Marsden's most famous circular, however, was a brief one whose message was unhappily distorted by the carelessness of his secretary-typist. Most houses had several boys' rooms big enough for two brothers to share, and Marsden, ever eager for statistics, sent all housemasters a questionnaire asking how many rooms each had 'suitable for brothels'. Many stories are told of the typing errors of bursars' secretaries, but the prize must go to one at Wellington who circularised parents as to their willingness to accept an increase of school fees of £25 per anum — to which one father replied that he agreed, but would prefer to continue paying through the nose, as in the past.Hat tip: Ian Jackson.
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Monday, July 29, 2013
Typographical Errors
Wilfrid Blunt (1901-1987), Slow on the Feather: Further Autobiography 1938-1959 (Salisbury: Michael Russell, 1986), p. 111: