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Gribble, gribble, the pier was a mess

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We've just been down to the Isle of Wight for a few days. The first day was rather 'stay near the tea shop' weather, but we went to Yarmouth and saw its Gribble sculpture. This was installed by the public art firm Eccleston George as part of the project to renovate the wooden Yarmouth Pier, which had suffered damaged by the teredo worm (not actually a worm, but a bivalve mollusc) and gribbles (wood-boring marine isopods of the family Limnoriidae).

There doesn't seem to be any sure etymology for "gribble". The Oxford English Dictionary says "Of obscure origin: ? cognate with grub v." and has a first citation to 1838. As is often the case, it's not hard to pre-date this; the earliest I can find online is 1793:
The Mast Pond is infested by Gribble Worms, whereby the Masts are greatly reduced in their Diameters in a short Time, which there are no other Means yet discovered to prevent ...
- Great Britain. Commissioners Appointed to Inquire into the Fees, Gratuities, Perquisites, and Emoluments, Which Are or Have Been Lately Received in the Several Public Offices, 1793
There are various descriptions in 19th century accounts, often intermingled with folksy philosophy about the gribble's role in Nature. These two books are both readable in general:
The destructive Teredo, like the lion, has his jackal—the Limnoria terebrans, or gribble worm. Woodwork in most situations, as posts in harbors, and piles of wooden bridges, must be protected by copper sheathing or square-headed nails made for the purpose. The gribble finds some little space, bores in and destroys the wood around. The Teredo then finds an entry, and destruction follows. The wooden bridge over the estuary of the Teign was destroyed some years ago. Other similar works, and particularly projecting landing piers, have been either eaten away or jeopardised.
- The Gribble Worm, pages 259-260, Curiosities of Natural History, Francis T Buckland, 1860

This is not the only wood-boring crustacean with which our coasts are pestered; for the Gribble (Limnoria tenebrans) makes deeper tunnels than the preceding creature, though it is not so rapidly destructive, owing to the direction of its burrows, which are driven straight into the wood, and do not cause it to flake off so quickly as is the case when the Chelura excavates it . Still, it works very great harm to the submerged timber, boring to a depth of two inches, and nearly always tunneling in a straight line, unless forced to deviate by a nail, a knot, or similar obstacle. The Gribble is a very tiny creature, hardly larger than a grain of rice, and yet, by dint of swarming numbers, it is able to consume the wooden piles on which certain piers and jetties are supported; and in the short space of three years these destructive crustacea have been known to eat away a thick fir plank, and to reduce it to a mere honey-comb. Sometimes these two wood-boring shrimps attack the same piece of wood, and, in such cases, the mischief which they perpetrate is almost incredible, considering their small dimensions and the nature of the substance into which they bore.
- pages 113-114, Homes Without Hands: Being a Description of the Habitations of Animals, Classed to Their Principle of Construction, John George Wood, 1866



- Ray

Chalybeate

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It's rather neat that when you know a location intimately, even by historical records, small details acquire significance. such as a stream of grubby water in the gutter.

Clare and I pottered around Shanklin on Thursday (more on this later) and spotted this rusty water running down the the gutter of the road by the side of the Spa Car Park: the one leading from the Esplanade to the Lift that goes to the clifftop.

Judging by location ...
The Shanklin Spa Baths will in their surroundings compare favourably with others; would even surpass some which have great reputations. The situation is admirable, from the visitor's point of view, in the very centre of the Esplanade adjoining the Royal Spa Hotel, close to the Pier and adjacent to the Lift. It must therefore be said to be the most "natural" place for such a Natural Spring. The bather can enjoy his freshening lounge on the sand, or his promenade on the pier, and then comfortably take his bath ; the patient living in the town can descend the lift, walk a few yards, and enter the Spa Baths.
...
The water from the spring flows from an aperture at the base of the cliff immediately behind the baths and the Royal Spa Hotel.
- pages 66 / 72, Shanklin Spa: A Guide to the Town and the Isle of Wight (1903)
... this water is from the chalybeate (iron-rich) spring that served the Spa in Shanklin in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (the one connected to the Royal Spa Hotel and Shanklin Spa Bath adjacent to this location). The historical continuity is pretty neat. But you'd think that Shanklin Town Council would organise a permanent drain for this copious ferruginous outflow - that Lift visitors not au fait with the history might assume to be sewage or chemical spill - rather than letting it dribble down the gutter.

It'd be interesting to see the source; according to Shanklin Spa: A Guide to the Town and the Isle of Wight, the water comes out of the spring clear, with the iron in solution as iron bicarbonate; it only deposits the rusty sediment on exposure to the air.

See Shanklin Spa ... for fuller details.



- Ray

Locked in the bastion

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I had a short wander around Gosport town centre on Tuesday, including a visit to the Number 1 Bastion (also called, locally, Trinity Bastion or Vicar's Bank), part of Gosport's fortifications remaining from the days when the town and its associated military installations served a major role in the infrastructure of Portsmouth Harbour as a naval base.

The site is only five minutes' walk from the Gosport Ferry. The information board says:
The initial phase of the construction of No. 1 Bastion dates back to the 1600s and the reign of Charles II, it was built as a defensive earthwork designed by his engineer Sir Bernard de Gomme.

The earthworks were restored almost a hundred years later in 1757 and were further fortified when there was a threat of invasion by Napoleonic France from 1797 to 1830G [sic].

At this time the brickwork was constructed with cheap labour provided by prisoners of war, it is the fortification that can be seen today.
It's interesting to look at late-1800s maps, which are very coy about the location; presumably at the time it was still of strategic importance, given the later Palmerston-era invasion fears. The 1875 town plans, for instance, just show the bastion as a circular park.

Historic map data is (© and database right Crown copyright
and Landmark Information Group Ltd. (All rights reserved
2009). Low-resolution image reproduced for small-scale non-profit
use under the terms described in the Old Maps FAQ.


It's much clearer on the 1938 map:

Historic map data is (© and database right Crown copyright
and Landmark Information Group Ltd. (All rights reserved
2009). Low-resolution image reproduced for small-scale non-profit
use under the terms described in the Old Maps FAQ.
In my early teens, my family lived in Seaward Tower, the adjacent block of flats, and I sometimes explored the woods around the rim of the bastion, which wasn't open to the public. In those days, it was heavily overgrown, and you'd occasionally stumble over the gun pivots among the ivy. It's now been cleared and grassed as a heritage site, revealing the full scope of the gun emplacements and the associated magazines inside the bastion.











By the way, don't do what I did. Firstly, it being a rainy day, the bank was so wet and slippery that I had trouble getting up it, so I eventually struggled up the very end by clinging on to vegetation and the chain link fence. Only afterward did I spot that there are steps to the bastion top (admittedly hidden by trees from the Haslar Road gate, so I didn't see them when approaching via Haslar Road).

Secondly, I completely forgot it was off-season, and that until April, the gates are locked at 4pm. After exploring and taking a few photos, I came back to the road entrance and found it padlocked. The sign gives a phone number to ring, but that would have been embarrassing and taken time (Clare was waiting for me in the Spinnaker Tower cafe). But fortunately the tide was out, so I was able to jump down to the shore of the moat, bypass the anti-climb spikes, and climb up the other side.

Addendum:  If you're local to Gosport, this may be of interest. There's a group - Friends of the Ramparts - which "aims to work with other local groups, Holy Trinity Church, The Gosport Society and Gosport Council to get the most of the Ramparts and the park, in whatever way is best for the local community and all users of the Ramparts". See Friends of the Ramparts.



- Ray

Newport: research visit and Little London

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On Wednesday I went to the Isle of Wight Record Office, partly to deposit a copy of A Wren-like Note, partly to check out a few topographical oddments for ongoing articles. I was particularly interested to locate an image of Bonchurch I'd seen referenced to the 1864 The History and Topography of the Isle of Wight, by WH Davenport Adams. As I've mentioned - see Brannon on Bonchurch and ... in the Isle of Wight #1 - Bonchurch was the scene of an 1840s boom that transformed wooded landslip into a landscape of up-market villas.

The underlying terrain is hard to see nowadays, with the extensive tree cover ...

Bonchurch, looking NW from Hadfield's Lookout


... but The History and Topography of the Isle of Wight has a very nice image giving a clear view of the newly-developed Bonchurch. It's reproduced from the 1856 print Bonchurch. Ventnor in the Distance, by William Leighton Leitch, engraved by J Godfrey.

Bonchurch. Ventnor in the Distance - click to enlarge


You can just see Pulpit Rock, with its summit cross, on the clifftop.

Bonchurch. Ventnor in the Distance - (detail) click to enlarge

A spin-off book by Adams, the 1884 The Isle of Wight : its history, topography and antiquities (subtitled A Hand-Book specially adapted to the Wants of Tourists & Excursionists) is available online: Internet Archive ID isleofwightitshi00adam. It's of interest for the text and maps, though its eight views, despite the novelty of being "printed in Tints", are not as artistically accomplished as those in the 1864 book.

Landslip - East End - The Isle of Wight : its history, topography and antiquities


The walk to the Record Office from Newport town centre is quite pleasant, passing the top end of the quay. Despite the traffic overpass, it's a pleasant corner of Newport, the old warehouses largely sympathetically adapted to modern residential and commercial use. The district is called Little London; see the detailed 2012 Heritage Report by David Booth.



Sir Barrington Simeon, Bart. memorial drinking fountain





I hope this remarkable building is preserved, for whatever use; as mentioned in the Heritage Report, this is the former Newport Electric Light Works, later a paint workshop, and now derelict. I only had a peek through the fence, but the urban exploration forum 28DL has more photos, including inside: see Admiral's Yard, Former electric works - Newport, Isle of Wight. Apparently a conversion is in the pipeline: the site for Anders Roberts Cheer Architects has concept sketches (see Little London, Newport, Isle of Wight) and says planning has been approved. But a January 2014 Isle of Wight Council report, Heritage Assets at Risk in the Medina Valley, says that it's still at risk, and that "a solution has been agreed (through a planning permission), but no works have commenced".




EW Haslehust's painting of Newport's highly industrialised quay, early 1900s, from Our Beautiful Homeland - Canterbury: Winchester: Isle of Wight : Swanage (see previously).

- Ray

Wild at Heart

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A repost of a story, Wild at Heart, that might be of interest; a few years back this was a non-winning entry to the Kenneth Grahame Society's Wind in the Willows short story competition, whose brief was to write a prequel, sequel or countertext to The Wind in the Willows. I'm reposting because I find I posted it to a hosted file, then cleverly changed the server configuration so that the file was inaccessible.

Right: spoof cover for The Wind in the Willows inspired by a Slate magazine piece on lurid covers for classics.

This came to mind because Clare finally bought the competition anthology, The Wind in the Willows Short Stories. Both of us went in for the competition, and didn't get anywhere, not even longlisted. Both of us were unaccountably irritated, largely because we're very familiar with the original, and our submissions seemed well within the competition brief. However, looking at the extensive Afterword (The Plausibility of Willows Sequels) by Nigel McMorris, Chairman of the Kenneth Grahame Society, it looks as if we fell foul of extremely narrow criteria that weren't explicit, or even implicit, in the brief.
    One was a very tight binding to the characters and scenario of the original story. For example, McMorris comments on the "disproportionate amount of harm" done by "the inclusion of non-British animals ... as new characters, which seemed to proclaim themselves surprisingly loudly to be outside the world of The Wind in the Willows". There, presumably, Clare's story went into the bin for its introduction of foreign bats brought on the winds of an unusually hot summer, reaction to their presence being a nice commentary on xenophobia. Though apparently it was OK for Kenneth Grahame to introduce a non-British animal, the Sea Rat:
`You are not one of US,' said the Water Rat, `nor yet a farmer; nor even, I should judge, of this country.'
`Right,' replied the stranger. `I'm a seafaring rat, I am, and the port I originally hail from is Constantinople, though I'm a sort of a foreigner there too, in a manner of speaking.
- The Wind in the Willows
So why shouldn't a sequel? Go figure. Another restriction was tone: the judges wanted the same tone as the original. This may well be fine for a sequel or prequel designed to actively imitate Grahame, but it immediately puts a damper on countertexts written from different viewpoints. Other characters, such as the weasels, are bound to have a darker view of the world, and the reversal of moral stance alone - as in Jan Needle's brilliant revisionist take, Wild Wood - will also make the tone less comfortable. A third restriction was genre: "There are genres which do not lend themselves to The Wind in the Willows. The omitted genres include romance, horror, crime and detection, and several others".
    This is probably where I went wrong, in taking "countertext" to have its normal meaning, and going for highly intertextual SF. The usual scope of countertext is that anything is fair game: not merely writing from a different viewpoint within the world of the original, but the possibility of changing the genre and register, even to the extent of intertextuality and deconstructing the whole scenario. And the world of The Wind of the Willows is a very strange one ripe for deconstruction. If it's to be taken as consistent, then it's a cop-out not to explore such issues as the coexistence and interaction of the animal and human worlds, and the inconsistencies of the latter: an England of trains and the occasional motor-car, yet which still has castle dungeons guarded by men in mediaeval armour.
    The competition seemed an exciting opportunity to pick up Grahame's themes, and run with them creatively - but in the end it came down to being expected to produce more of the same. And the anthology is a collection of dull safe stories - lacking Grahame's spark of nostalgic angst and cross-genre weirdness - reflecting that stultifying agenda.
    Anyhow, gripe over. Read on...



WILD AT HEART

The Mole was fretful. He had tried to dispel the feeling by cleaning his dark and lowly little house with brooms, then with dusters. When that failed, he stomped about the room, swinging his arms, hoping physical effort would help. That too failed and, quite out of character, he flung a teacup to the floor, saying "Bother!" Instantly contrite, he stooped to pick up the shards, and cut his finger on a particularly sharp one. At that point, the doorbell to Mole End rang. Sucking his finger, he went to answer it. He was relieved to see the grave round face and twinkling eyes of his friend the Water Rat.
    "Hullo, Mole," said the Rat.
    "Ah, Ratty," the Mole said. "Do come in. Pardon the state of my house."
    "Whatever happened to your hand?"
    "I cut it fishing," the Mole said. "Would you like some tea?"
    The Rat peered at the Mole. "We have been friends from the first, Moly," he said. "You look upset to me. What's all this about?"
    "I might as well tell you," the Mole said. "It's our mutual friend Toad. He has disappeared."
    The Rat hummed a tune, as he often did in such circumstances, for animal etiquette forbade any sort of comment on the sudden disappearance of one's friends.
    "Oh, it's not that sort of disappear," the Mole said. "Toad did say he would be absent. It's the why and the where that concerns me. And it has been weeks."
    "So let us talk of it over that tea. Sit there, old chap, and I'll attend to it."
    And so the Mole sat at his table while the Rat bustled in the tiny kitchen and brought back a tray with fragrant cups of tea steaming on it, along with a roll of sticking-plaster. "Now, show me that finger while you drink your tea, and tell me of Mr. Toad's absence."
    "Do you remember his plans to renovate Toad Hall?" asked the Mole. "It has never been properly tidy since the Weasels invaded it."
    "Indeed I do," said the Rat. "Although it would be more likely that others would do the work."
    "Well, whoever was doing it, the work got under way, and Toad unearthed in a cellar ... well, it's all the same whatever novelty he takes into his head. This time, it's books! He sees himself as a master of Literature."
    "Surely that is harmless enough," said the Rat. "I write a little poetry myself on occasion."
    "Oh," the Mole said. "This is different. I met him by the River Bank, and he was wearing half-moon spectacles, a tweed jacket and a bow tie, and singing the most conceited song you ever heard, though I have no idea what it means."

