Introduction: Geyser, Califont, Ascot

This book starts with a bang. Here are some lines from a twentieth-century play set in Bristol:

HEDLEY.

I'd enjoy nothing better than discussing ad infinitum the relative merits of British and American television but I'm dealing at the moment -

A loud explosion offstage.

What the hell -?

Makes for the door. QUEENIE has jumped up.

MAURICE.

HEDLEY.

MAURICE.

HEDLEY.

I put you in a new immersion heater. Why are you letting her risk her life with that old geyser?

He goes off, calling:

Mum, are you all right?

(Nichols 1979 [2014]: 238/with permission of Bloomsbury)

Some quickfire play with the word geyser three times in five lines to convey the character of someone who is old and dotty - which only works if the audience knows about words for water-heaters in late twentieth-century British houses and what sort of person was likely to use which type. At this date there was a social gap between having a faulty old-technology gas geyser and a brand-new electric immersion heater. Neither term is commonly used in British English now, and although the Oxford English Dictionary explains what they were (OED geyser, n. 2. 'The name given to an apparatus for rapidly heating water attached to a bath. Also for the heating of water for use in wash-basins, sinks, etc.', first attested 1878; OED immersion, n. C2 'a heater (usually electric) whose element may be immersed in the liquid to be heated; esp. one having a thermostatic control and designed to be fixed inside a domestic hot-water cylinder', first attested 1914), dictionaries do not explain the social dimension - what kind of person used these words, when and where. This kind of cultural knowledge is the domain of sociolinguistics: what sort of person says what to who, and also pragmatics: in what sort of social or cultural circumstance.

How this bifurcation in the social status of water-heaters came about is as follows. Inventor, Patentee, and Manufacturer Benjamin Waddy Maughan (or Maugham) of 214 Goswell Road, London, advertised the 'so-called geyser, or patent invention for heating water speedily' (The Times, 23 August 1870), although not all readers would have recognised that geysir was Icelandic for 'gusher', from Old Norse gøysa 'to gush', which became the name of a hot spring periodically hurling forth boiling water, nor would they have known how to say it aloud. Pronounced something like ['ke?is&ip.iscp;r&c.ringbl;] 'kacer' in Icelandic, the main eighteenth-century British pronunciation of the fountain's name had been ['geiz?(r)] 'gazer', followed by ['gaiz?(r)] 'guyzer', and then later on, ['gi:z?(r)] 'geezer' (I have put the /r/ in brackets as it was still variable word-finally in London English in 1870). Natural geysers are found in the English-speaking world in America and New Zealand where the 'guyser' pronunciation still predominates.

Competition came from George Ewart & Son of the Euston Road (est. 1834) who lifted the word geyser from Maughan. Ewart & Son advertised their Royal geyser in 1895, and went on to market their Lightning geyser, their Elite geyser, their Brilliant geyser, and their Success and Victor geysers, covering the market-appeal bases of heaven-sent electricity, social aspiration, and warfare. Ewart & Son also sold their B pattern Califont, with cali- from the Latin adjective calidum 'hot' and -font alluding like geyser to gushing water. In the twentieth century, a third common term for a geyser was an Ascot. The Ascot Gas Water Heater Company was created by Dr Bernhards Fridmanis of Latvia in 1932 at 255, North Circular Road, Neasden, as an agency for the German Junkers brand. But in 1933, Hitler came to power and Bernhards Fridmanis changed the name of both himself, to Bernard Friedman, and that of his company. The placename Ascot had been associated with horseracing royalty since 1711 and Dr Friedman was neither the first nor the last to harness the considerable marketing force of a royal personage together with a fast-running horse.

Here is George Ewart when his business was still in its infancy. He was working in the block of the Euston Road known at the time as Quickset Row, in workspaces created from the built-over front-gardens of the houses that faced the New Road (as the bypass was still known). It was crowded, witness the five firms registered at no. 5, with Benson, Logan & Co. making cement in the gap between two houses:

Quickset row, New rd. Fitzroy sq.

