Why do I even bother to read the TLS?

It always makes my blood boil, and this week I could have scorched a creme brulee using my nostrils alone.

First there was Hugo Williams's blimpish complaint in his Freelance column: "In order to avoid 'he' as a pronoun of common gender, some writers, including academics, have gone over to using 'she', a more obtrusive, less attractive word."

Now, whatever you think about the idea of common gender (no doubt everyone has their preferred solution), is "she" really a less attractive word than "he"? Really? And if Williams truly believes that, why, in his illustrative example of this barbarism, does he give a sentence that uses neither of these, but "her"? Answers on a brick, addressed to the TLS.

Elsewhere in the same issue, Adrian Tahourdin rightly celebrates the award of the Bernard Shaw translation prize to Thomas Teal for his work on Tove Jansson's Fair Play. Great - except that Tahourdin chooses to remind readers who Jansson is by telling them that "Tove Jansson will be known in this country for the charming novella The Summer Book." Now, I love The Summer Book, I really do, but this is a little like saying that "Shakespeare will be known to readers in this country for his narrative poem The Rape of Lucrece." Why couldn't Tahourdin bring himself to mention that Jansson is the author of some of the greatest works of twentieth century literature? Simple: because they were published for children, of course.

Why do I even bother to read the TLS?

It always makes my blood boil, and this week I could have scorched a creme brulee using my nostrils alone.

First there was Hugo Williams's blimpish complaint in his Freelance column: "In order to avoid 'he' as a pronoun of common gender, some writers, including academics, have gone over to using 'she', a more obtrusive, less attractive word."

Now, whatever you think about the idea of common gender (no doubt everyone has their preferred solution), is "she" really a less attractive word than "he"? Really? And if Williams truly believes that, why, in his illustrative example of this barbarism, does he give a sentence that uses neither of these, but "her"? Answers on a brick, addressed to the TLS.

Elsewhere in the same issue, Adrian Tahourdin rightly celebrates the award of the Bernard Shaw translation prize to Thomas Teal for his work on Tove Jansson's Fair Play. Great - except that Tahourdin chooses to remind readers who Jansson is by telling them that "Tove Jansson will be known in this country for the charming novella The Summer Book." Now, I love The Summer Book, I really do, but this is a little like saying that "Shakespeare will be known to readers in this country for his narrative poem The Rape of Lucrece." Why couldn't Tahourdin bring himself to mention that Jansson is the author of some of the greatest works of twentieth century literature? Simple: because they were published for children, of course.

Butler Records - Part 3

Last time we met Weeden Butler, my great*4 grandfather. It was he who, around 1770, started a school at 6 Cheyne Walk in Chelsea, on the site of Dr Dominicetti’s hydropathic baths (an eighteenth-century pamper palace).* That house was the family home until my great-great grandfather sold it in 1854.

I don’t have any of Weeden’s letters from his days as a teacher, though the British Museum has some in its manuscripts division. So too, it turns out, does the University of South Carolina. Their holdings come from a correspondence Weeden had with Pierce Butler (no relation), an American whose son Thomas attended the school during the late 1780s. These give some little insight into life in Chelsea, and Weeden’s schoolmaster style: “Tommy is perfectly [well]; and by this Time pretty quiet, under the Poppies of Morpheus, and so is the house too, in no small Proportion, when his Liveliness is retired to his Pillow”, he assures Pierce, while of a planned school trip to Weymouth he writes: “We mean...to eat very little more fish than we catch, tho' I rather anticipate that your Son's Stomach will require somewhat more substantial than the Quota of his piscatory Acquisitions." Something tells me that Tommy rather grated; but I do hope Weeden didn’t actually talk like that.

( Tales from the Tree - Our Claims to Fame )

* “On the right side of the garden, and communicating with the house, was erected an elegant brick building, a hundred feet long, and sixteen wide; in which were the baths and fumigating stones; adjoining to which were four sweating bed-chambers, to be directed to any degree of heat, and the water of the bath, and vaporous effluvia of the stove impregnated with such herbs and plants as might be most efficacious to the case.” An Historical and Topographical Description of Chelsea and Its Environs, Thomas Faulkner, 1810

Butler Records - Part 3

Last time we met Weeden Butler, my great*4 grandfather. It was he who, around 1770, started a school at 6 Cheyne Walk in Chelsea, on the site of Dr Dominicetti’s hydropathic baths (an eighteenth-century pamper palace).* That house was the family home until my great-great grandfather sold it in 1854.

I don’t have any of Weeden’s letters from his days as a teacher, though the British Museum has some in its manuscripts division. So too, it turns out, does the University of South Carolina. Their holdings come from a correspondence Weeden had with Pierce Butler (no relation), an American whose son Thomas attended the school during the late 1780s. These give some little insight into life in Chelsea, and Weeden’s schoolmaster style: “Tommy is perfectly [well]; and by this Time pretty quiet, under the Poppies of Morpheus, and so is the house too, in no small Proportion, when his Liveliness is retired to his Pillow”, he assures Pierce, while of a planned school trip to Weymouth he writes: “We mean...to eat very little more fish than we catch, tho' I rather anticipate that your Son's Stomach will require somewhat more substantial than the Quota of his piscatory Acquisitions." Something tells me that Tommy rather grated; but I do hope Weeden didn’t actually talk like that.

( Tales from the Tree - Our Claims to Fame )

* “On the right side of the garden, and communicating with the house, was erected an elegant brick building, a hundred feet long, and sixteen wide; in which were the baths and fumigating stones; adjoining to which were four sweating bed-chambers, to be directed to any degree of heat, and the water of the bath, and vaporous effluvia of the stove impregnated with such herbs and plants as might be most efficacious to the case.” An Historical and Topographical Description of Chelsea and Its Environs, Thomas Faulkner, 1810