steepholm

Father, father, where are you going
O do not walk so fast.
Speak father, speak to your little boy
Or else I shall be lost,

The night was dark no father was there
The child was wet with dew.
The mire was deep, & the child did weep
And away the vapour flew.

Blake's songs have been much on my mind lately. Perhaps that affects that way I read this letter from Weeden III to his father, written from 9-12th February 1822.

Weeden at this time is 15 years old and away at Harrow. He is not entirely cut off from his family: his uncle, Dr George Butler, is the headmaster, and his grandfather lives an hour's walk away in Stanmore. However, back in Chelsea his mother Annabella is on her sick bed, and within two days of this letter would be dead (which is why, perhaps, it appears never to have been sent). Weeden is worried about her, of course, but also about his father's state of mind. Meanwhile, he has his own studies to think about, with a big test coming up.

That's the main context, but there's another side to Weeden's personality, which is that he is a would-be Boswell to his family, collecting anedcotes, copying momumental insriptions, and of course preserving letters - which is one reason I'm able to write these entries. His grandfather, almost eighty years old and showing signs of forgetfulness, is not only a venerable relation, but the site of a biographical rescue dig, and Weeden jots down his confidences, knowing that his chances to do so will be few.

My Dear Father,
I have begun thus early to write to you on account of having been this evening to see my Grandpapa, by his particular desire: he said it did him good to see me, and among the first questions he asked me how my dear mother’s health was. This, he said, was his greatest care now on earth, & the good old man seemed very much affected as he spoke about her. He said he had a great regard for her, and that he had found that all who knew her felt the same esteem for her, & that he was certain she bore her trials like a Christian. He asked how old Anne was, and the names of all your children, and said, he wished to be remembered to all his friends who asked after him. He particularly asked about Tom, & whether he had not black eyes, & said Tom had often received hearty smacks on the face from him, which he was very glad to receive. Talking about the Gibernes, he said, Mr Giberne was name Mark after Bp. Hildesley, whose life Grandpapa wrote, & added that I might have one copy, & Tom another, of that work. They are up in the cupboard where my books are,--but that will do at the Easter Holydays. He seemed to be in very good spirits, & while I was there in his room read some small print very well, & on the maid’s coming into the room to ask whether he wanted more coals to his fire, he told her in his old good-humoured way, to “get along about her business,” and then asked whether that was not something like my old Grandpapa. He asked after Mr Oswald, as I suppose he had heard of his being at our house. He said he wanted but a few months of fourscore years, & that the Scriptures were verified in him, that then life is but labour & sorrow, & talked in a very Christian-like manner about the end of all worldly things. He also said that Dr Butler had been very kind to him, & often repeated that the sight of me did him good, & that he should be glad to see me whenever I could come, & that he hoped all were well at Chelsea beside my dear dear mother. He said he was glad to hear a good account of me, & alluded to what he seemed to consider as one of his greatest glories, viz. that of being the father of Dr Butler, Sen. Wrangler at Cambridge, & Head Master of Harrow. He said, that he did not consider you had a fair chance, as you had been very ill the two or three first years you began to learn, but Dr Butler had been “like a Giant.” ------

I was very sorry, my dear father, to hear from Nelly that Mamma was so ill—but God’s will be done. I thank both you & her for your good wishes towards me, & hope I shall do my duty. Tomorrow, as every Sunday here is, will be a day of rest to me I think. I wish you would take Tom or one of the Giberne’s with you on your solitary Sunday Night’s walk. I often think of that, & wish I were there with you to accompany you. – I often take a walk for exercise, & I think it good for my health. I should like when I come home at Easter to bring my books along with me, to study at home. I hope you won’t think, by my mentioning the Holidays so often that I am impatient to come home. I send my love to my dear mother & you my father, & to all my brothers & sisters, & particularly to Anne, & my kind respects to Mrs Read, & all other friends. I find a good deal of pleasure in writing home to you.

Sunday Night. –We have been twice to Church today, as usual. I find it one of my greatest comforts here, as also to pray for all my dearest relations in my prayers night and morning. There is nothing at present, I assure you that I am in want of. I beg you will give my kind love to Miss Gardner when you see her. My dear Uncle told me this morning that I might go occasionally to see my Grandfather, as he said the sight of me cheered him. –I have just finished doing a map, to be shown up tomorrow. It’s the ??? of Spain & Portugal, out of Guthrie. – I do not know how it is, my Mother is most in my thoughts, & yet I cannot find how to say or ask anything about her. I have been walking a good deal to day.

Tuesday. I saw my dear Grandfather again today, & he gave me 5 shillings. He again enquired about Mamma. There is a report here that we are to be tried in a fortnight.

Tuesday evening.
I have just come from a visit to my Grandpapa. He has been having a blister put on by the advice of his friends. Talked very feelingly about my dear mother; he said, that he would defy the world to produce a woman who had behaved so well, & done her duty toward her father & mother better than she had. He said, he had her daily in his thoughts, & that he knew she was patient & resigned under her afflictions. He seemed to like talking upon old subjects, & said that if Archdeacon Pott lived, & the king lived, he foretold that Archdeacon Pott would become a bishop, & that I might see it although perhaps he should not. I believe Dr Butler has gone to town today. My Grandfather took me into Mrs Butler’s room and I saw her: she asked after Mamma, & all of my brothers & sisters. My Grandpapa said I had my mother’s smile in my face. –Today is a whole holiday. –I find there is plenty of time here to do everything that is required, which I did not think at first. My Grandfather walked up and downstairs today with me, to show me what he could do, & seemed to be in good spirits, & said, he should be glad to see me whenever I could come. I hope all the boys are come back, and that you will soon get an assistant to your liking. My Grandfather said that he had heard a very good account of Gordon, and particularly asked how tall he was, as he said he thought he would have been short. The boy’s name who said he knew H. Cotton, is Timpson. I hope you will forgive the jumble I put into my letters, I write just what comes uppermost.

I've produced this one in full, because even the inconsequential topics speak eloquently of Weeden's state of mind: "I do not know how it is, my Mother is most in my thoughts, & yet I cannot find how to say or ask anything about her."

This isn't the first family entry to be subtitled 'Danny Boy', and for good reason. Long-term readers will know that, aided by a helpful Australian historian, I did some detective work a decade and more ago, searching for the identity of one Daniel Butler, teenaged sailor in the First Fleet of 1788 and subsequently one of the earliest entries in The Dictionary of Australian Artists - a story recounted here and here. That Daniel, born in 1772, cropped up frequently in the letters from fellow First Fleeter Daniel Southwell to Weeden I, but it took us a while to establish that Daniel was, in fact, the child of Weeden's older brother, who had fallen on hard times and seems to have become something of an embarrassment to his family, or at least to the upwardly mobile Weeden I.

Mysterious Daniels are thus a bit of a family trait, as we will see in this entry. But let us pick up where we left off last time, with the death of Weeden I's sailor son, Charles William Butler, at the end of 1813, and Fanny (Fanch)'s consequent widowhood.

Fanny was pretty well provided for financially, I think. As an East India Company officer, Charles was also an investor in the goods he was transporting, and these voyages were as profitable as they were perilous. (In a letter of 1808 from Whampoa [Guangzhou], at which time he was first mate on the Alfred, he mentions using his "8 tons privilege" - which I think must mean he was allocated a certain amount of hold space, no doubt determined by rank - to store £500 worth of tea.) A letter from Fanch's sister-in-law Annabella to Weeden II of 27th September 1806, suggests that Charles was working on a kind of "Financial Independence Retire Early" scheme avant la lettre:

Mr Charles Butler has been at home a few days from the ship, the addition of his company makes us all very happy. It is uncertain how short his stay may be as he has had applications already to go out again as first mate, one of them is for a ship that he must be on board of next month, he has not yet determined. It seems hard to go so soon, but his wife says she shall say nothing against it, for the more voyages he makes now the sooner he will be done with it.

Of course, it didn't work out the way Charles intended, but Fanny was hardly left in penury. As I don't have any of her own writing, I can only speculate as to how his loss affected her, but I've no reason to think she was anything other than grief-stricken. At some point over the next couple of years, however, she seems to have found solace in the company - and later, the arms - of Captain George Woods Sarmon, a Commander in the Royal Navy. Sarmon, who was eight years Fanny's junior, had himself recently lost his bride of one year, and perhaps this was a bond between them? (I can't help but think of of Capt. Benwick and Louisa Musgrove cheering each other up in Persuasion.)

Sarmon came from Cowes, where his father had captained an Excise cutter and been killed for his pains in 1796 by a French privateer; the family was spread either side of the Solent, on the Hampshire coast and the Isle of Wight. It's not clear how the Sarmons and Butlers came to know each other, though there is a hint in a letter written to Weeden II by his father from Harrow, on 7th August 1807:

Never mind the little Laurel: we have plenty here to supply its Absence in due Time, and our Fanny’s Laurels shall never fade. [...] Mrs Sarmon goes on a trip this morning for her vacation, and with the general approbation of her very fair and good deportment. She is a truly valuable Right Hand to our Friend.

If "Mrs Sarmon" is George's widowed mother (and let's face it, Sarmon is not a common name) and if the "Friend" referred to is Fanny (Weeden I habitually referred to relations in this way) - then it may be that she was being employed as a kind of companion while Charles was away - which would make an introduction to her son, then or later, very plausible. Also, though the Sarmons were based in Hampshire, George's mother was from Rotherhithe, less than twenty miles from Harrow.

Be that as it may, Fanny and George married in February 1816, and exactly two year later Fanny gave birth to a daughter, Sophia - probably named after George's mother and/or his late wife, both of whom shared the name.

You might think that this would signal a new and increasingly Butler-free life for Fanny, but such was not the case. Weeden I, having retired from Chelsea after Charles's death, was by then looking after the rural parish of Gayton in Northamptonshire on behalf of his other son, George (who was busy with his duties in Harrow). When the time came to christen little Sophia, it was Weeden I who did it in Gayton church. He and Fanny seem to have had a particularly close bond, right up until his death in 1824; he spent time with her and the Captain in Cowes and later in Bristol when his health was slowly declining and he was beginning to show signs of dementia. Fanny was a beneficiary of Weeden's will, on equal terms with his own children. And, when she herself died in 1841, she was buried at St Luke's in Chelsea, the local Butler church.

Can simple affection explain why Fanny received an equal share of Weeden I's estate with Weeden II, George and Harriot, despite the fact that she had remarried and was not (as far as I can see) a blood relation? Possibly, but surely this would be pretty unusual?

There is, however, another possible explanation - namely, that she and Charles had also had a child.

But did they? Charles and Fanny married in October 1804. Weeden II and Annabella were married the following summer, and their son Weeden III was born in 1806. In November that year, Annabella writes to her husband, apparently in response to Fanny's speculation that she may be pregnant again: "I flatter myself Mrs Charles Butler is out in her reckoning for this time with regard to me. Tell her so, & that I hope little Weedy will have a Cousin before he has a Brother or Sister." We can thus take it that by this date, at least, Fanny had no children, and Weeden III no cousin. Charles was of course often away, and at no point until his death is there mention of their having a child in the letters I have, nor in any of the letters following news of his ship's disappearance.

That said, it's true that I have relatively few letters between 1808 and 1818.

The exceptions are a series of letters written by the elderly Weeden I to his young grandson, Weeden III, mostly from Gayton. Now in his early seventies, Weeden I was just getting used to living in a rural parish after spending all his adult life in London. This is a charming and affectionate correspondence, and it is punctuated by mentions of a young boy named Dan, around the same age as Weeden III or a little younger, who is apparently living with Weeden I. Representative passages include:

"[Y]our curious description of a Ship battle in a Pig-Trough, would have made your lively friend Dan, laugh till his sides ached. The little fellow is very fond of Gayton, and the many Country Amusements all round us; and he has been almost every day out on horseback, except Sundays. Peggy has done herself much honour in her good behaviour, and never conducted herself better, than in our many delightful Rides." (2nd September, 1814)

"Pray tell our friend Mr Mosselman, that Danny will answer his letter very soon. His tame Rabbit – I mean, his nice young Hare, runs and skips every day about the Lawn, and seems to enjoy it so well that I believe she will grow almost a wild Hare by and by." (17th November, 1814)

"The Flowers begin to spring up merrily, and the sweet singing of the smaller Birds is coming on, to cheer the Hens with a delightful Tune while they are nursing their Eggs in the Bushes or Fields or Trees about us. Daniel and I begin to know a great many kind of these feathered Fowl, that I declare I knew very little of when I was so young as he and you are; and when they had killed any sort in the cold Winter, I used to examine their Plumage by Sight, with my Books of Natural History, and then I found them ten times more pretty and admirable than before." (21st February, 1815)

"Aunty and her Captain join in kind Love to you. Danny was quite well, when we last saw and heard of him. Like you, he is an excellent Boy." (6th October, 1817)

"Danny was very well, when we lately heard of him, and they tell me he is very good also." (8th May, 1818)

"Good Daniel is now with us, and hardly a Day of pleasure passes without reading and suggesting Books, to make them more pleasant and profitable. He desires his kind Love once for all, to those you so justly love at home. His Vacation too, is flying almost as fast as the Birds can move in this chilly Weather. I mark his progress; and may he always continue to imitate your fair Example; which I equally admire and approve. His principal pursuit is Bird-shooting; & he has often supplied our table, with Birds of various Sizes, and some Hares and Rabbits, that do not often run or fly about the Banks of Cheyne Walk. He is grown stout, and moves well in this slippery Season, almost without a Fall, which has hardly ever hurt him. I never shoot; and prefer eating, with safety and at Ease. [...] Daniel does recollect your former icy Amusements of sliding, and stately marches with wooden guns. Today he’s out with his Fowling piece, and stuts like a Crow here and there in a Gutter [?]. I sometimes can hear him with his companions, but they generally get out beyond my Wish to hear them; unless they bag their pouches with something capital." (12th January, 1820)

This suggests to me that Daniel was initially living with Weeden I in Gayton, where Fanny and her Captain were also visitors, but that at some point he went away to school. The obvious inference is that he is Fanny and Charles's son, is it not? Daniel is a family name, after all. But then, why is he living with his grandfather as early as 1814, within a few months of his father's death and long before his mother's remarriage? There could certainly be plausible reasons, but I'd love to know them. Unfortunately, neither Weeden I nor anyone else comes out and says in plain terms who Daniel is.