2 Adron Wm. & Charles, statuaries

5 Clothier Saml. statuary & mason

5 Libbis George, auctioneer

5 Milligan Wm. scagliola works

5 Morton James, brushmaker

5A Benson, Logan & Co. cement works

6 Dawkins Mrs. Hannah, dairy

8 Reeve Joseph, iron works

9 & 11, Gray John, organ builder

10 Pistell, William, statuary

14 Harris Edward, chair maker

15 Stamper Wm, zinc manufacturer

16 Drake Joseph, lath render

17 West Mrs. H. iron and wirework manufr

19 Ewart George, zinc worker

23 Marsh Thomas, statuary

21 Herring William, menagerie

(Post Office Directory 1841: 211)

Scagliola was imitation marble. At no. 6, Mrs Hawkins ran a dairy, and at no. 21, William Herring's trade card advertised 'Dealer in all sorts of pheasants, fancy poultry, swans, water fowl, gold and silver fish, sporting and fancy dogs: menagerie, New Road, Near Regents Park, London, Late Brookes', in reference to Joshua Brookes (1761-1833), zoologist, anatomist, and forerunner of seeing bad sanitation as the cause of cholera, whose menagerie was operative by 1776. Although George Ewart was initially crammed together with the iron and cement works, the statuary masons and all the animals, with traffic thundering up and down just a few feet distant, by 1884, he could afford a sustained advertising campaign. Over the autumn of that year, George Ewart & Son inserted near-daily advertisements in the Standard and Morning Post, not laid out with the other ads but as a line inserted in the personal columns with no explanatory context whatsoever. By insinuating his word into this daily reality-show, Ewart ensured that his disguised advertisements got read, rather than skipped over as advertisements usually are. For example:

A. P. to J. S. - Received. Don't call or send without my special request; write only under cover: suspect unfriendly eyes. N. got copies alone. If to blame for misdirection your friend across the sea is dead. Greatly distressed about person in grey who is dying; never fully recovered. Send address. If meeting necessary will give country one.

FETCH SILVER RING. P. heard outside; poorly surrounded afraid; Come Boldly; Lodgee, Alone; Send Help sealed; mistefied South Road Daily; fine 11, 30, 8, often. - STILLIE NIGHT.

J. E. H., Derby, write home.

TO J *** P***** - Pray come home, or communicate with Mr. Mills or your solicitor.

I. H. E. - Have you seen the CALIFONT?

([1884]. Multiple Classified Ads. The Standard [16 October]: 1)

BOX. - Letter received a few weeks since. I forgive you, though you did not keep your promise. I am sure you do not know how badly I have been treated, nay, robbed, by M., whom I shall never forgive.

DAISY. - Write K***, 2, V. S. Any day, Two o'clock, Charing-cross Station Waiting-room; preferable to Park-lane.

D. H. - The meeting is reported to have lasted only a few minutes. F. J. hopes that all is right, however, and longs to hear.

R. A. - A long communication from the London Committee shows that grounds for the anxiety felt have not existed, and it is desired that great satisfaction at this should be expressed. No despatch has arrived since the one written on Friday, the 11th. It is hoped that a brighter and happier view of the cause can now be taken? If you can send what can be considered 'satisfactory instructions', another Committee will be summoned after the 25th inst., and then dissolved for the winter months. A return of the summer days is anxiously longed for.

I. H. E. - Have you seen the CALIFONT?

([1884]. Multiple Classified Ads. The Standard [20 October]: 1)

Only in the New Year was it finally revealed that the califont was a gas water-heater. These three brand names were dreamt up by working men in the ordinary environs of the Goswell, Euston, and North Circular roads but their wider lexical associations with a dramatic Icelandic thermal fountain, fascinating fraught love-affairs and the glamour of...