Newspaper Clipping of the Day

"An Unmade Bed," Eugene Delacroix

This account of a man with unusual ideas about healthy living appeared in the "Birmingham Journal" on January 11, 1862.  It is a reprint of a story that appeared in the "Gentleman's Magazine" for March, 1753.  (Via Newspapers.com)

At Burcott, near Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, lives John Tallis, whose manner of life is very extraordinary. He was born at Solihull in Warwickshire about the year 1676. In the beginning of 1724, being then about forty-eight years of age, he caused a room to be prepared for his reception, with such scrupulous diligence to prevent the accession of fresh air, that only one window was admitted, consisting but of four panes, and the glass was directed to be more than thrice as thick as common, from an opinion that by a body so subtle as the air thin glass might be pervaded. 

To this room he retired from the world; but still regarding that fluid which supplies to all animals the breath of life, his mortal enemy, he thought some further precaution necessary for his defense.  Therefore he went to bed, from which he has not since risen; and as his head in this situation is chiefly exposed, he has covered it with swathings, wrappers and caps, that consist of near 100 yards of flannel; and he is often as long and as busily employed in adjusting the several strings by which these innumerable coverings are secured, as a sailor in righting his tackle after a storm. 

He has stoppers fitted to each nostril; he usually holds a piece of ivory in his mouth, and a piece of woollen cloth is laid over his face; his shirts are lined with swanskin, and the breast and sides are quilted. When I beheld him, he opened his eyes, and stretched himself like a bat that is just awaking from a sleep of six or seven months: but as he awaked thirsty and disordered, he reached his cup, which was constantly placed near him with some cooling liquor; and having drank, he exhibited his right hand decorated with many rings, which he surveyed with great appearance of satisfaction and complacency, and entered into a description of Babel, the Nile, and crocodiles. 

With respect to his religious opinion, he is a Quietist; and though he is not useful, he is at least harmless. There appears to be some tincture of avarice in his disposition, and the dark corner into which he is retired from the more fashionable vanities of life, does not appear wholly to have excluded affectation and pride. 

There is no need to caution mankind against his peculiar extravagancies, and it might be thought that there was as little reason to recommend them as patterns of imitation. However, though I do not wish the ladies to adopt his headdress of 100 yards of flannel, yet I think they should not sacrifice the vigour of health and the bloom of beauty, to a fly-cap or any fashionable mode of more southern climates, till our air is equally temperate by the return of the sun; and that they would no longer increase the infelicities of our long season of darkness, by giving it power to rob us of that, without which the sweetness of spring, and the splendor of summer, would cease to be the means of happiness.

Although one might assume Mr. Tallis' aversion to air would not be conducive to a long life, it was not until he reached the venerable age of 80 in 1755 that he finally achieved his ultimate goal, and ceased to breathe at all.

The Fall of the House of Windham

William Frederick Windham was always, to put it politely, a bit odd.  From an early age, he became both a puzzle and a worry to his family, all of them wealthy and respectable members of English society.  From boyhood on, he was anti-social, ill-mannered, headstrong, and bad-tempered.  After his unruly behavior got him kicked out of Eton, “Mad” Windham, as he was known, ignored his social equals, preferring to spend his time with servants and other members of the working class.  He was obsessed with trains, bribing porters and guards into letting him turn the railway into his own personal playground.  Wearing a guard’s uniform, he would parade the platform, herding passengers, blowing a whistle, and generally having a grand time.  He also enjoyed impersonating the police.  Some nights, he would dress as a constable and go about London “arresting” prostitutes.

And then, an event took place that turned his story from farce to tragedy.  For the first time in his life, Windham showed an interest in a woman.  Unfortunately, his choice was a beautiful and highly successful young courtesan named Agnes Willoughby.  When in 1861 he inherited the immense Windham family fortune, he decided that she would make the ideal lady of the manor, and proposed marriage. 

Willoughby was personally repelled by this unkempt, socially inept boor, and she never hesitated to say so in his presence.  However, she had no compunction about selling herself when the price was right, and she knew that in this dotty train-fancier she had hit the jackpot.  She agreed to marry him—in return for fifteen hundred pounds a year and nearly twenty thousand pounds’ worth of jewelry.  The happy couple wed on August 30, 1861.  Three weeks later, the new Mrs. Windham ran off to Ireland to join her lover, the famed opera singer Antonio Giuglini, leaving her husband with a pile of bills she had rung up that amounted to nineteen thousand pounds.

Agnes Willoughby

Windham sought consolation for his romantic difficulties by blowing through the family fortune at a truly astounding rate.  He also executed a deed where an uncle—who stood to inherit what was left of the estate if Windham died without issue—was prevented from succeeding to any of it.  This uncle became so alarmed at the trail of ruin his nephew was leaving behind him that he decided there was nothing for it but to haul him in front of a lunacy commission.  He reasoned that if it could be formally established that young William was of unsound mind—something that none of his relatives had ever doubted for an instant—his marriage could be annulled and this hemorrhage of Windham cash stopped.

