A Christmas Story by George Calderon

THE ACADEMY OF HUMOUR.

BY GEORGE CALDERON.

Woodham Daintry, Essex: October 15.

MY DEAR UNCLE, – I do not wonder at your surprise on hearing that I have again entered at an educational establishment, and I believe you will be still more surprised when you hear the kind of establishment it is. At the age of twenty-eight, as you very justly observe, a man has generally finished with that sort of thing, and is old enough to educate himself. What will you think when I tell you that two of my fellow pupils here are over sixty?

You must not suppose that I have abandoned my long cherished ambition of at last securing the Chair of Metaphysics in one of our Universities; not for one moment! And do not wrong me by imagining that the comfortable competence which has fallen to my lot through the generosity of poor Aunt Susan’s testamentary dispositions is sufficient to divert me from the principal object of my life. After one term here I intend to resume my independent researches in Ontology, and mean to be heard of at last. Cambridge itself will ring with my name; alma mater shall have no cause to blush for her alumnus.

As it is a great gratification to me to give you the fullest confidence, and impart to you all the details of my circumstances and aspirations, I will tell you the whole story of my new departure in full.

First I will premise that the establishment at which I am now residing, amongst the pleasant fields of Essex, is Professor Larrion’s Gelæological College, or Academy of Humour. Gelæology – the word, as I need hardly point out to you, comes from the Greek γελοϊος – is the science of the laughable, or ridiculous; and Professor Larrion, who has made a philosophical study of the subject, undertakes to teach to any man of good understanding the art of being humorous and amusing in the short space of some ten weeks. The College is only just opened; but from what I can judge of Professor Larrion on so brief and acquaintance, I feel sure that it is bound to be an extraordinary success. His hopes are very high; so also – I may be permitted to add – are his charges. (You see that the humorous atmosphere of the place is already beginning to tell on me, and I am commencing to make little jokes of my own.)

Now for the reason of my coming here. When I went down in September to stay with your friend, and, I venture now to add, my friend, Admiral Timminer, for the Chelmsford ball, it was still my intention, as it always has been from my Cambridge days, to remain single, in order the better to devote myself to the arduous pursuit of Mistress Metaphysics. But by what strange chances is a man’s fate altered! As soon as I set my eyes on Miss Kitty Timminer, all my plans were upset. Chairs of Metaphysics had no longer any charms for me, if Miss Kitty could not share them with me. (Is not this another joke?) If any one had described her to me beforehand I should have said at once that she was the last person in the world with whom I need have feared that I should fall in love. I never met anyone less interested in serious things in the whole of my life. You know her, of course; you must have seen her when you visited the Timminers at Chelmsford; so I need hardly describe the many particular beauties whose synthesis is so utterly bewitching. I really cannot write about her; whatever adjective I find is so hopelessly inadequate and tawdry. I cannot understand how any one who has seen her, even for a moment, can ever think of marrying anyone else.

However, to return to my subject. I pursued her with the most strenuous attentions. I was cheerful with her and even gay. At times I thought that she felt some little touch of what I felt, and I was on the point of declaring my passion. But something checked me. There were other men staying in the house, lively creatures, without a glimmer of intellect. When we were all together they cracked jokes and were always merry; she laughed and talked with them, while I sat glum and silent in the corner. I soon saw that one of these men, a certain Captain Bunching, of the Essex Light Infantry, was as deeply in love with Miss Kitty as the shallowness of his nature would allow. I was jealous; I envied him. Why, I thought to myself, why has this fat, brainless creature the art of making her rock with laughter while I, with fifty times his intellect, can bring nothing but the faintest of smiles to her lips? I listened to the conversation of these men and made mental notes of what they said; there was nothing in their ideas beyond my range of thought. Much of their success, it seemed to me, depended on the confidence of their manner. I strove to imitate them. I made attempts at saying funny things; but when, after much effort, I blurted them out a little late in the conversation, people looked at me blankly, with bewildered faces, and I sank back in my chair, hot, and blushing with mortification.