There are a couple more clues, though.

The first comes from a letter from Weeden III to his father, written 10th May, 1822. By this time Weeden III is a pupil at Harrow, and Weeden I has moved to nearby Stanmore. He writes: "I went to Stanmore last night, & saw Grandpapa & Dan. Grandpapa was as well as usual, I thought, but Dan has got a very bad cold. He has come home for the Charterhouse Holidays which are a month long."

When I saw this I was naturally very excited. So, Daniel was a pupil at Charterhouse! I could easily confirm this by contacting the Charterhouse archivist and asking if a Daniel Butler (or possibly Daniel Sarmon if he took his stepfather's name) had attended there. I did so, and got a swift if dispiriting reply:

I have checked the Charterhouse Register 1769-1872, which lists all known pupils arriving at Charterhouse between those dates, but I did not find either Daniel Butler or Daniel Sarmon. I also had a quick glance through the printed Charterhouse exam lists for summer 1822 - the only 'Daniel' that I spotted was Daniel Bayliffe Linde. His Register entry says very little, apart from his date of birth (27 April 1808) and dates at Charterhouse (July 1821- Dec 1822).

Who is Daniel Bayliffe Linde? His date of birth is right (a little younger than Weeden III), and he was baptised at St Luke's Chelsea, which seems quite a coincidence. Not only that, Bayliffe was the name of one of Charles's close friends (I quoted a letter from him in the previous entry). The appearance of his surname as Daniel's middle name may suggest he was a godparent. But that's as far as I got. Even if Daniel Linde was some kind of friend, why would he have been living with Weeden I? Altogether mysterious - but I guess that's why they call them The Fanch Mysteries.

The final clue is perhaps the most tantalising of all. Though I have no letter from Fanny herself, I do have one in which she is quoted, and a very interesting passage it is. This was written on 1st March 1822 by George to his brother Weeden II, passing on a request:

By a letter just received from Fanny, I learn, that an important letter respecting Daniel is probably in existence at Chelsea: her words are, “There is a letter somewhere, written to my Uncle, which is of consequence, because there in he acknowledges him. It used to be by the side of the fire in the study at Chelsea. When I was at Cowes, I looked a whole morning for it, but could not find it.” If this hint can lead to the discovery of the letter, I shall be very glad to be put in possession of it.

This is of course intriguing and exasperating in equal measure. Who is Fanny's Uncle? Who wrote the letter? Who acknowledged whom? "Acknowledged" in what sense? I can't help but wonder whether this is related to Fanny's own illegitimacy (as discussed here). Might the uncle be one of the Irish relatives of Clotworthy O'Neil, for example, or the brother of Fanny's mother? Or is it Daniel's own position that's in question?

Was the letter ever found? I wish I could say so, but I just don't know. Daniel is mentioned as being at Stanmore on 21st May 1822 in another letter of Weeden III, where he encounters him on his way to Harrow to breakfast with Dr Butler (i.e. George). In the same letter he adds a note dated Thursday evening (i.e. the 23rd May): "I had expected to go this afternoon back to Stanmore with Dan, but I believe he rode with Dr Butler, & I was not asked to go." The last glimpse we have of Daniel is a month or so later, when he is described by Weeden III as returning to "the Charterhouse".

I would love to know the content of that horseback conversation between George and Daniel. Weeden's exclusion makes it sound as if confidences may have been exchanged. Did it concern the contents of the missing letter? Had Daniel's identity been proved? His fortune been lost, or made? Or were they simply discussing the cricket?

These mysteries are as yet unsolved, but feel free (if you have stuck with it so far) to suggest new lines of enquiry!

I've taken longer to come back for the second of the three mysteries I promised in my last than I'd intended - apologies for that.

The death of Charles William Butler (1779-1813), the third and youngest son of Weeden I, is actually well documented, though many details remain uncertain, so perhaps it doesn't quite count as a 'mystery', but it was certanly seen and treated as such in the early months of 1814, when his fate was still uncertain, which is why it belongs here. Charles's death also, inevitably, marks a rupture in the life of his wife and widow Fanny, aka Fanch - although not quite as large a one as might have been expected. But more of that in Part 3.

Unlike his elder brothers, Weeden II and George, Charles showed no inclination for the Church, but was set from boyhood on a sailor's life. We can glimpse him in the letters of Pierce Butler, the American politician, in 1792, when thirteen-year-old Charles becomes seriously ill while his ship was in the United States and Pierce (no relation, but whose own son was one of Weeden I's pupils in London) had the opportunity of talking with him during his convalescence:

"The little time I had of conversing with your son, I tried indirectly to present before his the inconveinences of a seafaring life - but all to no purpose. He appeared to me quite determined to pursue it. I think, from some observation of him, that he is in his feelings and manners too amiable for a seaman. Not that there are not many amiable men of the profession, but you will agree with me it is a rough element for the exercise of mild manners and much sensibility, both of which are attached to your son." (2 September 1792.)

The letters I have from Charles match this character, but also go beyond it. He is religious, humorous, uncomplaining, devoted to his wife, and physically brave. At some point he joins the East India Company, swapping the Atlantic for the Indian Ocean. The run from London, round the Cape of Good Hope, and then on to Batavia (Indonesia) and China, becomes his circuit. It's a dangerous profession, what with disease and accidents, as well of course as the possibility of drowning. Here - to give you a taste - is a letter written on 12 March 1808 to George, from the sick bay of the East Indiaman Alfred, of which he was then mate:

since the 8th of Feby you h’bl Servant has not been out of his Cot, owing to a severe Jam or Squeeze between the Cable (which was running out & which we could not then stopper and the Messenger (another large rope of 11 inches Diameter). All about this “fortunate Event”, as to the ultimate Result, I hope in Sepr to be able to explain to you, when during our passage with Fanchy (probably) in the good Ship from the Downs to Long-Reach. Meanwhile I shall merely mention that I was dragg’d half way into the Fauld [?], & have yet escap’d without any Fracture of Bones whatever, though I never really expected to have come out alive, or at best, I thought I should have had my thigh torn out & consequently most likely in a worse Situation. Everyone who witness’d the Accident, were astonish’d at my Escape, which the more & more I reflect upon, by so much the more I think wonderful. The Flesh was of course lacerated, my Pantaloons and Stockings fairly ground, and yet I walk’d aft, wishing to prevent Confusion from the Men’s Feelings around me, who really, tho’ in an uncultivated State, had very nigh overpower’d mine (by their solicitous Enquiries & offers of Assistance) agitated as they were with Astonishment at the miraculous Interposition of Providence, and I trust not void of Grateful Emotions for my Preservation!!!

Eventually Charles was given a command of his own, the William Pitt. He made one successful voyage on her from 1811-1812, and was returning from Batavia at the conclusion of a second, when he came to Algoa Bay off the Cape in December 1813.

What happened next is still not entirely clear. It's evident now that the ship was lost with all hands, but whether it ran aground or went down in deep water, or why either might have happened, is less obvious. I have quite a collection of contemporary letters and reports, which it would be tedious to reproduce in full here, but I'll give you a representative sample. One thing I find particularly interesting is the forensic reasoning used by some correspondents, notable Capt. Bayliffe below.

31 December 1813: from J.G. Cuyler to the War Office

Sir,
Several Pieces of Ship having lately been cast upon the coast of this district under my superintendence, I lost no time in having a search made along the coast, and a Box has been found, though nothing as yet of the Hull of the Ship, or of any of the crew. In said Box were several letters, much damaged by the sea water, among which were those under this cover, however less injured than many others. From what I can collect, it appears that the letters were a mail made up at Batavia about the 20th October last, and sent per ??? East I. Com. Extra Ship William Pitt, which was to have sailed about the 22d October in company with the Lord Eldon for London. I have dried the letters and now send them all by this opportunity to the Colonial Secretary at Cape Town, and hope they may reach their destination.
May I solicit your giving information of this loss to the East India Company.
With the greatest respect,
I have the honor to be,
Sir,
Your most obedient hum. Servant
J.G. Cuyler Lieut. Col
& Major Cape Regt.

11 January 1814: from C Chatfield (solicitor) to Weeden II

I should have replied at an earlier period to your favour of the 4th instant, but I have been awaiting the information given by the India fleet, and it was only yesterday, that I was able to ascertain circumstances to a certainty. I have learned from a person, arrived by the Lord Eldon, that he was on board the William Pitt, on the day previous to the supposed loss of that unfortunate vessel. The William Pitt was then in perfect order, and parted with the view of standing in, towards the shore, to get into a better channel; whilst the Lord Eldon kept out to sea. The Company’s resident at the Cape has sent out a vessel to endeavour to find the crew, but they cannot discover any trace whatever of the ship or its people, excepting that considerable part of the vessel has been driven on shore at Algoa Bay, where there are a few persons resident; other articles belonging to the ship have been cast up near the same place, and the impression on my mind is, that the ship has struck upon a rock, and having afterwards floated into deep water, has there sunk. It is impossible for me to offer you any consolation in this afflicting event, and I must therefore leave you to the exercise of that patience of resignation, and of those religious resources, from which you are well able to derive consolation, infinitely greater than any which I can afford. I request you will believe that I have not been inattentive to the contents of your letter, altho’ I have so long delayed to return and answer to it, my only motive having been a wish to obtain decisive information.

21 January 1814: from Capt. Phipps Hornby of The Stag to Admiral Tyler

What little Information I have been able to collect respecting her probable fate comes from the officer commanding the Troops at Algoa Bay where I first anchored on the 11th. This officer Captn. Evatt informed me that on the 16th Dec last they had seen a large Ship passing to the westward and that on the Friday night the 17th about 11 oclock 5 signal Guns as if fired in distress were heard in St Francis of Gamptoos Bay which is the Bay directly to the westward of Cape Recife ; on the Saturday it blew very hard from the westward and in a day or two afterwards he heard that much wreck had been thrown up in one spot particularly near the mouth of the little River Gamtoos. He then ordered our officer’s Party round to the place who remained there two or three days during which time wreck continued to come on shore but no bodies. The pieces of the wreck that I have seen (and they describe there being nothing lager) appear to be only bulk heads of cabins, Lids of Boxes, Furniture, the medicine chest (marked William Pitt) pieces boats and small spars and such articles as might be expected to have been washed away from the upper deck and Cabin from a heavy Sea striking her. There is indeed on plank as if of the Poop Deck with the Cot Screws still in it and this is the only thing that bespeaks at all the Ship to have gone to pieces. I have also seen the sheave of four of her top masts, and some of the party said that a little distance from the other pieces of the wreck there was what appeared to them to be the Heel of top-mast. It is somewhat remarkable that if the Ship has been wrecked on any part of this Coast, none of the larger Timbers have been thrown up as she must from the Surf have gone immediately to pieces neither has one bit of Rope or Sail been thrown on shore or seen attached to any of the Fragments picked up. About the latter end of the Month the party returned to Algoa Bay but Captn Evatt having since learnt that some drown’d Sheep & Pigs had been thrown up on the same spot I was induced to beg him to send again round, to see if anything further could be gained, in which request he kindly complied whilst I in the mean-time intended to go and look at the Bird Islands. I accordingly left Algoa Bay during the night in order to reach the Rocks by day-light. It however blew so strong from the S.W. that I could not approach them and therefore ran on in the hope of gaining shelter in the Bay which the books describe to the eastward of Cape Padtoon. It did not however seem to offer safe anchorage and during the night it blew very hard with a tremendous Sea, in which we lost our quarter Boats. I got back to Algoa Bay on the 13th and found the party had returned from Gamptoos without further information. I again therefore weighed on the morning of the 14th for the Bird Islands and was standing on and off them during that forenoon but they are so surrounded by breakers on the South South East side that I could not safely approach them nearer than four miles and as the wind was from the S. with a direct Lee Shore I did not venture to send my boats on shore. I can however to a certainty say that there is no human being alive on them, even should the ship have been lost on them, which there is no reason to expect.