The inquiry, which took place in December of 1861, ruled that while William Windham may have been strange and generally unpleasant, he was legally sane. However, the court ordered that he pay twenty thousand pounds in costs.  His uncle’s efforts to save the family fortune backfired dismally.

Windham filed for divorce, which proved as disastrous as every other action of his life.  Agnes asserted she had left her husband on the grounds of his cruelty to her.  Her descriptions of his threats to kill her and overall violently frightening behavior only increased Windham’s already notorious reputation.  There were two hearings on the divorce and a third scheduled.  Before this last court meeting could take place, however, Agnes had lured her cash cow husband back to her side.  This so annoyed the judge that he dismissed the case and ordered Windham to pay not only his costs, but Agnes’ as well.

Before long, the once fantastically wealthy William Windham was completely bankrupt.  In 1864, Agnes had somehow persuaded him to sell his remaining assets to her, not to mention take out no less than five insurance policies on his life where she was sole beneficiary.  The family manor, Felbrigg Hall, which had been theirs for generations, was put up for sale.  It was bought by a merchant named Kitton, which led to a popular music hall song featuring the refrain, “Windham has gone to the dogs, Felbrigg has gone to the Kittons.”  

Predictably, Windham’s reunion with his wife did not last long.  When Giuglini’s star began to fade, Agnes tossed him aside as well and moved on to other wealthy admirers.  The former musical idol eventually entered a private lunatic asylum.

Windham ended up living in utter destitution in a Norwich flophouse, where, after a night of heavy drinking in a round of pubs, he died on February 1, 1866, aged only 26.  After his demise, a London newspaper asked how “a British Jury could have been led into the insane belief that Mr. Windham possessed a sound mind.”

As for Agnes Willoughby, her sins reaped a spectacular reward.  In 1864 she gave birth to a son, Frederick, with the highly dubious assertion that it was her husband’s, and therefore, the rightful Windham heir.  After a great deal of legal brawling with the Windham family, she managed to have this claim legally established.  In 1870, she married the agent of the Windham estate of Hanworth, and settled down to a life of prosperous respectability.  Having grown prematurely plain and dowdy, she turned to good works, becoming a pious, prim Lady Bountiful.  She died in 1896.

Frederick Windham—who proved to be as feckless as his ostensible father—died childless only a few months after the death of his mother, and the venerable Windham line became extinct.

In Which Mimi and Toutou Go to War

Normally, war stories just aren't my sort of thing.  If the truth be known, tales of military tactics and battlefield heroics usually leave me yawning and reaching for the books discussing goblin cats and unexpected arsenic in the tea.  However, now and then I stumble across a person who makes me change my view of warfare and welcome them into the hallowed gates of Strange Company HQ.

Enter, Geoffrey Basil Spicer-Simson.

Spicer-Simson was born in Tasmania in 1876, but was educated in his father's native England.  At the age of 14, he entered the Royal Navy, where by 1898 he achieved the level of lieutenant.  Unfortunately, his career stalled, due largely to our hero's manifest incompetence.  On one occasion, he nearly sank a submarine during a training exercise.  On another, he drove a ship onto a beach.  And, of course, there was the memorable day when he crashed a destroyer into another naval ship, killing one of the sailors.  His brash, eccentric personality (one of his biographers describes him simply as "a deeply irritating man,") did not help matters.

However, Spicer-Simson did have some talent for surveying, a task he carried out in China and Africa.  After the beginning of WWI, he was given an office post in the Admiralty.  His task was transferring Merchant sailors to the War Navy.  His superiors evidently believed that the further away from battle he was, the better it would be for their side.  Spicer-Simson, it soon emerged, was peculiarly unsuited for such a routine desk job.  His special talents lay elsewhere.  

In April of 1915, the British learned that the Germans were planning to take control over Africa's Lake Tanganyika.  If they succeeded, it would strengthen the enemy's position throughout German East Africa.  To counter this threat, the British Navy prepared to send a small expedition to challenge the German warships.  As Spicer-Simson was familiar with Africa and fluent in German, he was given the task of leading what the Navy brass assumed would be a routine mission, ridiculously minor and uninteresting compared to the epic conflicts taking place in Europe.

Spicer-Simson's expedition may have been minor, but he was damned if it was going to be uninteresting.

