Cox's Fragmenta II E-Book

Simon Murphy

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 123

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

A presumptuous bear imposing on a coachful of ladies, how to behave in the British Museum, the dangers of dallying with a black-eyed girl and the Royal Navy's inaugural biscuit machine are just some of the masterpieces of understated journalism collected by Francis Cox and contained in his Fragmenta. At ninety-four volumes, Cox's scrapbook has to be one of the largest collections of journalistic ephemera ever. For sixty years during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries he accumulated articles on everything from duels to playhouses, and foreign travel to warfare. Following on from the success of the first volume, Simon Murphy has selected more bizarre stories to create another delightful historical miscellany which will intrigue and amuse.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

TITLE PAGE

INTRODUCTION

ARTICLES

COPYRIGHT

INTRODUCTION

Unsurprisingly, the content of Cox’s bewildering collection remained consistently inconsistent as its curator moved from 1822 (his seventieth year) to 1834. His sources – predominantly the newspapers of London and Birmingham – continued to feed the popular appetite for local, national and international news; the mixture is spiced with sport, rumour, fashion, gossip, satire and vituperation. What is unexpected is the mushrooming of content collected each year. While the first half of the ninety-four volumes covered a period of thirty years, the second part spans only ten. Why such an increase in the average?

The history of the press at the time offers no clues; there had certainly been no sudden drop in the price of a newspaper. Until 1836 the stamp duty on a paper stood at 4d, and furthermore King George’s six acts of 1819 had required all publishers and printers (of periodicals that cost less than 6d and were published one or more times a month) to post a bond to ensure their ‘good behaviour’. While newspaper consumption outside Britain was largely on the increase, these financial constraints on printers and publishers kept both prices high and readership relatively elite. Mr E.L. Bulwer, writer and MP for Lincoln 1832–41, declared in the House of Commons that the duty was a ‘tax on knowledge’ and that periodicals were a luxury.1 On 14 June 1832, the day of Bulwer’s speech, a copy of The Times cost 7d – around the same time a plate of meat and pint of ale could be had for 9d.2

Knowing as little as we do about Cox himself, it would be guesswork to suggest personal reasons for his increased interest in obtaining copies of the day’s news (though one could reasonably imagine advancing years gave him a little more time to read). What can be gleaned from the Fragmenta is a growing concern for accuracy and order in his collection. In the earlier volumes of his scrapbook, articles were pasted roughly chronologically, but with no concern for pairing the piece with its date, or source publication; however, in later volumes articles are purposefully cut out to keep title and date. Often a column of text is pasted in its entirety. Sometimes whole papers are neatly folded and included. This decision to bracket articles with their particulars necessarily means more material is saved and the collection fills out.

What is also evident is that this concern for order leads Cox to interact with his materials in a slightly more critical way. On a few occasions he adds the date, publication title or even specific section of the paper by hand,3 and very rarely he even pens marginalia relating to the content. In the bottom gutter of the front page of The Times from Monday 14 March 1831 (v.87, p.60) we are greeted with the following in a clear hand: ‘Number Immense! 153 adverts! the whole amount to about eight hundred.’4 Not only did Cox collect and store the papers of his day voraciously, but he was also reading them with an eye for content and proportion.

Are we surprised that Cox chose to write down such thoughts? Whether or not the collection itself was kept private or opened to friends by Cox, we know it was his intention to leave the volumes that comprised his life’s work to the British Museum. He would have been increasingly conscious that at some point the trove would be examined, and so his pen’s rare incursions on to the pages of the Fragmenta must be seen as an aware form of self-display. The reference to the number of adverts, which goes beyond simply recording the figure, expresses a little overplayed astonishment and helps construct a ghost of his character within the collection. In most places the papers exist undisturbed, but in others the pen creeps in, reminding us whose guest we are. This quiet entrance raises a question: what kind of reader did Cox seek to be seen as?

