UNIVERSITY OF THE WTTWATERSRAND
 INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED SOCIAL RESEARCH
 ADDITIONAL SEMINAR PAPER
 TITLE: 'A Thing of Unspeakable Horror1 - The History of the
 Loo in Literature and Life.
 BY: COUZENS, T.
 NO: A16
*A THIMG OP UH3PEAKABLE
 A HISTORY OF THE LOO INJLITERATUREAND LIFE
 by
 TIM COUZENS
PREFACE
 The title of this book requires explanation. Some years ago I saw a Don
 Martin cartoon in Mad Magazine. It was of one of his crazed-looking, loony
 characters standing in a laboratory with a test-tube filled with smoking
 liquid in his hand. He says: *One drink of this and I shall turn into a thing
 of unspeakable horror*. He drinks ... and nothing happens. So he throws the
 failed experimental liquid into a nearby sink. Instantly it turns into ??? a
 loo! As we shall see the cartoon is manifestly slanderous.
 I nust also own up to a personal interest in the subject. My father was a
 plumber; ny grandfather was a plumber. I hail from a plumbing line. But I
 was the stupid one of the family - I became an academic. I have never quite
 managed to become part of the Brain Drain. Instead I must content myself with
 being, at least today, the Drain Brain* I am, however, no Specialist, and
 this book should not be taken as the last word on the subject.
 The writing of loo history is an ancient and honorable profession and I must
 thank some of the pioneers in the field whose work I have drawn upon:
 Lawrence Wright, Clean and Decent. London, 1960.
 Wallace Reyburn, Flushed with Pride. London, 1969.
 Frank Muir, A Book at Bathtine. London* 1980.
 Mollie Harris, Privies Galore. Wolfeboro Falls and Stroud, 1990*
 David Niven, The Moon's a Balloon. London, 1971.
 Frank Graham, The Geordie Nettv. Rothbury, Northumberland, 1986#
 Charles Sale, The Specialist. St Louis, 1946.
 The Bod ley Head (ed) A New Garden of Bloomers. London, 1967.
 Irving Lee, Language Habits in Human Affairs. New York, 1941.
 Gladstone Pottery Museum (ed) Water Closets. Past Present and Future.
 Longton, Stoke-on-Trent, 1989.
 Jonathan Routh, The Good Loo Guide: Where to Go in London, London, 1965.
 Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars (trans. Robert Graves), London, 1957.
While they are not responsible for what follows I would like to acknowledge
 the inspiration I have obtained fro? their work and the coafort I have enjoyed
 froa the fact that they have gone before.
LOO STORY
 We all have heard of thea - the great men of history - Caesar, Boadicaea,
 Alexander the Great, Cleopatra, Napoleon, Bisaark, Churchill, Popeye etc. But
 who can put their hand on their hearts and swear that they have ever heard of
 Sir John Harington, George Jennings or Sir Joseph Bazalgette. I hope by the
 end of this talk you will never forget them and come to regard them as the
 true and truly great Heroes of our Time*
 We can generally say, historically-speaking, that the history of the loo has
 gone through its boons and busts* The story is not a pretty one for aany
 centuries. This is sad because the beginning was so promising.
 In the Beginning
 At first people settled near rivers and, generally, water was plentiful for
 both drinking and bathing. But, due to overcrowding, people roved away from
 rivers so that drinking took precedence over bathing. The loo and the bath
 have existed side by side through much of history. While early water-borne
 sewerage seems to have existed nearly five thousand years ago in Neolithic
 stone age huts at Skara Brae in the Orkneys, the first known bath dates from
 about 1700 B.C. and is located in Crete. At Ring Minos'e great palace at
 Knossos water was supplied via terra cotta pipes. The drainage system was
 flushed by rainwater. The latrines seen to have been reaarkably sophisticated
 (possibly with wooden seats) and England only saw the like in the eighteenth
 century. Siailarly, in the Indus valley between 2500 to 1500 B.C. ,
 water-flushed loos flourished. It will be remembered that Agamemnon,
 returning from ten years of successful battle at Troy, took a bath and was
 promptly axed by his good wife, Clyteanestra.
 The Romans were into baths. Often public ones. In the fourth century A.D.
 Rome had 11 public baths, 1352 public fountains and 856 private baths. In 315
 A.D. the city had 144 public, water-flushed latrines. It used to supply 300
gallons of water per head per day (compared with 51 gallons per head in
 England in the 1960s). The public baths of Caracalla were about six times the
 size in floor area of St Paul's Cathedral.
 After the Roman Occupation ended, Britain disappeared not only into the Dark
 Ages but into the Dirt Ages as well. While some bathing did take place in the
 monasteries, the practice was not widespread. Ring John, for instance, was
 comparatively diligent, bathing once every three weeks. The mediaeval name
 for the loo was the 'garderobe' and this was usually positioned within the
 thickness of the walls, above a very large drop to the moat or whatever, and
 usually consisted of a stone or wooden seat, often somewhat draughty or, to
 coin a phrase, windy. As one commentator has suggested moats which were
 formerly defensive now became offensive.
 When no water was available, movable barrels or cess-pits or what-have-you had
 to do. With houses on London Bridge there was a hazardous undertaking known
 as 'shooting the bridge' and the saying developed that the bridge was 'for
 wise men to go over and for fools to go under*. The removers of nightsoil
 from pits were known as gongfermors and at Queenborough Castle in 1375 the
 gentlemen entrusted to this task rejoiced in the names of William Mokkyng and
 Nicholas Richendgood. Stairs were often spiral to prevent soiling in the
 corners.
 By the sixteenth century the 'closed stool' became the main alternative to the
 garderobe, 'cosier for the user but hard on the servants'. There is a
 particularly plush one at Hampton Court, used possibly by William of Orange
 covered in crimson velvet, bound with lace and secured by gilt nails, with a
 lock to dissuade interlopers, and carrying handles.
 In 1596 we come to the first of our Great Heroes. In this year Sir John
 Harington, godson of Queen Elizabeth I, published his book Metamorphosis of
 A.iax: A Cloacinean Satire (those who know Shakespeare's Troylus and Cressida
 will know that Ajax, the oafish Greek hero, also provided the opportunity for
 the pun on 'a Jakes', an Elizabethan word for a necessarium) ? Harington
 invented a valve water closet nearly 300 years before its Victorian
 descendant. A prophet before his time, but no profit in his time.
Queen Elizabeth herself took a bath once a month, we are told, 'whether she
 need it or no*. Because toothpaste and toothbrushes were not. invented her
 teeth were black in old age.
 What's in a Name? A Loo by Any Other Hame...
 It was in the tine of Queen Anne in the early eighteenth century (when the
 Fleet River ran down the centre of Fleet Street in London and acted as an open
 sewer) that we cone to the probable origin of the none of our revered object.
