Until the late 1960s there was nothing camp about Camp Coffee. I’m sure the name has something to do with the tent shown pitched in the background and I think the manufacturer was advertising an instant light refreshment for the colonial military, the ones who were tired of tea. The thing is, though, I have never heard of anyone actually drinking Camp Coffee as coffee. It is a very good coffee flavouring: if you add it to milk and ice and vanilla ice cream it makes wonderful iced coffee, we always had it for that purpose when I was growing up. It’s also good for making coffee ice cream if you only have vanilla available — in fact, my mother likes it better than store-bought coffee ice cream. She may have learnt about it in Australia, where each town has (or had) a milk bar.
First produced by A. Patterson & Sons, Ltd, of Glasgow — not known to me as a hub of the coffee trade, then neither was Seattle before Starbucks — when I try to look up the current manufacturer of Camp, I can’t find any reference. There are clues at Wikipedia:
Camp Coffee … began (sic) production in 1876 by Paterson & Sons Ltd. in a plant on Charlotte St, Glasgow. Almost one-hundred years later in 1974 businessman Daniel Jenks merged with Paterson to form Paterson Jenks plc.In 1984, Twelve years later, Paterson Jenks plc was bought by McCormick & Company Inc. Thereafter, McCormick UK Ltd assimilated Paterson Jenks plc into Schwartz. Interestingly, McCormick claims not to be the manufacturer on their main site, and the product can’t be found on the Schwartz site either.
It could be that the manufacturer is hiding because the label symbolises colonies and racism (apparently there was some trouble in England about its unpc-ness, some years ago). The Wikipedia entry continues by describing what Camp Coffee is:
Camp Coffee is a glutinous brown substance which consists of water, sugar, 4% coffee essence, and 26% chicory essence. This is generally used as a substitute for coffee, by mixing with warm milk in much the same way as cocoa, but it is commonly found on baking aisles in supermarkets as it is also used as an ingredient in coffee cake and other confections.
On the label it’s called “Camp Coffee and Chicory”, and I think it was always so. One of the best things about Camp Coffee is its label:
The label is … a drawing of a Scottish soldier (allegedly Major General Sir Hector Macdonald) and a Sikh soldier sitting down together outside a tent, from which flies a flag carrying the drink’s slogan, “Ready Aye Ready”. Originally the picture depicted the Sikh as carrying a tray of coffee; it is widely believed that this was changed to avoid the imperialist connotations of the Sikh as a servant, although the company does not confirm or deny this. The original drawing was by William Victor Wrigglesworth.
Yes, that’s interesting, here’s the tray on the old label (with its tiny Camp bottle, he, he):
The newer version has removed General Macdonald’s bearskin too, though that may be as much because of lousy draghtsmanship as to appease the animal rights lobby. In today’s version, below, the Sikh has normal-sized legs, General Macdonald has his bearskin back and the two soldiers sit together as colleagues:
Makes you wonder why they wanted us out, really. It’s not a very interesting drawing, though; unlike in the earlier versions there’s nothing you could discuss at the breakfast table while you’re eating your cornflakes except that they’re now sitting on astroturf with their backs to the pyramids. There is no depiction of the Camp bottle any longer; nowadays, they’re probably having a nice cup of tea.
I haven’t been able to find anything about the Sikh or his outfit. Major General Sir Hector Macdonald is shown below dressed, not as a magician, but as a commander of an Egyptian army brigade:
The son of a poor Scottish crofter, he had been apprenticed at fifteen to a draper and subsequently to the Royal Clan Tartan and Tweed Warehouse, in Inverness. In the photograph he’s wearing what looks like a linen suit. Ideal for a hot climate would have been a kilt made from linen; the thought must have crossed his mind, though such a garment would have got very creased.
There’s an interesting Wiki article about General Macdonald. The military commander in Ceylon in 1903, he was being investigated for alleged homosexual relationships when he shot himself dead, poor man.
He had just had his fiftieth birthday. He left a wife he had secretly married nineteen years earlier (Kitchener disapproved of his officers marrying) and a young son.
