Extraordinarily Optimistic Architects

“’Down here at your Coney Island, toward the end of the season, I am made to feel very sad,’ said the stranger to me. ‘The great mournfulness that settles upon a summer resort at this time always depresses me exceedingly. The mammoth empty buildings, planned by extraordinarily optimistic architects, remind me in an unpleasant manner of my youthful dreams. In those days of visions I erected huge castles for the reception of my friends and admirers, and discovered later that I could have entertained them more comfortably in a small two story frame structure.’”

Stephen Crane, Other Writings About New York, “Coney Island’s Failing Days” (1894-6).

Oiled Wrestlers

"The first two hours of the morning tax
Poor clients; during the third advocates wax
Eloquent and hoarse; until the fifth hour ends
The city to her various trades attends;
At six o'clock the weary workers stop
For the siesta; all Rome shuts up shop
At seven; the hour from eight to nine supplies
The oiled wrestlers with their exercise;
The ninth invites us to recline full length,
Denting the cushions. At last comes the tenth.
Euphemus, that's the hour when you prepare
Ambrosia with a major-domo's care
For godlike Caesar who, relaxing, grips
In his great hand the nectar that he sips
Sparingly. Then my jest-books can appear.
Please smooth their passage to the Emperor's ear:
My Muse, shy-footed, dare not importune
Jupiter with her levity before noon."

Martial, The Epigrams (85 AD).

Adventurers en France

An adventurer: a soldier of fortune. Someone who undertakes or shares in commercial adventures or enterprises. A speculator.

"Then he said and imagined, that he had too soon repented of well-doing, and that to kill and to rob even as he had done before, (all things considered), was a good life. On a time he said to his old companions, who had helped him with this device of war: "Sirs, there is no pastime nor sport, nor glory in this world but that of men of war, to use such life as we have done in time past. What a joy it was to us when we rode forth at adventure, and sometime found by the way a rich abbot or prior or merchant, or a route of mules of Montpellier, of Narbonne, of Limoges, of Fougaron, of Beziers, of Toulouse, or of Carcassone, laden with cloth of Brussels, or musterdevillers or peltryware, coming from the fairs or laden with spicery from Bruges, from Damascus, or from Alexandria; whatsoever we met all was ours, or else ransomed at our pleasures; daily we gat new money, and the villeins of Auvergne, and of Limousin, daily provided and brought to our castle wheat, meal, bread ready baken, oats for our horses, and litter, good wines, beeves, and fat muttons, pullets, and wild fowl; we were ever furnished as though we had been kings: when we rode forth all the country trembled for fear, all was ours going or coming."

Froissart (1350).

Accountants

"O ye Dividers of my Time! Ye bright Accomptants of my days, and months, and years."

Edward Young, The complaint; or, night-thoughts on life, death and immortality (1742)

Remaindered Pamphleteers

"I hear he has been a pamphleteer, though as yet only to the benefit of the trunkmaker and pastrycook." [Alluding to the practice of using the paper from unsold books to line trunks and wrap pastries.]

G. Williams, Jesse Selwyn and Contemporaries (1764).

Why not indeed?

Someone who hunts moles (moler) or looks after a flock of geese (gozzard). A gooseherd.

"Why should gaulters and bankers only have double pay; why not molers and gozzards also?"

Sabine Baring-Gould, Cheap-Jack Zita (1893).

The Caddies of St. Andrews

“Tommy preferred the caddies. The renowned caddies of St. Andrews were ‘no’ saints,’ as they gleefully admitted. They were poor, unshaven, often drunk, occasionally insolent. One R&A man called them ‘gentlemen of leisure, who for a consideration will consent to sneer at you for a whole round.’”

Kevin Cook, Tommy’s Honor (2007).

Sweaters

A tailor hired to work overtime at home. An employer or supervisor who overworks and underpays his employees.

"The sweater may employ only two or three persons, or he may have two or three score in his service; but the great bulk of the sweated class work for small masters and in rooms or shops where from two or three to a dozen or twenty are employed."

