EXCESSIVELY NOT HOSPITABLE, EXETER, 1845.

 The Western Times of 8th November, 1845, was at its silliest when it reported  on a deputation that had visited Exeter's sitting Member of Parliament, Sir John Duckworth .  He had been elected in July after the death of the much-loved William Webb Follett. 

The Deputation was from the parishioners of St Lawrence whose sometime curate, the Reverend Mr. Michel, had been promised the living at the next vacancy.  The living was in the gift of the sitting Member of Parliament and it was Mr. Follett who had made this promise.  Now that Sir John was elected, a Rev. Mr Turner had been presented to the living.  The deputation visited Sir John at his grand residence Weare House,  now the Exeter Golf and Country Club. on Mr. Michel's behalf .  Below is an excerpt from the longer article:

"The reception was as cold and rigid as well could be.  The hon. member seemed to look right into them, as if he fancied that they had come to eat him out of house and home.  It was perfectly polite but excessively not hospitable.  When he was elected we saw something in print about the beef that would smoke on the well-spread board, and the stingo that would be brewed, and the excellent home baked bread , that would be ready at all hours for every free and franchised man who would condescend to wait upon his member and reveal his mind to him in questions of state policy or local interest.  These anticipations were not one of them realized; but the deputation were kept waiting without bite or sup, just as if there was not a morsel  in the house.

"The deputation expected to see the cook rush in and declare that the cat had made away with the beef and that the potatoe rot had spoiled the bread; and the butler following, with tears in his eyes, to show how the strong October beer had been cut of in its prime, just as it had come to its proper age - by an envious thunder storm.  But no such unhappy tidings were brought in, and yet they were sent empty away. Sir John bowed them out, after a few formal words - with a "good evening to you!" - not "gentlemen" - but you - hungry beggars of St. Lawrence, or anything else might have been added without jarring upon the emphasis of the parting  salutation."

*

The citizens of Victorian Exeter clearly expected more in the way of hospitality from their Representative than we do now.

St. Lawrence: was  a mediaeval city church on Exeter's High St.. It was bombed in the war.  The stipend in 1845 was only £40 a year.  The Times, witty to the last, described it as a  Starving rather than a Living 

Potatoe:  So, bread was routinely being baked with potato it would seem.

Stingo:  from the stinging  flavour of old ale, says the Oxford English Dictionary. 

Thunder Storm:  that lightning can spoil a brew  (or curdle milk) is a myth apparently, although, I read, the warm, damp weather that accompanies thunderstorms may do so.