Pelham, the hero of the novel of the same name (which came out in 1828, the first year of The Spectator’s existence), visiting his old friend Glanville, is conducted by ‘the obsequious and bowing valet’ into a room where his host sits ‘opposite to a toilet of massive gold’. (Yes, words change meaning. This toilet would not have resembled the lavatory of gold on display at Blenheim Palace, to the theft of which a man has pleaded guilty.) The narrator declares: ‘I had never seen so perfect a specimen of masculine beauty.’
The anonymous reviewer in The Spectator attributed the book to Benjamin Disraeli. He was wrong. It was by Edward Bulwer Lytton, as had to be acknowledged later in the year. But the reviewer satisfied himself in the meantime by quoting an absurd incident where the hero of the novel takes control of an enraged horse. Periodically the reviewer inserts in the quoted matter remarks in square brackets, ‘Stuff!’ and ‘Oh, what stuff!’, concluding: ‘Will any critic properly chastise the writer of such pestilent stuff?’
Stuff, a word in use in English since the Middle Ages, has shown energy in covering a breadth of meanings. Being made of the right stuff goes back to the 16th century. Stuff is today obsolescent if used of textiles, but the Spectator critic in 1828 took the more restricted sense of ‘worthless material’, as in stuff and nonsense. That is the modest sense deployed in ‘How pleasant to know Mr Lear,/ Who has written such volumes of stuff…’
In the 20th century stuff has been used ‘in coarse expressions of contempt’ as the Oxford English Dictionary puts it, or as a sort of mumbled oath.
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in