Send Me A Kiss by Wire

[Editor’s Note: Few remember now that the initial telegraph message, sent by Samuel Morse in 1844 from Baltimore to Washington ushered in a revolution in communication almost unparalleled since the invention of language itself. Just 14 years after Morse transmitted the unforgettable phrase “What Hath God Wrought?”, it was possible for the late lamented Queen Victoria to send a cable to the long forgotten President Madison in a mere fourteen hours.

Like the telephone and Internet which followed in the next century, the telegraph opened up many avenues and possibilities for communication, limited only by the imagination and pocketbook of the users. Originally, there were no limits on the content of communications, and the railway companies (who controlled the telegraph) trusted to the good manners of the paying public. The London and Northwestern Railway Regulation #23, for example, stated in 1910 that “no message is to be refused”, while also noting that “irregular” messages should be copied to the Superintendent of the line. In the article that follows, the writer claims evidence that the telegraph was put to a very imaginative use as early as 1919, in a manner prescient of later telephone and Internet use, and long before the age of credit cards.]

On February 10, 1954, a small explosion was heard in in the Winery Hill area of London. Those first on the scene found a small shack, smouldering in ruins and the less than well preserved body of Lickstamp O’Baybee breathing its last. Before expiring, O’Baybee was understood to mutter “Damn Flannigan!”, his face contorted in rage and agony.

O’Baybee was a native of London whose sole distinctions were a stint in London’s telegraph office before World War Two, his extensive collection of sixteen millimetre european art films, an arrest in 1947 for assaulting a visiting Nordic ski team, and his invention of the night vision telescope.

While the London Fire Marshall first suspected a build up of naturally occuring swamp gas in the cellar of O’Baybee’s rundown bungalow, a keen-eyed coroner, examining the victim’s medical records, noted that old Lickstamp had been both a heavy smoker and the victim of an almost unprecedented case of chronic flatulence. The coroner concluded that “the wretch O’Baybee” had been attempting to withhold his gaseous emissions with the assistance of a “appliance of unknown origin”. After some initial success, the device had failed at the very moment Lickstamp was lighting his pipe.

After two days of front page headlines, London soon forgot about the death of Lickstamp O’Baybee. In the months after the explosion, small boys were attracted to the scene of the disaster, now simply a blackened and somewhat smelly pile of sticks on the edge of a black and somewhat smelly creek. Those boys would laugh and cavort throughout the ruins, pretending to be O’Baybee, pretending to light pipes, and pretending to explode. On one such day in early 1958, one of the boys fell through a charred floorboard and came to rest in the cellar of the house. There, he found a number of unusual and dusty objects which he took home to his parents. The London Weekly Journal of Protestant Disapproval described the incident thus.

An Irish boy from an Irish family living in the Irish part of this city has uncovered a number of objects from a house once owned by a disgraced Irish Telegraph Operator of this city.The police have confiscated the items and censured the Irish children and their Irish parents for this act of trespassing. Police have declined to comment on the objects, stating that “they are for personal use only and strictly intended as novelties.”

Rumours abounded that the articles confiscated by the police included a stack of mysterious papers. Some said they were bank notes and implied the police had kept the money for themselves. Others said they were the beginnings of a novel or, worse, an Irish novel. Still others said they were moistened towelettes, and looked discreetly away as they said it. However, in his 1993 autobiography, published just two months before his death, the then London chief of police Gnut Sackem revealed that the bulk of the “O’Baybee Papers” were innocuous art and photography magazines. But he noted that they had included a schedule for showings of O’Baybee’s european art films, which he projected against the side of his shack in the wee hours of London summer nights. While this was shocking enough, the real scandal lay in O’Baybee’s carefully kept guest lists from these occasions, as well his lurid accounts of the interactions he observed on those nights. Chief Sackem revealed that the guest lists included the names of some of London’s most respected men and women, intermingled with names heard only in the lusty yells of showbar DJs. “In the interest of peace, order and good government” said the Chief cryptically, “we burned the guest lists - once we had used them for the benefit of the Policeman’s Benevolent Pension Fund.” Thus, history will never know who was there or what occurred.

However, archivists in the sprawling London Police Hall of Records have unearthed one small part of the documents found in O’Baybee’s basement that day. They are telegram carbons, dating from the period just after the Great War, which documented a long and torrid correspondence between an unknown person living in London and the famous writer of Speculative Fiction, Emily Chesley. While neither used their true names in their telegrams, the pseudonym chosen by Chesley - “Felicia Hornblower” – was easily deciphered by scholars of the Emily Chesley Reading Circle, who noticed photocopies of the the documents while rummaging in the archives’ dumpster.[1] The true name of Emily’s correspondent remains a mystery, however, as that person went invariably by the presumed pseudonym “Longboat Oorsman”.

While many of the telegram carbons are smudged, and some appear to be strangely stained, there is little doubt that O’Baybee had secretly tracked this correspondence during his years as a telegraph operator in London. Through much painstaking work, dumpster diving and yeasty inspiration, the Scholars of the Chesley Circle have pieced together the main thrust of the telegram exchange between HornBlower and Oorsmen, spanning the period from March 1919 until Christmas that year. While the full extent or length of the telegram exchange may never be known, the Circle’s reconstruction – presented below - reflects some dim light onto the dank and unseemly underbelly of international electronic communication. Some have noted that Chesley, as was so often the case, showed an uncanny prescience about the potential of the new medium.

