The Ode Less Travelled, Cherwell, 2 June 2006, pp. 10-11.
Your Bod Card is about to expire. Miranda Kaufmann takes a look at some of the more bizarre books that the Bodleian Library has to offer.
“Promiscuous reading is necessary to the constituting of human nature”- Milton, Areopagitica, 1644.
That’s it. The problem is that this monogamous relationship you’ve had for maybe as long as the last four years with your subject is finally getting stale. You’re stuck in a rut. It’s making you jump through hoops to prove you still care. If you’ve finished Finals or even Prelims, it’s time to start an open relationship. And until August when your Bod Card expires, you have a ticket to the Best Little Whorehouse in Oxfordshire for pursuing some promiscuous reading: the Bodleian. As you may recall, it’s a copyright library. That means it has copies of everything ever published in this country. And that includes Playboy. Ever typed a subject at random into the OLIS search engine? It comes up with some interesting results.
You may at this stage never want to see another book ever again. And the idea of entering a library voluntarily may seem like madness. But you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t once upon a time enjoy reading for pleasure. One friend of mine, a Somerville engineer, though proud to boast that he hadn’t read a book since he was 16, got almost wistful when describing to me how he loved reading The Way Things Work as a child. Remember- the big Dorling Kindersley volume with the woolly mammoth illustrations? Once you leave Oxford for the ‘real world’, you may not have much time to read. But this summer, you may find a bit of leisure time, perhaps in the afternoons, between brunch and the first garden party of the day (especially if it’s raining) to pick up a book. This is your chance to use the great resource that is the Bodleian for your own ends. Some of the volumes stored in the cellars under Broad Street do not exist anywhere else in the world, and you certainly won’t have such easy access to them ever again.
So, what is there to read? You can of course spend a happy hour or so playing with OLIS, entering any subject that comes to mind. I did exactly that. I tried to look for something topical. World Cup? According to one 18th century pamphlet I found that “football is a rough and ugly game”, while “cricket is a much better game...because there are regular rules for playing, which are always strictly kept by honourable boys”.
Summer Balls? Fancy Dress parties? “But what are we to wear?” is the question that Fancy Dresses Described seeks to answer. This Victorian tome, which went through many editions to satisfy the vogue for fancy dress parties, puts the inventiveness of the average Bop theme to shame. It describes what to wear to impersonate not only a wide variety of historical and literary characters, but also a wide variety of inanimate objects. The effects were clearly easier to achieve in an age of personal dressmakers, or when, as is advertised at the end, “Debenham and Freebody are prepared to make to order any of the fancy Dresses described in this volume”. The reader is assured that “There are few occasions when a woman has a better opportunity of showing her charms to advantage than at a Fancy Ball” (a separate volume entitled Gentleman’s Fancy Dress: How to Choose It, is also available). This said, while the costumes described claim to be tried and tested, it must have been a lot easier to look good while dressed as a rose garden, than if you chose the ‘Coals’ costume. This constituted a “cap with a miniature coal scuttle” teamed with a “short skirt and tunic all covered with lumps of coal, save the front of the bodice, showing a white satin label: ‘100 ton’”. Victorian women were clearly not as concerned with appearing fat as we are today. But even the sveltest figure can not have benefitted from being encased in lumps of coal. Other equally ludicrous costume ideas posited include: Sack of Flour; Cigarette (featuring a coronet of cigarettes as a headdress); Leek; Spring Cleaning; and Beer (with bunches of barley on the shoulders and a headdress fashioned like a pewter pot). Slightly more sophisticated is the get-up for Champagne: “bodice of old gold satin, green satin skirt, white satin label on front with ‘Jules Mumm, Rheims, very dry, or any suitable lettering’ had-dress a full gathered cap of fawn cloth set in a band like top of cork; wine glass attached to one shoulder...” It’s these little details that get me. Imagine spending a whole night with a wine glass attached to your shoulder, or a “ruffle of small parcels around your neck” (Parcel Post) or holding a leek (Leek).