 The historian G M Trevelyan elaborates:
 Far overhead the windows opened, five, six. or ten storeys in the air,
 and the close stools of Edinburgh discharged the collected filth of the
 last twenty-four hours into the street. It was good Banners for those
 above to cry Gardy-loo (Gardez 1'eau) before throwing. The returning
 roysterer cried back 'Haud yer han* and ran with lumped shoulders, lucky
 if his fast and expensive full-bottoned wig was not put out of action by
 a cataract of filth. The odure thus sent down lay in the broad High
 Street and in the deep, well-like closes and wynds around it Baking the
 night air horrible, until early in the morning it was perfunctorily
 cleaned away by the City Guard. Only on a Sabbath Morn it Bight not be
 touched, but lay there all day long, filling Scotland's capital with the
 savour of a Mistaken piety.
 But as Dr Johnson said: 'The Scots took good care of one end of a Ban but not
 the other1.
 The novelist Thomas Smollett in Humphry Clinker gives us a similar but
 contemporary eighteenth century description in one of his characters' letters.
 And now, dear Mary, we have got to Haddinborrough, anong the Scots? who
 are civil enuff for our money, thof I don't speak their lingo. But they
 should not go for to impose upon foreigners; for the bills in their
 houses say, they have different easements to let; and behold there is
 nurro geaks in the whole kingdoa, nor any thing for poor sarvants, but a
 barrel with a pair of tongs thrown a-cross; and all the chairs in the
family are emptied into thia here barrel once a-day; and at ten o'clock
 at night the whole cargo is flung out of a back windore that looks into
 Bone street or lane, and the said calls gardy loo to the passengers,
 which signified Lord have mercy upon youl and this is done every night
 in every house in Haddinbor rough .. ?
 There are other explanations of the origins of the word. One possibility is
 the anglicised form of the French 'lieu', - meaning *the place'? Another
 possibility favoured in the present day is that it derives from 'Waterloo1.
 An attractive one, however, is to be found in the Penguin Dictionary of the
 Decorative Arts.
 The bordalou, much used in the eighteenth century by ladies travelling
 or in other privy difficulties on drawn-out social occasions. Portable
 in a muff, its artistic quality and its shape have sometimes led to its
 being mistaken nowadays for a sauce-boat. The name is said to derive
 from Louis Bourdaloue, the fashionable and prolix Jesuit preacher of
 Louis XIV's reign. The first known example, made in Delft, dates from
 1710- and the article became very much 'the thing1 ?
 Bourdaloue*s sermons were reputedly so long-winded that many ladies found such
 a contrivance necessary. Yet other ideas of where the word comes from are
 'leeward' since that is, on a small boat, 'the side one would use', or from
 'ablution*.
 Nigel Dempster (in the Daily Telegraph. 11 March, 1979) suggests that 'in
 fashionable circles the term is out and replaced by lav*. In ordinary
 unfashionable circles 'loo' was still going strong in 1983. The word was
 already a joke in 1895 as a Du Naurier cartoon in Punch magazine testified.
 The curate announces to the congregation, 'Now we'll begin again at the
 Hallelujah and please linger longer on the "lu*".
 Whatever the name it should be noted, however, that a certain dinity was
 attached to the Royal Stool, especially on the continent, and it was the scene
 of many dramatic events. It was often treated literally as a throne before
 which audiences took place. Lord Portland, the English Ambassador to the
Court of Louis XIV, was summoned to this particular throne froa which the king
 announced his marriage to Mae de Maintenon! The revolutionary Marat, like
 Agememnon, was murdered in his bath; and a King of Naples had a heart-attack
 and died while sitting on his 'throne', as did George II of England. But the
 throne later lost its place of honour and frequently was disguised as a piece
 of furniture. Such a piece was the 'Mysteries of Paris'*
 Of course, there was scope for embarrassment. The bidet (COBing froa a French
 word Beaning a small horse which is easely straddled) first appears about 1710
 but was still so unfamiliar by the late 1730s that one dealer Mistook its
 function and advertised it as 'a porcelain violin-case with four legs'. The
 night commode or jerry had its ancient ancestors but begins to appear in
 modern fora about the fourteenth century. One of Its Host distinguished
 appearances (or, rather, non-appearances) was in the Speaker's chair in the
 House of Commons where a silver pot was concealed so that the Speaker could be
 present for the entire session and remain po-faced throughout.
 The commode gets an anonymous walk-on-part in Canto One of Byron's poem Don
 Juan. While hero Don Juan, having been seduced by the fair Donna Julia, lies
 asleep in her arms, her husband Don Alfonso rushes in with curses on his lips
 and hell in his heart. Nimble-witted Julia flings the bedclothes and Juan
 into one indistinguishable heap.
 He search'd, they search*d and rummaged everywhere.
 Closet and clothes-press, chest and window-seat,
 And found much linen, lace, and several pair
 Of stockings, slippers, brushes, combs, complete,
 With other articles of ladies fair,
 To keep them beautiful, or leave them neat:
 Arras they prick'd and curtains with their swords,
 And wounded several shutters, and some boards.
 Under the bed they search'd, and there they found -
 No matter what - it was not that they sought;
 They open'd windows, gazing if the ground
 Had signs or footmarks, but the earth said nought;
And then they stared each other's faces round:
 'Tis odd, not one of all these seekers thought,
 And seems to ne almost a sort of blunder,
 Of looking in the bed as well as under*
 By the late nineteenth century some jerries case with concealed musical boxes
 which played *appropriate chamber Music*. Some, apparently, even played
 truepet Music.
 On occasion a certain amount of improvisation has had to take place, as David
 Niven recalls in his hilarious autobiography, The Moon's a Balloon. His first
 regimental dinner nearly proved to be a monumental disaster.
 Round after round of drinks in the anteroom and finally just as I was
 headed for a most necessary trip to the lavatory, Mr. Gifford announced
 dinner. Like a lamb to the slaughter, I was led with bursting bladder
 to ay chair next to ay Commanding Officer. As he had still not spoken
 to me directly during ay service, I was in no position to ask him if I
 ?ight be excused, an unthinkable request as officers and gentlemen never
 left the table under any circumstances until the end of the meal when
 the King's health had been drunk. Sweat broke out all over me as I
 contemplated the hours of agony ahead.
 I've long since forgotten who was on my right. Whoever he was, he
 too never directed a word in ay direction.
 So I sat in miserable silence with crossed legs, perspiration
 trickling down inside ay stiff shirt front, ay stand-up wing collar
 wilting with pain.
 Cold soup {more strain on the bladder) was followed by other
 courses, each washed down by a different wine. I drank everything that
 was placed in front of ae in the vague hope that something might act as
 an anaesthetic and reduce the torture.
