First published in Great Britain in 2002 by Doubleday,
a division of Transworld Publishers Ltd.
This edition published in Great Britain in 2013 by Atlantic Books,
an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.
Illustrations copyright © Quentin Blake 2002
The rights of John Julius Norwich to be identified as the editor and Quentin Blake as the illustrator of this work have been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Hardback ISBN 978 1 78239 251 4
ePub ISBN 9781782392521
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Contents
Introduction
Chapters
Ever since Quentin Blake and I collaborated a few years ago on The Twelve Days of Christmas, we have been looking forward to another joint project; and one day it occurred to me that it might be fun to produce an illustrated selection from my Christmas Crackers – the anthology booklet that I have been annually sending round to my friends (and selling in the best bookshops) for the past thirty-three years. The result is the slender volume you now hold in your hands.
I have been collecting bits and pieces of poetry and prose that amuse or move me for most of my adult life; but there comes a moment when every collector contracts the come-up-and-see-my-etchings syndrome and wants to show off his collection. In 1970 I couldn’t bear it any more: I chose twenty-four pieces I particularly liked, had two hundred copies printed in the simplest possible form and sent them around to my friends. At the time it never struck me that I would be repeating the process the following year, but people seemed to like the first one so I decided to have another go; and so the thing snowballed and I have been doing it every year since. Every decade the last ten Crackers are published by Penguin: Christmas Crackers in 1979, More Christmas Crackers in 1989 and Still More Christmas Crackers in 1999. (In 2009 – if I live that long – the new title threatens to pose something of a problem.)
None of them, however, has ever been illustrated – so here at least we are breaking new ground – nor could I have hoped for a more brilliant illustrator. As expected, Quentin and I have had a lot of fun putting this book together; we can only hope that you will enjoy it as much as we have.
John Julius Norwich
Some dictionary definitions:
BAFFONA, f. Woman with not unpleasing moustache.
Hoare’s Short Italian Dictionary,
Cambridge, 1954
CARPHOLOGY. Delirious fumbling with the bedclothes, &c.
Concise Oxford Dictionary
DOTTEREL. A species of plover (Eudromias morinellus): said to be so simple that it readily allows itself to be taken.
1. This dotrell is a lytell fonde byrde, for it helpeth in maner to take it selfe 1526.
Oxford Dictionary
NATURA . . . 6. the female pudenda; 7. the male organ of generation; 8. God.
Italian Dictionary by Davenport and Comelati,
London, 1873
I’m very fond of palindromes. Perhaps my favourite of them all is:
Live dirt up a side-track carted is a putrid evil.
J. A. Lindon must be credited with two gems:
Straw? No, too stupid a fad. I put soot on warts.
and – perhaps the only one of reasonable length that might pass unnoticed in any twentieth-century novel:
‘Norma is as selfless as I am, Ron.’
But the palm for the longest goes to W. H. Auden:
T. Eliot, top bard, notes putrid tang emanating, is sad. I’d assign it a name: ‘Gnat dirt upset on drab pot toilet.’
And while we’re at it, there are even a couple of classical ones to be quoted. First, the lament of the Roman moths:
In girum imus noctes, et consumimur igni.
And finally the inscription engraved on the phiale in St Sophia:
(Wash not only my face, but also my transgressions.)
At Wimpole Hall in Cambridgeshire you may still see the glorious library designed by James Gibbs in 1730 to house some of the 50,000 volumes belonging to Edward Harley, 2nd Earl of Oxford – the finest collection of its time in England. Harley’s close friend, the poet Matthew Prior, stayed frequently at Wimpole, where he paid his host the nicest compliment a bibliophile could ever receive:
Fame counting thy books, my dear Harley, shall tell No man had so many who knew them so well.
It was sad that Prior never saw the Gibbs library, having died – in the house, as it happened – in 1721; and sadder still that almost the entire collection, which also included 41,000 prints and some 300,000 pamphlets, was sold by Harley’s widow after his death in 1741. (Fortunately she kept back the manuscripts, which were bought twelve years later for the British Museum and form the magnificent Harleian Collection.)
Not many of us can boast what Prior claimed for Harley; we can all, however, take comfort from Disraeli, who wrote to Lady Bradford in August 1878:
You asked me where I generally lived. In my workshop [i.e. his study] in the morning and always in the library in the evening. Books are companions even if you don’t open them.
Two pieces of advice for foreign travellers:
In the matter of language it is always best to go to a little more trouble and learn the exact equivalent if possible. ‘I am an Englishman and require instant attention to the damage done to my solar topee’ is far better than any equivocation that may be meant well but will gain little respect.
