It is no secret among my friends and family that I do like to do a bit of cooking and so although I am ruthless about throwing away donated and dated cookery books, old and interesting ones do catch my attention.
So, fellow ordinary cooks – no special stuff here – you might want to read on and be entertained by David de Bethel (the cook book writer and illustrator) as he spends time in the Tyrol oscillating apparently between pestering Anna the cook at a rather posh schloss called ‘the Castle with the Little Red Tower’ and the Knapp’s ‘peasant house.’
Before we start, this was published in 1937 ( there are no mentions of what would have been the political ‘issues’ of the time but plenty of references to the mores of the time.)
I have no idea who he was except to have a quick search and find he wrote other cookery books from his travels in France and perhaps he ended up involved in the New Zealand Players Theatre Trust with his wife Joan who was a potter.
But I haven’t confirmed he is the same man, so let’s just go with the cookery writer.
So here is why he went:
And it must be said, though he is not complimentary about all Austrian cooking, he is later equally willing to report the disdain of Anna for, as he described, the type of English cook who has ‘damned forever the character of the English on the Continent’ by their appalling cooking.
It is a characteristic of old cookery books that they just don’t have the detail you would expect from a Jamie, Nigella, Nigel….
If you bear with me, there will be another piece on a similar vein of ‘Ok if you regularly cook and potter in the kitchen over the years/tears and work out what works with what and how, then you can work this out but if you are not that person, you need a lot more advice on how that recipe is going to work.’
I think it must be that in those days, cooking was much more ‘if you had a cook, they knew how to do it, and if you didn’t, you knew how to do it.’
Prepared meals? What??
Now David, I have to say that stuffed cabbage leaves was one of my specialities in lockdown and my Austrian-born neighbour liked them.
But essentially the cabbage ( and I used Savoy as a much better alternative to white cabbage) was the easy bit – it was the filling and sauce which made the food interesting.
So to have a recipe which is largely about cooking cabbage and only a brief mention of the stuffing, I have to say, sorry, is pretty rubbish.
Mince, rice and parsley could be good but only with a lot more thought and action.
(Happy to supply a better recipe, though I say it myself, if called on to do so.)
David, yes we are on first name terms now, interspersed his recipes with a (slightly florid and Disney-like, but rather charming and interesting diary about the seasons and weather and customs.)
If you are wondering about the recipe for bilberry fritters, essentially it is: make some fritters and add bilberries.
There are times when his recipes have more detail but I have to say a) I would never use the time I have left in life to make a strudel and b) if I should somehow change my mind on that one, I would not be relying on David to tell me how to do it – great read though and love the love letter thing AND CAPITAL LETTERS.
Fungi foraging is much more of a thing now but I remember my grandmother soaking button mushrooms to make sure they were safe to eat and anything other than those white things were never to be countenanced, so I understand David’s comments on this.
By the way, Sarah Gamp was a ‘dissolute, sloppy and generally drunk’ character in Dickens’ Martin Chuzzlewit who always carried an umbrella, so an umbrella became called a Gamp. I am assuming that is what David is referring to.)
I am not sure that ‘most people’ hunt foxes but could tell you a tale of being at a pre-Vienna ball dinner (in my posh days) where talk was of the days they went hunting around the cemeteries of the city….. just saying.
So, thank you David.
I am not sure that I will be doing that many of your recipes (though being a potato fan, Sauerkraut with potato pancakes might feature one day) but it was a great read.
The Directory of Clubs (1887) book came into the shop recently and there is little to say about it except what it says itself on the mores, values and attitudes of the time so I will let it ‘speak’.
Except to say that when I was living in Europe but had work in London, I looked around for a club to join so that I would have an overnight base here.
The Liberal Club would have been convenient but one visit confirmed I was the only woman within sight and the youngest (then) by about 40 years.
It was a half-hearted search on the basis that I did not really want to join the kind of people who sat in leather armchairs with their friends from Eton days and discussed off-shore bank accounts and how the poor should get off their lazy asses and get a job.
I should have stuck with it and joined The University Women’s Club but too late now.
( Mind you, there is a bit of me that could embrace the idea of coming up from the country for a night or two to see a couple of exhibitions, do cocktails and dine with a few friends and visit my dressmaker…..)
According to Wikipedia:
‘Men’s clubs were also a place for gossip. The clubs were designed for communication and the sharing of information. By gossiping, bonds were created which were used to confirm social and gender boundaries. Gossiping helped confirm a man’s identity, both in his community and within society at large. It was often used as a tool to climb the social ladder. It revealed that a man had certain information others did not have. It was also a tool used to demonstrate a man’s masculinity. It established certain gender roles. Men told stories and joked. The times and places a man told stories, gossiped, and shared information were also considered to show a man’s awareness of behaviour and discretion. Clubs were places where men could gossip freely. Gossip was also a tool that led to more practical results in the outside world. There were also rules that governed gossip in the clubs. These rules governed the privacy and secrecy of members. Clubs regulated this form of communication so that it was done in a more acceptable manner.’
And,
‘Discussion of trade or business is usually not allowed in traditional gentlemen’s clubs, although it may hire out its rooms to external organisations for events.’
‘In recent years the advent of mobile working (using phone and email) has placed pressures on the traditional London clubs which frown on, and often ban, the use of mobiles and discourage laptops, indeed any discussion of business matters or ‘work related papers’.’
