Changed Men

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Amou_Haji_in_2014_or_earlier.png

Iranian hermit Amou Haji ate carrion, drank from puddles, lived in a hole, smoked dung, and died at 94, a few months after bathing for the first time in 60 years. He said he became a hermit due to “emotional setbacks” after a heartbreak.

English merchant Nathaniel Bentley became known as Dirty Dick when he stopped washing in his late 30s. His filthy shop became a tourist attraction. Interestingly, he too was said to have changed after a ruined love affair, allegedly after his fiancée died on the eve of their wedding. Charles Dickens knew of the story, which may have inspired that of Miss Havisham in Great Expectations.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nathaniel_Bentley_Sketch.png

| Literature · Oddities

Lacunae

Demetri Martin’s 2012 book This Is a Book contains a page marked “This page unintentionally left blank.”

The first page of this edition of Jean-Paul Sartre’s 1944 essay Anti-Semite and Jew is marked “This Page Intentionally No Longer Blank”.

At the start of Australian children’s author Andy Griffiths’ 1999 book Just Stupid!, a cartoon snail tells the reader, “This page would be blank if I were not here telling you that this page would be blank if I were not here telling you that …”

Reza Amirkhani’s 2000 novel Man-e-oo contains a whole chapter of blank pages.

Idries Shah’s The Book of the Book spends 10 pages explaining why the pages that follow are important; these pages prove to be blank.

Don Novello’s 1977 book The Lazlo Letters ends with several otherwise empty pages marked “FREE PAPER!”

This 32-page pamphlet, published in 1880, was entirely blank:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Political_Achievements_of_the_Earl_of_Dalkeith.jpg

It worked — William Gladstone defeated Lord Eskdaill in an upset victory at Midlothian.

| Literature · Oddities

A Wide Net

Entries in the index of Charles Cotton’s 1685 translation of Montaigne’s essays:

Ancient History how far respectable
Ants Conference
Arts taught to Men by other Animals
Books, immortal Children
Chearfulness Sign of Wisdom
Chewing accounted unbecoming
Clothes unknown to many Nations
Compositions that smell of Oil and the Lamp
Convenience, none without Inconvenience
Counsel’s Strength consists in Time
Desire of gathering Riches has no Limits
Dowry, great, Ruin of Families
Dying for Fear of Death
Elephant, discovering the Cheat of his Keeper
Feet performing the Service of Hands
Fortune often coincides with Reason
Foxes judging of the Thickness of the Ice by hearing
Goats trained up to give suck to Children
Greyhound’s Imagination
Head uncovered in the Presence of the Gods, why
Hedgehogs Foreknowledge of the Wind
Hospitals for Beasts
Kings and Coblers Souls cast in the same Mold
Lice cracked with the Teeth
Life, many Ways to get rid of it
Magpie that imitated the Trumpet
Monsters, whether there are such properly
Nations that sleep and wake by Half Years
Nobility, what
Opinion gives Weight and Value to Things
Parchment Scrolls tied about the Neck of Pericles
Parents dead Bodies eaten by their Children
Pedants despised
Pleasures wheedle and caress only to strangle us
Poverty obstinate
Prince ought to be himself in the Field
Revenge against inanimate Creatures
Skin of a Man, sufficient Proof against Weather
Trees buried in Winter
Utility, public, too dearly purchased
Women are more learned than Men in Love’s Business
Word of Men, their only Tye on one another
World a Looking-Glass and Book

The full index (in three volumes) is here, here, and here. It was added after Cotton’s death; I’m not sure who composed it.

| Literature

Overview

Excerpts from the index of the British literary and society journal Tatler, 1709-1711:

Age, if healthy, happy
Ancestors, their examples should excite to great and virtuous actions
Animals, a degree of gratitude owing to them that serve us
Atheist, behaviour of one in sickness
Barbers, inconveniences attending their being historians
Classics, absolutely necessary to study them
Climate, British, very inconstant
Cowards never forgive
Cunning opposed to wisdom
Duels, the danger of dying in one, represented
Earth, its inhabitants ranged under two general heads
Examination, self, advantages attending it
Fame, common, house of, described
Feet, pretty ones, a letter concerning them
Flies and free-thinkers compared
Gardens, the best not so fine as nature
Honour, temple of, can be entered only through that of Virtue
Horse, described by Homer, Virgil, Oppian, Lucan, and Pope
Janglings, matrimonial
Ladies, all women such
Laughter, the chorus of conversation
Master, how he should behave to his servants
Pedants, their veneration for Greek and Latin condemned
Peruke, a kind of index to the mind
Possession, true, consists in enjoyment
Reproof distinguished from reproach
Sloth more invincible than vice
Terrible Club, account of it
Time not to be squandered
Wisdom opposed to cunning
Women should have learning

Henry Wheatley said that the indexes “possess that admirable quality of making the consulter wish to read the book itself.” Leigh Hunt wrote, “As there is ‘a soul of goodness in things evil’ so there is a soul of humor in things dry … so an Index, like the Tatler’s, often gives us a taste of the quintessence of his humor.”

| Literature

Sob Story

In 1886, on republishing Henry Mackenzie’s 1775 novel The Man of Feeling, University College London English professor Henry Morley underscored the book’s sentimentality by adding an “Index to Tears” that records every instance in which a character weeps — 46 occasions in less than 200 pages:

