The Week-End Book

I thought I was pulling a poetry anthology off the library shelf but The Week-End Book is more like a somewhat dated English prescription for well-rounded amusement. I had never before seen a book shelved in the English literature section (PN1175 .W43 1955), on the same shelf as collections of Metaphysical poetry, that promised, under the heading of “Notable and Amusing Food”:

“However witty the talk, however shady the garden, however original the cottage and its furnishings, it won’t be by these things alone that your week-ends will be judged for repetition, but also by the food you offer.”

Hear, hear. The Nonesuch Press published the first edition in 1924, and it sold out in days. Its editors were Francis and Vera Meynell, the founders of Nonesuch Press. That snot Virginia Woolf is supposed to have said, “The Hogarth Press may not make any money but at least we did not publish The Week-End Book.” As my mother used to say, “Smell her.” Between the first edition and 1955, it went through 34 printings, then it remained out of print until last year, when it was resuscitated by Duckworth/Overlook Press. The edition in my hands dates from 1955.

Mistaking The Week-End Book for a poetry anthology is understandable. The first 247 pages are precisely that. Let’s pause and consider a moment in Western civilization when poetry, including much Donne and Browning, is assumed to be an important component of an amusing weekend. There’s nothing stodgy about the Meynells’ selection or the way they organize it: “Great Poems,” “Late Poems,” “Hate Poems,” “State Poems,” “Epigrams,” and “The Zoo.” Like me, you probably want to look first at the “Hate Poems,” which the Meynells begin with a well-known couplet from Byron’s Don Juan:

“Now hatred is by far the longest pleasure;
Men love in haste, but they detest at leisure.”

Here we find Donne’s “The Curse,” Dryden’s “On the Duke of Buckingham,” Sassoon’s “Base Details” and Walter Alexander Raleigh’s “Wishes of an Elderly Man (Wished at a Garden-Party, June, 1914)”:

“I wish I loved the Human Race;
I wish I loved its silly face;
I wish I loved the way it walks;
I wish I loved the way it talks;
And when I'm introduced to one
I wish I thought What Jolly Fun!”

The rest of The Week-End Book is a grab bag of information, much of which would baffle a typical 21st-century American reader planning a carefree weekend getaway. For instance, in the chapter titled “The Fields and the Beasts Thereof,” we read:

“A sow who has her belly rubbed will almost always respond by slowly rolling on her side, emitting pleasurable grunts. Very occasionally a sow will become fierce at farrowing. It should be remembered that it is not a good idea to turn your back on a near-by boar.”

Has such advice ever been packaged between the same covers as Shakespeare’s Sonnet CXXX and Hopkins’ “The Golden Echo?” An entire chapter, “Bird Song at Morning,” is devoted to brief descriptions of birds commonly observed in England, including musical notations of their songs. More music follows in “Rounds and Songs,” which gives notation and a verse for dozens of songs, including the limerick-like “Calcutta”:

“There was a young man of Calcutta
Who had a most terrible stutter.
He said: p-p-p-please pass the ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-cheese
And the b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-butter.”

After making fun of the weekend guests afflicted with speech defects, we move on to “Games,” the names of which are akin to poetry: “Tishy-Toshy,” “Drawing Clumps,” “Human Polo,” “Gallows,” “Up-Jenkyns!” and “Who Are They?” Then it’s “On Food and Drink,” where we are encouraged to “Serve unusual dishes that will be remembered and spoken of.” That should be easy, considering the suggested menu: apple fluff, Jamaica junket, banana whip, oyster bake, veal with mushrooms and sandwiches made from “flaked buckling with lemon juice and plenty of pepper.” I checked: “buckling” is hot smoked herring. After chapters on “Architecture” and “First Aid” (which contains this advice for those with “diarrhoea and/or vomiting”: “Do not eat.”), we arrive at “The Law and How You Break It,” which offers a charming explanation:

“A policeman’s powers of arrest are not much wider than the ordinary citizen’s: the policeman being, in fact, little more (or less) than an ordinary citizen, oddly dressed and doing for payment what it is everyone’s duty to do for nothing.”

Finally, it’s “Etiquette,” which might as well be written in Swahili for all of its resemblance to contemporary manners. The Meynells give guidance on writing thank-you letters, proper musical performances (“A lady must never sing a song that is of a decidedly masculine character, nor if the words describe masculine action or passion.”), shaking hands, penmanship and saying grace. It’s worth quoting at length from that last section:

“It is not creditable to a `thinking people’ that the two things they most thank God for should be eating and fighting. We say grace when we are going to cut up lamb and chicken, and when we have stuffed ourselves with both to an extent that an ourangoutang [sic] would be ashamed of; and we offer up our best praises to the Creator for having blown and sabred his `images,’ our fellow-creatures, to atoms, and drenched them in blood and dirt. This is odd. Strange that we should keep our most pious transports for the lowest of our appetites and the most melancholy of our necessities! That we should never be wrought up into paroxysms of holy gratitude but for bubble and squeak, or a good-sized massacre!”

The Week-End Book is a faithful photograph of a long-lost world and an instruction manual for good living. To lift one of the Meynells’ sentences from its context in the “First Aid” chapter:

“According to the nature of your mishap, and your diligence in following these prescriptions, they may save your life, render your misfortune more tolerable, cancel it, or prevent it.”


.