Summer of Love? The earliest sex manual held by the Bodleian is a volume entitled Preparation for Marriage, issued by the British Hygiene Council in 1932. Some of its advice is mind-bogglingly dated: “Psychologically speaking it is better that a woman should marry a man who has never kissed with significance a woman other than his intended mate.” Equally, at least one of the three reasons it suggests why men become “pseudo-homosexuals” is factually out of date: they “deliberately cultivate habits that are foreign to them either on account of a fear of venereal disease, a disappointment in a normal love affair or because they want to emulate true homosexuals who they admire”. However a comment on contemporary society rings still truer today: “We have confused the erotic with the pornographic and made of sex a jest.”
Most of the practical sex advice is extremely sensible, and while not going through an array of complicated positions like most modern tomes, it paints with broad brushstrokes a positive, almost reverent, attitude to sexual intercourse: “Many men are in the habit of going to sleep immediately after coitus, depriving not only their wives but themselves of the exquisite psychic and emotional experiences that should bring to a fitting termination the sexual communion.” The author warns against quickies, which he fantastically names “lighting love”- they shoulf “occur but seldom, and on exceptional occasions between persons of finer feelings, and... there must be complete mastery of intimate aesthetic technique”. In general “the man who neglects the love play (foreplay- but love play is I think a much better term, as it gives it its own dignity, not just labelling it as the starter to the main event) is guilty not only of coarseness but of positive brutality, and his omission...[will] offend and disgust a woman”.
Don’t have someone you’re considering marrying? Try reading Onania, or the heinous sin of self-pollution. The first edition was a fairly slim pamphlet penned by an 18th century quack doctor, hoping to sell some pills which claimed to cure one of the disease of Masturbation. However the Bodleian edition is a much larger book, swelled by the mass of correspondence received by its author after its original publication. These letters range from young men taking issue with the doctor’s views- Masturbation after all, is a much lesser sin than Fornication, one fervently argues; to one young housemaid’s distressed plea for a cure for the small penis she fears she is growing as a result of her sinful activities with a fellow maid who has been her bedfellow for the last year.
Not convinced by the quack doctor? Perhaps you’d prefer the advice of Mother Bunch. The History of Mother Bunch is an 18th century compendium of folk wisdom. Bunch is a wise old woman, giving advice to young people on the interpretation of dreams, the significance of moles on various parts of the body, and how to handle their love affairs. This gives rise to one particularly wonderful interchange: Mother Bunch: “I hope thou hast not played the wanton wagtail with him, hast thou?” Miss Susan, a brisk young seamstress from Salisbury answers: “No indeed Mother; but yet I must needs confess he would fain have played a lesson upon my lute the last market day, but I would not let him, and that was the cause of our falling out.”
To dream that a maid lets a bird out of a cage is a sign that she will not long hold her modesty, but as soon as she can get a customer “she’ll part with her maidenhead”.
You may remember the old rhyme about Monday’s child being fair of face. The 18th century version is a little less optimistic. We are told that those born on Wednesday “will be very slow in learning anything”, while those born on a Friday will “live long and be extremely lecherous”.
In the same book are preserved various other titles, including Hocus Pocus or the whole art of Legerdemain; Mother Goose’s Fairy Tales; Moral Tales- with such edifying titles as The Spoiled Child and Domestic Management(which seems to incorporate an element of anti-Scots xenophobia), and The Complete Letter Writer- a handy volume full of model letters, which could be of quite a lot of use to the Facebook generation.
Already feeling nostalgic for the strange customs of Oxford? The Vindication of the Mallard sets out to defend the Mallard of All Souls from the foul ‘forg’d hypothesis’ that the Mallard might be “a Goose, or at least rank’d in the same class as that ridiculous Animal”. The author calls on the writings of 14th century monk, Thomas Walsingham, to prove that the tale that Henry Chichele, the archbishop of Canterbury who founded All Souls, was guided as to location by a dream that told him that the ideal place to lay the foundation stone was the corner “which turnyth towards the Cattys Strete”- and to confirm the truth of this, when they dug there, they would find a Mallard trapped underground, ‘wele yfattened”- which symbollised the “thrivance of his future college”. Sure enough, we are told: “Long they had not digged ere they herde, as it might seeme within the wam of the Erthe horrid Strugglinges and Flutteringes, and anon violent Quaakinges of the distressed Mallarde...the size of his Bodie was as that of a Bustarde or an Ostridge”. Chichele was convinced.
