The Babel of History May 2, 2012
Posted by Beachcombing in : Ancient, Contemporary, Medieval, Modern
***Dedicated to Mike Dash***
The past according to a much worn-line is ‘a foreign country, they do things differently there’. Of course, if this were all then history would be a doddle. It would be enough to fill the Cutty Sark with sabres and give the natives music sheets for their acres. But, unfortunately for those who like the easy life, the past is many different countries and, almost as bad, the present is also a vast thalassocracy stretching to the horizon. The success of any historical venture will depend on the proximity of the historian’s land to the one he or she wishes to travel to: and that proximity depends to a large extent on language.
For a start, one language is rarely enough to study the past. There are the tongues that were spoken by the people(s) you want to study multiplied by the languages spoken by the nations that study them today. To deal with the Anglo-Saxons, for example, you would need Anglo-Saxon and Latin and perhaps some rudimentary knowledge of the Celtic languages or Norse. But you would also need English, German, French and (preferably) Spanish and Italian for secondary sources. That is bad enough, but let’s say you had an attitude problem and decided to study Anglo-Saxon missions in Scandinavia: then you would have to add Swedish, Danish and Norwegian. Or perhaps you decide to do your doctorate on Anglo-Saxons in the Varangian Guard in eleventh-century Constantinople: Greek, ancient and modern would matter and quite possibly Turkish and a couple of Slavic languages. If you are really serious about the Varangians you could do a lot worse than marry a Bulgarian.
Some areas of the past are neglected not then because they are inherently difficult in source terms, but because there are impossible language combinations. In some senses, this is becoming less common (for secondary sources) as English becomes the language of choice in academic journals. But, in other ways, it is getting worse as ‘minority’ or despised languages start to assert themselves. Take another example: the ancient Mediterranean was ultimately split into a Latin speaking western half and a Greek speaking eastern half. In the good old days scholars needed Greek, Latin and the colonial languages, French and English to study the Roman province of Africa. Today the Mediterranean is split between the Romance and Slavic speaking north: with Albania and Greece tagged on and the Arabic speaking ‘southern shore’. In the twenty-first century it will be a handicap for a Roman historian determined to study that same province not to know at least some Arabic for archaeological reports. Greek and Latin and a smattering of modern European languages will no longer be enough.
Of course, these kinds of examples are not just restricted to the classical world. There is no definitive book on the Voyage of the Damned, the final phase of the war between Japan and Russia in 1904/1905 for the simple reason that no scholar of stature has both Japanese and Russian. Ditto pogroms in the Second World War: who has Hungarian, Romanian, German, Polish and the Baltic languages? The Nazis and their friends killed many of those who could have replied ‘yes’ to that question. More modestly, the present author’s most productive medieval research took place a decade ago with material involving three different Indo-European language families. There was, in scholarly terms, lots of low-hanging unpicked fruit simply because no one who had troubled to look at it, had had this combination of languages before.
Then if this all sounds easy what about this email sent in by Mike Dash on the languages needed to master the story of the Mongols?
Someone – it might have been JJ Saunders – commented that to do a thorough history of the Mongols would require a historian who spoke, at minimum, Chinese, Japanese, Persian, Turkish, Arabic, Armenian, Syriac, Latin and Russian (just for the original source materials), plus of course ideally Mongol itself (for the Secret History.) Then to read what historians have written, which has not been translated, you’d need at least German and French as well as English, and ideally Czech and Hungarian. Hence in a discipline in which it is rare for a seminal work to stand unchallenged for more than 20-40 years (the longer period, I think, for the medieval stuff) there is always W. Barthold’s Turkestan Down to the Mongol Invasion, originally a PhD thesis defended at St Petersburg in 1900. It remains the standard work because no one since has mastered all the languages required to supplant it. It would be interesting to know if any still-standard work on any other place or time antedates it.
Beach wonders if anyone could come up with a more challenging selection than Mike’s. It makes messing about with Old English and Greek look positively tame: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
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Icelandic Penis Collections, Gnome Sanctuaries and Other Unusual Museums April 3, 2012
Posted by Beachcombing in : Actualite, Contemporary
Beachcombing was in his early teens on holiday in Cornwall when he went to the Gnome Museum. There was a very likeable hippy in her early forties (?) who ran the place and showed Beach and family around a couple of rooms and the garden where she had ‘seen’ the gnomes: there had been some form of mystic contact. She had also come up with a brilliant marketing trick. If you joined the gnome club you were given a small gnome and then every year you renewed your subscription you received a larger and larger gnome by post. Naturally, the young Beach went away with a little plaster cast figure and then lost the kind lady’s address.
In an alternative universe where everything proceeded according to God’s plan, there is a six-foot gnome of gold presently being run up the hill in a postal van. Perhaps in that parallel universe the Gnome museum has expanded to Ikea-like dimensions and displaced Truro.
In our pissy little version of time and space, meanwhile, the gnome museum has disappeared. Beach can find no proof that it ever existed. But some gentle musing this morning did get Beach thinking about other strange museums throughout the world and sent him running to his files. The vast majority, he should note, he has never been to: though he would love to visit Leila’s Hair Museum if anyone has some airmiles to spare.
Stalin World: Based in Lithuania this vast park specialises in statues of Soviet leaders and particularly Uncle Joe. There are also train carriages from ‘vintage’ trains: the trains that carried Lithuanians to the gulags or worse fates. And rather strangely – but this is Stalin World – there is a zoo as well. What animals are kept in the Stalin World zoo? Is petting allowed? Unfortunately, Beach cannot answer these questions because he was unable to find an internet page for Grutas Park where statues are kept: likely because of his lack of reach in the Baltic languages. The wikipedia page suggests that it is still open though.
Icelandic Phallic Museum: This is one where the blurb should be enough. ‘The Icelandic Phallological Museum is probably the only museum in the world to contain a collection of phallic specimens belonging to all the various types of mammal found in a single country… Phallology is an ancient science which, until recent years, has received very little attention in Iceland, except as a borderline field of study in other academic disciplines such as history, art, psychology, literature and other artistic fields like music and ballet.’ Ballet?!
Cheating Museum: A museum that went the way of the gnomes. In Rome in the 1990s university students opened a centre to celebrate different methods of exam cheating. Italy is a country, it must be remembered, where cheating at high schools and universities has been brought up to the level of an art form with no sense of moral fault attached. (Though God help you if you overcook the pasta.) Mrs B spent some time in a seminary as a theology student where, in the New Testament Greek exams, future priests would jostle to sit next to her and copy from her translation, while the teacher looked benevolently on.
Oradour-sur-Glane: This French town in Limousin was a site of a WW2 massacre and, in commemoration of the 642 people murdered there the town has been left frozen in time, recalling the events of 10 June 1944. Over several nightmare hours the men of the village were machine gunned in barns, the women and children burnt alive in the local church by German occupiers. Photographs show wrecked buildings and a car eternally parked in the village square. Went the Day Well with a snuff ending.