By the time we arrived at the cheese, I was desperate, past
 caring. As far as I was concerned ay career could end in.a pool right
 there under the polished aahogany and the regimental silver, but succour
 was at hand. Mr Gifford bent over and whispered in ay ear, 'With Mr
 Trubshawe's coapliaents, sir, I have just placed an eapty aagnua
 underneath your chair.' Belief, when I heard his words, did not flow
 over ae - it spurted out of ae. In an apparently endless stream, but
 thanks to a firm grip on the bottle with my knees, I was able to aia
 with one hand and leave the other available to crumble, nonchalantly, a
 water biscuit. This proved just as well because suddenly the Colonel
 zeroed in on ne and spoke to me for the first tine. I was so unnerved
 by this sudden reversal of form that I nearly released ay grip on the
 warm and by now heavy receptacle below the table.
 His words were few and his point was Bade with admirable clarity.
 'I have,' he said, 'fucked woaen of every nationality and aost aniaals,
 but the one thing I cannot abide is a girl with a Glasgow accent. Pass
 the port.' He never spoke to ae again.
 In Lancashire there were many ancient reaedies for sicknesses. For instance,
 for warts and other excrescences on the neck, the touch of a dead Ban's hand
 was a sure-fire cure. For whooping cough, a child should be passed nine tiaes
 around the neck of a she-ass. But what about bed-wetting? Until late into
 the nineteenth century in the sane county children were still cured of this by
 being fed fried aice.
 The opposite problea to peeing in the bed - being unable to relieve oneself -
 was noted on one occasion by the seventeenth century writer Richard Burton in
 his famous Anatomy of Melancholy who also noted an ingenious cure.
 The pleasantest dotage that ever I read, saith Laurentius, was of a
 Gentleaan at Senes in Italy who was afraid to pisse, lest all the towne
 should bee drowned; the Physicians caused the bells to be rung backward,
 and told him the towne was on fire, whereupon he Bade water, and was
 immediately cured.
Loos Change
 Although the population of London increased by half between 1760 and 1800 the
 death rate actually fell. But the death rate was still extremely high in
 nineteenth century England. Of 1000 children under five, 240 died in the
 country, 480 in the city - nearly half! The fleet Ditch was as filthy in 1840
 as it was in 1340, though in 1841 it was at last covered. In 1860 there were
 80000 waterless houses in London. Although Richard II had introduced a
 statute which forbade dung-duaping, the first public health act dealing with
 closets in England was only introduced in 1848 and Bade illegal the building
 of any house without a sufficient w.c. or privy or ashpit (with a fine of
 twenty pounds for non-compliance).
 By 1830 cholera had spread from India and reached western Russia. At first it
 was thought * incapable of attacking a decent Englishman, until it struck
 London with sensational effect in 1832, and again at intervals until 1866*.
 (In 1849, 14000 died of it; in 1854, over 10 000; in 1866, 5000). To give an
 indication of what this Beaut to the nan in the street, we need only refer to
 a letter from William Knott in 1840 which was written as part of the on-going
 agitation following the 1831 cholera epidemic in Sunderland.
 I beg respectfully to make known to you a serious existing abuse viz: -
 the fact that the street lamps are extinguished generally two or three
 hours before daylight at this tine of the year which is a source of
 considerable danger ... there are some awkwardly-situated public privies
 adjoining the river; four men have been drowned within a short space of
 time when going to these early in the morning, the lamps being out at
 the time; and I know, from personal observations, that individual
 collisions, and consequent brawls, are of frequent occurrence.
 It was only by the 1870s that the death rate began to fall decisively. Who do
 we have to thank? Largely, the Chief Engineeer of the Board of Works, Joseph
 Bazalgette who not only constructed both the Albert & Victoria Embankments but
 also the vast drainage and sewerage system that was completed by 1865. Hail
 to thee, Joseph Bazalgette!
 8
We now come to the highwatermark of loos - the late Victorian Age.
 When Victoria cane to the throne (the real throne I hasten to add) in 1837
 there was no bathroom In Buckingham Palace. This was soon remedied. George
 Jennings - there's a name to conjure with - insisted, despite opposition, that
 the Crystal Palace be fitted with loos for the Great Exhibition of 1651. No
 fewer than 827,280 people paid for their use. To Jennings therefore we owe
 the expression 'spending a penny*. And largely to Jennings do we owe that
 useful place 'the public convenience'?
 The Golden Age of loos begins in 1870, the "annus mirabilis" (annus with two
 n's). For nearly a hundred years Joseph Bramah's valve closet had performed
 yeomen service. But in 1870 T W Twyford produced his Washout Closet; Hellyer
 the 'Optinus' Improved Valve Closet; and J R Mann the 'Epic1 Syphonic Closet.
 Jennings's 'Pedestal Vase* was able to flush regularly at one sitting - no
 flush in the pan this - no fewer than 10 apples, 1 flat sponge, plumber's
 "smudge" coated over the pan and 4 pieces of paper. Mr Shanks (do you
 remember the graffitti on many urinals next to his trade-name: *No Shanks, I
 don't shink I oughter') went further at a demonstration of one new model by
 snatching the cap from off an apprentice's head, throwing it in and pulling
 the chain, happily crying 'it works!' as the cap disappeared.
 In 1885 this hitherto shameful thing finally came out of the closet*
 Porcelain maker Twyford brought out his 'Unitas' model - no longer encased, no
 longer disguised as a chair, a cupboard, or surrounded by woodwork. The thing
 itself, pure, pristine. The advantage? It could be easily cleaned and did
 not trap dirt in unwanted corners.
 And then we have a last, great Hero. The man who developed the modern w.c.
 cistern. His biographer explains:
 In the old days the water for a flushing toilet was provided from a
 cistern in which there was a valve at the outlet to the flush pipe.
 When you pulled the chain it simply lifted up that valve and released
the water. In other words you just pulled the plug out. Some people
 would tie the chain down so that the valve was perpetually open and the
 water flowed ceaselessly.
 Obviously, the waste of water was prodigious as no valve ever worked properly.
 So the Modern cistern was developed, with its 'Pull and Let Go1 action. The
 name of the inventor - Thomas Crapper.
 Crapper lived with other artists like Turner, Rossetti and Whistler in
 Chelsea. He did such of the plumbing at Sandringham House (when it was built
 by Prince Albert for Edward, Prince of Wales), and at Westminister Abbey.
 Crapper also devised ways to cut down on the curse of the loos - noise. You
 nay not have thought about it Much but there are at least four distinct noises
 connected with the domestic thunderbox.
 1. The sound of the flush itself - the downrush of water to the pan.
 2. The gurgle which occurs at the end of the flush.
 3. The hissing sound of the water coming in to refill the cistern.
 4. The noise of water coming under high pressure to the cistern through the
 pipes.