I saw my great defect. I was not humorous. I had been so long occupied with serious things that I had lost the art of being amusing.

Walking along the streets of London or any other city on a Sunday, I have often noted the happy faces of lovers that frequent them on that day. The man whispers two or three words in the girl’s ear, she throws down her eyes, and blushes and laughs delightedly. What is this secret of conversation, I wondered, that these common people have and from which I am excluded? Had I whispered three words in that girl’s ear, putting all my intellect into the effort, would she have laughed? I think not. I doubt whether she would even have blushed.

I determined to begin at the very beginning. I saw that in order to make any girl fall in love with me, I must first of all learn to be funny. Returning to London, I confided much of my trouble to Jack Sloper, a young barrister who was up at Trinity with me. He said he knew the very thing I wanted. Larrion, the man who had got him through his law examination, was giving up ‘cramming’, as it is called, for the bar, and was setting up an Academy of Humour in Essex, only a few miles from Chelmsford. I jumped at the idea, put myself into communication with Mr. Larrion – his title of Professor is only assumed for business purposes – and here I am!

Mr. Larrion is a man of powerful analytic intellect, and, I am told, very amusing. I have as yet heard no jokes from him myself, at least, not that I know of. His face wears such an air of imperturbable gravity that it is often hard to know whether he is being funny or not. When I arrived, he called the boot-boy to take my portmanteau, saying: ‘What ho, within there! Go, scullion, bear this traveller’s baggage to the donjon-keep.’ We none of us smiled except the boot-boy; he roared. I think very likely it was only a quotation.

In person Mr. Larrion is short and broad. He has a very large and muscular face, clean-shaven, and quite inscrutable.

His career has been a varied one. Finding his early years at the bar unremunerative he took to literature; he was the author of a series of articles called ‘Topsy Turtledove, by the Last of the Joneses’, which appeared in a paper known as the ‘Pink Un’. The sketches are very clever, I am told; I have not read them myself. However, literature proved no kindlier than law. He went to Paris and lived a chequered life, getting along as best he could with English lessons &c. I hear that at one time he was even a waiter at the Café Boulanger. Two years ago he returned to London and was very successful in preparing a certain class of law students for their examinations; he made them work only an hour a day, and fixed the leading cases in their minds under the form of amusing little stories and jingling rhymes. Now he has set up this Academy, and he has, I think, a real career before him.

I can best convey to you some notion of the daring and originality of his intellect by giving you an extract from one of the extremely sensible letters which he wrote to me when I first thought of joining him.

‘To the careful observer of the intercourse of men,’ he says, ‘nothing can be more patent than the Uniformity of Humour. To him it is plain that below the shifting surface of humorous conversation lie certain immutable principles or laws to which all Jokes conform. I have made it my task, by patient comparison and inference, to discover what those laws may be; to find a scientific basis for one of the most important arts of life; to save that art from being the privilege of the few, and even in their hands an instrument of uncertain success. My aim, like that of the Sage of Verulam, is to establish a method which shall be able exæquare ingenia, to make the fool and the philosopher equally good fools. That, Mr Jones, is what you want… You may often hear people say, ‘It was only a Joke’, as though a Joke were a trivial thing beside a serious remark. Those who speak in this way show a lamentable misapprehension of the position of Jokes in the scheme of nature. The philosopher, knowing that he has no excuse for existence but as a member of Society, sets himself to cultivate that faculty which is to win him his diploma of membership – the faculty of Rational Intercourse. Now of Rational Intercourse there are three kinds, consisting in the communication respectively of facts, of theories, and of Jokes. To communicate theories is the function of the intelligent bore; to communicate facts is the function of the unintelligent bore; nous autres, my dear Mr. Jones, we must crack our Jokes. The bores must still play a part in conversation; we cannot have conversation without theories and facts; these are the boughs on which the golden fruit is to hang. I shall have three or four paid bores at my Academy to start conversations and to act as the whetstones of our wit.’

