Defence Against the Dark Arts Part XII: The books of Sellar and Yeatman

The article about balancing depressing books with amusing and uplifting ones gives Terry Pratchett and Gerald Durrell as examples of people whose books can be used to counteract the damaging effects of negative and distressing material. 

After reading still more such material, I needed to take another break and find another antidote. I remembered the witty and amusing books of W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman: the best passages are good for dispelling dark clouds. Just like Rudyard Kipling's Stalky stories and Geoffrey Willans' and Donald Searle's Molesworth books, they are a good defence against the dark arts.

They may not mean much to people unfamiliar with traditional British culture though, and as time passes they may seem increasingly dated, stale, juvenile and irrelevant to British readers.

W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman
Scotsman and schoolmaster Walter Carruthers Sellar and Englishman Robert Julian Yeatman were born in 1898 and 1897 respectively. They met at Oriel College, Oxford and became lifelong friends. They collaborated on four humorous books, which were illustrated by John Reynolds:

1066 and All That (1930)   And Now All This (1932)
Horse Nonsense (1933)    Garden Rubbish (1936)

1066 and All That is by far the best known of the books and in my opinion much the funniest.

1066 and All That
1066 and All That: A Memorable History of England, Comprising All the Parts You Can Remember, Including 103 Good Things, 5 Bad Kings and 2 Genuine Dates was first published as a series of articles in Punch magazine then in book form in 1930.

1066 and All That is a parody of the textbooks used for teaching British history in schools at the time. Familiarity with the style and material that is being parodied is essential for getting the most out of this little book.

Antonia White and a few more familiar elements

This article contains a few more examples of elements that Antonia White had in common with other people featured on here. 

Telepathic connections
Antonia White is said to have established a telepathic connection or psychic rapport with a few people during her lifetime.

This is from her daughter Lyndall Hopkinson’s book Nothing to Forgive:

”...a strange telepathy...had again and again compelled me to leave for England just when Antonia most needed someone, although she had never appealed for help.”

Another link was with a young solder called Robert Legg. As Jane Dunn tells us in her biography Antonia White: A Life, they played a game in which they would not communicate verbally. Antonia White describes this phenomenon in her autobiographical novel Beyond the Glass:

“She had become so expert at ‘the game’ that he had only to will her and she went instinctively to the right place at the right time.”

This reminds me of what Joyce Collin-Smith said about the Maharishi Yogi:

“He seemed to have definite hypnotic power. Most of us could be summoned at a distance and would come at the inner command...”

Antonia White too had a telepathic link with an Indian guru, a mystic called Meher Baba. She too believed that he was sending her hypnotic commands.

Feeling different and copying others
Feeling that they are not real people, feeling different on the inside from everyone around them and imitating others for various reasons are common elements in the lives of Antonia White and Stella Benson - and many other creative people.

Antonia White, a gold coin and impressionable children

This article was inspired by an incident that I read about in the novelist Antonia White’s account of her early childhood in As Once in May.

It concerns what she called one of the great disappointments of her life. It happened when she was only four years old.

In addition to being a schoolmaster, her father gave private tuition to young men. Antonia got talking to one of these pupils while he was waiting for his lesson. He was so impressed by her knowledge that he gave her a gold coin, a half-sovereign!

When her father arrived and noticed the coin, he forced her to return it. He could not possibly allow her to accept it; it was far too much money for a child of her age. Despite his pupil’s efforts on Antonia’s behalf, her father was adamant. The coin went back into the young man’s pocket.

As she left the room, holding back her tears, she heard her father say:

“It was exceedingly generous of you, but I’m sure that you’ll see my point of view. No, no, she won’t be disappointed. I’m sure she knew all along she couldn’t possibly be allowed to keep it. Don’t worry. By tomorrow she’ll have forgotten all about it.”

This is what Antonia White said decades later:

“He was wrong. After seventy-two years I have not forgotten that breathless moment of possession and the bitter sense of injustice when the treasure was snatched away...”

This is a very good illustration of something that that really stands out in the biographies and autobiographies of many writers: how hard they take some things and how they often never forget and never forgive a childhood injury.

Diana Wynne Jones had this to say, in connection with being permanently affected by not being permitted to read fantasy books as a child:

“And it does bring you hard up against the responsibility adults have, if only because it shows you what a truly lasting impression can be made on a child.”

This is from her book Reflections: On the Magic of Writing, which is full of such insights.