The Sacred Cause of Idiom 
Frank Kermode
The possession and use of a toothbrush was a mark of the difference between us and them, gentry and peasant, or so Lady Gregory suggested when she made the remark – jocular, perhaps, and not the sort of sally she would have chosen to be remembered by. Colm Tóibín makes more than one allusion to it in this essay, gently hinting that his sympathies are with the toothbrushless, though there is no place for anger in his elegant little study of the great lady.
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Frank Kermode’s books include The Sense of an Ending and The Uses of Error.
Other articles by this contributor:
At Tate Britain · William Blake
Nothing for Ever and Ever · Housman’s Pleasures
Our Muddy Vesture · Frank Kermode watches Pacino’s Merchant of Venice
Writing about Shakespeare · Frank Kermode has his say
First Pitch · Marianne Moore
Retripotent · B. S. Johnson
Maximum Assistance from Good Cooking, Good Clothes, Good Drink · Auden’s Shakespeare
Complicated Detours · Darwin’s Worms by Adam Phillips
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