[Vwoolf] string bags redux

[Adams, David]

Jeremy Hawthorn started a thread about string bags back in October and many list members praised the bags at the time.  I remember my grandmother using one in a Portland Oregon shopping mall, a habit she might have picked up going to markets in the mission field.  But I've just run across a criticism of them in Macaulay's The World My Wilderness (1950):  they are not practical for shoplifting.  Here is the opening of Chapter 24:

"A string bag's silly," said Mavis to Barbary. "Anyone can see what's in it, before you're out of the store. What you want is a good-sized canvas bag. . . .

Mavis goes on to coach Barbary on the best legal defense for shoplifting if she gets caught:  tell the court "I'd been took giddy" (or have your lawyer blame giddiness for you).

David

[Vwoolf] missionary string bags
Jeremy Hawthorn jeremy.hawthorn at ntnu.no <mailto:vwoolf%40lists.osu.edu?Subject=Re%3A%20%5BVwoolf%5D%20missionary%20string%20bags&In-Reply-To=%3CSV0P279MB04100FA36AE890F5DF2B8995E7D0A%40SV0P279MB0410.NORP279.PROD.OUTLOOK.COM%3E>
Sun Oct 15 04:59:36 EDT 2023
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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 me 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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