    The clever Booker judges Read all that there is to be knowed.
    But none of them read one half as much As literate Mr. Toad!

    "He waved a copy of a newspaper at me," Mole continued, "And said he was going to be a correspondent". He imitated Toad's hearty accent as best he could: "'Look, this fellow has written a letter about the first cuckoo of Spring. And this one about the first swallow in Summer. Amateur nonsense! I shall tell them of the Sweet Bird of Youth, the first Lion of Winter. I am The Toad, the handsome, the popular, the successful literary critic! O brave new world!'". At that point, the Mole broke down into a fit of sobbing.
    "Whatever is the matter, old fellow?" the Rat asked, bringing out a white handkerchief to wipe the Mole's tears. "We have seen Toad this way before."
    "It is all my fault," the Mole said miserably. "I should have gone sooner. But you know how tiresome Toad can be in such moods. I left it over a month, then went to Toad Hall, hoping he might have calmed himself a little. But the place was empty, and look what I found tucked under the door knocker. It has been there weeks." He took a paper from his pocket and unfolded it. Beneath the Toad Hall letterhead, in Toad's scrawled handwriting, it said.
To whom it may concern:-
It is outrageous that my work has not been accepted by The Times. I am off directly to London to have it out with the Editor. Help yourself to anything in the larder.
Signed,
Mr. Toad
Man of Letters
    "I have never heard of London," said the Rat.
    "I have," said the Mole gravely. It is a city in the Wide World."
    "That will never do," said the Rat. "We should seek advice from Badger."

The Badger lived in the Wild Wood (or more precisely lived under it) and such an excursion was not normally lightly undertaken. The Wild Wood needed passwords, signs, sayings, plants to carry in one's pocket, verses to repeat, and dodges and tricks to practise. But as his close friends, the Mole and the Rat knew the hidden entrance to Badger's home at the edge of the Wood among the rocks and brambles, hidden by creepers, brushwood, and dead leaves.
    A walk in the gentle autumn afternoon took them to that place, and after what seemed miles through the damp and airless tunnel that wound and dipped, part vaulted, part hewn through solid rock, they saw a light ahead.
    "Mr.Badger," the Rat called.
    There was the sound of a bolt shot back, and the slap of down-at-heel carpet slippers. "Who is it disturbing me, and without even ringing the doorbell?" a gruff voice said.
    "It 's me, Rat, and my friend Mole," cried the Rat.
    "O, that's different," said the voice, softening, and the Badger shuffled into view with a lantern. "Ratty, Moly, come in, my dear little men." He summoned them into the warmth of his kitchen where they sat at oaken settles beneath the rafters hung with smoked hams, herbs and onions, and Badger nodded gravely, never surprised nor shocked, as they told him of their worries.
    "Toad lacks restraint in the gratification of his various desires," Badger said eventually. "Under his magnificent eloquence, there is something lacking in the poor fellow."
    "So is there, if you could be so kind, anything you could do?" the Mole asked.
    "I can't do anything NOW," said the Badger somewhat severely. "The year is getting on, you know."
    His two friends assented, knowing that according to animal etiquette, no animal is expected to do anything strenuous, or heroic, or even moderately active during the off-season.
    "Very well, then," the Badger said. "I will make certain enquiries tomorrow, but I am sure that Mr. Toad has come to no harm. And it is time I was in bed. Come along, you two, and I 'll show you out." And with what appeared unseemly haste for the normally phlegmatic Badger, he led them to the door.
    "I'm not letting it lie there," said the Rat crossly, as he and the Mole walked home through the quiet fields toward the glint of the river. "Badger is a good chap, the best, but it is only Autumn. We shall find Toad ourselves."

The next day they packed sandwich-cases and prepared flasks of tea, and set out for Buggleton, a few miles' walk. At the Red Lion Hotel, where Toad had embarked on his disastrous career as a motor-car thief, they enquired cautiously over luncheon in the coffee-room. A recaptured master criminal or a further theft would have been a matter of local gossip. No-one remembered any such thing. The next step was to follow Toad's likely footsteps, and there their problems began.
    "He would have taken a train," the Rat said. "Let us do likewise."
    At the station they attempted to purchase second-class tickets to London.
    The clerk at the ticket-window stared at them. "I'm sorry," he said. "London trains only stop here on the third Wednesday of the month. You need to take the motor-bus to Buggleton Parva."
    This they did, after a long wait, travelling in the cramped back seat wedged between a fat lady and a crate of chickens, only to find at Buggleton Parva Halt that they had been wrongly advised. "No, young gentlemen," said the second clerk. "Only London-bound goods trains stop here. Go back and tell them to consult the updated timetable. Say I said so. Or you could try the motor-bus station."
    This too they did, and found there were no direct London buses from Buggleton Parva, or even connections that week. On returning to Buggleton, by which time it was nearly dark, the first clerk solemnly consulted the timetables and assured them that the other had been in error.
    The end of the day found them, footsore and weary, back at Toad Hall eating a supper of French bread and tinned sardines. "We are looking at this the wrong way," said the Rat. "If it were this difficult, Toad would not have travelled by that route. He is not an animal of the greatest resolve."
    "If you ask me," the Mole said despondently. "They were trying to obstruct us. Perhaps they think we are not up to the journey."
    "Nonsense," said the Rat severely. "And no-one did ask you. Let us spend the evening usefully, and find out more about London."
    They found Toad's study and, among an unruly heap of books on his writing-desk, the scattered editions of The Times of which he had spoken. Although the paper was strangely yellowed, this was a far grander affair than the Buggleton Chronicle that Badger was always reading. Neither of the friends was vastly literate, but together they pieced together the facts, with the help of the many pictures.
    "Look, Moly" the Rat said. "This is London. See this mighty domed church."
    "And this white-stoned fortress," said the Mole.
    "And this two-towered bridge," said the Rat. "Why!" he exclaimed, "London is on a great river." Then he executed a jig. "Hooray!" and then "Hooray-oo-ray-oo-ray-oo-ray!"
    "I know rivers are dear to your heart," the Mole said. "But this doesn't help us."
    "Come and see," said the delighted Rat.
    The puzzled Mole followed him to the boathouse.
    "What do you notice?" asked Rat.
    "Nothing," Mole said.
    "Precisely what I expected!" cried the Rat. "Where is Toad's motor-boat?"
    The Mole remembered it. Long-neglected as one of Toad's previous interests, the boat had been sitting at its mooring for over a year, its bright red paint gathering dust. "Gone," he said. "Perhaps it has been stolen? Perhaps the same villains carried off Toad too?"
    "O, dear! O, dear!" cried the Rat, in despair at his friend's obtuseness. "We know London is on a river. Toad has taken the boat himself. This was why we could find no news of him in the Town."
    The Mole fell backwards from sheer surprise and delight. "Rat!" he said. "You're a wonder!  A real wonder.  I see it all now!  You thought it out, step by step, in that wise head of yours". Then he frowned. "But in which direction?"
    The Rat, knowing the ways of rivers, sighed. "Downstream, of course. We have seen that London is on a great river. Did you not know that rivers get bigger as they flow to the sea?"
    "I had heard something of the sort," said the Mole, impressed but not entirely clear as to what his friend was speaking of. "Why, you ought to go where you'll be properly appreciated."
    "That may be," said the Rat sternly. "But we will both need our wits about us if we are to find him. Buggleton is one thing; a city of the Wide World is quite another."

The bright early morning found them in the Rat's skiff, sailing with the current at a leisurely pace. "I love the smell of the river in the morning," said the Rat dreamily, dipping an oar occasionally to steer them around tree roots and clumps of reeds. Even with the importance of their journey, the Mole was inclined to agree, trailing his paw in the water and intoxicated by the sparkle and ripple. After a several hours they went ashore to dine from a fat wicker luncheon-basket packed with salami, French bread, olives, gherkins and potted bloater paste from Toad Hall's pantry. The familiar river-bank fell behind them, and by late afternoon, they found themselves passing between rough untended pastures, the silence broken only by the occasional croak of moorhens. The sparse bramble bushes on the bank gave way to continuous scrub, dotted with taller trees.
    Eventually, they heard a rushing sound ahead, and the Rat sculled more carefully, then jumped ashore with the mooring rope and made the boat fast to a tree.
    "Come on Moly", he said, walking a little downstream as Mole followed with the food hamper. "Just as I thought."
    Ahead, the river was blocked by the arc of a weir; not the gentle weir they knew fringed by willow-herb and purple loosestrife, but a steep dark incline over which the water plunged like smooth dark bottleglass. There was a weed-chocked lock beside it, topped with a sign: "Private! Strictly No Passage!" What was more, the river at its foot flowed on between dense dark woodland.
    "Ratty, old chap," the Mole said. "I think this is the Wild Wood."
    "Of course it is," said a voice behind them, and they turned to see an Otter hauling himself out of the water. "We don't get many visitors around these parts. First one for years a few weeks ago, and then two more. Are you going to invite me for tea?"
    As the three shared a light meal, the Rat and the Mole enquired after the previous visitor. "Pompous fellow in a red motor launch," the Otter mumbled around a fish-paste sandwich. "Yes, he went this way.  I helped him work the lock handles."
    "Are we near London?" asked the Mole.
    "Never heard of it," said the Otter. "Sometimes over the Wood you can see something like the smoke of towns.  But he went that way certainly. Don't mind the sign; humans place great store in them, but they never come here. Let me give you a hand."
    The Otter helped them drag the Rat's boat round the weir, and disappeared back into the water, leaving a stream of bubbles in his wake.
    "It's very dark," said the Mole. He was used to darkness, but not that of gloomy thorny woods.
    "You really needn't fret, Moly," the Rat said. "We'll be thoroughly safe on the river."
    It seemed so. After a short distance the channel, the final outlet of their own friendly stream, fed into a wider slower-moving river with forest on both sides, a yellow Moon rising on the horizon ahead. They moored there, and the Rat unfolded the green canvas cover for the skiff. Inside, by the light of a spirit lamp, the three ate supper, then drowsed, wrapped in rugs, until a damp misty dawn found them.
    For the next day, they followed the larger river downstream through its many sweeping meanders, seeing no-one but rabbits in occasional clearings, who eyed them suspiciously, saying "O my! O my! O my!". "Onion-sauce! Onion-sauce!" the Mole called, and they vanished into their burrows.
    After day, a during which they spoke little, oppressed by the interminable bosk of the Wild Wood, dusk loomed again. "We should find a spot to moor; the light won't last much longer," the Rat observed.
    "I should not say," the Mole said. "But I feel we are being followed. I have felt it since..."
    Then they heard the singing. They both knew well that it is quite against animal-etiquette to dwell on possible trouble, so they merely listened, and heard a chorus punctuated with thin little laughs. The words couldn't be made out, but they knew the tone, one that spoke of vulgar songs about prisons and magistrates, and policemen; horrid personal songs, with no humour in them.
    "Weasels," the Mole said.
    "Do be quiet," whispered the Rat.  But it was too late. In the dusk, lights flared on the banks; from somewhere in the undergrowth came a hail of missiles that turned out to be crab apples; and a horde of rowing boats came sculling from the left bank toward them.The chant of their occupants became clear.

    Lock 'em in a dungeon! Throw away the key!
    Hit 'em with a truncheon! Nobody will see!

    The Rat turned to the Mole. "I've brought you to this, Moly," he said. "Brought you out of your happy life to this. Say you forgive me, Moly."
    "I do," said the Mole. "Fully and freely."
    They sat helplessly as the boats closed around them, the crew jeering. The Rat's boat was towed ashore, and the friends were bundled to the bank and marched a short distance through dark woods by a sweating, singing horde of Weasels, coming to a huge clearing with a hill of stepped tumbledown stone whose upper levels were illuminated with burning torches.
    "Please," the Mole squeaked. "We mean no harm."
    "Quiet!" said one of Weasels. "Listen to the words of the Great Buffo."
    And above them, a great looming figure wearing bandoliers and swordbelt over a tweed jacket stepped out, silhouetted against torchlight.
    "It's Toad!" the Mole exclaimed, but a Weasel jabbed him in the ribs.
    Toad looked imperiously out over the assembled animals, the light glinting on cracked half-moon glasses. "Dearly beloved," he began. "I know I have but the body of a weak and feeble Toad; but I have the heart of a king."
    The Weasels grunted approval.
    "They blew it all up," he said. "They sold our birthright for a pottage of lentils. But we, the people, are we not Men?" His voice raise to a bellow as he puffed to twice his size. "You ask, what is our policy? I say it is to wage war by land, sea, and air. Imitate the action of the tiger; stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood. Together we shall build Jerusalem in England's green and pleasant land. I, the Great Buffo, have spoken!"
    As the Toad bowed and retreated, there was a roar of applause from the Weasels, who began a capering dance and resumed their singing.
   
    Serve 'em with an ASBO! Put 'em in a cell!
    Shoot 'em with a crossbow! Poison 'em as well!