 Everytime you hardly hear the loo - think of the silencers fitted (known as
 the Marlboro Silent Water Waste Preventer) and offer up a hymn of thanks to
 Thomas Crapper. My own grandfather, I am told, invented a silent cistern and
 went to England to get financial backing for it but failed because the system,
 designed for South African bungalows, could not cope with the British
 double-storeys. And if you are inclined to dismiss this achievement please
 remember the story told by Crapper's biographer, Wallace Reyburn, in his book
 flushed With Pride.
 At the coronation of our present Queen the organisers of the occasion
 were concerned, among other things, about the matter of the special
 needs of the great number of Peers who would be assembled at
 Westminister Abbey, many of whom were well on in years and not able,
 with the best will in the world, to stay settled in one place for long
 periods, as the lengthy ceremony demanded. It was known that the very
 10
aptly naned 'peer's bladder' would cone to their aid, but there was no re
 to it than that. So an additional 'range* of toilets, as. they call it
 in the trade, had to be installed to cope with the expected increased
 deaand.
 Then somebody got the frightening thought that at the vital moment
 of the ceremony, when the whole Abbey would be in hushed silence as the
 crown was being placed on the Queen's head, there light be one of those
 terrible coincidences whereby all the toilets happened to be occupied
 and all their ocupants pulled the chain at the same tine.
 Would the strains' of that symphonic flush penetrate into the body
 of the Abbey and create one of the major embarrassments in the history
 of British Royalty? There was nothing for it but to have a test.
 A detachment of Guards from nearby Wellington Barracks was pressed
 into service, and as technicians borrowed from the BBC, each armed with
 a decibel meter, were stationed at various key points in the main part
 of the Abbey, the troops were deployed along the long line of toilets.
 It is not known what fora of drill was evolved for this unique exercise.
 It was probably something like: 'At the command, "Chains - FULL" ???
 wait for it!' Anyway, as the order rang out all the toilets were
 flushed simultaneously and the good news from inside the Abbey was that
 nothing could be heard of the noises off. The heading Time magazine put
 on their story about it was 'Royal Flush*.
 So Crapper and Twyford have given us the loo as we know it today - the pan and
 the cistern, separate but equal. When the 'Unitas' came out in 1885 it
 provided a way for British subjects to show their loyalty.
 The Angel Hotel in Doncaster were among the first proud possessors of a
 Unitas and the management were even more proud when Queen Victoria on a
 visit to the town made use of it. Wishing to capitalise on this, they
 were placed in rather a quandary. Numerous Inns around the country
 displayed notices to the effect that 'Queen Elizabeth Slept Here' but
 they could not very well make capital out of Queen Victoria's brief
 11
visit by erecting a sign on something of the sane lines. However, it
 did not become necessary. Word of south, as ever, proving the best form
 of advertising, the news soon got around and each day saw the good
 ladies of Don caster Baking their way to the Angel and queuing up to use
 the sane toYlet that bad been graced by their beloved Queen.
 (W. Reyburn)
 Not only was the w.c. out in the open, but it was also a thing of beauty, a
 joy almost for ever. Names, too, reflected a poetic age, the age of Tennyson
 and Browning, Reyburn tells us.
 (1) THE *HARD SELL' NAMES, such as the Deluge. Cascade. Tornado and
 Niagara. These were obviously ained at the slice of the Market which
 demanded that a toilet should be seen and heard to do a good flushing
 job.
 (2) THE SPEED AND EFFICIENCY GROUP, like the Rapido. the Alerto and
 the Subito. I think Alerto is a wonderful name for a toilet. It
 conjures up a picture of it standing there poised to leap into instant
 action at the very touch of the chain.
 (3) THE COMPOUND NAMES. These are Made up from taking part of the
 Manufacturer's naie and part of the location of his works, as for
 example the Twycliffe (made by Twyfords of Cliffe Vale) and the Sharcote
 (Sharpe Brothers of Swadlingcote).
 (4) CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY. This gave rise to obvious ones like the
 Pluvius and the Aquarius. More subtle were the Aeneas (he got his
 association with water through being reared by a Sea Nymph) and the
 Nereus (he was a sea diety, son of Oceanus).
 But by far the largest single category are -
 (5) CRAPPER'S STREET NAMES. His toilets include the following:
 Marlboro Onslow
 Walton Lennox
 Ovington Manresa
 Cadogan Culford
 Sloane
 12
These are all Chelsea streets, avenues and squares immediately adjacent
 to or within a stone's throw of the site of his original works in
 Marlborough Road.
 For Those in Peril on the Seat
 Few people have associated plumbers with courage. But they have not only
 changed history, they have also braved it. He have already seen how dreaded
 disease (plague, cholera, typhoid, smallpox) lurks in the sewers of the world.
 But many a plumber, unsuspecting of the noxious and toxic gases, has peered
 into a recalcitrant cesspit with a lighted Batch and blown hiaaelf to Kingdom
 Cone - or beyond.
 There are other physically dangerous episodes that have been recorded, one by
 the always-alert and entertaining Wallace Reyburn.
 An incident in modern times ? ? ? was what was to become known as the
 Palestinian Explosion of 1947. I was told about it by an acquaintance
 of mine who had been with the Medical Corps attached to the First
 Infantry Division during the Palestine troubles just after World War II.
 In his camp there was a permanent latrine which might well have been
 termed historic, since it had obviously done service for several wars.
 It was a huge concrete-encased, circular pit, the concrete having been
 continued up above ground to form a parapet across which the seat-boards
 were laid. The occupants, divided by wooden partitions, sat outward
 looking in the style of the garderobes still to be seen in old English
 castles. The edifice was topped with a corrugated iron roof.
 At that time DDT had just come into being and the Disinfestation Officer
 decided to put sooe of this to work on the foul smelling accumulation
 down below. The DDT was in a solution with a paraffin base and he
 poured in a couple of gallons of this. There had been complaints from
 late night users of the latrine about the disconcerting sound of rats
 down there, so he thought it would be a good idea to complete the
 operation by burning them out. He threw in a lighted match and was not
 prepared for what happened. When the paraffin caught alight it ignited
 13
the mephitic fumes and the force of the explosion was such that the
 concrete parapet split open like the petals of a flower and the tin roof
 was sent a considerable distance into the air. And the aftermath of
 this atomic-like detonation was that fall-out, in the fora of toilet
 papera was still drifting down out of the sky four hours later.
 Sonewhere I have read that ten thousand accidents occur in English bathrooms
 annually. The hazards of the bathroom are* indeed, legion, as James Thurber
 discovered.