Mmm, I cannot quite believe that men of business and politics spend their time just discussing the cricket or how best to get the gardener to prune roses.
I have been on a search to find the full name and hope the history of a man whose letter was slipped into a book he sent to someone.
And someone else donated to our Oxfam bookshop.
But meanwhile, it being a book about an Admiral, I have fallen into more naval history than I ever thought I would want to know – but it turns out I do.
So, if you have missed previous episodes, we are with a biography of Admiral Duncan (famous in his day for beating the Dutch navy in 1797) written by his grandson and therefore not exactly dispassionate.
As you can see, it was given by the Ear of Camperdown (author) to Maria’s grandfather.
Given that only 100 copies were published it is (hopefully) bound to be worth a bit – always welcome.
But it was the letter inside which was, at least to me, as interesting as the book – admirable though the Admiral no doubt was.
So, I wanted to find out who Patrick was, who Maria was, who her grandfather was and the very longest of shots, who Sir John was.
I have had a lot of help with this sleuthing and first thanks go to a very nice man at Savills estate agents in Guernsey. Let’s call him Richard.
Because with no surnames to go on, the address was my starting point.
And, what do you know, Savills the estate agents, had sold Patrick and Maria’s house in 2019. Well, I am not sure that it looked just like this when they lived in it, and it was sold some 30 years ago – it was a great lead.
I sent them an email and asked if they knew anything about the people who had lived there and, lets call him Richard, came back to me and said he did.
He gave me Patrick’s surname and told me Maria was a fairly renowned local artist.
What a stroke of luck was that?
Maria first:
Here are some of her paintings – the first was painted in 1995 which was the year she died and if I could be doing something as creative as that in my final year, I would be very pleased.
As mentioned before my Best Beloved’s niece is an ace sleuther and she found a reference in a piece about Patrick which mentioned that he had served in the Navy under Maria’s father, Rear-Admiral ‘Burgoo’ Burges Watson.
And her grandfather, recipient of the book, was also Rear-Admiral Burges Watson.
He was a few posh-sounding things in his career; naval aide-de-camp to Queen Victoria, and Admiral Superintendent of the Malta Dockyard for example.
So, that is Maria and her grandfather and now for Patrick.
He turns out to have quite a history.
He says in the letter that he was a ‘snottie’ (a junior midshipman) ‘in the flagship during the Invergordon mutiny.’ 1931
The flagship was HMS Hood which was later to become famous for all the wrong reasons.
‘In May 1941, Hood and the battleshipPrince of Wales were ordered to intercept the German battleship Bismarck and the heavy cruiserPrinz Eugen, which were en route to the Atlantic, where they were to attack convoys. On 24 May 1941, early in the Battle of the Denmark Strait, Hood was struck by several German shells, exploded, and sank with the loss of all but 3 of her crew of 1,418. Due to her publicly perceived invincibility, the loss affected British morale.’ Wikipedia
Now I am no naval historian – though goodness knows I have spent so much more of my time than I had expected trawling through the stuff – Patrick was actually serving under his (future) father in law on Nelson.
(Perhaps you can have more than one flagship in a gathering of soon-to-be-mutinous ships?)
Anyway, that makes the link, but Patrick had lots more to tell us.
He had to leave the Navy because of poor eyesight and went to join a trading house in Singapore – as you do.
But when war broke out he came home and joined the Royal Navy Reserve Personnel.
This is what the Imperial War Museum cite under the Special Forces Roll of Honour:
But an obituary ( which I am sorry I cannot credit because I have lost the link) adds more dramatic colour to his life.
I have put it in wholesale below.
But before I leave you to read that, I couldn’t find Sir John. It was always going to be a very small needles in the haystack of Sir Johns so I am not so disappointed.
To have found Patrick, Maria and her grandfather has been more than enough.
Commander Patrick Whinney, who has died aged 92, landed and collected agents from the French and Italian coasts during the Second World War.
Once inside the shipping lanes, he had to navigate with pinpoint accuracy on quietened auxiliary engines towards a rendezvous before rowing ashore in a dinghy; often he would be unsure whether there were passengers to pick up or he was entering a trap.
Though calamity often threatened, no agents were lost in transit. When one important group of Italians, led by a general, were to be collected from a beach near Orbitello, Whinney and his right-hand man, Petty Officer Jim Bates, paddled their dinghies carefully through the surf with Tommy guns cocked; but when he gave the password there was no reply. Bates could see a huddle of men silhouetted up the beach and, fearing that the Italian party was under hostile control, he whispered: “Shall I let ’em have it, sir?” “No, wait,” said Whinney, who repeated the challenge twice more. At last came the response: “Giuseppe”, followed by a question: “English?” When Whinney replied “Yes”, six men flung themselves down the beach and into the dinghies.
As they steamed back to Bastia on Corsica at 40 knots in a USN patrol boat, the general showed Whinney the ancient automatic with which he had been about to shoot him. Their courier had been gone a week, and they suspected a trap themselves. One of the group had thought Whinney sounded German; it was not until the third challenge that the general, whose wife was English, had been convinced that all was well.
Patrick Fife Whinney was born on January 5 1912, the son of an Army officer whose family had the accountancy firm Whinney Smith and Whinney (later part of Ernst and Young). Patrick’s elder brother, Reginald, was awarded the DSC and Bar in destroyers escorting convoys in the North Atlantic.