The plan was simple:  Spicer-Simson would be given two small wooden ships with a motor and cannon attached to each one.  (Geoffrey wanted to name them “Cat” and “Dog,” but after these were rejected by the Admiralty, he settled on “Mimi” and “Toutou.”  He later explained that these meant “Miaow” and “Bow-Wow” in French.)  These vessels would be trundled across Africa before being dropped into Lake Tanganyika.  It was assumed that after this, the Germans would either be awed by the majesty of the British Navy or die laughing.  Spicer-Simson's crew was happily suited for the enterprise.  His chief engineer had not the slightest idea how the ship's engines worked.  Another of his sailors was known as "Piccadilly Johnny."  He had dyed bright yellow hair and a monocle, and insisted on taking along two boxes of Worcester sauce, which he drank straight out of the bottle.  The sanest member of the expedition was a chimpanzee named Josephine, who would join the crew for meals. Oh, and don't forget the two Scotsmen in kilts.  It was as if the Marx Brothers decided to make a war movie.

Spicer-Simson, heavily covered in “macabre tattoos,” was the perfect commander for this crew.  Despite having little knowledge of semaphore, he persisted in waving around the flags, perfectly indifferent to the fact that he was spelling out gibberish.  He was also in the habit of giving orders while flourishing a fly-swatter and keeping a cigarette holder in his mouth, leaving his words as unintelligible as his flag messages.  He proudly made himself a bogus Admiral's flag for his ship, donned a skirt--feeling that was more appropriate attire for the tropical climate--dressed his goat mascot in a British uniform, and announced that he was more than ready to take on the German Navy.

When the enemy first caught sight of this floating sideshow, they gave themselves over to the greatest merriment.  Being confronted by this egomaniacal loon and his daffy crew was an unexpected comedy bonanza.  The Germans, chuckling all the while, opted to ignore him.

It never pays to underestimate egomaniacal loons.  Because, you see, the funniest thing is that Spicer-Simson beat them silly.  While the enemy fleet was busy laughing at the self-made Admiral, he was capturing some of their boats and sinking others, to the point where he quickly had the Germans rendered a virtually spent force.  Their stranglehold on Lake Tanganyika was permanently broken.  "Simson's Circus" (as the expedition had been dubbed by the press) had accomplished what was among the most unlikely victories in British naval history.

The awed local tribes decided that Spicer-Simson must have had supernatural powers, and began worshiping him as a god.  They made clay effigies of the Englishman and gave him the titles of "Navyman God" and (in honor of his skirt) "Lord Bellycloth."  Spicer-Simson was not at all displeased.  He had only thought to promote himself to the rank of Admiral.  Divinity was an unexpected bonus.  

When the "Circus" came home, the Navy gave them more traditional honors.  Spicer-Simson was awarded the Distinguished Service Order.  Three of his men received the Distinguished Service Cross, and twelve others were given Distinguished Service Medals.  Later, he was appointed a Commander of the Belgian Order of the Crown.

After the war, Spicer-Simson became Assistant Director of Naval Intelligence.  He was a delegate and translator at the Versailles Peace Conference.  In 1919, he was elected secretary-general of the International Hydrographic Bureau.  His final years were spent in British Columbia, where he gave lectures on his war exploits until his death in January 1947.  All in all, a respectable ending to what at first had promised to be a singularly unmemorable career.

As I said, never underestimate the loons.  They find ways of getting the job done.

Thomas Pitt, Georgian Era Holy Terror

"He was studious and reckless; scientific and hare-brained; tender-hearted, benevolent, and barbarous; unreasonably vindictive and singularly forgiving. He lived a humorous ruffian, with flashes of virtue, and died a hero, a martyr, and a Christian."
-Charles Reade, describing Thomas Pitt

It is often said that there is a fine line between genius and madness. It can also be argued that there is an even finer line between dashing rogue and out-of-control menace to society.

This brings us to the subject of today's post. Thomas Pitt, 2nd Baron Camelford, spent his brief life manically swerving between both sides of that particular divide.

Pitt was born into an exceptionally wealthy and influential Cornish family on February 19, 1775. His uncle, William Pitt, as well as William's namesake son, both served terms as Prime Minister. However, despite his grand heritage, Pitt had a lonely, desperately unhappy childhood. His family virtually ignored him practically from his birth, shuttling him off to various boarding schools in Britain and Switzerland, where his prestigious social position allowed him to do pretty much as he liked with no fear of contradiction. This appalling combination of lack of parental love and absence of official discipline does much to explain why the young man grew up with a decided feral streak.

At a very early age--perhaps as young as six--Pitt began a naval career. His curious gift for mayhem first emerged on the pages of history in 1791, when he was serving on HMS Discovery. The Discovery was on an important expedition bound for the Cape of Good Hope, and ending at Nootka Sound, off the coast of North America. During the voyage, Pitt continually made a seagoing pest of himself. The captain, George Vancouver, had him repeatedly flogged for various harebrained offenses (most notably wooing a girl in Tahiti by gifting her with iron he had stolen from the ship.) The boy's behavior was so uncontrollable that Vancouver finally threw up his hands and placed his unruly crewman in irons.