 I am sure that many a husband has wanted to wrench the fanily medicine
 cabinet off the wall and throw it out of the window, if only because the
 average medicine cabinet is so filled with mysterious bottles and
 unidentifiable objects of all kinds that it is a source of constant
 bewilderment and exasperation to the American male. Surely the British
 medicine cabinet and the French medicine cabinet and all the other
 medicine cabinets must be simpler and better ordered than ours. It may
 be that the American habit of saving everything and never throwing
 anything away, even empty bottles, causes the domestic medicine cabinet
 to become as cluttered in its small way as the American attic becomes
 cluttered in a major way. I have encountered few medicine cabinets in
 this country which were not pack-jammed with something between a hundred
 and fifty and two hundred different items, fron dental floss to boracic
 acid, from razor blades to sodium perborate, from adhesive tape to
 coconut oil. Even the neatest wife will put off clearing out the
 medicine cabinet on the ground that she has something else to do that is
 more important at the moment, or more diverting. It was in the
 apartment of such a wife and her husband that I became enormously
 involved with a medicine cabinet one morning not long ago.
 I had spent the week-end with this couple - they live on East
 Tenth Street near Fifth Avenue - such a week-end as left me reluctant to
 rise up on Monday morning with bright and shining face and go to work.
 They got up and went to work, but I didn't. I didn't get up until about
 two-thirty in the afternoon. I had my face all lathered for shaving and
 the wash-bowl was full of hot water when suddenly I cut myself with the
 14
razor. I cut ay ear. Very few men cut their ears with razors, but I
 do, possibly because I was taught the old Spencerian free-wrist movement
 by ay writing teacher in the grammar grades. The ear bleeds rather
 profusely when cut with a razor and is difficult to get at. More angry
 than hurt, I jerked open the door of the Medicine cabinet to see if I
 could see a styptic pencil, and out fell, from the top shelf, a little
 black paper packet containing nine needles. It seens that this wife
 kept a little packet containing nine needles on the top shelf of the
 ?edicine cabinet. The packet fell into the soapy water of the
 wash-bowl, where the paper rapidly disintegrated, leaving nine needles
 at large in the bowl* I was, naturally enough, not in the best
 condition, either physical or aental, to recover nine needles froa a
 wash-bowl. No gentleman who has lather on his face and whose ear is
 bleeding is in the best condition for anything, even something involving
 the handling of nine large blunt objects.
 It did not seen wise to me to pull the plug out of the wash-bowl
 and let the needles go down the drain. I had visions of clogging up the
 plumbing system of the house, and also a vague fear of causing short
 circuits somehow or other (I know very little about electricity and I
 don't want to have it explained to ae). Finally I groped very gently
 around the bowl and eventually had four of the needles in the palm of
 one hand and three in the palm of the other -, two I couldn't find. If I
 thought quickly and clearly I wouldn't have done that. A lathered man
 whose ear is bleeding and who has four wet needles in one hand and three
 in the other nay be said to have reached the lowest known point of human
 efficiency. There is nothing he can do but stand there. I tried
 transferring the needles in my left hand to the palm of ay right hand,
 but I couldn't get them off my left hand. Vet needles cling to you. In
 the end I wiped the needles off on to a bath-towel which was hanging on
 a rod above the bath-tub. It was the only towel that I could find. I
 had to dry ay hands afterwards on the bath-mat. Then I tried to find
 the needles in the towel. Hunting for seven needles in a bath-towel is
 the most tedious occupation I have ever engaged in. I could find only
 five of them. With the two that had been left in the bowl, that meant
 there were four needles in all nissing - two in the wash-bowl and two
 15
others lurking in the towel or lying in the bathtub under the towel.
 Frightful thoughts cane to me of what sight happen to anyone who used
 that towel or washed his face in the bowl or got into the tub, if I
 didn't find the Biasing needles. Hell, I didn't find thea. I sat down
 on the edge of the tub to think, and I decided finally that the only
 thing to do was wrap up the towel in a newspaper and take it away with
 Be. I also decided to leave a note for ay friends explaining as clearly
 as I could that I was afraid there were two needles in the bath-tub and
 two needles in the wash-bowl, and that they better be careful.
 I looked everywhere in the apartaent, but I could not find a
 pencil, or a pen, or a typewriter. I could find pieces of paper, but
 nothing with which to write on then. I don't know what gave ae the idea
 - a aovie I had seen, perhaps, or a story I had read - but I suddenly
 thought of writing a aessage with a lipstick. The wife Bight have an
 extra lipstick lying around and, if so, I concluded it would be in the
 aedicine cabinet. I went back to the aedicine cabinet and began poking
 around in it for a lipstick. I saw what I thought looked like the aetal
 tip of one, and I got two fingers around it and began to pull gently -
 it was under a lot of things. Every object in the medicine cabinet
 began to slide. Bottles broke in the wash-bowl and on the floor; red,
 brown, and white liquids spurted; nail files, scissors, razor blades,
 and ?iscellaneous objects sang and clattered and tinkled. I was covered
 with perfume, peroxide, and cold creaa.
 It took ae half an hour to get the debris all together in the
 ?iddle of the bathroom floor. I aade no attempt to put anything back in
 the aedicine cabinet. I knew it would take a steadier hand than aine
 and a less shattered spirit. Before I went away (only partly shaved)
 and abandoned the shambles, I left a note saying that I was afraid there
 were needles in the bath-tub and the wash-bowl and that I had taken
 their towel and that I would call up and tell thea everything - I wrote
 it in iodine with the end of a toothbrush. I have not called up yet, I
 am sorry to say. I have neither found the courage nor thought up the
 16
words to explain what happened* I suppose my friends believe that I
 deliberately smashed up their bathroom and stole their towel* I don't
 know for sure, because they have not yet called me up, either.
 This is not to Mention the artistic dangers of loos such as happened to the
 famous music composer, Eric Goates. While he was relieving hiaself in a
 public lavatory Coates heard the man next to him whistling Coates' own
 composition, 'Knightsbridge March*. The man kept sounding the wrong note,
 however, and Coates leant over and tried to put hia right. The man mistook
 his attentions, however, and it was only after an unfortunate scene that
 Coates was able to establish his innocence.
 The historical researcher into loos is not immune, either. I have often
 wondered how my own actions have been perceived when I used to take people on
 social history tours of Johannesburg. One of the mandatory stops was at the
 Fordsburg Men's Toilet to see the urinals with their bullet-holes from the
 1922 Revolt. The furtive shapes of several females being sneaked in for a
 quick peek might well be recorded in the notebooks of the Vice Squad or
 Special Branch.
 Of course, there are dangers in haste, as the eponymous hero (in Laurence
 Sterne's eighteenth century novel Tristram Shandy) discovered in his early
 childhood in his encounter with a window-sash:
 'Twas nothing, I did not lose two drops of blood by it
 'twas not worth calling in a surgeon, had he lived next door
 to us thousands suffer by choice, what I did by accident.
 Doctor Slop made ten times more of it than there was
 occasion: some men rise, by the art of hanging great weights
 upon small wires. and I am this day (August the 10th, 1761)
 paying part of the price of this man's reputation. 0'twould
 provoke a stone, to see how things are carried on in this world!