    "Oh, my," said the Rat. "He makes no sense, but I've never seen Toad so determined."
    "He is certainly altered," the Mole agreed.
    "Quiet," said the Weasel who had jabbed the Mole. "He has enlarged our minds."
    "They have little nails," said another. "It is well."
    "No," said a third. "None escape."
    "It's not our job to decide their fate," said the first. "The Great Buffo can deal with them."
    The Rat and the Mole were led up the steps to an entrance leading to a dank cavernous chamber, where their guards left them.
    The earthy smell struck the Mole to his heart, bringing a wave of sorrow as it reminded him of his own home. "Oh, I wish I were outside Mole End," he sobbed. "With its skittle alley and cockleshell fishpond. I fear I shall never see it again."
    The Rat patted him gently on the shoulder. "Toad?" he whispered.
    In the gloom of an alcove, Toad raised his head. "What do you think of my methods?" he said.
    "I'm sorry, old chap," the Rat said. "I can't say I see any methods."
    "I read book after book, newspaper after newspaper" the Toad said. "Until the truth came to me, like a kingfisher spearing my forehead. A story has been pulled over our eyes to blind us from the truth. The Weasels understand."
    "Please, Mr. Toad," the Mole pleaded. "You are not yourself. Forget all this and come back to Toad Hall with us." .
    "Toad Hall? I can't remember," said the Toad. "I seem to recall a river, and gardenias. But ..." He winced in seeming anguish and bent to wash his head, patting water on it with trembling fingers.
    "You do remember," the Rat continued. "The creek and the boathouse and the stables and the banqueting hall. And how we were all friends and drove the Weasels and Stoats from your home. And the time we had a picnic by the weir with its scented herbage and orchard trees. You went to visit the editor of The Times."
    As the Rat spoke, the Toad become more and more dejected, his skin hanging baggily as the tears flowed plentifully down his cheeks. "Don't you see? There is no Times," he said. "It was folly."
    The Mole and Rat took him by the hands and helped him to his feet. "Come on, old chap, let's go home."
    The Toad took a few steps and then resisted. "And yet," he said, a strange glint growing in his eye. "I can't say I'm not sorry. And it wasn't folly at all! I found a greater truth and it was simply glorious! The Great Buffo shall not perish from ..."
    There was a flash of black-and-white and a resounding thump, and the Toad sagged to the floor. The Badger stood before them, hefting a cudgel. "The Great Buffo can take a rest," he said.
    Moly and Ratty rushed at the Badger and hugged him. "We are saved!" they cried.
    Embarrassed, the Badger scratched his head. "I thought I would look out for you. This is not the sort of place for small animals to be. But we are not out of the woods yet."
    Quickly, he directed them to support the senselesss Toad between them. "Weasels are easily swayed by confidence and by appearances. With the light behind us, we may fool them."  He followed them down the passage, where Mole was puzzled to see the Weasel sentries asleep and snoring.
    "Dearly beloved!" the Badger yelled in a passable imitation of Toad. "My young friends have agreed to join us. The king is leaving the building. Are we not Men?"
    "Are we not Men?" chorused the Weasels, as the three carefully negotiated the steps, Badger holding Toad's arms draped over the shoulders of the Mole and Rat as if in casual bonhomie.
    "I have a steam launch at the river," the Badger whispered. "We have to brass it out. Just follow the path."
    They progressed between the ranked Weasels and had nearly reached the shadows at the edge of the clearing when a Weasel child came up to them and peered closely. "Great Buffo?" he said suspiciously. They proceeded past him, but he must have seen the Toad's dragging feet, for he let out a piercing squeal of alarm, and all the Weasels pointed their fingers and echoed the squeal.
    "The jig's up," said the Badger. "Run!"
    The Rat and the Mole made for the river as fast as they could manage with the unconscious Toad. They paused once, to see the mighty Badger, his whiskers bristling, his great cudgel whistling through the air as he fought off the press of Weasels.
    "No time for goodbyes," said the Rat. "Come on."
    They reached the shore, and dumped Toad into the steam-launch.
    "Ratty, do you know how to work one of these things?" asked the Mole.
    The Rat pulled levers at random. "Toad would, but he is in no state to be useful. O blow! Where is Badger?" He was puzzled, as the uproar behind had ceased, and there was the hint of a sound, reedy notes that tugged at the edge of his memory like a song-dream. But before he could complete the thought, the Badger trotted down to the shore, and clambered into the launch.
    "Have I missed anything?" he asked. With an expert touch, he spun brass wheels, kicked the boiler, and with a hiss of escaping steam, the "put-put-put" of the engine started up. "You, Ratty, grab the tiller and get us into mid-stream!" he said, taking command. "Moly, open that grate and stoke, there's a good chap! I'll see to Toad."
    Toad lay still at the boat's bows.
    "Mr. Toad ... he ... dead?" the Mole said querulously.
    Badger bent over him. "No, I just knocked the poor fellow out for his own good," he said. "Lend me your handkerchief."
    As the Rat's excitement from the fight waned, a growing realisation dawned in him. Looking back as the launch reached mid-river, he saw a great vista of foliage-covered ruins. He touched the Mole's arm. "Moly, look," he said urgently. They gazed at the structures, now white in the moonlight, protruding above the tree line: the tumbledown heap of white stone that had once been a blocky fortress, the pair of broken stumps that had once been the twin towers of a bridge spanning the river, and a vast domed roof broken like an egg-shell.
    "Oh, my," the Mole said, shocked. "It is the city whose pictures we saw in The Times."
    "Badger," the Rat said. "You are the wisest animal I know. This is London, isn't it?"
    The Badger, bathing the Toad's head, said nothing for a time. "Let me tell you a story," he said at length. "Many hundreds of years ago, the Wide World - a world of people, you know - was separate from the animals. Animals, if you can imagine it, were even more vacuous than rabbits, and could not even speak. As to the people, there was little they could not do. Everyone had a motor-car."
    "Poop-poop," muttered the Toad, stirring weakly.
    "They could send pictures through the air," said the Badger. "They had flying machines. They set foot on the Moon. They even found the means to alter the germ of life itself, to cure disease, or to make bigger and tastier crops. They could give some of the character of plants to animals, animals to plants, and even animals to animals."
    "That sounds mightily unpleasant," said the Mole, with a slight shiver.
    The Badger squeezed out the handkerchief; Toad was conscious now, groaning a little. "That," the Badger said, "was their undoing. It went beyond their control, and all over the Wide World, animals acquired intellect and speech. They were our ancestors. But humans were suspicious of them, and there was a war, far bigger than any of our trifling skirmishes with Weasels and Stoats, and all the great cities of the Wide World became deserted. For London, it was all down, down, down, gradually - ruin and levelling and disappearance.  Then it was all up, up, up, gradually, as seeds grew to saplings, and saplings to forest trees, and bramble and fern came creeping in to help.  London, little by little, became the Wild Wood."
    "Why did we not know this?" the Mole asked, helping Toad into a sitting position.
    "Can you imagine the turmoil it could cause?" the Badger said. "In the quieter backwaters of the world, life went on. In the small towns and countryside, humans and thinking animals came to live together peacefully. Knowing the past would only lead to a desire to overthrow that peace and recreate the world that was lost, perhaps on your pleasant river bank."
    He looked down. "Toad here, unfortunately, found ancient books and newspapers that led him to the truth, and the thought of restoring the glories of the Wide World overwhelmed him as the ultimate novelty. No, it is better that London be believed in by both humans and animals. Badgers, being dutiful fellows by nature, lead a guardianship that maintains that fiction. The people who run the motor-buses and trains, the migrating swallows and the Sea-Rats who tell tales of a Wide World that no longer exists, all are part of that guardianship."
    Toad, Rat and Mole looked back. The Moon was hidden now; sight of the tree-cloaked London was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway flowed somber under an overcast sky, seeming to lead into the heart of an immense darkness. They stared blankly in dumb misery that deepened as they slowly realised all they had seen.
    "I had never imagined..." the Rat said, aghast.
    "The horror ... the horror..." Toad said.
    "How can we ever see our world in the familiar way?" the Mole asked, shuddering as he held back tears..
    The Badger looked at them sympathetically. "You will," he said. "I sent the Weasels into sleep and forgetfulness, and you will join them". He fiddled with a device on his watch chain, and something like a capricious little breeze, dancing up from the surface of the river, blew lightly and caressingly on his friends' faces; and with its soft touch came instant oblivion. "Lest the awful remembrance should remain and grow," murmured the Badger, "and overshadow mirth and pleasure."
    He took the tiller from the Water Rat's limp hand and set the boat's course upstream, sailing through the night to carry the sleeping friends back to their familiar River Bank. They would wake in the morning in Toad Hall with smiles of much happiness on their faces and vague memories of one of many sunny days sculling the river.
    "Remembering," the Badger mused, "is my burden." But it was a burden he did not grudge to carry, for he was a kindly soul despite all his gruffness.

copyright Ray Girvan ray@raygirvan.co.uk


Secret Topsham

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I'm still occasionally rather slow about realising the possibilities of the Internet; the Internet Archive often makes it possible to retrieve online material lost through site updates and domain changes. So I was delighted to recover this local history article I wrote, which I've now updated to reflect changes in Topsham over the past eight years or so.




Secret Topsham

Topsham, Devon, is an atmospheric little town on the Exe Estuary, now a suburb of Exeter, that used to be a major port. Many aspects of its features and history are well-known but for a time I've been intending to compile some of the more obscure facts, mostly omitted from official guides, that I've encountered since living here. They may be of interest to visitors, and can be viewed in a circular walk that takes about an hour.

St Margaret's Church, near the town centre, is a convenient landmark to start your walk. It comprises features differing architectural styles. While it's well-known that the main church was rebuilt in grey limestone following its destruction by fire in the 19th century, it's a curious fact that the top of the tower (the portion above seam marked by the white stone band) is older than the bottom. In the English Civil War, the tower base was completely destroyed by cannon fire from Royalist forces acting on a rumour that Cromwell was hiding there. This left the belfry inaccessible - the situation called flying freehold - until a new lower section was built up to meet it in the early 1700s. If you visit the church, please contribute to the Topsham Society's fund to finance staining the main church with locally mined red ochre to match the tower.

The churchyard of St Margaret's has an intriguing feature, the Hamilton Tomb. This is the tomb of Alexander Edward ('Ned') Kelso Hamilton, the young archaeologist on whom Bram Stoker based the hero of his story, The Jewel of the Seven Stars. Stoker's title was inspired by the Seven Stars Cider House which can be seen in the small close at the other side of the churchyard (the same location was used in the filming of Cider House Rules). Hamilton found great significance in the fact that his own initials (A.N.K.H.) spelled the Ancient Egyptian word for "life", and left instructions that he be mummified before burial. His tomb is claimed to be the subject of a Pharaonic curse: in 1972, a visitor who vandalised it was found with what appeared to be jackal bites on his throat; and it was said that if you placed your hand under the central spike, it would drop and crush it if you told a lie. The spike has since been removed on Health and Safety grounds.

Inside the church itself are the Duckworth Memorial and Tombs. The memorial carvings mark the tombs of the Duckworth family. Sir John ("Jack") Duckworth died on the HMS Florizel at the Battle of Corrie, shown in the bas relief below. The figures at the lower right are his wife Vera and their son Terence; the smaller plaque above is dedicated to his grandson Thomas. You can also see the banner of Colonel Robert Hall's Devonshire & Cornwall Sensible Regiment.

Leaving the church, take the steps from the churchyard down to the river and turn left to follow the Underway to the Quay. Since I first wrote the article, the heaps of garget shells left over from the defunct fishing industry have been cleared away as a nuisance, but you can still see a prominent landmark, the King's Beam. This cast iron structure on the Quay is one of the more sinister relics of Topsham's maritime heritage. It was used well into the 19th century for the summary punishment of sailors. Those who had absconded from their ships or "engendered an affray" in the local brothels were suspended here to be flogged, and the beam was also used to hang those condemned to death for more serious offences. In the late 19th to early 20th century, a stylised depiction of the beam was used as a religious symbol by the Topsamite Reformed Brethren, a non-conformist sect who preached that Joseph of Arimathea had visited Topsham with the young Jesus. The sect is still technically banned by an emergency law passed in 1915 when its leader spoke out in favour of the Kaiser, but it still exists and members can be identified by their secret pronunciation of the town's name as "Topsam". It's of related interest that Oscar Wilde stayed incognito at the quay, "posing as a Topsamite", before sailing to exile in France.

Proceeding downriver along the Strand, which has notable Dutch-style architecture, you'll find Topsham Museum. A central feature is the restored apartments of the sumptuous Topsham mansion of the Dutch merchant millionairess Avis van Rental, where she lived with the actress Vivien Leigh ("tiny tiny hands, mind like a sewer, and absolutely lully"). A number of the older exhibits are now in store (the full-rigged Spanish galleon captured from the Armada, and the a quarter-scale model of the town as it was in 1850). The cafe, for some years an amusing recreation of a 19th century sailors' brothel, has been renovated to reflect the current Antarctic theme commemorating the Topsham-built HMS Terror. The tasty pemmican pasties and Ice Bird Surprise are recommended: but wrap up warmly, as the air conditioning is set to a bracing -5 degrees: not entirely authentic, but sufficient to give the flavour of life for those who sailed on the Terror.

Proceed to the end of the Strand, and you will come to the Goat Walk.This narrow path along the sea wall is so named because a 19th century Exeter dignitary used to lead his goat out here to commit unnatural acts with it out of sight of the town. One snowy night in the 1850s, suspicious locals followed the tracks and caught him, whereupon the goat, frightened by the shouting and torches, ran across the frozen Exe, covering miles across the Devon countryside before being shot near Totnes by Charles Babbage, the computer pioneer. This gave rise to the local story of the 'Devil's Hoofprints', which appears to have been invented to provide a more acceptable explanation of the prints. The regular off-road car racing on the shore has been suspended to permit pedestrian access while the damage to the Goat Walk, the toll of years of use by overweight strollers and dog-walkers, is repaired.

At the end of the Goat Walk, turn left, and this will take you on a pleasant country walk along Bowling Green Road back toward Topsham railway station. The attractive fields of genetically modified sukebind are no longer a feature following local protests, but you can take a brief detout along the new Route 2 cycle track extension over the marshes at the meandering lower reaches of the River Clyster. In the evening, it's advisable to take a torch, as the track has a high wall on one side to prevent access to the railway, a high wall on the other to prevent disturbance to grazing marsh birds, and an opaque roof to prevent walkers and cyclists from frightening any birds flying over.

At the railway station, continue straight across the mini-roundabout, where the road will lead you to Topsham Cemetery, which is notable as the burial place of Tryphena Sharks, Thomas Hardy's cousin. The grave is easy to find as it lies at the foot of a decommissioned nuclear missile silo. Public access is still forbidden to the silo, a relic of the Cold War, which was built for the protection of Plymouth and the western reaches of the English Channel.

Almost opposite the cemetery you'll see a railway arch. Go under this along Denver Road, which will take you to the Exeter end of Topsham. Unfortunately there is little sign of the once-famous Topsham Gum Mural on the wall opposite. This unusual piece of art, called Spirit of Youth and commissioned for the Topsham 2000 Heritage Year celebrations, consisted of hundreds of carefully placed blobs of chewing gum, installed as a performance art piece by Exeter sculptor Trago Mills. Mills says of it: "The gum is a metaphor for our recycling of cultural influences. We take in the indigestible ephemeral images of the mass media, extract what we can from them, then return them in a changed form to the field of discourse." Already sadly dilapidated in 2005, the work was doomed by failure to gain Lottery funding for its upkeep.

Now walk back into town. After you pass the mini-roundabout, you'll see on the left a small public garden with an interesting statue, The Spitting Ballerina. This statue commemorates the visit of the young Anna Pavlova to Burnthouse Lane, establishing it as Exeter's central venue for cultural and artistic events. Her famous Dying Swan performance was inspired by seeing a swan expiring at Topsham Quay. Pavlova, due to a strict dietary regimen during training, had a lifelong nervous habit of salivating copiously at the sound of the dinner bell (hence the term "Pavlovian reflex" and the meringue dish Pavlova, which is supposed to elicit the same effect). Her problem extended to any bell, such as those in the orchestra and interval bells in the theatre. Following disastrous early reviews (Max Beerbohn wrote, "One who dribbles so well would better have pursued a career as footballer") she dealt with excess by developing the skill of precise and unobtrusive spitting during performances; the clang of the spittoon can be heard distinctly in early sound footage of her work.

Just beyond the statue, you'll see Matthews Hall, the centre of Topsham's community life, and named in honour not (as is commonly stated) of the footballer Sir Stanley Matthews, but of "Ma Thews", the celebrated 19th century lady wrestler immortalised in Jean Veber's 1898 painting Women Wrestling in Devonshire. In a tradition commemorating the rebel Duke of Monmouth's speech to the people of Topsham in 1685, on Saturdays anyone may proclaim themselves monarch and address the public (either from the street or, for a small fee, from the balcony). The Union flag is normally flown above Matthews Hall, but during the Town Fair held every summer, it is replaced by the Topsham flag, whose heraldic description is "a serpent with its head thrust in its own fundament".

Continuing back toward the town centre, you'll see 13 Fore Street on the left. Now occupied by Mere Antiques, this was the home in her later life of Tryphena Sharks, the subject of Thomas Hardy's poem cycle The Day of the Tryphenas. After meeting him while climbing Tryfan in Snowdonia, Tryphena married George Gale, the publican of the adjacent London and South Western Hotel (later Drakes, and now pending conversion to an extension of the Co-Op). Despite an attempt at trephination treatment, she died young from a debilitating disease that medical historians have identified as tripanosomiasis aggravated by a tryptophan deficiency. She was survived by one daughter, Tripitaka. (Note: sufferers from triskaidekaphobia should on no account approach the building).