In 1793, his fellow sailors were undoubtedly relieved when Pitt's father died and Thomas was summoned home to assume his title and manage the family estate. Rather oddly, the new Baron paid little heed to the news. He continued serving on various ships for three more years before finally making his way to London. His proud, undisciplined spirit continued to nurse a grudge against Vancouver. He sent his former captain a challenge to a duel. Vancouver--by then a prematurely old, ailing man--sent a dignified reply stating that he had only followed his official duties. However, Lord Camelford was free to take his complaints to a naval board of inquiry.

Pitt was disgusted by such a tame method of righting his perceived wrongs. He went straight to Vancouver's house and verbally attacked him so viciously that the captain was genuinely terrified. Vancouver felt he needed some sort of protection from this aristocratic maniac, but realized that Pitt's wealth and social status left him virtually immune from any normal legal or civil actions. Not knowing what else to do, Vancouver made an appointment with the Lord Chancellor to discuss his quandary.

In a case of supremely unfortunate timing, while walking to meet the chancellor, he was spotted by Pitt. The Baron dashed over to the captain and began walloping him with a cane, an incident that became immortalized in a caricature drawn by Pitt's friend James Gillray. In a classic example of adding insult to injury, Gillray's drawing cruelly depicted Vancouver as a sniveling coward. Despite his long and meritorious naval career, this one cartoon turned the poor captain into a public laughingstock. (It must be said that Vancouver wound up having the last laugh. Before he died in 1789, he completed three large journals detailing his many voyages of discovery. When published, they became a massive success, insuring that he would go down in history as one of his nation's great mapmakers and explorers.) Thanks to his rank, after this fracas Pitt was merely bound over to keep the peace for one year and quickly hustled back to sea.

Pitt showed no signs of mellowing. In 1797, he shot to death two seamen who resisted his efforts to press them into his service. He also killed a fellow officer for perceived insubordination. He horsewhipped a storekeeper for poor service. His rank continued to protect him from serious punishment, but his commanding officer quickly had more than enough of Pitt and packed him back to England. Feeling he still had not had his share of trouble, Pitt decided to single-handedly invade France, which was then at war with Britain. This escapade led to his arrest on suspicion of spying, although it was soon realized that someone this nutty could hardly be acting as an espionage agent.

Pitt, strangely enough, was popular in many circles. Tall, with a slim, but muscular figure, the handsome, blue-eyed Baron was often seen as a charming swashbuckler rather than an antisocial menace. Disliking his family's ornate, if somewhat depressing home, he instead took up residence above a grocer's. He decorated his new abode with a variety of imposing-looking weaponry, and gave himself up entirely to his favorite occupations: boxing and feuding.

In 1799, he was fined for knocking a man down a flight of stairs. In January 1802, all of London put on an illumination to celebrate the recent peace with France. Every house in the city was sporting lit candles in their windows...every house, that is, except for Baron Camelford's. Evidently out of sheer perversity, Pitt flatly refused to take part in the festivities, and his residence remained stubbornly, insultingly dark. An outraged crowd soon gathered around his lodgings to launch an attack on the offender. The Baron gleefully marched out to face the mob alone.

It did not turn out well for him. Despite being armed with "a good stout cudgel, which he laid about him right and left," he was simply hopelessly outnumbered. The Baron found himself "rolled over and over in the gutter" until he finally staged a retreat, "for once in his life crest-fallen."

Later that same year, Pitt took it into his head to assassinate Napoleon. Before he could get very far in this particular whim, he was detained in Paris and packed back home.

Early in 1804, this astonishingly stormy petrel got into what would prove to be his last quarrel. He and an old friend, Thomas Best, got into some petty argument over a courtesan, which the pair--well-matched in hot-headedness--decided could only be settled by a duel. Best was a famed sharpshooter, but Pitt, characteristically, paid no heed to the danger. At dawn on March 7, the two met in a dewy meadow in Kensington. Camelford, who fired first, missed. Best responded with a shot that went through his adversary's body. Three days later, the Baron died from his injuries, at the age of only 29. One of his last acts was to leave written instructions ordering that Best not be punished for his death.

It is interesting, if ultimately pointless, to wonder what would have become of Pitt had he made old bones.   Hard as it may be to believe, Pitt had his good qualities. He was fearless, intelligent, generous, and possessed of a strong sense of humor, with an innate, if deranged, sense of nobility. Would he have carried on his feckless ways indefinitely, springing from one self-made disaster to another? Or would he have learned some sense of self-discipline and responsibility, maturing into a wiser, if considerably duller, respectability? There is no way to know.