 The chamber-naid had left no ******* *** under the bed:
 Cannot you contrive, master, quoth Susannaht lifting up
 the sash with one hand, as she spoke, and helping me up into the
 window-seat with the other, cannot you manage, my dear, for
 17
a single time, to **** *** ** ?** ******?
 I was five years old. Susannah did not consider that
 nothing was well hung in our family, so slap cane the sash
 down like lightning upon us; Nothing is left. cried Susannah,
 nothing is left for me, but to run my country.
 My uncle Toby's house was a much kinder sanctuary; and so
 Susannah fled to it.
 There are even political dangers: In his biography of Winston Churchill,
 William Manchester tells the following story. The Labour Prime Minister
 Clement Atlee met the then Leader of the Opposition in the House Men's Room,
 *Atlee, arriving first, had 'stepped up to the urinal trough when Churchill
 strode in on the same mission, stood at the trough as far away from him as
 possible. Atlee said, "Feeling standoffish today, are we, Winston?"
 Churchill said: "That's right. Everytime you see something big, you want to
 nationalize it.*"
 There is always, too, potential for legal disasters. Lord Campbell in his
 lives of the Chief Justices wrote in the 1850s:
 In those days retiring-rooms for the use of the judges were unknown, and
 a porcelain vase, with a handle to it, was placed in a corner of the
 court at the extremity of the bench. In the King's Bench at Guidhall
 the students' box (in which I myself have often sat) was very near this
 corner. One day a student who was taking notes, finding the ink in his
 little ink-bottle very thick, used the freedom secretly to discharge the
 whole of it into My Lord's porcelain vase. His Lordship soon after
 having occasion to come to this corner, he was observed in the course of
 a few moments to become much disconcerted and distressed. In truth,
 discovering the liquid with which he was filling the vase to be of a
 jet-black colour, he thought the secretion indicated the sudden attack
 of some mortal disorder. In great confusion and anguish of mind he
 returned to his seat and attempted to resume the trial of the cause but,
 finding his hand to shake so much that he could not write, he said that
 on account of an indisposition he was obliged to adjourn the court. As
 he was led to his carriage by his servants, the luckless student came up
 18
and said to him, 'My Lord, I hope Your Lordship will excuse ie, as I
 suspect that I an unfortunately the cause of Your Lordship's
 apprehensions.' He then described what he had done, expressing deep
 contrition for his thoughtlessness and impertinence, and saying that he
 considered it his duty to relieve His Lordship's Bind by his confession.
 Lord Kenyon: 'Sir, you are a man of sense and a gentleman - dine with us
 on Sunday.' Lord Ellenborough pursued the sane practice. I Byself have
 often heard his large seals dangling froa his watch-chain rattle against
 the vase, as he took it in his hand coram populo, decorously turning his
 back upon then.
 Finally, there are professional and social dangers, too. Witness the
 experience of Wallace Deuel (which he described in the Chicago Daily News. 10
 January, 1941). Deuel was a young doctor called out to visit a rich patient.
 Any doctor would have been glad to be called to this house, one of the
 most beautiful old hones in the city. I felt that ny standing in the
 community was at stake and that it was an inportant nonent.
 At the conclusion of the exasination I wanted to talk privately
 with the stiffly starched and immaculate nurse who was in attendance,
 who, too, was apparently Baking every effort to be perfect in her
 professional attitude. I wanted to give some instructions to the nurse
 and asked the fanily to excuse us for a moment while I talked to her
 privately. The nearest and aost obvious place was the old-fashioned
 bathroom adjoining and I asked her to go in. I closed the door.
 'Sit down,* I said pointing to the bathroom stool, and then, as
 she took it, I noticed that the only place left for ae was the
 indispensable one in any bathroom, which was covered by a gold and white
 lid.
 I seated myself and talked for several minutes while the family
 waited anxiously outside for the verdict. Finally she rose and as I,
 too, rose, my hand automatically grasped the ornate pear-shaped knob at
 the end of the chain hanging beside Be - and I pulled.
 19
Why I pulled the cursed thing I'll never know except) of course,
 from force of habit. Instantly the place resounded with the familiar
 screeches and hisses of flushing water.
 'Oh doctor!' she gasped, 'what will they think? * And the door
 shut! - What can I do?'
 'Hell, woman,' I said, my dignity ruined, 'Don't ask ne what you
 can do. I don't even know what I can do!'
 I was never asked to return.
 Loos Talk
 The loo has provided the subject for immense linguistic creativity. People
 will do anything to avoid nan ing names. You can think of many for yourself:
 the Elizabethans called it 'the place of easement*. Now we have: 'the little
 girl's room'; the 'chaaber of commerce'; the 'cloakroom'; the 'long-drop'; the
 'Ladies & Gents'; the "smallest room*'; the Geordie 'netty' (from Italian
 'gabinetti1?); the 'dunny' (originally from the British dialect *dunnakin'v
 but now Australian); the South African p.k. (from 'picannin kia', meaning
 'little house') etc. The act of going there is also concealed with a dainty
 nicety. I'm going 'to wash my hands'; 'see a man about a dog'; 'powder my
 nose'; 'No. 1 and No. 2' (I never knew which was which!)* During the Second
 World War a favourite was: 'I'm going to telephone Hitler'. The Australians
 are marginally less restrained - *Ia going to splash the boots ... point percy
 at the porcelain ... shake hands with the wife's best friend' etc. In South
 Africa we have even gone through a phase of having 'International Toilets'.
 I myself believe we should not sweep this thing under the carpet. I believe
 we should be open and honest. We must, as they say in America, "cut the crap'
 and be brutal and forthright and ask of our hosts, 'Please take ne to your
 euphemism*.
 20
This failure to avoiding calling a shovel a shovel can, of course, lead to
 trouble, as is evident in a story which appears in many forms and contexts
 (often passed around surreptitiously in school claasroons), but with its
 basic shape unchanged. It is perhaps best told by an informant of Mollie
 Harris's with delightful whimsicality.
 An English lady was to stay in a small German village. Not knowing any
 German she secured the help of a German schoolmaster, and wrote to him
 for information. One of her questions was to ask, was there a w.c.
 attached to her lodgings? The schoolmaster, not familiar with the
 abbreviation, thought that w.c. might mean Void Chapel - which means
 *Chapel in the Hoods'. Thinking that she must be a devout Church-goer,
 he wrote her the following letter:
 The w.c. is situated some seven miles from your
 lodgings, in the midst of beautiful scenery, and is
 open Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays. This
 is unfortunate if you are in the habit of going
 frequently, but you will be interested to know that
 some people take their lunch with them, and make a
 day of it, whilst others go by car and arrive just
 in tine.