Mr. Larrion’s household is in a very topsy-turvy condition at present; for all the pupils, myself included, were in such a hurry to begin, that we arrived three days before the time appointed – all except one, that is: he is expected tomorrow; I haven’t heard his name.

The servants are in such fits of laughter all day at what we do and say that they are quite incapable of work. Knowing the purpose of the Academy, they are prepared to find humour in everything. When the boot-boy awoke me the morning after my arrival, I said, ‘I shall want some hot water to shave with.’ I have never seen anybody laugh like he did; he knocked over the jug and rolled about on the floor. I also laughed, but not so immoderately, being in bed. Half an hour later, finding that no water came, I rang the bell. When I took the boy to task for his forgetfulness, he defended himself by saying that he ‘did not know I was serious’.

There are eleven pupils in all: three City men, five cavalry officers, two High Church curates, and myself. There are also six bores, i.e. people paid to be quite serious. They spend the morning reading the ‘Times’ and ‘Standard’, besides things like ‘Whitaker’, Encyclopedias &c. Two of them are specialists; one of these got a First in History at Oxford. Another is a decayed man about town; he takes in ‘Truth’ and the ‘Morning Post’, and knows an immense number of interesting things about people in London. In the afternoon we poke fun at them and play practical jokes on them. I am very glad I am not a bore.

You can have no conception of the gaiety of this place – apple-pie beds night after night, and booby-traps on every door. Mr. Larrion says he will lead us to higher things once we can get our studies ‘under way’.

Once a day we all go for a walk together. We walk in threes, with a bore in the middle of each trio, and a pupil of the Academy on either side. Of course we don’t keep to this order, but get running about in the open, knocking off one another’s hats, and all that sort of thing. The country people fly with every sign of terror when they see us approaching, for somehow or other the absurd rumour has got about that Mr. Larrion’s Academy is a private lunatic asylum.

However, it is getting late, and I must close this long letter, as Mr. Larrion has given me a number of anecdotes and puns to learn by heart before I go to bed.

Your loving Nephew,

Bilbury J. Jones

II.

Woodham Daintry: October 18.

MY DEAR UNCLE, – I am delighted to find that you are so much interested in the Academy, and that you so heartily approve of my coming here. I have, as you say, always been conspicuously wanting in humour; no man can feel it more keenly than myself. It is by no means for lack of effort; I have always tried my best, and now we shall see what a little study can do for me.

Imagine my disgust when Captain Bunching, of the Essex Light Infantry, the very man that I am studying to emulate, turned up yesterday at the Academy and entered himself for the term. I do not think it is fair that people who are already so humorous as he is should come here. However, I am not afraid of him; his presence will be an additional incentive to industry; I feel as if I were a boy at school again, preparing for the examination at the end of the term – but, oh! What a prize awaits the successful one! As soon as the course is over I shall fly into Chelmsford and bombard Miss Kitty with jokes. Captain Bunching, I feel certain, will do the same; we both have the same end in view. We shall sit on either side of Miss Kitty, plying our wit, and we shall soon see who is the better man!

Mr. Larrion’s first two lectures, on the History of Humour, have been profoundly interesting. I have made copious notes, and am sure that you will be interested to learn what he said. It may make you humorous too if I keep you ‘posted’ in his lectures; not that I mean for a moment, my dear uncle, that you are in any way wanting in comicality; but, with Christmas coming on, you may be glad of a little help.

Mr. Larrion began with Aristotle. I quote from my notes.

‘Aristotle defined wit as a mean between buffoonery and stolidity; but inasmuch as people are far too fond of jokes,’ says he, ‘buffoons are generally called wits.’ In all these philosophical writers there is to be noticed a certain shade of bitterness when they speak of the humorists. Hobbes, in speaking of the cause of laughter, says: “That it consisteth in wit, or, as they call it, in the jest, experience confuteth; for men laugh at mischances and indecencies wherein there lieth no wit nor jest at all.” One can scarcely help thinking that someone must have stolen his clothes while he was bathing.’

