On the lending and losing of books: "how many more of your books I daily make use of:"

I have written before about John Locke's long friendship with James Tyrrell from his time at Christ Church, Oxford, who lived at nearby Oakley.    I knew Tyrrell's maternal grandfather was James Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh and revered as a biblical scholar, by both King James I and Oliver Cromwell.  He was best known for his Latin history, Annals of the Old and New Testaments, which dated the creation of the world from 4004 BC.  

James Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh, 1641    Cornelis Janssens van Ceulen

© Jesus College, Oxford

But  I gave Archbishop Ussher no further thought until I was reading about the Book of Kells in Christopher de Hamel's "Meetings with  Remarkable Manuscripts".  It was Ussher who first studied Ireland's world-renowned late 8th century Latin manuscript of the four Gospels as a key historic book, and not just as a monumental religious icon of Ireland.  (It is now on the Unesco Memory of the World Register.)

Illuminated page from the  Book of Kells  

© Trinity College Library, Dublin

His grandson James himself was a respected Whig historian (e.g. Bibliotheca Politica 1694). It is not surprising then that the Tyrrells were a family of serious readers, lending and borrowing books amongst themselves and friends.  

Locke entrusted Tyrrell with the storage of his furniture and books from Christ Church when he had to move abroad in 1683.  Back in England seven years later under William III,  by 1691 he  was moving from London lodgings to a more permanent home with Sir Francis and Lady Masham at Oates in Essex, and asked for his Oxford belongings to be returned to him.  This took a long time,  because of the problems of transporting safely furniture, household goods, and valuable items as well as numerous heavy books.  Much was sent by the newly restored river-barge route between Oxford and London:

 A Victorian photo of the new style pound lock at Culham
Originally built by the 17th century Oxford-Burcot Commission; the first commercial barge from London for centuries reached Oxford in 1635, after work to add gated poundlocks and improve the passage over the many weirs and sluices (i.e. flashlocks). 

Even this was not easy:  

"John could not get a Cart before last week to bring them hither [from Shotover to Oxford], nor was there ever a barge ready to carry them till today….I hope they will come safely to your hands for I have given the bargeman great charge of your chair."  Tyrrell to Locke, 15th October 1691

A week later Tyrrell writes, "Your boxes layn here this fortnight waiting for a passage, for the locks being at fault the barges could not passe till they were mended."

This consignment included six large boxes,  two smaller and a trunk, plus a large bundle of linens, and a cane chair.  Locke's goods from Christ Church included a very large number of books as well as items awkward to pack (two carpets were too big to go in the bundle). 

Christ Church College, Oxford   Frederick Nash 

The other problem was that over the years the Tyrrell family had dipped in to Locke's library and used his trunks and boxes, furniture and other items: "having taken the books; and other things out of it, I lent my wife the box to put some linen in:"  30 June 1691

Tyrrell's difficulties sound familiar to anyone who has moved house and had to store belongings with friends or relatives for a long time, or vice-versa.  He has constant problems finding overlooked items at the family homes at Shotover and Oakley and then packing them for transport.

"I would have sent you your telescope if the box had been long enough….I find since the writing of the Catalogue [of Locke's Oxford books] that I have omitted some books which I left at Oxford: and were among my books there, and so were forgot till now….I have bin forced to take the second part of the 'State of France' out of the box: because it would not hold it and the bottle."  

I have sent you all your bookes, except…such bookes (he lists over a dozen) as I have made bold to borrow of you for some longer time.…your Telescope is on top of the bookes in one of the boxes;" 
15 October 1691

"I have also sent you up the 2 first Tomes of your French Herodotus; and the last [Volume III] which I lent my daughter, is come as far as Oxford, but I cannot have it to send up this returne, but you shall have it the next week; when I send up some other things to James:" [Tyrrell's son]  November 1691 

His despatches continue into 1692 with an insight into family life at Oakley:  "as for books not medicinal, James had in his keeping unknown to me Oglebyes Japan, and my Father had borrowed Africa of the same Authours but they shall both be sent to you with the boxes". 

  John Ogilby's Africa 1670  (Photo Bauman Rare Books)

"..the little hair trunk  I lent to my daughter into Wales...Besides your Carpets, I have an old terrestrial Globe of yours, which would not go well into the trunk…...  2 pair of [your cases for books] were at Shotover, with some books of mine, and I could not prevail with the carter to go out of the way." [from Oakley to Oxford] 30th January 1692

And in August: he sends a book "which my Sister had borrowed;"  but not  "an old Terrestriall Globe which would not got into the box … . and my son desires the use of it a little longer;   I have allso your weather glasse at Shotover which was too long to goe into any of the boxes",  nor another book and a cushion which his son still had. 

John Patrick's Weatherglass: Directions   (see SIS Bulletin 80)

Tyrell entrusts a friend to send this 'last' consignment  to Locke:  Mr: Thomas … haveing first sent all your things together with his owne to Mr: Rushes barge, which I suppose sets out on Thursday "  9th August 1692

Eventually, in slow succession, Locke's precious boxes of books and other belongings arrived in London and were then transported by carrier  (i.e. horse and cart) via Bishop's Stortford to the Masham's home at Oates, High Laver in Essex.

