TRIVIA.

Press, Volume LXVII, Issue 20412, 5 December 1931, Page 13

TRIVIA.

lake baths, now. The characters in modern novels are always in tliem, or just out of them, or preparing for them. The heroes are always "well-tubbed" of "clean-limbed"— sweet; words! Itis difficult to believe that the tune of English life is not, and has not alv.;:j3 been, Ming to the obbligiito of bathplug and • down-pipe: "The moving waters, ' as Keats said, "at their priestlU.o ta:-k of pure ablution." .Even in Goethe s day Continental innkeepers broke down uinler the relentless demand oi. Luglish tourists for baths and hot water. But the travellers returned home, not any met:us to the unrestricttd joys of laid on hot and cold, but to the inconvenience of the pail and the tin contraption. When a certain eccentric nobleman designed himself y, bath which was something more than the large but: qui to inadequate dish in irregular use, the design and his daily practice were accepted as proof that the last screw hud loosened. (Jcrtaiulv it was an odd bath. It was a tail leaden tank, built into a cupboard in the wall; and he climbed up a Judder and let himself down into it to enjoy a vertical wallow. Whether his man tilled it by pumping or by bucket I cannot remember; but this was at any rate tho fust indoor and sufficient alternative to the extensive wash in a tin pan. Progress was very slow. Lord Ernest Hamilton is a witness to the terrifying difficulty of getting a. warm bath in the stately homes of Victoria's England, Experiment with taps was rowarded by a "succession of sepulchral rumblings . . . succeeded by the appearance of a small geyser of" rustcolourod wnter, heavily charged witli dead earwigs and bluebottles. This continued for a couple of minutes or so and then entirely ceased. The only perceptible difference between the hot water and the cold lay in its colour and tho cargo of defunct life which the former boro on its bosom. - Both were stone cold." Dame Margaret Lloyd George swears that there was no bathroom at No. 10 Downing Street until 1908. According to Dr. Karl Silex, in his amusing book, "John Bull at Home,'' Lord Desborough, Chairman of the Thames Conservancy Board, *'spread consternation by declaring that the large increase in the number of houses titled with bathrooms since tho War was threatening the world metropolis of London with a shortage of water."

Like Tennyson, 1 have "inought of a pood word." This: ''lautocracy" : meaning something like the superiority of the well-tubbed and the cleanlimbed. It is chastening to remember, however. that when Alfred announced his inspired discovery Mrs Tennyson replied shortly, "Go to sleep. I've thought of a bad one." •HMaking up that, word reminds mc of the English policeman, who a few weeks ago, giving evidence in a traflic case, described the girl on the back of the niotor-cyclc as a "pillionaire."' * And petrol reminds me of the American business men who were moaning together. One said that ho had Chryslers at 110. The other said, "That's nothing; I've got diabetes at 45." And of the man who was buying a car and wanted a new horij fitted to it. A loud horn? — "Oh no, give mo on-:* that just sneers." And that remims 10 of the book catalogue I received I / the last English mail. Consecutive items: 176 BARNES (WILLIAM). Poems of Rural Life in Common English, Macmtllan, 1868. I'irat Edition, original cloth, fcap. Bvo. 15/Mr Jolin Drinkwater's copy .with hia bookplate and autograph and a note in his handwriting. I 177 BARNES (WILLIAM). Poems of Kursl Life in Common English. Macmiljan, 3863. First Edition, original cloth, fcap. Bvo. 15/I think Mr Drinkwater once wrote a play called "X=o." Well, let X be tho value of the Drinkwater association, as they call it, and work out the cata' loguer's dramatic algebra. It is funny how the world has grown tired of Mt Drinkwater's "moon-washed apples of wonder. 1 '

And the sneer reminds mo of James Whistler, who listened to a group of people, one day, rehearsing an«J admiring the variety of Lord Leighlon's accomplishments, this and that. "Paints, too," added Whistler. * And the versatility of Leighton reminds me of Bucking'!;am, and -Dryden's satire on this man so various that seemed to be, Not one, but all mankinds epitome: Stiff •in opinions, always in the wrong, Was everything by starts and npUiinff long; But. in the course of one revolving moon, "Was ohymist, fiddler, statosman, and buffoon- . Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking, . Besides ten thousand freaks that died in tliinkinp. * And that reminds me. how once .1 heard the passage read with "epitome" pronounced trisyllabically, as if Buckingham were perhaps some kind of encyclopaedic book about mankind. This gave mo a great deal of pleasure, and I began hunting for some more rhymes that could be similarly ironed out. At the moment I can remember only the J song, Breaking the silence oE the seas Among the farthest Hebrides. * And that reminds me that "The Reaper" is a very good example of the way in which Wordsworth stumbles and strays withdut coming to griot. Could anv other poet tell you tour times in five lines that the reaper, wus alone and twice that site was singing while she reaped, riot lose his hold r 1 She was "single i' l t'»G fl0 . l(] > f, h , 0 , w "solitarv," she was by herself, she was '-alone"; she was. "reaping, and singing.'' she was cutting and ' Jln d'"B the grain and singing. Note also the unhappy echo, "single" and "singing " But none of this matters. 1' ruin the first Jine it is obvious that the poem is one of Wordsworth's good ones and that means it is good enough to carry with ease what would bring down another man's, flat on the ground, it is good enough to tolerate the common misuuderstanding-to. judge. irom the common reading or speaking ot the line—of "Stop here or gently pass.' Nearly everybody reads it with more weight on "pass" than on gently, is if Wordsworth were giving alternative orders: to stop, or to move on, But what he means is, Stop here, 01, if von • usfc pass on, pass gently. "Gepli'therefore, is the word to Stress, "'l-his is i&ther like the end of the "Lucy" poem: But she is in hor grave, And olj 1 tk® difference to me. The usual, fairly ? veu accentuation of tho line with considerable erwnhasis on the rhyroe-wprd, "me," w all wrong. The weight is on "difference ': you should hardly hefir "to me." Wordsworth is not an egotigt in grief, asserting his against others'. And I can never think of egotism without recollecting tit® delict C«s-

placency who introduced himself to Dr. Johnson: ''Sir. i am the great Twalniley, who invented the New Floodgate Iron." # And that puts it into my mind to ask if Rnybody can say what the invention was that' Coleridge refers to in "Youth and Age."— Alt! for tlia change 'twixt Nov and Then! Thin'broathing house not built with hands, This body that does mo grievous wrong, O'tr aery cliffs and glittering' sands llow lightly then it flash'd along: Like those trim skiffs, unknown of yore, On winding lakes and rivers wide, That ask no iiid of sail or Oiir, That fear no spite of wind or tide! Nought cared this tody for wind or weather, When youth and I lived in't together. What trim skiffs? "Steam-boats" does not seem to be the answer. Trim skiffs? And on lakes and rivers? And already—apparently—quite common t ■Coleridge wrote tjiese lines in 18538. Years ago I asked a (whose initials—W.D.A.—will revive in some readers tho memory of "studies that served for delight") what lie made of tho reference, Aiter some days he offered only the. conjecture that there must have been a kind of small-boat in use, with a paddle-wheel worked by hand. * And bv way of limiting, _and Byron, and Aldous . Huxley, it is only two or three steps to the end of "Point Counter Point," where they take a batil: That night he and Beatrice pretended to be two little children and bad their bath together. Two little children sitting at opposite ends of the big old-fashior|od bath. And what a romp they had! The bathroom was drenched with -aplashings. Of such is tlie Kingdom of Heaven. This is the way in which the intelligentsia paraphrases grandmama's old stuff about cleanliness being next to godliness. —J.H.E.S.