Leila’s Hair Museum: Leila appears to be a delightful person. ‘When Leila Cohoon tells people she owns a hair museum, they envision old curling irons, hair dyers, and other such tools. However, this is not the case. There are 159 wreaths and over 2,000 pieces of jewelry containing, or made of, human hair dating before 1900… According to Cohoon, ‘It could possibly be the only hair museum in the United States, maybe the world’.
HezBollah’s Museum: HezBollah decided to open their own museum in 2010 to celebrate (a remarkable) victory over Israel in their war in Lebanon. ‘A young boy ducks under a barricade to have his photo taken next to an Israeli tank. A father puts his baby daughter’s hand on the trigger of a piece of artillery. A Shiite sheikh, in full religious dress, strolls past a map of ‘Occupied Palestine’. Two women silently sob at the site where former Hezbollah leader Abbas al-Musawi, now dead, was said to have prayed.’ Essentially the whole site is dedicated to battle spoils and HezBollah paraphernalia. Not a place to wear your kippah.
Beach would be fascinated by any other strange museums (past and present) that are sent his way: particularly ones that have been missed by the internet: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com In the meantime he would like to offer some ‘internet museum’ sites put together by Invisible on that old obsession of his: fairies. The Fairy Museum (virtual), the Renaissance Faire Pictorial (mobile), the Leprechaun Museum, and the Japanese Fairy Museum. And here is one virtual museum that Beach found while looking for the gnomes: children should not visit unaccompanied… Thanks Invisible!!
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3 April 2012: JB writes in ‘Dear Beach, my guess is that you are befuddled with old age and that you are thinking of the Gnome Reserve in Devon (rather than in Cornwall). And I quote from their very entertaining website: For a completely unique 100% fun experience, simultaneously 100% ecologically interesting, with an extra 100% wonder and magic mixed in, visit The Gnome Reserve. Set amid truly rural countryside between Bideford and Bude just 7 miles from the Devon Cornwall border. the 4 acre Reserve comprises woodland, stream, 30 yard pond, meadow and garden – home to 1000+ gnomes and pixies, and about 250 labelled species of wild flowers, herbs, grasses and ferns. Gnome hats are loaned free of charge together with fishing rods, so you don’t embarrass the gnomes! Take your cameras and embarrass the family with some truly memorable photos for the family album! The children will love it because there is so much for them to discover from a woodpecker in a tree to a pixie flitting over clumps of comfrey. Recommended also for adults whose sophistication can have robbed them of a freshness of vision…The Gnome Reserve will rejuvenate you!’ Thanks JB. I’ll do some research, certainly some of these images seem familiar.
4 April 2012: Pam makes the same point: ‘Is the gnomereserve the place you’re searching for, Dr. B? They have a Gnome Museum there. I remember driving by it on my way to and from Tintagel. (The yard was *filled* with gnomic statuary.) I didn’t get a chance to visit the reserve as I was with two non-gnome/fairy fetishists and they weren’t interested. Since my friends had indulged my Arthur mania, including climbing up to Tintagel Castle, I thought I should leave well enough alone. I also have a vague memory of reading something in Fortean Times about a lady who had a museum and communed with gnomes (or fairies or pixies or…), but a search of their site yielded a big zero in that regard. Perhaps the gnomes have fogged my memory, or there’s some Big Conspiracy to suppress the Truth. It couldn’t be that I have a bad memory.’ The gnome reserve still hasn’t written back. Heidi Fury comes up with Marshsfreemuseum ‘It’s not terribly museumy, but maybe something there will catch your fancy.’ Lehmansterms writes (seconded by Dennis): It’s probably not among the oddest of all museums, but it contains some of the more bizarre items in what is a decidedly bizarre museum genre, the Mutter Museum at the University of Pennsylvania’s Philadelphia museum/campus has a few of the odder medical marvels Lehmansterms ever saw on public display – and in it’s heyday in the 60′s he saw and toured, more than once, the Army Medical Museum and Library in Washington D.C. At one time just across Independence Ave. from the Smithsonian’s venerable “castle”, it was moved to a far less visible location at the Walter Reed Medical Center (and, I believe, recently closed for good). The Mutter’s collection includes, among other items, the shared liver of Chang & Eng – Barnum’s original “Siamese Twins”, the “Soap Lady” – a saponified Colonial-era corpse unearthed in the 19th century, and an enormous collection of objects removed from the throats of choking victims rescued from the brink of death by the first revolutionary 19th century optical “endoscope”-type looker-grabber device. There are also a few skeletons of legitimate, non-hoax, physical bones (and not concrete castings or stone carvings) of actual human giants, to refer to a subject evidently of some interest to the good Dr. B. Photos on Google from the Mutter. A more informative, official website on the Mutter. The old Army Medical Museum - Lehmansterms also recalls what he found to be an extremely unusual exhibit in another of his original hometown, Philadelphia’s museums. Otherwise to be considered unusual only for the vast breadth and wealth of its collections (and for being the largest example of Classical Greek archtecture in the world, including Greece), this is the noted and notable Philadelphia Museum of Art. In the mid 90′s, while on a visit with his 3 daughters and a Swedish exchange student his ex was then hosting, we encountered in a back stairwell a large vitrine full of Victorian-era (lehmansterms believes he recalls) plaster casts of human genetalia. While the “plaster-casters” were a short-lived phenomenon recording the endowments of some of the more famous musicians of the early Psychedelic rock era - and, lehmansterms supposes, could be considered “Art” in an era in which handicrafters the like of Robert Mapplethorpe, et als, are considered to be artists - these were of a different time altogether, if not of dissimilar substance.’ Bennett has more on the phallic museum Thanks to Lehmansterms, Pam, Bennett and Heidi Fury!!!
7 April 2012: Ervy sends in this classic from Alberta: ‘Strange but true, Torrington is the home to the infamous Gopher Hole Museum. This attraction features stuffed gophers (Richardson ground squirrels) posed in a series of 47 anthropomorphic scenes, from a hair dresser to a preacher to an RCMP officer. Located north of Calgary, east of Olds on highway #27. Open daily from 10am to 5pm. Admission $2 for adults.’
Handlist of Adult Changelings March 30, 2012
Posted by Beachcombing in : Modern
Beach’s hell is about to begin as today is the day that Mrs B runs away to Athens leaving him alone with his younger daughter FOR 48 HOURS. Beachcombing’s relations with tiny little Miss B are mainly restricted to playing peekaboo and putting her to bed. The next TWO DAYS then will be terrifying for both parties. While Beach is enjoying his last half hour of freedom he thought he would put together the outlines of a fairy handlist. Over the years Beach has stumbled (constantly) on references to changelings: i.e. children changed by the fairies for a fairy. However, he has also sometimes come across references to adult fairies, namely fairies that were changed in childhood and then survived into adulthood when they were politely shunned by their neighbours. Just to set things off here are a few from his very short list: he would love any additions, drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com For contributors rules are (i) the changeling should be real (no tenth-hand accounts about villages two hundred years ago) and (ii) the changeling has to be an adult: changeling children are everywhere and (iii) the change took place in childhood rather than in adulthood, no nursing mothers or Bridget Clearys.
