A Guide to Dorothy Sayers I

You may remember that last week I quoted a passage from Dorothy Sayer's introduction to her translation of Dante's Divine Comedy. Click here  to refresh your recollection. She listed some of the references drawn largely from British history of the late 19th and early 20th century that a British poet in the middle of the 20th century might use in creating an analog.  Her point was that these references will become obscure over time, just as the various references of medival Italy now seem quite obscure to us.

The passage of time has proven her right in this.  I've decided to see if I can say something about every one of her references, just as if these were for the annotations of a real poet.

Let's begin:

Chamberlain (him of the orchid) – Joseph Chamberlain (1836 – 1914), who wore an orchid as a personal signature, was a prominent political figure of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, and though never prime minister his name was associated with a hawkish policy against the Boers in South Africa.  He was also the father of the next figure on our list.

Chamberlain (him of the umbrella) – Neville Chamberlain (1869-1940, prime minister 1937-1940)  -- widely reviled in the post war years including the period in which Sayers was writing – he has found some scholarly defenders since. He often carried an umbrella in public, was always portrayed with one in cartoons, and  is remembered for his part in the Munich Accords, conceding Germany’s sovereignty over the Sudetenland in what had been Czechoslovakia.

[Stewart Houston] Chamberlain (1855-1927), a British-born author of books on race, he became a German citizen in 1916 and produced anti-Brit propaganda for the remainder of that war.  It doesn’t appear that there was any relation to the above Chamberlains.

“Brides-in-the-Bath” Smith – George Joseph Smith (1872 – 1915), a serial killer convicted in the Old Bailey in 1915 of drowning each of his three wives.

 “Galloper” Smith – F.E. Smith, who became known as “Galloper” when that term was used in much the way we use the term “gofer.” A Galloper was someone who did errands for someone more famous.  F.E. Smith was an associate/galloper of Sir Edward Carson  in support of giving Ireland Home Rule. Later, he became Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain.

Horatio Bottomsley (1860-1933) – the publisher of a patriotic journal of opinion, John Bull, during the first world war.  Argued for the confiscation of the property of German nationals living in Britain, and a requirement that they be required to wear distinctive clothing.   I hope Dorothy Sayers was thinking of him as a plausible occupant of one of the rings of hell. 

Horatio Lord Nelson (1758-1805)  this one requires no explanation.  Victor at Trafalgar.

Fox [Charles or George] .  George Fox (1624-1691) was the founder of the Society of Friends (Quakers).

Charles Fox (1749-1806) was the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs for about three months in 1782, as the Brits sought to cut their losses in America. That was just an incident within a long parliamentary career, in which he was perhaps the most prominent advocate of the abolition of slavery within the Empire.

Man who picked up the bomb in Jermyn Street – this apparently refers to Al Bowlly (1898-1941), a jazz crooner who made a thousand recordings in the late 1920s and through the 1930s, in both the UK and US, and whose life was brought to an end during the Blitz in London in the manner to which this phrase makes reference.

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) this one doesn’t yet require explanation.  

Oscar Slater (1872 – 1948), the victim of a once-notorious case of mistaken identity in the murder of Marion Gilchrist in 1908.  The case has often been cited as showing the imperfect nature of witness identifications/line-ups etc. The identification evidence in this case was the result of coaching of the witnesses and more subtle means of slanting their decision.

Oscar Browning (1837-1923), a figure of some repute at Cambridge University in the late 19^th century.  Mentioned quite unfavorably by Virginia Woolf in “A Room of One’s Own” in connection with his prejudice against the education of women.  

That's a good start.  More tomorrow.

Hume's History of England

"Luther, a man naturally inflexible, vehement, opinionative, was become incapable, either from promises of advancement or terrors of severity, to relinquish a sect of which he was himself the founder, and which brought him a glory superior to all others, the glory of dictating the religious faith and principles of multitudes."

Those are the words of David Hume, best known these days as a hyper-skeptical philosopher, was more successful in his own time (1711-1776) as a historian.

Hume was the author of a six volume work called, revealingly enough, "The History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution of 1688." One measure of the success of these volumes is that despite his subsequent renown as one of the triumvirate of "great British empiricists," as the man who woke Kant from his "dogmatic slumber" and all that, the British Library, and the Cambridge University Library both still list Hume's works under the heading, "David Hume, historian."

I'm delighted to discover that "Project Gutenberg" has put the whole thing on line. It is now freely available to all the curious. And though I would imagine few of my readers will be able to invest the time necessary to read through the whole of it, the format makes it easy to take a dip here and there -- reading the table of contents of a volume, then going to the page or pages that interest you.

You'll find yourself addressed by a distinctive voice. At the beginning of Vol. III, for example, he introduces the subject of the Protestabt Reformation by discussing the clerical profession, and the reason any wise state must keep an eye on them.

"Each ghostly practitioner, in order to render himself more precious and sacred in the eyes of his retainers, will inspire them with the most violent abhorrence of all other sects, and continually endeavor, by some novelty, to excite the languid devotion of his audience. No regard will be paid to truth, morals, or decency, in the doctrines inculcated."

The creation of a state-supported Church helps the magistrates keep order, Hume continues. Without it there would be continual warring amongst the sects inspired by such "ghostly practitioners." But with state support for one Church, the clergy of that one lose the incentive to excite the devotion of their audience in such ways. Their audience is guaranteed them, and their salaries assigned.

"And in this manner ecclesiastical establishments, though commonly they arose at first from religious views, prove in the end advantageous to the political interests of society."

These general views being first clearly stated, we are unsurprised when we come to read what Hume has to say specifically -- in the passage I quoted above -- about the disturber of the official Church of all of western Europe to whom he soon turns his attention -- Martin Luther.

Put "penguin" in the paper

I love hearing grand things, deep things, discussed. Unfortunately, I also love to understand what I'm hearing. These two loves are of course in conflict because, quite frankly, I'm not equipped to understand a serious discussion of subatomic particles. I'll start listening, or reading, and then when bafflement overcomes intrigue, walk away or close the book.

This is why I was delighted to learn about penguin diagrams. It reconciles my two loves. Physicists use penguin diagrams to help keep track of "deWitt indices." Never mind what that means. When I read the story about a certain barroom bet, I had the feeling both that I understood what I was reading and that it was important and deep. Almost as if I were one of the folks who know what a deWitt index might be.

Here's the story according to John Ellis, a Cambridge-educated Brit who led a particle theory group at CERN for six years.

Mary K. [Gaillard], Dimitri [Nanopoulos], and I first got interested in what are now called penguin diagrams while we were studying CP violation in the Standard Model in 1976… The penguin name came in 1977, as follows.

In the spring of 1977, Mike Chanowitz, Mary K. and I wrote a paper on GUTs [Grand Unified Theories] predicting the b quark mass before it was found. When it was found a few weeks later, Mary K., Dimitri, Serge Rudaz and I immediately started working on its phenomenology.

That summer, there was a student at CERN, Melissa Franklin, who is now an experimentalist at Harvard. One evening, she, I, and Serge went to a pub, and she and I started a game of darts. We made a bet that if I lost I had to put the word penguin into my next paper. She actually left the darts game before the end, and was replaced by Serge, who beat me. Nevertheless, I felt obligated to carry out the conditions of the bet.

For some time, it was not clear to me how to get the word into this b quark paper that we were writing at the time…. Later…I had a sudden flash that the famous diagrams look like penguins. So we put the name into our paper, and the rest, as they say, is history.”

ACtually, you have a squint a lot to agree that the diagrams "look like penguins." But he was a man of his word, and the phrase has stuck.