The professor was still more interesting when he launched into wider generalizations of the History of Humour.

‘Laughter being the distinctive characteristic of man, the more human we become, the more we shall laugh; and inasmuch as we must have something to laugh at, the progress of civilisation will be always accompanied by an advance in the Art of Humour. Taking Humour, in accordance with this theory, as a criterion of the civilisations of the past, many archæologists have been disappointed at finding no traces of it in the records of the Egyptians. Taking it as a criterion of the future, there are some who go so far as to believe that, in the course of evolution, the lower animals will learn to laugh; and that the jokes of today will in the end be relegated to the lowest orders of creation, sponges and the like; that the quip which used once to rouse the laughter of kings will at last shake the sides of the jelly-fish… The circumstances of life are always altering, and each new combination affords an opportunity for a new joke. Even language changes; twenty years ago it was impossible to make a Volapük pun.’ I shall certainly learn Volapük when I have finished the course.

He also made a very interesting calculation that if every male person in the British islands were to make a joke on coming of age we should have 150,000 new jokes every year. If these were all passed round we should hear 480 new jokes every day – Sundays, of course, excluded.

As you may well imagine, all this was Greek to Captain Bunching. He did not even take notes, but kept scribbling caricatures in his exercise book and winking at another of the military men. I don’t think he will have a chance.

Much as I admire Mr. Larrion’s intellect, I cannot fully agree with all that he says. He quoted a remark of Sydney Smith’s today as one of the best impromptus on record. On seeing a little girl stroke a tortoise one day, Sydney Smith observed that what she did was like stroking the dome of St. Paul’s to please the Dean and Chapter. I really must confess that I see very little point in this, for I am sure that the present Dean, at any rate, would be quite the opposite of pleased if he knew that anyone had been taking such a liberty with the building.

Your loving Nephew,

Bilbury J. Jones

III.

Woodham Daintry: November 12.

MY DEAR UNCLE, – Thank you for your letter. I will try to make up the joke you want and will send it as soon as it is ready.

I have been a little uneasy this afternoon, for Captain Bunching drove away in his dogcart as soon as lunch was over; and Pawley, one of the bores, who has become a great friend of mine, tells me that he has gone over to Chelmsford – to the Timminers’ of course. I do not think it is fair his going there like this in term time, because he knows that I am not yet far enough advanced to compete with him. What a beast he looked as he drove away! With his hat on the back of his head, and a great cigar sticking out from the middle of his fat red face!

Mr Larrion was very interesting this morning in dealing with the principles of joking.

‘We may roughly define a joke,’ he said, ‘as a thing which provokes laughter. Laughter is an intermittent, inarticulate sound due to the expulsion of breath through the larynx by a series of nervous convulsions of the diaphragm; and the humorist must always bear in mind that it is this phenomenon, and this alone, which he is endeavouring to produce.’

He recommends constant practice. ‘If you are not in form one evening, persevere. You will perhaps inadvertently say something funny; you may discover a joke if you cannot invent one… You must begin with the simplest form of joke, the joke which is made in answer to another person’s remark. Your answer must be pertinent in form, but impertinent in matter.

‘If, however, there was any personal animus in the remark addressed to you, you may best express your contempt for the speaker by a rejoinder which makes no pretence to relevance, such as “You go and dye your hair”.

‘A lone-joke is made on the same principle as a joke in answer.

‘You must always be ready with answers to the commonplace openings of conversation, especially to weather-gambits. For instance, if anybody says “The rain is coming down!” your best answer is: “Did you expect it to go up?” If an old gentleman, a friend of your father’s, say, observes to you, “I think I’ve seen your face before”, you should reply, “You didn’t expect to see it behind, did you?”’

After the lecture we practised latent gambits; that is, given a commonplace, to joke in two moves. I made up one or two and tried them on the bores, but somehow I could never get them to give the right answer to my first remark, so they didn’t come off.

To my great relief Captain Bunching has just come back from Chelmsford, looking very glum, while I write. What a beast he is! How I hate him!

