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From Pea-Shooters to Sonorous Voices: Time-Keeping, Then & Now

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Early this morning I saw that Shaun Usher, whose blog Letters of Note is one of my favorite websites, had tweeted this historic photo and humorous message:

“Before alarm clocks there were knocker-upper’s. Mary Smith earned sixpence a week shooting dried peas at sleeping workers windows. Limehouse Fields. London. Undated. Photograph from Philip Davies’ Lost London: 1870 – 1945.”

Keeping with the time-keeping theme, later in the day I saw that Lucas Wittmann, Books Editor of the Daily Beast had tweeted about this obituary from The Economist, remembering the life of Brian Cobby, who for decades was the voice of what is known in Britain as “the talking clock.” From the magazine:

“For many people in Britain for much of the 20th century, indulging the national weakness for exact timekeeping, Time spoke from the other end of a telephone line. His number could be dialled; and from a room presumed full of chittering and whirring timepieces, Time would inform them that ‘At the third stroke, the time. . . will be ten twenty-seven and fifty seconds.’ His companion robot then chimed in: Pip—pip—pip.”

I’m grateful to Usher and Wittman, and the two publications, for publishing these rich evocations of time-keeping from the past two centuries. Here’s a full shot of the knocker-upper image:

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J.R.R. Tolkien Renounced Racial Politics in 1938 Letter to a German Publisher

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Here’s another gem from Letters of Note, the second from the epistolary blog I’ve posted today, after this earlier example concerning the Cleveland Browns football team. The latest shows that in 1938, a German publisher interested in possibly translating The Hobbit for its market, asked J.R.R. Tolkien for “proof of his Aryan descent.”  According to blog curator Shaun Usher, “Tolkien was furious, and forwarded their letter to his publisher along with two possible replies—one in which their question was delicately side-stepped, and one, seen below, in which Tolkien made his displeasure known with considerable style.”

Before presenting the text of that second letter, it’d be pertinent to mention that when I studied biblical criticism, one of my subject areas  at Franconia College, the English-language translation of the bible I used most was the Jerusalem Bible, a special scholarly translation published in 1966. As can be seen below from the acknowledgments facing the title page, “the list of principal collaborators in translation and literary revision,” included Tolkien, a renowned and prolific linguist who by some estimates knew more than 30 languages, including many ancient tongues from the ancient near east.

Dear Sirs,

Thank you for your letter. I regret that I am not clear as to what you intend by arisch [Aryan]. I am not of Aryan extraction: that is Indo-Iranian; as far as I am aware none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects. But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people. My great-great-grandfather came to England in the eighteenth century from Germany: the main part of my descent is therefore purely English, and I am an English subject — which should be sufficient. I have been accustomed, nonetheless, to regard my German name with pride, and continued to do so throughout the period of the late regrettable war, in which I served in the English army. I cannot, however, forbear to comment that if impertinent and irrelevant inquiries of this sort are to become the rule in matters of literature, then the time is not far distant when a German name will no longer be a source of pride.

Your enquiry is doubtless made in order to comply with the laws of your own country, but that this should be held to apply to the subjects of another state would be improper, even if it had (as it has not) any bearing whatsoever on the merits of my work or its sustainability for publication, of which you appear to have satisfied yourselves without reference to my Abstammung [lineage].

I trust you will find this reply satisfactory, and remain yours faithfully,

J. R. R. Tolkien

I admire the explicit philo-semitism that Tolkien adopted in his reply, as I have indicated with the emphasis in bold. Here’s the acknowledgments page from the Jerusalem Bible.

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Would a Lawyer Today Dare Send Such a Funny & Profane Letter?

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If it’s Sunday, it must be football, right? In keeping with the day, Shaun Usher, the British proprietor of the always-splendid website Letters of Note has reposted on his site’s Facebook page a funny exchange of correspondence that I chuckled over when he first shared it last February. It gave me another good laugh today. Shaun’s placed the 1974 letters under the heading Regarding Your Stupid Complaint. They were between Dale O. Cox, Esquire, a persnickety Cleveland Browns season ticket holder, and the Browns’ team office.

