No. 477: The word game
COMPETITION
Competitors are invited to use the following ten words, taken from the opening passages of a well-known work of literature, in the order given to construct part of a narrative, essay, speech, advertisement, newspaper report or other coherent piece of prose. Any number of words can intervene, to a maximum total of 150. Entries, marked 'Competition,' must be in by 11 December.
The words: formed, style, virgin, provincial, quotation, trimmings, inquired, puritan, conformed, huckster.
In addition to the usual prizes, a special prize of one guinea will be awarded to the first entry opened which correctly identifies the book from which the words were chosen.
No. 475: The winners
In general the hint seems to have been taken: very few competitors failed to adopt some kind of stylistic framework, with the result that entries showed a marked improvement on the last Word Game. Clearly a good deal of imaginative effort went into choosing original forms of presentation. The cast included a Scot- tish preacher; Jim Callaghan; a social anthro- pologist; numerous journalists and lawyers; a disc jockey; and a letter-writing foetus— another amazing first for the GPO! A notable
example was this extract from Pepys in Modern London, by R. G. Hillier: `Nov. 10th Up betimes and to Piccadilly to see ' my Lord Mayor's show where we did meet Lord Sterling, the father of the City, who de- clared the Mother of Parliaments to be negli- gent in her care of the pound and much depended on the Bankers.'
Martin Fagg's entry earns him first prize not so much for its parody as for sheer imitative skill: Dear Sir, As the father of five olive branches, it behoves me to congratulate you on your daugh- ter Lydia's becoming a mother. It cannot be anticipated that an infant born of such unusu- ally depraved parents will ever follow the dic- tates of Christian duty, or come to be depended on for any pious or elevated action. Do not, however, permit the temperature of your spirits to be so cast down by this unhappy event that your heart is forever weighed upon by the thought of the vicious and abandoned courses that the issue of such loins must, in maturity, inevitably pursue. There is always the illusory hope that the animal may succumb to the spiritual.
Yr Benevolent Cousin, Wm Collins PS: My illustrious patroness observes that it is nonsense to regard all births as providential: miscarriages may, on occasion, more fittingly fulfil our Maker's purpose.
V. B. Burden's letter to Father Christmas is rather a disturbing document: Dear Father Christmas : My mother, for whom I have a filial affection, has the innocent notion that it is my duty to explain to you that, whereas previously we have depended on coal fires for the maintenance of an equable temperature, we have now cast aside such old-fashioned methods in favour of an all electric home. Having weighed the pros and cons of mother's request, and being aware of the immense pleasure she obtains from creeping, with animal stealth, into my room on Christmas Eve, I resolved to indulge her nonsense. My fictitious belief in you could not be sustained unless I had con- sented to inform you of the need to use the window of our new, chimneyless house, and thus avoid any miscarriages in the distribution of presents.
Yours irrationally, I. Q. Mensa (junior)
N. M. Reynolds is obviously a careful SPEC- TATOR reader: Mr Burgess seems to be of the opinion (SPECTATOR, 17 November) that the revised `0Xford Companion to English Literature' will be both father and mother to all future literary masterpieces; and he apparently felt it his duty to set the example, with a plan for a novel which depended almost entirely on pages 446 and 447 of the 'Companion.' . . . let us hope that Mr Burgess does not suffer any miscarriages in his plans for his own novel.
Honourable mention also to Angus Maude's `Extract from a rather dull book of nineteenth century reminiscences':
The words came from Tristram Shandy, and C. Quin gets a guinea for the first correct answer opened.
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