This one is from a British newspaper in the 1880s: this describes an unusual variant on the changeling tradition.
I often called, on my way to school, at the house of a very little old woman (in fact I do not ever remember seeing a less woman) called Fanny Bradley, with the pretence of buying pens and pencils, but more from a desire to see this little woman; and I am sure that there are scores of the older part of the inhabitants of Rigton and Stainburn and the villages surrounding Almscliff Crag at the present day who can remember this little woman and her brother Tom, who was a very little man also. People said that when these two little folk were infants their mother took them with her to a field adjoining Almscliff Crag, where she had occasion to go to shear or reap some corn. At that day it was generally admitted by most people that a kind of little people of the fairy order, about 2ft. high and about the same proportion in body, and dressed in all kinds of flash and gaudy colours, and flying about with the quickness of lightning, inhabited the openings and crooks in the rocks. While this woman was busy at work these fairies came and stole her children. When she found that her children had gone she cried and was so much troubled that the fairies brought them back, and placed them where they found them. And they said that that was the reason Fanny and her brother were so little.
This is from Evans Wentz’s Fairy Faith and is rather upsetting. Sadly too the photo has not survived:
One of the most striking examples of a changeling exists at Plouharnel-Carnac, Brittany, where there is now living a dwarf Breton whom I have photographed and talked with, and who may possibly combine in himself both the abnormal psychical and the abnormal pathological conditions. He is no taller than a normal child ten years old, but being over thirty years old he is thick-set, though not deformed. All the peasants who know him call him ‘the Little Corrigan’, and his own mother declares that he is not the child she gave birth to. He once said to me with a kind of pathetic protest, ‘Did M. —- tell you that I am a demon?’
This is Evans Wentz again, also in Brittany:
M. Goulven Le Scour, at my request, wrote down in French the following account of actual changelings in Finistère:–’I remember very well that there was a woman of the village of Kergoff, in Plouneventer, who was called —-, the mother of a family. When she had her first child, a very strong and very pretty boy, she noticed one morning that he had been changed during the night; there was no longer the fine baby she had put to bed in the evening; there was, instead, an infant hideous to look at, greatly deformed, hunchbacked, and crooked, and of a black colour. The poor woman knew that a fée had entered the house during the night and had changed her child. This changed infant still lives, and to-day he is about seventy years old. He has all the possible vices; and he has tried many times to kill his mother. He is a veritable demon; he often predicts the future, and has a habit of running abroad during the night. They call him the ‘Little Corrigan’, and everybody flees from him. Being poor and infirm now, he has been obliged to beg, and people give him alms because they have great fear of him. His nick-name is Olier. ‘This woman had a second, then a third child, both of whom were seen by everybody to have been born with no infirmity; and, in turn, each of these two was stolen by a fée and replaced by a little hunchback. The second child was a most beautiful daughter. She was taken during the night and replaced by a little girl babe, so deformed that it resembled a ball. If her brother Olier was bad, she was even worse; she was the terror of the village, and they called her Anniac. The third child met the same luck, but was not so bad as the first and second. The poor mother, greatly worried at seeing what had happened, related her troubles to another woman. This woman said to her, ‘If you have another child, place with it in the cradle a little sprig of box-wood which has been blessed (by a priest), and the fée will no longer have the power of stealing your children.’ And when a fourth child was born to the unfortunate woman it was not stolen, for she placed in the cradle a sprig of box-wood which had been blessed on Palm Sunday (Dimanche des Rameaux). ‘The first three children I knew very well, and they were certainly hunchbacked: it is pretended in the country that the fées who come at night to make changelings always leave in exchange hunchbacked infants. It is equally pretended that a mother who has had her child so changed need do nothing more than leave the little hunchback out of doors crying during entire hours, and that the fée hearing it will come and put the true child in its place. Unfortunately, Yvonna —- did not know what she should have done in order to have her own children again.’
Here is a passage in Hartland’s Science of Fairy Tales describing a passage in Rhys (sorry we don’t have time to hunt down the original!).
Professor Rhys’ description of a reputed changeling, one Ellis Bach, of Nant Gwrtheyrn, in Carnarvonshire, is instructive as showing the kind of being accredited among the Welsh with fairy nature. The professor is repeating the account given to him of this poor creature, who died nearly half a century ago. He tells us: ‘His father was a farmer, whose children, both boys and girls, were like ordinary folks, excepting Ellis, who was deformed, his legs being so short that his body seemed only a few inches from the ground when he walked. His voice was also small and squeaky. However, he was very sharp, and could find his way among the rocks pretty well when he went in quest of his father’s sheep and goats, of which there used to be plenty there formerly. Everybody believed Ellis to have been a changeling, and one saying of his is well known in that part of the country. When strangers visited Nant Gwrtheyrn, a thing which did not frequently happen, and when his parents asked them to their table, and pressed them to eat, he would squeak out drily: ‘B’yta ‘nynna b’yta’r cwbwl’ that is to say’ Eating that means eating all.’ A changeling in Monmouthshire, described by an eye-witness at the beginning of the present century, was simply an idiot of a forbidding aspect, a dark, tawny complexion, and much addicted to screaming. [is this latter a child?]‘
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30/04/2012: Count Otto writes in.Concerning adult changelings – what exactly do you mean by this? Does the adult in question have to be actually done away with, or at least permanently removed, and replaced by a totally different person who may or may not look the same? If so, examples are probably very rare indeed. However, if the physical body remains the same, but the person inside is generally reckoned to be somebody else, does that count? And if so, does the transformation have to be absolute, or are there degrees of separation? Consider one of my favourite unashamed fraudsters of all time, Tuesday Lobsang Rampa. When it transpired that his physical body was in no way Tibetan, either genetically or in the sense of ever having been there, a convenient explanation was forthcoming whereby his soul was indeed that of a Tibetan lama, but his body was in every legally provable sense that of an Englishman who, thanks to a bizarre bird-watching accident, was now somebody else. Now, you may not believe that. Not many people do. Though you have to admire a man who with a perfectly straight face published the telepathically-dictated autobiography of his cat.However, a huge proportion of all the people who ever allegedly went to Fairyland were literally “not quite the same person” when they came back. And sometimes they didn’t come back for years. There is a very good case for suggesting that every fairy abductee was replaced by an actual fairy, and since fairies are generally reckoned to be highly intelligent, most of them more or less pulled it off, but they’re not perfect, so a few of them didn’t.Which ties in extraordinarily well with the modern alien abduction phenomenon. You’ve got your bog-standard abductees. Then you’ve got your star-children, who are in every biological sense human until the aliens whisk them away, and after that they suddenly announce that they aren’t human and somehow never were, and start displaying a combination of hitherto unadmitted artistic ability and rather vague psychic powers that would have come as no surprise at all to anyone who knew Thomas the Rhymer.And then you’ve got your “walk-ins” – biological humans who are suddenly somebody else because they have a totally alien consciousness. Effectively, 100% different people who happen to be identical in every way that you can actually prove. When you compare that with the medieval notions of possession and obsession (in its original sense of being demonically compelled to do things for no halfway logical reason), I think you’ll find that a very tangled can of worms has been opened.’ Thanks Count!!