Patrick Whinney went to Dartmouth in 1925, and as a midshipman served under his future father-in-law, Rear Admiral “Burgoo” Burges Watson, in the battleship Nelson. But poor eyesight forced him to leave the service and join a trading house in Singapore.
On the outbreak of war Whinney immediately returned home and was commissioned in the RNVR. With another young intelligence officer, Steven Mackenzie, he was sent as liaison officer to the French Admiral Darlan’s headquarters outside Paris. At the Fall of France, Whinney escaped in the Canadian destroyer Fraser, and survived when the ship was run down and sunk by the anti-aircraft cruiser Calcutta on the night of June 25 1940.
Back in London, Whinney reported to Ian Fleming, who sent him to the newly-created Directorate of Operations (Irregular), where his early naval training was of great assistance to Captain Frank Slocum, who had neither adequate or trained staff.
On August 3/4 1940 Whinney undertook his first clandestine mission. This was in a commandeered French-built motor dispatch vessel to land agents at Ouistreham, on what would later be famous as Sword Beach. His next mission, to Sein in Brittany, involved escorting Breton fisherman who had taken refuge at Newlyn; Whinney recalled being met off the train in Cornwall by a Russian Grand Duke, also in RNVR uniform.
Early in 1941 Whinney acted as liaison officer on board Le-Rhin, a French cargo vessel being refitted at Barry for special operations; it was no easy task, as the French crew had little knowledge of English or of naval procedures. Despite the opposition of de Gaulle’s Free French in London, the ship was placed under the White Ensign and renamed Fidelity. She sailed from the United Kingdom to land Special Operations Executive agents in southern France and to recover escaped British servicemen. Whinney and Mackenzie were awarded the Croix de Guerre in April 1943.
When Whinney’s loan to SOE was over, he was sent to Gibraltar to organise all irregular naval operations in the Western Mediterranean. After a brief return to London, and a visit to Spain to arrange for the covert purchase of fishing boats to augment his flotilla, he travelled to North Africa to reconnoitre suitable advanced bases and requisition Italian-type local craft for operations to the Italian mainland and islands; his flotilla was known, for cover purposes, as the African Coastal Flotilla.
Whinney spent 1943 at Slocum’s headquarters in London, controlling Mediterranean operations, then was sent to set up an advanced operational base at Bastia, using a mixture of borrowed British, American and Italian craft. Since the same craft were rarely loaned consecutively, Whinney had to train each crew in special operations, while commanding the base and planning and co-ordinating other operations. He personally took charge of the first 18 operations. Shortly afterwards a temporary illness forced him to relinquish his command and return to England where, after sick leave, he was given liaison duties with French special forces, and also awarded the DSC for his gallantry, enthusiasm and devotion to duty in hazardous operations.
After the war Whinney joined the diplomatic service. He spent many years in Athens, and then went into cosmetics business with a wartime colleague. In the 1960s he settled on Guernsey, where he helped his wife to found the Coach House Gallery.
From 1981 he became involved in the Guernsey Cheshire Home. Returning from a committee meeting at which it had been plain that the home faced a six-figure hole in its finances, on a whim Whinney walked into the local television studio where he found Sarah Montague, then a budding journalist, on duty alone. Whinney charmed her into giving him an interview, and held forth so eloquently that, a few days later, an anonymous cheque arrived for the sum required.
Patrick Whinney, who was appointed OBE in 1998, died on November 15, 2004. He married in 1939 Maria Burges Watson, who died in 1995; they are survived by three daughters.
If you waded through the last piece on mutiny, you may be feeling as if you have had enough of that aspect of Naval history.
So, now is you chance to turn away quickly because if you decide to stay, you may end up knowing more about the mutiny at Invergordon than you ever wanted to.
This all started with a book and a letter and trying to find out who the people were mentioned in the letter.
And, I now have a good idea about all of them except Sir John. ( Little thanks to research I have done, but huge thanks to the Best Beloved’s niece who is researcher extraordinaire in her spare time.)
But again, this is about a mutiny and only in the next instalment do we get to know the people in the letter.
So, if you are still with me, here’s the story of the Invergordon mutiny:
‘On Tuesday September 15th, 1931, at 8.00 a.m. most of the stokers of the forenoon watch in the battleship HMS Valiant, under orders to sail from Invergordon for exercises in the North Sea, refused duty and prevented the ship from sailing. In the battleships Rodney and Nelson and the battle-cruiser Hood, all due to follow Valiant out to sea, the crews also refused to turn to. By 9.31 a.m. the admiral commanding the Atlantic Fleet had cancelled the exercises and recalled to Cromarty Firth those ships already at sea. What was to become known as the Invergordon Mutiny had begun.’ Cambridge University
There has been a lot written about this industrial action by about 1,000 sailors but I will spare you the bramble and nettles and keep to the main path.
1931 was The Great Depression in action and there was a governmental push to cut public spending.
Part of that was to cut some sailors’ pay by up to 25%.
Actually, 10% for senior officers and senior ratings and 25% for the juniors who has joined before 1925.. Plus ca change then.
The men on the ships in Invergordon were due to go out on exercises but whilst they were waiting, they heard – not from the Admiralty but for newspaper reports – about the cuts.
They were not happy, and were indeed less happy when they got confirmation from the Admiralty that the reports were indeed accurate and basically a ‘suck-it-up’ communication.
