Schoolmasterly Memoir: Swan Song of A. J. Wentworth

 

H. F. Ellis. Swan Song of A. J. Wentworth (1982) The second (and final) chronicle of Wentworth’s life and career, as told by himself. It’s a mildly amusing and occasionally sharply skewering satire of the naively blinkered fool, in the peculiarly English tradition of Diary of A Nobody. Several of its parts appeared in (the now defunct) Punch, a magazine that appeared as if by magic in my Grandfather’s house when I was a boy barely capable of understanding the cartoons, let alone the prose pieces.
     I enjoyed this book, but I suspect that it’s a specialised taste. Too many of the jokes depend on allusions too very English traits and attitudes, most of which were already obsolescent when this book was written. Wentworth is given a trip to the USA; it seems his experience as a maths teacher at Burgrove prep school qualify him for a lecture tour. He ends up a married man, but the causative events leading up that blessed state were recounted in the first volume, which I haven’t read. Drat! **½