Obscurity

From recent history I have learned that if you ever want to run for Vice President of the United States, don’t shoot your puppy. I assume the same would hold about drowning your puppy in a pond. I have learned by reading British and American literature of the early twentieth century that that (drowning) was the accepted method for relieving oneself of excess puppies at the time. For example, Ian Hay’s Scally: The Story of a Perfect Gentleman (1914). All of which has nothing to do with introducing the topic of obscurity, except that it explains part of this quotation:

My egotism’s at the bottom of a pond, with a philosophical brick around its neck. The world is ill, my time is short and my strength is small. I’m as happy here as anywhere.

That’s H. G. Wells in Kipps: The Story of a Simple Soul (1905).

Then something we need hardly be told from Sir Ruthven Murgatroyd in Gilbert & Sullivan’s Ruddigore (1887 or thereabouts), Act I:

My boy, you may take it from me,
That of all the afflictions accurst
    With which a man’s saddled
     And hampered and addled,
A diffident nature’s the worst.

Though clever as clever can be—
A Crichton of early romance—
     You must stir it and stump it,
     And blow your own trumpet,
Or, trust me, you haven’t a chance!

Like I say, we need hardly be told again. It’s the watchword of our time. This may be the beginning of a series of posts on obscurity.

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• A couple more quotations from Kipps just for fun:
  “Savoir Faire and self-forgetfulness is more than half the secret of Sang Froid.” Let’s call that SF³.
  An infant “given a spoon to hammer on the table with to keep him quiet.”