It is oddly cheering to note that Thomas Pitt could not even die and be buried like a normal human being. His will stated that he wished to lie on the shores of Switzerland's Lake St. Pierre, a place he had fond memories of from his childhood, "where the surrounding scenery may smile upon my remains." He asked to be buried under a certain tree, where "I formerly passed many hours in solitude, contemplating the mutability of human affairs."

Unfortunately, this surprisingly sensitive and peaceful desire was never realized. His family instead buried his body in St. Anne's Church in Soho, where, according to rumor, it promptly disappeared. For years afterward, this alleged vanishing turned him into a national punchline. "What has become of Lord Camelford's body?" was the 19th century's "Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead."

Undoubtedly Pitt himself would have been the first to laugh at the joke.

Yda Hillis Addis, California Literature's Stormiest Petrel

All images via Newspapers.com

Although she is largely forgotten today, Yda Hillis Addis is an important figure in California literary history. She was the first to write and publish English translations of Mexican history and folktales, the most enduring of which is the now-popular legend of La Llorona, the "Weeping Woman." (Her translations, which originally appeared in the San Francisco journal "The Argonaut," were later compiled in the book "Wicked Legends.") She was also a talented author of fiction. Her numerous short stories, which utilized elements of folklore, the supernatural, and proto-feminism, appeared in many of the newspapers and magazines of her day. Addis also wrote a major history of the city of Santa Barbara. She was a prolific, influential, and unique literary voice.

All this, of course, is to be applauded. However, I would not be including Ms. Addis in the hallowed halls of Strange Company if it were not for her personal life, which was as strange and colorful as anything she put on paper. When a woman manages to gain nationwide renown as the "Crazy Lady of Santa Barbara," I throw open the doors to this blog and say, "Come on in!"

Addis was born in Kansas in 1857. When she was about four, her father, photographer Alfred Addis, moved her family to Chihuahua, Mexico. Yda assisted in her father's work photographing the Mexican frontier, which gave her an early familiarity with Indian villages, mining camps, and the other features of border life. She developed a deep love for the culture and history of the region. She learned Spanish, French, Italian, and several Indian dialects. When Yda was fifteen, her family moved to Los Angeles. After her graduation from Los Angeles High School, she began teaching, while also launching her career as a writer. By her early twenties, her name was well-known to readers across the country for her eerie Mexican-influenced ghost tales and tempestuous love stories which always ended badly--for the men. Critics lauded her writings as "original, daring, strong, polished."

Before long, her name became even more famous--for reasons that had nothing to do with her literary talents.

"Los Angeles Herald," April 17, 1875

The fun started in 1887, when "Argonaut" owner Frank Pixley introduced her to his friend, former California governor John Downey. A romance soon reportedly developed between the sixtysomething Downey and the beautiful young Yda. Wedding bells loomed in the horizon. Well, they would have, if it hadn't been for Downey's sister, Mrs. Peter Donahue. When Mrs. Donahue learned that her brother planned to marry someone young enough to be his granddaughter, she was outraged. Yda told the press that Mrs. Donahue was keeping Downey in literal captivity in order to get him to break the engagement. Downey responded by publicly declaring that he had never had any intention of marrying Miss Addis.

"San Francisco Examiner," July 30, 1887

Yda promptly sued Downey for breach of promise, but for whatever reason, Yda dropped the suit and moved to Mexico City, where she found work writing for the newspaper "Two Republics." The paper's editor, Theodore Gesterfeld, quickly became infatuated with Yda.

This would have been all well and good, if it had not been for the inconvenient figure of Mrs. Gesterfeld. Theodore's wife sued him for divorce, naming Addis as co-respondent. During the trial, Gesterfeld admitted to sleeping with other women, but insisted that Addis had not been one of them. Despite Theodore's gallant, and very likely perjured, testimony, the uproar only added to Yda's increasingly notorious reputation. (Yda later claimed that she did not figure in the Gesterfeld scandal at all. According to her, she had an illegitimate half-sister, Maud Addis, who looked remarkably like her. It was Maud, and not herself, who was the correspondent in Gesterfeld's divorce suit. Make of that what you will.)

Realizing that Mexico was getting a bit too hot for her, Yda relocated to Santa Barbara, where she began compiling material for her 1891 book, "A Memorial and Biographical History of the Counties of Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, and Ventura, California." In 1890, she married attorney and newspaper owner Charles A. Storke.

"Los Angeles Herald," January 8, 1888

True to form, the marriage almost immediately collapsed, with every lurid detail lovingly published by the local newspapers. Yda publicly accused Storke and his 15-year-old son Tommy of abusing her both physically and mentally. For good measure, she informed the world that Storke had a taste for certain unspecified but clearly shocking sexual practices. Yda declared that her husband's "refusal to have reasonable marital intercourse" left her in a state of "nervous and hysterical morbidity." As if that weren't bad enough, his table manners were "loathsome, repulsive, and obscene." Oh, and he rarely bathed, causing him to emit a "mephitic odor."