Rear-Admiral Tomkinson, standing in because his boss was in hospital, was sympathetic towards the mens’ grievances apparently and he tried to get the Admiralty to stop ordering orders and deal with the worsening situation.
He cancelled the exercises and warned that things would likely get worse if there was no movement from the powers that be.
This mutiny was short-lived.
The Admiralty waived the 25% cut and ‘just’ cut all pay by 10% and on September 16th
“In the afternoon, the Admiralty ordered the ships of the Fleet to return to their home ports immediately. Tomkinson directed the ships to proceed in their squadrons as soon as possible, and gave officers and crew with family at Invergordon leave to visit the shore and say their goodbyes. That night, all ships sailed from Invergordon as ordered.’ Wikipedia
Meanwhile, the mutiny had caused a panic in the Stock Exchange and forced it off the Gold Standard.
In the aftermath Tomlinson was blamed by the Admiralty for the mutiny claiming he had failed to quickly deal with insubordination and nip the situation in the bud.
Always useful to have a scapegoat in these situations.
‘A number of the organisers of the strike were jailed, while 200 sailors were discharged from the service. A further 200-odd sailors were purged from elsewhere in the Navy, accused of attempting to incite similar incidents. The Admiralty held Tomkinson accountable for the mutiny, blaming him for failing to punish dissidents after the first protests.There was much attention given at the time of the mutiny to the apparent involvement of the Communist Party.’ Wikipedia
There were reports that a meeting of the mutineers had ended with the singing of the Red Flag but there was a lot of fake reds-under-the-bed news going on at the time and there is no evidence that the CP was behind this mutiny.
Indeed,
“…it was only in the weeks and months following Invergordon that Wincott’s alleged leadership began to be promoted as the Communist Party laid claim to the mutiny. The party’s identification with it intensified when two prominent Communists, Shepherd and Allison, were arrested on trumped-up charges of inciting ratings to further mutiny and given stiff prison sentences. Comintern attempts to capitalise on this by means of Communist recruiting drives among sailors in the naval towns of Portsmouth, Chatham and Plymouth were now stepped up, but to no avail. As John Gibbons, the party’s organiser for Portsmouth and the South Coast between 1931 and 1935 subsequently admitted, in that period he never managed to recruit a single matelot (Gibbons to Carew, 16 August 1976).
Len Wincott a notable among the mutineers and claiming to be their leader, spoke at many Communist Party meetings after being dismissed from the Navy.
He was put under surveillance by MI5 and in partly, he said, as a result of that he defected to the Soviet Union in 1934.
He survived the Siege of Leningrad from 1941-1944 but in 1948 he was arrested as a British spy and sent to the Gulag where he spent 11 years ( and met and married his wife.)
After his release he became friends with Donal Maclean and died in 1983.
Interestingly, at his request, his ashes were scattered over Devonport Harbour.
Next time, the letter that started me down the rabbit hole of mutinies. I bet you can hardly wait……
So, who knew there were so many mutinies in the Navy? Well I didn’t. Apart from Mutiny on the Bounty, I had heard of not much of the (seemingly) many others.
I am (still) on my research of a book about Admiral Duncan and the letter tucked inside, so if you haven’t read the relevant previous blog, you might find it a bit strange that I am writing about mutinies – don’t feel obliged to go back, after all you might just be interested in Navy ill-discipline.
But just in case you are in for the long haul – and it will be a long one, here is what I found which started this search.
I need to find out about Patrick, his wife Maria, her grandfather and one day perhaps, Sir John.
Meanwhile back to mutinies.
My kind friend who does know about these things sent me this:
‘There were quite a few mutinies over the centuries, usually involving more than one ship when the fleet was at anchor (often for extended periods), and were due to government pay cuts or the state of the victuals as a result of corruption in the Victualling Board or yards – so pesky civilians at fault.
The more concerning ones from the Admiralty viewpoint were those on individual ships far from home – hence the Naval Discipline Act which unlike the other services allowed captains to award up to 2 years imprisonment.
Incidentally, WRNs were never subject to that act, and could just walk away.
The Captain’s safe used to have a confidential reference book on how to deal with mutinies. The only bit I remember was not to try to re-establish order while only wearing underpants.
Needless to say, we now have a joint Armed Forces Discipline Act and anything serious is handed over to civilian lawyers.’
I have two mutinies I want to investigate – the Nore mutiny for Admiral Duncan and the one Patrick was involved in – Invergordon.
But first some background to mutinies in 1797 – a big year for mutinies:
‘In September 1797, the crew of Hermione mutinied in the West Indies, killing almost all the officers in revenge for a number of grievances, including throwing into the sea without proper burial, the bodies of three men killed by falling from the rigging in a desperate attempt not to be the last men on deck, which was punishable by flogging.The Hermione was taken by the crew to the Spanish port of La Guaira.
On 27 December, the crew of Marie Antoinette murdered their officers and took their ship into a French port in the West Indies. Other mutinies took place off the coast of Ireland and at the Cape of Good Hope and spread to the fleet under Admiral Jervis off the coast of Spain. ‘ Wikipedia
So, if you are up for this, help yourself to a tot of rum and settle down.
(But given that this series of blogs is all about wandering about the Navy, books and history, here is a digression, and as a digression on a digression, who’d have thought the rum ration was still in action in 1970, and who’d thought it was not available in 1797 when the mutinies in this blog were in action?..)