Guide to the Native Languages of Africa,
by A Gentleman of Experience, 1890
An attenuation is often understood better than a circumlocution. Exempli gratia:
‘Why is there no marmalade available?’ is better understood in the form ‘Quelle marmalade non?’. ‘Bring marmalade’ may be simply rendered as ‘Marmalade demandez’, always remembering that the z is silent as in ‘demanday’. The little English joke about jam may be easily translated if one wishes to amuse the proprietor: ‘Hier, marmalade; demain, marmalade; mais jamais marmalade de jour.’ Such little pleasantries are often appreciated.
French for the English,
by A Gentleman of Quality, 1894
W. S. Gilbert, beginning a letter of complaint to the station-master at Baker Street, on the Metropolitan line:
Sir,
Saturday morning, although recurring at regular and well-foreseen intervals, always seems to take this railway by surprise.
Of all the sonnets I know, perhaps the oddest are these two by Leigh Hunt. And yet, the more I read them, the better they seem to be.
TO A FISH
You strange, astonished-looking, angle-faced,
Dreary-mouthed, gaping wretches of the sea,
Gulping salt water everlastingly,
Cold-blooded, though with red your blood be graced,
And mute, though dwellers in the roaring waste;
And you, all shapes beside, that fishy be –
Some round, some flat, some long, all devilry,
Legless, unloving, infamously chaste:–
O scaly, slippery, wet, swift, staring wights,
What is’t ye do? What life lead? Eh, dull goggles?
/> How do ye vary your vile days and nights?
How pass your Sundays? Are ye still but joggles
In ceaseless wash? Still nought but gapes, and bites,
And drinks, and stares, diversified with boggles?
A FISH REPLIES
Amazing monster! that, for aught I know,
With the first sight of thee didst make our race
For ever stare! O flat and shocking face,
Grimly divided from the breast below!
Thou that on dry land horribly dost go
With a split body and most ridiculous pace,
Prong after prong, disgracer of all grace,
Long-useless-finned, haired, upright, unwet, slow!
O breather of unbreathable, sword-sharp air,
How canst exist? How bear thyself, thou dry
And dreary sloth? What particle canst share
Of the only blessed life, and watery?
I sometimes see of ye an actual pair
Go by, linked fin by fin, most odiously.
In a third, non-partisan sonnet, a Spirit sums up. It ends:
Man’s life is warm, glad, sad, ’twixt loves and graves,
Boundless in hope, honoured with pangs austere,
Heaven-gazing; and his angel-wings he craves:–
The fish is swift, small-needing, vague yet clear,
A cold, sweet, silver life, wrapped in round waves,
Quickened with touches of transporting fear.
I must not omit a foolish singularity, in relation to the women dancers at Naples, that, in consequence of an order from court, in the late King’s time, they all wear black drawers. I presume it was from some conceit on the subject of modesty, but it appears very odd and ridiculous. I shall not enter into any detail of the two houses; but their dresses, their scenery, and their actors, are much more despicable than one could possibly imagine.
Samuel Sharp,
Letters from Italy, 1767
This ‘Song of a Young Lady to her Ancient Lover’ is in fact not by a young lady at all, but by John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester. But it is none the worse for that.
Ancient Person, for whom I
All the flattering Youth defy:
Long be it ere thou grow Old,
Aching, shaking, crazy Cold.
But still continue as thou art,
Ancient Person of my Heart.
On thy wither’d Lips and Dry
Which like barren Furrows lye,
Brooding Kisses I will pour
Shall thy Youthful Heat restore.
Such kind show’rs in Autumn fall,
And a Second Spring recall:
Nor from thee will ever part,
Ancient Person of my Heart.
Thy Nobler parts which but to name
In our Sex would be counted shame,
By Age’s frozen grasp possest,
From their ice shall be releast:
And sooth’d by my reviving hand
In former warmth and vigour stand.
All a lover’s wish can reach
For thy Joy my love shall teach.
And for thy Pleasure shall improve
All that Art can add to Love.
Yet still I love thee without Art,
Ancient Person of my Heart.
And now here is Gibbon on the first – and false – Pope John XXIII. The events described occurred in May 1415, five months before the battle of Agincourt.
Of the three [simultaneous] popes, John the Twenty-third was the first victim: he fled and was brought back a prisoner: the most scandalous charges were suppressed; the vicar of Christ was only accused of piracy, murder, rape, sodomy, and incest; and after subscribing his own condemnation he expiated in prison the imprudence of trusting his person to a free city beyond the Alps.
As things turned out, he didn’t do too badly after all. Two years later he was made a cardinal again; and when he died in 1419 he was buried in the Baptistery in Florence, with Donatello designing his tomb.
Bifocals, like most other things, were invented by Benjamin Franklin. He writes from Passy on 23 May 1785:
I had formerly two pair of spectacles, which I shifted occasionally, as in travelling I sometimes read, and often wanted to regard the prospects. Finding this change troublesome, and not always sufficiently ready, I had the glasses cut, and half of each kind associated in the same circle. By this means, as I wear my spectacles constantly, I have only to move my eyes up or down, as I want to see distinctly far or near, the proper glasses being always ready. This I find more particularly convenient since my being in France, the glasses that serve me best at table to see what I eat, not being the best to see the faces of those on the other side of the table who speak to me; and when one’s ears are not well accustomed to the sounds of a language, a sight of the movements in the features of him that speaks helps to explain; so that I understand French better by the help of my spectacles . . .
Life for him was an adventure; perilous indeed, but men are not made for safe havens.
Edith Hamilton on Aeschylus
(The Greek Way)
Dorothy Parker said much the same thing, equally beautifully, about Isadora Duncan:
There was never a place for her in the ranks of the terrible, slow army of the cautious. She ran ahead, where there were no paths.
Here is an extract from Parson Woodforde’s diary for 1778:
April 15 . . . We breakfasted, dined, supped and slept again at home. Brewed a vessel of strong Beer today. My two large Piggs, by drinking some Beer grounds taking out of one of my Barrels today, got so amazingly drunk by it, that they were not able to stand and appeared like dead things almost, and so remained all night from dinner time today. I never saw Piggs so drunk in my life . . .
April 16 . . . My 2 Piggs are still unable to walk yet, but they are better than they were yesterday. They tumble about the yard and can by no means stand at all steady yet. In the afternoon my 2 Piggs were tolerably sober.
Gilbert White, author of The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne, kept his journal for a quarter of a century, from 1768 to 1793 when he died. No literary work has ever recorded more precisely, more sensitively and yet with less pretension, the changing face of the countryside with the passing of the seasons. Most of the individual items are in themselves unmemorable – it is the cumulative effect that counts – but occasionally we are pulled up short:
4 December 1770:
Most owls seem to hoot exactly in B flat according to several pitch-pipes used in tuning of harpsichords, and as strictly at concert pitch.
8 February 1782:
Venus shadows very strongly, showing the bars of the windows on the floors and walls.
The first of these entries brought a most serendipitous contribution from Antony Head, quoting Professor Howard Evans of Fort Collins, Colorado:
Even the simple wing sounds of midges and mosquitoes play a role in bringing the sexes together. In this case it is the female that attracts the male by the hum of her wings, a fact quickly apparent to singers who hit a G in the vicinity of a swarm and end up with a mouthful of male mosquitoes.
Charles Cotton is almost forgotten nowadays, except perhaps as the friend and collaborator of Izaak Walton. Here is his ‘Epitaph on M.H.’:
In this cold Monument lies one,
That I knew who has lain upon,
The happier He: her sight would charm,
And touch have kept King David warm.
Lovely, as is the dawning East,
Was this marble’s frozen guest;
As soft, and snowy, as that down
Adorns the Blow-ball’s frizzled crown;
As straight and slender as the crest,
Or antlet of the one-beamed beast;
Pleasant as th’ odorous month of May:
As glorious, and as light as Day.
Whom I admir’d, as soon as knew,
And now her memory pursue
With such a superstitious lust,
She all perfections had, and more,
Tempting, as if design’d a whore,
For so she was; and since there are
Such, I could wish them all as fair.
Pretty she was, and young, and wise,
And in her calling so precise,
That industry had made her prove
The sucking school-mistress of love:
And Death, ambitious to become
Her pupil, left his ghastly home,
And, seeing how we us’d her here,
The raw-boned rascal ravisht her.
Who, pretty Soul, resign’d her breath,
To seek new lechery in Death.
I know little Spanish; but one does not have to be bilingual to feel the power and beauty of two stabbing lines of Francisco Quevedo:
Su tumba son de Flándes las campañas
Y su epitafio la sangrienta luna.
The fields of Flanders are his sepulchre
And all his epitaph, the bloodshot moon.
Quevedo lived from 1580 to 1645, was secretary to Philip IV, but spent the closing years of his life in prison for his opposition to the policies of the Duke of Olivares. The lines are quoted by Maurice Baring – though he translates them a little differently – in his superb anthology Have You Anything To Declare? He naturally adds that Flanders’ fields ‘have a special message for many English men and women’ – the book was published in 1936 – but omits to point out that for Quevedo and his generation that message was just as poignant, and in much the same way.
Indeed, what reason may not go to school to the wisdom of bees, ants and spiders? What wise hand teacheth them to do what reason cannot teach us? Ruder hands stand amazed at those prodigious pieces of nature, whales, elephants, dromedaries, and camels; these, I confess, are the colossuses and majestic pieces of her hand; but in these narrow engines there is more curious mathematics; and the civility of these little citizens more neatly sets forth the wisdom of their Maker.
The Illustrated Christmas Cracker Page 1