Yda was not finished with Storke yet. In 1896, a Santa Barbara mother and daughter named Richardson were found brutally murdered in their own home. The ghastly crime, which was never solved, became an obsession with Yda. She eventually developed a "solution" for the murder that was an elaborate conspiracy involving the city's most prominent citizens--with the chief architect of the murder plot being her very own former husband Charles Storke. (A contemporary paper noted dryly that this theory "tended to strain the relations between Yda Addis Storke and Santa Barbara.") There were a number of people who came to seriously believe that Yda had committed the Richardson murders herself. While there was no proof that she was responsible for the crime, by this point in our story I'm sure you share my belief that nothing Yda Addis did would be surprising.

Storke sued for divorce, on the grounds of Yda's insanity. He told the press that Yda had twice attempted suicide, by taking morphine and setting fire to her clothes. He added that she had developed an "insane antipathy" to Tommy, and frequently threatened to kill him. Yda, he stated, was an adulteress who had only married him for his money. She refused to perform her "womanly duties." She had a perverse fondness for witnessing public executions. Worst of all, she hung out in Bakersfield dance halls!

While Yda was still legally married to Storke, she decided to make the most of the situation by suing him for alimony. After a great deal of legal wrangling, in January 1892, a judge essentially found for both sides, ruling that "the husband was not cruel, nor the wife insane." The divorce was finally granted in 1895, with Storke being ordered to pay Yda's attorney fees, as well as $250 in alimony. Storke repeatedly appealed the ruling, until in 1897, the California Supreme Court ordered him to make the payments.  (Storke reportedly continued to default on his obligations.)

During these protracted court battles, Yda moved back to San Francisco, where she tried to refocus on her writing career. During this period, she published stories in which women killed men in various gruesome ways, and knowing our Yda, I am not altogether certain these were works of fiction.

In 1898, Storke became D.A. of Santa Barbara County. Soon afterward, local newspapers and prominent Santa Barbara citizens began getting some very interesting mail. They were bombarded with anonymous letters accusing a local man, Dr. Robert Winchester, of "immoral and scandalous conduct." Santa Barbara men received letters advising them that the back rooms of Winchester's offices doubled as a brothel. Santa Barbara women were sent notes suggesting they make some quick and easy money by "lying on their backs" in Winchester's offices. Winchester immediately suspected Yda of writing these scurrilous messages. It was no secret that Yda had a grudge against Winchester, who had testified against her in the divorce trial. There was the significant fact that her handwriting was identical to those of the poison pen letters. Besides, it just seemed so perfectly the sort of thing she'd do. In 1899, Yda was charged and convicted of criminal libel.

"San Francisco Chronicle," June 22, 1899

During her trial, she claimed she was being framed by the prosecuting attorney Grant Jackson. She claimed that she and Jackson had entered into a "contract marriage," (something he denied,) and that he betrayed her by secretly working for the Storke camp.

Well. Clearly, there was only one thing she could do: namely, kill the man.

One night, Yda broke into Jackson's house, armed with chloroform, a glass-cutter, two revolvers, acid, and poison--our heroine was never one to do things by halves--and attempted to have the attorney permanently disbarred. Fortunately for Jackson, Yda was a better writer than she was a murderer, and he was able to wrestle the arsenal from her before any damage was done. This little escapade meant Yda faced eight months in prison, (on top of the sentence she faced for the poison pen letters,) and probably did little for her efforts to have herself proven sane. (Her defense was that she entered Jackson's house merely to "talk matters over with him.")

"San Francisco Examiner," July 13, 1899

As a side note, while all this was going on, a man named Frank Gutierrez, whom Yda had accused of being the real writer of the libelous letters, asked for police protection. He claimed that Yda had threatened to kill him (and when Yda made such threats, they clearly were to be taken seriously.) Gutierrez told reporters that he was being followed at night by "certain Italians and Mexicans over whom Mrs. Storke is supposed to have considerable influence."

"San Francisco Examiner," July 15, 1899

At about this time, the "San Francisco Examiner" did a lengthy profile of this now-infamous public figure. Describing Yda as "Santa Barbara's bogie," the reporter marveled, "In all California there is not another being so brilliant and at the same time so weird as Yda Addis Storke; and perhaps not another so feared and hated--and unhappy." The newspaper mourned "poor, wretched, unhappy, brilliant, erratic, vindictive little Yda Addis Storke...Nothing can daunt or tame or soften her, or tire her relentless hatred."

If Yda ever read those words, she probably took that last line as a high compliment.