This brings you back to the centre of Topsham, completing the tour. If you find Topsham's more unusual features were to your taste, you'll enjoy reading about another of Devon's lesser-known attractions, the Dunchideock Treacle Mines. Topsham's official town page can be found at www.topsham.org.uk.

- Ray

Tisbury Starred Agate

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Last week, passing through Tisbury jogged my memory to look up "Tisbury Starred Agate". I've had this nice specimen for decades - I can't remember where I got it - but never bothered to look up its provenance.

Tisbury Starred Agate (which goes under various other names such as Star Flint, Star Coral and Tisbury Coral) is silicified Isastraea oblonga, a Jurassic fossil coral. The strata near Tisbury where it's found are unique to Britain.

It appears in the naturalist John Woodward's 1728 catalogue of his fossil collection:
k. 44. A ſtarr'd Agate very beautiful; it is chanel'd on that part of the Outſides which is remaining, exactly after the manner of a ſtarr'd Honeycomb-ſtone: and I have ſeen ſeveral others, that have had Stars on the Outſide [as indeed this has in one part, tho' not ſo fair as ſome I have ſeen] like thoſe of the Honeycomb-ſtone exactly. This was found, amongſt ſeveral ofhers, lying on Floors, like the common black Flints, amongſt Chalk; and indeed like the Honeycomb-ſtone about Oxford. Underneath theſe Floors of ſtarred Flints lay Strata of Sand-ſtone, in a Quarry in Tisbury-Pariſh, about five Miles from Shaftesbury. I obſerv'd ſome ot the Flints from this Place had but very few Stars in them .. and thoſe in Spots; part of the Flints being free, and without any Stars at all.
- page 77, An Attempt Towards a Natural History of the Fossils of England, Tome 2, John Woodward, 1728
(Woodward is an interesting figure in the development of geological thought. His observational methods were impeccable, and he recognised the importance of strata in rocks, and correctly deduced the marine origin of many fossils - but he ascribed their existence to the biblical Flood. See Google Books - ID URhc2d-4qmMC - for his 1695 An essay toward a natural history of the earth and terrestrial bodies, especially minerals : as also of the sea, rivers, and springs, with an account of the universal deluge : and of the effects that it had upon the earth).

Although Woodward gave the first account of this "Starr'd Agate", the material was evidently known and prized even in pre-history. Flakes of it were found by Alvan T Marston in the classic Swanscombe palaeolithic deposits as 'manuports' from the Tisbury deposits 193km away: see Origins Net / Later Acheulian Exotic Stones. There are a number of good images online: for example, "Isastraea oblonga, polished coral - Image ID: 042962" in the Natural History Museum Picture Library; and these images (as "Tisbury coral") in the Rock Tumbling Hobby forum.

It appears in several subsequent geological accounts. For instance:
The chief area occupied by this [Portland Beds] formation lies to the west of Tisbury, where it constitutes some high ground in the direction of Newtown and Pyt House ; the surface of this part of the country conforms to the curve of the beds, which are squeezed up by the anticlinal, whose axis here occurs very near to the northern edge of the Portlands, just beneath the woods of Fonthill. There is a "gravel pit" (so called) on the summit curve of the Portlandian bulge, which is in fact a mass of Portland stone decomposing in situ, with the flinty portions remaining as undissolved fragments, the whole being in great confusion, but without evidence, as far as I could see, of having been transported from any considerable distance. This material is at present worked for road stone, and contains, along with other siliceous fossils, the celebrated 'star flint'  in considerable abundance.

The spot whence Isastraea oblonga was formerly obtained would appear to have been . in a field north of Tisbury, on the Fonthill road. With reference to this Miss Benett says (op. cit, p. 4), "The Siliceous madrepore of Tisbury is a subordinate bed in this (the Portland) series, and which has not yet been found elsewhere, with the exception of the agatized madrepores of Antigua : they were first discovered by being turned up by the plough; but the sinking of a well near the inn at Fonthill Gifford has proved their geological position to be over the Portland rocks ; they are extremely local." The following postscript is added : — "Geological position of the siliceous madrepore. The sinking of a well in the field called Butcher's Knap, in the parish of Tisbury, the only place where the Coral Flint has been found, and which led to the discovery of the bed."
- page 166-7, On the Geology of the Vale of Wardour, WH Hudleston, Proceedings of the Geologists's Association, Volume 7, 1881-2, 1883 (Internet Archive ID proceedings17assogoog).
"Miss Benett" refers to the collector and geologist Etheldred Benett:
She was Etheldred Bennett [sic], a great-granddaughter of a seventeenth-century Archbishop of  Canterbury. She was born in 1776, and she definitely met William Smith – indeed, gave him a piece of the well-known Tisbury Coral, of which she was England's best-known collector. She made a speciality of exploring the Middle Cretaceous Upper Greensand in the Vale of Wardour, in Wiltshire: as a relative wrote, 'while other ladies of her time were doing needlepoint and chattering over their cups of India tea, she became competent at systematic scientific research, as well as the vigorous fieldwork of fossil hunting'. She had a monograph privately printed: A Catalogue of the Organic Remains cf the County of Wiltshire. All evidence suggests she died a maiden aunt; her family insisted that one of the specimens later placed in her collection, nestled among her sponges and her corals, and thanks presumably to a cooperative undertaker, was her own heart, unbroken but quite petrified – transformed to resemble a stone, as a geologist's heart perhaps deserves to be."
- page 114, The Map That Changed the World: A Tale of Rocks, Ruin and Redemption, Simon Winchester, 2002
(A Catalogue of the Organic Remains of the County of Wiltshire (1831) is online: Internet Archive ID acatalogueorgan00benegoog).

I don't know how findable the Starred Agate is nowadays, but a Geological Survey technical report gives locations:
According to local tradition, the coral Isastraea oblonga, the Tisbury Star coral, can be found on the fields west [935 310] and south [936 307] of Ashleywood. Reid (Ms, BGS) found this coral in the angle of Hindon Lane and a footpath [9376 3028].
- Bristow, C.R. 1995. Geology of the Tisbury district (Wiltshire). 1:10000, Sheet ST 92 NW, British Geological Survey, Technical Report WA/95/82 
The environs of Tisbury is altogether an interesting area, not far from the scenic Fonthill Lake ...



... where an easy walk - see Fonthill's Fantastic Folly - takes you through part of the Fonthill Estate, the site of some remarkable folly-building in the 18th century by the immensely rich collector and aesthete William Beckford, including the Fonthill Grottoes, now off-limits as a SSSI as a bat hibernatorium. As the listed buildings record (ID 321012) says, the grottoes were built by Josiah Lane of Tisbury, who specialised in that area: his other works include the grotto at Old Wardour Castle and that at Stourhead.

For more background, see Maxwell Steer's The Grottoes of Fonthill, and Rictor Norton's A Visit to Fonthill. As the latter article mentions, William Beckford's notoriety was undoubtedly fuelled by his being homosexual; but nevertheless, some of the works he commissioned were undoubtedly "more money than sense" jobs: notably Fonthill Abbey, which must have been an amazing sight ...


... before it collapsed. Six times.


Addendum: I just found in my collection this other little specimen, about an inch high and polished as a pendant. It's starting to ring bells; I think I might have been given both pieces by one of my distant aunts (or whatever relation my mother's cousins are) who was from Wiltshire.



- Ray

Things that go bump in the night

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The Temptation of St. Anthony,
Matthias Grünewald (detail)
From Ghoolies and Ghoosties,
long-leggety Beasties, and Things
that go Bump in the Night,
Good Lord, deliver us.

Following up a query I saw elsewhere, I've been wondering about the origin of this piece of doggerel, which gets variously credited as Scottish, Irish, or West Country. It goes off in interesting directions...

Both the Oxford Dictionary of English Idioms (page 352) and the Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins (page 443) identify it as "The Cornish or West Country Litany"; the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (page 34) gets specific and gives the first citation as FT Nettleinghame's 1926 Polperro Proverbs and Others. But 1926 is easily pre-dated, and given that it's also widely billed as an "old Scottish prayer" or "traditional Scottish prayer", the story turns out to be more complicated.

The ultimate origin is very clear: that's it's a parody of the Great Litany from the Book of Common Prayer. For instance:
From all evil and mischief;
from sin, from the crafts and assaults of the devil;
from thy wrath, and from everlasting damnation,
good Lord, deliver us.
But the interest is in how it got to its present form. There are no print citations findable for "go bump in the night" prior to the start of the 20th century; a look at the wonderful Google Books Ngram Viewer immediately suggests it's not that traditional.



A closer look at Google Books occurrences finds a cluster of early citations from about 1910. Notable ones include:
Probably all of you know the Scotch child's prayer, which goes something like this: "From all witches, warlocks and wurricoos, from all ghosties and things that go 'bump' in the night, Gude Laird deleever us!"
- Transactions, Volumes 5-13, National Safety Council, 1916
I'll slightly discount that as a data point, because the phraseology of this "Scotch child's prayer" appears to derive solely from Arthur Stringer's 1915 novel The Prairie Wife: (Gutenberg E-text 18875):
And Babe whimpered a little in his cradle and brought us all suddenly back from the Wendigo Age to the time of the kerosene lamp. "Fra' witches and warlocks," I solemnly intoned, "fra' wurricoos and evil speerits, and fra' a' ferly things that wheep and gang bump in the nicht, Guid Lord deliver us!"
So, counting down further:
The text of his [Oliver Onions'] book, Widdershins (Martin Secker), is the quaint petition for deliverance "From Ghaisties, Ghoulies, and long-leggity Beasties and Things that go Bump in the Night".
- page 108, Punch, Volume 140, 1911

A collection of fairy poems is obliged to appeal to old and young alike. Mr. [Alfred] Noyes evidently had no age limit in mind when he did his work, but certainly he was an appreciator of child-nature when he decided upon this "Quaint Old Litany" for his motto:
“From Ghoulies and Ghoosties, longleggety Beasties, and Things that go Bump in the Night, Good Lord, deliver us!"
- The Literary Digest, Volume 39, 1909
This appears to be the key clue. This "Quaint Old Litany" in its modern form originates, as far as I can tell, in Alfred Noyes' 1908 The Magic Casement; an Anthology of Fairy Poetry (Internet Archive magiccasementant00noyeiala). I can find no earlier citations; it looks like the standard literary device of claiming antiquity to add weight to a quotation.




However, once you extend the search to similar texts, you start finding precursors:
A Scotch Farmer's Prayer
The following prayer is said to have been uttered by a worthy farmer in the West of Scotland during the time of the threatened French invasion in 1804:—

"God bless this house and all that's in this house, and all within twa miles ilka side this house. O, bless the cow, and the meal, and the kailyard, and the muckle toun o' Dumbarton.
    Bless the Scots Greys that are in Hamilton Barracks. They are brave chiels— they are not like the English whalps, that dash their foot against a stone, and damn the saul of the stone —as if a stone had a saul to be saved. O, build a strong dyke between us and the muckle French, but a far stronger ane between us and the wild Irish.
    "O Lord ! preserve us frae a' witches and warlocks, and a' lang-nebbet beasties that gang through the heather. O Lord! put a pair o' branks about the King of France's neck; gie me the helter in my ain hand, that I may lead him about when I like. For Thy Name's sake, Amen."
The Queenslander [newspaper], Brisbane, Saturday 19 January 1901
That one was in Jacob Larwood's 1871 The Book of Clerical Anecdotes: page 184, and appears to have first seen the light of day in The Gentleman's Magazine in 1867 as A Scotch "grace" during the French War. And:
He was very fond of a travesty on the Litany, which ran in this manner — " From witches and wizards, and long-tailed buzzards, and creeping things that go in hedge-bottoms, good Lord deliver us."
- A son of Belial; autobiographical sketches by Nitram Tradleg, Edmund Martin Geldart, 1882

A venerable friend tells me that he remembers to have heard grace before meat in Scotland in these words: " Frae witches an' warlocks an' a' lang- nebbed creatures, guid Lord deliver us!"

- page 12, The English Lakes and their Genii, Moncure D Conway, Harper's New Monthly Magazine, December 1880

The canny Scotch folks, on first settling down in the wilderness, were greatly terrified at these noises, and used to pray fervently to be delivered from "witches and warlocks, and the things that cried 'Boo' in the meadows."
- Frank Leslie's Pleasant Hours, Volume 13, 1873

In Scotland it [the curlew] is called Whaup, which is a name for a goblin which is supposed to have a long beak and go about the houses after nightfall; hence we can understand the Highlander's prayer to be saved from witches and warlocks and "a' long-nebbed things."
- Johnson's Natural History, Samuel Griswold Goodrich, pub. AJ Johnson, 1872
"Long-nebbed" is "long-nosed", by the way. This looked to be the end of the trail, in Scottish folklore, but From Ulster to America: The Scotch-Irish Heritage of American English (Michael Montgomery, 2006) gave a lead that jumps it back a century to James Row's 1733 tract headed by The Humble Remonstrance of the Five-foot-highians: Against the Antichristian Practice of Using a Standard in Enlisting of Soldiers (see Google Books ID MZpbAAAAQAAJ - I can't honestly tell whether it's barking mad, or politico-religious satire whose context I don't get). The blessing  ...
Bless us free aw Witches and Warlocks, and aw lang nebbed Things that creeps intill Heather; but fre that exhorbitant Power o'France, oh, deliver us!
... appears in the section A North-Country Grace (pages 29-31). It's a marvellously vigorous rant worth reading in full; there are elements recognisable in the alleged 'Scotch Farmer's Prayer' quoted above. Further back still, David Fergusson's 1641 Scottish Proverbs has a similar warning ...
God keip us from gyrcarlings& all long nebbed things
- Fergusson's Scottish proverbs from the original print of 1641, JD Westwood, 1924
 ... and that's about as far back as I can track it.

- Ray

The Eyes! The Eyes! and other ads

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It goes without saying that ads for scammy products are nothing new, especially in the days before the Advertising Standards Authority, but these (among many) caught my eye while I was browsing the Isle of Wight Observer for April 05, 1879.

Dr Ball's Patent Ivory Eye Cups sound particularly horrible. The Quack Doctor site ("I was disappointed to learn that Dr Ball’s initial was J, not I") has a piece on them, explaining the mode of action - suction, to bring arterial blood to the enfeebled eye. This sounds like a precursor to The Deacon's line in Waterworld: "If you'll notice the arterial nature of the blood coming from the hole in my head, you can assume that we're all having a real lousy day".

Magnetism is ever-popular as a bogus remedy. Here was one for the products of Darlow & Co (who otherwise made surgical corsets and trusses, etc). Their "Magnetine" and "Magnetoline" involved wearing magnets, as described in this other advert:
PREVENTION AND CURE OF CHOLERA.

THIS terribly fatal malady is now within measurable distance of our own shores. It therelore behoves ua not only to look well to all our sanitary arrangements, but also to protect ourselves as far as possible from any personal attack.

In localities where Cholera has been raging, it has been noticed from time to time, by many eminent medical men and others, that Oxygen, in its allotropic form, 'Ozone,' has been absent from the atmosphere. In 1H.M Dr. Boekal, of Strasburg, made regular ozonometric observations in that city, and was thereby led to suppose that a connection exists between the presence of Cholera and the diminution of the quantity of ozone in the atmosphere.