I have a hedgehog that I am going to put in his bed to-night. Of course he will have no right to be angry, as it is only a joke. I hope he will hurt himself.

Your loving Nephew,

Bilbury J. Jones

IV.

Woodham Daintry: November 20.

MY DEAR UNCLE, – I hope to have your joke ready in a few days.

There has been a little unpleasantness in the house since I last wrote. Captain Bunching must have found out beforehand about the hedgehog. When I got up to my bedroom in the evening and opened the door – it was quite dark in the passage – a whole pailful of potato-parings came down on my head, and I narrowly escaped being hit by the bucket; and when I got into bed, there was the hedgehog there! I pricked my feet in the most abominable way. Naturally, I was very angry; and the Captain and I had words at breakfast. Larrion, in the most unjust way, took the Captain’s side; he said that of course it was a joke, not a first class joke, but quite good of its kind – and appropriate. Certainly I did not agree with him; it is not the sort of joke that amuses me. I thought of leaving the house at once, but I stayed on and swallowed my wrath for her sake, for Miss Kitty’s sake. What would I not give for the term to be over!

Four of the pupils and two of the bores have already left. Some of the people here seem quite unable to understand the difference between humour and horse-play.

The servants have got so used to humour that they never take the least notice of it now. The boot-boy doesn’t raise the ghost of a smile when I let off my most screaming jokes at him. This seems to me a pity. I think the servants ought to be discharged once a month. Of course we don’t laugh much at one another’s jokes, and it is not to be expected of the bores; so that one hardly realises how funny one really is.

Our lecture this morning was on Style, which is much more important than many people think.

You complain that you have as yet had no opportunities of seeing what progress I have made. I must acknowledge that I still find it difficult to make actual jokes, but with the Professor’s lecture on Style in view, I think I could be humorous, or funny in the narrower sense of the word. It is, of course, rather difficult to do it without having any very definite subject to apply one’s methods to, but I will do my best.

Now I will be humorous.

‘Here goes! Tittup my hearties! How are you, old Cocky? As the monkey said when he met the parachute. How’s your delectable boko today? Not too catawamptious, but just catawamptious enough? That comes of the beamish bottlemilk. Then the coal-dust came down on the giddy pantechnicon.’

This is, of course, not as funny as I could have made it if you had given me a subject. But don’t you think it is rather amusing? It is in what Mr. Larrion calls the ‘Happy Chappie’ style; next time I will try to show you something in the ‘New Humorous’ line.

Your loving Nephew,

Bilbury J. Jones

V.

Woodham Daintry: November 22.

MY DEAR UNCLE, – I am exceedingly sorry that you take the humorous part of my letter amiss. I assure you that I had not the least intention of being offensive. You know how sincerely I respect you. Perhaps it was rash of me to try to be funny before I was further advanced. I will promise not to write funnily to you again, since you dislike it so much. Many thanks for your advice about Miss Kitty; but I can assure you that it was, in a way, superfluous: I had no intention of endeavouring to engage her affections by that particular vein of humour.

You will hardly believe how eager I am now for the end of the term. We are going to wind up on the last day with a ball, at which we are all going to be screamingly funny. A committee of pupils – I am not a member of it – has been formed to devise a few good practical jokes, to be played off on the guests; and we are all working very industriously on private jokes about the floor, the music, &c.

The fame of this institution has gone abroad, the rumour of our ball has spread like wildfire through the country and everybody is clamouring to be invited. Of course I asked the Timminers as soon as I heard of the ball; but I was disappointed to find that they had already accepted an invitation from Captain Bunching. Never mind! On that night I will do or die. Even Larrion himself shall be dazzled into silence by the scintillation of my wit. I shall not use any of the jokes that we have learnt during the term; I shall make up mine on the spot, one after another.

Your loving Nephew,

Bilbury J. Jones

P.S. – I enclose the joke you wanted. It was Pawley, the bore – he is one of my most intimate friends now, you know – who first thought of it. I have only worked it up a little.

VI.

