TRANSGRESSIONS

posted by James Reel

    So I’m sitting here playing a recording of the Symphonic Scherzo by Arnold Bax, and the Infamous Bax Quote comes to mind: "You should make a point of trying every experience once, excepting incest and folk dancing." I wanted to check the precise wording, so I Googled “incest and folk dancing.” Many of the hits Google returned attributed the quote not to Bax but to Sir Thomas Beecham, and one even credited Oscar Wilde with the remark. Well, it certainly sounds like something Beecham or Wilde would have said, and that makes it far too easy to credit them with the quip without looking it up. (I suspect Beecham never actually uttered many of the witticisms for which he is known; they merely accreted to his reputation over the years. As Yogi Berra reputedly remarked, “I didn't really say everything I said.”)
    I first heard the quote attributed to Bax by one of my professors in library school around 1980, in a class on fine-arts reference materials. Somehow, I’m more inclined to trust the authority of my old library professor than the preponderance of opinion on the Internet. Call me old-fashioned.
    (For the record, in his 1943 book Farewell My Youth, Bax himself attributed the incest quote to “A sympathetic Scot,” which may be a fabrication, may allude to a Bax acquaintance, or may suggest that it’s some folkish proverb. Perhaps someday I’ll pursue this … in the library.)