Advice: Just close your eyes and think of England (the Empire)

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

Here are a set of matches. Many of the dates are from GB and are
unverified. The examples in the QI article are verified with paper,
scans, or archive text (though two are from quotation references,
i.e., indirect, at this time).

A three part version similar to LH's suggestion appeared in 1977, apparently.

1943 just close your eyes and think of England
1955 just close your eyes and think of England
1963 I lie still and think of a new way to trim a hat
1968 I shut my eyes tight and thought of the Empire
1971 remain still and think of England
1971 Lie still and think of England
1972 I lie down on my bed, close my eyes, open my legs and think of England
1974 Lie still and think of the Empire
1977 Lie still and close your eyes, dear, and think of England
1978 lie still and think of your gods
1979 Lie back and think of the Empire
1986 Lie back, close your eyes, think of England...
1999 Lie back and think of Belgium

The 1943 cite is about kissing. All the other cites appear to be about coitus.

The 1972 cite includes the unsupported assertion that the quotation is
from a private journal in 1912.

Garson

On Wed, Oct 1, 2014 at 1:19 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Advice: Just close your eyes and think of England (the
>               Empire)
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I recall a three-part recipe, obviously not designed for how to get =
> through the disgusting of kissing but more for what "baiser" now =
> designates in French:
>
> "Lie back, close your eyes, and think of England"
>
> Do any of your cites include the first step?
>
> LH
>
> On Oct 1, 2014, at 12:15 PM, ADSGarson O'Toole wrote:
>
>> Fred and Charlie have an entry for "Close (Shut) your eyes and think
>> of England (the Empire, the queen, Old Glory, etc.)" in DMP and YBQ.
>> These two references list a key 1943 citation that involved kissing.
>> I've located an interesting 1954/1955 cite that involved more than
>> kissing. This was the earliest cite I found displaying the modern
>> sense.
>>=20
>> The general background is here:
>> http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/09/30/empire/
>>=20
>> [Begin modified excerpt from Quote Investigator]
>> The earliest relevant evidence known to QI was published by an
>> influential American newspaper columnist in 1943. Intriguingly, the
>> topic was osculation and not conjugation, and the advice-giver was
>> Lucy Baldwin who was the wife of the former Prime Minister of the
>> United Kingdom:
>>=20
>> [Begin 1943 excerpt]
>> Stanley Baldwin=92s son tells this story of the day his sister went =
> out
>> with a young man who wanted to marry her. She asked her mother for
>> advice, in case the young man should want to kiss her . . . "Do what I
>> did," said her mother, reminiscing of the beginning of her romance
>> with the man who was to become Prime Minister, =93Just close your eyes
>> and think of England."
>> [End 1943 excerpt]
>>=20
>> It is conceivable that this was a bowdlerized version of a more ribald
>> tale, but QI has not yet located supporting evidence for that
>> hypothesis. An alternative conjecture would hold that the carnal
>> element of this story was modified and amplified over time.
>>=20
>> In 1954 "Les Carnets du Major Thompson" was published in French by
>> Pierre Daninos. The following year an English translation titled =93The
>> Notebooks of Major Thompson: An Englishman Discovers France & the
>> French=94 was released in the U.S. The character portrayals in the
>> volume emphasized humor. The French author Daninos asserted that the
>> English character Ursula had been prepared =93for marriage in an
>> entirely Victorian spirit=94. The expression in the following passage
>> was identical to the one used in the previous citation. Yet, the
>> activity shifted from kissing to intimate coupling:
>>=20
>> [Begin 1955 excerpt]
>> The day before she left home, Lady Plunkwell had delivered her final
>> advice: "I know, my dear, it=92s disgusting. But do as I did with
>> Edward: just close your eyes and think of England!" Like her mother
>> and her mother=92s mother before her, Ursula closed her eyes. She
>> thought of the future of England.
>> [End 1955 excerpt]
>>=20
>> [End modified excerpt from Quote Investigator]
>>=20
>> Cite info: 1943 May 18, Washington Post, Broadway Gazette by Leonard
>> Lyons, Quote Page 10, Column 5, Washington, D.C. (ProQuest)
>>=20
>> Cite info: 1955, The Notebooks of Major Thompson: An Englishman
>> Discovers France & the French by Pierre Daninos, Translated by Robin
>> Farn, Chapter 8: Martine and Ursula, Quote Page 105, Alfred A. Knopf,
>> New York. (Originally published in France as Les Carnets du Major
>> Thompson by Librairie Hachette in 1954) (Verified on paper)
>>=20
>> Garson
>>=20
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>
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