‘The rum ration, or “tot”, from 1850 to 1970 consisted of one-eighth of an imperial pint (71 ml) of rum at 95.5 proof, given out at midday.
Senior ratings (petty officers and above) received their rum neat, whilst for junior ratings it was diluted with two parts of water to make three-eighths of an imperial pint (213 ml) of grog.
Rum, due to its highly flammable nature, was stored in large barrels in a special rum store in the bowels of the ship. The rum ration was served from one particular barrel, known as the “Rum Tub”.
Not all sailors necessarily drew their rum: each had the option to be marked in the ship’s books as “G” (for Grog) or “T” (for Temperance).
Sailors who opted to be “T” were given threepence (3d) a day instead of the rum ration, although most preferred the rum.
Sailors under 20 were not permitted a rum ration, and were marked on the ship’s books as “UA” (Under Age).’ Wikipedia
So back to mutinies.
In 1797 two mutinies broke out.
One in Portsmouth, the Spithead mutiny, and one in Nore in the Thames Estuary.
Apparently, the Spithead mutiny was more a kind of strike for better conditions whilst the Nore mutiny had more political overtones – and that is the one which involves Admiral Duncan.
When I say ‘apparently’ I am relying on a Wikipedia entry on these mutinies.
Now, I am a big fan of Wikipedia, rely on it frequently and yes, do send money to keep it going.
And all the entries are anonymous but sometimes you get the feel of the person behind what they are writing, and this entry has the whiff of a chap who is rather formal, has a Naval background and is not a fan of leftie politics. ( Of course I could be wrong.)
So, he (I’m assuming) writes (comments in italics are mine):
‘Seamen’s pay rates had been established in 1658, and because of the stability of wages and prices, they were still reasonable as recently as the 1756–1763 Seven Years’ War; however, high inflation during the last decades of the 18th century had severely eroded the real value of the pay. In recent years, pay raises had also been granted to the army, militia, and naval officers.
You can rather imagine that for people seeing their bosses getting a pay rise when they were told they shouldn’t grumble about the reasonableness of their own more meagre pay, set about 100 years before, during a period of high inflation, might just be just a bit annoying. Nothing like our own times of course.
And, ‘until 19th-century reforms improved conditions, the Royal Navy was additionally known to pay wages up to two years in arrears.
The Navy always withheld six months’ pay as a standard policy, in order to discourage desertion.
At the same time, the practice of coppering the submerged part of hulls, which had started in 1761, meant that British warships no longer had to return to port frequently to have their hulls scraped, and the additional time at sea greatly altered the rhythm and difficulty of seamen’s work.
The Royal Navy had not made adjustments for any of these changes, and was slow to understand their effects on its crews.
If you are still with me when I get onto the Invergordon mutiny (1931 rather than 1797 ) you might well see that little in the way of attitude had changed.
Impressment (a common practice) meant that some of the seamen were onboard ship against their wills.
That, is press gangs and meant that men between 18 and 55 years old and capable of being seafaring were ‘taken into naval force with, or without, notice.’
The army tried it for two years from 1778 to 1780 and then gave it up. The Navy held onto it for a long time: 1664-1815.
The new wartime quota system meant that crews had many landsmen from inshore (including some convicted criminals sent in lieu of punishment) who did not mix well with the career seamen, leading to discontented ships’ companies.’ Wikipedia
So, you as a well practised sailor, knowing your stuff, your colleagues/mates etc etc then find you are alongside men who know nothing about sailing and have a criminal past. It may be that that criminal past mattered less than the fact those men didn’t know how to hoist a sail….
The Nore mutiny 1797, as promised earlier:
The crew of Sandwich at anchor at Nore, seized control of their ship and several other crews did likewise. Because they were scattered, they set up their own elected delegates to make demands on the Admiralty – or indeed anyone who might listen.
The crews elected Richard Parker as President of Delegates of The Fleet and drew up demands which included pardons, a pay rise and modifications to The Articles Of War.
Mutinous assembly. Uttering words of sedition and mutiny. Contempt to superior officers. If any person in or belonging to the fleet shall make or endeavor to make any mutinous assembly upon any pretence whatsoever, every person offending herein, and being convicted thereof by the sentence of the court martial, shall suffer death: and if any person in or belonging to the fleet shall utter any words of sedition or mutiny, he shall suffer death, or such other punishment as a court martial shall deem him to deserve: and if any officer, mariner, or soldier on or belonging to the fleet, shall behave himself with contempt to his superior officer, being in the execution of his office, he shall be punished according to the nature of his offence by the judgement of a court martial.
Richard Parker became known as the President of the Floating Republic – and this was the time that the French Revolution was stretching its influence.
Imagine the effort the English establishment were harnessing so they they could ‘manage the disturbance.’
The mutineers extended their demands and partially blockaded London but they couldn’t make it work and the mutiny failed.
Parker was convicted of treason and piracy and hanged from the yardarm of Sandwich, the vessel where the mutiny had started.
In the reprisals that followed, 29 were hanged, 29 were imprisoned, and nine were flogged, while others were sentenced to transportation to Australia.
If you have made it here, thank you and yet, and yet, there is more……
We start thinking the unthinkable very early on in the Oxfam bookshop – we think about Christmas from August onwards.