Chelmsford: December 20.

MY DEAR UNCLE, – The end of term has come at last, and I am the happiest man that ever lived. Oh, if only I could tell you one tenth of what I feel! Life hasn’t been life till now. I can’t imagine how I could have endured it. I can hardly sit still even to write to you. Isn’t she the dearest, sweetest, loveliest creature you ever saw? To think that Kitty should be mine after all!

The ball the day before yesterday was a complete fiasco. Larrion is in despair; he as been tearing his hair and cursing and swearing like a madman ever since. He says his business is ruined, and I expect it is. When the guests went away that evening – as they did before half the programme was finished – he got up and said that we were the stupidest lot of men it had ever been his misfortune to meet with; he said there wasn’t a spark of humour or a grain of common sense in the whole pack of us.

We collected in the drawing-room at eight, all rather nervous. We none of us liked to talk, for fear of letting out one of our jokes, which would, of course, have been common property at once. We walked up and down, putting on our gloves and looking at the pictures on the walls – Punch cartoons, and comic valentines by Larrion, of which we were already sick to death. The bores were the only members of the party who seemed at ease. They chatted gaily, and made jokes amongst themselves; of course they were allowed to do as they pleased that night. They were not to dance round dances, however, unless there was somebody sitting. Both the High Church curates came down to dance. I noticed one of them going about with a placard saying: ‘Beware of the dog’ on his tails. He didn’t know. It was most amusing. Later on I found that I had a paper on my back saying ‘This style 18s. 6d.’ I think I can guess what humorist did that; but I can forgive him now.

During the first three dances people simply yelled with laughter the whole time; one really couldn’t hear the music at all. But I think everybody was too excited to be really funny. The men jumped about rather boisterously in the Lancers. I was too nervous even for that. I was so nervous that, to tell you the truth, I did not get off a joke the whole evening. In fact, one of my partners mistook me for a bore.

Practical jokes, Mr Larrion had arranged, were not to begin till supper time; so we had supper early on purpose. There was a tremendous turkey at one end of the big table. Captain Bunching – he was one of the Practical Jokes Committee – asked Admiral Timminer to carve it. As soon as he put the fork into it, it exploded with a loud report; it was made of inflated india-rubber. The Admiral was very indignant; so was Kitty. Bunching had secured her for supper, but she left him and went to another table. Here she was still more unfortunate, for one of the curates, next to whom she found herself, offered her a little scent bottle from the table, asking her if she was fond of stephanotis. As soon as she opened the top of it, a stream of black ink ran out of the bottom, making a very ugly stain down the front of her dress.

After supper Captain Bunching somehow got her to dance with him. I think he threw the blame of the turkey on somebody else, or said he didn’t know. He took her into a little bower which had been made in the conservatory, and asked her to sit down on a thing like an ottoman. As soon as she sat down she tumbled into a box; the top was only a sham. She tore her dress very badly on some nails there were at the sides.

This quite destroyed all the Captain’s chances with Kitty. I have never seen anybody so angry as she was. She came running up to me in the dancing-room, and led me away by the arm into another room. She said, ‘You, at least, will not be funny, Mr. Jones’; and, to tell the truth, I really wasn’t.

She said that she had never been to such a ghastly entertainment in her life; ‘ghastly’ was the word she used. She said that the perpetual stupid jokes, idiotic riddles, and facetious answers that she had had to listen to perfectly sickened her, and she hoped she would never meet a funny man again. I comforted her as best I could; the conversation became more and more intimate, and suddenly I found that I had proposed and been accepted.

I saw the Admiral about it next morning. He consented, and invited me to stop over Christmas.

I have sworn never to make another joke as long as I live. Last night, towards the end of dinner – the Admiral had been talking in a very interesting way about the proposed new international code of marine signals – he said, ‘Will you have some port?’ I replied, ‘No, thanks, Admiral; I should prefer a little starboard.’

For a minute or two I could hardly realise the full force of what I had said. There was no effort; it simply dropped out. A long pause followed. We all seemed to be gasping for breath.

