A matter of no importance?

This story, concerning Alan Bennett, starts with a misspelling at reference 1 and his book at reference 2. BH has been reading this book and she was very pleased to tell me yesterday evening that Fortnum & Mason had been founded by the Mr. Fortnum who did serious time as a page (whom I now know were not all boys) to George III.

My memory however was that the founding was all to do with someone who had done serious time as a footman to Queen Anne, some years previously. Queen Anne had a thing about having new candles every day and this footman was able to make a business out of recycling the candle ends, with candle wax at that time being expensive enough for this to be a good business.

Last night's thoughts to this morning's checking

I suppose in a modern palace, someone would be charged with gathering up all the old candles and disposing of them. With all this being recorded in the accounts in the proper way. While in those days, things were all much more informal, and while the footman may have been given permission, given the concession, there must have been lots of leakage. Other members of the household putting candle ends in their pockets. Candles which the Queen was not going to come across being renewed unnecessarily to improve the supply of candle ends. Wax candles being used in places where rush lights or dripping or whatever would have been good enough. All very messy.

In the morning, I took a look at the Internet, where I quickly turned up references 3 and 4, which more or less confirm my version of events.

But why had I known about this? When had it cropped up before? Search of the archive was indicated. First I turned up interest in Queen Anne - for example at reference 5. But persisting, I turned up reference 6 where there is indeed a brief reference to the story in question. Getting on for five years ago now. So all prompted by curiosity about the shop prompted by consumption of their fine chocolates. And in the margins, I am reminded that Fortnum's was bought up by a Canadian businessman, Garfield Weston, as long ago as 1951.

Back to Bennett

Next stop, take a look at the book that BH had been reading. It turns out that the pages in question were Bennett's recollections - possibly originally captured more or less at the time - of writing his play about the madness of King George, for which see reference 7. I am reminded of the complicated business of turning history into drama that works - a business which involves taking liberties with the truth. But what else is one to do? The truth is not going to work on the stage, and not enough people will be prepared to pay to see it. One has to compromise. A compromise that has to take into account that some of the audience - people like me - are a bit fastidious (not to say precious) about historical truth in historical dramas and fiction.

And the page business is a one-liner. A minor fact which is wrong amid a welter of other facts. Is it reasonable in a book of this sort to expect the author - or his assistants - to check all this sort of thing? I suspect the answer is that it wouldn't pay, it would cost too much - as a proportion of sales revenue - to be a runner. One just trusts the author's memory to be reasonably reliable. A trust which I suppose the author might lose if he is too careless or too free with his trivia - and lose sales in consequence.

It strikes me now that reference 8, which I am presently dipping into, may have something to say about all this. As may reference 9, a book which I have owned, more or less unread, for many years.

Further report in due course!

A further thought

Further thought produced the snap above.

Suppose that the box on the far right is the event in which we are interested, the event we want to make into a story. Further suppose that we have constructed the tree of causation of this event. Where links are somewhere on the spectrum 'this event preceded that event in time' and 'this event caused that event'. And where all these events occupy time, sometimes quite a lot of time.

Then there is, in general, no way to map all these events onto a line, onto a sequence. While a story is constrained to be a sequence. So we have a problem.

And even in the case where none of the events overlap in time, that one can map them onto a sequence, that may not be very helpful from the point of view of exposition. Although it is true that detective dramas sometimes tease by offering clues at the time of creation and, if you have the knack and are lucky, you make the connection at the right time, some time later.

And the diagram gets much more complicated when we distinguish facts from events and when we allow peoples' knowledge about events as events in their own right. A variation on what development psychiatrists call theory of mind, something human children start to acquire around the age of two or three.

So there is room for theory. Perhaps this is what reference 9 is all about.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/01/fishcotheque.html.

Reference 2: Writing home - Alan Bennett - 1994.

Reference 3: https://www.fortnumandmason.com/stories/our-history-timeline.

Reference 4: https://www.fortnumandmason.com/stories/fortnums-and-the-royal-household. The source of the snap above, date presently unknown.

Reference 5: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2017/09/queen-anne-revision.html.

Reference 6: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/08/a-modest-celebration.html.

Reference 7: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Madness_of_King_George.

Reference 8: Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word – Walter J. Ong – 1982. 

Reference 9: Narrative discourse - Gerard Genette - 1980.