Doric String Quartet

Back to St. Luke's on Thursday to hear the Doric Quartet do Schubert: a trio fragment D471 and a complete string quartet D887.

Started off in the usual way via Bullingdon and bacon sandwich, the only news item on that front being a number of men in and around the Market Café having elaborately combed hair, mostly of the frontal rather than the side parting variety, in any event something I have not noticed for a while - this being something I need to keep an eye on if I am to fend off suggestions that I might perhaps purchase a comb for myself.

Trio fragment good, but the complete quartet seemed to sag a bit - the first movement seemed rather long and the seats seemed rather hard; not sure why this was. Maybe the first violin was too relaxed, having given place to the second violin for the trio and not bothering to tie his tie vary carefully for the quartet, giving him a slightly sloppy appearance. But the quartet got better as it progressed, with the whole taking a little longer than the allotted hour, something which the radio people will have to deal with in due course. The quartet did rather better at the quiet bits than the Elias had been on the occasion reported on 22nd February, but I do wonder whether violinists do not make a bit of a challenge of it: how quiet can they play while still playing music, with a result which is not always very musical. I think I would prefer them not to try quite so hard.

Afterwards, off to Tooting to a debate about enlistment. If you are a famous person (in this example, Lawrence Olivier) and you happen to be in New York when the second world war starts, what should you do? If you appear to be doing nothing at a time when other young men are being conscripted, is if fair for the newspapers to have a pop at you? I argue that the answer is 'yes'. If you have made your living by being a public person, you should set a good example, you should do your duty and join up. Otherwise name and shame. The argument for 'no' was that this famous person had been told by the consulate in New York to sit tight while they dreamed up a safe billet for him, a wheeze commonly adopted by the relevant authorities the world over; you don't want a valuable member of society going west as common or garden cannon fodder. In the end, so this story ran, he was found a job ferrying aeroplanes around England, duties which he could presumably combine with acting assignments. But I still argue that, as no public statement had been forthcoming, he was fair game.

And then I noticed that the fat blue book called 'Pathology', noticed on 26th October last, was still there, a book which continues to intrigue me despite its gruesome contents. A book written by one William Boyd, an eminent Canadian from Scotland, running to some 1,378 pages, in the writing of which he acknowledges no help. These days such a book would be a team effort. It also looked to have become a standard text, running to seven editions, spanning thirty years or more and including translations into Spanish and Portuguese. The cost to Henry Kimpton of Great Portland Street (never before heard of) in setting the thing up in movable type must have been prodigious, enough to deter anyone else from having a go for a good long while, which was, I suppose, part of what enable it to become a standard text. A punt by the publisher which came off.

I learn from Google, that the book was still going in 1990, by then into its ninth edition and a new author, but with its review in no less an organ than the 'New England Journal of Medicine' suggesting that it was starting to run out of puff. The time was ripe for it to be pushed off the shelves in favour of something new. One could write an interesting story about the life history of such a work and about how the coming of computers and the internet has changed this particular game - although for myself, despite some reliance on Wikipedia, I still make use of a paper encyclopedia, a Chambers from more than sixty years ago. Still fine for old knowledge, with the articles properly written by proper people with proper editorial control. Chambers is still a brand one can trust.

Not clear if Henry Kimpton is still a brand one can trust. Google comes up with signs of life from the mid seventies, but I suspect he may have been swept away.

I hesitated, but in the end decided that ignorance was bliss and the thing was best put back on its shelf with the entries for various ailments which I now recognise unread and the probably accompanying pictures unseen.

Poor showing of aeroplanes at Earlsfield.