Meaning of ‘Jewsbury, Miss, cheats time with stuffed owl’

Question

The passage below is from A History of the Index by Dennis Duncan.

Given this formal similarity between the economical index entry and the perfectly honed bon mot, it was only a matter of time before literary wags discovered the index as a convenient vehicle for their wit. Whether it’s the mock-serious paraphrase of bad poetry (‘Jewsbury, Miss, cheats time with stuffed owl, 151’), the razor-sharp skewering of a disgraced politician (‘Aitken, Jonathan: admires risk-takers, 59; goes to jail, 60’), or the caustic take-down of one’s colleagues (‘Peterhouse [College]: high-table conversation not very agreeable, 46; main source of perverts, 113’), the index presents a perfectly sized nook for the deployment of discreet snark.

I want to ask a few questions on the underlined passage, ‘Jewsbury, Miss, cheats time with stuffed owl’.

‘Jewsbury’ is the name of a woman. (Am I right?)

‘Miss’ indicates that she is an unmarried woman. (Am I right?)

‘Cheats time’ is said to mean ‘to hide one’s age’ according to a dictionary I looked up. (Am I right?)

‘Stuffed owl’ is a toy owl made from cloth and filled with a soft material. (Am I right?)

Even if I’m right about all of the above questions, I still don’t grasp what this passage is trying to say. How an unmarried woman named Jewsbury can cheat time with toy owl?

Thanks in advance.

Anonymous · Accepted Answer

Stenka25‘Jewsbury’ is the name of a woman. (Am I right?)

Yes. She is a character in a modern novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit.

Stenka25‘Miss’ indicates that she is an unmarried woman. (Am I right?)

Yes. That is how she is referred to, Miss Jewsbury.

Stenka25‘Cheats time’ is said to mean ‘to hide one’s age’ according to a dictionary I looked up. (Am I right?)

Yes, but that is not what we're seeing. It is a reference to a famously bad line from the poem "While Anna's Peers And Early Playmates Tread", by Wordsworth, "'The presence even of a stuffed owl for her can cheat the time." In the poem, little Anna can't sleep, and she "cheats the time" (note the "the"), that is, passes the time lying awake, with imaginings inspired by the stuffed owl in her room. This "cheat" is a poetical conceit, not normal English.

Further, it refers to a book whose title is derived from that same poem, Wyndham Lewis's The Stuffed Owl: an anthology of bad verse, 1930.

I have also heard "stuffed owl" used to refer to a stodgy person.

Stenka25‘Stuffed owl’ is a toy owl made from cloth and filled with a soft material. (Am I right?)

Can't say. I took it to mean an actual product of taxidermy on a shelf, but your version makes better sense, now that you mention it.

Stenka25I still don’t grasp what this passage is trying to say.

Me, neither. Until we can read page 151 in whatever book that index is from, we can't know. Luckily, it doesn't matter, and Duncan knows that. All he wants is an example of an adroit erudite poetical reference in an index entry, the more obscure the better.

Meaning of ‘Jewsbury, Miss, cheats time with stuffed owl’

Top answer

Get the Weekly English Kit 📬

Related Questions