Spirit of the Wouldbegoods comes alive amid Roman ruins
Oswald Bastable, the narrator of E Nesbit’s children’s book The Wouldbegoods, is an appealingly subversive figure, not least in his brisk attitude to ancient civilisation. In one adventure, Oswald and his siblings decide that it would be fun to tease the Maidstone Society of Antiquaries by burying some old pots for them to dig up. Alas, the pots prove to be priceless Roman antiquities, and there follows a painful interview with the affronted antiquarian-in-chief.
Something of the Wouldbegoods’ larky attitude to ancient artifacts found an echo in reports of the newly restored Roman temple of Mithras in the City of London, which opens tomorrow. The temple was first excavated in 1954, during post-war rebuilding of Blitz sites. Hundreds queued to visit.
When the team behind the current restoration appealed for anyone who remembered the original dig to get in touch, people came forward with more than memories. Diana Van Rooyen visited the site as a teenager and was given a small terracotta lamp: “We’ve got hundreds of those,” the archaeologist in charge told her. Other children were given coins, bones and an oyster shell.
The objects have now been safely returned, but anyone who has ever seen a collection of Roman artifacts knows that, to the inexpert eye, one lamp or oyster shell looks very like another. Every potsherd is a tiny fragment of a bigger story, of course; but I don’t suppose that anyone will ever cherish that little lamp, the coins or the oyster shell in quite the same way as the children who became their temporary custodians, 60-odd years ago.
♦ visiting John Lewis some weeks ago in pursuit of a kitchen bin, I found my search for this humble item accompanied by a glutinous arrangement of Christmas carols, a good month before Advent. Now a clinical psychologist called Linda Blair warns that Christmas music can damage our mental health – an assertion that comes as no surprise when you consider the hostile use of music to craze everyone from General Noriega (blasted by US forces with top-volume Jethro Tull) to loitering teenagers (who allegedly shun Beethoven and Brahms as vampires do the light). Perhaps John Lewis’s success as the market leader in schmaltzy Christmas advertising has encouraged it to believe that it can reverse its falling profits with a slug of auditory gluhwein – but I wouldn’t count on it. Just a few minutes’ worth of unseasonal warbling was enough to make me flee the store faster than an adolescent confronted with the opening bars of the German Requiem.
♦ that keen observer of the English, George Mikes, said that our national version of overstatement takes the form of “someone remarking, ‘I say...’ and then keeping silent for three days on end.” Well, not any more. Our taste for gently depreciating qualifiers – slightly, fairly, awfully – is in swift decline, according to Prof Paul Baker, a linguistics expert at Lancaster University.
Soon, Prince Charles will be the lone custodian of the “gradable adverb” – appropriately enough, since it is their overtone of poshness that has made them unpopular. In these unpropitious times for ambiguity, linguistic primary colours banish misunderstanding, while also acting as an efficient repellent for nuance, irony and wit.