LIFE
sport, or whatever they call 20/20.
But an ungenerous climate can bring
consolations. That prince of foragers,
young Louis, deciding that these were
the perfect conditions for mushrooms,
set off into the wood with a bucket and
brought it back, full of chanterelles.
Scoffing them, we also drew on
the lingering fruits of summer. A sum-
mer pudding was to be garnished with
some final wild strawberries. They
always look delicious — and the name.
Caviar apart, is there anything more
alluring in the culinary vocabulary?
That said, what about the taste? In that
passage of Decline and Fall so aptly
named ‘Pervigilium Veneris’, Margot
and Paul saunter from bed to lunch. In
Waugh, low-life deflation is never far
away. They come across Philbrick, that
master of multi-faceted fraudulence,
who is eating some of those ‘bitter
little strawberries which are so cheap
in Provence and so very expensive in
Dover Street.’ He warns Paul that the
League of Nations is taking a beady-
eyed interest in Margot’s business (the
Mistress Quickly of 1920s Belgravia,
she is the most elegant whore mon-
ger in all literature). ‘Bitter’ is surely
an exaggeration, perhaps a deliber-
ate one. Waugh may have intended toI
was reminded of Wild West films
from boyhood. Then, the belea-
guered garrison scanned the hori-
zon; would the US cavalry arrive
in time to save them from being
scalped? (John Wayne always did.)
Now, one was hoping for relief, not
from the Injuns, but in the form of
an Indian summer. This is of especial
interest to those who have a tendresse
for Somerset cricket. Its paladins usu-
ally have a charmingly amateur qual-
ity. As Cardus wrote of an earlier
cricketing vintage: ‘[They are] chil-
dren of the sun and wind and grass.
Nature fashioned them rather than
artifice.’ Somerset needs a match or
two in order to gain points and avoid
relegation. That said, the way we were
playing earlier in the season, being
rained off was the best hope.
It would help if those in charge
of schedules should remember three
things. County cricket is a summer
game. It is also one of the glories of
English civilisation, almost entitled
to rank with the cathedrals and the
common law. As such, it must not be
brushed aside in the interests of junk
signal the bitter-sweet fate waiting in
ambush for his principal characters.
Yet he had a point. The tiny wild berries
work as an heraldic escort to the taste-
bud fireworks of British strawberries.
On their own, they flatter to deceive.
In love and cookery, earthiness has
an honoured place. The beef was roast-
ing. To accompany it, Roland harvest-
ed some horse radish, mired in mud.
There was then a problem. Our table
was to be graced by a much greater
power than horseradish, and the two
must never be allowed to mingle. In
decanters, the grandeur of earlier
autumns awaited us. We stopped to
sniff and stayed to genuflect.
I had warned my friends that
luncheon would not only be an occa-
sion for indulgence. There was work to
be done. We had two bottles to com-
pare, a 1989 and a 2000, both from
that superb house, Léoville-Barton.
The debate was vigorous, and incon-
clusive. The memsahib thought the ’89
was just about the finest claret she had
ever drunk, and one could taste why.
A harmony of sun and nature and arti-
fice, it was in a state of grace. So often
when drinking such a wine, one won-
ders whether it would have benefited
from another three years, or would
have been even better three years ear-
lier. This was perfect. The novice, the
2000, divided opinions. Still shy of 20,
it was a young unbroken colt. Even so,
I thought it deserved the blue riband.
What fun. Louis, his palate not yet
trained to Bordeaux, but permitted
a sip, began to understand why the
grown-ups were so intent at the glass.
The seasons, the generations, the wine:
by the end, we could hear the music
of the spheres.Drink
All’s fair in love and Waugh
Bruce Anderson
In decanters,
the grandeur
of earlier
autumns
awaited us.
We s t o p p e d
to sniff and
stayed to
genuflectMy husband complains that
the disposition of teenagers
in London is one of mocking
hostility. I seem to suffer less from
such encounters, and console him
by saying it was ever thus.
In the 1790s ostlers’ boys
would shout ‘Quoz!’ to disconcert
an uncertain-looking passer-by. It
was a word of doubtful meaning,
perhaps connected with quiz.
A generation later, young
loafers would call out ‘Oh, what
a shocking bad hat!’ — enough to
instil doubt in the most carefully
dressed shopman or clerk.
Neither men nor women were
seen out in public without a hat.
The locus classicus for thephrase is in a book with a title
perhaps more entertaining
than its contents: Memoirs of
Extraordinary Popular Delusions,
and the Madness of Crowds
(1841) by Charles Mackay (the
natural father of Marie Corelli,
the sensational novelist). Mackay
gives a circumstantial origin for
the phrase from a Southwark
election, but I don’t find it
convincing. It is quoted by Eric
Partridge in his Dictionary of
Catch Phrases (1977), though heis seldom credited with putting his
finger on it.
The date of Mackay’s book is
important because to the Duke
of Wellington, on seeing the first
Reformed Parliament in 1833,
is attributed the remark ‘I never
saw so many shocking bad hats
in my life’. The account of this
remark was not published until
1889, in Words on Wellington by
Sir William Fraser, who had made
a reputation back in the 1850s at
the Carlton Club with his stories
of Wellington. But he was only
seven in 1833.
The disapproval is literally of
the hats. The moral character of
a bad hat is secondary. Shocking,used as a quasi-adverb like this,
was thought a vulgarism (though
Wellington wouldn’t have
minded).
The Oxford English Dictionary
contains no entry for shocking bad
hat, but the phrase figures in its
illustrations of other words. The
earliest comes from 1831, when
R. S. Surtees recounts the fortunes
of Mr Jorrocks, in hunting
raiment, reaching a spot opposite
Somerset House in the Strand,
to be met with boys heckling him
with insults pronounced with the
conventional Cockney V for W:
‘Vot a swell! Vot a shocking bad
hat! Vot shocking bad breeches!’
— Dot WordsworthMIND YOUR LANGUAGE
Shocking bad hat‘Good heavens, a flying Ryanair jet!’