The myth of Lady Muck
QUESTION Did banjo-playing Lady Meux give rise to the saying: ‘Who do you think you are — Lady Muck?’
Lady Muck refers to a self-important, pompous or pretentious woman pretending to have greater importance or status than is really the case.
Flamboyant Lady Meux (pronounced Mews) would provide a neat answer to the origin of this phrase — but probably too neat.
Valerie ‘Val’ Susie Langdon was born in 1847. She claimed to have been an actress, but accounts suggest she was a prostitute and barmaid at the casino de Venise in Holborn, London, and used the name Val Reece. There she met wealthy London brewer Sir Henry Bruce Meux and they married in secret in 1878.
In response to Meux’s appalled relatives, Val acted in the most ostentatious way possible, wearing fabulous clothes and reputedly driving herself around London in a carriage drawn by a pair of zebras.
She adorned the Theobalds estate in Hertfordshire with a swimming pool and indoor roller-skating rink.
She even had her husband buy christopher Wren’s Temple Bar, one of the eight gates that surrounded the old city of London, for £10,000, which she installed as a gateway to the estate.
Her rise to fame coincides with the origin of the phrase Lady Muck and she was the archetype, yet this saying was not known in England until the 1950s and she died in 1910.
For many years it seems to have been an australian phrase, starting out as Lord Muck.
The earliest recorded use of Lady Muck is from 1891 in the New South Wales katoomba Times & Blue Mountaineer: ‘He would not favour women having a property qualification for voting. Bridget should have a vote as well as Lady Muck.’
The earliest known reference in Britain is in Ian cross’s 1958 novel God Boy: ‘She sat there, sipping away at her tea like Lady Muck.’
The term’s precise origin is uncertain, but it’s probably simply a juxtaposition of an aristocratic title with the lowliest of substances.
Darren Cross, York.
QUESTION Has anyone later discovered they’ve been introduced to a famous person without realising it?
WHEN I first went to London in the late 1970s, I came out of the Tube at Hyde Park corner looking for apsley House Museum. I stopped a man in a white linen suit and asked for directions. He turned me around and kindly walked me the 20 yards to its gates.
I thanked him and he urged me to enjoy the Velasquez painting The Water-seller Of Seville.
I told the concierge what kindness the stranger had shown to me. ‘Oh! I am sure that’s the least you would expect from such a nice gentleman as david attenborough,’ he replied.
That painting remains my favourite, along with the kind stranger who presents those nature documentaries on TV.
Ian Elliott, Belfast.
IN 1958, I was in the RaF and on my way to the u.S. on the liner Liberte to be trained on intercontinental ballistic missiles by the u.S. air Force.
One afternoon, a young Frenchman addressed the crowded lounge, saying: ‘Today is my 21st birthday and I am going to New york. My name is yves Saint Laurent. you must remember my name for one day I shall be famous.’
He then conducted the whole company in the pronunciation of his name.
Jack Docherty, Bridgend, Mid Glamorgan.
SOME years ago, I went to an address near Newbridge in caerphilly to buy a second-hand piece of furniture.
The lady pointed to a man sitting on the sofa and said: ‘This is my son.’ He looked up and said hello, but seemed a bit shy when I said hello. again the lady said: ‘and this is my son.’ I was confused: why would she introduce him to me twice?
‘Oh, you don’t recognise him!’ she said. It turned out he was super-middleweight world champion Joe calzaghe.
Joanna Harvey, Raglan, Mons.
IN 1977, on leave from serving with the British army of the Rhine, I was walking through a housing estate in South London. coming towards me was a dapper little man. On passing, nods, smiles and good mornings were exchanged.
Later, I was sitting in the living room of my mate when his dad answered the door and in walked the man I’d passed. a few words were spoken and he left.
‘do you know who that was? It was charlie kray.’ He was the elder brother of criminal twins Ronnie and Reggie.
In 1974, on a Nato exercise on Sardinia, I drove a radio technician to Porto Pino, where a small yacht belonging to a British national needed technical help.
On approaching the moorings, I was told to sound the Morse letter ‘V’ on the horn. The tech sergeant went on board, did his stuff and we left.
driving back, he told me the skipper was Pat Reid, the British escape officer in colditz.
Tony Levy, Wednesfield, W. Mids.
QUESTION Why was the 12sided threepenny coin known as a Joey?
THOSE of a certain age will remember the 12-sided brass thruppenny bit, but before 1947 the threepence was a small circular silver coin ( above) that had inherited the nickname Joey.
Joey was first given to a silver fourpence or groat. This coin, with origins in the 16th century, was re-introduced in 1836 when the standard hansom cab fare was 4d. cabbies, having got used to being handed a sixpence and told to keep the change, lost their tip.
Joseph Hume MP had extolled the coin in a speech in Parliament and they were derided with the nickname Joeys in his honour. When the groat was taken out of circulation in 1855, the nickname passed to the silver threepence.
Simon Males, Sheffield.
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