A Bad Guide 
Where do you see that the tray has been airbrushed or photoshopped? You haven’t provided a picture of this later version, and I can’t find one elsewhere.
And why would a linen kilt be more likely to get creased than a linen suit? Based on the same linen-crease-tendency-per-square-foot for both, the kilt should have less total creases than the suit, because it has smaller area. In fact, since a kilt drapes in front when one sits down, it should get less creased there than the lap of a seated suit, which fits more closely. Your claim has more crinkles in it than a wad of paper just before it is launched towards the dustbin.
How old is the “allegation” that the drawing represents Macdonald? The product appeared in 1876, Macdonald disappeared in 1903. The “allegation” might well be just a gay jokey-poo post mortem, connecting up “camp” with the accusations (presumably scandalously familiar, in those days as now) against the general. The OED shows “camp” already in 1909, in the sense adumbrated here. I didn’t know it was that old. I vaguely remember Sontag’s article Notes on ‘Camp’ in 1964, read with precocious interest. Reviewing it, I find this, so typical of the good ol’ days when authenticity was an issue:
GS: You haven’t provided a picture of this later version
Good point, but now I have.
GS: Why would a linen kilt be more likely to get creased than a linen suit?
A kilt is a mass of pleats at the back. But as you seem to be, I’m all for the linen kilt.
GS: How old is the “allegation” that the drawing represents Macdonald?
Dunno. I use the word ‘alleged’ in ‘he was being investigated for alleged homosexual relationships ‘, because for Macdonald to have been living as a gay man would have been a capital crime and there was, apparently, no proof that he was or wasn’t.
The interesting thing to me about all this is that Camp is riddled with lying from start to finish: Camp coffee isn’t really coffee, the Sikh ‘colleague’ was a servant but we have to pretend the British Raj didn’t happen, the General who was a brilliant soldier came from a poor background and was therefore despised by his actual colleagues, who (maybe) framed him to get rid of him. Then there’s the fairly strong implication in wiki that it was so unfair that he was driven to suicide, because, a) HE WASN’T EVEN GAY, HE WAS MARRIED, like it all would have been fairer if he had been gay, and, b) he couldn’t have been both gay and married. I think there’s more — oh, there’s the Macdonald wearing the Gordon tartan (traditional Highland enemies) but that’s another, different argument.
I didn’t claim that you used the word “alleged”. What I wrote was “How old is the ‘allegation’ that the drawing represents Macdonald?” That question arose from your Wiki quote: The label is … a drawing of a Scottish soldier (allegedly Major General Sir Hector Macdonald) ….
I have again walked into one of your traps, I see. I’m not partial to the linen kilt. I was just using what I thought was inexorable logic, in order to crush what I thought was an illogical argument on your part. I didn’t know that kilts were pleated at the back, and so would have creases by right.
So much for logic in the absence of all relevant data. There’s a lesson to be learned here, but I’m not sure what it is. Some of the data may be missing.
Nice info, useful for me… thanks a lot… :)
Ah, okay. I did write ‘alleged’, though, as I said. I think I sometimes use words I’ve just seen written down elsewhere.
No, you definitely rely on inexorable logic, whereas I rely on luck.
Comments are helpful for finding the spots where more data is required.
I think the linen kilt has possibilities. I’ll make one right after I’m finished making the mariachi pants.
I can’t make up my mind if this is spam.
First copy all the recipes. Then your conscience will be free to identify the post as spam.
Thanks, Stu. All that philosophy, it’s really worth the effort.
It’s spam–nothing but advertising plus no comments.
Chicory was used here I think during one of the depressions as a cheap way to extend coffee. I don’t think it’s considered to be a gourmet product here.
Linen is impossible. What about raw silk? My Viking outfit is all silk and it’s quite comfortable, although I don’t supposed it would take a crease.
When do we get to see the mariachi shorts?
