9

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756—91), child prodigy and prolific genius and Ferdinand

‘Jelly Roll’ Morton (né La Menthe) (1890—1941), pianist and arranger; both made their mark on the music of their time; both addicted to the gaming table; both chronically short of money.

The Bach family (fl C17&18), composers and practitioners of baroque music and Scott Joplin (1868—1917) prolific (but by no means the only) composer of ragtime, repopularised in the 1970s by the American Professor Joshua Rifkin who is also a noted authority on (inter alia) the music of the Bachs. Joplin’s The Entertainer.

(Achille) Claude Debussy (1862—1918), French composer and critic, creator of impressionism in music, linking with Leon Bismarck ‘Bix’ Beiderbecke — (1903—31), inspired and inspiring cornettist, whose piano composition In a Mist (Dans une Brume)(1925) sounds modern even today.

Ma foie — As opposed to ma foi.

Quel fromage — As opposed to quel domage

10

Bartholomew Fair — one of the great fairs of England, held on St Bartholomew’s Day (24 August) at Smithfield between 1133 and 1752; after the calendar reform (when 2 September 1752 was followed by 14 September — ‘Give us back our eleven days’) the Fair opened on 3 September. It moved to Islington in 1840 and was last held in 1855, when it gave place to the Caledonian Market (‘The Stones’). It was stylised in the play Bartholomew Fair) (1614) by the playwright and poet Ben Jonson (1572—1637).

Joe ‘King’ Oliver (1885—1938) and Louis Armstrong (1901—71) were renowned for their two-cornet breaks at Chicago’s Lincoln Gardens 1922—24.

Dan Leno (George Galvin) (1860—1904) British music hall entertainer and, noted pantomime clown, who died insane.

Charlie Chaplin, Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin (1889—1977), English comedian, Hollywood film actor and director; the ‘little fellow’ with bowler, baggy trousers, cane and moustache.

Euclid — Third Century BC Greek mathematician of Alexandria, the ‘father of geometry’.

Sir Isaac Newton (1642—1727) — English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, philosopher and mystic, noted for his work on gravitation and optics.

Leonhard Euler (1707—83) — Swiss mathematician, the ‘father of mathematical analysis’.

Pierre de Fermat (1601—65) — French mathematician, ‘father of the theory of numbers’ whose famous ‘last theorem’ states there the only whole number n for which there is n an integral solution to the equation xⁿ + yⁿ = zⁿ is 2.

Karl Friedrick Gauss (1777—1855) — German mathematician who applied mathematics to astronomy, magnetism and electricity.

11

Shurely the mishtake we’re making... — Private Eye in-joke.

Haiku — a Japanese verse form consisting of 17 syllables: 5—7—5; Japanese hai-ku amusement verse.

Procrustean Bed — Procustes was a character of Greek legend, a robber of Attica, who placed people he seized on his iron bed, stretching those who were too short, and shortening those who were too long.

Cabined, cribb’d, confined, bound in

To saucy doubts and fears

— Macbeth (1606) 3:4:24; William Shakespeare (1564—1616).

12

Isaac Watts (1674—1748) English hymmodist.

picosecond — 10^-12 or 0.000000000001 (one million millionth) of a second.

The tartan shirt, and (p13) the owls hooting and the tableau seen from the train are all personal memories.

13

William Allingham (1828—89) Irish poet, chiefly remembered for The Fairies (1850) ‘Up the airy mountain,

Down the rushy glen,

We daren’t go a—hunting

For fear of little men...

A Memory (1888) is quoted here.

oubliobilia — Antonym: memorabilia.

Cecil Aldin (1870—1935), English animal artist with a distinctive style.

Sir [Thomas Henry] Hall Caine (1853—1931), English novelist with a Manx bias, a tremendous best seller in his time but now almost completely forgotten; a close friend of Dante Gabriel Rossetti in the poet’s last years.

Harry Furniss (1854—1925) Irish caricaturist who worked for (inter alia) the Illustrated London News (1876—84) and Punch (1884—94).

Dornford Yates (1885—1960), pen name of Major Cecil William Mercer, English novelist of the elegant leisured society, the first of whose immensely popular many books was Berry and Co (1921).

Dr Samuel Johnson (1709—84) — English poet, critic, lexicographer and conversationalist uttered (according to James Boswell) the first phrase on 6 April 1775, and the second on 18 April 1775.