Perrottet: Sinners’ Grand Tour March 23, 2012
Posted by Beachcombing in : Ancient, Medieval, Modern
Tony Perrottet, The Sinner’s Grand Tour: Journey Through the Historical Underbelly of Europe (2011 in paperback)
Broadly-speaking all humans have three reactions to forms of sexual activity: (i) frenzy, (ii) comic indifference or (iii) disgust. Beachcombing, for example, has to (i) contain himself when confronted with sultry Mediterranean beauty. He finds it (ii) amusing that some of his fellow humans are excited by leather-bound or office-based fantasies. And he gags (iii) at even vague references to a whole series of activities from bestiality to zoophilia. (Yes, yes, these are the same thing, but this was the closest he could get to the alpha-omega of sexual grossness.) The tragedy is, of course, that these three categories vary from individual to individual: one man’s meat is another’s obscenity.
Now the beginning of sexual relations between two adults inevitably involves a degree of: are-we-compatible shuffling around the bedroom (or, for those so inclined, the office or stables). And so it is with a reader and a book on sexual history: including Tony Perrottet’s The Sinner’s Grand Tour: A Journey Through the Historical Underbelly of Europe. Unfortunately for Beachcombing TP’s book, though well-written and amusing, covers a series of Europeans – Byron, the Emperor Tiberius, the Marquis de Sade – with whom Beach is NOT in sympathy. Beach’s hands began to sweat with the six pages on pubic hair wigs, and he was close to retching by the time he got to the four on chastity belts.
Beach mentioned ‘history’ above, but this is not a history book per se. What we actually have is a ‘character’, the American author Tony Perrottet leading his family (wife and two sons) through sites with sexual histories in Britain and continental Europe. These range from the Hell Fire Clubs in Scotland, to a Pyrenean town with memories of a fourteenth-century inquisition – Albigensians did ‘it’ in front of church altars, to the search for the brothels of nineteenth-century Paris. In other words anything goes bar the Etruscans and, thank God, the Vikings.
The author reminds Beach of Bill Bryson – I bet he is sick of hearing that! – and some of his exploits such as his extraordinary attempts to get into the Marquis de Sade’s dungeon are well worth reading: particularly when you think of the efforts that some local virgins made to get out of the same. What Beachcombing found a little worrying was the running joke of trying to keep the purpose of the trip from the author’s ten and four year old sons. ‘Where’s Daddy going? [the elder son] started asking whenever I slipped out. ‘Oh, he’s got work to do’ [the wife] would mutter dryly pushing my copy of Juliette [by De Sade] under the bed with her foot. The cover displayed the heroine with a strap-on dildo brutalizing a gagged shepherd.’ Beach never quite decided what he made of this type of humour. But perhaps the discomfort comes close to why the book works: the whole point of this material is that it should, like a Haneke film, unsettle you.
Oh and there is also a little gripe: if you purchase a book called The Sinner’s Grand Tour you might reasonably expect, well, the Grand Tour. Beach bought this volume on the strength of ‘Grand Tour’ thinking that here we would have northern travellers making merry in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century southern Europe, something reinforced by Renaissance statues on the front cover and a man and woman in great-grandparent-clothes groping. As Beachcombing confessed above he has a thing about sultry Mediterranean beauty: the idea of an unbalanced Georgian licking his lips as he rode towards Naples was one Beach relished.
In fact, this volume sat, damn it, on his Grand Tour shelf, until he decided to read it today to get through a series of insane bureaucratic appointments. Now he can’t complain. He enjoyed the book and he wouldn’t have brought it had it been called Tony’s Sexual Safari. So both the publisher, author and Beach are satisfied with said act of mendacity. But still…
Beachcombing is always on the look out for interesting books and thanks Invisible for sending him the link to this one: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
On the subject of sex follow this link for extraordinary photographs of life among teenage prostitutes in a Bangladeshi slum
And so it begins… Images from 1914 March 21, 2012
Posted by Beachcombing in : Contemporary
[students in Berlin, off to enlist]
Beachcombing has recently become interested in crowd photography: large groups of people, preferably in rather strange or extreme situations. And as part of this ‘project’ he started collecting photographs from perhaps the dizziest month in western history: August 1914. The war is just beginning and young and not so young men are racing to enlist, most of them with smiles on their faces. They are – and this is something that comes through these pictures – not only supported by their nearest and dearest, but their nearest and dearest seem to be almost as happy as our imperial warriors.
[Just joined up in Exeter]
The sheer enthusiasm unsettled many of the leaders who were responsible for the world war that was to come. Lloyd George noted, while walking through ecstatic crowds, towards the House of Commons: ‘These people are very anxious to send our soldiers to face death‘… and so they were. Revenge didn’t come into it: at least not then. There was something about transcendence and the nation state: that Beachcombing can just get glimpses of in these jubilant faces.
There may have been other wars where men were so happy to go off and kill and die for their country: but none jump to Beachcombing’s mind. The contrast with the Second World War is particularly striking. Then, the populations of even the most ‘enthusiastic’ nations gritted their teeth.
[Goodbye at the Gare d'Est in Paris]
The First World War may or may not have been worth fighting. But these images don’t give justified causes. In fact, the silly hats and the moustaches, so similar from nation to nation: give a tweedle-dee, tweedle-dum feel to the whole enterprise, as if Europe was about to war over Swift’s boiled eggs rather than Serbia and Belgium’s territorial integrity. Look, for example, at the essential similarity of these scenes in London (Buckingham Palace) and Berlin (with the Kaiser speaking to his people). Then just to underline what these moments did to people, look who crops up in this shot from Munich in the third image…. Back story here.
Or what about Trafalgar Square against Unter den Linden?
It is an incredibly puerile thought given how many millions were going to die: but, well, couldn’t they just have settled it all with a massive boater throwing competition?
Beachcombing was set off on this hunt by the following image of French Heavy Cavalry leaving Paris: that’s right Captain, charge the two machine gun nests and then straight to Berlin!
Heavy cavalry! WtH!! But from there he branched out into other shots of women saying goodbye to the boys.
[German troops x 1]
[German troops x 2]
[French troops: a real frisson here]
[New Zealand troops]
And as a variation on theme, the sons wearing their fathers’ helmets as they go to leave their civilian clothes at home.
