MUSINGS FROM THE BOWER 29
‘By hook or by crook,
I’ll be first in this book’
When did you last sign your name? Properly, with a pen, not electronically on an email or text. Think about it – years ago we signed our name regularly. We wrote letters, signed cheques or scrawled our signature on petitions to our local MPs. Today, even petitions tend to be online, and unless we’re entering into some official business, like taking out an insurance policy or making a major purchase, our signature isn’t required. When did you last write your name in someone’s autograph book? I expect that is even longer ago – in Victorian times, and right up until the Second World War, most girls and young women had autograph books, not to collect the signatures of their favourite pop singers but to collect rhymes, quotations and drawings entered up by their relatives and friends.
After the War, people still had autograph books but the rhymes become more banal, and gradually the books fell from favour. Sometimes, school leavers copy the American idea of the school year book, collecting signatures and good luck messages from their classmates, but in general, today’s books are used by fans to gather the autographs of their favourite actors, film stars, pop stars or reality personalities. A couple of years ago I wrote a book about autograph collecting, and gathered a collection of early autograph albums, which were packed with exquisite watercolour paintings, sketches and delightful verses. Can you imagine someone today taking the time to borrow someone’s autograph album, returning it a few hours later embellished with an intricate painting? Or a cartoon? Or a long poem, lovingly written, full of advice for the years ahead? No, neither can I.
Some imaginative pages found in earlier autograph books involved photographs or small objects pasted in, such as silk pictures, cigarette cards, lengths of thread, locks of hair, buttons, postage stamps or matchsticks with a clever comment, witty remark or joke beneath. For instance ‘The Lost C(h)ord’, ‘I’ve stamped your page’ or ‘This is the most striking object in your book’, as well, of course, as that vital signature.
One of my favourite rhymes that I’ve come across, was written in the 1920s:
He criticised her pudding
He didn’t like her cake
He wished she’d make the biscuits
That his mother used to make
She didn’t wash the dishes
She didn’t make the stew
And she didn’t darn his linen
As his mother used to do
Oh well she wasn’t perfect
Though she always tried her best
Then one day at length she thought
It was time to have a rest
So when that day he scolded
The same complaints all through
She turned around and boxed his ears
Like his mother used to do.
Or how about this gem, also from the 1920s?
Some girls love their brothers
But I so good have grown
That I love somebody else’s
Better than my own.
Love, marriage and babies are recurrent themes, something to be expected considering the vast majority of autograph books were owned by young women or schoolgirls. Friendship is another popular topic, with people proclaiming undying devotion. Interestingly, unlike today where we tend to bottle our feelings or make jokey references about ‘eternal friendship’, a few decades ago people weren’t afraid to show their feelings. They were happy to write loving thoughts and messages to friends and relatives as well being willing to show their patriotism by writing stirring quotations about Britain, its soldiers or its Union Flag. Unsurprisingly perhaps, forget-me-nots are the flowers which crop up in albums the most, though roses and violets are also exceedingly popular.
When on a lonely path you’ve got
And may perchance to see
That little flower Forget-me-not
Pluck it and think of me
Your album is a garden
That only friends may know
I will plant a forget-me-not
And see if it will grow
It’s interesting to analyse the themes – broadly speaking, they fall into four distinct categories. There are the flippant, humorous or novelty entries – these are verses and drawings which usually bear no relevance to the owner of the album; they are purely entries chosen to entertain. Secondly, there are the sentimental entries which often proclaim advice, friendship or love. The third type are those which consists of quotes, homilies, texts or poems. Sometimes these poems seem original to the writer, but more often are an extract from a well-known poet such as Browning, Kipling, Shakespeare or Keats. The fourth category belongs to the entries that I think of as ‘self-indulgent’. These are the self-satisfied, holier-than-thou entries that were particularly in vogue in Edwardian times and up to the 19220s. You can imagine these being penned by elderly aunts with pursed mouths like cats’ bottoms, or pompous uncles who believed that their flighty nieces needed a firm hand to keep them on the straight and narrow. They tended to consist of moralistic verses and prose setting out rules for behaviour, and you can imagine the young recipient screwing up her nose in disgust as she read the offering, such as this entry dated 1919:
And even when you’ve found them
It is well and kind to be somewhat blind
And to look for the virtue behind them.
The world will never adjust itself
To suit your whines to the letter
Some things must go wrong your whole life long
And the sooner you know it the better
I rather like this 1950s’ offering, too:
Tell me quick
Before I faint
Is we friends
Or is we ain’t?
As children, we tended to scrawl our names and a sentiment such as the ubiquitous ‘By hook or by crook, I’ll be first in the book’ or maybe, ‘Don’t kiss at the garden gate, Love is blind but neighbours ain’t’. However, as we mature, we realise what a great responsibility we undertake on the rare occasions when an autograph book is proffered for us to sign. What should we put? Do we come up with a thoughtful entry in the hope it will guide the book’s owner through life’s rocky highway, or do we opt for something witty to demonstrate our sense of humour? Sadly, the opportunity rarely comes along nowadays.
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