[Vwoolf] Slater's pins

Jeremy Hawthorn jeremy.hawthorn at ntnu.no
Mon Nov 18 04:12:06 EST 2013


Thanks for this! But as Woolf used Clara Pater's comment about /Barker's 
pins/, which from what I have discovered did exist, how relevant is the 
link to the (real) Herbert M /Slater/ company?

It does open for the possibility that Woolf felt that to avoid libel she 
needed to change the name, but then (deliberately or, more likely 
unconsciously)  chose the name of another real company that made pins. 
The present-day company, according to the website, manufactures needles, 
so it is absolutely possible that at some time it also made pins. 
Incidentally, although your link worked, none of the links on Slater's 
webpage to specific products seem to work. Slater's links have no points!

If Herbert M Slater & Co made pins in 1927 they might well have been 
somewhat ticked off by Woolf's story ... but they don't seem to have 
insisted on Woolf's changing the name.

Jeremy H

Den 18.11.2013 09:52, skrev William Bain:
> Very interesting questions. All I can offer is a
> tiny bit of quick research on the www. The link
> below gives some information on products made
> by Herbert M. Slater. Apparently all far from blunt,
> though of course the text is a kind of advertisment
> from the company itself, I believe. Best wishes, WB (link >>>
>
> http://ukmade.wordpress.com/tag/herbert-m-slater-1853-ltd/
>
>
>
> On Monday, November 18, 2013 9:14 AM, Jeremy Hawthorn 
> <jeremy.hawthorn at ntnu.no> wrote:
> I have long wondered whether Slater's pins really were blunter than 
> the average. We know that Woolf used a comment made about (the real) 
> Barker's pins by Clara Pater. If one browses critical comments on the 
> story all move straight into symbol and metaphor and sexual politics; 
> I have not found one that asks whether it is possible that Clara Pater 
> really did mean that Barker's pins had no point, or whether she was 
> right. It's not that the symbolic /metaphorical extensions are wrong 
> (they are I think right), but I wonder whether they are based upon 
> some truth in the non-literary world. In contrast, when readers and 
> critics come across this passage in Conrad, no-one asks what it 
> symbolises: the nails are nails:
>
> "At the bottom the nails lay in a layer several inches thick. It was 
> ghastly. Every nail in the world, not driven in firmly somewhere, 
> seemed to have found its way into that carpenter’s shop. There they 
> were, of all kinds, the remnants of stores from seven voyages. 
> Tin-tacks, copper tacks (sharp as needles), pump nails, with big 
> heads, like tiny iron mushrooms; nails without any heads (horrible); 
> French nails polished and slim. They lay in a solid mass more 
> inabordable than a hedgehog. We hesitated yearning for a shovel, while 
> Jimmy below us yelled as though he had been flayed. Groaning, we dug 
> our fingers in, and very much hurt, shook our hands, scattering nails 
> and drops of blood. We passed up our hats full of assorted nails to 
> the boatswain, who, as if performing a mysterious and appeasing rite, 
> cast them wide upon a raging sea."
>
> Part of this is reader expectation. We expect descriptions of physical 
> objects aboard ship in a Conrad fiction to evoke the physical; we 
> expect descriptions of physical objects in a Woolf fiction to lead on 
> to matters social and experiential.
>
> Thinking about this, I recalled that I had once had a very pleasant 
> visit to a museum of needles and pins in the English midlands, so I 
> wrote and asked them if they had any information about Barker's pins. 
> Alas, they did not. A Google search for Barker's pins threw up hardly 
> any hits, but one did suggest that Barker's supplied the medical 
> profession with pins - which does not suggest that they produced 
> low-quality goods.
>
> So: has anyone ever found out anything about Barker's pins that might 
> confirm that they did actually have no point? And do we assume that it 
> is Clara Pater who was talking in code to Virginia, or that while 
> /she/ had no hidden meaning it is Woolf herself who takes the comment 
> and gives it a double meaning in the story?
>
> Incidentally, for anyone with a taste for odd museums (I speak as one 
> who has visited the sadly now-closed Liberace museum in Las Vegas), 
> here is the web address for the needle and pin museum.
>
> http://www.forgemill.org.uk/
>
> Jeremy H
> -- 
> Jeremy Hawthorn
> Emeritus professor
> Department of Language and Literature
> NTNU
> 7491 Trondheim
> Norway
>
> (00 47) 73596787 (NTNU)
> (00 47) 72887602 (home
> (00 47) 90181427 (cellphone)
>
> See details of my forthcoming book at:
> https://ohiostatepress.org/Books/Book%20Pages/Hawthorn%20Reader.html  
>
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>


-- 
Jeremy Hawthorn
Emeritus professor
Department of Language and Literature
NTNU
7491 Trondheim
Norway

(00 47) 73596787 (NTNU)
(00 47) 72887602 (home
(00 47) 90181427 (cellphone)

See details of my forthcoming book at:
https://ohiostatepress.org/Books/Book%20Pages/Hawthorn%20Reader.html

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