"San Francisco Examiner," November 1, 1900

In December 1899, a grand jury declined to indict Yda for the Jackson incident (they possibly felt the man had had it coming.) Five months later, she won an appeal for a new trial in the matter of the poison pen letters. However, this retrial never took place. Accounts of her life generally state that the destitute Yda, her physical and mental health now completely broken, was committed to an insane asylum. In 1902, Yda escaped from her confinement, where her sad and hectic story came to an abrupt end.

She disappeared, and was never seen or heard from again.

Edward Montagu, Rogue Scholar

Edward Wortley Montagu in 1775, by Matthew William Peters

I have a particular fondness for a really good last will and testament. There is great pleasure in observing someone who knows how to go out in style. One example of this surprisingly rare breed was written by Edward Wortley Montagu. Montagu, a renowned author, traveler, and con artist, lived as an eccentric (his father once threatened to disown him unless he learned to “act with more prudence than a downright Idiot,”) and, bless him, he died as one.

Montagu was born on May 16, 1713, the only son of diplomat Edward Montagu and his wife, the famed writer and socialite Mary Wortley. Edward's wanderings around the globe began early. When he was only three, his mother took him on an exciting, if highly dangerous, trek to Constantinople. While in that city, he achieved a certain fame by being one of the very first Westerners to be inoculated against smallpox.

After a number of turbulent and essentially unproductive years in Britain's most exclusive schools, he was sent for a brief period to that popular dumping ground for unsatisfactory aristocratic sons, the West Indies. By 1730, he was back in England, where he horrified his parents by marrying, in the disgusted words of his mother, "a woman of very low degree." The new Mrs. Montagu was a washerwoman known  to history only as "Sally."

The marriage played out rather predictably. Whatever Edward's reasons may have been for entering into this scandalous union--it was probably simple bloody-mindedness--he soon left his wife and the marriage was determinedly forgotten by everyone except the bride. His parents soon packed him abroad again, while his father contemplated disinheriting him.

Edward's tour of Europe initially followed the usual dissipated pattern of drinking and womanizing. After a while, however, he developed his own peculiar form of reformation. He talked of entering a monastery, of becoming a humble ploughman, of living out the rest of his days as a simple peasant. He proclaimed himself a changed character.

Then his head cleared and he became himself again. He went back to touring the continent's fashionable attractions and returned home in 1734, leaving behind mammoth debts all throughout Europe. However, he stayed in England only long enough to collect a legacy from his grandfather. Then he was off again, this time to the Netherlands. He endeavored to negotiate a reconciliation with his father, who was now forbidding his son to even come near him. However, the elder Montagu remained obdurate. Edward Senior, a notorious skinflint, was irked by what had proven to be his very expensive son. Aside from Edward Junior's personal debts, his father was forced to pay annuities (read: "hush money") to several of young Edward's former lady friends, not to mention his washerwoman wife. Worse, Edward Junior had begun to associate with notorious highwaymen. His father wanted nothing to do with this family embarrassment he had sired.

Young Edward shrugged and enrolled in the University of Leiden. A talented linguist and bibliophile, he settled down to study Oriental languages. Well, he settled down for about three months, at least. After that period, he became bored with such a respectable, cultivated lifestyle and went back home, leaving the usual trail of debts as his legacy to the Low Countries. When the War of Austrian Succession broke out, Montagu decided to seek an army commission, and in 1742, he was made a cornet in the seventh hussars. He proved to be a fine soldier, eventually rising to the rank of captain, then as aide-de-camp to the British commander-in-chief. In 1746, he was captured by the French, but he was soon freed in a prisoner-of-war exchange.

In 1748, Montagu felt he had advanced as far as he could in the military. Feeling restless, he resigned his commission and this least politic of men sought a diplomatic career. He eventually became a secretary to John Montagu, earl of Sandwich. The earl helped Edward gain a seat in parliament, which freed him from the possibility of being arrested for his numerous debts.

In 1751, Montagu blithely ignored his inconvenient early marriage and bigamously wed a society lady of equally rakish reputation named Elizabeth Ashe. This irregular marriage lasted less than three months before the groom abandoned his bride. He was not pleased when the courts ordered him to pay support for their new-born son, Edward Montagu III. (He already had sired at least three other illegitimate children by various women.)

Montagu's next career move was to turn professional gambler. He also helped launch an extortion racket aimed at cheating men at the gaming tables, and luring them into racking up huge gambling losses. Montagu and his cohorts then forced their victims to pay up, under threat of violence. This repulsive way of making a buck proved--as most such repulsive schemes do--hugely profitable, until one of the ring's victims, Abraham Payba, had his lodgings burglarized by Montagu and one of his cronies, Theobald Taaffe (who was also an MP. ) Payba defied them and made their crimes public. Montagu and Taaffe were arrested and tried for the robbery. They were found guilty, but successfully appealed their conviction. The pair then had Payba charged with defamation.

