The Sunday Gentleman (40 page)

The agony column has carried insertions offering a batch of Hon cubs for sale, a request for miniature monkeys (“I will pay $4 per ounce for the monkeys”), an inquiry for mustache cups, and an offer to purchase all Aeolian harps that could be had. Sometimes cryptic ads appear from Inland Revenue acknowledging the receipt of money—published at the request of persons who, having once evaded income tax, guiltily, anonymously, send in conscience money.

Recently, when I visited the London
Times
, I went through innumerable files of Personal columns. A typical advertiser had a “used Rolls-Royce” to sell or “an evening gown, worn once.” Mostly there were ex-servicemen seeking “remunerative posts,” including the lieutenant colonel “with high-powered car,” and the “ex-RAF wing commander, suffering from overdose of political inertia.”

Then there was the young accountant who lacked money to support his wife and two daughters and wished “to contact a Gentleman with desire to arrange mortgage on ray house.” There was the person with “Nelson relics for sale, American offers are welcome.” There was “the advertiser wishing to free himself from the tyranny of possessions, will sell car, pictures, camera, stamps, guns.” And, as in prewar days, the “titled lady and Oxford man willing to take small party young people on educational tour of France, Switzerland, Italy, Portugal.”

In these columns, I met the most interesting people. The “gentlewoman” who “takes paying guests in her beautiful country mansion.” The “young married ex-officer” who “requires practical experience of mushroom-growing.” The “stammering [gentleman]” who “wishes to meet another gentleman suffering from similar disability with view to discussing means of improvement.” Here, too, I met the “lady, aged 25″ who “wishes to see the world,” the “ex-Major, aged 29″ who is “despondent in today’s world of moribund commercialism,” and the “lady, 46, suffering acutely from Head Noises.”

Other ads intrigued with their half-told dramas:

Decidedly NO. Too dogmatic. Lack sympathy. Nothing in common between us—O.

C.A. You should remain steadfast whatever the cost.—Heartbroken mother.

Home wanted for Gentleman subject to alcoholic bouts. Supervision required.

Grateful thanks to the Lady of Lourdes.—H.B.

Susan. Please tell me how you are and what you are doing. Time isn’t changing anything. Love always.—Jon.

Hong Kong Resident whose library was looted during the Japanese occupation, wants to negotiate for replacement.

Articulated skeleton required.

But if today’s ads appear to have dramatic possibilities, they are but minor intrigue compared to some of the pathetic, villainous, and zany ads of the past. Although the first Personal column of
The Times
saw light in 1785, occasional ads of this type were printed years earlier when the paper was known as the
Daily Universal Register
. And even before, bizarre Personal advertisements were being published, such as the one that appeared in London during 1749, as part of the design for a gigantic practical joke.

In that year, several celebrated persons, including the Duke of Portland and the Earl of Chesterfield, were seated in their London club discussing the question of human gullibility.

“I will wager,” said the duke, “that let a man advertise the most impossible thing in the world, and he will find fools enough in London to fill a playhouse and pay handsomely for the privilege of being there.”

The Earl of Chesterfield objected “Surely, if a man should say that he would jump into a quart bottle, nobody would believe that.”

It was a tough challenge, but the duke stuck to his guns. He insisted that people would be gullible enough to believe it and made the wager.

The two wrote out a Personal advertisement:

AT THE NEW THEATRE IN THE HAYMARKET, on Monday next, the 16th instant, is to be seen a Person . who performs the most surprising thing—viz, He presents you with a common Wine Bottle, which any of the spectators may first examine; this Bottle is placed on a Table in the middle of the Stage, and he (without any equivocation) goes into it, in the sight of all the spectators, and sings in it; during his stay in the Bottle, any Person may handle it, and see plainly that it does not exceed a common Tavern Bottle. Tickets to be had at the Theatre. To begin a half an hour after six o’clock.