No. There’s nothing gourmet about Camp, either. Chicory was used in Britain and Germany during the war, I think. I can’t see any similarity and even if there is one, I don’t understand how it could have been first revealed.
I know what I’ll do: I’ll disable its link, like LH does. I hate to remove a comment unnecessarily.
The original drawing (much the better one, not least in its naive complacency about Indian-British relations) shows another object on the ground, just at the bottom of the picture: is it a sword with an extra-large hand guard (I forget the technical name)? it has disappeared in both later versions. The latest picture is hardly believable, both men look self-conscious.
“linen kilt”
Grumbly, if you know how a kilt would look from the front on a sitting person, I can’t believe you don’t know what it looks like from the back or sides. Sitting on a kilt (or a pleated skirt) messes up the back, although wool is resilient and goes back to its shape somewhat, but linen just gets creased, so a linen kilt, with the pleats pressed into shape when new or freshly washed (quite a job for the person ironing it) would look terrible from the back even if the wearer rarely sat (the creases on the kilt would also cause it to ride up). No, a kilt is only conceivable in fairly heavy wool (eg which will not be blown around by the wind). Besides, in the picture the seated Scotsman is in full dress uniform with its accessories as if he were still at home, not dressed in an outfit more suitable to a tropical country such as the linen suit in the picture (but the starched collar does look like it would be uncomfortable in the heat).
The Scotsman’s got two left feet, no wonder he’s self-conscious and flushed.
I was wondering what that other thing was, it looked to me like a crab.
In France chicory (la chicorée), or a mix of coffee and chicory, is used by many people, mixed with milk, as a breakfast drink instead of café au lait which is made with real coffee (and therefore less suitable for children). Nestlé even makes an instant chicory-coffee mix called Ricoré. My father has it at breakfast, along with bread slices spread with butter or jam (the traditional French breakfast at home – croissants is what you get in a restaurant, or on Sundays at home).
I know they are very keen to starch and iron clothing in the tropics, it’s something to do with killing the bugs that would otherwise live there. I expect Sig knows about this.
What do you think about raw-silk kilts, m-l? (What is ‘raw’ silk, anyway?) I don’t think the Gordon tartan pattern ought to be printed, though. It should be woven.
On second thought, it can’t be a sword, perhaps it is some kind of symbol carried in front of the regiment. It looks like it has what might be a small pennant attached to it.
No, I’m sure you were right. The pennant, where they’ve written ‘sole proprietors’, is what the sword dangles from when you wear it.
There’s a photograph of Macdonald’s actual sword here (you have to click on it). It looks like the one in the drawing.
That was not just in the tropics, it was done in Europe too. For one thing, heavy starching would keep linen collars, cuffs and shirt fronts from creasing (but made them very stiff to wear). Linen was used for undergarments (and also sheets and other household “linens”) for centuries because it could be not just washed but boiled, something that would destroy bacteria and bugs. Linen is quite stiff and even scratchy when new, but it loses a little of itself and gets softer with repeated washings. In the old days, old, worn sheets were torn up to make baby clothes – by then they were thin and very soft. Cotton largely replaced linen because it was easier to handle (but less durable), although linen has many advantages too.
Raw silk is a type of shiny silk fabric with irregularities in the thread, which give it its character. It comes in several thicknesses or weights. I would not make a kilt out of raw silk, the fabric is stiff(ened) when new and limp after washing (which is not recommended), and like linen it creases easily, all features which are unsuitable for a pleated garment (where the creases required should be set with heat, not form permanently in the normal course of wearing). It looks best when you can see a fairly large, uninterrupted amount of it, as on a plain jacket or skirt for the heavier types, or a shawl for the lighter ones. Like all silk it takes colour beautifully but also looks very good in its natural light écru colour. Since the thread itself has irregularities which give the fabric its character, raw silk is not usually printed or used for stripes or tartan patterns as the designs would compete with the appearance of the fabric itself.
(Ask Mrs. Crown – she probably knows about it, and about kilts too).
