Thursday, June the 24th, 2004

back to: title, date or indexes

hear this 

Spooky Boswell Coincidence

I received a letter yesterday from reader Max Décharné, in which he mentioned, apropos of nothing at all, that he is currently reading James Boswell's London Journal 1762-1763. Indeed, Max was kind enough to include a splendid quotation from what he calls “a constant joy. I hadn't looked at it for maybe fifteen years, and it's as good as Pepys' Diary for that sense of what it was like to live in London back when it was more of a small town. I thought you might like this description of preparations for theatre-going from 15th December 1762: At five I filled my pockets with gingerbread and apples (quite the method), put on my old clothes and laced hat, laid by my watch, purse, and pocket-book, and with an oaken stick in my hand sallied to the pit. I was too soon there. So I went into a low inn, sat down amongst a parcel of arrant blackguards, and drank some beer.”

Later on in the day, desultorily watchiug television, my attention was caught by a new (to me, at any rate) L'Oreal advert. Readers should know that I still harbour ambitions to become the new “face” of that confounded company (see 6 and 17 May) and will not stint in my efforts. Anyway, that aside, I was struck by the magic ingredient of whatever ridiculous new product was being pushed. This latest L'Oreal hair-goo* apparently contains something called Boswelox. (How typical that they misspell our hero's name, with just one L.) Suppressing my resentment at not (yet) having been granted a multimillion dollar contract, I shall be writing to L'Oreal to applaud their use of eighteenth century literary figures as inspiration for product-naming, and make some further suggestions: Dr Johnsonite, ColleyCibberox, Smollett, DelarivièreManleyox, and Walpolette spring to mind.

* NOTE : Poppy Nisbet has written in—promptly, it must be said (25 June)—to correct what appears to be an error:

Dear Hooting Yard : I read your L'Oreal's secret ingredient/18th-century literary figures theory. Unfortunately, Boswelox is not an ingredient in L'Oreal's ‘hair goo’, but the key element of their anti-ageing 'Wrinkle De-Crease With Boswelox', a skin cream. My own sources say that L'Oreal plan to use 17th-century inspiration for their hair products, including JohnDrydenite, Cromwellox and, of course, Regicide.

Yours knowledgeably, Poppy Nisbet