[Vwoolf] missionary string bags

[Stuart Clarke]

I write under a several difficulties.  Someone asked why missionaries 
should want string bags.  Mark?  Jeremy?

I have finally managed to look at the book in question at the BL: 
"Recollections of a Sussex Parson [Edward Boys Ellman]".  Not an easy 
business since the cyber attack: no public computers available; only old 
microfilm readers usable as the newer ones are computer-linked; couldn't 
order a MS.  Ordering books has to be done manually - hadn't seen those 
forms for many a year!

Then I got the 1925 edn, whereas I suspect that McNeillie used the 1st 
(1912) edn.  In any case, I don't have vol. 4 of the Essays to hand in 
London.  In even more any case, I don't think he referenced this, er, 
reference.

I haven't gone over every page of the book, but I think VW has misled us 
(having read quickly &/or remembered poorly): Ellman's daughter, Maude 
Walker, writes in her Memoir at the beginning of the book - and, boy, 
does she go on and on about his last days (he died aged 90) - "When his 
eyes grew weary in the evenings, he played whist or patience, and 
sometimes netted string handbags to give to charity sales" (p. xxiii). 
At the beginning of the paragraph, she mentions that he wanted to build 
a Mission Church for the distant part of the parish (his church was in 
Berwick).

I hope you're satisfied!

Stuart
------ Original Message ------
From: "Jeremy Hawthorn via Vwoolf" <vwoolf at lists.osu.edu>
To: "vwoolf at lists.osu.edu" <vwoolf at lists.osu.edu>
Sent: Sunday, 15 Oct, 2023 At 9:59 AM
Subject: [Vwoolf] missionary string bags

   I came across this Woolf reference in Patricia Moye’s detective novel 
Who Saw Her Die? (1970). “In the morning, Emmy went off to the Rue du 
Rivoli. Although, with her slender packet of travellers’ cheques, she 
could do no



I came across this Woolf reference in Patricia Moye’s detective novel 
Who Saw Her Die? (1970).

“In the morning, Emmy went off to the Rue du Rivoli. Although, with her 
slender packet of travellers’ cheques, she could do no more than lick 
the windows of the shops - as the French put it so vividly - still she 
was adamant that this was  an admirable way to spend a couple of hours. 
‘I don’t need to buy anything,’ she she explained to Henry. ‘I just 
look. It gives m e a whole new feeling about fashion. As Virginia Woolf 
said, it refreshes the eye.’”

Google located  the following from “Taylors and Edgeworths” in The 
Common Reader:

“And so back and so forwards, he paces eternally the fields of Sussex 
until, grown to an extreme old age, there he sits in his Rectory 
thinking of Newman, thinking of Miss Biffen, and making - it is his 
great consolation - string bags for  missionaries. And then? Go on 
looking. Nothing much happens. But the dim light is exquisitely 
refreshing to the eyes.”

It’s not a very satisfactory match. Is there a better Woolf source?

As is often the case, I learned something while searching; that 
“missionary bag” is a standard term. “Missionary string bag” less so; 
Google does give some hits, although the accompanying pictures are not 
of string bags.

Now that plastic carrier bags are frowned on or banned, the string bags 
I remember from the 1950s in the UK may make a modest come-back.

Jeremy H






Professor Emeritus
  Department of Language and Literature
  NTNU
  7491 Trondheim
  Norway





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