Imagine my utter astonishment when Kitty suddenly jumped up, pale and trembling, from her place at the table, and said, in a low, firm voice:

‘Bilbury, if you ever make a joke again I shall break off our engagement.’

I did not seek to fathom her motives. I was ready to make even this sacrifice for her sake. I promised her I would never make another. And I never will! So you must not depend upon me for the future.

Your loving Nephew,

Bilbury J. Jones

This story was published in The Cornhill Magazine for April 1899, when George and Kittie were in the second calendar year of their engagement following the death of Kittie’s first husband. They were married on 10 November 1900. As Calderonians will know, ‘Jones’ was the name of Kittie’s dog.

In a letter to Kittie of 11 February 1899, George wrote that he was ‘awfully afraid of becoming a bore. I have the makings of a bore in me’. Kittie knew him to have a tremendous sense of humour and wit, but this story seems to suggest he had also ‘researched’ the subject of laughter. At least two reviewers later called him a ‘laughing philosopher’.

Here are a few Notes that may be useful:

‘a young barrister who was up at Trinity with me’: George, of course, was an alumnus of Trinity College, Oxford, not Cambridge.

‘Topsy Turtledove…the Last of the Joneses…Pink Un’. I am unable to explain ‘Topsy Turtledove’, or what Jones’s involvement could be, but ‘the Pink Un’ was the Sporting Times (printed on salmon paper).

‘the Sage of Verulam’: Francis Bacon (1561-1626).

‘exæquare ingenia’: ‘to level out capabilities’. A phrase from Bacon’s Novum Organum on the scientific method.

‘apple-pie beds’: beds made with a single bottom sheet doubled back to look like the top sheet, so that victims cannot cannot stretch their legs. Thought to come from French, ‘nappe pliée’.

‘buffoons are generally called wits’: Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, chapter 8.

‘That it consisteth in wit…’ Hobbes, The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic.

‘Volapük’: the ‘international language’ created by Johann Schleyer in 1880.

‘On seeing a little girl stroke a tortoise’: a ‘true anecdote’ of Sydney Smith (1771-1845), but it seems the commonest version concerns a turtle.

‘a round dance’: a ballroom dance such as a waltz in which couples move in circles round the ballroom.

My heartfelt thanks to Sam2 (aka James Miles) for illustrating the story so aptly.

AND THANK YOU ALL OUT THERE FOR FOLLOWING ‘CALDERONIA’ INTO ITS EIGHTH YEAR!

HAVE YOURSELVES A VERY HAPPY CHRISTMAS

IN ALL CIRCUMSTANCES

AND A HEALTHY, SAFE AND PROSPEROUS 2021!

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SOME RESPONSES TO GEORGE CALDERON: EDWARDIAN GENIUS 

‘This meticulous yet nimble book is bound to remain the definitive account of Calderon’s life’ Charlotte Jones, The Times Literary Supplement

‘The effort of detection, it must be said, was worth it. The biography is a delight to read.’ Emeritus Professor Laurence Brockliss, The London Magazine

‘It is a masterly synthesis of your own approach with scholarship and very judicious discussion of the evidence.’ Emeritus Professor Catherine Andreyev, historian

‘This comprehensive, meticulously researched and highly readable biography, which the author describes as a “story” rather than an academic biography…’  Michael Pursglove, East-West Review

‘A monumental scholarly masterpiece that gives real insight into how the Edwardians viewed the world.’Arch Tait, Translator of Natalya Rzhevskaya’s Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter

‘The book is written with great assurance and the reader always feels in safe hands. I liked the idea of it being a story and I read it the same way I would read a novel.’ Harvey Pitcher, writer

‘Presents the Edwardian age, and Calderon in particular, as new and forward-looking.’ Emeritus Professor Michael Alexander, in Trinity College, Oxford, Report 2017-18

A review by DAMIAN GRANT appears in the comments to Calderonia’s 7 September post.

A review by JOHN DEWEY appears on Amazon UK.