No mayonnaise in Ireland*

*attributed to an author named Will Stanton in a 1971 article in Reader's Digest.

I hope this post won't be too esoteric for you, dear reader, but if it is, it simply can't be helped.

If the title alone seems pretty esoteric, let me explain. It is one of the most famous lines the English poet John Donne ever wrote, expressed in our old friend Anguish Languish.

I'll prove it to you. In 1623, in an essay we know as Meditation XVII, Donne wrote:

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were. Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

You see what Will Stanton did there. No mayonnaise in Ireland. This is where you laugh politely or groan and roll your eyes, whichever you feel is more appropriate.

Which brings us to Yorkshire Pudding's riddle.

In his spare time my cyberfriend Yorkshire Pudding likes to take long walks in his native Yorkshire and then blog about them afterward. He recently posted the following:

"On the edge of Low Bradfield I came across [a] disused building. I thought it was an old barn but then I spotted an early nineteenth century plaque above one of the doors. It reads like this "1826/ Rebuilt at the Curate's sole cost./Nemo soli sibi natus". Translated, the Latin phrase means "Nobody is born alone". Why would such a plaque appear on a barn? I have been unable to solve this riddle."

I shall now attempt to solve Yorkshire Pudding's riddle, "Why would such a plaque appear on a barn?"

The phrase "Nobody is born alone" had a familiar ring. It reminded me of a somewhat similar statement in the fourteenth chapter of the book of Romans in the New Testament:

7 For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself.

Here it is in the Vulgate, the fourth-century Latin version of the Bible:

7 Nemo enim nostrum sibi vivit, et nemo sibi moritur.

In context, the passage turns out to be all about the Lord (surprise, surprise!) as the next verse says, "Whoever lives lives unto the Lord, and whoever dies dies unto the Lord; therefore whether we live or die, we are the Lord's." Since many who read this blog are atheist, however, we will not go down this road any further.

I do definitely think, however, that the sentiment on the barn plaque has its roots in the passage from Romans.

In my research I discovered that the same quotation, Nemo soli sibi natus (Nobody is born alone), was also placed over the church door in Ecclesfield in 1695. The following is from page 202 of The History of the Parish of Ecclesfield: In the County of York:

"[Vicar Edward Mansel] also rebuilt the parsonage-house in 1695, over the door of which he placed this inscription, which, or a copy of it, is still just within the entrance of the present Vicarage:

Edward Mansel. Vicar 1695.
Nemo Soli Sibi Natus.
Vivat Rex.
Floreat Ecclesia.

He also gave 50£ towards building a parsonage at Bradfield, and left a still more substantial bequest of about fifteen acres of land to his successors,...."


Of course the vicar in 1695 in Ecclesfield and the curate in 1826 who had the plaque affixed to the barn in Bradfield cannot possibly be the same person, but the quotation from The History Of Ecclesfield does reveal a connection between Ecclesfield and Bradfield, especially where curates (or vicars) are concerned.

The Bradfield structure with the 1826 plaque was very likely once a barn. Interestingly enough, I also found the following on p. 247 of Topographical and Statistical Description of the County of Devon, a book by G.A. Cooke, Esq., in 1825:

"A tablet in the [Brixton] churchyard wall records the planting of an ancient grove of lofty elms, in 1677, by Edmund Fortesque, Esq., of Spriddlestone, who ordained that they should be sold, when mature, and the products applied to the relief of the parochial poor. The motto on this stone, "Nemo sibi soli natus;" "No man is born alone for himself," is most appropriate to every planter; and should be remembered by all, as an antidote to selfishness, and an incentive to benevolence." (emphasis mine)

The plaques in Bradfield and Ecclesfield and Brixton are meant to remind us all that we should not keep our blessings (our produce, our grain, our lumber) to ourselves but share them with others for the benefit of the whole community. Perhaps we are meant for neither dependence nor independence but for a mutually recognized inter-dependence.

John Donne was right. No man is an island. Or as you can still find in certain parts of England, Nemo sibi soli natum.

P.S. -- It is also true literally and cannot be denied that no one is born alone. A mother is always somewhere in the vicinity.

Ladies All

Lady Wallace, the Scottish author and translator mentioned in my last post, was said by Sir Walter Scott, in an 1825 letter to his son, to be “a very pleasant woman, [who] plays on the harp delightfully.” It should be noted that she was not Lady Wallace at the time, however; she was the baronetess of Newton Don. In 1825 her husband was Sir Alexander Don, sixth baronet of Newton Don. She had two children: Sir William Henry Don, 7th Baronet, the actor; and Alexina Harriet, who married Sir Frederick Acclom Milbank, bart., of Hart and Hartlepool.

Sir Alexander died in 1826, and in 1836 his widow married again, to Sir James Maxwell Wallace, K.H., of Ainderby Hall, near Northallerton, an officer who had served under Wellington at Quatre Bras and Waterloo, was afterwards lieutenant-colonel of the 5th dragoon guards (when Prince Leopold, afterwards king of the Belgians, was colonel), and died on 3 February 1967 as general and colonel of the 176th lancers. Lady Wallace died on 12 March 1878 without issue by her second marriage. So says Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is nothing if not complete. Anything you could possibly want to know about a baronet and baronetess can be found here, including how to address one, the fact that a baronet or baronetess is near the bottom of the ranks of nobility, and the revelation that a Duke and Duchess rank higher than a Prince and Princess, which was news to me.

When all is said and done, all that and $2.49 will buy you a pound of “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter” at your local supermarket.

Sir Walter Scott’s mention of his friends’s lady “playing on the harp delightfully” caught my eye, though, and I immediately thought, as I’m sure you probably did also, of Beatrice Lillie, Lady Peel.

What? You didn’t?

Beatrice Lillie, friend of Noel Coward and Cole Porter, is an artifact from days gone by. She was a comic actress and satirist who parodied the flowery performing style of even earlier decades when arias, declamations, recitations, and poetry readings were all the rage. If she looks the slightest bit familiar to you, you may remember her in her role as the villainous Mrs. Meers, laundress and white slaver, in the 1967 technicolor movie Thoroughly Modern Millie.

I think I remember hearing Bea Lillie perform “I brought my harp to the party, but nobody asked me to play; the others were happy and hearty, but I wasn’t feeling so gay” way back in the dark ages, but I couldn’t find it on Youtube. (Neither could I find Helen Hayes reciting “The White Magnolia,” but that has nothing to do with this post.) So if you have been dying to hear Beatrice Lillie perform, you will simply have to be content with hearing her do “There Are Fairies at the Bottom of our Garden” in a clip from the year 1952 on Ed Sullivan’s television program. And please try to remember that there was nothing more boring in the entire twentieth century than listening to Ed Sullivan talk.

If Beatrice Lillie doesn’t float your boat, maybe you would prefer listening to 5 minutes and 34 seconds of harp music, played delightfully by Ji Min.

And if that doesn’t float your boat either, just remember, there’s always Carrie Underwood.