The material selected is the first indication of Cox’s interests; but those pages that have been annotated are proof of a more active curiosity. Auction catalogues are included, the sum each object made often neatly filled in. Not only did he, or someone he knew, attend sales of furniture, coins, prints, books, paintings and so on, but what’s more, it seems, they stayed for the entire event and saw each object sold. Poems also appear, copied out or pasted among the cuttings, with one short verse titled ‘Upon the Death of Lord Nelson’ written by Cox himself. Within the Fragmenta there are also papers and notes, pasted complete with the names (in Cox’s hand) of the prominent individuals that presented him with the ephemera. The list includes Rear Admiral Sir Charles Cunningham, Matthias Attwood MP and a ‘Chandos’ who writes from Pall Mall (the Duke himself?).5 The collection also gains a cosmopolitan edge from the geographical range of the publications Cox obtained. Among others there are editions of Le Constitutionnel (France), The Conception-Bay Mercury (Canada) and The Canton Register (China).6

It’s easy to understand that like many men of his time Cox read the papers to stay abreast of events, but he is unusual in his desire to keep them. While others consigned their old papers to package wrapping or kindling, what compelled Cox to cut his up after reading and paste them into volumes? Why include other printed matter such as catalogues and speeches, before donating the results to the most impressive bibliographic institute he could?

The period in which Cox lived witnessed a huge number of fundamental transformations, changes George Eliot (writing of 1832) described as ‘the present quickening in the general pace of things’.7 The country moved from a collection of mainly rural settlements to expanding cities driven by steam and commerce; the government had begun combating epidemic disease with organised inoculation programmes; the new Metropolitan Police force was in action; parliamentary reform took place and the Far East and South America were opening up as potentially huge sources of trade and revenue. With change so ubiquitous, the daily paper must have been eagerly anticipated. These publications now offer a tremendous perspective on these past events – something Cox, with his collection destined for the sanctity of the British Museum, clearly anticipated. And he wasn’t alone. On Thursday 26 March 1801 an auction was held on the Strand. The advertisement read:

In this day’s sale will also be offered to the public an extraordinary COLLECTION of NEWSPAPERS, consisting of upwards of three hundred Volumes, perfect and half bound, from which the Literati may select Materials for forming a complete history of literature, and of the Times in which the newspapers were written.8

The literati, however, have not flocked to Cox’s Fragmenta. Indeed, apart from C.B. Oldman’s 1966 commentary on the work, it has never been – as far as we know – used by or useful to a soul. This can largely be put down to the difficulty of navigating the vast collection. To discover the newsworthy events of a particular day one would have to pluck a volume from the ninety-four almost at random, find the dates it encompasses and repeat the process, refining until the desired date was discovered. Even at the end of this long business you would have at best the one or two papers Cox pasted for the day. (He might not even have bought one.) Far easier to use an indexed online database of scanned papers.

Between 1804 and 1838 a number of tiny electromagnetic signals were sent, the first signs of changes that would eventually affect the world just as significantly as steam power. Inventors, such as Sömmering, Salvá i Campillo, Morse, Fothergill, Weber and Gauss were investigating the potential of electric telegraphy, a process by which messages could be sent instantaneously and over great distances. Pronounced in 1837 as ‘one of the most important and extraordinary discoveries of this inventive age’,9 initial applications included the improvement of signalling on railway lines and the reporting of crime. Relatively recent improvements in technology have helped the concept behind those first experiments to blossom; e-mail and the internet allow communication and information transfer to increase dramatically. The consequence of this new ability seems to be a definition of information coloured by the potential and advantages of modern technology; information is assumed to be immediate, transparent and searchable, organised and navigated at the click of a mouse.

But imagine divesting yourself of laptop, broadband, e-mail and mobile. It is 1820. The gas lighting on your street has only just been installed. Each night before bed you wind your pocket watch, setting the time as best you can against the church bells of London which ring, the hours staggered and unpunctual, as evening falls. It’s a world away from search engines and social networking – modern essentials we have learned to synchronise our thinking with. Indeed we are now such effective users of information technology that it often takes us only a few seconds to discover the information we require.

Cox’s collection is the antithesis: it cannot be searched, repackaged, simplified or stored; but this does not render it obsolete. Rather it enforces the serendipity of browsing and renders the opportunity to pursue a tangent ever present. Every cutting included in these two volumes has been stumbled upon and perhaps there is even something in this anachronistic approach that brings us a little closer to the period that intrigues: despite the order that technology has allowed us to impose on the past we sit down to the papers to read history unfolding precisely as Cox would have – open to surprise.

1 As reported in The Hull Packet and Humber Mercury, Tuesday 26 June 1832. His motion to repeal the duty was finally successful in 1855. He had more rapid success with an 1833 bill that established dramatic copyright.

2The Caledonian Mercury, Saturday 19 December 1835.

