the cook. Thus he met Catharine Hanson, a handsome woman of 29 and immediately led her to his bedchamber. When the time came for him to return home, George could not resist the temptation to again sample the delights of the Stratford Arms. This time Catharine had a surprise for Lord Aberdeen. Faced with a loaded pistol and the choice of marriage or his life, George pragmatically decided the Gordons of Haddo would benefit from an infusion of English blood."

As we have seen, Lord John did not noticeably take after Lord George. But genes are funny things, as we will see when we now turn to Lord John's grandson, Alastair Gordon, 6th Marquess of Aberdeen and Temair (Lord John was promoted from 7th Earl to 1st Marquess, hopefully for services to comedy, or at least pageants.) Alastair, who died in 2002 at the age of 82, was an artist and art critic, 'a tall, sprightly, bespectacled man with a toothbrush moustache', who listed his recreations in Who's Who as 'wine, women and song'. He wasn't joking, either. The year before his death, he wrote an article for The Oldie entitled 'The Good Whores Guide', comparing and contrasting his wartime experiences in Mme Janette's brothel in Beirut, and Mrs Fetherstonhaugh's 'private hotel' in Kensington. Here he is on Mrs F's recruitment policy:

"This consisted of asking girls who seemed as if they might be enthusiastic amateurs - out-of-work actresses or married women with husbands away at the war - if they would like to come to a party. If they then showed signs of enjoying themselves, it would be suggested that they continue to do so for money."

His wife Anne, according to the obituary, 'regarded her husband's interest in sexual matters with tolerant amusement' and 'decorated their home with her colourful flocks of parrots.' That's what I call a wife.

I now promise not to go on about any other Lord Aberdeen. Not even Lord John's grandfather: the Prime Minister who took Britain into the Crimean War; or the current incumbent, Lord Alastair's son Alexander, and his ill-fated tank-driving business. You can have too much of anything, even Lords Aberdeen.