Then just to round off with another kind of photo and another kind of hysteria, here is Kier Hardie, the grand old man of British labour, addressing a pacifist meeting in London. The hats are the same…
Any other August 1914 pictures before the guns come out: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
Churchill, De Gaulle and Waterloo March 15, 2012
Posted by Beachcombing in : Contemporary
Today a bit of modern British history/myth. Beach will write it out as it was told to him. He would be interested to see whether there is any basis to the tale: it sounds very Churchillian, but it also has the exquisite stench of cobblers.
Towards the end of his life Churchill was visited by a young official to discuss the details of his state funeral. The official showed Churchill the planned route that his coffin would take from his home to London and was surprised that, though Churchill proved flexible and uncomplaining about most details, here he demurred. Churchill suggested various other routes and when the young official finally asked why Churchill tapped his fingers on the map of London and one of the capital’s most important stations. ‘If I outlive De Gaulle, there is no problem. But if he is still alive I want him to be part of the group that greets my body as it comes into Waterloo!’
It is a beautiful story. However, is it true? Beachcombing has found no confirming details. Churchill was one of those rare Britons, perhaps even rarer among the aristocracy, who loved France. He did though have a lasting and fond antipathy for De Gaulle who had often made his life a misery in the war years. While Churchill with an operational Empire had to creep and crawl before Roosevelt, De Gaulle, without an acre of France to his name, calmly antagonised the US at every turn with undeniable style.
De Gaulle had a similarly doubtful attitude towards Churchill. Here were, after all, two alpha males whose personalities had too many commonalities to make any form of friendship possible. And how Waterloo would have irked De Gaulle much as the general loved battlefields!
In fact, Churchill’s body did come to Waterloo – on its homeward voyage – which might mark the beginning of this particular tale. One BBC report that Beachcombing has just chased down states:
The funeral cortege was accompanied by a 19-gun salute and an RAF fly-past as it began the journey to Sir Winston’s final resting place. At Tower Hill, the coffin was piped aboard the launch Havengore for the voyage up the Thames. From Waterloo, it was placed onto a train drawn by a Battle of Britain locomotive named Winston Churchill. Thousands gathered to pay tribute at wayside stations. At many football matches a two-minute silence was observed. Sir Winston was finally laid to rest in the Oxfordshire parish churchyard of Bladon, close to Blenheim Palace where he was born 90 years before, with only family members present.
De Gaulle was still alive and, indeed, he was present at the funeral: see picture. But did he follow the coffin to Waterloo? Did Churchill ever insist on a Waterloo route – that seems, looking at the map to have been the obvious one? Beachcombing fears not… drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
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16 March 2012: Wade did a lot of the necessary spade work here, though as he notes still no real sources. First website Wade links has: ‘On January 15, 1965 Churchill suffered another stroke — a severe cerebral thrombosis — that left him gravely ill. He died nine days later on January 24, 1965, 70 years to the day of his father’s death. His body lay in State in Westminster Hall for three days and a state funeral service was held at St Paul’s Cathedral. This was the first state funeral for a commoner since that of Field Marshal Lord Roberts of Kandahar in 1914. It was Churchill’s wish that, were de Gaulle to outlive him, his (Churchill’s) funeral procession should pass through Waterloo Station. As his coffin passed down the Thames on a boat, the cranes of London’s docklands bowed in salute. At Churchill’s request, he was buried in the family plot at Saint Martin’s Churchyard, Bladon, near Woodstock, Oxfordshire, England.’ Beach loves the ideas of the cranes of London bowing to their dead master. And another site that is sceptical. Beach can’t help but thinking someone with a good knowledge of British railways could kill this legend – not that we would want to, of course: As his coffin passed down the Thames on the Havengore, the cranes of London’s docklands bowed in salute. The Royal Artillery fired a 19-gun salute (as head of government), and the RAF staged a fly-by of sixteen English Electric Lightning fighters. The state funeral was the largest gathering of dignitaries in Britain as representatives from over 100 countries attended, including French President Charles de Gaulle, Canadian Prime Minister Lester Pearson, Prime Minister of Rhodesia Ian Smith, other heads of state and government, and members of royalty. It also saw the largest assemblage of statesmen in the world until the funeral of Pope John Paul II in 2005. It has been suggested it was Churchill’s wish that, were de Gaulle to outlive him, his (Churchill’s) funeral procession should pass through Waterloo Station. This is complete myth. Though President de Gaulle did attend the service and the coffin departed for Bladon from Waterloo Station, there is absolutely no connection. In fact, Churchill did not plan his own funeral as commonly believed; he made a few suggestions, but there was a private committee which made the plans, and he was not on it.’ Thanks Wade!!!
17 Mar 2012: FP writes in ‘Hello, After reading your recent post “Churchill, De Gaulle and Waterloo” and particularly the line that a railway expert could kill the myth, I thought I would write in with a comment. At first sight, railway geography would seem to support the myth. To get from London to Bladon, Waterloo would not be your first choice of station. The obvious departure station would be Paddington, from which a train can get to central Oxfordshire very directly. However, if the organisers definitely wanted to include a journey down the Thames, the problem is that Paddington is a long way from the river: it would be a case of a road procession from St Pauls to Tower Hill, a barge from there to the West End followed by a second road procession through Mayfair and Bayswater. Waterloo is not only almost on the riverbank, but there is a fairly direct rail route from there to Reading, where the train can join the main line from Paddington and on to Oxfordshire. Moreover, for obvious reasons the train was hauled by the locomotive “Winston Churchill”. Although the railways were nationalised in 1947, in England and Wales the former railway companies had survived as largely-autonomous “Regions” within British Railways. “Winston Churchill” was built by the Southern Railway, and in 1965 (although only a few months from withdrawal) was based at Salisbury, on the Southern Region’s lines out of Waterloo. It is probably safe to say that at that time there were no loco crew at all on British Rail who were qualified both to drive “Winston Churchill” and to drive trains from Paddington to Reading; on the other hand almost all Waterloo-Reading line steam crews would have been able to handle the engine. It is also likely that special work would have been needed to make sure that a Southern Region engine would even have been able to run on the Paddington-Reading line safely. In other words, using Waterloo solved two issues: how to get the procession from boat to train easily, and also how to ensure the right engine could be used on the train with minimal special effort. I hope the above is helpful to you. On balance, I think it is highly unlikely that the use of Waterloo was purely to annoy De Gaulle – although I can imagine that when it became apparent that Waterloo would be the most straightforward terminus to use, it would have raised a few wry smiles on the planning committee!’ Thanks FP!!!!