The inhalation of oxygen may be very good as a remedial agent in the collapse stage, but we have to consider the best means of keeping the body well supplied with the necessary magnetic power to enable the arterial blood to take a sufficient quantity of oxygen from the atmospheric air, and carry it through the blood-vessels to every part of the body. By wearing Darlow's Magnetine appliances which supply the requisite amount of the electric force, without the aid of acid or fluid of any kind, the body can be fortified against Choleraic attacks. The appliances require no cleaning, nor.'indeed, any care or attention whatever. They are put on with the garments when dressing in the morning, and generally laid aside on retiring to rest at night. They give no shocks, and cause no sores. Their action on the system is gentle and imperceptible, but then it is continuous; it may go on unceasingly every moment, night and day. and yet this is entirely at the option of the wearer, who may lay the appliances aside when he pleases. As a rule they are not worn during the night. But they are always ready, always effective, and gradually produce a most beneficial change in the condition of the entire frame. For the most part they are unfelt in their operation—they cannot harm an infant—and the most delicate invalid may be under their Influence without having the consciousness of any unpleasant or even unusual sensation, except it be, indeed, the delightful glow of returning health and strength.

The direct action of Magnetism is on the iron in the blood.
Darlow's Magnetine Belts for Ladies, 27s. | Darlow's Magnetine Belts for Gentlemen, 25s.
Descriptive Pamphlet Post Free.
DARLOW & CO., 443, STRAND, LONDON.
- page 339, The Practical Teacher, Volume 4, Joseph Hughes, 1885
 Here's another ad from the 1886 Arrows and anecdotes by Dwight L. Moody:


And on to Halse's Galvanic Apparatus:


This was the mesmerist and galvanic therapist William Hooper Halse's device to give the patient electric shocks:
Halse's ten guinea Galvanic Apparatus, which has now become so celebrated, consists of twelve pairs of zinc and platinised silver plates, and a most complete  regulating apparatus, with handles, wire, &c. The whole is contained in a neat mahogany box, about eighteen inches long, eight inches wide, and seven inches high, and when in action it is an ornament to any drawing-room, and is, in short, perfection itself.
You can read all about in Halse's own pamphlet, On the extraordinary remedial efficacy of medical galvanism when applied by means of Halse's galvanic apparatus (1883, Internet Archive onextraordinaryr00hals). Some 40 years before he turned his electrical interests to therapy, Halse had conducted "curious experiments ... in cases of suspended animation": rather a euphemism for deliberately drowning a litter of spaniel pups in a bucket, and seeing if he could revive them by zapping them with electricity. If you want to read this piece of nastiness, it was reported in The Chemist (ed. Charles Watt, 1840): Power of Galvanism in Cases of Suspended Animation.

No luck on finding more about the above.

This is an especially quacky one. Morison's Pills were the invention of the "quasi-physician"James Morison. They were, according to Wikipedia:
what he called the 'vegetable universal medicines,' commonly known as 'Morison's Pills,' the principal ingredient of which is said to be gamboge
There's a detailed history of the product, and Morison's "British College of Health" at the UCL Bloomsbury Project. Morison did a runner to France after a series of deaths attributed to these "vegetable pills", such as this one reported in The Lancet in 1838. Nothing much changes: although it's a different gamboge, we're still being scammed by ads for Garcinia gambogia nostrums.

Finally ...

... this isn't a quack remedy ad, but it intrigued me. Despite it looking like an ad for dubious sexual services, it's actually promotion for Thomas Lloyd Fowle's novel Gentle Edith: A Tale (1879).
Gentle Edith: A Tale. By Dr. T. Lloyd Fowle (Charing-cross Publishing Company.) This story is made up of religion, law, love, and stage-coaching. Edith, the heroine, an accomplished young lady, is the daughter of a retired banker, hence her suitors are numerous. She at length marries a young man of good family, and the bishop of the diocese graces the wedding breakfast with his presence. The story is for the most part simply told, and if the plot is meagre, the heroine helps to make up for it by being a tolerably good character.
- The Literary World, 1879
One might imagine that it's rather slight, given that Fowle (1827-1896) appears to be more of a musician than a novelist ...
Fowle, Thomas Lloyd, organist, writer and editor, born at Amesbury, Wilts, October 16, 1827. His father was a clergyman, a prebendary of Salisbury. Self-taught in music, he acted for some years as organist at his father's church, Amesbury, and later at Crawley, Sussex. From 1856 to recent times he has been engaged as editor and publisher. He is Ph. Doc. of Giessen. He has published 4 vols, of anthems; 5 cantatas; 4 vols, of organ voluntaries; 12 marches for special seasons; The Church Tune Book; 2 Services, and numerous other musical works. Handel, a memoir; Charles Dickens, a memoir; Gentle Edith, a novel, and miscellaneous writings.
- British Musical Biography, James Duff Brown, ‎Stephen Samuel Stratton, 1897
... but it is findable online via the British Library record (BLL01014811098). It has a lengthy "It was dark and stormy night" introduction - or at least "It was a depressing autumn day".
To a thoughtful and contemplative mind the season of autumn must always impart a tinge of sadness. The whole face of Nature becomes changed, and that which the outward eye perceives the inward mind can be no stranger to. Almost everything seems ready to decay, save the evergreen shrub which stands forth as an emblem of that life which never dies. The rich golden tints in the nobleman's park would appear to deceive us for a brief moment, so brilliant is the lustre they shed with the setting sun fast sinking in the west. But their glory is short and of a transient date, for soon the gorgeous hues become too sombre to excite admiration; the dead leaves fall around us on every side, and the trees raise their lofty boughs with all the appearance of never-ending barrenness and desolation. The mind of youth dwells but little upon such a scene, the natural buoyancy and vigour of early days being at variance with contemplation. Middle age becomes grey and somewhat thoughtful at the prospect of descending the hill of life, and, beginning to view the outer world and all things therein under a different aspect, the mind is occasionally absorbed in meditation. But it is to the fast-setting sun of threescore years and ten to whom autumn's fading hour reads her most solemn lesson.
...<more snipped>
We have been thus sentimental upon the subject of autumn because our story commences at that season of the yearnamely, October, 1833.
- Gentle Edith: A Tale, Thomas Lloyd Fowle, 1879
Makes you want a Von Roon's Pill.

(PS The book is of marginal interest on a bibliographic and biographic basis, as it ends with a list of TL Fowle's musical, religious and literary works, as well as a reprint from the Sunday Times of news of the petition sent to the Prime Minister asking that he be given a Civil Service List pension, on account of his financial and health hardships after long service as "The People's Musician". His age and health circumstances go a long way toward explaining the tone of the novel's introduction. The 1886 Biographical Dictionary of Musicians entry (page 253) mentions that the pension wasn't granted, as well as the detail that Fowle was a resident of Ryde, Isle of Wight - which further explains both why the ad was in the Ryde-published Isle of Wight Observer, and why "Gentle Edith" and her husband take their honeymoon on the Island).

- Ray

Bliss - Brixham again

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Looking across Torbay from Berry Head
We were hoping this week would bring good weather - and it delivered. Today, now that the coastal railway's running again, we made the planned return visit to Brixham.

From Topsham, it's very easy: the hourly straight-through train to Paignton, and cross the road to the bus for Brixham. We went in December: see To Brixham. But this time, on a brighter longer day, we did the easy walk to Berry Head: you follow the quayside walk on the south side of Brixham Harbour as far as the marina, then follow the well-signposted road and path up to the flat-topped limestone promontory of Berry Head, with its fortifications and lighthouse. It's about 3.5 miles there and back.

I'll fill in more details later.  I particularly wanted a pleasant day's outing to set me up for tomorrow, when I have the unpleasant chore of starting chemotherapy again - and I feel very well set up. Enjoy the pictures meanwhile.

 Heading through Dawlish (pardon the murky image): the 'Orange Army' are still at work.










Bery Head lighthouse and radio beacon








Brixham: the Jabba the Hutt of pigeons
The Clerk rock, approaching the Parson's Tunnel
- Ray

Bones beneath Brixham

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A minor detour from yesterday's walk to Berry Head leads to the topic of Brixham's subterranea, and the history of its "bone caverns".

Limestone leads pretty inevitably to 'karst' features, so it's not a wild surprise to find that the Brixham area's Devonian limestone geology gave rise to caves. I had a glance at this one, readily spottable from about here ...


View Larger Map

... if you look uphill through the woods a few yards from where the South West Coast Path meets the Berry Head Road at the end of the Shoalstone car park.




This is Ash Hole Cavern (aka Ash Hole, Ashole Cavern, and Berry Head Cavern). This opening isn't naturally-formed, but a breach into the chamber created in 19th century quarrying. There's not a great deal to see unaided: a small opening upward to the eastern end (perhaps the original sinkhole), and a muddy slope downward to the west. However, it's of interest as one of a couple of Brixham caves that in the 19th century yield significant animal and human remains (there's a brief summary here at the page Brixham's Caves).

Looking up left ...

... and down right
There are a number of 19th century accounts of Ash Hole Cavern: for instance, there's the large section about the "Ash-Hole" (pp 146 onward) in Octavian Blewitt's 1832 The panorama of Torquay: a descriptive and historical sketch of the district comprised between the Dart and Teign (Internet Archive ID panoramaoftorqua00blew). Blewitt quotes a letter from Thomas Northmore, first scientific investigator of Kent's Cavern, concerning the latter's visit in 1824 (see page 120) - but, as with many investigators of the 'antiquarian' era, Northmore doesn't seem to have been terribly rigorous. His field methods may have been OK, but he saw everything in terms of his pet theories about the biblical Flood and of caves used to celebrate "Mithratic or Dionysaick Mysteries".  Many accounts note an exploration of the cavern around the same time by a Reverend FB Lyte, but he doesn't seem to have published anything. The first solid scientific review appears to be The Ash Hole and Bench Bone-Caverns, at Brixham, South Devon (page 73, W Pengelly, FRS FGS, Report and Transactions of the Devonshire Association for the Advancement of Science, Literature and Art, Volume 4, 1871). The site is scheduled under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979 (ID 1019133).

Windmill Hill Cavern as first uncovered

While the early investigations of Ash Hole Cavern sound rather messy - antiquarian dabbling - the same can't be said of Brixham Bone Cavern (aka Brixham Cavern, Windmill Hill Cavern, and Philp's Cave). This now somewhat forgotten cave - or set of limestone fissures - is close to Brixham Harbour, and came to light in 1858 in the period when Brixham was expanding uphill, and a Mr Philp discovered the fissure in the process of excavations for a row of buildings. The location's very clear, marked as "Bone Cavern" on the 1865-1874 town plans, and the buildings called "Grotto Terrace".
Historic map data is (© and database right
Crown copyright and Landmark Information Group Ltd. (All rights reserved
2009). Low-resolution image reproduced for small-scale non-profit
use under the terms described in the Old Maps FAQ.
The cool thing is that the street map actually gives a schematic outline of the cave, from the following paper:


In this case, the Geological Society of London set up a committee to investigate the cave, leased it from Mr Philp, and conducted a through scientific investigation, which was published as the paper Report on the Exploration of Brixham Cave, Conducted by a Committee of the Geological Society, and under the Superintendence of Wm. Pengelly, Esq., F.R.S., Aided by a Local Committee; With Descriptions of the Animal Remains by George Busk, Esq., F.R.S., and of the Flint Implements by John Evans, Esq., F.R.S. Joseph Prestwich, F.R.S., F.G.S., &c., Reporter  (Proceedings of the Royal Society of London; Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Royal Society of London, 1873, Internet Archive ID philtrans03896081). The results - see William Pengelly Cave Studies Trust - were groundbreaking in the evidence they brought to the then disputed antiquity of humanity, by showing rigorously than human remains existed in the same deposits as extinct animal species.

See Philps Cave at Showcaves.com for a brief summary of the cave's story. It was open as a show cave within living memory, but closed in 1977. It's commemorated, however, by the street name "Cavern Road"; and, from a look at Google Maps Street View, I assume that this quaint little archway leading under a house on Mount Pleasant Road is its entrance:


View Larger Map

See also Brixham Heritage Museum: Opening of the Bone Caverns Display.

The third Brixham bone cavern - the Bench Cavern (aka Bench Bone Cavern)mentioned in Pengelly's account - The Ash Hole and Bench Bone-Caverns (page 78 ff) - no longer exists. It was uncovered by quarrying in Bench Quarry, Freshwater (not the IoW one). I haven't found the precise location ...
the northern slope of Furzeham Hill, one known as Bench Quarry, about half a mile due north of Windmill Hill Cavern, and almost overhanging Torbay
 -Pengelly, ibid.
... but accounts say that it was destroyed by further quarrying.

- Ray

Topsham: roads not taken

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A bright afternoon, so I took myself for a walk and a quick glance at the Museum, newly-opened for the 2014 season, where I spotted some pictures of of historical 'roads not taken'.

Topsham Museum never terribly grips me. Like many local museums, it has a bit too much emphasis on what won't frighten the horses (maybe a reflection of the demographic of museum volunteering) and the intensely parochial (I doubt anyone outside the Topsham Museum circuit is remotely interested in the Museum's founder, Dorothy Holman). But there's usually something of interest, such as these intriguing pictures of unreal historical scenes.

click to enlarge
This print (apologies for the poor image, but the lighting and glass front made it difficult to photograph) is captioned Bridge & Viaduct Over The Ship Canal & The River Exe - On The Exeter And Exmouth Railway Between Exminster And Topsham. You can spot St Margaret's Church at the top centre of the detail below.

click to enlarge
This 1856 lithograph, by W Spreat, is an artist's impression of a scheme that never happened: a plan to get a rail link to Exmouth by taking a spur of the South Devon Railway (on the west of the Exe estuary) over a swing bridge across the Exe at Topsham. It was one option in the complicated saga (see Years of delays before Avocet line was finished, Exmouth Journal, May 4, 2011) that saw 36 years of conflicting proposals before agreement was reached to build the line from Exeter to Exmouth (now the Avocet Line). Once decided on, it took just a year to build, and opened in 1861.

This drawing, unfortunately undated and unsigned...

click to enlarge

... shows a "Proposed public Pleasure Ground, Opposite the Churchyard, Topsham". The concept is quite nice, but the gardens would have been highly prone to inundation by bad weather at high tides. While the picture considerably exaggerates the scale and proportions, it's interesting as a record of the historical appearance of the the buildings at the right - now Nail Cellars and Wixels. The latter, well-known in views of Topsham's Underway, was originally a sail loft and later a coal shed. Its rebadging as a house, with the addition of Dutch-styled gables, dates from 1920.

Detail: C is identified as "Holmans Quay and Stores"
- Ray

Sandrock Spring: quaffing the lymph

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Further to The Sandrock Chalybeate Spring, I just found these excessively erudite verse testimonials to its medicinal properties, courtesy Isle of Wight County Press Archive.
THE OLD CHALYBEATE SPRING AT SANDROCK, I.W.
SOME OLD-TIME POEMS IN PRAISE OF ITS DISCOVERY

Dr. E. Allan Waterworth, of Newport, writes.
The extremely interesting account of my grandfather's discovery of the chalybeate spring at Blackgang which appeared in the County Press a short time since reminded him of two gems of poetry addressed to him by grateful patients which I think may perhaps amuse some of your readers. I am afraid that, notwithstanding the medicinal virtues of this chalybeate water, the consumption of it did not tend to promote literary of poetical talent:
SONNET
Addressed to Mr. Waterworth on his discovery of a chalybeate spring, by a lady who has derived benefit from its use.