Yes, I can imagine your rolling eyes, and indeed the rolling eyes of professional shop designers who obviously start thinking about Christmas in January.
But bear with me, if you can.
So, long-time readers may know that from August (maybe even July) we start putting aside books which are in such lovely condition a customer could buy them and give them to someone who would never know they were second hand. ( And we can get a bit more money for them.)
Mind you, I have to say that most of our customers say they are on a mission to buy from charity shops, or they have a family contract to buy second hand books to ‘indulge’ in the Icelandic tradition of having Christmas Eve when everyone in the house eats and reads a book.
Or they are looking for ‘table presents’ – ‘do you have a book which will interest my godson who is really into physics, and my niece who is into jewellery-making, and my friend who loves ghost stories?’ etc etc
That was a fun hunt last Christmas Eve, and the lovely customer-couple bough £50 worth of books.
But the primary issue is making the window look good. Really good.
And that is the primary job of my great colleague who, I may tell you, made Narnia in our window last year.
She does the window displays and I do the table displays (which is also in the window but requires a lot less effort.)
So, what to do this year.
Now, my Best Beloved will say that I have lots of bright ideas but few ever make it into reality unless there is someone picking them up and doing what is needed.
And, that is (sadly) true – lots of my good ideas have thus fallen by the wayside.
But my idea for the Christmas window seems to have got traction.
Want to know what it is?
Oh, go on then.
So we have decided to do a Cluedo window.
There will be the dead Mr Black slumped over a desk in the ‘library’ in the window.
And the nod to Christmas will be a fake window in the real window ‘looking through’ to snow.
There will be lots of books about murder mysteries on his ‘library’ bookshelves.
And, thanks to the BB suggestion, we will have clues around the shop.
For those of you who don’t know the Cluedo board game – are there any such people? – we are going with the early version.
So, Mrs White was the cook so there will be old-fashioned ladles hanging from the cookery book section and a book in that section with a cover (we will have made) called Mrs White’s Country House Recipes.
I have arranged to borrow a vicar’s collar from ( not entirely surprisingly, a vicar I know) and it will be in our religious books section with a bible ‘owned’ by the Rev Green.
Miss Scarlett is proving a challenge so far because although we take clothes donations and sell them online, not many people associate us with a clothes shop so my hunt for a bright red evening dress is proving a bit difficult.
Do let me know if you have one to spare.
Colonel Mustard will be a pot of Colman’s mustard in the section of military history and somewhere/somehow we will make/find a suitable moustache to go alongside.
Mrs Peacock is going to be peacock feathers around the shop. But again, if anyone has a peacock model/trinket/statue/garden adornment they don’t need, I would love to borrow.
For Professor Plum, we will have a mortar board and (maybe) a gown alongside a pile of academic books.
And then we are on to the weapons.
We need a dagger – well the BB has one (actually several) so that is covered but we are not supposed to have those in the shop so that will need some ‘display finessing’.
A candlestick – we have at least several we can lend to the shop.
Lead piping – well, we will make something which looks like that but that can’t actually injure a volunteer or customer.
Rope is easy-peasy but again, we will try and ensure that no volunteer is injured/murdered in the making of this Christmas display……
What is proving really hard is finding a fake revolver – today’s parents don’t like their children playing with guns these days.
In my part of Deepest Sussex there is a man whose business is making posh shooting weapons but I am not sure that Oxfam will wear me borrowing a beautifully designed real thing…..
Now, just as a PS, we have had no end of Cluedo sets donated to the shop in the past.
Do we have one now, no of course not.
But a quick WhatsApp messages to my village has turned one up. Of course it did.
There are times when I really like being a Reluctant Sussex Housewife.
It has been a day of brilliant collections in our Oxfam shop.
For example,
Most of the time, we get donations which are an assortment of what people have accumulated – 1970s cookery books ( but not those which are now worth something), The Reader’s Digest Book of Cats, browned paperbacks – Neville Shute shunted against Catherine Cookson etc etc.
Dated management accountancy text books, unread self-help books, the complete collection of Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe novels – all with numbered labels so you knew in which order to read them – but all left in ‘our garage which got a bit damp but they will dry out eventually.’ No, they won’t or at least they will dry out over a long time and in no condition to sell.
But there are some collections which make a Thursday morning a delight.
This maybe new to you but the publisher Collins published a series of books branded New Naturalists which is, in case you didn’t know:
Collins New Naturalist series is the longest-running and arguably the most influential natural history series in the world with over 100 volumes published in over 60 years.
Now some of these are quite rare and therefore valuable – for reasons you may to want to be bothered with the rare ones are those printed in the middle of the series.
It began in 1945 with Butterflies. And from this you can see that one of the delights of the books is the beautiful covers. They are very lovely.
We had nowhere near the complete collection see below, but we did have more in a donation than we usually get.
No, that is an image of what we would love to have – that collection worth £6,000. Ours, not so much….
At the same time, our ace book-sorter told me of a carrier bag he had found full of King Penguins.
Now you maybe familiar with Penguin books – so popular with interior design Instagram aficionados – never mind the quality (of the writing) see the width of orange vintage books on your shelves.
Not that I am judging of course – and have to admit I have a shelfful.