Pulling Things Out of Rivers March 13, 2012
Posted by Beachcombing in : Ancient, Contemporary, Medieval, Modern
Rivers are useful guardians of the past: often thousands of years roll by (and millions of tonnes of water) before things that have been thrown in are fished out (sometimes literally) several hundred or thousands of years later. Here are Beachcombing’s favourite they-were-found-in-river things. Others would be welcome: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
1) Claudius’ Head in the Alde: In 1907 a school boy pulled this prize out of the river and brought it to a local antiquary. From then excitement slowly mounted and it has never entirely died down. What is of particular interest is the way that the head of the emperor Claudius seems to have been hacked off a statue and a blow to the back of the head suggests that murder was done on an inanimate object. It looks very much as if a Roman statue was ritually slaughtered and the head was then dedicated to a Celtic river God (i.e. thrown in a river): back in the days when the Alde was called the Itchen. And the suspects? Why not Boudicca’s revolt in 61 AD when Colchester with its Temple of Claudius was overrun by British ‘savages’ and Rome was, at least for a season, lain low in East Anglia?
2) Silver Plate in the Rhone: ‘In 1656 a fisherman on the banks of the Rhone, in the neighbourhood of Avignon, drew to shore in his net a round substance in the shape of a large plate, thickly encrusted with a coat of hardened mud. A silversmith who happened to be present brought it for a trifling sum. He took it home, and upon cleaning and polishing it, found it to consist of pure silver… Fearing that such a massive and valuable piece of plate might awaken suspicion , if offered for sale entire, he divided it into four equal parts, each of which he disposed of at different times and places.’ One of the pieces was sold at Lyons to Mr. Mey, a wealthy and well-educated merchant, who at once saw its value and who, after great effort, procured the other three sections. He had them nicely rejoined, and the treasure was finally placed in the cabinet of the King of France.’ This object is often called Scipio’s Shield. It actually dates to the fourth century AD.
3) A Steamboat in the Missouri River: In 1987 a nineteenth-century steamboat, the Arabia was discovered in a field just off the Missouri. Its excavation proved logistically difficult because river waters kept pouring in as the excavators dug down. In fact, in one episode an excavator was almost killed. The boat had disappeared into the mud of that river almost a hundred and fifty years before, sinking in ten minutes with no casualties save a mule! 700 items are now on display from this victim of ‘the hungriest of all rivers’ at a special Arabia museum: and the boat stands as one of the most impressive archaeological finds from frontier America.
4) A Tank and the Neva. This picture shows a BT-5 one of the most impressive Soviet tanks from WW2 being fished out of the river. A nice question is how it got there! Images of the tank and descriptions of the find suggest that there was no one in it when it went down into its watery grave – so bridges and vodka-sozzled drivers have to be ruled out. And it does not seem to have suffered any damage from the enemy: though Soviet tanks were famously resistant to even point blank blasts. Perhaps its owners, as they were surrounded by the Germans decided to get rid of it and the nearby river offered the quickest way to dispose of their hardware?
5) Hindu finds from the Thames: The Thames has been good for ‘Roman brooches, medieval pilgrim badges, 17th-century tin-glazed tiles, an 18th-century miniature portrait and an early-20th century handgun‘. But for Beachcombing at least some of the most curious finds have been the various Hindu statuettes dredged up in London’s river. So what does this represent: an underground Hindu cult in medieval London? Not a bit of it. The best estimates put these objects from the 1880s to 2000. For London’s modern Hindu community have evidently been using the Thames as a kind of surrogate Ganges, a place to throw their gods in an eerie echo of those rituals carried out in pre-Christian times on the banks of the same waterway. The British Museum at first thought that some of these statues were Roman… An understandable if entertaining mistake.
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14/Mar/2012: First is Louis with some corrections for the tank story. ‘Actually BT tanks were notorious for their thin armor, which became very clear during the Winter War and the Nomohan incident and which prompted the Red Army to change to the T34 faster then previously scheduled. And, the tank was probably on its way to the Neva Bridgehead, on a pontoon, during a relief offensive for Leningrad, as can be read in this English language website: Second is Tacitus from Detritus: Here is a link to one of my favorite river finds. An early confederate submarine of which no reliable record has ever been produced. Dredged up by accident in 1878. Technically found in a bayou coming off of Lake Ponchartain, but clearly designed for use against an impending Union attack on New Orleans. Even the thought of entering the treacherous muddy waters of the Mississippi in this glorified tin can alarms me! Then Jakub: ‘How about the opposite: pulling boats out of the ground? This happened a few years ago not far south from Warsaw, Poland. In a pond in an apple orchard a 500-year old ship was found and dug out: a 34m-long grain-punt. 500 years earlier Vistula, which is notorious for changing its course (and thus a most unsuitable container for long-lost artefacts), flowed through what is now the apple orchard on the border of a place called Czersk – once the capital of an entire province, dwindled into a tiny village once the river that gave it its prosperity decided to pack up and move a few miles eastward, leaving boats like this one in the middle of a sandy plain (link in Polish). Next is Invisible: My personal favourite [creepy warning!]: I visited the Steamboat Arabia museum a couple of years ago. The amount of organic materials – leather, cloth, foodstuffs – that survived is simply astounding. Apparently the sites of several other wrecked steamboats buried by the shifting river are known and await excavation. The remarkable thing about the Arabia excavation and museum is that it was done entirely without public funds – the Hawley family (with friends and supporters) paid for the arduous, large-scale excavation, the conservation of the artifacts, and the museum out of their own pockets. The book The Treasures of the Steamboat Arabia by David Hawley gives a step-by-step account of the difficulties involved in getting the steamboat and its cargo out of the tons of mud that covered it and includes color photos of many artifacts. An extraordinary story.’ Thanks Louis, Tacitus, Invisibile and Jakub!!
16 March: Some great stuff from Jim W here. ‘Similar to the Arabia steamboat recovery was the USS Cairo sunk in the Yazoo River during the Vicksburg Siege of the US Civil War. Found by old-style geophysics (magnetic dip needle) nearly intact but broken in half during recovery. Massively displayed in National Military Park as half original and half reconstructed. Museum contains quantities of personal and military gear recovered in very good state of preservation. On the other side, the CSS Arkansas is still buried under a mainline levee near Sunrise, LA. She was badly damaged during the Vicksburg Siege and escaped downriver to her coup de gras at Baton Rouge. Steamer Desoto discovered under a bean field near Missouri River, IA, again by 1960s vintage geophysics (flux-gate magnetometer). Excavated and on display with large quantity of personal and trade goods. Carried supplies and equipment to Montana gold rush before snagged. Meandering, large-flow, high sediment rivers like the Mississippi/Missouri system do this kind of thing as a matter of course, generally leaving the wrecks hundreds of yards to miles from the present courses in old meanders. Reference the Mississippi Confederate submarine: The Grand Gulf State Park Museum, Port Gibson, MS has (or had several years ago) a submersible home-built from an old boiler that was supposedly used for bootlegging from Louisiana to Mississippi back in the good/bad old days of Prohibition.’ Thanks Jim!!!!