Earl Dunraven, Draft. Rep. (1890).

Coopers

A craftsman who makes and repairs wooden vessels formed of staves and hoops, as casks, buckets, and tubs.

"Any work for the Cooper?
Whene'er a vessel gets a bruize
By slipping off the stooper,
Old Farrell I would have you chuse,
As soon as any Cooper."

Cries of London (1784).

Souters

A shoemaker or cobbler.

"I tugged as hard as ever did a souter to make ends meet."

Sir Walter Scott, Journal (1829).

Pounders

Someone who impounds animals, seizing stray animals and putting them in some kind of an enclosure.

"So we might go on from court to court, for there were few held at which he did not figure, and we can follow much of the manorial arrangements as we watch him breaking the laws of the manor, trespassing on his neighbour's land or despoiling their property. He is found putting more animals on the village common than he was entitled to do, or taking away his beasts from the pound wherein they have been enclosed by the village pounder because of some breach of the manorial regulations. He constantly encroached on his neighbours' holdings, thus reaping oats or cutting hay that was theirs, or causing trouble to others by failing to clean out his ditches. The bailiff accused him of stealing parts of a cart and also of assault on one occasion, and other tenants evidently found that he was no respecter of property and were constantly making accusations against him."

Six Medieval Men & Women, "Richard Bradwater," H. S. Bennett (1955).

Mummers

An actor who performs a show with no words. A mime.

"The villager of the fifteenth-century had also his pleasures and his days of sober content. The feasting and festivities at Christmas and other festivals were red-letter days. Work was suspended: often he ate hugely up at the hall at the lord's expense, and contentedly watched the antics of the mummers, or gambolled around in the carols--part song, part dance--or bemusedly beat the table with his horn or pewter mug as he sang:

Back and side, go bare, go bare,
Both hand and foot go cold,
But belly, God send thee good ale enough,
Whether it be new or old!"

Six Medieval Men & Women, "Richard Bradwater," H. S. Bennett (1955).

Groom Porter

The court official who was in charge of the gambling tables.

"By and by I met with Mr. Brisband, and having it in my mind this Christmas to go to see the manner of the gaming at the Groome-Porter's I did tell Brisband of it, and he did lead me thither: where, after staying an hour, they begun to play at about eight at night, where to see how differently one man took his losing from another, one cursing and swearing, and another only muttering and grumbling to himself, a third without any apparent discontent at all; to see how the dice will run good luck in one hand for half an hour together, and another have no good luck at all;... and lastly, to see the formality of the groome-porter, who is their judge of all disputes in play and all quarrels that may arise therein, and how his under-officers are there to observe true play at each table, and to give new dice, is a consideration I never could have thought had been in the world, had I not now seen it."

Samuel Pepys, Diary (January 1, 1668).

Tacitus on Taverners

Someone who keeps a tavern, a place where wine or beer are sold to be drunk on the premises.

"Here raged battle and death; there the bath and the tavern were crowded. In one spot were pools of blood and heaps of corpses, and close by prostitutes and men of character as infamous; there were all the debaucheries of luxurious peace, all the horrors of a city most cruelly sacked, till one was ready to believe the Country to be mad at once with rage and lust."

Tacitus, Histories (100 AD)

Flaubert on Scholars

"Poke fun at them. To become a scholar the only requirements are a good memory and hard work."

Gustave Flaubert, Dictionary of Platitudes (1880).

[Translation by J. I. Rodale (1954).]

Erasmus on Writing Proverbs

Someone adept at coining or collecting proverbs.

"I can hardly believe that there will be anyone so unfair (and yet I think in the future there will be) as to expect even eloquence from a Dutchman, (i.e. a Boeotian or worse), and I am not joking--and in a work which is entirely directed to teaching, and teaching things like these, not unworthy of notice, but so tiny, so humble, that not only do they not attract ornaments of speech and fluent writing but repel everything of the sort. In a medley like this, with the constant enumeration of the names of authors, even modest ones, which I had to persevere in with dull stolidity for the sake of teaching, with the frequent interspersion of Greek and the recurring translations, what room was there for brilliance or elegance, or for maintaining the style, or for flow of oratory? Tully does not require eloquence from a philosopher, and is anyone going to ask it from a proverb-writer? Seneca never recommends it except when it comes easily or is there of its own accord, so as to treat great subjects in the great manner, and if I were to pretend to the paraphernalia of the Rhetors would it not be a case for quoting the proverb about 'Perfume in the pease-porridge'?"