You are right. The picture is even larger under “Weapons of … Hector Macdonald” in the picture gallery below. The drawing is not very good compared to the photograph, which shows the wrist guard (I think that is the term) clearly and also the actual shape of the sheath.
The “small pennant” I means is not the thing saying “sole proprietors” (which is not attached to the sword), it looks like a small limp thing attached to the sword, on the very left.
marie-lucie: What do I know about pleated thighwear? My original claim was merely that sitting on a linen kilt (the idea was Jeremy’s) would create the same amount of creasing as sitting on a linen suit, or sitting on a linen anything.
My argument was directed against his claim that “Ideal for a hot climate would have been a kilt made from linen; the thought must have crossed his mind, though such a garment would have got very creased.” I countered that “linen is linen” and “crease is crease whether in kilt or suit” . But a kilt would have been creased already just from being manufactured, since kilts have creases. I didn’t know that, so my argument doesn’t formally hold.
A linen kilt is still a crazy idea, of course.
m-l, your comments are an education.
I expect Sig knows about this.
Correct. Every morning my boy starches my white shirts. (I wear only white linen shirts, being copied in that respect by my friend Lek from Thailand. But he never wears the kilt I sometimes wear, in the memory of my (Neo) Caledonian grandfather.)
We call the startch cange, a word with an origin still unknown to me. A rice with a lot of starch would be called en cange, which means that’s it’s good for the dogs only. As members of the aristocracy we cannot eat du riz cangé. But we can wear a shirt made of mundane toile écrue when we go on pilgrimage to the sacred lake in the jungle.
You see?
Maybe the goats would starch my shirts.
Kilts are not “creased”, they are “pleated”. A pair of pants has just two creases (front an back) on each leg, a pleated garment has multiple parallel creases. The creases in question are deliberate and regular and made durable by exposure to heat (with an iron). “Creases” produced accidentally by other means (such as sitting or even leaning back for a long time in a padded chair, especially on a hot day) are unwanted and definitely detract from the appearance of the garment. So a kilt does not have “creases” in the sides and back, but “pleats”. Sitting on pleats (as when wearing a pleated skit) either flattens the pleats out or introduces more creases, but in the wrong direction. Only a good quality wool fabric will lose its creases and/or go back to its pleats.
Producing pleats while making the garment (by “basting” = loosely sewing the pleats down and later pressing the pleats into place) is not too difficult (even though time-consuming), but reproducing the pleats correctly after they have been washed out of the garment, or the fabric has been flattened by sitting, is more difficult and even more time-consuming. A linen kilt on a live, moving person (rather than on a store mannequin) would become badly creased and look terrible in a very short time, especially in the back as I said earlier, and the amount of care required to keep such a garment looking presentable would take an inordinate amount of time.
Thank you, LH. It is not something that many men would know about unless they were in the tailoring business, but most women knew about such things at one time, before most clothing production became industrialized.
I see I used the wrong punctuation above: about “basting” it should be:
(= loosely sewing the pleats down) and later pressing the pleats into place …
Pressing is a very different operation from the very loose sewing that is “basting” (français bâtir), normally used for keeping garment pieces into place before the final sewing, in order to be able to adjust the garment if necessary before the final assembly.
You wouldn’t want the whole shirt to be starched unless you planned to just stand there like a statue.
I always had a starched white shirt for school every day when I was young, my mother did it (she had a full-time job too). Everything was starched, I especially remember the table napkins. I know there was some discussion, perhaps with my grandmother, that starching ought not to be necessary with the underwear.
Yes, we made all our own clothes at one time, with the exception of men’s suits. Now you can buy an entire outfit made in Asia for less than the materials would cost, not to mention spending an entire weekend sewing something.
We didn’t do much basting though, we did “pin-basting”. You attach the pleats to the ironing board with straight pins stuck right into the thick lining of the ironing board cover. It’s much faster.
“pilgrimage to the sacred lake in the jungle”?
What is this pilgrimage of which you speak?
Jordanians are crazy about ironing. They polish their shoes constantly too–that’s something they pick up in the military.