9 May 1814: Capt Bayliffe to George Butler

My Dear Doctor Butler,
You, who know the operations of the human mind, will not be surprized to hear the Questions I have asked myself, since the conversation that passed between us yesterday. “Well, what would Dr Butler infer from your remarks? Is he to suppose from your observations that there are greater Hopes of his Brother’s safety, than what other People had induced him to believe?” To which I should answer, probably and possibly No: but I must confess, it is a qualified No. The Modification of the Negative arises from these Reflections: as a professional man you put into my possession certain Documents, from which you wish me to draw a professional conclusion.
To a person who I think would not misapply my Reasoning I should thus remark:
The first Report of the Ship being lost, was slighted, because there was not sufficient Evidence. My conclusion was very different: it shewed great Cause for suspecting the fatal Accident.
The next Report stated some pieces of Wreck were discovered, and some part bearing the Ship’s Name; but that no other Tidings were known, nor had she otherwise been heard of; from which it appeared very conclusive that she was gone: - the Mind was left at large to imagine How, When, and Where.
A circumstantial Detail next appears,- which reports the particular Articles that had come to view: those Articles are decidedly nothing more than what would be washed from a Ship’s Upper Deck; - except a Medicine Chest: That, most assuredly, would not be an Appendage of the Upper Deck; nor is it possible to be the only thing of the other Deck; because there must naturally be more buoyant things on the Deck where the Medicine Chest was, than that Thing itself: and even the natural Things likely to be on the Upper Deck floatable does not appear to justify a conclusion, that all was washed from that particular Part, which was floatable.
Now, I can account for a probable Mistake in the Parties’ concluding the Article to be a Medicine Chest. It probably was a Part of a Colour Chest; which always, like the other, bears the Ship’s Name. and is of the same Size, and which, frequently and generally is kept on the Poop.
What does all this infer?- No less than this, that the Ship might have lost the Poop, or Part of it, and many of the Things on the Upper Deck; but that she might exist notwithstanding. How many Ships have lost their Poops, and so existed? – And, if otherwise in this Case, it is most extraordinary, that more of the Wreck has not been thrown up – this Wonder appears to strike the Judgement of the Captain of the Ship sent to make Enquiries. He expresses his Astonishment at it; and draws the natural Conclusion, “the she must first have struck on a Rock, and then gone down in deep Water:” But, the Things that have driven on Shore do not justify that Conclusion; but rather, that the Ship had lost her Poop: Whether she did not afterwards founder, God only knows.
To justify my own Conclusions, I have these Grounds.
The Ship was seen, as to-day, passing to the Westward: it is not noticed that she appeared in Distress: the People on board, we conclude, must have seen the Land. Guns—they say five—we heard at eleven o’Clock the following Night: it is most probable that more than five were fired, because at that Hour, People are not the quickest in their Notice.
Now, all I wish to infer about the firing of Guns, is this, - that the People on board knew of their Danger, - a contrary thing to their going suddenly down. All Seamen must know the Advantage of being apprised of Danger: Various are the Resources, at Times, in such awful Moments. That your poor Brother did not neglect some of them, we know, by the Guns being fire; and it is natural to conclude, he had Recourse to them all. This I know, his never-failing one would be a Trust in God, - and an affectionate Feeling to those left behind.
I feel also, my Friend, that this Explanation, to you, of the passing Thought in my Mind will not be Misapplied. I trust your Resignation will be that of a pious Man.

10 May 1814: Weeden II to George Butler

Hearing last night of Captn Bayliffe’s sanguine hopes, I called upon Captn Butterfield (a most excellent officer & a fond friend of dear Charles) and asked his opinion. I give you his ideas, in nearly his own words. “My good fellow! I wish I could join this supposition of their arrival at Madagascar. Madagascar lies full six days’ sail from Algoa Bay. I myself was nearly lost in Algoa Bay; but, by heaving overboard sixteen of my guns cautiously & some heavy articles, in nine days time, I got clear. With a Westerly or So. Westerly wind the sea there is dreadful. Even at sea, I have often only seen our consorts between the rollings. Depend upon it, the underwriters for their own sakes will cling to every reasonable hope, but they will pay their ventures on the William Pitt, I fear, without remarks now. I do think, that (being a slow-sailing ship, as it is reported) the William Pitt made land, when the Ld Eldon left her, & was caught in a gale before she again made good her offing. If she was distrest and lost her sails, as I think possible, she must in that case soon again near the coast. If she shipped a heavy sea, and had sugars on board, the sugars would melt, and she would become top-heavy. The wreck of yards, boats, bulk-heads of cabins, &c, &c, might be washed over with the pigs and sheep, by a heavy sea; but the bag of letters, the cot, the medicine chest give me great uneasiness, indeed. The signal guns seem to have been fired at the abandonment of all hope of self-preservation. Oh! Butler! how gladly would I give up my dollars, to shake my friend Charles by the hand once more. You know how eagerly I called with my enquiries at your house, though I would not trouble your good father. Charles was a sound officer & a worthy man.”

11 May 1814: Weeden II to George Butler

Yesterday, on his return from Harrow, our excellent father blessed my heart with Captain Bayliffe’s sensible remarks, - of which till then I had heard only an imperfect statement: I deem them strong & highly comfortable; and next to facts, the most satisfactory encouragements to hope that I can well conceive possible to be given.
I wish the bays where the “signals” were fired may have been explored: therein lies the solution, I fear, of all our doubts!!! But – God’s paths are in the mighty waters & his mercies are are all over his works. A truce now to ingenious conjectures; no doubt, the officers did their arduous duty well, - & if they are gone from us, God grant that the humblest of the crew may have been as virtuous & as prepared for immortality as (I am confident in hope) our valued brother was! My feelings are still wrought up too boisterously, alas! for me to contemplate in idea a rolling sea, a tempestuous sky, a shattered vessel, & a rocky shore, - & to hear the broken sound of 5 feeble guns – without horror unalloyed & overwhelming.

The Times, 19th May 1814

The sea did indeed prove a rough element, as Pierce Butler had predicted, but Charles made a tidy sum before it overwhelmed him, and he had made sure to give Fanny power of attorney before leaving on his final voyage. (I have a copy of it.)

What became of her afterwards? And what's the mystery surrounding that latter part of her life? Tune in next time - which I shall try to make sure comes without such a shameful interval as preceded this entry.

You may have noticed my absence from these pages. Aside from general busyness, I attribute this largely to the fractal complexity of family research, which has meant that every time I felt almost ready to share my latest findings, a new mystery opened up. So, I’m leaning into it a little bit. If all goes well, this will be the first of three posts on a person of whom I possess no image or manuscript papers, whose birth and death are alike mysterious, and who was in fact not a blood relation at all, but who played a central role in the family’s affairs over the three decades or so from the mid-1790s to the mid-1820s. This is Frances, also called Fanny, also called Fanch, who begins life as an O’Neill, then becomes a Butler, and finally a Sarmon.

There are three sets of mysteries I’d like to solve: one surrounds Fanny’s birth; the second the death of Charles Butler, her first husband; and the third the identity of “Daniel”, who may or may not be her son. I’ll do it over three posts.

So, Frances (or Fanny) Juliet O'Neill (or O’Neil) was baptized at St George, Hanover Square, on 17 March 1779. The figure on the right, which records the date of her birth, was clearly also initially written as a 17, but then altered to look like a 12. Whether that was just a slip of the pen, who knows? Either way, the parents are listed as “Clotworthy & Frances Oneile.”

The name Clotworthy O’Neill sounds pretty distinctive, and indeed it’s easy to find reference to a minor Irish aristocrat of that name from Shane Castle in County Antrim, who was born in 1688 and who died around 1749 in Bath, where he is apparently buried in the Abbey. So far, I’ve not been able to find any direct reference to his having children, but in 1763 another Clotworthy O’Neill – presumably his son or other close relative – pops up nearby in Bristol, where he marries a West Country heiress called Mary Arundell (1739-1793). A few years later, in 1767, they have a daughter, Phillis, who appears to be their only (legitimate) child. In due course Phillis marries a Clifton apothecary, William Mounier Yeo (1761-1809), “representative of the ancient and family of that name, seated at Huish, in the county of Devon.” Phillis and William live a prosperous life in Clifton and Hotwells, where the thriving spas of that era must have made the life of a high-class apothecary very comfortable, and they have a numerous children, including one delightfully called Beaple. William Yeo dies in 1809 and Phillis lives on in Clifton until her own death in 1846, aged 79.

Now, why do I think that the Clotworthy O’Neil who appears on Fanny’s baptismal record in London’s Hanover Square is connected to the Clotworthy O’Neil who became the father of Phillis in Clifton, Bristol, 12 years earlier?

The main reason, apart from Clotworthy’s distinctive name, is that in later life Fanny is a visitor to “Mrs Yeo” in Clifton, from as early at 1798 to as late as 1821. There is clearly some connection: either they are half-sisters (if their father is the same Clotworthy) or perhaps more distant relatives (if there are multiple Clotworthys).

In any case, Fanny’s mother, recorded as “Frances Oneile”, is clearly not Mary Arundell. There are no doubt other possible interpretations, but the most obvious inference is that Fanny is Clotworthy’s illegitimate daughter.

Between her birth in 1779 and 1798 I have no information on her at all. However, in the latter year, she pops up in the Butler household in 6, Cheyne Walk, where she is apparently already a fixture. We first glimpse her in this letter from Weeden I’s third son, Charles, to his elder brother, George, who is in Prussia undertaking a Grand Tour of sorts. The scene is the Butler dinner table, and the dramatis personae are Weeden I, his wife Anne Giberne, his eldest son Weeden II, his daughter, Harriot, Charles himself, and … Fanny:

Now and then you have been thought of but generally in this Case, to reassure has been the chief Object till fond Anxiety had partly gained the Ascendancy, when paternal Affection always closed the Scene with some short Ejaculation for your Safety and Welfare. My Father generally began with “I think he might have written, since his last.” “There has certainly been Time enough,” rejoin’d my Mother. “Oh, there’s no knowing,” replied Weeden. “You can’t possibly tell if he’s hurried, or were likely so & so, & may be this & that,” with a thousand different Conjectures that he has the knack of being capable of forming. “Yes, but my dear,” retorts my honour’d Father, “it is now so many days since he has given us a single line,“ for he has the Dates as pat and regular as a four Hours Watch. “I should not mind, if he was only just to say, I’m well”; and then he chalks it out, as clear and as easy as he would a penny post Letter. I generally try in these Cases to slip in a Word edgeways, and desire him to recollect that in War Time, the opportunities are not as frequent, and to wait the Event of the next Mail. “Ah! Well! Well! I only hope he’s in perfect Health, but it’s strange I have not a Word; however, I’ll not think of him.” This concludes the discourse about your Worship whenever anyone happens to start a Clue for your Enquiry, and Tranquility is for a while restor’d. On these Occasions, Harriet and Fanny generally remain mute, thinking I suppose that the least said, as the whole can only be Conjecture, is the best.

It is also in this letter that we first hear of Fanny visiting Mrs Yeo:

Fanny is return’d from Mr Yeo’s of Clifton, which is tout près, and I never witnessed a more favorable Alteration than she brings from thence. She is grown quite stout, looks exceeding well, us’d to get up regularly at or before six …, and in general without experiencing Fatigue, from the Exercise.

At this point Fanny is just nineteen. There’s no indication that she and Charles are yet an item, but a few years later, in April 1803, another letter from Charles (this time to Weeden II) leaves no doubt. This one is written just a few weeks after Anne Giberne’s death, and Fanny has clearly played a key part in looking after the stricken Weeden I – a task more necessary because Harriet has (as related in an earlier entry) had something of a hysterical fit:

When I think of Fanny I am in Raptures, when I hear from her, I am overjoyed and almost unhappy at the ideas of leaving her. When I yesterday saw her, I was particularly astonish’d at her Deportment & Conduct throughout the different trying scenes she has almost latterly daily encountered

“No one so capable as Fanny!” is the Austenian mot juste, I think. Indeed, if there’s an Austen book that her story reminds me of, it’s definitely Persuasion. This will become clearer in the second part of her story, though in this first part there’s also a slice of Mansfield Park, with Charles in the role of Edmund.