 As there are many visitors in the summer, I do
 advise you to go early. The accommodation Is good,
 and there are about 60 seats, but if at any time you
 should be late arriving, there is plenty of standing
 room. The bell is rung 10 minutes before the w.c*
 is open. I advise you to visit on a Friday as there
 is an organ recital on that day.
 I should be delighted to secure a seat for you
 and be the first to take you there. My wife and I
 have not been for six months, and it pains us very
 much - but it is a long way to go.
 21
Hoping this information will be of some use to
 you.
 Yours sincerely ...
 LOOS AND LITERATURE
 Now we cone to loos and literature. The history of loos is, of
 course, Buch lore inportant than the history of poetry and has
 therefore taken hiterto deserved precedence in this book* There are
 two ways literature can be connected to the loo: functionally and by
 content.
 Loos Leaves
 The functional connection Bust be linked to the history of toilet
 paper* Before toilet paper, people used a variety of articles. The
 Romans, for instance, used sponges; others, particularly in deserts*
 sand or stones; in his book The Specialist Charles Sale suggests that,
 in the American countryside, one should have a box of corn cobs next
 to the loo, or a Bail order catalogue hanging behind the door of the
 outhouse* In aost loos in South Africa, in dire emergency, one could
 probably use The Specialist itself!
 In 1747 in his Letters to his Son Lord Chesterfield gave this advice:
 *I knew a gentleman who was so good a manager of his tine that he
 would not even lose that small portion of it which the call of nature
 obliged hin to pass in the necessary-house; but gradually went
 through all the Latin poets, in those moments. He bought, for
 example, a conmon edition of Horace, of which he tore off gradually a
 couple of pages, carried them with him to that necessary place, read
 them first and then sent them down as a sacrifice to Cloacina; thus
 22
was Buch tine fairly gained; and I recommend you to follow bis
 exanple. It is better than only doing what you cannot help doing at
 those Moments and it will make any book which you shall read in that
 manner, very present in your Bind.'
 The Roman poet, Catullus, was fearful that his writings would end up
 this way.
 In the old dayB, incidentally, as far back as the eighteenth century,
 books were used so prevalently in this manner that they came to be
 called bum-fodder. Which is where the word *humph' comes from.
 Which reminds one of the story of the man in England who went into a
 loo and stayed there a very long time and when he was asked why he
 took so long said: 'Well, I started pulling on the toilet roll and
 all it said was Boots, Boots, Boots and I was waiting for it to say
 ... something else.'
 Reviewers of this book should be warned of the famous retort to
 reviewers: 'I have your review in front of me. Soon it will be behind
 me.'
 The l i teral use of literature must have been popular for many years
 after Lord Chesterfield's personal discovery. The rol l of t o i l e t
 paper started playing i t s role in history only in the late Victorian
 t imes . I t was in 1880 that perforations (made by the Br i t i sh
 Perforated Paper Conpany) revolutionised the genre. Up t i l l then i t
 was squares and often the dreaded hard and slippery paper.
 Even the coming of rolls was not without possible embarrassment.
 Trader Horn's daughter Harie has a nice story about her uncle Tom
 Smith (Trader Horn's brother) , who was a Cathol ic p r i e s t in
 Lancashire.. He always had a housekeeper. Marie loved going shopping
 with one of them, a young one* The f irst item on the weekly shopping
 l i s t , always announced in a loud voice by the housekeeper, was 'A
 23
email box of Beecham's pills and a roll of toilet paper on Father
 Smith's account!' All his parishioners must have known that Father
 Tom was a man of regular habits!
 It must be remembered in passing that the words sanitary and sanity
 have the same root: physical health and mental health. It probabaly
 explains the quality of writing of the German philosopher Immanuel
 Kant who suffered from chronic constipation.
 Mentioned in Dispatches
 While all this is crucial, we mustn't forget literary content) or
 honourable tributes. He have seen the potty in Byron just as Don
 Alfonzo saw it. Loos and related activities take their bows of
 course, in Chaucer and Shakespeare, Sterne and James Joyce. The Great
 Panjandrum himself, Dr Johnson, was unequivocal. No quilted seats or
 fancy plastic for him. 'There is nothing as good as the plain board*.
 Wooden seats are warmer.
 You have to have sympathy for Compton McKenzie when he writes in
 Greece in my Life: 'I think I should sigh for the old Grande Bretagne
 Hotel in spite of the squalor of the loo which was no paradise for
 dysentery'. Especially when one thinks of those loos on the Continent
 where one squats on two platforms for the feet while the maelstrom
 swirls around like Scylla 4 Charybdis. We used to call them
 'starting-blocks' ? Richard Burton II, the nineteenth century
 explorer, would shock people by leaving out on his desk a book he was
 writing called A History of the Fart - he may not have seriously
 intended to write it.
 The Wind in the Willows
 Had he done so, however, Burton would quite likely have started with
 the Roman Emperor Claudius, a humanitarian man according to the
 historian Suetonius.
 24
Some say that he planned an edict to legitimize the breaking of
 wind at table, either silently or noisily - after hearing about a
 ?an who was so modest that he endangered his health by an attempt
 to restrain himself.
 He could not have failed to include the sad story of Edward de Vere,
 seventeenth Earl of Oxford, which is told in the seventeenth century
 biographer John Aubrey's wonderful book Brief Lives.
 This Earl of Oxford (writes Aubrey), making of his low obeisance
 to Queen Elizabeth, happened to let a Fart, at which he was so
 abashed and ashamed that he went to Travell, 7 yeares. On his
 returne the Queen welcomed him home, and sayd, My Lord, I had
 forgott the Fart.
 This is an even more wonderful story if it is true, as some contend,
 that de Vere was actually Shakespeare. The whole of literary history
 would have to take into account this exile and its cause.
 The French novelist Balzac said that he would like to be 'BO well
 known, so popular, so celebrated, so famous, that it would permit me
 to break wind in society, and society would think it a most natural
 thing'.
 Burton might well have ended with David Niven's account, when he was a
 young man in Bermuda, of an attempted seduction.
 We were never out of the water and became burned the colour of
 mahogany. I fell slightly in love with a dark haired beauty of
 eighteen from Richmond, Virginia. She wore a camellia in her hair
 on the night I took her for a romantic drive in the full moon.
 Joe Benevides, though himself the soul of tact on these occasions,
 sitting bolt upright in his box and staring ahead oblivious to
 what was going on behind him, had unknowningly sabotaged my very
 delicate preliminary moves by feeding his horse some wet grass.
 25
noves by feeding his horse soae wet grass. It is quite impossible to
 impress a beautiful girl with your sincerity if your carefully .worded
 ?urnurings into a shell pink ear have to coapete with a barriage of
 farts.
 Loo Tenants
 There are not aany poeas directly addressed to the topic of the loo.