Christ, what a bunch of typing errors in my last post. Jeremy, would you please delete that one, leaving this one:
The way marie-lucie hones the cutting-edges of words is in the spirit of Gilbert Ryle. The Concept of Mind was the first book of philosophy I ever read, I think, around the age of 15 or 16. I was fascinated by the convincing, precise analyses he did of concepts and expressions, and the useful idea of “category error”. It sharpened up my sense of language something fierce. The “ghost in the machine” was just a pretext for conceptual analysis, as far as I was concerned.
Later, I read criticms of Ryle as being a “behaviorist”. What a bunch of crap! And if it were true, who cares! I remember the book ends with something like this: “In case of doubt, ignore all this and pay attention to how novelists, poets and historians work”.
<* spooky music *>
Remember that HAL in 2001 is obtained by subtracting 1 from each letter of IBM? I just discovered that g-r, the initials of Gilbert Ryle, are obtained from m-l by substracting 6 from m, and adding 6 to l.
You wouldn’t want the whole shirt to be starched unless you planned to just stand there like a statue.
That’s what everybody must have said to khun L., but he is completely rigid on this point.
Well, Grumbly, after this introduction I don’t know if I should read Gilbert Ryle or not. Do you really think he would be a kindred spirit?
Interesting coincidence about the number 6, like the one I observed the other day on LH: for a brief moment all the numbers ended in 6, and there was even a 66.
When I first crossed the Atlantic (in the 60’s) I was astonished that women actually used starch for ironing (a very weak solution I suppose, much less strong than for the starched collars, etc of my great-grandfathers’ generation). Starched underwear! in the 20th century! I had never heard of such a thing until today.
We had a similar discussion over ironing sheets. (Dad’s white cotton shirts for work always got ironed.) Polyester blends changed all of that.
Wouldn’t it be really interesting if m-l had a blog???? I don’t think it will happen though, because of time constraints, but just think what even a one page collection of links might look like.
I suspect that cange is related to congee, of Dravidian origin.
Wikipedia: “The Scottish basket-hilt sword is often distinguished from others by the velvet liner inside the basket (often in red), and also sometimes by additional decorative tassels on the hilt or pommel.”
In France you can still buy linen sheets, or a blend of linen and cotton called “metis” (same word as for mixed-race people). The trouble with linene sheets is that they must be ironed, pressing hard with the hottest setting of the iron, and it takes forever, so I don’t use the heirloom linen sheets my mother gave me (she thought I could cut them up for other uses, but I don’t like to do that with such “museum pieces”). I don’t iron sheets, period. But cotton shirts, of any colour, yes.
I have no plans to have a blog of my own. I enjoy responding to other people’s blogs much more. Thank you all for putting such interesting stuff on your blogs.
I’ll have to remember this method, thank you!
MMcM, you are a precious man indeed. I never suspected that Dravidia might get in our rice as well, but here it is, and it’s been there for centuries. Where is John Emerson to rejoyce with me?
Take a look! It should be in any university library. I bought it off a paperback stand in an El Paso drugstore in the 60’s. Here are some extracts from Daniel Dennett’s 2002 Reintroducing the Concept of Mind.
A google of “languagehat” and “marie-lucie”, then selecting “show all results”, turns up more than 900 hits. And that’s just @H@. marie-lucie, you’ve written enough already to collate into a small book. Because your contributions are always concise and easy to understand, a title along the lines of “… for Dummies” is conceivable. But that kind of schematic title is pretty lame by now. From the effect your pieces have had on me, I would suggest “Elements of Historical Linguistics for Know-it-Alls”. But that’s not the spirit of marie-lucie. Maybe just “How Historical Linguistics Works”.
Funny that it is particularly Scottish. I have just bought “The Invention of Tradition” by Hobsbawm and others. I’m hoping for an explanation about this sort of thing (and kilts and tartans, of course).
Arabs, Indians and Italians all do it — it looks very nice, of course.
Now that I’ve deleted your comment I’m forced to add one of my own so I don’t deplete my total.