Anyway, on 3rd October 1804 Charles and Fanny are married in St Luke’s Church, their local church in Chelsea. The marriage is performed by Weeden I, and Weeden II and Harriot are the witnesses, along with the church’s curate. There are no witnesses from the O’Neil side of the family.

At this point, my main questions are:

1) What is the secret of Fanny’s parentage? Does she share a father with Mrs Yeo? Who was her mother?
2) When, and how did she come to be living in the Butler household? And how did she spend her childhood before that?

The story of Charles and Fanny, but especially of Fanny, is not yet half done, but for now let us leave them in connubial bliss.

As a young man, Weeden II had been quite outspoken in his dislike for empire and his opposition to slavery, as evidenced in his Zimao, the African (1800) and his poetry collection, Bagatelles (1795), most notably in poems such as "The Slave", "The Indian Warrior, bound to the stake", "The Indian in Despair", etc. Even then, there are definite limits to his radicalism: Zimao the handsome maroon is paired with Wilmot, the "good" plantation owner, for example; the Indians are sympathetically depicted, but the manner of treatment owes a good deal to what we might call the noble savage aesthetic, and presents them as tragic, doomed figures, speaking using jarringly eighteenth-century poetic diction. (But then, no more jarring than when Tacitus makes the British leader Calgacus give an oration that would have been at home on the floor of the Senate - and what other diction did Weeden have access to?) Anyway, this is an aspect of Weeden I've always been fond of, and one thing I'd been wondering is whether his politics changed as he moved out of his twenties, as is so often the case.

Reading his letters from middle-age gives little clue as to that: they are mostly concerned with family and professional matters. But yesterday, I found this fascinating passage in a letter to his son Weeden III, written in his early fifties (on 13th July, 1824) about an event that I feel ashamed to say that I knew nothing about. I've included for interest the immediately preceding sentences about the recent deaths of Thomas Rennell (yes, I had to look him up too) and Byron (whom he evidently had little time for, perhaps because he'd been so mean to his little brother):

The deaths of Rennell & Byron form a contrast awful, improving, important. Yet, how few comparatively lament the one; how pompous & gorgeous are the outward demonstrations of grief for the other! But God seeth not as man seeth.

The death of the Queen of the Sandwich Islands bears a pathos which a poet might feel strongly. A child of nature sacrificed in a few weeks at the shrine of civilization & modern refinement! Change of habits of living, routs of plays & operas, in confined & scented rooms, with a smokey atmosphere, & and at midnight, lead us with ease to divine the powerful disease by which the denizen of pure regions fell. There is in truth the semblance of a mystery visible throughout the treatment of these honest Islanders, that awakens the warmest compassion for the fate of the departed & the liveliest sympathy for the embarrassments & difficulties of the living. “Rex et amicus appellabatur” is the political phrase explanatory of the system now pursued towards these people, to make them subjects to our power & interests & to withdraw them from the paws of the Russian bear.

"There speaks the author of the Bagatelles!" I cried as I read this. Still drenched in the language of noble savagery, admittedly, but still anti-imperialist in his instincts, or at least that's my reading. Never change, great-great-great Grandpapa.

If, like me, you need some of this historical context filling in, there's an account here (including pictures), but briefly, King Kamehameha II (aka Liholiho) and Queen Kamāmalu were visiting from the Sandwich Islands (i.e. Hawaii) when the Queen caught measles, quite possibly in Chelsea, and died a month later, on 5th July. The grief-stricken King also succumbed, dying on the 14th, the day after this letter was written.

Ironically, the captain of the ship that returned their remains to Hawaii was called George Byron - a cousin of the poet.

On my birthday a couple of weeks ago - which I celebrated with friends and a buffet lunch of haggis, salmon, karaage and Waldorf salad (the company was harmonious but eclectic) - my cousin (3rd once removed) Michael arrived with more family documents. Since then I've been reading as time has allowed. It's such a rich store! All the generations from Weedens I-III are well represented, by letters and other kinds of material. (I single out 12-year-old Weeden III's detailed journal of a holiday taken in Margate in 1818 as a document of particular charm.) Some mysteries have been unravelled, others ravelled all the more. It will probably take me years to do it justice, but along the way I'll add some highlights here that I think may be of wider interest.

In the next couple of entries I'll be looking at the children of the first Weeden Butler (1742-1823). Of the four that grew to adulthood, we've already met two: Weeden II (1772-1831), whose children's letters occupied the last few family entries and who took over the Chelsea school in 1814 on his father's retirement; and his high-achieving brother George (1774-1853), who was Senior Wrangler at Cambridge, Headmaster of Harrow, Dean of Peterborough, and became the patriarch of a whole dynasty of academics, lawyers and politicians culminating in Rab Butler.

They had a younger brother, John, who lived less than 18 months, and then two more siblings: Charles (1777-1814) and Harriot (1779-1846). It's about these youngest two that I want to write, for each, in their own way, holds a mystery. In Charles's case the mystery is public, and surrounds the circumstances of his death, when the East Indiaman "William Pitt" (of which he was master) was lost with all hands off the coast of Algoa Bay in the Eastern Cape. I've long known of this tragedy as a bald fact, but now I have the letters and speculations that surrounded the event. There's a lot, and it will take some time to get it into a state that can be usefully summarised. But I promise I'll get there, and that it will be worth it.

For now, let's turn to Harriot, whose mystery is more private. I have no letters from her, nor picture neither, just references to her by a series of other authors - references that leave enough gaps to allow for multiple interpretations. Perhaps it's best to lay out the evidence first - which may be supplemented as I work through the many letters, etc., now in my possession.

Some early references to Harriot come from the letters of Pierce Butler (no relation) the American senator and Founding Father, whose son Thomas was attending Weeden I's school at the time. In August 1787, he takes a few minutes away from attending the Constitutional Convention to praise the eight-year-old Harriot's progress in writing: "The rapid progress she has made is amazing, and must give great delight to her good parents." Another letter, sent when Harriot is 14, makes reference to a serious illness, without specifying its nature.

So far, so standard. However, in April 1803, the month after their mother's death, Charles records in a letter to his elder brother Weeden II a disturbing incident, witnessed by his bride-to-be Fanny in the Cheyne Walk house:

Today I had the Pleasure of seeing our dearest, only Parent now left on earth, & found him, as well as Harriet & Fanch [?] quite well. Poor dear Henny [Harriot] however on Tuesday went off in a very strong hysterical fit, when coming down stairs & alarm’d my father who was coming with her extremely. You may judge of Fanny’s situation, who told me she felt even more apprehensive for my father, who had become as white as a sheet, knowing that Harriet would shortly come too [sic], but fearful lest the shock might have overcome him! When at Chelsea I did not hear a word of this from my Father & did not wish to recal [sic] the memory of it to him. They talk of Henny’s going away for a short Time, till her Spirits get stronger & I think, if she could get to Mrs Yeo’s [?] Clifton, the Jaunt & Residence there would be a delightful thing for her. Our dear Father, was apparently perfectly composed and cheerful, but had, perceptibly, suffered much. He could not sleep after the surprise. Miss S. Giberne had been out in the morning in Chelsea & I conjecture the similarity of situation, tho’ at a distant Period, had worked upon Harriet’s mind, naturally very susceptible & now with too just a cause rendered almost helpless. She however was quite compose’d yesterday & had had Miss Slater with her all the morning. I was extremely hurt at the account, as the last letter I had receiv’d mention’d that every thing was going on so very well.

(Clifton, then near rather than part of, Bristol, was at this time a spa town, a rival to the longer-established Hotwells at the bottom of the hill.)

Harriot was sufficiently recovered to be a witness at Charles and Fanny's wedding the following year, in any case. The next glimpse of her is on 10 January 1822, also in a letter to Weeden II. This time the writer is his other brother, George, who has just seen her in Clifton. The immediate context is that their father, the elder Weeden, is to turn 80 later that year and has been drafting some changes to his will. That's a story I may return to on another occasion, but what concerns us here is the plan for Harriot's inheritance, which Weeden has decided to put into the hands of trustees - an idea George heartily approves of.

To Harriet £500, “in the hands of Trustees;” this trust seems to be very essential in her case. For I regret to say, that her conduct at Clifton has of late been more extravagant than heretofore: she has now quitted Mrs Scriven, & is under the same roof with my father, waiting there until some satisfactory arrangement can be made for her separate maintenance.

Harriot also pops up in the letters between Weeden II's children, if somewhat tantalisingly. On 23rd February 1824, by which time the elder Weeden was six months dead and Harriot had presumably come into her trustee-managed inheritance, sixteen-year-old Anne writes to Weeden III:

One thing, which I think you will be surprised to hear, is that Aunt Harriet is coming to stay a few days with us at Chelsea soon. I am not quite sure of this yet, and therefore do not mention that I have told you, as I may be thought medling [sic]. If I hear any more about it I will tell you in my next letter.

When I first read this, I wondered why an aunt coming to stay should be surprising news or require such diplomacy.

Finally, Annie Robina Butler, the daughter of Anne and Weeden's brother Tom, wrote in her 1907 biography of her father that when he was living in Cheyne Walk in the 1840s and having to provide for a growing family on a small salary, one of his responsibilities was the care of an "invalid aunt." This was of course Harriot, who spent the last few years of her life in the house where she was born, dying there in 1846.

Annie Robina would have been just five at the time of Harriot's death, so although she lived in the same house for several years her memory of her aunt, and of the nature of her invalidism, would probably have been a little hazy - nor would she necessarily have wished to share it with her child readers. Was it physical? Mental? Both?

Harriot passes elusively through these various pieces of evidence. The reading of least resistance is that she suffered from what her contemporary Jane Austen might have seen as an excess of sensibility, leading to a degree of mental instability. That seems strongly implied by Charles's letter in particular, and confirmed in George's - although the latter is ambiguous as to the form of Harriet's "extravagance": is he referring to her use of money, as the financial context might suggest, or also to her behaviour? She doesn't appear to have been confined to anything as hardcore as an asylum, but I wonder what the Clifton regimes of Mrs Yeo or Mrs Scriven were like - were they normal lodging houses or something more like sanatoria?

Again, was Harriot's condition (whatever it was) with her from the beginning, or was it triggered - or at least worsened - by some kind of traumatic event? Charles's suggestion that "the similarity of situation, tho’ at a distant Period, had worked upon Harriet’s mind", suggests something of the kind. At first I thought that it must be a reference to their mother's death. Perhaps "Miss S. Giberne" (probably Sally Sophia Giberne, an older cousin born in 1764) reminded Harriot of their mother, who had been a Giberne herself? But their mother's death had occured just a few weeks earlier, not at a "distant Period".

Armchair diagnosis is a mug's game, but it's also the only game in town, apart from minding one's own business - which is of course unthinkable.

We haven't heard yet from George - who, being born in 1813, is the youngest of Weeden Butler's Cheyne Walk correspondents. His letters to his eldest brother tend to focus on the garden and on animals, whether considered as pets, livestock or food. This is typical, written when he was ten years old:

Chelsea, October 23rd

Dear Weeden

I do Saesar [sic] with John, Edward, and Henry Wylde; and we have done three pages in it, since I began. I have left off Corderious [sic] a long time. Would you be so kind as to lend me an Ovid? Charles Giberne killed two rabbits, one black and the other brown, and he had a great feast with Strachy [sic] and the two Hancocks, Papa has given me an Enfield’s Speaker with four pictures in it, two men came to ask Papa’s leave to build a house in Mr Depuis’ [sic] Garden, and Papa said that he had no Objection; but that they were not to make any windows to look in the playground: and they have begun to build it. The Hancocks are making an arbour in their garden, and have lengthened it down to Bowerbank’s garden. They have made a trench round the earth, as I have made mine. Bowerbank and I collected a great many bones, and I emtyed [sic] them out two days ago, and they were all over good fishing gentles. Miss Brunell [sic] came here and she says, that her Papa and brother are ill. I remain, your affectionate brother,

George Butler

In case you don't know (I had to look it up), fishing gentles are blowfly larvae, good for bait. As for the people mentioned: Strachey we've already met; Charles Giberne would go on to be the father of Agnes Giberne, a children's and popular science writer; while Bowerbank is almost certainly Louis Quier Bowerbank, who (as any fule know) did so much to reform mental healthcare in his birthplace of Jamaica.

It's nice when letters by different people refer to the same events, and we get a bit more detail on the projected new house in a letter from Fanny, written at the same time. Fanny, aged twelve, is clearly testing her powers of literary expression. She would go on to become the family poet, or what her nephew Gerard would describe acerbically as "a determined rhymer", but I quite like her turn of phrase in describing the playing style of the infant Isabella:

A gentleman of the name of King is building a house at the bottom of our playground, in Mr Dupuis’ garden. He is a paper stainer, & says “he is building it to dry his paper.” He came the other day to ask Papa’s leave, without which Papa says he could not have done it. The windows are not to face the playground. George was mightily pleased with your letter and got through all the prosy part very heroically without once giving it to Papa to read. The Hancocks have been making their garden much longer. Mine is getting on very well and my Myrtle is beginning to blossom very nicely. The box of playthings that you gave to Isabella has begun Alas! to feel the heavy hand of time. Legs and arms have been broken off without mercy. However, the stumps still remain and she seems as fond of them as ever.