Or, if you are missing Eights week, the May Bee: an Eights’ week Buzzer; Pan and The Barge were all published during Eights weeks in the first decade of the 20th century, and include lovely illustrations such as Prehistoric Oxford, or Eights week in the Stone Age- which shows cavemen crews rowing logs down a dinosaur-infested river, and amusing stories- one by G.K. Chesterton.
One noteworthy anecdote was as follows: “I know a chap who went in for Honour Mods, and he spent nearly the whole of last term in bed. He used to get more rest that way he said, and when he fell asleep, which was about every ten minutes, the book he was reading dropped onto the bridge of his nose and waited there til he woke up (he always dreamed that his nose was broken), then he just lifted in up and went on working.” These fantastic pieces of ephemera are a real insight into the Oxford of old.
In the end the most entertaining thing I read while researching this article was the January 1965 edition of Playboy. However it was not at all what I had expected. I’ve never actually read modern Playboy (though I have read lesser titles such as FHM, Maxim, Nuts), so I suppose I didn’t really know what to expect. It was a revelation. This one issue had short stories by Vladimir Nabokov, Jack Kerouac, P.G. Wodehouse and Harold Pinter, a column by Woody Allen (prize insult: “Facially, she resembled Louis Armstrong’s voice”), an interview with Martin Luther King, business advice from John Paul Getty and a hilarious photo story starring Peter Ustinov entitled A Hypothetical History of Harems. I was quite stunned by the list of talent that was the Contents page. The talent that made the magazine infamous was certainly not lacking- and since I had chosen the January issue, it contained a Playmate review- a retrospective of the last years’ centrefolds. However the pictures seem fairly tame by modern standards.
As with many old publications, the adverts were often as amusing as the articles, certainly more so than the dire Playboy jokes page, which featured such corny, dated material as: “Some girls are music lovers, while others can love just as well without it.” The date-rape fantasy copy of one aftershave ad: “She won’t? By George, she will! By George!- a very persuasive fragrance for men” would hardly be countenanced today by the Advertising Standards Commission. Tamer, and laughably so, was the Playboy Ski Sweater, in which “the renowned Playboy rabbit puts in an interwoven appearance”.
An amusing column- Playboy After Hours- imagines a dating future where sex is easy, and it is good conversation which is sought after: “It will require a fair amount of sex play to lead up to that exciting climax, a hot argument. Naturally, once a guy makes a good conversational point, he’ll be content to relax a little, take some time before the next one. But you know how girls are. Once the girl gets going she’ll want to talk her head off, one point on top of the next.”
The Playboy Advisor is a problem page which answers “all reasonable questions- from fashion, food and drink, hi-fi and sports cars to dating dilemmas, taste and etiquette”. While its advice seems on average to be quite sensible, its mode of expression might upset some- a lady who’s started an affair with a married woman is reprimanded: “Having unplugged this dyke, you seem unwilling to deal with the consequences.”
There are even some cartoons. A fantastic illustration, showing Winnie the Pooh looking much fatter than usual gazing at a pair of children’s shoes accompanies the verse: “Christopher Robin/Christopher Schmobin/A Bear has got to Eat!”
There are also cartoon strips featuring Hostileman: “Avenger of the Meek, the Recalcitrant, the Scared and the Dubious, Champion of the Clumsy, Wheelhorse for the Inept... Now in a fight to the death with Sylvia the Giant Man Eater”; and Little Annie Fanny, who in this month’s issue has a spoof-ing encounter with someone very like Sean Connery’s James Bond.
All the books I’ve mentioned had to be ordered up from the stacks: that’s where the real treasures are. In general, you’ll have a choice of reading rooms, and this will give you a chance to explore some parts of the Bodley you’ve never had reason to set foot in before. The Duke Humphrey is well worth looking at. However, if the system deems the book you’ve selected to be of a pornographic nature, which the cataloguing system denotes with the Greek letter φ, you may only view it in what the system calls BOD MOD PA. This translates as the Modern Papers, or Room 132 in the New Bodleian. There is no Room 133 or 131. I think the idea is that the room is small enough for the librarian to keep an eye on you.
