in the Bank at Oldham: Oldham, 200 miles north of London and several degrees colder, was then at the hub of England’s cotton-spinning industry.
APRIL 3: Beginning the Diary on 1 April would have been too obvious, but starting around this time is appropriate. The beginning of April is also the beginning of the financial year, as Pooter, and Lupin, particularly, would have been aware.
(April 10) It is disgraceful how late some of the young clerks are at arriving: In 1879 George Grossmith had appeared in an adaptation of the farce Cox and Box by Punch editor F. C. Burnand in which he had to perform a song which opened ‘My master is punctual always in business.’
(April 11) Sarah, our servant: By 1890 the number of servants in Britain had peaked at around one and a half million.
(April 15) a good long walk over Hampstead and Finchley: Weedon Grossmith talks about going on such a walk in From Studio to Stage. Even today such a walk, from Upper Holloway to Hampstead and Finchley, would be pleasant, taking in Highgate Village, Ken Wood and Hampstead Garden Suburb (not built when The Diary of a Nobody was written). The last stretch, to Finchley, across the North Circular Road would however be rather irksome.
(April 15) Gowing suggested that we should make for ‘The Cow and Hedge’: The Cow and Hedge is an obvious pun on The Old Bull and Bush, a perennially popular pub on North End Road by Hampstead Heath with which the Grossmiths, having been raised locally, would doubtless have been acquainted, and which at the time the Diary was written would have been one of the few buildings in the area. The pub, a favourite of Hogarth, David Garrick, Reynolds and Dickens, was immortalized in Florrie Ford’s 1903 song ‘Down at the Old Bull & Bush’, now considered to be a standard from the period.
(April 15) ‘That’s all right – bona-fide travellers ’: Until 1914 the law allowed only those who had travelled more than three miles a drink out of hours on Sundays. Only those of the lowest morality, i.e. not Pooter, would fib about the distance they had come.
(April 21) the Italian Opera, Haymarket, Savoy, or Lyceum: A month previously (i.e. in March 1888) the Pooters would have been able to see both George and Weedon Grossmith appearing in Sheridan’s The Critic at the Haymarket. The Savoy was of course the setting for many of George Grossmith’s greatest performances in the Gilbert & Sullivan operas.
(April 27) he only called to leave me the Bicycle News: A decade earlier bicycling had been dominated by the cumbersome and risible penny-farthings, but by the 1880s important developments in the construction of the modern bicycle had been made. In 1885 the first practical safety bicycle with the rear wheel operated by a chain was invented, and three years later J. B. Dunlop invented the pneumatic tyre. As a result bicycling’s popularity amongst all classes rose.
(April 30) an invitation for Carrie and myself from the Lord and Lady Mayoress to the Mansion House: George Grossmith was well acquainted with this place, having met Mark Twain there at a banquet in 1880, and having attended a function for theatre people inside in June 1887.
(May 12) but the stupid people had mentioned our names as ‘Mr and Mrs C. Porter’. Most annoying!: George Grossmith often had to complain about the misspelling of his own name which would come out as Grousesmith, Goosesmith, Ghostsmith or Grogsmith.
(June 4) Mrs Cummings sang five or six songs, ‘No Sir’ and ‘The Garden of Sleep’: These were two contemporary favourites. George Grossmith wrote and sang a parody of the latter entitled ‘Thou of My Thou’ at a show performed in front of the Prince of Wales (the future Edward VII) at the Portland Hall, Southsea,
