Clay Lane

The Copy Book

A Library of History and Literature in English

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151

Educational Ideals

Like the ideal Christian, the ideal teacher is one who spreads joy in everything, great or small.

Alexander Haddow, who taught at Jordanhill College of Education, Glasgow, between the wars, was known for his conviction that poetry-reading must bring joy or it must not be attempted. “I would have only those who wish to read, try,” he said, “and I would have you deal gently with all who really try.” In On the Teaching of Poetry (1925) Haddow went so far as to liken the vocation of the teacher to that of the Christian.

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Picture: By Adrian Pingstone, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.

152

Pater’s Bathe

A charming children’s rhyme that is also a test of the clearest speaker’s diction.

Sir Edward Abbott Parry had recently been appointed one of her majesty Queen Victoria’s judges when he published Katawampus (1895), a book of tales and rhymes for young children. It all began, it seems, when Pater (Latin for father), in despair over his fractious children, took a Christmas Day dip in the sea... but before telling that extraordinary story, Pater gave these little verses from his ‘book of rhymes’.

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Picture: © Peter Trimming, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0 generic.. Source.

153

Fricassée in France

In the opening lines of Laurence Sterne’s Sentimental Journey, the narrator explains the perverse whim that led him to leave his home shores behind.

Laurence Sterne published A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy in 1768, only a few weeks before his death. Sterne had recently toured the Continent himself, determined to be less fractious and curmudgeonly than fellow writer and tourist Tobias Smollett. The story begins with the narrator, the Revd Mr Yorick, feeling challenged to back up his rosy view of life on the near Continent by actually paying it a visit.

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Picture: By James Bretherton (?1730-1806), after William Henry Bunbury (1750-1811), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.

154

Recollections of Slavery

Samuel Pepys ran into a little knot of seafaring men at the Exchange, who told him some hair-raising tales about their time in Algiers.

On February 8th, 1661, Samuel Pepys, a civil servant with the Royal Navy, popped over to the Exchange to meet William Warren, who supplied wood for the nation’s warships. Warren was unavailable, but the convivial Pepys invited some Naval officers to the nearby Golden Fleece tavern, where he listened open-mouthed to their recollections of life in the slave compounds of Algiers.

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Picture: By Willem van de Velde (1603-1707), via the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, and Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.

155

Jailbreak

When Rhoda, maid to John Mark and his mother, said Peter was standing at the gate, nobody in the house believed her.

St Peter was imprisoned during the purge of Christians ordered by Herod Agrippa in AD 44, during which St James, brother of St John the Evangelist, was executed. Peter’s miraculous jailbreak is a tale into which another evangelist, St Mark, also comes; but the star of Luke’s superbly crafted account is Rhoda, the scatterbrained maid.

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Picture: © Andrey Mironov, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0.. Source.

156

Trouble at Belsize Gardens

In 1720, Welsh promoter William Howell opened a pleasure garden at Belsize House, but the pleasures drew the magistrates’ frowns.

In 1722, the pleasure gardens at Belsize House near Hampstead were raided by constables on the orders of horrified magistrates, as being a den of gambling, lewdness and riot. It had all started innocently enough two years earlier, after an enterprising Welshman named William Howell obtained a lease on the stately house and gardens.

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Picture: By Jan Siberechts (1627-?1703), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.