Several items were still missing or remained 'borrowed' by the Tyrrell family.  In the summer of 1701, Locke makes a last attempt to trace the missing volume III from his French edition of Herodotus, which may have gone with James's daughter Mary to Wales and was said to have been returned in November 1691 - it was she who had irretrievably lost the key to one of Locke's small trunks, which caused everyone a deal of trouble in her absence.  Tyrrell replies, "my daughter assures me she never saw more than those 2 volumes of it….which way the third came to be lost I know not….my son may perhaps have borrowed it unbeknownst to me.." August 1701

Pierre du Ryer's French translation of Herodotus' "Histories"  (Photo Sequitur Books) 

Locke's Herodotus Volume III was never found, so is it perhaps buried in some old Welsh library archive, or given the difficulties of transport then, lost forever in a Thames mill pond?

 The Mill at Mapledurham,  part 15th century, the oldest surviving mill on the Thames

Quotations from The Correspondence of John Locke, ed. E.S. De Beer, Clarendon Press Oxford

"Hay and Ice" : June weather cycles (and the correct way to scythe)

The Haymakers  George Stubbs 1785  © Tate Britain

"It froze hard last night;  I went out for a moment to look at my haymakers, and was starved.  The contents of an English June are hay and ice, orange flowers and rheumatism.  I am now cowering over the fire."   This was Horace Walpole at Strawberry Hill on 14th June, 1791.   He also recorded droughts and inundations: 

 "11th June: We have had an extraordinary drought, no grass, no leaves, no flowers; not a white rose for the festival of yesterday!  About four arrived such a flood, that we could not see out of the windows: the whole lawn was a lake, though situated on so high an Ararat…. You never saw such a desolation.  …It never came into my head before, that a rainbow-office for insuring against water might be very necessary." (Twickenham 1775)

Strawberry Hill, Twickenham     Paul Sandby

Others recorded June temperatures in the 80s (Fahrenheit): thus Walpole's poet friend Thomas Gray: "June 3rd Wind S.S.E.  Thermometer at 84 (the highest I ever saw it): it was at Noon. Since which till last week we had hot dry weather.  Now it rains like mad."  (Cambridgeshire, 1760)

And Gilbert White of Selborne: "June 22nd.  Fruit-walls in the sun are so hot I cannot bear my hand on them.  Brother Thomas's thermometer was 89 on an east wall in the afternoon.  Much damage was done and some people were killed by lightning on this sultry day."  (Hampshire, 1790)
.

Daniel Fahrenheit and his thermometer  (Wikimedia)

Mercurial Samuel Pepys reacted to a late June heatwave: "June 28th: Up; and this day put on a half-shirt first this summer, it being very hot; and yet so ill-tempered I am grown that I am afeard I shall ketch cold, while all the world is ready to melt away."   (London, 1664)

Erratic weather particularly threatened the hay and other essential fodder crops.

James Tyrrell reported frosts and drought to his friend John Locke, a regular weather observer.
"June 24th:...  alas for news all that we talk of here is of the rain and are still praying for more,….I hear at Oxford, that the Drought hath bin so great about Paris……for the honour of our Northern Climate, there hath been seen severall times this month, ice of the thickness of half a Crowne…   I am hayning* my ground againe as if it were but Lady day haveing almost no hay yet: but however I hope I shall be able to bid the horse, as well as the Master welcome…" . ( Shotover, Oxford 1681)  Correspondence, ed. E.S. De Beer

" June 21st:  We now have frosty mornings, and so cold a wind, that even at high noon we have been obliged to break off our walk in the southern side of the garden, and seek shelter, I in the greenhouse, Mrs Unwin by the fireside.  Haymaking begins here tomorrow."  (William Cowper, Buckinghamshire 1784)

Sainfoin (Fr. holy hay)  Onobrychis viciaefolia  (Wikimedia)

"June 9th: Everything seemed parched and dried up by the two months drought except some brilliant patches of the crimson sanfoin which lighted up the white hot downs and burning Plain. " (Frances Kilvert, Wiltshire  1874)

And the same the previous year: "July 22nd: Today the heat was excessive and as I sat reading under the lime I pitied the poor haymakers toiling in the burning Common where it seemed to be raining fire." (Frances Kilvert, Wiltshire, 1873)

What would these observers have thought of  meteorologist Eduard Bruckner's 35-year weather cycles of alternate periods of warm dry and cold damp weather?   Readers of Cassell's Magazine in June 1899 (particularly umbrella-makers) were reassured that the twentieth century would begin with the 17 year period due of rainy weather.


But if you are planning to make hay while the sun shines this summer, here is how to do it:

"July 24th:  Robert says the first grass from the scythe is the swathe, then comes the strow (tedding),
then rowing, then the footcocks, then breaking, then the hubrows, which are gathered into hubs, then sometimes another break and turning, then rickles, the biggest of all the cocks, which are run together into placks, the shapeless heap from which the hay is carted."  (Gerrard Manley Hopkins, Lancashire 1871)

Haymaking  Alfred Glendening  1898  ©Tate Britain 

* Haining:  fencing grass to protect  from cattle.

Most of these quotations are from Geoffrey Grigson's anthology "The English Year"