SHOW YOUR OAK, EXETER, 1843.

"Last Monday being the anniversary of the restoration of that royal scamp Charles II, - the day was generally observed by the little boys and schoolmasters as a holiday.

"The urchins kept up the traditional cry of the restoration by challenging youngsters who did not display the sign of the Stuart ascendancy, and cries of 'show your oak,' resounded through the streets.

"A few of the greener sort of tradesmen sported oak boughs at their door - but the display was not equal to what we recollect of a few years since."

The escape of Prince Charles and his hiding in the oak is a good story that young people in England today have not heard.  Many young people have never heard of the Restoration nor, for that matter of  Alfred burning cakes nor of Harold losing his eye, Bruce critically examining spiders, Nelson putting the telescope to his blind eye,  Lord Uxbridge losing his leg at Waterloo.  Many, indeed, have never heard of the Danish Invasion, Hastings, Bannockburn, Copenhagen or Waterloo et cetera, ad infinitum!   

What is History?  Well, it is mostly lies, of course, but the kind of half-true lies that, for the most part, are heuristic, good for morale, provide holidays and bonfires, offer some fun, do (mostly) no harm, improve morale and bind communities and nations together.   Schoolboys and schoolmasters  (let us at once include their female equivalents,) no longer get a holiday on May 29th nor do they stick oak-leaves in their hats.  The narratives they ingest in school these days are dismal to a degree and just as much half-truth and propaganda and they provide no fun and no holidays.  It seems a shame to me.  Bring back Oak-Apple Day!  

Source:  The Western Times, 3rd June, 1843

LOW IN THE DUST, ROMANSLEIGH, 1834.

Having found this I felt I should not let it get lost again.    Romansleigh is a long way from Exeter but The Western Times published this on 27th May 1843.   Perhaps it has been recorded elsewhere but, just in case it is not, I replicate it here.  The scale of the infant mortality in this village of North Devon is heart-rending and the ingenuousness of the local scribe only makes it seem more so:  

"CHURCH-YARD POETRY.  -  A Maryansleigh correspondent sends us the following touching communication respecting the mortality in that parish.  He has paraphrased the awful fact with most awful poetry: -

"'MOARTALITY. - In Romansleigh within the Last three months we Have witness thirteen Furnals of Home 10 have been Childering out of this very small parish and one now lyeth a bear [a bier] wich make 14 six out of one House. 

"We 11 childring gone to sleep/ We leave our parentes dear to weep/ Our parents dear weep not for we/ for we are gone our god to see.

"We 11 chlidring are gone you see/ preay take a pattern now by we/ for you must follow you plinly see/ Low in the Dust we Lied Be.

"Six from one House you plenly see/ What dretful thing must this be/ through the are gone from this/ We all must go and cant resist." 

 

The Western Times helps its readers to read bier for bear but leaves them to work out that Home=whom (which) and through the=though they.

Childering/ childring is a form that might be of interest to lexicologists.

THE 'REAL' TOM POOLEY.

 Tom Pooley’s Fateful Year is admittedly a contrived work. It is a jeu d’esprit in as much as I thoroughly enjoyed putting it together.  It is, however, mostly Pooley’s own work.  He has contributed more to it than I have, indeed the work must be something like  60% Pooley and 40% Pooley pastiche supplied by me, Wayland Wordsmith, and I hasten to add that the vituperative content is 100% Tom Pooley.

The writings of Tom Pooley exist and the original manuscripts are in the public domain but they are such a kaleidoscope of fantastic ideas with so many repetitions and confusions and with such bizarre capitalization and with such an unconventional orthography that they needed the savage edit which I have applied.  

The ‘real’ Tom Pooley, 1807 to 1876, was one of those many men or women, some more clever than others, and some even who seem to change the world for the better, who are naturally suspicious of what they are told by persons in authority.   Tom Pooley was a natural contrarian.  Although he was not a clever man and not, one might think, a man capable of changing anything, he questioned everything and thought as hard as he was able to find alternative theories to counter opinions that he felt were being foisted upon him.  Invited to look up to heaven, Tom Pooley looked down to his boots, to the Earth beneath his feet.  Invited to love Christ as the son of God, Tom Pooley declared him to be an imposter and a blackguard.  He was by nature argumentative.  He was, as his daughter said of him, a man who liked to enjoy his own opinion.   It was his duty, he believed, not only to protest his own beliefs but to write on gates and walls and in Bibles and so to alert the world to his truths.

His zeal, however, went no further.  He did physical harm to no man and despite his fulminations he was content to live at peace with all around him. He believed that, as an Englishman, he was free to speak his mind. His neighbours, his wife and children read their Bibles and went to church unrestrained by him and worshipped as and when they pleased.  In his children’s Bibles he did not write.  Like any prophet, Tom would have liked the world to know the truths that had been ‘revealed’ to him but he found no followers, he commanded no audience.  He was more-or-less alone with his thoughts.  He dictated no rules.  His was truly a voice crying in a wilderness.  He lacked the power to make anyone take notice of him.   When he expressed himself  his ideas were ill-formed and no-one took him seriously.  This was what frustrated him.  Most people thought him to be harmless but just a little crazy.  Eccentric his ideas were, but not more difficult to accept perhaps than the mystery of the Holy Trinity or the New Testament miracles:  walking on water, turning water into wine, raising the dead, stories which in 1857 were taken literally and about which, whatever they thought about the matter, very few poor Cornishmen dared or cared to express any doubt.