The appearance of the advertisement created a sensation in London. There was a great rush for tickets priced from two to seven shillings, and on the scheduled night, the pit seats, the boxes, the galleries were packed with people. They waited patiently, until the appointed hour came and passed, and then they began to boo and catcall. The theater manager appeared, bowed, apologized for the delay, and announced that he would refund the money if the performer did not appear in fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes came, went—thirty minutes, an hour. The galleries began to hiss ominously. A nobleman threw a lighted candle from his box onto the stage. Then, as one, the audience rose, began ripping up seats and benches, began tearing down fixtures and curtain. Inside, the entire theater was gutted. Outside, its furnishings were transformed into a huge bonfire. In the chaos, someone stole off with the box office receipts.

And the Duke of Portland won his wager.

Thereafter, and for 162 successive years, the agony column dominated the game and offered a field day for its readers. High romance was afoot as early as August 20, 1795, when the following notice appeared in the Personal column of the ten-year-old
Times
:

If the Lady who, on Tuesday morning last, between 12 and 1 o’clock, was addressed by a Gentleman near the top of King Street, Covent Garden, when they afterwards walked together in that neighborhood, and an unexpected separation abruptly happened, would favour that Gentleman with a few lines, directed to A.B. at the Turk’s Head Coffeehouse, in the Strand, to remain till called for, and mentioning any morning, place and hour, when and where he may have the satisfaction of meeting her again, he would esteem himself much obliged-One’s imagination soars. Who was the ardent Gentleman? Up from the country, no doubt, or he would have been walking in a better part of town and would not have accosted an unattended Lady. And the Lady? “Who was the unknown fair who had made such an impression on the gentleman who accosted her?” muses an editor of
The Times
. “Ladies encountered by chance in Covent Garden, unaccompanied and of none too difficult access, were not generally the type for the renewal of whose acquaintance one would insert eager appeals in The Times. What was she? Clarissa Harlowe or Moll Flanders? A countess incognito? A masquerading lady’s-maid (the 18th century was much too full of these)? A beautiful distressed emigre from across the Channel?” And how did their unexpected separation come about? The Lady’s guardian, her husband—who or what frightened her? And, after the Personal ad appeared, did she write, did they meet again? What tragicomedy followed?

The agony column merely posed the questions, started the game. Each reader supplied his own answers. But other provocative advertisements overshadowed that one. In 1795, came a simple, somewhat terrifying announcement. “A most capital, superb, and valuable assemblage of jewels, late the property of Madame la Comtesse du Barry, deceased.” Madame du Barry had lost her head, in France, two years before. And in 1798, when matrimonial advertisements were still permitted, a touch of humor. A gentleman requests a wife. “I am of excellent and unimpaired constitution, but afflicted with an incurable weakness in the knees, occasioned by the kick of an Ostrich.” And, in that same year, another amusing advertisement. “Two pigs found swimming in the Thames, near Westminster Bridge. Now safely lodged, awaiting a suitable reward, at the Swan, by Lambeth Church.”

A whole series of mundane patent medicines and new inventions ushered in the 1800’s. In the agony column, “a Medical Man” offers for sale his newly invented “Patent Coestus,” an elastic steel belt, “used in my own family above 15 years, preserves the vital organs from pressure and retains the figure in that beautiful oval form so remarkable in Grecian sculpture.” Another ad features “Soyer’s Magic Stove” which “enables a Gentleman to cook his dinner in his pocket.” And of greater moment, the first announcement, by some genius, of braces or suspenders. “New invented gallowses or breeches suspensors, for keeping up the breeches without girting them tight around the waist, but, on the contrary, keep them well up and loose.”

Between 1848 and 1900, an endless number of eccentric and unrelated ads dot the agony column:

You could not speak. It was so sudden. I am a good rider. Green is my favorite color. I want money.

Small House. Danger. Cross the sea.

Since Friday morning, I die hourly. Where are you and when will you return?—J.S.

My colours are nailed not tied to the masthead. T.

Hampstead Heath Enclosure. Something’s up.

If the youth that left Islington on Sunday evening can remember that he ever had a mother, he is informed he will soon be deprived of that blessing, except he immediately writes with particulars, or personally appears before her.

Cloves. Many things have forced themselves upon me. From the past let us gather strength. T wants to meet Bird. Infelix.

I entreat you to keep your word, or it may be fatal. Laws were made to bind the villains of society.

However, the most intriguing ads in the Victorian era ran in series, the interested parties corresponding through Personal ads. Readers followed these as avidly as Dickens’ serials. For example, between July and November of 1850, the following advertisements appeared:

The one-winged dove must die unless the Crane returns to be a shield against her enemies.