 An exception is the following, with its dilenma as to whether God is
 everywhere - even in the kleinhuisie. Sir John Harington, with true
 Renaissance dexterity, turned his hand froa plunbing to the poetry of
 plunbing and piety.
 A godly father, sitting on a draught
 To do as need and nature hath us taught,
 Munbled (as wax his Banner) certain prayers,
 And unto him the devil straight repairs,
 And boldly to revile hia he begins,
 Alleging that such prayers were deadly sins
 And that he shewed he was devoid of grace
 To speak to God from so unmeet a place.
 The reverent nan, though at the first disnayed,
 Yet strong in faith, to Satan thus he said:
 Thou damned spirit, wicked, false and lying,
 Despairing thine own good, and our envying,
 Each take his due, and ae thou canst not hurt,
 To God ay prayer I meant, to thee the dirt.
 Pure prayer ascends to Him that high doth sit,
 Down falls the filth, for fiends of hell aore fit.
 There is at least one poem, however, (by A Y Caapbell), which does pay
 proper respect to the profession of plumbing:
 26
Plumber is icumen In;
 Bludie big tu-du.
 Bloweth lampe, and showeth dampe,
 And dripth the wud thru.
 Bludie hel, boo-hoo!
 Thawth drain, and runneth bath;
 Saw sawth, and BCruth scru; -
 Bull-kuk squirteth, leake spurteth;
 Hurry springeth up anew,
 Boo-hoo, boo-hoo*
 Tom Pugh, Tom Pugh, well plumbea thu, Ton Pugh;
 Better job I naver nu.
 Therefore I will cease boo-hoo,
 Hoorie not, but cry pooh-pooh,
 Murie sing pooh-pooh, pooh-pooh,
 Pooh-pooh!
 Until recent times, if we do not know what Scotsmen wore under their
 kilts, we do know what ladies wore under their dresses. Nothing.
 And many no doubt suffered for it from chills and worse. Until an
 American social reformer came along by nane of Mrs A Bloomer. In 1850
 a certain kind of drawers took her name. No doubt because of their
 voluminous character and potential for embarrassing discussion, the
 name came, by metaphoric extension or some other route, to mean an
 embarrassing faux pas. If the feminine origin is appropriate then it
 is fair to point to one of the more embarrassing bloomers in
 literature - from none other than Jane Austen and in Pride and
 Prejudice:
 On entering the room, she found the whole party
 at loo, and was innediately invited to join them ...
 27
For a writer so sure of her touch, so delicate in sensibility, this is
 a lapse of ?onuuental proportions. Like Mne de Ponpadour she nay well
 have said, *Apres aoi, le Deluge,*
 Even the poet laureate hiaself, Alfred Lord Tennyson sometimes let his
 knickers show, as in his well-known poea, 'Locksley Hall*.
 In the spring a young Ban's fancy lightly turns to
 thoughts of love.
 Then her cheek was pale and thinner than should be for one
 BO young,
 And her eyes on a l l ay Motions with a mite observance
 hung.
 The aind boggles at what they thought they were doing. HuBourist
 Frank Huir has suggested the poea night have been inspired by a
 two-seater loo.
 Iaagine, too , the sensation that would be caused i f any Royal
 Shakespeare Company director took l i tera l ly the words of the sentry,
 Francisco, in Hamlet when he says at the beginning of the play, 'For
 this relief auch thanks'.
 Hail to Thee!
 But the loo and the sewerage systea, in the fora of drains, does get
 an honorary Mention in the greatest poea in the English language. You
 Bight think that Paradise Lost is the greatest poea in the English
 language and it is true that we do find that plumbing is accorded a
 place in Book One.
 As one who long in populous city pent,
 Where houses thick and sewers annoy the air,
 Forth issuing on a summer's aorn to breath
 Aaong the pleasant villages and faras
 Adjoin'd, from each thing net conceives delight.
 28
But Paradise Loat is not the greatest poem in the English language.
 What is the greatest poen in the English language? The greatest poen
 in the English language was written by Captain Haaish Blair, probably
 a Soyal Navy officer, when he was stationed at Scapa Flow, in the
 isles north of Scotland. The greatest poea in the English language is
 called 'The Bloody Orkneys' and goes thus
 THE BLOODY ORKNEYS
 This bloody town's a bloody cuss-
 No bloody trains) no bloody bus,
 And no one cares for bloody us-
 In bloody Orkney.
 The bloody roads are bloody bad,
 The bloody folks are bloody Bad,
 They'd make the brightest bloody sad,
 In bloody Orkney.
 All bloody clouds, and bloody rains,
 No bloody kerbs, no bloody drains,
 The Council's got not bloody brains,
 In bloody Orkney.
 Everything's so bloody dear,
 A bloody bob, for bloody beer,
 And is it good? - no bloody fear,
 In bloody Orkney.
 The bloody flicks are bloody old,
 The bloody seats are bloody cold,
 You can't get in for bloody gold
 In bloody Orkney.
 The bloody dances aake you anile,
 29
The bloody band is bloody vile,
 It only cranpa your bloody style,
 In bloody Orkney.
 No bloody sport, no bloody gases,
 No bloody fun, the bloody danes
 Won't even give their bloody names
 In bloody Orkney*
 Best bloody place is bloody bed,
 Kith bloody ice on bloody head,
 You sight as well'be bloody dead,
 In bloody Orkney.
 If you think of it a book is, as Aristotle would say, a kind of
 catharsis. It begins with preliminary pangs, it entails great turmoil
 and struggle, it brings, certainly by the end, great relief -
 especially to the readership. Writing a book is like pulling the
 chain - you never know if it will work (Readers are cranky as
 chains). And then there is the washing of the hands. But before I
 wash ny hands of this subject I want to point out The Greatest Mystery
 of All.
 The idea cane to me when I read a saying of Christopher Horley, who is
 over one hundred years old today if he is still alive. Following, I
 suppose, John Donne's saying that no man is an island, Horley is the
 nan who said: *No man is alone while eating spaghetti.' A nan who
 can say that must be one of the most profound thinkers in the world -
 ever. So we must take careful note of another thing he said. It is a
 Baying of deep religious insight. He said, and suddenly we see into
 the Mystery of the Universe: 'A human being is an ingenious assembly
 of portable plumbing.' In the light of this we cannot deny ourselves.
 We have created the loo IN OUR OWN IMAGE. It is no wonder that the
 euphemism is the most mysterious room in our homes; it is our most
 private world; it is, as some people have recognised, the 'holy of
 30
h o l i e s ' . And what i s i t we do when we go ins ide , c lose the door, lock
 i t , turn round and bow down? What i s i t we do? We recognise
 OURSELVES.
 Three cheers for the Loo. Hip, hip ???
 0O0
 31
KHKBGEHCY HOTES
 32