Do you do this to everyone’s initials? Can’t do much with ‘Nijma’, but you ought to be able to have a field day with ‘MMcM’, with its sub-c. What comes from GS ? (I always read it as ‘golden section’).
My mother irons her sheets, but I think she gave up starching them. It’s a lovely feeling, getting into a bed like that, though. VERY interesting about the French linen sheets, m-l.
Who is khun L, McSig?
I have no plans to have a blog of my own.
Neither did I.
Nah, I don’t do numerology. I was casting about for some way to josh her into looking at the book. She is not a fan of philosophy, I believe, and my recent quote from Morin may have put her hackles up as to what I might be trying to foist on her. I noticed that m, l, g and r are not far away from each other, then thought of HAL. The rest was just counting letter distances, and luck.
It’s category mistake, by the way, not category error.
That’s a very nice quotation about Gilbert Ryle. I’m glad to see you finally made it to El Paso.
I suspect he is none other than “my friend Lek from Thailand.” (Khun.)
Thanks for the link, Language.
Not that it matters, but plenty of gay men were, are and will be married – to women.
Poor blokes.
Yes Khun Arthur, that was him, sorry. (Khun is used for both men and women.)
Poor “blokes??!!1! What about the women?
I have no plans to have a blog of my own. I enjoy responding to other people’s blogs much more.
You wouldn’t have to stop responding to other people’s blogs. In fact, you can disable comments entirely, or have a blog that is nothing but links, like Stuart:
http://maxqnzs.com/References.html
A blog can be used more or less like a business card to say who you are when you are blogging somewhere else, although I can’t think of anyone who needs that less.
I like that Sig has a blog now, even if it’s in French, because when I first started commenting at LH, I didn’t know quite how to take him, probably because of the language barrier. Even if I can’t read all the blog, I can see where he lives and how curious he is about all things, including language.
GS, you are right that I am not much into philosophy, but the description by DD looks quite interesting. It sounds like GR is somewhat off the beaten track, something I like. I’ll see what I can do.
Reading this I feel my cheeks get hot! I didn’t realize I had written so much. It would take me for ever to reread it all. But unlike most of you I am not working full-time, so I have a fair amount of leisure in which to reply to all of your interesting comments.
Watch out! The UK courts seem to have ruled bloggers have no right to anonymity…terrifying:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jun/16/nightjack-blogger-horton
(Not that anyone here would blog in any less than impeccable way; but all should be entitled to blow whistles as well as horns with impunity should the need arise.)
Thank goodness the goats aren’t in England. Their horns are safe for a while. DV
Who’s DV?
Nijma, you flatter me by calling my list of links a blog. I lack both the wit and the skill to write anything of consequence about anything of consequence and so keep shtum. The list simply reflects my pieriansipist’s parasitism, the delight I get from reading what others write on subjects of interest to me. The idea of writing an actual blog is well beyond me – even the occasional 140 character update on Tiwtter stretches my neuron to its limits.
Stuart, don’t demean yourself like that. You have plenty of wit and skill, even if you prefer to be laconic. But can you define pieriansipist? (and give some inkling of the pronunciation, such as where the stress is?)
marie-lucie, pieriansipist is my coinage. This is Crown’s blog and so stealing focus seems like lazy majesty, hence I would suggest clicking the “proud pieriansipist” link on my list. :)
It is very late, here; and I am likely making no sense. But I always imagined that website (despite my conflation of “Stu”s – I have had their visual identities separate – just not clearly with their…”tag”s’) had some pan-galactic relation with Pierson’s Puppeteers, who know everything (as far as I can tell). I thought that Stuart’s blog just allowed us to embark on a search for whichever kind of information we might have been seeking…Unlimited.
Jo no sé quasi res de DV. DVDs a tope.
So what, if it suits you.
I found it rather interesting, and I even followed some of the links, although I found the subjects to be rather formidable.
This one is not hardly as neat:
http://teachernotebook.wordpress.com/resources/