Somerset, S.B. The mate of the Dove must take wing forever unless a material change takes place.

It is enough. One man alone upon earth have I found noble. Away from me forever. Cold heart and mean spirit, you have lost what millions, empires, could not have bought, but which a single word, truthfully and nobly spoken might have made your own to all eternity! Yet you are forgiven, depart in peace. I rest in my Redeemer.

The mate of the Dove bids a final farewell. Adieu to the British Isles, although such a resolution cannot be accomplished without poignant grief. W.

The most mysterious series consisted of three cryptic ads in three different years. On March 24, 1849, this appeared in the agony column: “No doormat tonight.” One year later, March 28, 1850, the message was: “Doormat and beans tonight.” More than a year later. May 28, 1851, only: “Doormat tonight.” Students of the agony column have speculated for years on this series. What did the key word “doormat” mean? Did it mean the absence of a stern father or a jealous husband, or did it point to the victim of a murder? History provides no answer but the reader’s own.

The longest single series of advertisements in the agony column ran fifteen years, from 1850 to 1865, and was inserted by an eccentric millionaire named E. J. Wilson. There appeared a steady bombardment of ads, written (when
The Times
had as yet no ban on foreign languages) in French, German, and English. These advertisements tell a sad little story. Wilson worked in the British Customs Office, had a private fortune, married, and produced a daughter. He became involved in some smuggling scheme; his wife objected and left him. For fifteen years, through the agony column, he tried to woo her back. His advertisements followed her when she traveled to Stockholm and to Paris. His paid notices eventually accused her openly of having a lover. She replied, in the agony column, to this charge. “You are deceived. I foster none, but am true to ties of happier days. Open to me a communication and a public investigation. Mary.” Many of Wilson’s ads were in code: “ACHILLES has got the lever. Corruption sinks and virtue swims. E.J.W.” Finally, in October, 1865, having lost his job, his fortune, and his health, Wilson arranged a meeting with the wife whom he had not seen in a decade and a half. The time and place of the meeting appeared in an ad in the agony column. Whatever the outcome of this meeting, Wilson had placed his last advertisement.

And today, others take up where Wilson left off. In the tiny print of the agony column, in a vocabulary replete with words like “desperate” and “brokenhearted,” parted lovers continue to meet, schemes for easy millions continue to materialize, beautiful old Paisley shawls continue to sell, and escapists desiring “any sort of remunerative adventure, would risk all” continue to defy the ever-more-crowded columns of Mortgage Investments, Legal Notices, Business Offers—and Births and Deaths.

WHAT HAS HAPPENED SINCE…

I became interested in the agony column of
The Times
of London while I was living at the Athenaeum Court off Green Park, and later, at the Savoy Hotel, in London during the bitter winter of 1946 and 1947. The city was still suffering from the aftereffects of the Second World War, and there were food shortages, and rationing was still in existence. The standard price for an austere postwar dinner was five shillings, although if you were in a better-class restaurant, then two to six shillings extra was added as a “house charge.” Lunch was always an omelet made from powdered eggs, and tea. Dinner was usually three courses, a soup thick with potatoes, chicken patties and brussels sprouts, and a sweet. If the diner wanted bread with his meal, he had to give up one of his three courses. Since I was a compulsive bread eater, and there was no bread with the regular meals, I was constantly famished. In fact, the highlight of that visit to London occurred when an English newspaper correspondent, connected with Buckingham Palace, appeared at my hotel room on New Year’s Day of 1947 with an overwhelmingly generous gift—a loaf of bread that he had purloined from his own mother’s ration.

During those London evenings, as I contemplated my receding navel (I lost seventeen pounds in that period), I would often try to take my mind off my stomach by reading the London
Times
. Since I was not interested in cricket or bird-watching or Labour’s latest program, this was not particularly diverting—until I discovered what I had for several weeks overlooked: the agony column. This discovery was a major enchantment. And from that time on, I read the agony column as religiously as the Archbishop of Canterbury read his daily Scripture. I lost my interest in the staff of life because I now had what a writer needs most of all—food for thought.