Boasting was a sport of essayist and critic Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946) who enjoyed a good 'vaunting and humiliation'.
The minutes of the Chelsea Boasting Party, held at St. Leonard's Terrace, March 8th, 1934 recorded twenty-eight boasts by six of Smith's guests, published in 2004 as a slim notebook.
Mr R.G.H. boasted he had given ring-worm to the present Archbishop of Canterbury, and that his mother was the adopted daughter of the Queen of the Cook Islands, and had an orchid named after her. Miss R.M. boasted she once swallowed 59 cherry-stones one after another.
But it was Mrs A.W. (later revealed to be writer Antonia White), who eclipsed them all with her winning boasts, including, 'Although the mother of two daughters, she had a certificate of her virginity signed by Pope Pius XI, for which she paid £80'.
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