The Genius Gene.

There’s another story up at the other blog. It isn’t very good.

Which reminds me of something. I was once married to a woman who was descended through the female line from the Boules (Professor Boule of binary system fame, and Ethel Voynitch the novelist.) Being geniuses, the Boules were a strange lot, and my mother-in-law told me a couple of stories about them. I wrote them as part of an editorial once, so I thought I’d paste them here. The style is a little severe, but you’ll forgive me no doubt. I was younger then.

My mother-in-law, whose maiden name was Boule, had two sisters. When they were children in the 1930s they used to spend part of their summer holidays staying with a maiden aunt in Ilfracombe, North Devon. Ilfracombe lives on tourism these days, but it was considered a somewhat staid, middle class, English seaside retreat then – the sort of place where old army officers went to retire.

The aunt was a stern old spinster and the children were required to do everything by the book. Etiquette ruled, and one of the most revered conventions of traditional English culture was the taking of tea at around 4 pm.

One hot summer’s day, the children scrubbed up and dutifully took their places at the table laden with teatime fare. The aged aunt sat to attention at the head, sporting her customary frown. There was an unfamiliar pot sitting among the jams, marmalade, honey, muffins, cake and toast. It contained a recent arrival from America – peanut butter. The aunt scowled silently at each child in turn, then pushed the pot down the table and said

“Have some jam. It’s not very nice.”

***

A generation back from her there were two sisters and a brother, none of whom ever married. They lived and grew old together in the same house. The brother had some sort of medical condition - maybe he’d had a stroke or something, I don’t know – which caused him to hobble around with one shoulder raised higher than the other and a perpetual drool coming from his lips. His speech was slurred too, and he was described as being “a little vague.” I imagined him as a sort of cross between Quasimodo and Richard III.

One of the sisters died. On the day of the funeral she was laid out in her coffin, as was the custom then, in the best room in the house. The coffin lid was shut but there was a glass panel in it, through which the face of the deceased could be seen.

The brother shuffled over to pay his respects, bending down to kiss the glass. It was a cold day and the panel misted over as he breathed on it. He became very agitated and hobbled around the room crying

“She’s alive! She’s alive!”

The mourners looked at each other in alarm until the surviving sister took him firmly by the arm, marched him over to the coffin and said

“Of course she’s not alive, you fool. See?”

Then she lifted the lid and stuck a hat pin into the body to prove it.

Times change.