I will leave you with another apt quote: “There are worse crimes than burning books. One is not reading them.”- Ioseph Brodsky, 1991.
“Promiscuous reading is necessary to the constituting of human nature”- Milton, Areopagitica, 1644.
That’s it. The problem is that this monogamous relationship you’ve had for maybe as long as the last four years with your subject is finally getting stale. You’re stuck in a rut. It’s making you jump through hoops to prove you still care. If you’ve finished Finals or even Prelims, it’s time to start an open relationship. And until August when your Bod Card expires, you have a ticket to the Best Little Whorehouse in Oxfordshire for pursuing some promiscuous reading: the Bodleian. As you may recall, it’s a copyright library. That means it has copies of everything ever published in this country. And that includes Playboy. Ever typed a subject at random into the OLIS search engine? It comes up with some interesting results.
You may at this stage never want to see another book ever again. And the idea of entering a library voluntarily may seem like madness. But you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t once upon a time enjoy reading for pleasure. One friend of mine, a Somerville engineer, though proud to boast that he hadn’t read a book since he was 16, got almost wistful when describing to me how he loved reading The Way Things Work as a child. Remember- the big Dorling Kindersley volume with the woolly mammoth illustrations? Once you leave Oxford for the ‘real world’, you may not have much time to read. But this summer, you may find a bit of leisure time, perhaps in the afternoons, between brunch and the first garden party of the day (especially if it’s raining) to pick up a book. This is your chance to use the great resource that is the Bodleian for your own ends. Some of the volumes stored in the cellars under Broad Street do not exist anywhere else in the world, and you certainly won’t have such easy access to them ever again.
So, what is there to read? You can of course spend a happy hour or so playing with OLIS, entering any subject that comes to mind. I did exactly that. I tried to look for something topical. World Cup? According to one 18th century pamphlet I found that “football is a rough and ugly game”, while “cricket is a much better game...because there are regular rules for playing, which are always strictly kept by honourable boys”.
Summer Balls? Fancy Dress parties? “But what are we to wear?” is the question that Fancy Dresses Described seeks to answer. This Victorian tome, which went through many editions to satisfy the vogue for fancy dress parties, puts the inventiveness of the average Bop theme to shame. It describes what to wear to impersonate not only a wide variety of historical and literary characters, but also a wide variety of inanimate objects. The effects were clearly easier to achieve in an age of personal dressmakers, or when, as is advertised at the end, “Debenham and Freebody are prepared to make to order any of the fancy Dresses described in this volume”. The reader is assured that “There are few occasions when a woman has a better opportunity of showing her charms to advantage than at a Fancy Ball” (a separate volume entitled Gentleman’s Fancy Dress: How to Choose It, is also available). This said, while the costumes described claim to be tried and tested, it must have been a lot easier to look good while dressed as a rose garden, than if you chose the ‘Coals’ costume. This constituted a “cap with a miniature coal scuttle” teamed with a “short skirt and tunic all covered with lumps of coal, save the front of the bodice, showing a white satin label: ‘100 ton’”. Victorian women were clearly not as concerned with appearing fat as we are today. But even the sveltest figure can not have benefitted from being encased in lumps of coal. Other equally ludicrous costume ideas posited include: Sack of Flour; Cigarette (featuring a coronet of cigarettes as a headdress); Leek; Spring Cleaning; and Beer (with bunches of barley on the shoulders and a headdress fashioned like a pewter pot). Slightly more sophisticated is the get-up for Champagne: “bodice of old gold satin, green satin skirt, white satin label on front with ‘Jules Mumm, Rheims, very dry, or any suitable lettering’ had-dress a full gathered cap of fawn cloth set in a band like top of cork; wine glass attached to one shoulder...” It’s these little details that get me. Imagine spending a whole night with a wine glass attached to your shoulder, or a “ruffle of small parcels around your neck” (Parcel Post) or holding a leek (Leek).