If they, who first beneath the heaving mould,
Min'd where embowell'd gems and metals glow,
And thence spreade dubious good, or specious woe,
In grateful record, lofty stations hold:
What rank will fame on Waterworth bestow?
Who, in a source of purer good than gold,
The healing powers first ascertained and told,
And bade the fountain health dispensing flow.
The rescued nymph ensures no humble place,
By him invoked, life's ebbing tide she swells,
Restores the genuine rose to beauty's face,
Dejection's nerve-thron'd stubborn spirit quells,
Incites the stagnant fluids in their cells,
And heals and animates a languide race.
- Isle of Wight, April 30th, 1809

FIES NOBILIUM TU QUOQUE FONTIUM
What, tho' the muse, fatigued with trilling long,
In fancy's fields, and of the poet's meed
Regardless, as despairing, hushed the song,
Which erst all freely flowed, and flowing freed
Her soul of care, though dropt her sylvan reed
Beneath the poppies of the bower of ease,
And bound her temples with the' oblivion's weed;
Aroused, she starts, prepared her pipe to seize,
And join the choral strain, which fame to worth decrees.
But all in vain she starts, in aid to swell
A choral strain, with the accordant lays.
No minstrel hand attunes the vocal shell,
No minstrel voice resounds the note of praise;
Yet, be it here, all unrelieved to raise
A symphony, which floating on the wind,
May, as its cadence on the ear decays,
Melt in the melody of lyres combined;
Its theme the glorious cause which benefits mankind.
Tho' far her talent falls before the theme,
She quits he Aonian and Castilian rill
To seek and quaff a more inspiring stream
Than ever gushed from worshipped fount, to fill
The winding currents of Apollo's hill;
She quaffs the lymph, which from the rock-roofed mine
Wells slowly, brew'd by Nature's chemic skill,
To form libations for Hygeia's shrine,
When science bid the fount in daylight radiance shine.
She quaffs the lymph, she feels her powers expand
With growing health, and lifts her simple strain
To laud the blest research, the patient hand,
Which strove with arduous toil, nor strove in vain,
To exalt amid Britannia's naiad train
The excelling virtues of the Sandrock spring;
Lo! languor, nerved anew, and vanquished pain,
Shall in the exulting tone of gladness sing,
Till ocean's neighbour here in echoing paeans ring.
And then some poet; then, when this faint lay
Sinks noteless, as the trampled sod when blend
Its minstrel's relics with their native clay,
His mighty lyre to chant the found shall lend:
Shall sing the explorer, and each patron friend,
Disease's rescued prey, the bard's acclaim,
Shall join, and loud re-echoing extend,
And thus in prayer and verse each honoured name
Shrined and embalmed, shall live the during life of same.
- Isle of Wight, 1809

Isle of Wight County Press, Thursday, December 24, 1896, page 2 (reproduced as fair usage, Isle of Wight County Press Archive archive.iwcp.co.uk).
The title of the second poem comes from Horace's Odes III, 13 dedicated to the Spring of Bandusia (Ad Fontem Bandusiae), and his promise to to immortalise the spring: "Fies nobilium tu quoque fontium" = "Thou too shalt become one of the famous fountains".

I don't like the sound of "quaffing the lymph" - especially as lymph nodes are not my favourite organ of late - but this is an archaic use of the term:
lymph
a. Pure water; water in general; a stream. Only poet. and rhetorical.
a1630   in Roxburghe Ballads (1871) I. 176   Here rurall gods and tripping Nymphs Did bath their corps in the pure lymphs And christal streams.
- Oxford English Dictionary
- Ray

Angry birds

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It was a quiet afternoon on Topsham Underway: until the resident geese and a swan took exception to each other.












It didn't come to an actual fight, but there was a lot of noisy squaring-off. Geese win on points.

- Ray

A Wren-like Note: IWCP piece

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I'm very pleased to see that the Isle of Wight County Press, after a few months' delay, just ran a piece on A Wren-like Note: "Secret life of a Victorian novelist" (Richard Wright, IWCP, 11 Apr 2014, Weekender section, p7).

It's a very fair summary of the book; a biography that necessarily drew on Maxwell Gray's works as a window into her world, as she was highly reticent about her personal life.

I've already had some extremely interesting correspondence arising - of which possibly more later - and furthermore, decided to subscribe to the IWCP beta archive in connection with this and other research. The latter so far hasn't told me anything radically new about Maxwell Gray, but it's revealing a few characteristic snippets. 
"Why some pen-names were chosen" is the title of an interesting article in a recent number of Cassell's Saturday Journal ... Our distinguished Island novelist, "Maxwell Gray," says she does not know how she came to select her pen-name.
- Town and Country Notes, IWCP, 30 September, 1899 (reproduced as fair usage, Isle of Wight County Press Archive archive.iwcp.co.uk).
This is a typically information-free answer from MG. I really can't tell if she was obfuscating, or she really just wasn't that in touch with her own thought-processes.

However, the archive revealed some nice details concerning identification of a couple of minor characters in MG novels. See Some characters tracked.

- Ray

Building the Devonport Column

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Wikimedia Commons
I've not yet visited the Devonport Column, which has now been open to the public for nearly a year. But last year I had a look at John Foulston's The public buildings erected in the West of England as designed by John Foulston F.R.I.B.A. (1838), which has some background: "The manner of raising and setting the stones, in the erection of the Devonport Column is, he [the author] believes, perfectly novel, and will not fail to interest the young practitioner".

In 2013, I paid a visit to the Devon and Exeter Institution to research a piece on Foulston's "Hindoo" Calvinist chapel, a now-lost building in his Ker Street development for the newly-incorporated Devonport. Foulston's vanity-published The public buildings erected in the West of England also describes the Devonport Column.

I don't pretend to understand all the terminology; but the gist is that the stones were raised very neatly, without scaffolding, by hauling them to the top of a "Spar" (a stout vertical mast) that had a "Gaff" (an angled boom acting as a crane) at the top. As the height increased, extra sections were added to the top of the Spar, which was reinforced and braced to the already-built section of the Column, as required.

Foulston's book is distinctly self-promotional, and his grievances regularly surface in the commentary, as in the introduction to the Devonport Column section.
57
Commemorative Column, Devonport

This column, which was intended to be erected by public subscription, commemorates the change of the name of the town from "Plymouth Dock" to "Devonport", the authority for which was granted, agreeable to a petition forwarded to George IV, in 1823.

The Foundation Stone was laid on the 12th of August, 1824, and it was originally proposed to place a colossal statue of His Majesty on the summit; but certain individuals having refused to answer the engagements to which they had affixed their names as subscribers, the parties employed in the erection have not been paid; and there is, consequently, very little chance of its being completed in the manner originally contemplated. Instead of being a trophy, recording the honours which belong to a high sounding name, it is likely to remain a memorial of the neglect and injustice with which the indigent widow of the builder, and others have been treated, to whom considerable sums are now due.
Anyhow, here's how it was done:
This Column is built of a beautiful granite from a quarry near the Tamar. The Shaft is 11 feet in diameter—its height from the bottom of the Shaft to the top of the Capital is 65ft. 4in., being nearly six diameters. The Column makes, with its inferior and crowning pedestals, a total altitude of 101ft. 4in. Its height above the street, including the rock on which it stands, is 124 feet. Every stone was hoisted and set without the use of

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scaffolding. The Abacus of the Capital is in four stones, each weighing between 3 and 4 tons.

The ascent is by a spiral Staircase within the Shaft to the Gallery on the Capital; which commands a prospect of surprising variety, interest, and beauty. "As you look down on the town of Devonport and its Dock-yard, and also on the extensive waters of Hamoaze, as on a map, where generally from 90 to 100 ships of war are reposing—the hills, vales, fields, woods, and waters, from Hengeston Down in the north, to the ocean in the south—from the wilds of Dartmoor in the east, to the billowy eminences of Cornwall in the west—lie below the gaze in a beautiful varied panorama." *

DESCRIPTION OF PLATES

Plate 85—Plan at A, B, on section.

Plate 86—Plans at different heights, as described by letters of reference Figs. 1 and 2—Plan and section of Dowels, being of old ship timber—"heart of oak"; mortice holes were cut in the stones at each joint, as shewn in the plans, into which these Dowels were fitted, and swam in and plaistered over with Parker's cement. Fig 3—Cast Iron Rain Water Pipe.

* Vide Carrington's "Devonport Guide," p.6.

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Plate 87—Elevation and Section

Plate 88—Fig. 1—Elevation of Capital and upper part of Column.
Fig. 2—Lower part of Column.
Fig. 3—Plan of upper and lower Diameters.
Fig. 4—Section of upper part of Column, shewing the method of securing the Echinus, (which was in 6 stones) by Irons, until the Abacus and other work was set over them.
Fig. 5—Method of Drawing the Echinus.

Plate 89—The manner in which the Stones were raised and set.

The Stones in the foundation, the Plinths, and the lower part of the Shaft, were raised and set with the triangle; those above in the following manner:—The end of a Spar a, 45 feet long, was let into the ground, erected and braced by the diagonal pieces, c,c, and lashed and strutted to the lower part of the Shaft, similar to the method shown at A,B, but afterwards removed for the support under, and to fix a second spar b; the end of top was secured by Guys R,R,R,R, strained tight by Blocks and Falls fastened to Piles driven into the ground at k,k, &c. A Gaff D, with Jaws at the lower end, was then slung in the throat by a strong Rope or Chain at s, so as to work round the upright Spar in the Jaws prepared for this movement, at the end or bottom of the Gaff, and placed at the height required for raising the Stone, as shewn in the upper part of the Drawing at D.

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As the work proceeded, the second Spar b, 58 feet long, was hoisted and placed in the Cap F, supported by a Shore T under the heel, 15 feet long, as shewn from the Plinth, and braced to the Column and secured by Lashing and Guys in a similar manner (as shewn at A,B.) When more height was required for hoisting and setting the upper Courses, the third Spar n, 50 feet long, was hoisted with a Shore under o, 23 feet long, to lengthen it, and placed in the Cap L, lashed and braced to the Shaft of Column then built, and the top secured by Guys as before; and the Gaff raised and slung at the height required, as shewn in the drawing for hoisting and setting the top Stone.

By the Blocks and Fall, and the manner of setting the Jaws, and hanging the Gaff, it is easily adjusted and regulated, so as to bring the stone immediately over the spot on which it is to be set. The Fall for regulating the Gaff, being secured to a Cleet G, fixed in the lower part of the upright Spar A, at G.

The Stones are hoisted by a Crab or Windlass, secured to the pile H, driven into the ground, and by Blocks and Falls placed as shewn at I, I, I, I.

By proportionally increasing the size and number of the Spars, Guys, &c. &c., and having Blocks and Falls sufficiently strong, Stones, Statues, &c., of any weight may be raised to the height required.
Here are the plates: click to enlarge. I've done my best to correct for difficult lighting, and the inability to flatten the pages of this rare book.

Plate 85
Plate 86

Plate 87

Plate 88

Plate 89

Plate 89 (detail)

Plate 89 (detail)

- Ray

Thanks to the Devon and Exeter Institution for guest access to its library; all images are reproduced courtesy of the Institution

Imaginary prison and an elephant portfolio: more on Foulston

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Another highlight from John Foulston's 1838 The public buildings erected in the West of England as designed by John Foulston F.R.I.B.A.: his rejected design for Bristol Gaol. He was sore about the rejection, and shows it.

79
BRISTOL GAOL, designed for 200 prisoners
In consequence of an advertisement appearing in the public papers in April, 1816, inviting Architects to offer designs for the new Gaol then about to be built at Bristol, the author became a competitor; and submitted this Design to the Committee in Bristol, who gave it their decided preference, and also confirmed their election in London after they had availed themselves of the opinion of many members of the House of Commons. Notwithstanding this, however, on their return to Bristol, by some unaccountable management, the matter was submitted a third time to competition, when a decision was given in favour of the design as now executed, by a majority of one vote. Since this, the author has declined (as he has had good reason to do) all competition; he now freely forgives the parties concerned in this transaction, they having experienced the ill effects of their injustice.
- The public buildings erected in the West of England
The feeling's very understandable, but Foulston goes into distinct schadenfreude about subsequent events. His design combined features of contemporary fortifications and prisons: "Polygon" (polygonal outer walls and keep, against external attack) and "Windmill" (radiating internally-connected wings around a Panopticon-style core, in aid of surveillance, demarcation of functions, and general hygiene).

Bristol New Gaol
The design chosen over Foulston's was extremely similar, but rather more open-plan. Designed by the architect Henry Hake Seward, the Bristol New Gaol, opened in 1820, was initially acclaimed as a model design. However, conditions rapidly deteriorated - see BBC Bristol Online, Gruesome Bristol: New Gaol prison / The Bristol Riots, the breaching of the gaol and its revenge on the mob - and in 1831 the New Gaol was attacked by a mob and set on fire. The Bristol Radical History Group has a gallery of contemporary images for 1831.

Foulston took this outcome as vindication of the security features - "FirstProtection from External Violence and Insubordination from Within - that would have been incorporated in his own design, and wastes no time in telling his readers: "I told you so."
81
That these precautions were not duly appreciated at the time, sufficiently appears in those fearful circumstances, which have since involved the destruction of that very building, the designs for which were allowed to put aside those plans which the Author now submits to the consideration of the profession and the public.
- The public buildings erected in the West of England
Plate 113 - entrance gate
Plate 115 - ground floor of core buildings
Plate 116 - upper floor of core buildings
overall ground plan
The public buildings erected in the West of England, while undoubtedly interesting, is ultimately a vanity-published venture produced at the end of Foulston's working life as an architect; he was 67 at the time of publication, and died three years later. In his later years, he retired to a house called Athenian Cottage at Townsend Hill, Mutley, Plymouth, where he experimented in landscape gardening and, it seems, cultivated a spot of eccentricity. His business partner George Wightwick gives a good account (the source of the frequently repeated anecdote about Foulston driving a gig built in form of an ancient war-chariot):
My late partner, thus relieved from the insistance of practical duty, lived a pleasing amateur life for some years, decorating his pretty cottage and grounds in the suburb, and seeking to rival, in little, the famed falls of Niagara, by an artistic spreading of the Plymouth watercourse, or leet, over some yards of spar and rock-work, greatly enhancing the beauty of his shrubbery. This reference to the falls of the mighty St. Lawrence will not be deemed sarcastic, when I state that the ex-architect had at one time resolved on designating his abode by the thundering title of "Niagara Cottage." A former appellation had distinguished it as "Athenian Cottage," though what connexion there was between a kind of Tudor thatched domicile and anything ever seen at Athens, it was for the fanciful owner to specify. The vulgar public persisted in simply alluding to it as "Foulston's Cottage."

But his chief employment was devoted to the publication of a large quarto of his principal architectural works, plentifully illustrated by lithographic elevations, plans, sections, and details, including an adequate amount of descriptive letter-press, in which I had the pleasure of assisting him; for he was by no means so accomplished an adept with his pen as with his pencil.

