George Grossmith - The Diary of a Nobody

(December 18) ‘ I am sure it would prove quite as interesting as some of the ridiculous reminiscences that have been published lately ’: A nice dig at the main author; only a few months previously George Grossmith’s own memoirs, A Society Clown , had appeared.

(December 21) I left the room with silent dignity but caught my foot in the mat : This was based on an incident from Weedon’s youth when his father spotted that he’d been drinking and Weedon, trying to slink out of the room to go to bed, caught his foot in the rug and fell on the floor.

(February 20) ‘ Great Failure of Stock and Share Dealers! ’: In a well-known news story of the day a Kimberley diamond magnate, Barney Barnato, gambled away a fortune in other people’s money and then threw himself into the sea from a boat moored off the African coast.

(March 21) Today I shall conclude my diary : This entry, with Charles Pooter’s greatest ambition fulfilled, namely to have Lupin work alongside him at Perkupp’s firm, was originally the last of the Punch instalments. Now it just looks like a false ending.

(April 16) the cabman, who was a rough bully : George Grossmith wrote a song, ‘He was a Careful Man’, which included the lines ‘He knew how cabmen will impose if people don’t take care/By charging for a mile or two beyond the proper fare.’

(April 16) as I intend writing to the Telegraph: To this day some people, including the Daily Telegraph , haven’t got the joke. The authors are mocking the kind of self-important person, the precursor of the modern-day ‘Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells’, who writes to that newspaper over some trifling injustice. The Telegraph claimed this incident as a PR coup in a 1996 editorial in which they declared their honour at being ‘associated with such a decent fellow’.

(May 30) I found Carrie buried in a book on Spiritualism, called There is no Birth, by Florence Singleyet : Spiritualism, very popular during Victorian times – even Queen Victoria partook – was introduced to Britain in 1852 from the United States. As J. B. Priestley explained in Victoria’s Heyday : ‘In every town there were darkened rooms in which luminous spirit faces appeared, musical instruments played themselves, strange voices were heard prophesying… spiritualism and its miracles were all the rage’ (J. B. Priestley, Victoria’s Heyday , London: Heinemann, 1972).

When Pooter returns home from work on 30 May he finds Carrie reading There is No Birth , by Florence Singleyet. The latter’s name is a crude pun on that of George Grossmith’s stage partner, Florence Marryat, an ardent spiritualist who persuaded George to take part in a séance in 1876 (an experience he found impossible to take seriously) and who later wrote a book called There is No Death .