A couple of months later, in the run up to Christmas, we find elder sister Anne (aged 15) party planning. Have things changed much in the last two centuries? But of course, since her mother's death the previous year she is now mistress of the house, and takes these things seriously:

I hope we shall be able to have a little dance these holidays. I have planned it all, and have made out a list of about 40 or 42 persons, whom I should like to come. When you are at home, we must think about it. I think we might have the dance in the School room, if there were many people coming, or in the dancing room if there not above 16 or 20, and then we might have the tea and supper, in the study as that is a ???er room than the parlour, and would be more handy, as it opens into the Schoolroom. The only objection I have to the Schoolroom is that it is so much disfigured by the boys. The walls are so covered with ink. We might have the green forms from the dancing room down, and it would be very easy to cover two more with green, and I daresay 4 would be enough, and they take up much less room than chairs. I think that we might cover the part over the fireplace with artificial flowers, as those were made at Mrs Christie’s and that is the most conspicuous part, and I think the worst in the room. Out of my list of 40, perhaps not above 25 would come, but it is always best to send out about 20 invitations first and then see how many of them will come, and then if more are wanted to send about 10 more, and so on. Will you have as many as you want. I will send you a list of those I thought of, perhaps you will think of some more to add to it. I daresay you will not know all the names, but some of them are great friends of Fanny’s school and some are my friends. It is a good plan to make out a large list and then we can ask first those we wish most to come and if they can not, we can make up the numbers we want by others. I believe the party at Mrs Christie’s will be about the 30th of the next month.

Let us end in July 1825, where we find Anne reporting on a couple of delightful outings in a much more rural London, complete with gypsies:

On Monday Miss Gardiner, Fanny & I went for a walk to Putney, and along the towing path about a mile or rather more, we set out directly after breakfast & took our provisions with us, & also books and work [i.e. needlework]. We spent a delightful day in the fields & came home to tea at 7. Yesterday we had Mr Johson’s cart and set off at half past 9 in the morning round by Vauxhall, Miss Eady’s, Lewisham, Sydenham & to Norwood where we dined & had tea & came home at 6 through Brixton, Clapham, Kennington & Battersea. At Norwood we were surrounded [by] gypsies. Mary had her fortune told. They wanted me badly to have mine told, one of them said I was born to riches, that I should have a handsome present soon & a lot of nonsense. Isabella Gardiner is to marry once more. (I suppose they thought she was a widow.) We had a beautiful ride, and when we liked we got out and walked. We took a great many things with us. Isabella was quite out of her mind with joy. I never heard her laugh so & say such drole [sic] things before. ... I shall send you a piece of cake which I hope you will like. I am sorry to say Cook did not bake it half enough.

What became of these children? They had very different fates. The shortest-lived was young George, who died aged just 16, in 1830. He was followed by the end of the decade by Anne, who died in childbirth, aged 29, a couple of years after marrying. (Her son was still born.) Weeden himself made it to middle age, although he outlived all five children from his first marriage and was widowed, then remarried and fathered five more. Fanny made her three score and ten, while Tom, my own ancestor, was the longest lived of all, seeing ten children grow to adulthood before dying at the age of 97.

And Isabella? She was also long-lived - she almost made 88 - growing by the end to resemble Queen Victoria (with whom she was a near contemporary) to an almost uncanny degree.

Today I turn to my great-great-grandfather Thomas - or Tom, to his siblings. Tom is the middle child, between Weeden and Anne (older) and Fanny and George (younger), though we mustn't forget little Isabella, who is the youngest of all and not yet old enough to write.

We first meet Tom on 5th October 1822, shortly after his thirteenth birthday. It's a short letter, but it paints an enthusiastic picture, perhaps of a trip to Harrow:

My dear Weeden

I have not written you a letter for a long time. This morning after 10 O’clock we had a theme, it was on “Truth”. I wrote down to the bottom of the second page. I daresay that little George thought it rather funny that we dissapeared, for he must have thought so, I think as he did not see us go away. I hope you spent the day very agreably. I am sure I did, as we were coming home in the coach we began to sing “A Frog he would a wooing go”, &c. I dare say the people who passed by did not much care for our beautiful singing, or the Coachman either. We were at home at about a quarter after 11 O’clock. —Not quite so late.
I remain, yours,

ever affectionately,

T. Butler

Tom's father (also Weeden) was in the habit of appending notes of his own to his children's letters to his eldest son. In this case, he adds: "The children, dear Weeden, not your father, sang merrily. I was glad to notice their joy. W.B." Was he worried that it might appear undignified in a father, a priest, a headmaster, to sing about a Frog's adventures? Weeden had been widowed earlier that year, and perhaps that too was an element in his reassurance.

Tom was something of a worry to his sisters. Here's Fanny complaining about him to Weeden in a letter written in the Autumn of... well, I'm not sure which year, because it's undated (even the season is only implied by her concern for fires and muffetees). But I'm guessing 1822 or 1823, because it seems a little on the young side.

My dear Weeden

We began fires today. I got up at 8 o’clock this morning. Tom will not write to you because he says that it would be a waste of paper. Tom has been told more than once that he will be an old Batchelor & I think it is very likely to be true if he indulges such miserly opinions as these. Mr Dyer preached a sermon this morning that Papa says he remembers having read 4 or 5 times before. If you want some white muffetees for your wrists you can get them for 6d a pair at Carter’s. I remain

F. Butler

Perhaps Fanny's mind is set on misers because their next-door neighbour at the time, John Camden Neild, was a notorious miser, who (according to Wikipedia): "was so frugal with worldly pleasures that for a while he had not a bed to lie on. His dress consisted of a blue swallow-tailed coat with gilt buttons, brown trousers, short gaiters, and shoes which were patched and generally down at the heels. He never allowed his clothes to be brushed, because, he said, it destroyed the nap. He continually visited his numerous estates, walking whenever it was possible, never went to the expense of a great-coat, and always stayed with his tenants, sharing their coarse meals and lodging."

Anyway, Fanny's letter prompts another paternal PS:

Dear Weeden,

I let you have this letter for two reasons: first, to let you see the hurry of Fanny’s scrawl; which, secondly, exactly justifies Tom; who only declared he did not like to waste good paper by scribbling. Now, as I give the paper to them all, he could not object to writing out of covetousness; though, perhaps, he & Fanny are both idle. The one scrawls down what comes uppermost, the other declines such waste of paper.

I am, truly, yours,

Weeden Butler

Tom's laziness is not his only fault. Anne reports to Weeden on 27th April, 1824 about a more serious trespass:

My dear Weeden,

I have seen a great deal this week but do not know whether you will like to hear all about it. ...

Tom, Strachey & Charles Hancock were fishing in Kensington Gardens one day last week & ??? came & took them before a magistrate, he happened not to be at home & his wife did not like to let them go before he came home so she ??? ??? [staid?] with them in a room at his house. You may suppose that they were not a little frightened; the men talked of keeping them in the guard room all that night, & then writing to Papa the next morning. The Lady of the house heard the name of Strachey & asked him if he was a relation of Sir John & Lady Strachey, he said he was and she said she did not think a young gentleman of that name would have committed so bad an action as to rob the King of his property. Tom began to make apologies for himself & the others, Charles Hancock looked very grave, which made Strachey ready to laugh, but he was obliged to look very grave. Tom began to cry, & at last, when the Lady found that her husband did not come home, made them promise that they would never fish in the Gardens again, & then let them come home. They had been there two or three times before, but had escaped from the men. John Wyld used to give the men some money to get some bread, & then ask leave to fish, the men told him that he might fish if he took care not to let them see him, but if they saw him they should be obliged to take him up; when the men came to take them up, Tom advised them to run off, but they were too much afraid.

Thank goodness for the magical power of the Strachey name! I'm not sure exactly which Strachey this is, by the way, though his is certainly the family that later gave rise to Lytton of that ilk. A couple of months earlier Anne had described him in strict mourning ("He looks thinner than ever in black") for his aunt, Lady Strachey - Julia, wife of Sir Henry the first Baronet, who died on 12th February. But my idle Googling has so far failed to turn up any younger brother of Sir Henry to be his father, and no "Sir John" at all in that generation. Clearly some mistake - but mine, Anne's, or the magistrate's wife's? I feel a visit to the Strachey tombs in Chew Magna coming on. In any case, being the nephew of a baronet (or one of the nephew's companions) is, then as now, a sound method for getting away with petty crime.

We don't hear of Tom indulging in similar adventures thereafter, but Anne is still worried about his future. On 6th July she writes again, in the wake of the death of a young friend, William Gardiner, probably from tuberculosis:

Mrs Read went to see Miss Gardiner and Mrs Wishart, a few days ago, they were pretty well, but of course very dull and low-spirited. They say that poor William wrote a letter to Mr Gardiner, & another to Isabella about a month or six weeks before his death, and put them among his papers, which were not to be read till after his death. I think Tom will begin to think a little more seriously about the way in which he spends his time. I was talking to him last night about it, and he said with the greatest unconcern that at any rate he would go for a chimney sweeper or a scavenger. He seems to have a great desire to be a bookseller I think. He said also that he thought he should do for an auctioneer. I think I shall go to Chelsea church tonight. Tom says he intends to begin to study tomorrow. I advise[d] him to have some good historical or Geographical work in constant reading, as he has so very little idea of either history or geography.

In retrospect, it seems ironic that a boy who considered becoming a scavenger, a bookseller or an auctioneer should end up as Assistant Secretary to the British Museum during its most, shall we say, acquisitive period. But this is to peer too curiously into the glass of futurity. At the end of August Tom, not yet quite 15, moved to Bordeaux to work for his wine merchant uncle. His last letter from what we might called the Weeden Schooldays collection, from 21st May 1825, is prettily written, but speaks of a certain homesickness, I think:

In what part of the playground is the pump to be erected? You say near your willow is it close to the top bench in Fanny’s Garden, or where? Has H. Wylde still a garden in the old place. My last letter to you was written rather in a hurry, therefore I beg you will excuse me if you did not find it very interesting. I hope however that you were all contented with my letters to you. How does the violin get on. My music master is beginning to teach me some tunes. Did you see Strachey when he came to our house. I suppose you have been to see him and Stratford lately? Remember me kindly to them when you see them. My Uncle left Bordeaux rather sooner than I expected. Have you seen Edwin Dawes lately? How does he get on in the world. I believe it was settled that he should be a clergyman. Has he got rid of the impediment in his speech which he had when he was with us, if he has not I doubt if he will ever be able to preach so as to be well understood.

Poor, stranded Tom. And less than three years ago he was singing about frogs.

Over the course of May and June 1824 Anne Butler, then aged sixteen, took a trip from London to relatives in Burntisland in Fife, by way of Cheltenham, Birmingham, Lichfield, Derby (where she hung out with the Philosophical Society), the Peak District and York, in the company of her godmother, Mrs Vaughan. In her letters she comments on all these places, as well as Edinburgh - so, if you're interested in what impression the journey might have made on a teenage girl in the Regency period, and what kinds of tourist activities were available, sit back and read on. You will get some leeches as a bonus.

(In what follows I've taken out passages that don't relate directly the journey, and I've added a few annotations where I hope it will be helpful.)

30 April 1824 [London]

My dear Weeden,

I have a few minutes to spare this morning and therefore take the opportunity of writing to you. I am to set of tomorrow about 4 o’clock with Tom & William, but the latter is only going as far as the coach with me, & Tom is going all the way to Cheltenham. I think that instead of Tom taking care of me, I shall have to take care of him.(1) He is not accustomed to travelling, and to add to his trouble he will have to sleep at the inn, & look after himself all Sunday I believe, for as Mrs Vaughan is only upon a visit herself, I do not think she will be able to ask him to go home with us. He is to return on Monday. …

I remain

Your affectionate sister

Anne V. Butler

(1) At this point Anne is 16 years old, and younger brother Tom (her protector) only 14.

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13 May 1824

My dear Tom

Many thanks for your nice letter which we received yesterday. I am glad to hear that you arrived safely in London. I dare say you were not sorry to reach home after so long and dull a day. … I am sorry to say that Mrs Vaughan is rather fatigued by the journey, but I hope after a few days rest she will be quite recovered. We slept at Birmingham on Monday night and set off for Derby at 7 the next morning and therefore had no opportunity of seeing the place, but what I did see gave me no favourable opinion of it. We passed through Litchfield and while they changed horses we had time to see the outside of the beautiful Cathedral. I wish we had had time to go inside to see the monuments.

