Given that much swearing, at least of old, was rooted in matters divine, the title seems to derive from the conceit that Lars Porsena had at least nine divinities to swear about, rather than our rather impoverished one. The article about Porsena in wikipedia gives no clue at all, beyond prompting speculation this morning that Gaius Mucius (illustrated, subsequently known as Scaevola) might have been doing a good bit of swearing under his breath as he held his hand in the barbecue.
The book is one of series called 'To-day and To-morrow', published, I imagine, between the world wars, by Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd of E.C.4. Short, entertaining essays by eminences of the day. Bertrand Russell contributed several volumes and we also get one called 'The Dance of Çiva' by someone called Collum, whoever he or she might be. My book must have done fairly well, getting from first edition to third impression of second edition between the January and July of 1927.
Graves is a writer who wears his considerable learning lightly, altogether a civilised chap of a kind which I imagine is now pretty much extinct, and his book is full of all kinds of entertaining snippets. A good read entire, or good for dipping before a snooze. I offer three dips below.
We have a few pages on the utility of swearing in the trenches of Flanders, diverting to Uncle Toby in Tristram Shandy (a book which I have owned for a long time, but from which I have never managed to read more than a few pages at a time), 'whose opinions had been formed some two hundred years before in the same district and curiously enough with the same battalion as I served with'.
A few more about the days when the word 'bottom' was considered risqué and when a practical joker managed to assemble a great herd of people, all unbeknown to each other, but who all featured 'bottom' in their surname in one way or another, for example, Longbottom, for a dinner at a grand hotel. Each bottom was loudly announced by the butler as he arrived. I think my father would have enjoyed the joke.
And some closing comments about the obscenity or otherwise of James Joyce's 'Ulysses', topical at the time of writing. One strand of the story being that Graves' father was an Anglo-Irish school inspector and Gaelic scholar, a member of the Celtic-Twilight which Joyce knew so well. Comments which are also interesting as a good bit of literary criticism in their own right.
The physical construction of the book is also of interest, prompting a waking reverie this morning about folding.
Apart from boards and end papers, it is made up of 7 signatures of 16 pages each, with the start of each signature, from the second, being marked with an upper case letter, from 'B', at the bottom right of a right hand page. I believe such marks were intended to reduce errors when assembling books from piles of signatures. I also believe that books had to be a whole number of signatures, thus accounting for the blank pages and padding one often gets at the end of older books. Maybe things are done differently now.
Each signature being produced by folding a single sheet four times, twice down to up and twice right to left. The reverie being about in what orientation the 16 book pages would need to be on the 1 signature page to be the right way round when folded, with the last fold having to be from right to left so as to provide a spine to be sewn, but with folding otherwise unconstrained. At least as far as my reverie took me.
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