Ptolemy, mid-yawn:

One of my minor scholarly ambitions is one day to write a short history of big-haired lady Classicists, from the seventeenth century onwards. But one of the reasons that this may be a more challenging exercise that it sounds is that it is sometimes hard to tell whether lady Classicists have big hair or not, given their fondness for being painted wearing large military helmets in the style of the Roman goddess Minerva.

I mentioned this to someone in Celtic Studies the other day, and she observed that lady Celticists in centuries gone by also liked to pose for portraits in flowing Celtic costumes. So there may be a significant comparative dimension to make the project a bit more complicated and interesting than I’d initially anticipated.

But I was interested in the remark about lady Celticists for another reason, which is that I’m a first cousin, six times removed, of Charlotte Brooke–not the international fetish model, but the distinguished eighteenth-century lady Celticist. And so the question immediately poses itself: did she have big hair?

Well, it seems that it’s quite a tricky question. I can’t find any images of her in any of the places you might expect to find one–in the catalogue of the National Portrait Gallery, on her Wikipedia page, in the ODNB, or in the front matter of reprints of her major work. And I’m told that although there was a likeness made of her in the eighteenth century, no-one seems to know what happened to it, whether it survived–or, crucially, whether it recorded a lady Celticist with big hair or not. So the mystery persists.

Anyway: all that is really just a long and frivolous introduction to say that while I was scratching around looking for Charlotte Brooke-related material on the web–and finding along the way that she has her own roundabout in Co. Longford!–I learned that there’s a gorgeous new-ish edition of her major work, Reliques of Irish Poetry (1789), edited by Lesa Ni Mhunghaile, and a copy arrived in the post the other day. And it’s very good indeed: really well done, and I’m going to learn a lot from it.

As well as my own book, Philosophic Pride, the same press (Princeton) on the same day (8 April) will be publishing a posthumous volume by Robert Wokler, Rousseau, the Age of Enlightenment, and their Legacies, for which I wrote the introduction. (And a very fine collection it is, too.) This is just to note that the publisher has posted a pdf of the first chapter on the website, and since it’s the chapter on orang-utans, I thought I’d copy the link here.

I wrote to B on Thursday night saying that’s it, no more; posted it Friday morning, so he won’t have seen it yet, maybe not till Tuesday. Because it isn’t quite the fun it was — he has changed… [Diaries, 20.3.1988]

But what fun it once had been!

I wish my flat was filled with one big man in his blue underpants — I wish I was warm and sticky and laughing… [24.1.1991]

Apologies in advance for the mental images this post may conjure up.

On 27 May 1940 an RAF bomber, aiming for a German airfield in Holland, flew into a magnetic storm which disabled the compass. Completely lost, the crew identified the Thames as the Rhine and bombed an airfield in Cambridgeshire.

I did not know this. Andrew Etherington’s website has more:

RAF Bomber Command: 4 Group (Whitley). Bombing – Dortmund, Duisburg, Dusseldorf and Cologne.

10 Sqn. Eleven aircraft. Ten bombed. One enemy aircraft claimed destroyed by tail gunner. One bombed Bassingbourn in error…

The 11th crew from 10 Sqn, failed to find their primary target and bombed what was thought to be an airfield in Holland. This was not the case. After carrying out their bomb-run they set course for home, but after flying for some time, and when the Dutch coast failed to show up, it was thought that something was amiss. This was confirmed when W/T bearings indicated that the aircraft was over England and flying on a westerly course. With the aid of further W/T assistance they were able to scramble back to base. A re-plot of the sortie was instigated and the unfortunate conclusion was reached that the airfield they had bombed must have been British! This was confirmed when communications with Air Ministry revealed that the RAF airfield at Bassingbourn, near Cambridge had been attacked at the same time the No. 10 Squadron crew presumed they were bombing an enemy airfield. Luckily there had been no casualties and only slight damage at Bassingbourn. Subsequently the story got around that one of the bombs had hit the W/T rest hut at the side of the airfield, passing through one wall, over the top of a sleeping airman and out the over side before exploding. The said airman then woke up!

Repercussions followed. The unfortunate skipper was demoted to second pilot and he and his crew subjected to much leg-pulling by the other crews. This included the dropping of a home-made ‘Iron Cross’ constructed from a tea-chest lid and some brown coloured cloth, by one of the other 4 Group squadrons. It was addressed to ‘Herr von (name withheld) from a grateful Führer.’

During subsequent investigation it was discovered that the magnetic compass had been rendered U/S when the aircraft had flown through an electrical storm after crossing the English Channel on its outbound flight.

It looks as if this would have been a bomber based at RAF Dishforth in Yorkshire.

It should be coming out in April. Webpage here.

The subject was cats: when Boswell said he didn’t care for them, Rousseau pounced. Men who disliked cats were tyrannical: “They do not like cats because the cat is free and will never consent to become a slave. He will do nothing to your order, as the other animals do.” “Nor a hen, either,” Boswell objected. “A hen would obey your orders if you could make her understand them,” the philosopher rejoined, “but a cat will understand you perfectly and not obey them.” Rousseau seems to have been in earnest with this theory of feline indepdenence, for the frontispiece of The Social Contract features Lady Liberty accompanied by a cat.

– Robert Zaretsky & John T. Scott, The Philosophers’ Quarrel, p. 36.

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. [Luke 2:8]

[Image from The Brick Testament, obvs.]