We arrived here [Derby] at about 12 o'clock on Tuesday, and Mr & Mrs Finlay came at night. We all went yesterday to see the Porcelain Manufactory which is extremely interesting. We saw the whole process from the making [?] of the clay to the beautiful china that we see in the shops. There was a boy only 14 years old who painted landscapes beautifully. You can have no idea of the number of hands a cup must go through before it is finished. We did not leave Cheltenham till ?? o’clock, and therefore had time to see the public rooms, & Dr White would write our names in the book of arrivals, so that perhaps you have seen them in the newspaper. We also went with Dr & Mrs White to the pump room and walks which were crowded with people. The Bishop of Bangor and the Duke of Buccleuch were there. I tasted the water at ????. I did not much like it but it only tastes a little salt.

There are several pretty old churches at Derby, and the church of All Saints is something like our new church at Chelsea. Mr Holworthy(1) has a very pretty place here called Green Hill, it is just before you enter the town, the house is very large and he has a beautiful garden. …

I believe we going in a day or two to see the Marble works and the silk and lace??? Manufactories, so that I shall not close this letter till I have seen something more. We are going today to see the Infirmary, which I believe is the finest in England. Kean & some of the London actors were in Derby last week, but the people here give very little encouragement to the theatre. I observe that the inhabitants of this place pronounce it as if it were spelt Darby, and not Derby: they have a very peculiar manner of speaking, and I remark that they generally put the letter G at the end of their words, thus they say thing-ge, king-ge, &c.

Dr Forester(2) is a very odd man, do you remember the way Gordon used to talk sometimes for fun? Well he speaks much in the same manner, he puts me sometimes in mind of Willets, he makes the same kind of faces, and stoops as he does when he sits with his legs crossed. I can assure you he is a man of some consequence here. He made the plan of the infirmary, and ??? giving a donation of 50£. He attends as Physician to the Infirmary for nothing. He belongs to the order of Knights-Templars, and there are only six of the order in England. I think that Gordon would be delighted to see him, he understands every kind of machinery and gives up much of his time to the study of it. …

I am writing this in my room with one of my fingers quite dead with the cold so that I can hardly hold my pen. I really think I shall have chilblains again if this weather continues. We had a dinner party on Wednesday and we are to have another today (Friday). We have had an invitation for tomorrow but I do not know whether we shall go yet. We are a good large party of ourselves. Mrs & Mrs Holworthy and Miss Wright (Mrs H’s sister),(3) Mr & Mrs Finlay, Mrs Vaughan & myself. Dr Forester’s grounds touch those of Mr Holworthy. Mr H has several pets as a Dog, a Duck, some pigeons & some partridges, and an old poney aged 40 years, all these live on the lawn before the house. I think of all these the greatest pet is the Duck, it follows him about wherever he goes, and will even come in at the dining and drawing room windows if they are open as they reach to the ground. His dog is a pointer and is called Don. Mr H has an open chaise and a close carriage, and Mr Finlay has his, so that some day we are to go in a large party for a drive.

I believe we are going to Buxton from this, & then to York and afterwards upon a visit to some friends of Mrs Vaughan. So tell Mrs Read with my best love, that I do not know what I shall do for white frocks, as I have only one and that is almost dirty, & I shall not be able to get it washed in a day here as I could at home. …

Believe me to be your ever affectionate sister Anne V. Butler

(1) James Holworthy (1781–1841), artist and close friend of Turner.
(2) Dr Richard Forester (1771-1843). President of the Derby Philosophical Society from 1815.
(3) Anne Holworthy (nee Wright) was the niece of Joseph Wright of Derby.

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30 June 1824 [Burntisland, Fife]

My dear Weeden

Many thanks for your nice long letter, which I fear you will think I ought to have answered sooner. This was my intention, but several things have occurred to prevent me. I think I am always unlucky, I do not know whether I mentioned in my last letter a fall I had, when in Edinburgh. As I was stepping out of a coach at Mrs Charteris’s door, the step was not firm and it slipped from under my foot, so that I fell down, & hurt my arm upon the corner of the pavement, it was stiff for some days but is now well; I think that if it had not been noticed in time it would have been very bad; but I had some egg skin put on it immediately.

About 10 days ago, as I wished to be friends with Mrs Boog’s dog, I went to see it fed by the servant, who said that it was very quiet, & would not bite, so ventured to pat it; at first it was very good natured, but after a little while, it found out that I was a stranger, snarled & snapped at me, happily it did not bite me though it hit me a very hard blow upon the face with its mouth, & tore my frock very much; I felt the effects of the blow for some days, & the pain was so great at first that I thought he had bit me. The servant beat him from me, or I do not think I should have got off so well as I did.

My finger that was so bad is nearly well, but I shall not be able to use it for some time. Last Saturday I found that the third finger of the same hand was beginning to swell & looked very red. I felt pain in it, the night before, but as I had been working, I thought that I might have run my needle into it, but as it got worse, on Saturday, Mrs Vaughan sent for the doctor, Mr Philp [?], to see it, & he said I must have two leeches on it directly, before it got worse. Jane Boog gave up 4 hours of her time which is now very precious to put them on my finger, & after all, we could only make one of them stick on, but it had the desired effect, for the next day the pain was almost gone, & on Monday it was quite well. I hope I shall meet with no more accidents, or I shall grow quite idle, not being able to work or do any thing that requires my hand.

You will have seen in the letter I wrote to Papa from Edinburgh, that Jane Boog is going to be married, in less than a fortnight, so you may suppose we are very busy just now. William Boog is coming next Wednesday. I believe he is to be the best man, you will not perhaps know what this means; it answers to the best maid or Bride’s maid who attends the Lady, so the best man should attend the gentleman.

Mr Sadler went up in a baloon [sic] at Edinburgh on Monday; this is a very uncommon sight in Scotland, I believe it is the first that has been seen here large enough to carry any body in it; and therefore attracted great attention. The gardener who was at Mrs Charteris’s that day, was heard talking about it very much, he said he thought it was very presumptuous in Sadler to try to get to Heaven that way (for he thought that this was what Sadler was trying to do) but that he was in his master’s territory; and he only hoped he would return safe. When asked who he meant by Mr Sadler’s master, he said, “the Devil.” Perhaps you have seen an account of the ascent in the newspapers. It crossed the firth, & at one time appeared quite near, we could distinguish two people in it and that it looked as if it were made of a plaid; but this was not without the assistance of a good telescope. …

In answer to your question as to where the Derbyshire spar comes from, I must tell you it is principally taken from the Peak Hole, which cavern is under Peveril Castle. This is a most extraordinary place, but perhaps you have seen pictures of it, nothing however but the reality can give you a true idea of its wonders. I am sorry that we did not go into the interior of this astonishing place, but it would have been very disagreeable to pass so far under ground, in a narrow passage walking almost double, till we came to the boat, which is only large enough to hold one at a time, & the person who is thus conveyed is obliged to lie down (as the passage is not high enough to allow him to sit up) and he must be pushed along by a man who walks behind the boat in the water, after proceeding some way in this manner we should have entered a very spacious cavern. If the party had all been young, we might have done this, but the fatigue would have been too great for Mr & Mrs Finlay, Mrs Vaughan, & Mrs Holworthy. I think that when the bustle of Jane’s wedding is over, I must again read “Peveril of the Peak.” I only heard parts of it, but did not read it through when we had it at home, & therefore do not remember much of it.

I cannot describe to you the beauty of York Minster, it is really grand beyond description, but I have a York guide, that Mrs Vaughan bought for me, & when I return home you shall read it. You will see from the last letter, (or I believe it was the one before it) that I wrote to Papa, the danger we were in at Wakefield, by the falling of three of the horses, & therefore I shall not say more upon the subject. …

This is a very pretty place & when I am able I hope to take some views which I think you will be pleased with. I intend to collect some shells for Isabella when we go down to the sands, which are about 5 minutes walk off. But we have only been once that way, and then we had not time to stop to pick them up; I hear that there are some very pretty shells to be found, and I hope they will amuse little Isabella. I shall expect to see a very great improvement in her at my return, I hope she is learning to work as well as read now. Fanny will be able to teach her now that she is at home. I believe when we return it will be by sea. This will be a change, but I like travelling by land better. However the steam boats are very large.

When we were at Edinburgh we went to see the Castle, we went up the Calton Hill & Salisbury Crags, but have not yet been up Arthur’s Seat, which I believe a very great Tickler (as Mr Finlay would say) but I hope before we leave Scotland, that I shall be able to say, I have been up it. This Hill has a very grand appearance from all sides, as it is in the form of a lion couching. The eye, nose & mouth are very distinctly seen, the form of the head is altogether very good & and the front paws are very perfect. Princes Street is like our Bond Street, a fashionable lounge where all the Dandies in Edinburgh go to walk. But Bond Street must not be compared to it in length or beauty. It is said that the King was particularly struck with it. George Street is also very beautiful, having at one end Melville’s Monument & at the other St George’s Church. I suppose you know that all the houses in Edinburgh are built of stone but this street loses much of its beauty from having from having St Andrew’s Church (which is situated in the middle of it) project, & the Physicians’ Hall, which is directly opposite, recede. Thus the people say that the modesty of the Physicians & the forwardness of the Clergy have spoilt the finest street in Europe.

There is a very high hill near here called the Bin[n], but we have not yet been up it, but we have been over several of the smaller ones. I can assure you we did not pass your birthday without thinking of you, but all drank your health. Stirling Christie’s was on the same day, but he is a year younger than you and Elizabeth Dawes’ birthday is on the 22 we thought of her also. There has been a very dreadful fire in Edinburgh last week, such a one has not been known here for 34 years. Pray remember me to Papa, Mrs Read, Tom, Fanny and George. I hope little Isabella will remember me when I return. … Mrs Boog & Mrs Vaughan & all friends here desire to be kindly remembered to Papa, they have all asked very particularly after you. I hope you will think this a long letter, I have been nearly all day writing it. I remain your very affectionate sister.

Anne V. Butler

My family history entries used to be a regular feature of this blog, but have rather trailed off recently, in part for lack of time, in part because I'd already picked the low-hanging fruit on the family tree. It's long been my ambition to do something more substantial with the Butlers in due course, but I'd thought of it as a retirement project - which indeed it still is. However, recent events have made me consider starting a little earlier.

A few months ago I was contacted by my third-cousin (once removed) Michael, of whose existence I had been aware but whom I had never met. He had recently inherited from his elder brother a large number of family papers, and very generously offered to share them with me - and, indeed, to give me a portrait of my great*4 grandmother, Margaret Kynnier, born 1736. Her picture is now hanging at the top of the stairs:

Just as exciting, though, was a cache of letters from my great-great-grandfather Thomas and his siblings, written between 1822 and 1825 to their elder brother Weeden, who was then at Harrow. Weeden (the third of that name) carefully preserved a good many of them, and together they constitute a fascinating (at least to me) source for what life was like at 6 Cheyne Walk at the time, when Weeden's father (also Weeden) was running a classical school there. Everyday life, the activities of the siblings and the school pupils, visits to different parts of the country, public events, worries and illnesses, are all laid forth in the disparate voices of Weeden's four siblings:

Anne (b. 1808), aged 13-16 over the period of the letters, and the most prolific correspondent.

Tom (b. 1809), aged 12-15

Fanny (b. 1811), aged 10-14

George (b. 1813), aged 8-12.

The baby of the family, Isabella (b. 1820), is too young to write herself, but a presence throughout.

Luckily, Weeden Senior taught his children good penmanship, so the letters are mostly legible, though several raise the stakes by using cross-hatching - a way of saving paper by writing twice on the same sheet at 90-degree angles:

All in all it's quite a treasure trove. I'll give you a few highlights in the entries to come. And here, to start us off, is a letter from Fanny, then aged 11, dated Sunday 22nd June 1823, the day after Weeden's 17th birthday.

My dear Weeden

We all drank your health yesterday but Anne, who was not returned from school. My Holidays began on the 10th of the month. Mrs Wishart, Brunell, Mr Leeds and his two daughters, Mr Bey and Mr & Mrs Quinby and Willets were here at the play on Tuesday they all acted very well, Henry Hancock was compared with Kean. He and Tom acted the best of all.

Thursday 26th. Maryann Leeds was continually saying to me that it was very well acted. I sat next to her. She and her sister Susan had never been at a Play in their lives before so it was a great treat to them. Brunell sat just behind me. I asked him if he remembered when they acted a Play here before and when he was an old woman. He said yes but that was nothing compared to this.

Anne is now marking Studholme’s and Strachey’s stockings. I think George will not be satisfied till he fills the house with Cats for he has been out today to get one.