3 He adds the section title and date: ‘Parliamentary Foreign Affairs. May. 1. 1823’ (v.57, p.164).

4 That Cox found the opportunity to count them suggests he may indeed have been richer in free time.

5 v.18, p.158; v.86, p.14; and v.85, p.122.

6 v.87, p.50; v.87, p.102; and v.90, p.74.

7 Eliot, George, Middlemarch, chapter 65.

8The Morning Post and Gazetteer, Tuesday 24 March 1801.

9The Morning Chronicle, Saturday 30 December 1837.

DRURY-LANE THEATRE

Mr. Macready last night sustained the character of Macbeth. His performance, though occasionally irradiated by flashes of genius, was, on the whole, entitled to little more than the praise of being coldly correct. Mr. Wallack’s Macduff was energetic without rant. The choruses were given in an excellent style. When the tragedy is next performed, it is humbly requested that a smaller quantity of sulphur may be used in illuminating the shadowy descents of Banquo. Last night Mr. Macready was for some minutes enveloped in a dense cloud of sulphurous smoke, which eventually concealed him from view. The cloud soon made its way amongst the audience, who were simultaneously seized with a fit of coughing, which lasted for a quarter of an hour.

The Times, Friday 31 October 1823 (v.60, p.57)

The following anecdote, as told by the captain of a whale ship which was at Valparaiso, shows of what unshakable fortitude the hard sons of Neptune are possessed, and what indifference they evince even under the severest misfortunes. ‘One morning,’ says he ‘as we were cruising about in search of whales, we espied an especially fine looking one, and at no great distance from us. We immediately manned 4 boats, and soon came up to this monster of the deep, which proved to be a whale of the sperm kind. We attacked him, and in return for a death-wound which we inflicted, he, as is frequently the case with these ferocious animals, stove in one of the boats. In the confusion which ensued, one poor fellow unluckily came within reach of the whale, who, although in the agonies of death, made shift to draw one of his legs into his mouth. The thigh was pierced with one of his tusks, and consequently broken. Luckily for the sailor, however, the whale began to gasp, which afforded him an opportunity to escape from the jaws of immediate death. On being carried to the ship, it was found necessary to amputate the leg above the joint, which operation was borne with the greatest equanimity. Shortly after (continued the captain,) I asked him what were his feelings when he was in the whale’s mouth. “Why,” says he, “I thought he might furnish 60 barrels of pretty good oil!”’

The Times, Tuesday 10 February 1824 (v.62, p.1)

VACCINATION

It appears from the reports of the National Vaccine Board to the Right Hon. Robert Peel, that the applications for lymph have been much more than usually numerous – a proof that the confidence of the world in vaccination is increasing, particularly since the Parliamentary establishment, where the inoculating matter is always to be procured. Since the last report, lymph had been despatched to the East and West Indies, to Ceylon, to the Cape of Good Hope, the island of Mauritius, the coast of Africa, New South Wales, and to France and Italy, &c. The report then states that it has been distributed in this kingdom with great success, ‘for the small pox has prevailed as an epidemic with more than ordinary malignity in various parts of this island lately, and has committed great ravages in those districts where it found victims unprotected against it by a previous process.’ The total number vaccinated from 1818 to 1822 in the United Kingdom (excepting the capital) is 327,521, and the total by the stationary vaccinators for the same time 34,275. In 1821 there were 90,000 persons vaccinated in Ceylon; 20,149 in the Presidency of Fort William; and 22,478 in that of Bombay.

The Times, Tuesday 10 February 1824 (v.62, p.4)

The benign yet powerful properties of that most esteemed cosmetic Rowland’s Kalydor stands pre-eminent; it thoroughly exterminates eruption, tan, pimples, freckles, redness, and all cutaneous imperfection whatsoever; arrays the neck, hands, and arms in matchless whiteness; bestows on the complexion a juvenile bloom; renovates beauty when on the decline; realises it where before absent, and sustains it in pristine splendour to the latest period of life. To mothers nursing their offspring it is essentially serviceable in healing soreness, and reducing inflammation, so frequently following this otherwise pleasing pursuit of maternal affection. To gentlemen, Rowlands Kalydor will be found an infallible specific in allaying the smarting irritability of the face, and will render shaving, heretofore a painful, now a pleasurable operation.

Various,c. June 1825 (v.70, p.5)

WOLVES IN RUSSIA