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Tuesday 2 December 2008

And Another Thing

Was Sir William Joynson-Hicks hair-brained?

It is said that, during his long reign, General Franco, who had grown to hate crabs during his time in the army, managed virtually to eradicate them in Spain, just as Mussolini drained the Pontine Marshes and put down the Sicilian mafia. In both cases the victory proved transitory. At one time whores used to shave themselves, for this and other reasons. Some of their clients did not like pubic hair on women anyway, a distaste known to sexual therapists as — wait for it! — the Ruskin Syndrome. I am told that nowadays smart young women, Sloanes, Ladbroke Ladettes, Bayswater Bimbos and the like, go in for partial shaving, leaving an oblong thatch in the middle, known as an Airstrip. The Prince of Wales, later Edward VII, could not abide female pubic hair. This was not just because Ruskin advised him about how a prince should behave in artistic matters, but because he had been warned off Paris establishments known by the double entendre as un panier de crabes. In the expensive maisons he patronised during his Paris jaunts, he liked his ladies dressed as nuns and shaved beneath the habit. Hence Beerbohm’s shocking cartoon showing the Prince visiting a fashionable Paris convent. As the Mother Superior presented her nuns, he became confused and said: ‘Enfin, Madame, faites monter la première à gauche.’

But enough of this scatological gossip! Joynson-Hicks has always been a comic favourite of mine, and it is amazing there is no good biography of him. He was a highly successful solicitor, becoming famous as the first expert on motoring law. His handbook, The Law of Heavy and Light Mechanical Traction on Highways in the United Kingdom, dates from 1906. He invented Summer Time, destroyed the new prayer book, and raided more nightclubs than any other man in history. I have a plaster statuette of him, his hands joined in pious prayer, clutching an umbrella which came from the same shop as the more notorious brolly made famous by his colleague Neville Chamberlain. This statuette is or was part of a set based upon the portraits of the Daily Express cartoonist, Strube. The only other one of the set left in my possession is Stanley Baldwin. Churchill and Lloyd George have gone, alas. Jix smiles, and appears to be intoning. What can it be? Not that wicked Brendan Behan ditty, ‘The Hound That Caught the Pubic Hare’?

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