I’m supposed to be having a massive desk clear-up and finish-off of various projects, so what am I doing ..

You’re Bettie Page!

What Classic Pin-Up Are You?
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I have to confess that I’d never heard of her, but she did have an interesting life, certainly self-fashioning herself in an admirable way. Her take on it:

“I don’t know what they mean by an icon. I never thought of myself as being that. It seems strange to me. I was just modeling, thinking of as many different poses as possible. I made more money modeling than being a secretary. I had a lot of free time. You could go back to work after an absence of a few months. I couldn’t do that as a secretary.”

I’m supposed to be having a massive desk clear-up and finish-off of various projects, so what am I doing ..

You’re Bettie Page!

What Classic Pin-Up Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

I have to confess that I’d never heard of her, but she did have an interesting life, certainly self-fashioning herself in an admirable way. Her take on it:

“I don’t know what they mean by an icon. I never thought of myself as being that. It seems strange to me. I was just modeling, thinking of as many different poses as possible. I made more money modeling than being a secretary. I had a lot of free time. You could go back to work after an absence of a few months. I couldn’t do that as a secretary.”

Having discovered a new exclamation – Zounds, see post below – I’ve also stumbled across another long-term word survivor, Alsatia. I recently emailed someone on this subject:

“The designation “Alsatia” in London is most commonly used for the area north of the river that was covered by the White Friar’s monastery (to the south of the west end of Fleet St). That had, it is commonly said, arisen because the Alsace/Alsatia area of continental Europe was also lawless. (No idea if that was true or not, but it was what London thought.)

This Alsatia was a constant source of trouble well into the 19th century. In one case, in 1691, the benchers of the Inner Temple ordered that the gate between the two areas be bricked up. The “Alsatians” attacked the workers and killed one of them, and when the sheriff arrived at the scene they knocked him down and stole part of his chain of office.”

The term’s origins seem to be lost in the mists of time; it is probably approaching 1,000 years old. But the term, used more generally, also survived, I’ve just found, well into the 20th-century. From Margery Allingham’s The Tiger in the Smoke (first published in 1952).

“It was a market, Geoffrey saw, one of those small Alsatias which are still dotted about the poorer parts of the city, protected by ancient custom and the independence of their patrons. Ramshackle stalls roofed with flapping tarpaulin and lit with naked bulbs jostled each other down each side of the littered road; their merchandise, which ranged from whelks to underwear, was open to the sooty air, while behind them tottering shops, open-fronted and ill lit, cowered odorously.”
(p. 95 in my 1953 Reprint Society edition)

Living as I do on Leather Lane in central London, in which just such a market survives, I recognise the description immediately, although the “tottering shops” here have been, or are being, gentrifed, and the council chases out the pirate software vendors.

Having discovered a new exclamation – Zounds, see post below – I’ve also stumbled across another long-term word survivor, Alsatia. I recently emailed someone on this subject:

“The designation “Alsatia” in London is most commonly used for the area north of the river that was covered by the White Friar’s monastery (to the south of the west end of Fleet St). That had, it is commonly said, arisen because the Alsace/Alsatia area of continental Europe was also lawless. (No idea if that was true or not, but it was what London thought.)

This Alsatia was a constant source of trouble well into the 19th century. In one case, in 1691, the benchers of the Inner Temple ordered that the gate between the two areas be bricked up. The “Alsatians” attacked the workers and killed one of them, and when the sheriff arrived at the scene they knocked him down and stole part of his chain of office.”

The term’s origins seem to be lost in the mists of time; it is probably approaching 1,000 years old. But the term, used more generally, also survived, I’ve just found, well into the 20th-century. From Margery Allingham’s The Tiger in the Smoke (first published in 1952).