28 March 2012: Norman writes: Haven’t had any luck tracking an image of it down yet (still working on it), but I remember once seeing a crucifix in a museum in New Brunswick (Canada) that had been recovered from a river. It was made of bone (or maybe ivory, I misremember), and was of the type that missionaries would give out to the local Indians (in this case either Mi’kmaq or Maliseet). The cool thing about it was that the wrists and ankles of the figure, where they were attached to the cross, had been scraped so thin that they had nearly snapped off. Archaeologists conjectured that the natives had scraped thin shavings of the figurine into a broth which would then be fed to sick people – apparently a conflation of religion and magic, or perhaps a misunderstood interpretation of the old “this is my body…” routine that the indians took literally.’ thanks Norman!!
Christ’s Execution in a Marble Jar March 6, 2012
Posted by Beachcombing in : Ancient, Modern
Beachcombing must yet again apologise to his readers for a brief post, but the last exams before spring break need to be corrected (hurrah! hurrah!) and in any case the Huntsville Daily Times (29 Jan 1911: MO) wanted to do all the talking for him.
George Carter, son of the late I. M. Carter and nephew of Uncle Joe Carter of this city has handed us a newspaper clipping which as been in the Jackson-Carter families for about ninety years. George says his father came in possession of the copy of the ‘warrant’ in 1874; Will Jackson gave it to him and that Mr. Jackson’s father brought it from Kentucky to Missouri in an early day and that it had been in the Jackson family long before they came to Missouri. The clipping shows age all right and reads as follows: ‘Death Warrant of Christ’.
The what? The newspaper continues with a quotation from this extraordinary artefact (ahem!). Beach could have cut and run with the Missouri connection but he loved the yellowing paper being passed from father to elder son as the family crowded around the death bed. Anyway, back to the actual death document.
Chance has just put into our hands the most imposing and interesting judicial documents to all Christians, that every has been recorded in human annals; that is the identical death warrant of our Lord Jesus Christ. We transcribe the document as it has been handed us. Sentence rendered by Pontius Pilate acting governor of lower Galilee, stating that Jesus of Nazareth shall suffer death on the Cross.
The document is then quoted from.
In the year seventeen of the empire Tiberius Caesar, and the 25th day of March, in the City of Holy Jerusalem, Anna and Caiophas being priest sacrifactors of the people of God, Pontius Pilate, Governor of Lower Galilee, sitting on the presidential chair of the practory, condemn Jesus of Nazareth to die on the Cross between two thieves, the great and notorious evidence of the people saying:
1. Jesus is a seducer.
2. He is seditious.
3. He is an enemy of the law.
4. He calls himself also the Son of God.
5. He calls himself falsely the King of Israel.
6. He entered into the temple, followed by a multitude bearing palm branches in their hands.
Order the first centurian, Quillus Cornelius, to lead him to the place of execution.
Forbid to any person whatsoever, either poor or rich, to oppose the death of Jesus.
The witnesses who signed the condemnation of Jesus are viz: 1.—Daniel Bobana, a Pharisee; 2. Joannus Hoabable; 3. Raphael Robani; 4. Capet, a citizen.
Jesus shall go out of the city of Jerusalem by the gate of Stuenur.
The above sentence is engraved on a copper plate; on one side are written these words: A similar plate is sent to each tribe.
Other sources – there are many – claim that the plate was found in a marble jar ‘while excavating in the ancient city of Aquila in the kingdom of Naples in the year 1810’: no mention is made of which tribe the artifact was sent to and, in any case, sending a copy to each tribe seems to so third-century-BC. Also it was discovered ‘by the Commissioners of Arts of the French Army. At the expedition of Naples, it was enclosed in a box of ebony and preserved in the sacristy of the Chartem (Certosa). The French translation was made by the Commissioners of Arts. The original is in the Hebrew language.’
The ‘original’ is ‘peculiarly’ close to the Gospel account: if someone faked a document today they’d at least have the decency to throw in some reference to Christ’s bloodline or Jack the Ripper. Anyway, enough moaning. The newspaper report concludes with the following interesting addition.
At the sale of his collection of antiquities, etc., it was bought by Lord Howard, for 2,800 francs.
So a Lord Howard in the early nineteenth century: who could this be? Did this sale ever take place? Who put this honestly-not-very-imaginative fake together? And does the death warrant still survive today? Drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
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30 April 2012: Rayg brings up a reference: I just had a brief search: the story kicks off around 1839 in French journals (see Google Books – “Lord Howard” “Denon” – for that period). The sale itself did exist: this must be the 1826 sale of the Baron Vivant Denon’s museum collection after his death. See Museum Masters, page 104), which says there was a catalogue … and here it is: Jay meanwhile has a wanted poster to go with this. Thanks Jay and Rayg!
Escaping the Guillotine March 4, 2012
Posted by Beachcombing in : Modern
Capital punishment: it’s been a while. Beachcombing was thinking about close escapes from death penalty. There are two types of these, of course: either royal screw ups on the part of executioners or daring escapes at the point of death. The first category would include John Lee and a few others who somehow survived a hanging: unfortunately most other forms of state-inflicted death leave far less room for manoeuvrings. The second category would include… well, whom? Beach has been able to come up with lots of examples but all appear in fiction and many of those in comic books. So any genuine escapes at the point of death? drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com To get the ball rolling Beach offers up this tale of Henri Chateaubrun who was allegedly sentenced to death in the ‘Terror’ because a Jacobin fell in love with his wife.
The next morning a number of carts were backed up to the door of the concierge, and a soldier in the prison called the names of twenty-one men who were to forth to execution. Among them was Henri Chateaubrun. They all walked out of the carts, some erect, all of them showing in their pale and haggard features the mark of death. Standing in the carts, they were driven towards the Seine and crossed it by a bridge entering the Place de la Revolution, since called the Place de la Concorde. There stood the guillotine with persons to work it ready to lop off twenty-one heads, and there stood a crowd kept back by soldiers, to witness the grewsome [sic] sight. The carts stopped besides the machine and the victims descended from the carts.
And now began a work that even an implement so well adapted to the purpose found it difficult to perform. Each one of the prisoners, hatless and with his hands tied behind his back, in turn stepped up to it, was laid upon it, strapped to it; the knife fell, his head rolled into the basket and his body was removed to make room for the next victim. Fifteen of the twenty-one had been executed when the guillotine refused to work. Whether the knife got wedged in the grooves or whether the machinery that raised the ax or that which detached it after it had been raised got out of order doesn’t matter. Something had gone wrong, and those in charge of the executions were unable to fix it.
The proceedings were stopped, and a messenger was sent for mechanics to put the guillotine in order. This required time. Waiting is not conducive to discipline. The soldiers who were there to keep the crowd back grew lax, and by the time workmen had arrived people had elbowed their way close upon the remaining six men standing in line waiting for the repairs on the machine that was to make corpses of them.
