Society

Imagine I were to begin this column by remarking that a woman preaching is like a dog walking on its hind legs: it is not done well, but you’re surprised to find it done at all. Dear me, that would never do, even in as cheeky a magazine as The Spectator. Then try instead: “Dr. Johnson was no admirer of the female sex. ‘A woman’s preaching,’ he said, ‘is like a dog’s walking on his hinder legs. It is not done well, but you are surprised to find it done at all.’” I could get away with that. An antiquated opinion, safely attributed to an 18th-century writer, enclosed behind quotation

“‘I am not screwed,’ replied the Caterpillar, solemnly. ‘Whisky and potass does not agree with everybody; but I am not screwed, not at all.’ So speaking he sat down rather suddenly.” By screwed he meant “drunk” of course. The Caterpillar is the nickname of a pupil in The Hill (1905) by Horace Annesley Vachell about boys at an English boarding school, more particularly the love between them. The Caterpillar was drunk on whisky, then sometimes mixed with potassium bicarbonate water. In Doctor Claudius (1883) by F. Marion Crawford, in a scene in Baden-Baden, we hear of an English duke drinking “curaçao and potass water.” Crawford was an American man who