“It was a market, Geoffrey saw, one of those small Alsatias which are still dotted about the poorer parts of the city, protected by ancient custom and the independence of their patrons. Ramshackle stalls roofed with flapping tarpaulin and lit with naked bulbs jostled each other down each side of the littered road; their merchandise, which ranged from whelks to underwear, was open to the sooty air, while behind them tottering shops, open-fronted and ill lit, cowered odorously.”
(p. 95 in my 1953 Reprint Society edition)

Living as I do on Leather Lane in central London, in which just such a market survives, I recognise the description immediately, although the “tottering shops” here have been, or are being, gentrifed, and the council chases out the pirate software vendors.

… that we live in an unusually uncouth or rough age can be found in my Christmas Amazon order, my usual present to myself, which includes a collection of verse from 1580 to 1830 (concentrated in the earlier section of that span).

Two samples from the milder end of the spectrum:

I owed my hostess thirty pound

I owed my hostess thirty pound,
And how d’ye think I paid her?
I met her in my turnip ground
And gently down I laid her.

She oped a purse as black as coal
To hold my coin when counted.
I satisfied her in the whole,
And just by tail she found it.

Two stones make pounds full twenty-eight,
And stones she had some skill in,
And if good flesh bear any rate
A yard’s worth forty shilling.

If this coin pass, no man that lives
Shall dun for past debauches.
Zounds, landlords, send but in your wives!
We’ll scour off all their notches.

(From an undated song sheet, probably early 18th century. In case you were wondering: “just by tail” means exactly paying off a debt; “yard” was a word for penis and “stones” testicles. Zounds I haven’t worked out – Google gives me ” a group of anarcho-punk rockers” – probably not quite right.)

And then Sir John Davies, leaving nothing to the imagination, and proving not much has changed in the weirder bedrooms of the nation …

When Francus comes to solace

When Francus comes to solace with his whore
He sends for rods and strips himself stark naked,
For his lust sleeps and will not rise before
By whipping of the wench it be awaked.
I envy him not, but wish I had the power
To make myself his wench for one half hour.
(From his Epigrammes and Elegies, ?1596. The modern text gives no idea of Francus was, but I bet contemporary readers did.)

Lovers, Rakes and Rogues: A New Garner of Love-songs and Merry Verses, 1580-1830, John Wardroper, Shelfmark, 1995. Poems pages 154-5 and 186.

… that we live in an unusually uncouth or rough age can be found in my Christmas Amazon order, my usual present to myself, which includes a collection of verse from 1580 to 1830 (concentrated in the earlier section of that span).

Two samples from the milder end of the spectrum:

I owed my hostess thirty pound

I owed my hostess thirty pound,
And how d’ye think I paid her?
I met her in my turnip ground
And gently down I laid her.

She oped a purse as black as coal
To hold my coin when counted.
I satisfied her in the whole,
And just by tail she found it.

Two stones make pounds full twenty-eight,
And stones she had some skill in,
And if good flesh bear any rate
A yard’s worth forty shilling.

If this coin pass, no man that lives
Shall dun for past debauches.
Zounds, landlords, send but in your wives!
We’ll scour off all their notches.

(From an undated song sheet, probably early 18th century. In case you were wondering: “just by tail” means exactly paying off a debt; “yard” was a word for penis and “stones” testicles. Zounds I haven’t worked out – Google gives me ” a group of anarcho-punk rockers” – probably not quite right.)

And then Sir John Davies, leaving nothing to the imagination, and proving not much has changed in the weirder bedrooms of the nation …

When Francus comes to solace

When Francus comes to solace with his whore
He sends for rods and strips himself stark naked,
For his lust sleeps and will not rise before
By whipping of the wench it be awaked.
I envy him not, but wish I had the power
To make myself his wench for one half hour.
(From his Epigrammes and Elegies, ?1596. The modern text gives no idea of Francus was, but I bet contemporary readers did.)

Lovers, Rakes and Rogues: A New Garner of Love-songs and Merry Verses, 1580-1830, John Wardroper, Shelfmark, 1995. Poems pages 154-5 and 186.