Summer of Love? The earliest sex manual held by the Bodleian is a volume entitled Preparation for Marriage, issued by the British Hygiene Council in 1932. Some of its advice is mind-bogglingly dated: “Psychologically speaking it is better that a woman should marry a man who has never kissed with significance a woman other than his intended mate.” Equally, at least one of the three reasons it suggests why men become “pseudo-homosexuals” is factually out of date: they “deliberately cultivate habits that are foreign to them either on account of a fear of venereal disease, a disappointment in a normal love affair or because they want to emulate true homosexuals who they admire”. However a comment on contemporary society rings still truer today: “We have confused the erotic with the pornographic and made of sex a jest.”
Most of the practical sex advice is extremely sensible, and while not going through an array of complicated positions like most modern tomes, it paints with broad brushstrokes a positive, almost reverent, attitude to sexual intercourse: “Many men are in the habit of going to sleep immediately after coitus, depriving not only their wives but themselves of the exquisite psychic and emotional experiences that should bring to a fitting termination the sexual communion.” The author warns against quickies, which he fantastically names “lighting love”- they shoulf “occur but seldom, and on exceptional occasions between persons of finer feelings, and... there must be complete mastery of intimate aesthetic technique”. In general “the man who neglects the love play (foreplay- but love play is I think a much better term, as it gives it its own dignity, not just labelling it as the starter to the main event) is guilty not only of coarseness but of positive brutality, and his omission...[will] offend and disgust a woman”.
Don’t have someone you’re considering marrying? Try reading Onania, or the heinous sin of self-pollution. The first edition was a fairly slim pamphlet penned by an 18th century quack doctor, hoping to sell some pills which claimed to cure one of the disease of Masturbation. However the Bodleian edition is a much larger book, swelled by the mass of correspondence received by its author after its original publication. These letters range from young men taking issue with the doctor’s views- Masturbation after all, is a much lesser sin than Fornication, one fervently argues; to one young housemaid’s distressed plea for a cure for the small penis she fears she is growing as a result of her sinful activities with a fellow maid who has been her bedfellow for the last year.
Not convinced by the quack doctor? Perhaps you’d prefer the advice of Mother Bunch. The History of Mother Bunch is an 18th century compendium of folk wisdom. Bunch is a wise old woman, giving advice to young people on the interpretation of dreams, the significance of moles on various parts of the body, and how to handle their love affairs. This gives rise to one particularly wonderful interchange: Mother Bunch: “I hope thou hast not played the wanton wagtail with him, hast thou?” Miss Susan, a brisk young seamstress from Salisbury answers: “No indeed Mother; but yet I must needs confess he would fain have played a lesson upon my lute the last market day, but I would not let him, and that was the cause of our falling out.”
To dream that a maid lets a bird out of a cage is a sign that she will not long hold her modesty, but as soon as she can get a customer “she’ll part with her maidenhead”.
You may remember the old rhyme about Monday’s child being fair of face. The 18th century version is a little less optimistic. We are told that those born on Wednesday “will be very slow in learning anything”, while those born on a Friday will “live long and be extremely lecherous”.
In the same book are preserved various other titles, including Hocus Pocus or the whole art of Legerdemain; Mother Goose’s Fairy Tales; Moral Tales- with such edifying titles as The Spoiled Child and Domestic Management(which seems to incorporate an element of anti-Scots xenophobia), and The Complete Letter Writer- a handy volume full of model letters, which could be of quite a lot of use to the Facebook generation.
Already feeling nostalgic for the strange customs of Oxford? The Vindication of the Mallard sets out to defend the Mallard of All Souls from the foul ‘forg’d hypothesis’ that the Mallard might be “a Goose, or at least rank’d in the same class as that ridiculous Animal”. The author calls on the writings of 14th century monk, Thomas Walsingham, to prove that the tale that Henry Chichele, the archbishop of Canterbury who founded All Souls, was guided as to location by a dream that told him that the ideal place to lay the foundation stone was the corner “which turnyth towards the Cattys Strete”- and to confirm the truth of this, when they dug there, they would find a Mallard trapped underground, ‘wele yfattened”- which symbollised the “thrivance of his future college”. Sure enough, we are told: “Long they had not digged ere they herde, as it might seeme within the wam of the Erthe horrid Strugglinges and Flutteringes, and anon violent Quaakinges of the distressed Mallarde...the size of his Bodie was as that of a Bustarde or an Ostridge”. Chichele was convinced.