Still, however, the circumstance which, above all, manifested his classic ambition, was that of emulating the renowned Romeo Coates in the singularity of the vehicle which served him as a gig. It was built in the form of the antique biga, or war-chariot; with a seat furtively smuggled into the service of comfort, though he ascended into it from behind with classic orthodoxy, and looked (so far as his true English face and costume allowed) like Ictinus, of the Parthenon, "out for a lark"—or as Achilles, driving through the Troy-like streets of Plymouth, with an imaginary corpse of Hector trailing after him. Begging pardon, however, of the vanquished Trojan, let us rather suppose the imagined corpse to have been the defunct body of that Boeotian tastelessness, which, until Foulston's advent, had existed in the British south-west.
- George Wightwick, Life of an architect, page 296ff, Bentley's Miscellany, Volume 42, 1857
As to the book, it generally got fairly neutral reviews. Reviewers tended just to focus on summarising the factual content. One review, however, was distinctly scathing about "this slab of a book, this ponderous elephant portfolio, only more portable than the Devonport Column", and is worth reading for its extensive analysis - not all hostile - of Foulston's architectural works. Ironically, the review itself is pretty ponderous.
In the composition of this volume the evident intention of the architect has been to raise his own monument. The construction of streets and towns, of hall-rooms, reading-rooms, theatres, chapels, gaols, and lunatic asyla, cannot satisfy the ambition of Mr Foulston. His edifices are, unfortunately, fixed to their locality, and cannot walk about with their names, or rather his name, on their porticos or facades, to demand for him, and for themselves, the admiration of the world. Mr. Foulston, therefore. constructs this slab of a book, this ponderous elephant folio, only more portable than the Devonport Column. and sends it abroad among the nations as the examplar of his mighty labours, a shadow cast before his coming fame. To speak truly, the avant-courier is singularly significant, for it has the massive size of the ancient models which Mr. Foulston has imitated in his architectural productions, and that singularity of form, that " modification of ‘proportions,’ on which he prides himself in their adaptation to modern purposes.

The first great work celebrated in these pages is the edifice erected by Mr. Foulston, in Plymouth, of which the characteristic distinction is, that within one uniform outline of plan and elevation, or, as the architect expresses it, “within one perfect whole," are included a theatre, assembly-room, and a hotel, with stabling, coach houses, etc., for the last, and a manager’s house for the first. This mass of building was founded in 1811; it is the property of the corporation, and a part of the funds for its erection were raised on the principle of Tontine, condemned by Mr. Poulett Thomson as a species of gambling. Its form is a quadrangle of 270 by 220 feet. There is an Ionic octostyle portico on the north, and two tetrastyle porticos on the east; the Ionic is that of the temple of llissus, while the ballroom presents the Corinthian of the Choragic monument of Lysicrates. In the ball-room painted figures ornament the front of the orchestra between the double 80133 by which it is supported, and the ceiling is enriched by Mr. Ball, a native artist, with a painting of “the Synod of the Olympian Deities, the Eagle at the Thunderer's feet appearing to grasp the superb central chandelier, while the smaller lustres are supported by Cupids." The hotel is commodious, but the theatre is the apple of Mr. Foulton's eye. “It is,” he says, “ the only fire-proof theatre in the kingdom,“ and, forgetful of the works of Wyatt and Smirke, he gives us a series of details, even to the most minute, of every windlass, groove, and pulley, by which the scenes ascend or descend, the flys are taught to remain stationary, and the wings forbidden to fly.

As to the general effect of this triune edifice, it can scarcely be judged of, as the second portico on the cast front is left unfinished; and the Athenaeum, a building of a graver character, on its west front, rebukes by its severity the grace of the north portico. On the whole, however, Mr. Foulston has great merit in conceiving the project, and executing it in the way he has done,-—of finding space for the erection of one mass of ornamental public building by the union of several smaller features, which, in their individual proportions, must have appeared minute, while in their collective form they present a massive and dignified whole. To gain this good, however, a little evil is created. The hotel, the theatre, and the ball-room may be what the observer chooses to consider them; but, assuredly, character and fitness, the very essence of architectural merit, are entirely wanting; the design should express its purpose, and, if it fail in this, neither grandeur of conception nor accuracy of detail ought to save it from the censure of the judicious. The connection between the Ionic of the temple and the Corinthian of the Choragic monument, and the propriety of their adaptation to hotel, the theatre, and the assembly-room, are discoverable only by genius like that of Mr. Foulston.

The Athenaeum contains the Hall and Museum of the Plymouth Institution, a society for the encouragement of the arts. The style of the building is, as we have said, severe; the portico is a Doric Tetrastyle.
The Public Library, in Cornwall-street, is an adaptation of the Choragic monument of Thrasyllus, at Athens, a well-selected and not inappropriate design, but injudiciously altered, and over-enriched.

In St. Andrew’s Chapel the design is reduced_to poverty for the sake of the materials; and the interior, although we admire the running honeysuckle ornament of the gallery, is greatly injured in effect by the fanciful columns which support it, and the inappropriate place of the pulpit, but perhaps that was meant to conceal the picture of the Crucifixion which is said to enrich the altar.

The fine old Church of St. Andrew appears to have been restored in very good taste. We know not how much of the magnificent effect of the choir is due to Mr. Foulston, but he apologises for and explains the unfortunate site of the pulpit, which here, too, appears a mere mask to the altar.

The next plate is the most extraordinary of all possible jumbles. On the left are the Ionic and Corinthian of the theatre, etc. Near it the Doric of the town-hall. Opposite are the Oriental cupola of the chapel of Mount Zion, and an Egyptian temple adapted to a civil and military library; while the classic and barbaric are united by the commemorative column partaking of both characters.

Mount Edgecumbe-place is a mass of good houses in the Regent-street manner; and St. Paul's Chapel is in a style of which we have, alas! too many examples in London. The Abbey buildings are a specimen of Gothic in the worst sense of that word, but they mark no period of our architecture, imitate nothing, and their originality will not be contested. The ball-rooms of Tavistock and Torquay, and the County Gaol and Lunatic Asylum, require no comment.

Now, whatever merit Mr. Foulston may claim for having acclimatised some fine specimens of Grecian architecture, a service which we are very ready to acknowledge, yet, considering the opportunities afforded him and the present state of his art, we cannot but be shocked at the incongruous masses he has heaped together, and of which we are inclined to think that even he must be somewhat ashamed. The noble church of St. Andrew might have guided him in all his chapels; and, having once adopted the Grecian architecture for the principle of his public buildings, how could he throw away the opportunity of carrying out that principle, and of arranging, with a view to general effect, the noble specimens of antiquity he had the means of adapting to modern purposes within a small yet amply sufficient area?

His book is full of working details, which will be valuable to the practical part of his profession, as far as the designs to which they are subservient are worth adopting. We regret that this minute accuracy of detail is purchased at the expense of general principles. Not one word of Aesthetic, or really architectural character, occurs in the volume, while the mere builder is directed in the minutest practical points. When an architect has a town to restore, he has something more than his own fancy to serve, and Plymouth will not thank Mr. Foulston for experimenting on the picturesque, at the expense of consistency. Again, in the publication of such a work as the volume before us, the author's portrait and the accurate inventory of wheels and pulleys will not atone for the absence of all artistic feeling and professional enthusiasm. The only mention of any other architect which Mr. Foulston makes is invidious, and even the glorious minds from which he has borrowed the means of advancing himself are never honoured in his pages. A true artist would have lodged his working details with that invaluable association, the Royal Institute of British Architects, and the present ponderous volume might have been usefully reduced to a moderate portfolio of plans and elevations, in which case we might have hoped for excellence in the execution, instead of quantity in the designs. Grasp of mind, elevation of thought, refinement of taste, and the purifying love of art, will be sought in vain in Mr. Foulston’s transcripts of his physical and neutral self. He has raised a huge pile to his own memory, and blasted his fame in the epitaph.
- THE PUBLIC BUILDINGS ERECTED IN THE WEST OF ENGLAND (review reprinted from The Monthly Review), pp294-295, The London and Paris Review, 1839.

Thanks to the Devon and Exeter Institution for guest access to its library; all images are reproduced courtesy of the Institution.

 - Ray

"While I live I'll crow"

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I just checked out the reference to the architect John Foulston "emulating the renowned Romeo Coates in the singularity of the vehicle which served him as a gig" in George Wightwick's 1857 Bentley's Miscellany piece "Life of an architect" (see Imaginary prison and an elephant portfolio). The person in question was the famously eccentric dandy and actor Robert Coates (1772-1848).

Robert Coates was the son of a wealthy sugar planter in Antigua. He took an interest in theatre, and on gaining his inheritance, came to England and used his inheritance to fund a career of hilariously incompetent unpaid acting, billed as "the Celebrated Philanthropic Amateur". He acquired the nickname "Romeo Coates" after one of his favourite roles. It's hard to tell if he was one of am-dram's many sufferers from the Dunning-Kruger Effect, or if it was inspired trolling, but he gave people plenty of drama and amusement. He enjoyed his bling ...
... his collection of splendid brilliants, consisting of shoe and knee-buckles, brooches and rings, and sword-handle embossed with the same precious stones.
- p234, Charles Mathews, Memoires, Volume 2, 1839
... and seems to have got a great deal of fun out of his notoriety, before the money ran out. In later life he settled down, marrying in 1822 and living quietly in London until his death at 75 after what we'd now call a hit-and-run incident involving a hansom cab.

Wightwick's comment concerns the renowned flashiness of Coates's curricle; in the early 19th century, one's carriage was just as much a statement of fashion and wealth as choice of car is now:
As a rich bachelor, somewhat anxious for notoriety, as well as fond of display and dress, Mr. Coates about this period introduced to the gaze of the astonished Londoners his well-known curricle, which earned for him another sobriquet, that of "curricle" Coates. Whence the original idea emanated of this extraordinary vehicle it is difficult to say. Its style was so unique that Mr. Coates has been always looked upon as its originator. We think that he must have taken the idea from the celebrated Beau Fielding, a fashionable star of a century before, and of whom the Tatler tells that he rode in a Tumbril of less than ordinary size, to show off the fine proportion of his limbs and the grandeur of his person to the best advantage. Others compared the vehicle the beau rode in to a sea-shell, accompanying which were a dozen tall fellows dressed in black and yellow. The last feature Mr. Coates did not imitate; but his curricle is described by those who frequently saw it as one of the neatest vehicles ever turned out of Long Acre. Its shape was that of a scallop shell; the outside was painted a beautiful rich lake colour, and bore its owner's heraldic device — a cock, life-size, with outspread wings, and over this the motto, "While I live I'll crow." The step to enter the vehicle was also in the form of a cock. The interior was richly lined and upholstered, and the whole mounted upon light springs with a pair of high wheels picked out in well-chosen colours. The vehicle was drawn by two white horses of faultless figure and action, and which must have been matched and acquired at great cost. Their trappings were of the latest fashion and ornamented with the crowing cock in silver. The horses were driven in pair, and the splinter bar was surmounted by a carved brass row; on top of this stood a plated cock, crowing. An equipage such as this, driven by a person dressed in the height of fashion, could not fail to attract public attention, whether in The Row, Pall Mall, or Bond Street; it was admired as much for its unique appearance as for the well-groomed and trained horses attached to it. The effect desired, no doubt, was highly gratifying to its owner, who by this means became well known to the London populace long before he presented himself before them on the stage. Mr. Coates did not confine his drives to the immediate vicinities of St. James's and St. George's, but frequently drove into the city, where the curricle was often seen standing outside the Bank of England, whilst its owner was transacting business within. By this means he became more widely known than ever.
- The Life of Robert Coates, John R and Hunter H Robinson, 1891
To be fair, Coates was far from alone in this eccentricity:
The carriage was far more showy and complicated in those days, exhibiting less of good taste, and an inferiority in workmanship. Carriages were often fanciful in form, in consonance with the caprice of the owners, guided by no rule but eccentricity of appearance. Everybody who remembers the equipage of Romeo Coates, at a later time, can readily understand how carriage-building might be varied without the representations of chanticleer in bright metal, which covered his vehicle and harness, at which the boys in the street used to crow like cocks.
- By-gone Manners and Customs, The Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, 1862 ( page 527).
There's more about the fashionable curricle in Samuel Sidney's 1880 The Book of the Horse (page 538-).

The curricle, from The Book of the Horse


Returning to Coates, Volume 5 of Kirby's Wonderful and Eccentric Museum: Or, Magazine of Remarkable Characters (RS Kirby, 1820, Internet Archive kirbyswonderful04unkngoog) - which is a very good contemporary account of Coates and his act - has more on his equipage:
By some fatal accident, however, he broke this curricle that caused so much mirth and curiosity, and now sports another, made almost in as whimsical a manner: the body is copper, and painted so as to appear like a huge kettledrum hung upon two large serpents; the harness, as before, are studded with cocks, &c. but the large saddles are abandoned. He drives about town with two servants on horseback, and is very particular in having long-tail'd horses, and causing the servants at all times to keep a most respectful distance. Should any person turn to look after him, particularly the ladies, he will turn immediately, and not leave looking at them until they retire. It was our intention to have presented our readers with a view of the first curricle Mr. Coates sported, but we could not get a correct sketch, although Mr. Gillray has caricatured him in it; and a Mrs. Aberdeen advertised she had made one of paper, and exhibited it in her Papyrueism, stating she had been offered fifty guineas for the model. This advertisement appeared in the Morning Post, May 1, 1813, in the following words :

"Mr. Coates seems destined to live all the days of his life, or, in other words, to enjoy perpetual notoriety: he exhibits himself on the stage, and the theatre is crammed from the front row of the stage-boxes to the back seat of the one-shilling gallery. Mrs. Aberdeen exhibits his curricle in her Papyrueism, and her rooms are crowded almost to suffocation, with the world of taste and fashion. We understand that Mrs. Aberdeen has refused an offer of fifty guineas, which was made her for this elegant little model of Mr. Coates's fancy, alleging that she could not think of lobbing her exhibition of one of its greatest attractions."
- "Some interesting particulars of Robert Coates, Esq., commonly called the Amateur of Fashion", pages 2-20, Kirby's Wonderful and Eccentric Museum
Like many other fashionable and larger-than-life figures, Coates was caricatured variously in his lifetime. For instance, the anonymous aquatint An Amateur's Dream (see the British Museum site, Museum Number 1868,0909.12652) shows Coates asleep, holding his trademark cock. He also appears in William Elmes's 1813 The GAY LOTHARIO. the Great and Celebrated Amatuer [sic] of Fashion: ...




... as well as William Holland's 1811 The Game Chicken:, caricaturing his celebrated curricle:

William Heath's 1811 Grimaldi's Tandem is another caricature, and there's a smaller, more realistic, impression of the curricle in the 1813 May fashions, or hints for a four in hand exhibition (British Museum, Museum Number 1868,0808.8061). I can't find any reference to a Gillray print of Coates's curricle mentioned in The Life of Robert Coates; maybe the writer was mistaking The Game Chicken for a Gillray?

Coates was also satirised in verse. Remorse: The Dream of an Amateur of Fashion ("from the British Press, July 23"), published in The Spirit of the Public Journals, 1814, pages 171-174, is quite fun; it imagines him riding in Hyde Park, and having a terrifying encounter with the three witches from Macbeth, who scare him off acting. A shorter example:
And see where ev'ry body notes
The star of fashion, Romeo Coates
The amateur appears:
But where! ah! where, say, shall I tell
Are the brass cocks and cockle shell?
I'll hazard, rouge et noir
If it but speak, can tales relate
Of many an equipage's fate,
And may of many more.
- The English Spy, Charles Molloy Westmacott, 1825
See The Life of Robert Coates: Better Known as 'Romeo' and 'Diamond' Coates, the Celebrated 'Amateur (John Robert Robinson , Hunter H. Robinson, 1891, Internet Archive liferobertcoate00robigoog) for a full biography.

