Meux-ing on a mucky slur
QUESTION Did banjoplaying former prostitute 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.
The 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 zebra.
She adorned the Theobalds estate in Hertfordshire with a swimming pool and indoor rollerskating 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 it is not known in England until at least 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 example being from the Adelaide Express & Telegraph in 1877: ‘Have heard the boy call one of the mates “Spider” after he had been annoyed by the mate, but I have not heard the stewardess call one of them “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.’ In contrast, the earliest known reference in Britain is from 1955. Jack Thomas’s No Banners: The Story Of Alfred And Henry Newton, has: ‘Hey, Lord Muck! May we have the honour of introducing ourselves!’
Lady Muck is found 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 therefore uncertain.
Darren Cross, York.
QUESTION What was Ireland’s first postal system?
POST has been delivered in Ireland since 1660, when the General Post Office was set up.
But in those far-off days, postal deliveries were so expensive that only the wealthiest in society could afford to send a letter. The postal system remained haphazard for many years, as letters were sent by coaches as they travelled around the country.
Letter delivery took a long time, as coach travel was so slow that travelling from Dublin to Cork could take three or four days.
Sending letters this way meant another risk, too, as brigands frequently held up coaches and robbed them and their passengers of all valuables, including letters.
The situation improved during the 18th century, but more in England than in Ireland. In England, post started to be delivered on a more regular basis three times a week and the cost of sending a letter depended on how many sheets of paper it contained and how far it was being sent. The cheapest rate was two pence, still an enormous amount of money, for sending a one-sheet letter 40 miles.
But one of the main mail routes was that to Dublin, then the second city in the UK. Considerable quantities of mail were sent between London and Dublin and vice versa, much of it official mail to and from Dublin Castle, the then seat of the British administration in Ireland.
By the last quarter of the 18th century, the postal system in Ireland had developed so much that the whole island had a total of nearly 200 postal towns, where letters could be received and delivered. This compared with nearly 800 postal towns in England, but a mere 130 in Scotland.
In the first four decades of the 19th century, the post continued to be something so expensive that only the elite could afford to send letters. But Bianconi’s stagecoach system, which started in Clonmel, Co. Tipperary in 1815 and spread nationwide, made the business of sending letters much easier and cheaper. The present General Post Office in O’Connell Street, Dublin, was built in the early 19th century and rebuilt in the aftermath of 1916.
The biggest postal development came in 1840 when Rowland Hill introduced the first penny post in Ireland and Britain, making it much more affordable for a lot more people to post letters. In those days, long before the telephone, computers, the internet and Skype had been invented, the post was the main means for people to keep in touch, especially those who had emigrated.
The American letter, often containing money, became an essential delivery at many homes in Ireland, especially in the west.
At a local level, postal collections and deliveries were numerous throughout the day and in Dublin,
IS THERE a question to which you have always wanted to know the answer? Or do you know the answer to a question raised here? Send your questions and answers to: Charles Legge, Answers To Correspondents, Irish Daily Mail, Embassy House, Herbert Park Lane, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4. You can also fax them to 0044 1952 510906 or you can email them to charles.legge@dailymail.ie. A selection will be published but we are not able to enter into individual correspondence. for instance, it was perfectly possible for someone to send a letter or postcard to someone else living in the city and get a reply back the same day.
Pillar boxes started to be used in England in 1852 and the first five in Ireland were installed in 1855 in Dublin, Ballymena and Belfast.
The first Dublin post box is now in the National Museum at Collins Barracks. By 1857, pillar boxes had been installed in most Irish towns and cities.
After independence, the colour of the red-painted pillar boxes changed to green. In 2016, there was much controversy when, as part of the 1916 centenary commemorations, An Post painted 10 pillar boxes in Dublin red, their old colour.
John O’Donoghue, Co. Dublin.
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 Seventies, I came out of the Tube at Hyde Park Corner looking for Apsley House Museum. I stopped a man in a white linen suit, who had followed me off the train into the daylight, and asked for directions. He turned me around and kindly walked me the 20 yards to its gates.
I thanked him, he smiled and encouraged me to seek out the Velasquez painting The Waterseller Of Seville.
As he walked away, I spoke to the concierge and noted 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.