As readers of this blog may recall, from pieces such as How to Enjoy Sports Even When Your Teams Have a History of Failure, and a Personal History essay, I grew up following the ups and (often the) downs of Cleveland sports teams. With my late father and brother, I had the great good fortune to attend the last professional sports championship of a Cleveland team–when in the 1964 NFL title game the Browns upset the Baltimore Colts, 27-0. As the scanned copy of a grade school composition of mine will attest, the season ticket holders we sat near in the upper deck in Section 42 were a colorful bunch, like “Bert, a lover of wine” who “often fixe[d] himself a Diet-Rite and wine cocktail,” and Eddie, who “As soon as the first half ends, breaks out [a] thermos of chili . . . he shares with John, while John splits one of his many bottles of wine with him.” (See bottom of post for the whole piece.)

In the summer of 1977, after I was graduated from Franconia College, I worked as a beer vendor at Cleveland Indians’ baseball games. I enjoyed walking the wide open grandstands of cavernous Municipal Stadium, calling out such pitches as “Beer Here!” and “Get Your Cold Ones!”. My happy run as a vendor ended though when I worked a Cleveland Browns pre-season game, and was appalled to discover that the placid beer-drinking Indians fans I’d come to enjoy serving had morphed into, as I wrote in that personal history essay, “an unruly, inebriated mass. . . I was lucky I didn’t have my rack of beers stolen along with all my earnings.”

With these recollection of public drinking and intoxication at Municipal Stadium, you can see why I derive such a good laugh from the correspondence between Mr. Cox and the Browns (headings and signatures abridged):

November 18, 1974

The Cleveland Browns
Cleveland Stadium
Cleveland, OH

Gentlemen:

I am one of your season ticket holders who attends or tries to attend every game. It appears that one of the pastimes of several fans has become the sailing of paper airplanes generally made out of the game program. As you know, there is the risk of serious eye injury and perhaps an ear injury as a result of such airplanes. I am sure that this has been called to your attention and that several of your ushers and policemen witnessed the same.

Please be advised that since you are in a position to control or terminate such action on the part of fans, I will hold you responsible for any injury sustained by any person in my party attending one of your sporting events. It is hoped that this disrespectful and possibly dangerous activity will be terminated.

Very truly yours,

Dale O. Cox

The Browns’ reply, from their General Counsel and cc:d to team owner Art Modell, was written only three days later:

Dear Mr. Cox:

Attached is a letter that we received on November 19, 1974. I feel that you should be aware that some asshole is signing your name to stupid letters. 

Very truly yours, 

CLEVELAND STADIUM CORP. 

James N. Bailey,
General Counsel

cc: Arthur B. Modell

Cleveland Browns letters
—
In the years following the exchange with Mr. Cox, Art Modell–who died this past September at age 87–would later be tagged with infamy among many Cleveland sports fans for relocating the Browns to Baltimore in 1996. Yet it’s plain to me that at least in 1974 he was still a stand-up guy, or he wouldn’t have condoned his team attorney sending such a funny, profane letter to a customer who was himself a lawyer, and one who included in his letter an implied threat of litigation–“I will hold you responsible for any injury sustained by any person in my party attending one of your sporting events.” Would any caution-ridden lawyer today dare to send such a letter in response? If you have thoughts on this and would like to continue the conversation, please let me know what you think in the comments field below. A final point on Mr. Usher’s Letters of Note presentation for this exchange. He uses a photo in it of a Cleveland stadium, but it is the new Browns stadium, built and opened in 1999, on the site of the old Municipal Stadium, where I attended games as a boy and worked in 1977.

A grade school essay of mine on the fans I sat near at Cleveland Browns’ games.

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Great Content from the Public Domain Review

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I’m enjoying a website I recently discovered, devoted to sharing works of all kinds in the public domain, from the historical, visual, literary, and musical worlds. It’s called the The Public Domain Review. Here’s a screenshot of what their front page looks like today. H/t Shaun Usher of the great site Letters of Note, who brought the Public Domain Review to my attention.

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