Robert Coates, frontispiece, The Life of Robert Coates
- Ray

Mrs Aberdein's Papyruseum

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Pursuing the trail of enigmatic references... RS Kirby's 1820 piece on Robert Coates mentions that "Mrs. Aberdeen exhibits his curricle in her Papyrueism, and her rooms are crowded almost to suffocation, with the world of taste and fashion. We understand that Mrs. Aberdeen has refused an offer of fifty guineas, which was made her for this elegant little model of Mr. Coates's fancy, alleging that she could not think of lobbing her exhibition of one of its greatest attractions."

click to enlarge
image from "Old Prints", page 271,
The Picture Magazine, Vol 3,
Jan-Jun 1894, via Google Books
It took a moment to get past Kirby's misspellings to find that this concerns the "Papyruseum", a exhibition of scenes and objects made in paper by a Mrs Aberdein. As a flyer pointed out, "Many, Under an Erroneous Idea, Believe that These Works are Simply Flat Cuttings of Paper, We Could Wish it to be Understood that They are Completely Formed Models". Nor were they just papier-mâché, but of fine paper paste (see page 48, The Boy's Treasury of Sports, Pastimes, and Recreations, 1847). The Papyruseum toured Britain for a couple of decades starting in 1813. Mrs Aberdein was in at the start, but died somewhere between 1814 and 1817, after which Mr Aberdein managed the exhibition. This is the text of the above Papyruseum handbill, c.1818:


NOVELTY!
UNDER THE PATRONAGE OF
Their Graces the Duchesses of WELLINGTON and DORSET, and the
Right Honourable the
COUNTESS of LIVERPOOL

Western Exchange, Old Bond-Street
The Nobility and Grentry are most respectfully informed that the Elegant
and truly Unique Productions of the late

MRS ABERDEIN,
KNOWN AS THE
PAPYRUSEUM,
ARE NOW OPEN FOR EXHIBITION, AS ABOVE.
These extraordinary Specimens of Art consist of upwards of One
Hundred and Thirty Figures of Persons of different Nations, includ-
ing several PUBLIC CHARACTERS, representing their Expressions of
Countenance, peculiar Customs, and Costumes; also correct MODELS
of ARCHITECTURE, STATUARY, LANDSCAPES, and a great
Variety of FLOWERS, &c. faithfully coloured from Nature.
THE WHOLE MOST CURIOUSLY CONSTRUCTED IN
PAPER!
To attempt an adequate description of these Works of Tasteful Inge-
nuity would be in vain: they require to be seen, to be properly appre-
ciated; and cannot then fail to afford pleasure and satisfaction to the
most fastidious admirers of the Fine Arts.
This exhibition has been honoured with the approbation and support
of some of the most distinguished among the Nobility and Gentry of the
United Kingdom, and is made
FOR THE SOLE BENEFIT OF
Mrs. ABERDEIN's only Child, a Girl of twelve years.
Admission, One Shilling, from Eleven o clock till dusk.
DESCRIPTIVE CATALOGUES, at 1s. and at 6d.
Printed by Browne & Manchee, Bristol


The catalogue - Descriptive Catalogue of the Late Mrs. Aberdein's Papyruseum; Or, an Assemblage of Models of the Costume and Customs of Different Countries; Statuary; Historical, Domestice, Horticultural, and Landscape Compositions, in Paper, Now Exhibiting, for the Benefit of the Daughter and Only Child of the Deceased Artist - is not findable online, but there are accounts that give some details of the exhibits.
In this charming display of female talent and taste are no fewer than four pieces which mark the loyalty of sentiment possessed by the fair artist. The compositions we allude to are--- a fancy temple, dedicated to his MAJESTY and the PRINCE REGENT conjointly; a funeral temple, commemorative of the renowned NELSON; a very splendid temple of fame, in honour of the hero of Salamance; and a funeral temple, sacred to the memory of ... the late Mr. PERCEVAL.
- The Morning Post, April 13, 1813

PAPYRUSEUM, LEICESTER-SQUARE
This elegant and unrivaled display of female genius, calls forcibly for the protection and patronage of our fair readers; an exhibition that genuine taste cannot fail to approve, and which the conscious pride of feminine talent ought to distinguish. When we see a lady lost in admiration at the ingenious and wonderful construction of these elegant little figures, so correct in feature, drapery, and different costume, and all fabricated from paper, we behold her in her proper sphere, and much better employed than when she joins the suffocating crowds that flock to behold a parcel of mutilated statues, of the just proportions of which, or their antique merits, she cannot possibly be a competent judge. We indeed witnessed no part of the Exhibition of the late Mrs. Aberdein's Works, in Leicester-square, without astonishment and admiration. The monument erected to commemorate Wellington's Victories, the Funereal Sculpture of that to Nelson, Maria's Tomb, and the Costume of different nations, are all entitled to our warmest praise.
- page 284, La Belle Assemblée: or, Bell's Court and Fashionable Magazine, July 1817 

An Equestrian Statue of the Duke of Wellington—Alexander, Emperor of Russia— Buonaparte, late Emperor of France—The Don Cossack, who was in London in 1813—A Russian Baba—Children's Ice Hill in Russia, and coming down in Sledges— The Russian Queen of the Gipsies—An English Ballad-singer, well known in London— A Flower Girl in London—Monks and Nuns of various Orders—Palanquin of Madeira— Chinese Torture—Costumes of Spain, Portugal, Madeira, Switzerland, Russia, Iceland, East Indies, and China.
- Aberdeen Journal, August 30, 1826
 I've been able to find little else about Mrs Aberdein, except that she was an invalid:
This climax of ingenuity and perseverance is the more interesting, having been done on a bed of sickness, to which Mrs A. was confined for thirteen years.
- review, Caledonian Mercury, October 3, 1816
She was commemorated in verse ...
Nor can I here forget (so lately seen,)
Thy wonderous work, oh tasteful Aberdeen!
And, while it such unrivalled skill displays,
Neglect to pay my little meed of praise.—
When first I view'd thy miracle of art,
A beauteous whole, correct in every part,
Where in perennial groups, the loveliest flowers
Without the aid of spring's mild suns and showers,
Such vernal beauty always seem to wear
The bee might think to gather honey there,
Methought I stood upon enchanted ground;
And saw a new creation bloom around.
- Frome. Jacob Player, page 175, The Pocket Magazine of Classic and Polite Literature, 1822

ON THE LATE
Mrs. ABERDEIN's PAPYRUSEUM.
O, Thou! who with inimitable art,
To simple paper could'st such forms impart,
How highly gifted with superior pow'rs,
Thus to beguile Affliction's tedious hours!
Thy varied figures we admiring view,
And hail each image still to Nature true;
E'en Nature's self might ask, with wonder fraught,
What mortal hand my plastic skill has caught ?
Thyself unconscious of the voice of fame,
Thy works from death shall long preserve thy name.
- page 24, Elizabeth Bentley, Miscellaneous Poems, 1835
Mrs Aberdein
... and the John Johnson Collection's Scrap Album section has a relevant clipping (Allegro ID:  - 20090604/15:53:47$mf). It's undated and unidentified, but I just found out what it is, via Catalogue of engraved British portraits preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum (1908, Internet Archive catalogueofengra01brit). It's the admission ticket to the Papyruseum ...
ABERDEIN (Mrs.) ; artist in paper ; fl. c. 1820.
1. Oval medallion supported by seated female. Admission ticket to her 'Papyruseum.'
Stipple. Artist/engraver: Brocas
 ... so the lady in the oval image is in fact Mrs Aberdein.
-
 Ray

DWWW: part 1

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JSBlog has had a bit of a DWM (Dead White Males) bias lately, so here's a compendium of DWWWs (Dead White Women Writers) from The Picture Magazine, Vol 3, 1894. Published by George Newnes from January 1893 to June 1896, The Picture Magazine was quite an innovative format for its time, in being simply an eclectic mix of captioned images.
People tended to cut it up for scrapbooks - the images were in categories such as Fine Art, Jokes, Portraits, Old Prints & Pictures, and Autographs - but such copies as exist provide a remarkable late-Victorian sampler. The 1894 compilation, for instance, contains a wealth of Victorian cartoons, photos of virtually the whole British Royal Family, and portraits of literary figures such as those following, from Portraits No. XV - Lady Writers. Unless you're into literary Victoriana, most of them are little-known now.

Click any image to enlarge.



Olive Schreiner
Miss Olive Schreiner ("from a photo by S Barnard, Cape Town. Author of The Story of an African Farm, etc."). 
South African author, anti-war campaigner and intellectual.
The Story of an African Farm which has been highly acclaimed ever since its first publication in 1883 for the bold manner in which it dealt with some of the burning issues of the day, including agnosticism, existential independence, individualism and the professional aspirations of women; as well as its portrayal of the elemental nature of life on the colonial frontier.
- Wikipedia
See also Internet Archive "Schreiner Olive" for works, and  Olive Schreiner Letters Online.



Blanche Roosevelt
Miss Blanche R Roosevelt ("from a photo by Van der Weyde. Author of Stage Struck, etc").
An American opera singer and author - in later life the Marchesa d’Alligri - turned to authorship after her retirement from the stage, writing a mix of biographical works and novels. Her subjects included Longfellow, Doré, Elisabeth of Roumania, and Victorien Sardou. Her 1884 novel Stage-struck, or; She would be an Opera Singer obviously drew on her own background in the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company. The Copper Queen was a romance, of which George Bernard Shaw wrote: "It is difficult to describe ... To praise it would be treason to Literature; to condemn it would belie the sensation of reading it."

See Internet Archive "Blanche Roosevelt" for works.



Jean Middlemass
Miss Jean Middlemass ("from a photo by Russell & Sons. Author of Claude and Maude, etc")
London-born novelist, who initially published via her father under the pseudonym Mignionette, but came out as a prolific and popular author in the 1870s.
The death is announced, at the age of 85, at her residence in Eaton-terrace, of Miss Mary Jane Middlemass, one of the most prolific writers of popular fiction of the last quarter of the nineteenth century. It would be difficult to state exactly how many books she wrote but it is doubtful if she was exceeded even by Miss Braddon, to whose school she may be reckoned as belonging. When she began to publish in the 'seventies her work was promptly recognized as most suitable for the young person fir it combined abundant excitement and profundity of mystery with the strictest correctitude of morals. Even the worst of her characters is never guilty of any but the more reputable forms of villainy, such as murder and forgery, which would never bring a blush to the most innocent cheek.
- Times obituary, Friday, Nov 07, 1919
See Internet Archive "Jean Middlemass" for works.



Mrs. Lynn Linton ("from a photo by Bassano. Author of Patricia Kemball, etc").
This is Eliza Lynn Linton, "British novelist, essayist, and anti-feminist journalist ... the first female salaried journalist and author of over 20 novels".
Her most famous essay on this subject, The Girl of the Period, was published in Saturday Review in 1868 and was a vehement attack on feminism ... Her obituary in The Times noted her "animosity towards all, or rather, some of those facets which may be conveniently called the 'New Woman'," but added that "it would perhaps be difficult to reduce Mrs. Lynn Linton's views on what was and what was not desirable for her own sex to a logical and connected form."
- Wikipedia
See Wikipedia - Eliza Lynn Linton / Works - for a good link compilation for her works.



Florence Warden
Miss Florence Warden ("from a photograph. Author of A Wild Wooing, etc).
This is Florence Warden (1857–1929),  born Florence Alice Price, and later married to George Edward James. She was an immensely prolific but financially unfortunate author of melodramatic romances, generally concerning courtship and marital dilemmas (see the Answers.com entry from the Oxford Companion to Edwardian Fiction).

See Internet Archive "Florence Warden" for works.



L.T. Meade
Mrs L.T. Meade ("from a photograph. Author of Jill, etc").
L.T. Meade was the pseudonym of the Irish-born Elizabeth Thomasina Meade Smith (1844–1914), a prolific writer of girls' stories. Although she was best known for her works for young readership, she wrote in a variety of genres - 'sentimental' and 'sensational' stories, religious stories, historical novels, adventure, romances, and mysteries, including several with male co-authors" including Robert Eustace. A feminist and member of the Pioneer Club, she founded and edited the proto-feminist girls' magazine Atalanta, which regular readers will recognise as a venue for many poems, stories and serialised novels of Maxwell Gray.

See Internet Archive "Meade, L. T., 1854-1914" for works.



Lanoe Falconer
Lanoe Falconer ("from a photograph. Author of Mademoiselle Ixe, etc").
Lanoe Falconer was the pseudonym of the writer of novellas and short stories Mary Elizabeth Hawker (1848–1908). Born in Aberdeenshire, she grew up in Hampshire, at Longparish House, near Whitchurch, and spent most of her life in that area. This background is reflected in what's probably her best-known work Old Hampshire Vignettes (1907 - see Salamanca Corpus).

Her output severely limited by ill-health, she left a small but acclaimed corpus of work. The 2009 biography by Peter Rowland, The Unobtrusive Miss Hawker, looks rather interesting, but I'm sure not going to pay nearly $80 for it. There is, however, an out-of-copyright 1915 biography, Lanoe Falconer (Evelyn March-Phillips, Internet Archive lanoefalconer00phil) - the frontispiece is the source of one of the few portraits of her.

See Internet Archive "Lanoe Falconer" for works.



Amelia Edwards
Miss Amelia B Edwards ("from a photograph. Author of Debenham's Vow, etc").
This is Amelia Ann Blanford Edwards (1831-1892), the English novelist, journalist, traveller and Egyptologist. It's hard to add to the excellent account on the Penn Libraries A Celebration of Women Writers site - Amelia Ann Blanford Edwards (1831-1892) - which looks at her triple career as a successful novelist, a journalist specialising in travel writing (chiefly via her accounts of distinctly intrepid explorations of areas almost unknown to tourists, accompanied only by her companion of thirty years, Lucy Renshaw); and as an Egyptologist.

See Internet Archive "Amelia Ann Blanford Edwards" for works.



Pearl Craigie (aka John Oliver Hobbes)
John Oliver Hobbes (Mrs Craigie) ("from a photo by Van der Veyde. Author of A Study in Temptations, etc")
This is Pearl Mary Teresa Craigie (1867-1906), the Anglo-American novelist and dramatist. I've written about her before, as she has an Isle of Wight connection. Her father was John Morgan Richards, a late-Victorian fatcat who made his fortune from quack medicines and popularising cigarettes, then retired to play lord of the manor at Steephill, near Ventnor (see The writer, the cancer-merchant, his eccentric wife, and the faux castle). She came to the nearby Craigie Lodge to write (dramas and novels on social/relationship themes, with a distinct Catholic slant); rejected the overtures of the chemical magnate's artist son Walter Spindler (see Old Park - and a stormy friendship); then died unexpectedly of a heart condition at the early age of 38. There's a good, if understandably hagiographic, account in the biography by her father, The life of John Oliver Hobbes : told in her correspondence with numerous friends (pub. J Murray, New York, 1911, Internet Archive lifeofjohnoliver00hobbuoft).

See Internet Archive "John Oliver Hobbes" for works.


To be continued.

- Ray
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