‘Get back!’ cried the guards, shoving the crow with the buts of their muskets. This was repeated so often that at last very little attention was paid to it. Chateaubrun presently found himself in the first line of spectators. Then, instead, of being in the line next [to] the guillotine, he found himself in the second. In the pushing that continued he was wedged back into the third line and at last was at the back of the crowd that was there to see his head cut off.
There was something radically wrong with the guillotine. The men fixing it hammered and pulled and screwed and unscrewed. Meanwhile the day was ended, and it was growing dark. Chateaubrun, considering the sight of his execution not worth so long a wait, quietly walked away.
The Place de la Concorde is at the beginning of the Champs d’Elysces. Chateaubrun, ever moment expecting to be missed, concealing as well as he could his tied hands, his heart beating wildly, passed into the Champs d’Elysces eager to run, but forcing himself to walk leisurely. There he made his way onward in the shadow of the trees. Finally, when he had gone far enough from the scene of his intended execution, meeting a man coming toward him he said: ‘M’sier, a friend of mine just now, who is a great wag, tied my hands behind my back and ran away with my had. Kindly unloosen me.’
The man of course did so and Chateaubrun was free to go. But is it a true story? Rather worryingly there is a similar tale about a man called Antoine Gaspard de Châteaubrun. Beach then smells the distinct though not unpleasant whiff of cobblers. For anyone with access Beach learns in another place that ‘This ” histoire merveilleuse,” [the one recounted about Henri rather than Antoine] as the French narrator rightly calls it, will be found in the memoirs of the Comte de Vaublanc, who also, but for his own adroitness, had been shaved by the national razor.’ Mmmmm
Witty Gravestones February 26, 2012
Posted by Beachcombing in : Contemporary, Modern
One of those difficult days. Two of Beachcombing three sources of income have wobbled in a single six hour span and Beach answered an obnoxious email from one of his ‘managers’ with an even more obnoxious email. Anyway, quite how he got from these troubles to gravestones he can’t remember. But he did spend a few minutes of reverie flicking through old collections. Here are a select few from hundreds: eight that seemed to deserve a larger public.
1) In Paris: 1830
J’attends ma femme, 1820 [I await my wife, 1820]
Me voilá, 1830 [Here I am! 1830]
2) Or on the romantic front this is from Torrington, Devon, where the pixies roam
She was – but words are wanting to say what;
Think what a woman should be – she was that.
3) Then there are those graves that play with professional categories. Here is a class ‘act’ from Grimmingham church-yard, Norfolk, England
To the memory of Thomas Jackson, Comedian, who was engaged 21st Dec, 1741, to play a comic cast of characters, in this great theatre – the World: for many of which he was prompted by nature to excel. The season being ended, his benefit over, the charges all paid, and his account closed, he made his exit, in the tragedy of Death, on the 17th of March, 1798, in full assurance of being called once more to rehearsal; where he hopes to find his forfeits all cleared, his cast of parts bettered, and his situation made agreeable by Him who paid the great stock-debt, for the love which he bore to performers in general.
A beautiful last clause and more importantly in Keynsian terms the stone mason made a fortune. It also got Beachcombing thinking about what a blogger would have on his gravestone: google analytics, Chinese hackers WordPress…
4) Or what about this undated epitaph from Queenborough: a flash of adventure in mossy English soil.
Henry Knight, master of a ship to Greenland, and
Herpooner 24 voyages.
In Greenland I whales, sea-horses, bears did slay
Though now my body is intombed in clay.
Let’s hope that HK came home ‘heureux qui, comme Ulysse, a fait un beau voyage…’ a far-travelled one, laid to rest in the village of his birth.
5) Or from adventure to villainy. This is from Penryn:
Here lies William Smith; and what is somewhat rarish,
He was born, bred and hanged in this here parish.
It sounds like Mr Smith was lucky to get into consecrated ground.
6) Here are a couple of famous ones. John of Doncaster:
What I gave, I have;
What I spent, I had;
What I saved, I lost.
It reminds Beach of a favourite line from a favourite poem: ‘that which is taken from me is not mine’.
7) Then there is Yeats’ memorial under Ben Bulben:
Cast a cold eye
On life, on death.
Horseman, pass by!
8 ) And best and most moving of all (quoted from memory [now confirmed and corrected by Mike Dash, see below]) on a wreath rather than on stone, an anonymous memorial.
‘The village cricket team of 1926 is now complete.’
Try bettering that for finality!
Monuments to the dead are two a penny: but any really special ones? Drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
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26/Feb/ 2012: Southern Man writes in with another professional gravestone, this time a dentist: Strange! Approach this spot with gravity! John Brown is filling his last cavity’ Invisible meanwhile has ‘ Junior Glover and a picture: ‘For almost forty years for a nasty wife and her three kids I was a slave, So please God let me find rest in this grave.’ Don’t believe it? Invisible has, true to form produced a photograph. Thanks SM and Invisible!
27/Feb/2012: Mike L writes in with this photograph of Gordon Bell in Highgate Cemetery.
Mike Dash meanwhile writes in about cricket. ‘The quote is from Byron Rogers ‘The cricketer’ in An Audience with an Elephant (London: Aurum, 2001) pp.160-2. The quote is correct bar the actual year (1926) [now corrected]. The date of the wreath was, March 1987, the village, Napton Hill in Warwickshire, and the cricketer’s name was Sydney Hill. Rogers adds: “Homer could have written that.” I think he is right. And he says: “Who would they have been? Carpenters, labourers, farmers, perhaps the village schoolmaster. You will not find their names in Wisden, but that does not matter, as 60 years on one man remembered he had seen the gods saunter down that hill, before whom the teams of Warwickshire must have gone down like grass.” What a writer Rogers is: thanks Mike and Mike!
29 Feb 2012: Author Paula de Fougerolles writes in: Here’s a gravestone I’ve always loved (and which I’ll be stealing for my own unless I can come up with something better). Don’t know date or provenance, sorry, except that it’s from an English cemetery and wonderfully prescriptive. The wonder of the world. The beauty and the power, The shapes of things, their colours, lights, and shades; These I saw Look ye also while life lasts.’ The Mike L writes in again with this gem. I can’t find it anywhere on the web but I have a memory of one for a sewer worker which went something like: ‘Fred Smith, sewer worker, is here interred. In death as in life.’ Thanks Mike and Paula!
30 April 2012: Ricardo sends in an epic cemetery story: This is not an epitaph but is somehow related. The grave digger from my parents village come from a wealthy family. His management of the family wealth was not so good and he was throw into poverty. The village administration took care and gave him the job of grave digger. He seems to be known has harboring the wittines of someone who has been up there and now is down here. My parents village has one of those coffee places near the street, where old men stay baking in the sun outside, looking at each other and now and then exchanging some words. That is the setting. One day (I like to think of it during the summer) the grave digger went to the café, stopped for a brief moment in the street before entering and ‘Look here, oh, where all my money is waiting.’
(Vejam lá onde tenho o meu dinheiro empatado). And Invisible has a photograph. Thanks to both!
