He had always been an unruly, tempestuous child, perpetually at odds with authority and the despair of his law-abiding family. So it was a matter of sadness, but hardly of surprise, when as a young man he blurted out that he was not a believer. Throughout his working life his attitude never wavered, and there can be no doubt that as a result he was denied many a plum directorship that someone of his class and upbringing might normally have expected to come his way.
But as old age first approached and then engulfed him, he became less virulent in his criticisms and his family began to hope that all might not be lost and that he might yet see the light. Finally, on his deathbed, he whispered: "I believe". Smiling and crying at one and the same time, his family gathered round him as he uttered the magic words they had waited so long to hear: "I believe in the House of Windsor".
But as old age first approached and then engulfed him, he became less virulent in his criticisms and his family began to hope that all might not be lost and that he might yet see the light. Finally, on his deathbed, he whispered: "I believe". Smiling and crying at one and the same time, his family gathered round him as he uttered the magic words they had waited so long to hear: "I believe in the House of Windsor".
Barnaby, I thought this might appeal to you, here it is, I'm posting it here only because there's no more logical place for it. -lesle
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http://mleddy.blogspot.com/2011/04/lunatic-fringe-again.html
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The Lunatic Fringe Again
As my wife Elaine remembered and confirmed last night, “lunatic fringe” first referred to hair. She remembered what Ma says in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little Town on the Prairie (1941):
“And I can’t think that a lunatic fringe is the most becoming way to do your hair. It makes any girl’s ears appear larger to comb the hair up back of them and to have that mat of bangs above the forehead.”
Fred Shapiro explains it all:
In the Yale Book of Quotations, I gave the standard sourcing for this political/social expression:
[Of an international exhibition of modern art:] The lunatic fringe was fully in evidence, especially in the rooms devoted to the Cubists and Futurists, or Near-Impressionists.
Theodore Roosevelt, Outlook, March 29, 1913
More recently, I searched for lunatic fringe in historical databases. To my surprise, I found many uses from before 1913 — all in a very different sense from Roosevelt’s. Here are a few:
“The girls!” exclaimed Miss Lizzie, lifting her eyebrows till they met the “lunatic fringe” of hair which straggled uncurled down her forehead.
Oliver Optic’s Magazine, February 1874
“LUNATIC Fringe” is the name given to the fashion of cropping the hair and letting the ends hang down over the forehead.
Wheeling Daily Register, July 24, 1875
The “lunatic fringe” is still the mode in New York hair-dressing.
Chicago Inter Ocean, May 24, 1876
It appears, then, that Teddy Roosevelt was playing on an existing phrase. His usage was a metaphorical extension of an expression previously applied to bangs — evidently, bangs that were considered outré. Fringe is still used in Britain for bangs, but the usage has been abandoned for so long in the United States that lexicographers were completely unaware of the coiffure-related prehistory of lunatic fringe.
The Oxford English Dictionary traces the phrase to another 1913 Roosevelt sentence: “There is apt to be a lunatic fringe among the votaries of any forward movement.” Or backward.
A related post
Lunatic fringe
By Michael Leddy at 6:44 AM
Thank you, lesle, for yet another interesting entry and link. I checked out the Orange Crate Art blog and think it's wonderful - almost as good as mine!
ReplyDeleteCuriously enough, the meaning of "fringe" in relation to hair is well down the list of definitions given by Websters whereas I think it would probably be the first definition to spring to mind for a British person.
Incidentally, the show that changed the face of modern British humour, or at least satire, was called Beyond the Fringe. It starred Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Alan Bennet and Jonathan Miller.
When is a fringe a fringe and when is it bangs?
ReplyDeleteTo my recollection Mamie Eisenhower had bangs, which lead me to think it was always bangs in US of A and fringe was just an English term? Maybe being a lunatic decides it.
I don't think I have much to contribute to this subject!
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