Fun and Fancy.

Although I still find that I have painted Mellor only as a dull dog, the very reverse is the truth. His early work on mathematics shows that the true bent of his genius was mathematical even more than chemical, and like all mathematicians he was a great lover of poetry and a master of whimsey and nonsense. It was curiously enough as Secretary of the Ceramic Society that he let himself go to the fullest extent, and although the seasons of his most carefree jollity were apparently those occasions when that Society held its conventions in foreign places, nevertheless even the ordinary routine printed proceedings of that extremely dull body are enlivened by sketches and jeux d'esprit from its irrepressible secretary. He was obviously the spoilt child among the grave and reverend seigniors, whose chief concern rested in the obscure chemistry of fusible and refractory clays, and in 1934 the Ceramic Society—yes, as a Society!—published an extraordinary volume of light and airy nothings entitled “Uncle Joe's Nonsense,” a volume of fun in prose, verse, and picture chosen by Mellor himself from his store of published nonsense and from letters to his nephews and nieces in Dunedin or to other friends. Such a tribute is probably unique, although I think something of the kind happened after the early death in the 'nineties of Holly, a similar spoilt child of a metallurgical society in the United States. The other comparisons evoked by the book are those of Mellor with two Professors of Mathematics, the Reverend Dodgshun (Lewis Carrol) page 13 and Stephen Leacock. If in future any Queen of England is induced by a reading of “Uncle Joe's Nonsense” to send an open order to her bookseller for a complete parcel of Mellor's published works, as Queen Victoria did for Lewis Carroll's, what a similar shock is in store for her! The reproductions show what a facile draughtsman and able cartoonist Mellor was and also show the airy inconsequence of his humour. What is more difficult to show is the amazing range of his reading in poetry and general literature and the wonderful memory that stored so much away for easy and apt quotation. I think, however, that I can manage to do something in that direction for you. Some twenty years ago Dr. Mellor wrote a letter to a nephew in Dunedin who, being, as all of us, muddled by Einstein's revolutionary conclusions, had asked his learned uncle to explain the mystery of curved and expanding space. The answer was written from Strat-ford-on-Avon where Mellor was staying the night on his way to Exeter and where he would not be writing with his library and card indexes within range. Now this letter contains in order the following quotations or references (1) three lines from W. M. Praed, (2) two lines from Omar Khayyam, (3) four lines from H. D. Ellis, (4) a quotation in Latin from an unnamed ancient writer, (5) a prose quotation of twenty-six words from E. Johnson (this gravels me), (6) a reference to “Lord Wharton's Lilliburlero,” (7) three lines from T. Campion, (8) a prose quotation of forty words from Francis Bacon, (9) a prose quotation of forty-two words from Bishop Wilkins, (10) a quotation of forty-five words from Lewis Carrol, (11) a reference to A. Eddington's estimate of the number of the stars, (11) a French quotation from S. Vatriquant, (12) the Latin motto of the Nominalists of the eleventh century, (13) another quotation from E. Johnson, twenty-four words, (14) a tag of Mr. Richard Swiveller, (15) a line from Tennyson's “Tiresias,” (16) a rough version of a saying from Oliver Wendell Holmes, (17) the same of one from Jules Verne, (18) a Latin maxim from Tertullian, (19) another quotation from Francis Bacon, (20) a philosophical statement in French from G. B. von Leibniz, (21) a thirty-two word quotation from Eddington, (22) a twenty-one word quotation from Montaigne, (23) the “What is Truth?” of Pontius Pilate, (24) a musing of Mr. Dooley from the “Dooley Monologues” (sic) by P. F. Dunne, and (25) a reference to Weller senior's experience with widows. The letter also contains three amusing cartoons of studies in the fourth dimension! The letter is light, amusing, friendly, and is a clear and helpful explanation of where reality ends and theoretical mathematics begin in Einstein's Topsy Turvy world. Doubtless a few of the quotations were fresh in Mellor's mind, since everybody was talking Einstein at the time, but the great majority were obviously quoted extempore for the benefit of a youthful relative, and the last reason also doubtless prompted the “placing” of the quotations. Mellor himself admits elsewhere that he had “a good memory as memories go.” Readers also must admit this, with perhaps the qualification that most memories don't go that way.

It is doubtless a jolt to readers when they are reminded that chemists agree that Mellor is in the very forefront of the ranks of the inorganic chemists, that there is, nor has been, no such outstanding figure among the organic chemists, that in his sixteen noble volumes Dr. Mellor virtually exhausted all that could be authoritatively said up-to-date on the theory and practice of Inorganic Chemistry—and that his researches on refractory materials and special steels comprised original work of great importance to Great Britain and the world.

(Arnold Bennett tells us the “Five Towns” are “Hanbridge, which has the shape of a horse and its rider, Bursley of half a donkey, Knype of a pair of trousers, Longshaw of an octopus and little Turnhill of a beetle.”—Ed.)