Anyway, King Penguins are an eclectic series of books hardback, slim volumes published between 1939 and 1959 and were monographs ( short books on specific subjects)
The Carvings in Exeter cathedral, Edible Fungi and indeed Poisonous Fungi, Russian Icons, Book of Spiders, Ballooning, Early British Railways, The Isle of Wight – well if you want to know the full list see here https://penguinchecklist.wordpress.com/early-series/king-penguins/
So, taking this list and publication dates, I spent a couple of hours going through what we had been given – did we have a full collection and were they all first editions?
That would have been a say, £200 collection.
But…..
We had one which wasn’t a first edition and more importantly, we had one of the books missing.
Really? Just one book?
The should have been 76 books, was a pile of 75.
I looked it up – The Book of Scrips, in case you were wondering. I could buy a decent one online for £10 and I thought about it …. but not for long.
And some of the 75 ( but not many) were not in the best of rude health – spines a bit tattered….
So, I decided to put them down on the table with the New Naturalists – collections akimbo – with a sign saying this was a (very) nearly complete set but missing one book. And we wished anyone who bought them and went searching for the missing book, good luck and our best wishes.
I was at the back of the shop, sorting new donations when a colleague told me someone wanted to buy the books – they had been on the table for, say, 15 minutes.
The lovely woman who bought them had never heard of them, knew nothing about them, had fallen in love with some of the titles and lovely cover designs, was more than happy to pay the £50.
And as a determined charity shopper she was planning on refusing the charms of buying the missing book on the internet but would consider it a challenge/treasure hunt to find a copy.
She promised to come and tell me when/if she found it.
And finally, for those of us who recently heard about a type of concrete which seems to be a) dodgy b)in some cases dangerous and c) not entirely taken seriously in the budget for repairs Government decisions – repairs aren’t that vote catching after all.
These advisory leaflets were issued by the then government……. just saying.
Provenance (is everything as they say on Antiques Roadshow, and) seems to be the word of the moment in Oxfam Bookshop Petersfield.
Actually, not every other volunteer has this ‘mot juste’ on their lips – but I do.
Two books with unprepossessing covers have driven me down more research rabbit holes than I can remember.
(So, the big book involves a hunt for who was Patrick, Sir John, Maria and her grandfather but that will have to wait.)
The small book is what this is all about.
And, as you can see,
‘Front hinge is broken and front endpaper is detached’ And the rear hinge is holding on but only just, and will probably break sometime soon.
Normally that would devalue a book considerably but actually the ‘block’ of the pages are holding together well so with an expert bit of tlc, this book could be repaired easily.
And this is a rare book – with added history.
There are lots of versions of the First Book of Indian Botany right up to print-on-demand for sale, but none (as far as I can see) of the first edition – 1869.
(Bear in mind this was written/published and aimed at colonial residents of India rather than the Indian population who, no doubt, knew their own botany.)
Now if you just want to know what the book said, then a re-print is fine but if you want a rare first edition – and then owned by someone who created:
‘Perdana Botanical Gardens, formerly Perdana Lake Gardens, Lake Gardens and Public Gardens, is Kuala Lumpur‘s first large-scale recreational park. Measuring 91.6 hectares (226 acres), it is located in the heart of the city and established in 1888.The park served as place of refuge from the hustle and bustle of the city during colonial times. It contains large sculpted and manicured gardens and a host of attractions.’
He was Alfred Venning.
Then you need our book.
(Emma, who is amateur researcher extraordinaire follows up my Facebook posts asking for help when I am more than stuck, and comes up trumps. I couldn’t decipher Venning’s name in our book but she could…. thank you Emma.)
And actually, it is even before the first edition, with bound-in handwritten notes from the author.
So, who was the author?
Well, Daniel Oliver knew Charles Darwin and there are letters between the two of them.
And here is what Christies said about the letter between the two:
‘You have been very kind,’ Darwin tells Oliver, the botanist from the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, ‘to take so much trouble for me; the information is amply sufficient, as I wished to learn how far the roots cd act on rocks, not caring about the nutrition of the plants.’
Darwin recommended Oliver for a job at Kew and so Oliver became:
In 1864, while at UCL, he published Lessons in Elementary Biology, based upon material left in manuscript by John Stevens Henslow, and illustrated by Henslow’s daughter, Anne Henslow Barnard of Cheltenham.
He was elected a member of the Linnean Society, awarded their Gold Medal in 1893, and awarded a Royal Medal by the Royal Society in 1884.’ Wikipedia.
(Interestingly, his short Wiki entry does not mention our book.)
In case you need more provenance (connections), Henslow (1796-1861) was a ‘friend and mentor to his pupil Charles Darwin.’
And, ‘ Soon after Oliver’s arrival at Kew, Hooker, the assistant director, asked him to perform crossing experiments of Darwin’s behalf. Darwin was clearly impressed by Oliver’s abilities as an experimenter …..Soon they were both carrying out experiments ….and regularly exchanging notes and specimens.
When the chair of botany at UCL fell vacant Darwin strongly recommended Oliver for the post praising’ the range of his knowledge of facts buried in all sorts of foreign publications.’ Christies.
So, back to the book:
As you can see Oliver was concerned about Natural Orders – from his hand-written note on the endpaper and the printed preface.
And his bound-in notes are from pages 130-145.
And he has written a note in the margin of p 135 referring to Hooker.
Joseph Hooker: ‘was a founder of geographical botany and Charles Darwin‘s closest friend. For 20 years he served as director of the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, and was awarded the highest honours of British science.’