Erasmus, Adages ("Herculei Labores") (1508)

[translated by Margaret Mann Phillips (1967)]

Thurber on Mental Healers

A sort of psychologist.

“One time my mother went to the Chittenden Hotel to call on a woman mental healer who was lecturing in Columbus on the subject of ‘Harmonious Vibrations.’ She wanted to find out if it was possible to get harmonious vibrations into a dog.

‘He’s a large tan-colored Airedale,’ mother explained.

The woman said that she had never treated a dog but she advised my mother to hold the thought that he did not bite and would not bite. Mother was holding the thought the very next morning when Muggs got the iceman but she blamed that slip-up on the iceman.

‘If you didn’t think he would bite you, he wouldn’t,’ mother told him. He stomped out of the house in a terrible jangle of vibrations.”

James Thurber, The Dog That Bit People (1933).

Drummers

“At midnight the place went absolutely to hell, as though every guest—there must have been more than two hundred then, or else all were in the club cellar—had decided simply to throw back his head and holler at the top of his lungs for several hours. The orchestra played on, but without audible effect, and people danced brokenly to no music. For a while someone was kissing me, and I proposed to whoever it was that we fling our glasses into the fireplace, as one should. “There isn’t any fireplace.” “Well, into the noise, then.” “You can’t hit noise, silly.” “Regardez,” I said, and threw mine at the drummer.”

John Barth, The Floating Opera (1956).

John Kenneth Galbraith on Farming

"A more commonplace consequence of an early exposure to agriculture is a deeply valid appreciation of the nature of manual labor. It leaves all of minimal sensitivity with an enduring knowledge of its unpleasantness. A long day following a plodding, increasingly reluctant team behind a harrow endlessly back and forth over the uninspiring Ontario terrain persuaded one that all other work was easy."

John Kenneth Galbraith, A Life in our Times.

Professor of Black Magic

“Styopa dialed the number of the financial manager of the Variety Theater, Rimsky. Styopa’s position was delicate: to begin with the foreigner might take offense at Styopa’s attempt to verify his words after he had shown the contract; besides it was difficult to speak to the financial manager. After all, one could not say, ‘Tell me, did I sign a contract yesterday with a professor of black magic for thirty-five thousand rubles?’ No, such a question would not do!”

Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita (1928-40)

[Translated by Mirra Ginsburg]

Cervantes on Fools

"The most difficult character in comedy is the fool, and he who plays the part must be no simpleton."

--Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Bumbailiffs

A petty bailiff who makes arrests, especially of debtors.

"The very offscum of the rascal multitude,
as Decoys, bum-bayliffes, disgraced Pursevants,
and a rabble of such stinkardly companions."

Geffray Mynshul, Essayes and characters of a prison and prisoners (1618).

Genji Played a Few Notes

"Sending to the house on the hill for a lute and a thirteen-stringed koto, the old man now seemed to change roles and become one of these priestly medicants who make their living by the lute. He played a most interesting and affecting strain. Genji played a few notes on the thirteen-stringed koto which the old man pressed on him and was thought an uncommonly impressive performer on both sorts of koto. Even the most ordinary music can seem remarkable if the time and place are right; and here on the wide seacoast, open far into the distance, the groves seemed to come alive in colors richer than the bloom of spring or the change of autumn, and the calls of the water rails were as if they were pounding on the door and demanding to be admitted."

Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji (11th Century).

[Translated by Edward G. Seidensticker.]

Drivers

Someone who drives a cart or even people.

"'Drivers', or those who compel the men in their employ to do more work for the same wages."

Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London poor (1851).