Hand bathed with tears                     27
I could only weep                          48
Tears, wrung from the heart                51
Tear stood in eye                          65
Dropped one tear, no more                  67
Tears, press-gang could scarce keep from   69
Big drops wetted gray beard                70
Moistened eye                              72
Girl wept, brother sobbed                  74
Tears gushed afresh                        75
Tears flowing without control              96

And so on. At the top he notes, “Choking, &c, not counted.”

| Literature

Summing Up

J. Horace Round’s 1895 book Feudal England contains a bitter invective against Oxford historian Edward Augustus Freeman — it’s hidden in the index:

Freeman, Professor: unacquainted with the Inc. Com. Cant., 4; ignores the Northamptonshire geld-roll 149; confuses the Inquisitio geldi 148; his contemptuous criticism 150, 337, 385, 434, 454; when himself in error 151; his charge against the Conqueror 152, 573; on Hugh d’Envermeu 159; on Hereward 160-4; his ‘certain’ history 323, 433; his ‘undoubted history’ 162, 476; his ‘facts’ 436; on Heming’s cartulary 169; on Mr. Waters 190; on the introduction of feudal tenures 227-31, 260, 267-72, 301, 306; on the knight’s fee 234; on Ranulf Flambard 288; on the evidence of Domesday 299-31; underrates feudal influence 247, 536-8; on scutage 268; overlooks the Worcester relief 308; influenced by words and names 317, 338; on Normans under Edward 318 sqq.; his bias 319, 394-7; on Richard’s castle 320 sqq.; confuses individuals 323-4, 386, 473; his assumptions 323; on the name Alfred 327; on the Sheriff Thorold 328-9; on the battle of Hastings 332 sqq.; his pedantry 334-9; his ‘palisade’ 340 sqq., 354, 370, 372, 387, 391, 403; misconstrues his Latin 343, 436; his use of Wace 344-7, 348, 352, 355, 375; on William of Malmesbury 346, 410-14, 440; his words suppressed 347, 393; on the Bayeux Tapestry 348-51; imagines facts 352, 370, 387, 432; his supposed accuracy 353, 354, 384, 436-7, 440, 446, 448; right as to the shield-wall 354-8; his guesses 359, 362, 366, 375, 378-9, 380, 387, 389, 433-5, 456, 462; his theory of Harold’s defeat 360, 380-1; his confused views 364-5, 403, 439, 446, 448; his dramatic tendency 365-6; evades difficulties 373, 454; his treatment of authorities 376-7, 449-51; on the relief of Argues 384; misunderstands tactics 381-3, 387; on Walter Giffard 385-6; his failure 388; his special weakness 388, 391; his splended narrative 389, 393; his Homeric power 391; on Harold and his Standard 402-3; on Wace 404-6, 409; on Regenbald 425; on Earl Ralf 428; on William Malet 430; on the Conqueror’s earldoms 429; his Domesday errors and confusion 151, 425, 428, 436-7, 445-8, 463; on the ‘Civic League’ 433-5; his wild dream 438; his special interest in Exeter 431; on legends 441; on Thierry 451, 458; his method 454-5; on Lisois 460; on Stigand 461; on Walter Tirel 476-7; on St. Hugh’s action [1197] 528; on the Winchester Assembly 535-8; distorts feudalism 537; on the king’s court 538; on Richard’s change of seal 540; necessity of criticising his work, xi., 353.

While we’re at it: Here’s a detail from the index to the Rectory Magazine, handwritten by Lewis Carroll for his family in 1848:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lewis_Carroll%27s_own_handwrtten_index.png

He would have been about 16.

(Thanks, Jim.)

| History · Literature · Society

Misc

  • Ajoritsedabi Oreghoyeyere Memaridieyin Okorodudu played basketball for Bucknell in 1980.
  • Spike Milligan said his father’s last word was “Aaargh!”
  • It’s illegal to take a lion to the movies in Baltimore.
  • In 2007 the UK Association of Chief Police Officers’ spokesman on knife crime was named Alfred Hitchcock.
  • “I banged the door with such a slam, / It sounded like a wooden d–n.” — Frederick Locker-Lampson
| Death · Language · Literature · Society

Afoot

In 2004, the world’s foremost scholar on Sherlock Holmes was found garrotted on his bed. Richard Lancelyn Green had been planning a three-volume biography of Arthur Conan Doyle but had had trouble gaining rights to the author’s private papers and manuscripts, which were scheduled to be auctioned at Christie’s. Lancelyn Green believed that Doyle’s daughter had wanted these to go to the British Library instead, but his efforts to stop the auction had been unsuccessful. In the weeks before his death he told friends that an unidentified American was following him and that he’d come to fear that his contention over the papers might have put his life in danger.

The coroner returned an open verdict. Lancelyn Green’s best friends said it was not in his nature to take his own life, but others wondered whether he might have arranged his death to cast suspicion on a rival, mirroring the Sherlock Holmes story “The Problem of Thor Bridge,” in which a jealous wife contrives her suicide to cast doubt on a woman her husband had been flirting with.

The case remains unsolved. “I think he wanted it to look like murder,” said James Gibson, who had edited a Doyle bibliography with Lancelyn Green in 1983. “He must have been planning it for days, giving us false clues. He created the perfect mystery.”

| Crime · Death · Literature · Oddities