How the Victorians liked to fill their sitting-room hours

Press, 14 August 1976, Page 14

How the Victorians liked to fill their sitting-room hours

MICH \l<! 1 > XCII has a little fun with an erstwhile parlour game.

Puzzles brought up to date: This is a well-known carol which, interfered with by Fred Dagg, and rendered in rebus form, reads: We three kings of Orient are: one on a tractor, two in a car, one on a scooter tooting his hooter, following yonder star. Oh. star of wonder, star of light, star of beauty, she’ll be right! Star of glory, that’s the story—following yonder star.

From prehistoric cave drawing-s to Egyptian hieroglyphs, Chinese pictograms and the picture stories of today’s pre-school children, mankind has always relied heavily on pictures for communication.

In common with many other things that once had a practical purpose, these picture puzzles continued as a rather dilettante diversion when man grew confident in his literacy. The rebus (rebus from the Latin “of things”) is first recorded as a pastime in the fifteenth century, in both France and England. French clerks in Picardy . staged annual tournaments, pitting their picture puzzles against others. Although the rebus is usually pictorial, as in the accompanying illustrations. it can also be purely literal. The O.E.D. defines it as an enigmatic representation of a name, word or phrase by figures, pictures, arrangement of letters, etc., which suggests the syllables of which it is made up. In latter use it also applies to puzzles in which a punning application of each word is given, without pictures. In its early use the rebus was necessarily simple, as in its many examples in heraldry — for example the crest of the Dobell family is a doe and a bell — but it reached considerable sophistication, as in our Victorian example and later in the splendidly convoluted puzzles of Lewis Carroll. The rebus has had a chequered career, occupying about, the same place in literature as the pun — many detractors and a few (necessarily whimsical) defenders. The 1630 s saw an argument between Campden: “They which lacked wit to express their conceit in speech did use to depeint it out (as it were) tn pictures, which they called Rebus;’’ and Ben Johnson; “I will maintain the rebus against all humours, all complexions in the body of man.” To justify this (or' it might have been the other way round), Johnson uses the following imaginary picture of a rebus in his well-known play “The Alchemist.” When Abel Drugger, the tobbaconist and potion purveyor, applies to the imposter Subtle to invent a signboard that will magically attract customers to his shop, the cheat says: “I will have his name Formed in some mystic character, whose radii; Striking the senses of the passers-by. Shall, by virtual influence, breed affections That may result upon the

party owns it. As thus: He shall first have a BELL — that’s Abel; And by it standing one

wose name is DEE, In a RUG gown; there’s D and RUG — that’s DRUG;

And right anenst him a dog snarling ER — There’s DRUGGER. ABEL DRUGGER, that’s his sign. And here’s now mystery and hieroglyphic.” Mv wife's Uncle Jim, who used to describe himself as a “tricky chappie,” was a man much given to pun and conundrum (never riddles) and kept her — at the age of seven — guessing for weeks with the foilowing, which in our adult wisdom we now discern to be a rebus: If B mt put: If B . putting: When he finally divulged the solution, her cries of “unfair” were met by a bland “Modern children should know that capital b was once called great b.” |Some may want the solution: If great (grate) b (be) mt (empty), put coion (coal on). If grate be full, stop putting coal on.] Never mind if you did not get it; people felt they had a lot more time to ponder over such things in those days — as they did the accompanying Victorian rebus, which appeared in the “Girl’s Own Paper” in 1895. The paper used to have a similar rebus every month or so, offering two guinea prizes and six half-guineas to the best solutions. A few clues: The woman waving is the title of the poem, not something, in the text; a lot of use is made of tricks of juxtaposition — e.g., the s inside the g is s in g (sing), and as some of the illustrations may be a trifle muddy after 80 years we may say that the ticket on top of the bird in line 17 has 7/6 on it. (Seven shillings and sixpence.) The other rebus pictured is much easier, and much more for the moderns. It is a Fred Dagg paraphrase of a traditional rhyme, and is the work of Peter Gray, a first-year graphic design student at the Christchurch Technical Institute. Barry Cleavin, who runs the class — and who started me investigating the rebus — set his students each doing one of these picture puzzles. To him, it was an exercise to give them a better grounding in design — drawing simple, recognisable pictures. He sees a real gap between the image and the story in modern art, a gap that has been growing since the midnineteenth century. “The students are here to learn a craft and a technique. Basic design study now has almost destroyed the image — setting a square against a triangle, etc., might give technical excellence, but at the age of 17 this may be merely a passport to sterility and competence. “It is better to take them back to their visual beginnings, and if they are able to go on from there, then good. But at least they have a tuition in the basics — ‘about things’.”

The puzzle poem above was printed in the “Girls’ Own Paper” of January 26, 1895. The solution to it appears below. In order to avoid cheating while they work out the answer readers must, if necessary, fold the solution under.

Fare w ell. Y* ‘birds s-fh-G- man Y a tune FUL s-on-Gr Y* flowers WAFT man-Y A Scent EDB Vjireath. AS I pass A-long AND s>-kigh forty one RE mote AS DEATH O WHY Sir ©’id bird AND'flower. BE glad)» AS 77iroi/g7i-i]K\~-AiZ THE PLEASURE shadh Y* owls THAT Sc ree C H three, hares, THAT hide Y* G-/w WORMS riz-G-zn-T-H- hedge Y* VERY-trees in z7>/?y-P-RIDE g Can each two each THEIRTRUE Zrrw-vEP .ledge OWHYARE lords OF SUCHASTHEr PE raft OF joy ST HEIR sorrow sea SE / MY form BUT tar RIESHERE as"k-tray AND life-Wey less C-ihw N MY heart I sorxet Y* hills A W A Y A-N-o T t-zw-G hill BY l-ow-D en-T-0 WN SO THEN dear dove WELL patient bs-ide Till church PR O cl A IM S US groom AND bride

The birds sing many a tuneful song; . The flowers waft many a scented breath; As through the fields I pass along, And sigh for one remote as death. J Oh! why should bird and flower be glad, J As though they all the pleasures had? » The owls that screech, the hares- that hide, The glow-worms, twinkling in the hedge,’ The very trees, in lofty pride, Can each to each, their true lore pledge. Oh! why are’lords of such as these Bereft of joys their sorrow’s ease ? My form but tarries here, astray, And lifeless lives like country clown. My heart is o’er the hills, away In Notting .Hill, by London town. “ So then, dear dove, we’ll patient bide Till church proclaims us groom and bride.”