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March 10, 1919

From Longboat Oorsman, London Ontario

To: Felicia Hornblower Pondicherry, India

CANNOT FORGET YOU STOP FUNICULAR INCIDENT IS BURNED IN MIND STOP ARE YOU SIMILARLY INCLINED STOP

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March 25, 1919

Pondicherry, India

From Felicia Hornblower

To: Longboat Oorsman, London Ontario

EATING MUCH CURRY ANDAM IN SUB CONTINENT STOP SEE YOUR FINE FEATURES IN DREAMS BUT CANNOT MAKE OUT FACE STOP VERY DAMP HERE STOP

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March 10, 1919

London Ontario

From Longboat Oorsman,

To: Felicia Hornblower Pondicherry, India

WHEN WILL YOU RETURN STOP MISS YOUR ANTIES[2] STOP

==============

April 20, 1919

At Sea

From Felicia Hornblower

To: Longboat Oorsman, London Ontario

EARNING PASSAGE AS CAPTAINS MATE STOP MANY ABLE SEAMAN STOP SOME SPECTACULAR STOP

==============

June 5, 1919

London Ontario

From Longboat Oorsman

To: Felicia Hornblower, At Sea

MISS YOU STOP WHAT WEARING STOP

==============

June 10, 1919

Winnipeg

From Felicia Hornblower

To: Longboat Oorsman, London Ontario

YOUR FAVOURITE STOP NOTHING ELSE STOP ANDYOU STOP

June 20, 1919

London Ontario

From Longboat Oorsman

To: Felicia Hornblower,

EMBRACE YOU IN FIRM MANNER STOP LOINS BURN BURN BURN STOP

==============

June 29, 1919

Kenora

From Felicia Hornblower

To: Longboat Oorsman, London Ontario

SWOON IN YOUR ARMS STOP SURRENDER TO MERCY STOP BE GENTLE STOP

==============

July 1, 1919

London Ontario

From Longboat Oorsman

To: Felicia Hornblower,

EMERGENCY OPERATION FOR PILES STOP WILL WRITE AGAIN STOP

==============

July 10, 1919

London Ontario

From Longboat Oorsman

To: Felicia Hornblower

OPERATION SUCCESS STOP LAY YOU DOWN IN LONG GRASS STOP BEG PERMISSION TO DO MY STUFF STOP

==============

July 15, 1919

Wawa

From Felicia Hornblower

To: Longboat Oorsman, London Ontario

MAKE IT SO STOP ARRIVE LONDON SOON STOP DO NOT STOP STOP STOP NOT STOP

[Editors Note: a gap of four months exists in the telegram exchange, which corresponds roughly to Emily’s time in London Ontario in the late summer of 1919. In October, she departed once more for England and the cables begin anew.]

==============

November 19, 1919

Kneeling-Down-On-Sea, UK

From: Felicia Hornblower,

To: Longboat Oorsman

LONDON LAY BY HAUNTS MEMORY STOP OVER TOO SOON STOP YOU ARE MY ANGEL AND SAVIOUR STOP AN ADONIS IN YOUR PHOTO STOP I KEEP YOUR MAGNIFICENT SPECIMEN WITH ME ALWAYS STOP HOPE PILES ARE IMPROVED STOP

==============

December 1, 1919

London Ontario

From Longboat Oorsman

To: Felicia Hornblower

LONG TO KISS NAPE AND FONDLE THIGH STOP FEVERISH WITH THOUGHTS OF YOU STOP NO RELIEF FOR DESIRE EVEN FROM UNCLES APPARATUS STOP MUST MUST MUST HAVE YOU STOP PILES MUCH IMPROVED AND SITTING ONCE MORE STOP SHALL I SEND MONEY FOR CABLES STOP

==============

November 19, 1919

Kneeling-Down-On-Sea, UK

From: Felicia Hornblower,

To: Longboat Oorsman

AM REMOVING YOUR BRITCHES AND WHISPERING IN EAR STOP WEARING FAVOURITE PERFUME STOP ACHING FOR YOU STOP NO NEED FOR MONEY STOP TELEGRAM OFFICE ACCEPTS PAYMENT IN KIND STOP DEPART FOR IRISH CAPITAL TOMORROW STOP DUBLIN MY PLEASURE DUBLIN MY FUN STOP

==============

December 25, 1919

London Ontario

From Longboat Oorsman

To: Felicia Hornblower

DESIRES WITHOUT END STOP FEVERED DREAMS STOP NO RELIEF IN LONDON STOP ARDOR EVIDENT AT EVERY DOWNWARD GLANCE STOP LONDONS CHRISTMAS BALLS WILL NEVER BE SAME STOP ANTICIPATE BLUE BLUE BLUE CHRISTMAS WITHOUT YOU STOP

[END]

Notes:

This is sadly the Circle’s only access to the archives since the unfortunate “Corset Boning Incident” of ‘97. [back]

There fractious disagreement among Chesley scholars about the meaning of this garbled word. Some see a reference to the sisters of Michael Flannigan, the aunts of Emily. Others have offered less seemly suggestions. [back]

--"Scholarship" by Just Quisling

The second-most-favourite instrument of Lickstamp O'Baybee, circa 1919.

 

The only existing photo of Lickstamp O'Baybee, taken shortly after his disasterous attempt to perform brain surgery on himself.