The Jeweller’s Window Early Advertising

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30094, 30 March 1963, Page 8

The Jeweller’s Window Early Advertising

[Specially written for "The Press" by

ARNOLD WALL]

YVHO was the first really ” ente”pr>ising advertiser? I do not know, but I conjecture that in England he may have been Thomas Holloway, (1800-1883), “Holloway’s Ointment etc.”, My father told me the story of his enterprise. I do not guarantee the correctness of all details. Holloway, my father said, was employed as a very young man in making some article which required the use of petroleum, and noticed that any injury to his hands headed quickly so concluded that petroleum had heading virtues. He received a legacy of £2O and spent the wihole of it in advertising an unguent. We all know the sequel. In his later years he spent £50,000 a year on advertising and he founded the well-known Holloway College for women at Egham and similar charitable organisations. Another relation of mine told me something else concerning this hero but I do not feel confident of the accuracy of her yam. A young man sitting on a bench

at a seaside resort saw an elderly lady with her daughter passing along the esplanade accompanied by a email dog. A big dog attacked the little one and the young man came to the rescue thus earning the gratitude of the ladies and .eventually their friendship. These ladies had been notably solitary and seemed to know no-one and even to shun friendly relations of any kind. The young man married the girl, who turned out to be heiress to the Holloway millions. The widow of Thomas Holloway had had a deep suspicion of all marriageable men, suspecting the advances of fortune-hunters; that was why She kept her daughter incognito. So the little dog was the unconscious introducer of a lucky day. Another enterprising advertiser was “Griffiths, the Safe Man,” a manufacturer of office safes. My father, on a visit to Cairo, was taken with other tourists through the Great Pyramid along narrow corridors. He did not tell me the exact date and as

he used to travel very often between Ceylon and England I cannot be sure of it. However, I think it must have 'been some time in the 'so’s of last century. As the party wailked through the corridor they came to a gigantic G painted on the wall, then an R, then an I and so on till one of the party, a Frenchman, spelt out “Griffiths, the Safe Man.” I call that true enterprise I do not know what action was taken by authority—if any. In any case Griffiths “got away with it” for some time. Disinterested Until recently we kept apart in meaning the words “disinterested” (impartial) and “uninterested” (apathetic) but writers now commonly use “disinterested” as meaning “apathetic,” synonymous with "uniinterested.” The dictionaries still define “disinterested” as “impartial” only. There has been much discussion of this change in usage in England. It was observed by some that no less a stylist than Edmund Burke used “disinterested” in that sense and it was argued that this fact would justify the usage. I should not agree, but whether the change be justified or not it is plain that it is a loss rather than a gain to our language. You may in an emergency use a chisel as a screw-driver but it is a silly thing to do. The two tools have a certain resemblance j ust enough ,to allow of an attempt to use the one instead of the other, and that is all. So it is with the extended use of “disinterested.” This note is written on October 11 and in this day’s issue of a local newspaper occurs “disinterestedness” as for “want of interest” or “carelessness.” And there the Chisel has been used as a screw-driver. We have the two tools, Jet us keep them apart. Apparently the average English writer is not intelligent enough to realise the difference because the forms are so similar Assadist The Resident Commissioner in Leh, the capital of Ladakh, an elderly Kashmiri, told me that he was an “Assadist” when asked about his religion. He explained that Assadists are the followers of one Assad, an Indian (Bengali I think), who had founded a kind of new religion about 50 years ago and had at least 30.000 disciples. If I remember rightly, one of the main "new” items in the creed of Assadism was that Christ, after his resurrection, travelled in India, came to Kashmir. and died in Srinagar where bis tomb may be seen. On my return to Srinagar I was taken by a wealthy Mohammedan merchant to see this alleged tomb of Christ. He explained that in the Mohammedan view Christ was merely a great prophet, his name was, in the Mohammedan form. Yusuf or something like that. With some American friends 1 examined the mosque. We found that the tcmb, surrounded by lattice-work, occupied nearly all the interior so that it was impossible to photograph it. However, I took and have kept a photo of the mosque itself. Our guide, who was a man of some learning, assured me that there is some hdstroicad evidence for this account of Christ’s travels and death, but he never fulfilled has promise to supply me with such evidence. Do the Assadists, I wonder, still flourish in the Province of Bombay or elsewhere in India? And could any reader of these notes give further inforvnaikm on Assadwn