So, Oliver has impressive connections with Darwin and Hooker – he knew them both and, again, we are pretty sure this little book was his own.
Some later unknown owner ( Alfred Venning?), underlined words and sentences which meant something to them – a botanist no doubt.
I know nothing about botany but even I can see this is a delight of a book of its era.
And it has provenance in spades.
Nice, as we say when we get a delight of a donation.
And who knows how it made its way to the Oxfam bookshop in Petersfield – from Charles Darwin’s friend working in the Botanical Gardens, Kew, to Kuala Lumper into the ownership of Alfred Venning to us.
So what is its value:
Broken, but full of history and links to famous men.
This is not a proof copy with just somme notes in the margins, but a bound copy with hand-written pages trying to sort out what the author described as ‘my chief difficulty.’
It is unique.
But if you just want to know what Oliver wrote, do you care if it is a print on demand version or the author’s bound copy?
And can I establish a link between Oliver and Venning?
And are links to famous people enough to add value?
Recently we had a lovely donation of old natural history books – and so we are off to the countryside, books in hand.
The donation came after someone’s father died and he was clearly someone who had a particular interest in butterflies and moths (more on that another time.)
But not exclusively as this little book shows:
It is good to know that the young ladies of England have the appropriate study of botany to keep them from going wild…
Mind you the book plate suggests that it was rather better used by a (young) man.
Now this one is also clearly intended for the amateur but I do have to question how simple the simple method is….
And then there is this little delight.
Knowing the difference between a hippo and a rhino, a crane and a heron and a frog and a toad is always handy – not that in the 1800s you were likely to see any hippos or rhinos unless you were a very intrepid traveller.
But what is interesting is the introduction and the owner’s name.
So, it was bought in 1858.
Darwin published Origin Of The Species in 1859.
I wonder if the un-named author/editor would have changed their views on nature being the proof of the wisdom of the Deity….
So even back in the day there were lots of Peter Pan books published and he still keeps going, and lots of a print run means less value, so what is this one worth?
This lovely book came in and I set about working out what it might be worth.
Well there were lots of versions but none of them were exactly like ours – I called in our expert and here are the things we needed to think about.
There is no publication date in the book.
So is it a first edition of this version of the book? Well, we are going with that and that means I need to describe it in the listing as ‘first edition thus.’
It certainly isn’t the first edition ever published ( I wish) but it is ( we think) the first edition of this version of this book.
Mabel Lucie Attwell is the illustrator and she is still very popular in a rather charming/kitsch/of her era way.
So, she adds value and though the book is somewhat ‘foxed’ (I’ll explain) that doesn’t affect the plates (the pictures.)
We think, given a bit of research that she did this book in the 1920s but not enough research to find out the exact year……
More of MB Attwell later.
Foxing is the reddish-brown spots or splodges on pages and are apparently caused by age and contaminants.
Infact, did you know and I am pretty sure you didn’t, that there is no foxing in incunabula which (just in case you were not entirely sure) are books printed/created before 1500.
Anyway, back to the book.
It has a cover/dust jacket and that makes a huge difference.
A dust jacket makes the value of the book much more interesting.
Now I don’t want to assume you are not a dust jacket expert, but just in case:
It is the paper cover which has the nice pictures on it and ‘covers’ the ‘boards’ which are the main covers.
They get damaged and some people – including an Oxfam volunteer who was promptly and firmly put right on the matter – think that a scrappy dust jacket should be thrown away and you are left with the rather cleaner board covers of the book.
Never – just saying.
Another thing that matters is whether it is priced clipped. In case you are not 100 per cent sure what that means, it is whether or not the price always printed on the bottom left hand corner of the dust jacket’s fold into the front inside cover – got that image in your mind?
Who would have thought that mattered, but indeed it does.
So, not where are we up to deciding what this book is worth?
Well, the dust jacket is really important as I said, and it is in pretty good condition.
That means: it has small tears where it has been handled and put in and out of shelves.
It does not have major tears, rips, scribbled on it, bits missing….
The other thing which is an issue, especially with children’s books is ‘internal markings’ which is anything from polite underlining of words or passages to energetic scribbles across pages.
We have none – except a lovely inscription ‘To Elizabeth with all Mummie’s and Daddy’s love’
Now, back to Mable Lucie Attwell.
She was ‘known for her cute, nostalgic drawings of children.’
So, no surprise when she was called on to illustrate a famous children’s story.
‘From1914 onwards, she developed her trademark style of sentimental rotund cuddly infants, which became ubiquitous across a wide range of markets: cards, calendars, nursery equipment and pictures, crockery and dolls.’
‘Attwell’s illustrations caught the attention of Queen Marie of Romania, who wrote children’s books and short stories in English. Attwell was invited to spend several weeks at the royal palace in Bucharest in 1922. She also illustrated two long stories of the queen’s, which were published by Hodder & Stoughton.‘
So with all that, what have we got to sell – after all, we are raising money for a good cause.
Here is how I will list the book on Oxfam online:
Date unknown but thought to be first edition thus. Circa 1920s. Rare and very good condition dust jacket. Not price clipped. Significant, but relatively light, foxing throughout not affecting 12 colour plates. Many black/white other illustrations.
Clean with no internal markings except a small ink previous owner’s name on front endpaper/
All in all, a very nice edition of this children’s classic.
thereluctanthousewife 