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

Wed Oct 1 19:59:43 UTC 2014

There's the line in the Billy Bragg song, "Greetings to the New Brunette" (1986):

How can you lie there and think of England
When you don't even know who's in the team?

Lisa Galvin
Shoreline WA USA

> Date: Wed, 1 Oct 2014 15:48:39 -0400
> From: adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM
> Subject: Re: Advice: Just close your eyes and think of England (the Empire)
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> 
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       ADSGarson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Advice: Just close your eyes and think of England (the
>               Empire)
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> 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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