The Times Great Letters: A century of notable correspondence. James Owen
and I liked the mysterious sound, and wondered what “nutsimay” was.) If nuts do not grow upon trees in May, I conceive it to be possible that they grow in the ground. Certainly one of my pleasantest memories is that of hunting for nuts in the ground (a long time ago) somewhere about the month of May. They were to be found on a little bank, overshadowed by trees, that overhung a disused quarry. You knew their presence by the tender green shoots which grew from them; and when you saw those shoots, you took your knife, made a small excavation, and had a succulent reward. I have consulted the New English Dictionary (my general refuge in all mental perplexities), and I have found there, s.v. groundnut, the admirable entry which awakens a pleased reminiscence and rumination. “Bunium flexuosum: Culpepper, English Physitian, 64; they are called earth-nuts, earth-chestnuts, groundnuts.”
What I cannot really remember is whether we actually gathered Bunia flexuosa in May. But while I cannot prove it (except by the obvious device of consulting some scientific work of reference), I flatter myself that it is extremely probable. In any case, there was some real fun in gathering this sort of nut. It was elusive; it was succulent; it was neither so obvious, nor so unsatisfactory, as your hazel nut.
But it pains me to think of these things. They belong to the Arcadia of a vanished youth. Où sont les neiges d’antan? Where are the nuts of yester-year?
Yours obediently,
ERNEST BARKER
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Nestletripes and Piggy-Widdens
7 June 1923
Sir, “Tantony” is a new name to me for the small one of a litter of pigs or dogs. Some years ago I made the following collection of names all in use in various parts of the country:
Nisgil (Midlands), Nisledrige and Nestletripe (Devon), Darling, Daniel, Dolly and Harry (Hants), Underling, Rickling, Reckling, Little David (Kent), Dillin, Dilling (Stratford-on-Avon), Cad, Gramper, Nestletribe, Nestledrag, Nestlebird, Dab-Chick, Wastrill, Weed, Dandlin, Anthony, Runt, Parson’s Pig (the least valuable to be devoted to tithe purposes), Nest Squab, Putman, Ratling, Dorneedy (Scottish), The Titman (Vermont), Nestledraft, Pigot, Rutland, Luchan, Piggy-Widden.
Yours faithfully,
EDWIN BROUGH
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A Diamond in the Rough
28 October 1924
Sir, As one who has sampled most British sports, may I say a word upon baseball? It seems to me that in those Press comments which I have been able to see too much stress is laid upon what may appear to us to be a weakness or a comic aspect in the game and not nearly enough upon its real claim on our attention. I fully agree that the continual ragging is from a British view-point a defect, but baseball is a game which is continually in process of development and improvement, as anyone who reads Arthur Mathewson’s interesting book on the subject is aware.
The foul tricks which were once common are now hardly known, and what was once applauded, or at any rate tolerated, would now be execrated. Therefore, this rough badinage may pass away and it is not an essential of the game. What is essential is that here is a splendid game which calls for a fine eye, activity, bodily fitness, and judgment in the highest degree. This game needs no expensive levelling of a field, its outfit is within the reach of any village club, it takes only two or three hours in the playing, it is independent of wet wickets, and the player is on his toes all the time, and not sitting on a pavilion bench while another man makes his century. If it were taken up by our different Association teams as a summer pastime I believe it would sweep this country as it has done America. At the same time it would no more interfere with cricket than lawn tennis has done. It would find its own place. What we need now is a central association which would advise and help the little clubs in the first year of their existence.
Yours faithfully,
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
Conan Doyle was a keen sportsman who had played first-class cricket. He also helped to introduce skiing to Switzerland from Scandinavia, and so popularise the sport in Britain.
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Long Lives in The Times
1 January 1925
Sir, On the front page of The Times last year there were reported the deaths of 402 persons of 90 years of age and over. Of these 123 were men (including 18 clerks in holy orders) and 279 women; of the latter 178 were married. The number of those who reached their century is eight; of these two were men and six women, two of whom were 105 and had been married. Four others (two men, one a clerk) were 99. Besides the above named, 95 attained their 90th year, 28 men (six clerks) and 67 women, of whom 30 were married. The number of nonagenarians who have died in the last ten years is 3,153, a yearly average of 315, ranging from 263 in 1918 to last year’s big total of 402. The number of centenarians for the same period is 55, the most in one year being 11 in 1923.
In other parts of The Times deaths have been reported of 40 others who had been born before or during 1824. Of these four were 103; six, 104; one, 105; four, 106; and one, 107. Under “News in Brief” on 16 August, John Campbell, of County Antrim, aged 112, is reported dead; and on 18 August, under “Telegrams in Brief,” the same is told of Alexa Vivier, of Manitoba, who had reached the, nowadays, patriarchal age of 113.
I am, etc.,
C. B. GABB
Ten years later, Mr Gabb wrote to The Times to mark its 150th birthday. He noted that Zaro Agha, a Turk who had recently died, supposedly aged 157, could (and undoubtedly would) have read 46,950 issues of the newspaper — had he not been illiterate.
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All Greek to me
22 January 1925
Sir, Reading with great interest the pleasant controversy between the Headmaster of Christ’s Hospital and Mr. Austen Chamberlain, I have noticed that my own beloved and reverend headmaster, Mr. J. S. Phillpotts, is as alert and vigilant as ever.
The issue that has been raised is an old one, and as false as it always has been. Controversialists start on the wrong tack when they assume that learning and teaching grammar must be dull and unstimulating. Nothing is more untrue. There is everything in grammar, the accidence as well as the syntax of language, to make it as stimulating to thought and the imagination and as full of humour as any instrument of education. Witness the inexhaustible romance of the verbs in -μι, the miraculous history of the Greek preposition, or the indefinable wonders of the subjunctive mood!
HUBERT M. OXON:
Hubert Burge, Bishop of Oxford
Replied on 23 January 1925
Sir, The Bishop of Oxford’s letter gives a delightful picture of cultured boyhood. We see him indulging in a hearty laugh with his headmaster on the vagaries of εἰμί, or walking, a slender stripling, in a summer sunset, tracing with wistful eyes the romance of the subjunctive mood into the glowing West!
I began teaching as an Eton master in 1885, and taught classics there for nearly 20 years, starting with a whole-hearted faith in their merits for educational purposes, and coming gradually and reluctantly to a very different conclusion.
The average boy without literary and linguistic aptitude never seemed to me to get within reach of Latin and Greek as living things at all.
I am, &c.,
A. C. BENSON
Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge
Hubert Burge had been headmaster of Winchester, which no doubt explains his and Benson’s differing success rates with their pupils. The latter perhaps exerted more influence over the heirs to Greece and Rome by writing the words to “Land of Hope
and Glory”.
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Witnessing the Russian Revolution in 1917
9 March 1925
Sir, Saturday