| The Colour of Molesworth |
[Jan. 10th, 2011|11:40 pm]
|
Diane spotted someone’s Twitter enquiry about the skool uniform colours of that admirable educational institution St Custard’s, but when she asked my advice, to mutual surprise I couldn't produce an answer straight away. So I went looking. Well, you do, don’t you?
It would seme that Skool uniform colours aren't described anywhere in the text, at least nowhere I spotted during an admittedly cursory flip through my copy of The Compleet Molesworth. The interior black and white line drawings by Ronald Searle most frequently show a light blazer with dark lapels, light piping and a badge on the breast pocket.
How to be Topp (Armada and Armada Lion, also Puffin, all early-1970s paperbacks) represent it as a yellow blazer with black piping, which is also the colour scheme used on at least one (the US?) version of Back in the Jug Agane, an edition of The Compleet Molesworth, (Pavilion 1985) and a retitled compilation simply called Molesworth (Penguin Modern Classics 2009.) The most common cover for Whizz for Atomms shows Molesworth 1 in a bubble-helmeted space-suit, though it does have a school badge on the chest, but lurking in the depths of Google Images (it was lurking, not me) I found a tiny cover image of an Atomms cover where once again he is clad in yellow-and-black. This colour scheme is not only the one most recently and frequently used, it's probably the most easily recognised, and also most closely represents the light-blazer-with-dark-piping of the monochrome drawings.
The above fakts are correkt for a change. I had all of the above books when I too was but a mere skoolboy, but after the passage of many years, had cause to check my recollections in the aforesaid Google Images. (Posh prose eh? Go it, Morwood.)
However Searle's drawings also show a light blazer with light lapels and dark piping, a dark blazer with dark lapels and light piping, and a "Henley Regatta" striped blazer suitable for both Fotherington-Thomas and that rather unsettling pupil whose "developing individual character" evidently includes Resurrection, and not the kind taught in Divinity. These are all in Down with Skool, so it's not a change of uniform between different books. Long trousis are usual, with shorts for new bugs. The school cap is always represented as being "hooped" – horizontally striped – light and dark, with a badge at the front.
The Down with School cover of the Armada and Armada Lion 1970s paperback shows a red blazer with yellow piping and a red and yellow hooped cap; these colours also appear on the cover of Back in the Jug again (same publisher, and when viewed alongside Down with Skool, very clearly the same cover designer.) The red blazer also appears on a reissue (or possibly US edition) of The Compleet Molesworth but when compared to the frequency of the yellow-and-black colour scheme, the red-and-yellow is no more than a temporary aberration.
Or hav I missed something…?
(And I note that  miss_next is looking for some information about Radio Malt. I shall go looking for that, too. Funny that two questions about Molesworth would pop up on the same day... It must be an omen.) |
|
|
| Comments: |
How to Be Topp?
Didn't I see this book quoted in Kingdom of Champions at least a decade and a couple of versions of the Champions role-playing game ago?
Anything is possible with Molesworth: "as any fule kno" has slipped quietly into British usage, the books first came out in the 1950s, and at least a decade before, the character was commenting on the progress of the war and the Home Front from the pages of Punch. I have a couple of extracts photocopied from the collection in my Uni library. For example: May 11 1942. Gran take us to weedy concert at happy home canteen chiz chiz chiz as she sa i am to do famous imitation of hitler. i sa no dash it all but gran repli imitation is super and admired by all who haf seen it gosh am i that good? All soldiers browned off at thort of concert they eat sossages dejectedly. Start off fercely shake fists moostache tremble all hairs stand on end but chiz as i friten baby in second row. Does real hitler haf this problem? Soldiers remane browned off until moostache drop off chiz then pandermonium and all cheer. molesworth 2 blub he haf not been asked to pla faire bells on piano and all soldiers agane sunk in misery. molesworth 2 begin to pla mightily sossages fly into air mashed potates leap like pancakes ham sandwiches fly apart and soldiers deeply impressed it is like the noise of battle. Gran leave note that she unable to make final speech. Also she doubt whether anyone else will be able if molesworth 2 pla faire bells anything like he ushually do. Not a bad wheeze aktually.
That reads just about right for the style of the quotations I saw.
That quotation is original Geoffrey Willans, but as I discovered when I wrote a couple of mock-Molesworth pieces for SF con books years ago, getting the style, the tone and (believe it or not) the spelling right is harder than it seems.
I think those are still floating around somewhere, I suspect on a (gasp) 3.5 floppy; must find them. Then find something to read them on... | |
|
|
amused