Tom believed that important truths had been revealed to him.  Not only that, he felt that it was his duty to be the evangelist of his own crude Gospel and that he was called upon to reveal to his friends and neighbours the virtue of his faith and the essential iniquity of Christ and Christianity.  “What is man or woman after they converted to the Christian religion?  Sly. unjust, selfish, deceiving, lying.” It is not in the least too strong to say that he made it quite clear in his writing and in his conversation that he hated and feared Christ, Christians and Christianity and the expressions of his fear and hatred were hardly warmly welcomed by most of the good people of Victorian Liskeard.  But although he had for many years sought to advertise his views and although he had made enemies, he had, until his fateful year,  lived a relatively quiet life and his name was known to only a few.

I find Tom Pooley, the Cornish Well-sinker so much like a precocious infant, a terrible child, that still today, nearly a century and a half after his death, he amazes and gently amuses; at least, he amazes and gently amuses me.  Child-like and confused, he struggled to be a serious man and, more than that, he presented himself as a prophet, a chosen one and as the saviour of mankind.  I believe there is a case for him to be remembered, which is what, above all, he wanted.  His ‘Case’ divided ‘polite society’ and a handful of eminent Victorians allowed themselves to be drawn into the controversy.  What they said and did seems to me to be relevant today as we find ourselves once again between the poles of Free Speech and Censorship.  The Altogether Amazing Tom Pooley blog (see above, on the right) seeks to record the consequences of Pooley’s Case on the individuals who were involved in it and indeed to consider all matters Pooley. 

  

 

A WATERCRESS MAN, EXETER, 1843.

 "Prior, a watercress man, was fined ten shillings, and in default of payment committed to the treadmill for a fortnight on the complaint of the Rev. Charles Rodwell Roper, for using indecent and obscene language.  

"A woman, who had refused to buy his cresses incited the wrath of defendent;  and he avenged himself by a torrent of excessively bad English.

"The reverend gentleman remonstrated with him; but reproof led to no reformation, and hence the result." 

I have not met a watercress man before in the golden realm of The Western Times but they would have been busy here with their baskets of cress in or around the Higher Market.  I imagine the cresses in Exeter would have been foraged from local streams and ponds rather than farmed, although the Victorians did have watercress farms.

Two weeks imprisonment with hard labour seems a stiff sentence for effing and blinding, but then there was an Anglican parson involved and no doubt Prior was 'disrespectful'.  I smell something of what Tom Pooley would call Bible Tyranny in the case.

I have blogged the Tractarian, Reverend Rodwell Roper before.  He was the Rector of Saint Olave's who made Mr Ferris take off his hat in the vestry.  (THE CLERICAL COMMAND).

20th May, 1843

DANNY'S BOY, EXETER, 1843.

 "A bill-sticker named Thos. Dadds, summoned Mr. H. O'Connell, soi disant son of the great agitator, for the non-payment of 10s. due to him for the exercise of his profession.

"Mr O'Connell, in Sept., 1841. had bills posted about the city, stating that he would deliver a lecture on the Drama, the Immortality of the Soul, and the State of the Country, all on the same evening!  and the price of admission was two shillings only! 

"Those, however, who put their trust in these posters were doomed to be disappointed.  Mr O'Connell did not appear on the evening fixed; and so the minds of the liberal and discerning public were left unenlightened on these important subjects, and Thomas Dadds, the bill-sticker, was not remunerated for fixing in conspicuous situations the aforesaid delusive placards.   Mr. O'Connell not appearing before the Bench, the case was deferred to Monday."

"MONDAY, -  Mr. H O'Connell now appeared to answer the complaint of the bill-sticker, and said that as he was under age when this debt was incurred, he was not answerable for it.  The bill-sticker must therefore apply to his father, the great liberator.

"He, however, was willing to pay 5s.  He was now about to deliver a lecture on Astronomy (at which he would be happy to see their worships).  He intended to pay the expenses this time, and he thanked God he had the means to do so.

"After some chaffering, this was agreed by Dadds, who stipulated, however that he should have (as we understand) a few dozen of his admission tickets over and above the 5s."

This is fun, because this young man is assuredly Henry Simpson O'Connell the soi disant, as The Times elegantly puts it, son of Daniel O'Connell,  the  great and famous Liberator of Ireland, by Ellen Courtenay, a clever lass from Cork, who claimed to have been raped and thereby inseminated of Henry by the fragrant, 40 year old, family-man and liberator, Daniel, in Dublin when she was only 15.  She, like Henry, subsequently, survived as an itinerant lecturer as well as being an actress, a writer and a poet.  Daniel denied fatherhood of Henry but the boy's physical appearance was said to have given the lie to The Great Liberator.

If, as seems probable, Henry was living in Exeter between 1841 and 1843 we would perhaps not have suspected it, were it not for Mr. Dadds the unpaid bill-sticker. 

A writer, Trina Wills, in 2022, supplied a truly fascinating paper, on-line, about Ellen Courtenay, (https://repository.canterbury.ac.uk/item/94z00/the-voices-of-ellen-courtenay-the-life-and-work-of-ellen-courtenay-as-helen-steinberg-poet-actress-appeal-memoirist-and-lecturer) who Ms. Wills discovered, did not, as the world imagined, die in 1836 but who secretly transmogrified to one 'Helene Steinberg' (with the accents!) and lived until 1864. 

Source: The Western Times, 20th May, 1843.