I went yesterday to the house of old Mr Griffith with Papa who went to see him and his son Abel. It seems Griffith had pawned his coat which was a very good one, for the man gave him £2/1s for it and being in want of money he had gone I believe to ask his father for some more. His father would not listen to him so he shot him dead in the Temple and then laying down on the table the Pistol he had shot his Father with he walked to the looking glass to see where most effectually to shoot himself. I staid down in the parlour while Papa went upstairs to look at them both. He could see no likeness in Griffith to what he was when Papa saw him last. He was still bleeding at the mouth though he had been dead I believe 2 days and the verdict was settled at 11 o’clock on Tuesday night. It was brought in Murder and Suicide. William has heard that his body will be buried in the cross road at Pimlico.

One of our hens has been set for duck’s eggs.

I remain
Your affectionate sister
Frances Mary M. Butler

"Brunell" is of course Isambard Kingdom Brunel, then 17, a Cheyne Walk neighbour and a former pupil at the school. I don't know if it's widely known that he acted the part of an old woman, but therein lies my flimsy justification for the clickbait title. As for the case of Abel Griffith and his father, it was well known at the time - and in fact he was the very last suicide to be buried, according to tradition, at a crossroads; the law would be changed just a month later. The place of his burial is the current site of Victoria Station, apparently. At the time of his death Abel was a 22-year-old law student, and it seems quite likely that he, like Brunel, was one of Weeden Senior's former pupils, since he clearly knew him from some time before - and felt concerned enough in his affairs to take his 11-year-old daughter to the place where his corpse was being stored. Different times.

I'm now back in Bristol, and the duties of 2026 beckon, so I will wrap up my account of my Japan trip quickly. After Onomichi my next stop was Kobe, where I was meeting up with friends: Mitsuko for lunch, Yuka for dinner, and then Ayako and Irina the following day, when we visited the Kitano Ijinkan where Western merchants lived when Kobe was a treaty port after the Meiji restoration.

We visited two of the Ijinkan houses - ones I recommended, having been to them before: the English house (with its Sherlock Holmes and Alice themes) and the Trick House over the road. It's strange to think that Conan Doyle and Alice Hargreaves (nee Liddell) lie just a few miles apart, in graves in the New Forest - and are also juxtaposed here in such a different context.

Then it was on to Odawara, where I spent Christmas day itself in the warm bosom of the Kodaka family, where three generations had gathered to partake in the sacred Christmas ritual of eating KFC. The little boy, Rui, was particularly charming - going off into another room and calling out "Irasshaimase!" every now and then while people went in and pretended to buy things.

One great thing about staying there is the view from my bedroom window, at least when the weather is right - as it was on Boxing Day morning.

Finally, I went back to Tokyo and a couple of nights with Rei (my former tenant) and her husband Shuzo in their flat in Kanda. It was great to catch up with them. And my friend Hiroe took me to a puppet theatre, which has been going since the 1970s, just five minutes' walk from Shinjuku station. There we saw a rendition of an old Slovak folk tale about a mistreated girl who has uncanny encounters with the spirits of the months while out picking strawberries...

And that was that - back to Bristol, then a quick trip to Brighton to see my brother and ring in the New Year, and now I'm in my own study again for the foreseeable.

In spare moments during this trip I was a) reading the Kalevala with profit and pleasure and b) copying out 200-year-old letters, or rather scans of them. Much more on that in entries yet to come, but I've been making some interesting discoveries of the family history variety.

This is my second and last day in Onomichi in Hiroshima Prefecture. I'm writing about it now even though my last entry was so recent, because I don't know when I last visited a town I liked so well. (Sorry if a bit of Regency diction creeps in from time to time - I'm also transcribing some letters from that period in my spare moments, a subject for a later occasion.)

Onomichi (尾道 = "tail road") is not devoid of tourists, but most of the Western ones pass straight through. They get out at the station and immediately transfer to the little ferry that takes them over to the island of Mukaishima (a five-minute hop), and thence to the Shimanami Kaido cycle route across the Seto Inland Sea, a justly celebrated journey (though the only time I did it was on a rainy day and in a bus). I don't think many explore the town, which remains a bit of a hidden gem (or 穴場 - "hole place", in Japanese, as Mami informed me the other day). They should though, because it's really wonderful, at least if you share my tastes. Allow me to expatiate upon its charms under three broad heads.

First, physical geography. Onomichi is a town with a thin strip of flat land along the coast, where most of the shops are, then behind that a steeply rising hinterland. In this it resembles (on a much smaller scale) Kobe, where I'm going tomorrow, but the effect is more like that of a West country town - I was reminded oddly of Dartmouth. Mukaishima, though actually an island, feels like the far side of a river channel with a ferry connecting the two banks. Meanwhile, the narrow lanes and alleys above the town have more of a Cornish feel, with steps faced with granite in a more St Ives-ey manner. I got to know those steep lanes very well, because my hotel was at the very top of them, and it was not an easy climb on any of the three occasions I made it. (Luckily I'd forwarded my suitcase using the takkyubin, or it would have been impossible.) On the other hand, the view from my room is pretty damned good.

Yep, that's my hotel right at the top.

When I arrived yesterday I was told that, because it was the winter solstice, the public bath would have yuzu floating in it - something I've long wanted to experience, though I didn't have the body confidence to do so, sadly.

On the other hand, I did have the confidence to order the celebrated Onomichi ramen at an establishment in the town. An amazing meal at 900 Yen, which is (I'm almost embarrassed to write) about £4.50 at current exchange rates:

The second thing is cats. Onomichi is town of cats (which is presumably where the tails come from). Many of the cats are real, feral ones, lovingly fostered by the human population, but many are the inhabitants of stocks and stones, shrines and signs, and the twisty paths in the hills lead to many cat-haunted nooks, as you can see...

Clearly a lot of these displays are old and/or in relative disrepair, but that is far from detracting from their charm, at least to me. Rather, it helps create what one of the signs I saw described as "cat Ihatov" - a word borrowed from Kenji Miyazawa, who made his home of Iwate into a kind of palimpsestic enchantment, Ihatov, overlaying the quotidian. Onomichi is that, too, for those with eyes to see - which are, needless to say, cat's eyes. I ate lunch in a rather hidden restaurant called 'Owl's House' on one of these little paths, naturally choosing the 'Meow Pizza' with its sardines and bonito flakes. Two of the local feral cats sat inside watching me as I ate.

All of which brings me to the third charm of Onomichi - and actually my initial reason for wanting to visit - which is that it was the setting for the 2005 anime series, Kamichu! - a truly charming story of a middle-school girl, Yurie, who awakes one morning to discover that she has become a Shinto kami. This is not, however, a chunibyou story - i.e. the tale of a middle-schooler with delusions of divine power. Yurie, a shy and unassertive girl, doesn't really know what to do with her new status, or even what she might represent as a divine being.

Anyway, I learned from various web sources that not only was Onomichi the setting, but that its geography was adhered to particularly closely - which indeed I found to be the case, from the ferry that takes Yurie between home and school, to the shrine where her friend Matsuri lives and the many other places featured in the series.

By far the most moving thing to me, though, was seeing the school Yurie and her friends attended. I first saw it from above, coming down one of the steep slopes, so I had a good view of the roof:

It was all there! The roof where Yurie first exercised her powers as a god! The raised part where Kenji held his solo calligraphy club! Even the ladder connecting the two!

Now, because I write about the motivations for literary and anime pilgrimages in my academic work you mustn't imagine that I'm immune to such things myself. On the contrary, I found the sight profoundly moving, and all the more so when, as I got closer, I realised that Yurie's school was no longer a school. The building had clearly not been used in some years. The gate to the playground was open, so I was able to look around.

Not the least affecting was the set of swings, now consisting of the frame only, the swings themselves having been removed. ("What's their history?" "A　鞦韆". That's a free pun for fans of Shakespeare, playground equipment and ephemerality.)

I don't know why the school closed, but as we are all aware, Japan's birthrate has been declining steadily and Onomichi's own population has begun to shrink. It's all a long way from 2005, still more from the 1980s, when the anime is actually set. (I did not find anybody in the town who remembered the anime, for that matter - not that I asked everyone. Just a couple of Ema at Misode Tenman-gu shrine - Matsuri's shrine - commemorating the 20th anniversary of the series, among many others praying to enter, or graduate successfully from, Hiroshima University.) I hope that Yurie can tame the poverty god, as she did in the series, in which she helped him become a cat.

Having visited Onomichi, I also now understand why they made an episode based on Fight Club, but with cats. Or at least, I understand the cats bit.

Anyway, Onomichi is great, and you should visit it - tomorrow if possible, but at any rate very soon.

I finished my last full day in Tokyo for now by meeting Yuki for lunch at a Taiwanese place, followed by mitsuan, and finally dinner with Miho and Yuko, where we talked over our slow-burn project to research chirimenbon (books made in the Meiji and Taisho eras for Western tourists, usually telling Japanese folk tales and translated by some notable authors of the time such as Lafcadio Hearn). Here is a lovely view of the three would-be researchers outside a Christmassy Tokyo Joshidai:

On Wednesday I met my friend Mami at Haneda, and we flew to Nagasaki for a couple of days. I'd long wanted to visit, not least because this is the city that was the only toe-hold for direct contact between Japan and the West (more specifically the Dutch) from the 1630s to the 1850s - i.e. for most of the Edo period, when Japan had a policy of isolation (often known as sakoku). Even the Dutch, who were there purely as traders, were confined to a small artificial island known as Dejima - about 120/75m. (This was not reclaimed land, as I had somehow imagined, but was formed by a cutting a canal through a small peninsula.)

Dejima is no longer an island, but they've done a fine reconstruction job. Life there was rather more spacious than one might have enjoyed on a ship of the era, but it must have been tantalising being just a short bridge's width from the rest of the city. Nagasaki citizens weren't allowed in, either - though an exception seems to have been made for prostitutes.

The tablet computer in the last picture shows Nagasaki as it would have looked at the time, with a clear view to the mouth of the bay - rather than with a bunch of buildings in the way.

Nagasaki is, by Japanese standards, a very cosmopolitan city, with its relative proximity to the Asian mainland (it has a famous Chinatown) and its history of Dutch and, before that, Portugese trade - which can be seen in the ubiquitous Castella cakes. Here and there, though, a trace of the old sakoku spirit still remains, as in this pair of QR codes, where the Japanese "Guidance to business opening hours" has been Englished simply as "For foreigner" - which felt a little on the nose!

There's more to Nagasaki than Dejima, not least in terms of food. Most famous of all perhaps is Nagasaki champon, which, having been invented in Nagasaki by a Chinese restaurant owner, is as Japanese as chicken tikka masala is British. We sampled it in the original restaurant:

Nagasaki bay, when seen from above, sans buildings, is lovely. Other highlights included the trams (I'm a sucker for a tram, and this is the third Japanese city I've seen them in after Matsuyama and Hakodate) and a really charming bookshop-cum-picture-book museum, which had something of the air of the Ghibli Museum in its architecture:

We also took a day to visit Hui Ten Bosch - the Dutch theme park. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it definitely wasn't this:

And yet, in retrospect, how could it have been otherwise? Actually, Huis Ten Bosch is on a truly grand scale, and in terms of recreating buildings it puts even British Hills in Fukushima in the shade. Highly recommended if you find yourself on the shores of Omura bay with time on your hands!

I said my goodbyes to Mami on Saturday and started working my way back to Tokyo, albeit by a very circuitous route. First stop was Miyajima, home of the famous floating torii gate. This was the one night of the trip when I splashed out on a ryokan, mostly so that I could stay overnight on Itsukushima island (where Miyajima is located). I'd been told that it was easier to beat the crowds if one stayed overnight, though to be honest the crowds weren't that big - no doubt because of the season. (There were, however, more Westerners in evidence here than anywhere else I've stayed.) This meant that I was able to experience the shrine about both low and high tides:

It also got me this view from my bedroom window:

And, of course, ryokan style meals. This was breakfast, before and after the battle:

Altogether, an amazing place. The next day I set off on the next leg of my journey, to the place I'm writing this entry. But where is that place? Tune in next time to find out!

2025 has been quite a year, the second half being a distinct improvement on the first. The first six months saw various troubles come my way, including a) the threat of redundancy for me and my Cardiff colleagues; b) my brother having a serious stroke; c) the Supreme Court changing the meaning of the Equalities Act to the opposite of that intended by its authors, and the EHRC turning that up to 11; and d) the roof having to be removed from my house and rebuilt, due to a design flaw in its construction.

On these various fronts - work, family, societal, domestic - 2025 took quite a scunner to me, and the feeling's been mutual. However, the second half has mitigated some of these issues. The threat of redundancy passed, at least for me; my brother is recovering, although it's a long road; the EHRC appears to have overreached itself and its more radically exclusionary policies are getting some pushback, though we're currently in a very fragile place and the country is being kept in a perpetual ferment against imaginary enemies, of whom I am but one; and the roof situation is (almost) resolved, with the scaffolding coming down just yesterday.