Or, if you are missing Eights week, the May Bee: an Eights’ week Buzzer; Pan and The Barge were all published during Eights weeks in the first decade of the 20th century, and include lovely illustrations such as Prehistoric Oxford, or Eights week in the Stone Age- which shows cavemen crews rowing logs down a dinosaur-infested river, and amusing stories- one by G.K. Chesterton.
One noteworthy anecdote was as follows: “I know a chap who went in for Honour Mods, and he spent nearly the whole of last term in bed. He used to get more rest that way he said, and when he fell asleep, which was about every ten minutes, the book he was reading dropped onto the bridge of his nose and waited there til he woke up (he always dreamed that his nose was broken), then he just lifted in up and went on working.” These fantastic pieces of ephemera are a real insight into the Oxford of old.
In the end the most entertaining thing I read while researching this article was the January 1965 edition of Playboy. However it was not at all what I had expected. I’ve never actually read modern Playboy (though I have read lesser titles such as FHM, Maxim, Nuts), so I suppose I didn’t really know what to expect. It was a revelation. This one issue had short stories by Vladimir Nabokov, Jack Kerouac, P.G. Wodehouse and Harold Pinter, a column by Woody Allen (prize insult: “Facially, she resembled Louis Armstrong’s voice”), an interview with Martin Luther King, business advice from John Paul Getty and a hilarious photo story starring Peter Ustinov entitled A Hypothetical History of Harems. I was quite stunned by the list of talent that was the Contents page. The talent that made the magazine infamous was certainly not lacking- and since I had chosen the January issue, it contained a Playmate review- a retrospective of the last years’ centrefolds. However the pictures seem fairly tame by modern standards.
As with many old publications, the adverts were often as amusing as the articles, certainly more so than the dire Playboy jokes page, which featured such corny, dated material as: “Some girls are music lovers, while others can love just as well without it.” The date-rape fantasy copy of one aftershave ad: “She won’t? By George, she will! By George!- a very persuasive fragrance for men” would hardly be countenanced today by the Advertising Standards Commission. Tamer, and laughably so, was the Playboy Ski Sweater, in which “the renowned Playboy rabbit puts in an interwoven appearance”.
An amusing column- Playboy After Hours- imagines a dating future where sex is easy, and it is good conversation which is sought after: “It will require a fair amount of sex play to lead up to that exciting climax, a hot argument. Naturally, once a guy makes a good conversational point, he’ll be content to relax a little, take some time before the next one. But you know how girls are. Once the girl gets going she’ll want to talk her head off, one point on top of the next.”
The Playboy Advisor is a problem page which answers “all reasonable questions- from fashion, food and drink, hi-fi and sports cars to dating dilemmas, taste and etiquette”. While its advice seems on average to be quite sensible, its mode of expression might upset some- a lady who’s started an affair with a married woman is reprimanded: “Having unplugged this dyke, you seem unwilling to deal with the consequences.”
There are even some cartoons. A fantastic illustration, showing Winnie the Pooh looking much fatter than usual gazing at a pair of children’s shoes accompanies the verse: “Christopher Robin/Christopher Schmobin/A Bear has got to Eat!”
There are also cartoon strips featuring Hostileman: “Avenger of the Meek, the Recalcitrant, the Scared and the Dubious, Champion of the Clumsy, Wheelhorse for the Inept... Now in a fight to the death with Sylvia the Giant Man Eater”; and Little Annie Fanny, who in this month’s issue has a spoof-ing encounter with someone very like Sean Connery’s James Bond.
All the books I’ve mentioned had to be ordered up from the stacks: that’s where the real treasures are. In general, you’ll have a choice of reading rooms, and this will give you a chance to explore some parts of the Bodley you’ve never had reason to set foot in before. The Duke Humphrey is well worth looking at. However, if the system deems the book you’ve selected to be of a pornographic nature, which the cataloguing system denotes with the Greek letter φ, you may only view it in what the system calls BOD MOD PA. This translates as the Modern Papers, or Room 132 in the New Bodleian. There is no Room 133 or 131. I think the idea is that the room is small enough for the librarian to keep an eye on you.
I will leave you with another apt quote: “There are worse crimes than burning books. One is not reading them.”- Ioseph Brodsky, 1991.