Nevertheless, I needed a holiday, so when my daughter told me that she'd be away for Christmas I saw the opportunity to come to Japan on my own for a couple of weeks, which is where I am now - staying, for the moment at a friend's flat in Akasaka. The area is full of embassies (my friend and her husband are both translators/interpreters among other things, so it's handy for work) and the new Prime Minister lives about 10 minutes' walk away, so it's quite a swanky area, though the swank is mostly hidden behind high walls and fences.

Coming to Japan these days is in large part about seeing friends. I took Naoko and Eric, the flat owners, to dinner on the first night, and the next day went to a lovely party at Miho's, where I discovered that my Japanese is still good enough to have good conversations, and even (like everyone else) to make a little speech, even if my jetlagged appetite wasn't quite up to making the most of the goodies begroaning the table.

LINE_ALBUM_20251214 X'mas gathering, Welcome back Cathy ！_251214_3

Yesterday I took a side trip to Kawagoe in Saitama - just a 45 minute train from Ikebukuro - which contains a district known since the early Edo period as 'Koedo' or 'Little Edo'. If you're based in Tokyo it's probably the easiest place to get to if you want to see 'old-time' Japanese shops and houses, which escaped the various depredations of the twentieth century. It's also a good place to buy a pickled cucumber, as I did in honour of former tenant Yuko, whose grandfather (I think it was) used to be a cucumber farmer in the area.

Kawagoe seems to be the kind of place that everyone knows about, but despite (or because of) being so easy to get to surprisingly few Tokyo-ites have actually visited, and I will be recommending it highly to my friends, as I do to you.

This is my first time in Japan in December, so I'm not sure it's a fair comparison, but I've been struck by the relative sparcity of tourists. In particular, there are very few Chinese here, no doubt in large part because the Chinese government (which has taken offence at some of the new PM's more combative remarks) has discouraged people from visiting. It's not quite 2022 levels, but this is the first time in a long time - certainly in Tokyo - that I've see so few foreigners, other than in the mirror.

Then to the 'Blue Cave' illuminations in Harajuku/Shibuya, where I met up with Yoshiko, who translated my book into Japanese, before going with her to meet her publisher, Manabe, in the fanciest tonkatsu place I've ever seen, The Pretty Pork Factory - with an extensive menus that allows you to choose the breed of pig and the cut of meat, for an experience of fine-tuned gourmandism.

As you'll have noticed, there's no escaping Christmas in this non-Christian country, even if you wished to. I've been Whamageddoned several times, and in Kawagoe I was even treated to Noddy Holder telling me that it was Christmas at the top of his voice, not far from this fish and chip van. Not that I've any objection!

One difference between UK English and US English (or at any rate some forms of it) is the appearance (or not) of the preposition in the phrase "He wrote (to) me."

From a UK perspective, the 'to' seems necessary because 'me' is the indirect object: it's the letter/email/text that gets written, not 'me'. 'To' is a semantic marker indicating the direct object's existence, even it is not explicitly mentioned.

Where the direct object *is* mentioned, the 'to' gets omitted in UK English as well: thus, "He wrote me a letter", not "He wrote to me a letter."

In US English, presumably, the fact that 'me' is the indirect object is seen as sufficiently obvious not to need the scaffolding of a preposition. Occasions where the 'me' in "He wrote me" would be a direct object are pretty rare, after all. Perhaps a character in a Pirandello play might say it about the author?

This got me wondering about other verbs. With "feed", for example, the Brits follow the American pattern: "I fed the child her tea" gets shortened to "I fed the child", not "I fed to the child." But *is* 'child' the indirect object in that sentence? It *feels* as if it's the direct object. But then, it's certainly operating differently from a sentence such as "I fed the child to the dragon." Perhaps it's simply habituation that makes "I fed the child" sound as natural to me as "He wrote me" sounds to an American?

On the other hand, with "give" the indirect object *has* to be mentioned, if only in pronoun form, in both the UK and the US, but the preposition becomes an optional extra. "I gave the book to her" can become "I gave her the book" or "I gave it (to) her". However, "I gave her" (with the book implied) doesn't work.

That's when I got out of the shower, so the story of language must do without an ending - but then, I'm trying to save water.

When I was learning to read, my parents got hold of a rhyming ABC book. It was American, and inevitably I was frustrated by the final page. I don't think it was Dr Seuss's ABC, but we had quite a few of his, and his ABC illustrates the problem well enough.

Big Z, little z,
What rhymes with Z?
I do.
I am a Zizzer-Zazzer-Zuzz
As you can plainly see.

Why, I asked, has this book abandoned its rhyme scheme at the final hurdle, having been so strict about it hitherto? My parents, as I remember, hastily changed the subject. The loss of Britain's cultural hegemony was not, after all, a subject for the nursery, especially just before bedtime.

Later, of course, I learned the awful truth about the American pronunciation of the letter I had always known as Zed. Later still, it started to seep into British usage. I think that the phrase "Generation Z" was really the death-knell for Zed, already battered by the popularity of various rapper names, etc. In the mouth of a young person, especially, Zed will soon sound like a hipsterish affectation. Although it will probably be tolerated from elderly people such as myself, it will be at best a charming throwback to a former age, much like a penchant for the works of Vera Lynn.

Two (long) recent YouTube videos that I watched show this process in action. Both had their British presenters (one in his thirties, the other in his forties) pronounce the letter Z inconsistently. First Shaun, in his latest (excellent) analysis of the book The War on Science, starts with Zee, then goes to Zed, then back to Zee. Meanwhile, Simon from Cracking the Cryptic is equally unstable, saying Zed, Zee and then Zed again, while taking a frustratingly long time to notice that "NZ lamb dish rats" is an anagram of "Brahms and Liszt". Neither appeared to notice his own inconsistency. And why should they? In the grand scheme of things, etc....

But I do draw the line (of course, there is always a line) at British people and Australians saying "Dragonball Zee", especially if they are also fluent in Japanese and are thus aware that the Japanese pronunciation of that character is actually "Zetto". Yes, Trash Taste boys, I'm looking at you.

Judging from interviews, every famous person seems to have been told by a careers teacher at some point that they would "Never amount to anything", "Just didn't have what it takes to make it as a professional" etc., but then went on to prove them gloriously wrong.

This never happened to me - in fact, I don't think I ever spoke to a careers teacher at all. Perhaps we didn't have one at my school? The traditional options were get married or work in the brewery/on the farm, so it would have been a rather dispiriting assignment, I imagine.

But are careers teachers universally this negative in their attitudes? Doesn't it seem like it would be the first thing you learn at careers-teacher school, "Don't tell children that they'll never amount to anything"? Is it some kind of reverse-psychology motivational tool, sparingly but deliberately deployed? Or are the celebs bending the truth a smidge? I don't know, but I'd be interested to hear whether anyone here has been subjected to this kind of treatment.

My friend Rei sent me a photo of herself taking part in an academic panel on international defence at the Osaka Expo. My eye was drawn (as how could it not be?) to that fact that the panelists were sitting beside a large cut-out cartoon hedgehog - which seemed incongruous in a such a serious setting.

Rei tells me that this is in fact a mascot used by NATO for mass communication purposes. In which case, how come I've never seen it?

On looking into the matter, however, I find that the hedgehog was indeed in use during the Cold War, as a formidable beast whose spines were, nevertheless, defensive in nature. (The other picture dates from 1959, and shows 15 hedgehogs, representing the 15 then-members, seeing off a Russian bear. I wonder which is the USA?)

This article from the NATO website suggests that the symbol was dropped in the 1980s, but it has clearly made a comeback - at least in Japan, where no organisation is complete without its mascot character, any more than Lyra without her daemon.

I love me a ghost story coda. Their general purpose of course is to disrupt the border between the story world and our own by suggesting, explicitly or not (not being the classier option), that we can't simply shut the book and pack our fears safely away - that some may leak out.

Often codas take the form of reversion to a frame story, in which the main narrative has been related as a diverting fiction or country tale, only to have some unexpected evidence of its truth appear once all seems safely concluded. That device has probably been overused, though.

My favourite coda will probably always be the final paragraph (or really, sentence) of M.R. James's 'Casting the Runes', which has an austere minimalism that would have made John Cage proud:

Only one detail shall be added. At Karswell's sale a set of Bewick, sold with all faults, was acquired by Harrington. The page with the woodcut of the traveller and the demon was, as he had expected, mutilated. Also, after a judicious interval, Harrington repeated to Dunning something of what he had heard his brother say in his sleep: but it was not long before Dunning stopped him.

That said, I also like the far more garrulous use of the frame story in Lafcadio Hearn's retelling of 'The Romance of the Peony Lantern', under the title 'A Passional Karma'. It ought not to work, because unlike the slightly trite device of discovering some evidence that the story was true after all, it does quite the opposite - seemingly mocking the narrator for having been drawn in by the fiction. And yet, this still manages to give a creepy effect, at least to me, for reasons I can't quite formulate. Perhaps you can?

Anyway, I recommend the story, coda and all.

Reverse reasoning, for want of a better name, is something I've always found charming. What do I mean by 'reverse reasoning'? I'll give you an example from British Children's Literature in Japanese Culture. In that book, I recount the life of Momoko Ishii, the great translator, editor, publisher, critic, librarian, novelist and general powerhouse of Japanese children's publishing in the twentieth century. As a young graduate in English literature she was working for the writer and publisher Kan Kikuchi when the prime minister, Tsuyoshi Inukai, was assassinated - an event that marked the country's descent into military government. Kikuchi was acquainted with Inukai's son, and recommended Ishii as someone who could organise the deceased prime minister's personal library. In this way she became friendly with the Inukai family, and happened to be in the house one Christmas Eve, where she was presented by Inukai Jr.'s two children with a copy of The House at Pooh Corner, which they had been given by a friend recently returned from England but were of course unable to read. Ishii sat with them, translating as she went, and was overwhelmed by the experience to the extent that she devoted the rest of her life to children's literature. (This is the short version, of course.)

Anyway, later in the book, I write:

It is a sobering reflection that, if Tsuyoshi Inukai had not been assassinated, Momoko Ishii would not have become close to Ken Inukai’s family, would not have found the copy of The House at Pooh Corner under the Christmas tree and would quite possibly never have pursued a career in children’s books. To suggest that the world of Japanese children’s literature therefore owes Inukai’s assassins a debt would be perverse, but it is a striking example of the arbitrary consequences of human actions, especially when large enterprises depend disproportionately on the actions of a few individuals.

The 'perverse' conclusion I mention is what I would call 'reverse reasoning' (but surely there's a better name?). Another example: I used to tease my former lodger, Rei, by saying that she was only able to come to Bristol because Tokugawa Ieyasu won the battle of Sekigahara. The reasoning was that: Tokugawa was thus able to establish his capital at Edo, which created a demand for soy sauce, which the Kikkoman company (upriver at Noda) was able to supply, becoming rich in the process, and in due course the Kikkoman-dominated Noda chamber of commerce was able to fund the scholarship which paid for Rei's travel.

This way of reasoning, or rather the evident ropiness of it, is what makes some early detective stories creak a bit. (Yes, I'm thinking of the opening conversation in 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue', and if you didn't guess that you are no Dupin.)

Anyway, I was delighted to find recently that there's a Japanese expression that plays with the same phenomenon: "When the wind blows, the barrel makers prosper." Here, the sequence goes as follows:

The wind blows dust into the air.
The dust increases cases of blindness.
The increased numbers of blind people mean that there are more shamisen players (an instrument traditionally played by the blind).
The increased demand for shamisens (traditionally covered in cat skin) reduces the number of cats.
The lack of cats means that the number of rats increases.
The extra rats, lacking food, are reduced to chewing barrels.
This makes extra work for barrel makers, boosting their profits.

The real problem with this way of thinking is that it fails to recognise the assymetry between cause and effect. Look back down the garden of forking paths and you see the one route you took. From the other end, you are dazzled by infinite possibilities. This is why it's easier to analyse a completed chess game than it is to write a chess program. The branching factor is too high - and in life it's higher still.

Still, the thought of being able to analyse things forwards in the way we habitually analyse them backwards is certainly appealing. Presumably there is a 'proper' name for it, better than 'reverse reasoning' - but what might it be?

The Little Boy Lost

The Fanch Mysteries, Part 3: Danny Boy

The Fanch Mysteries, Part 2: Death of an East Indiaman

The Fanch Mysteries, Part I: Fanny O'Neill

Weeden vs the Empire

A Georgian Mystery: Part One

Fishing Gentles, Party Planning and Rural Rides in Central London

Tom, Tom, the Butler's Son

Anne Butler's Travels

A Play, a Shooting and Isambard Kingdom Brunel in Drag

Going West

On the Tail Road

From Dejima to Miyajima, by way of Amsterdam

Fuyu Diary

Linguistic Musings in the Shower

Zizzer-Zazzer-Zuzz

"Get off your Mustang, Sally"

Hedgehog vs. Bear

Coda Read

When the Wind Blows, the Barrel Makers Prosper

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