After this inglorious episode, Montagu demonstrated that his disreputable personal character was paired with a genuine classical scholarship. He published "Reflections on the Rise and Fall of the Antient Republicks," an erudite work praising the civic purity of the ancient republics while condemning the degeneracy he saw around modern society. (It was a degeneracy he himself personified, but that seemed of little concern to him.) It was an immense critical and public success.

Montagu's father died in 1761. Although he left his son a generous allowance, the bulk of his estate went to Edward's sister, Lady Bute. (His mother, who, along with the rest of the family, thought Edward was barking mad, left him the grand sum of one guinea.) Edward was infuriated by this snub, announcing petulantly that he would shake "the dust of an ungrateful country" from his feet and live abroad. He traveled extensively in the East, where he continued his studies in Eastern and classical history and languages. This otherwise utterly worthless wastrel was a genuine scholar. Montagu's entire career, in fact, is a dispiriting slap in the face to those of us (the author of this blog included) who like to assume that knowledge automatically confers virtue. While in Egypt, he somehow persuaded the wife of the Danish consul that her husband had died, and she and Montagu entered into yet another of his illegal pseudo-marriages. (He seems to have had a fondness for the wedded state, just as long as there was nothing legitimate or honorable about it.) Before long, she discovered that her husband was indeed still alive. Montagu responded by cheerily telling her that this unsettling fact was irrelevant--as she was a Catholic and he a Protestant, their marriage had been invalid in any case.

Montagu did not remain a Protestant for long after this latest "marriage." After he traveled to Constantinople, he took to wearing Turkish dress and converted to Islam.

It was early in 1776 that this exasperating man conceived two charming bits of eccentricity. Having (falsely, as it turned out) received news of his first wife's death, he decided that he desperately needed a legitimate male heir, who would be granted a large chunk of his late father’s estate. Accordingly, Montagu placed a singular lonely-hearts ad in several English newspapers. He announced the glad tidings that he had “no objection to marry any widow or single lady, provided the party be of genteel birth, polished manners and five, six, seven or eight months gone in her pregnancy.”

Unfortunately, Montagu never saw what would no doubt have been the interesting responses to this announcement. Two weeks after his ad went into print, he died of a throat abscess.

However, he still managed to, as Poe would say, “kick up a bobbery” posthumously. His will (all printed versions have the names tactfully redacted) read:

"To my noble and worthy relation, the Earl of _____, I do not give his lordship any further part of my property because the best part of that he has contrived to take already.

Item, to Sir Francis_____ I give one word of mine, because he has never had the good fortune to keep his own.

Item, to Lord M_____ I give nothing, because I know he'll bestow it on the poor. Item, to _____ the author, for putting me in his travels, I give five shillings for his wit, undeterred by the charge of extravagance, since friends who have read his book consider five shillings too much.

Item, to Sir Robert Walpole, I leave my political opinions, never doubting he can well turn them into cash, who has always found such an excellent market in which to change his own.

Item, my cast-off habit of swearing oaths I give to Sir Leopold D_____ , in consideration that no oaths have ever been able to find him yet."

Montagu may have rarely known how to live, but at least he certainly knew how to die.

Sir John He Would A-Wooing Go

Sir John Dinely's life could be characterized as being dominated by murder, madness, and marriage proposals.

Emphasis on the marriage proposals.

Dinely was born in 1729, the younger (by half-an-hour) of twin sons of Samuel Goodere, a Captain in the British Navy. Samuel had long been on bad terms with his elder brother, the head of the family, Sir John Dinely Goodere. This tension was only exacerbated when Sir John successfully prosecuted his wife for conspiring to kill him. During his wife's imprisonment, Sir John sought a divorce, but with Samuel's help, she was able to get the House of Lords to dismiss his petition.

It took a heck of a lot more than mere attempted murder to break up a marriage in Georgian times.

After this episode, relations between the brothers became so toxic that Sir John began to talk of disinheriting Samuel in favor of his sister's son, John Foote. It was this threat that inspired Samuel to horrific measures. On January 17, 1741, Samuel hired a small gang of desperados to help him kidnap Sir John, bring him aboard Samuel's ship, the "Ruby," and strangle him to death.

At Samuel's subsequent murder trial, he pleaded innocence. His defense was that his late brother was a lunatic who in "a fit of the phrenzy," strangled himself. To no one's surprise, this argument failed to convince the jury, and Captain Goodere, along with two confederates, was hung in chains, near the place where the murder ship had been at anchor.

Samuel's eldest son Edward went insane and died unmarried in 1761, so the hero of our piece wound up inheriting this rather cursed baronetcy.  He also acquired a decent-sized fortune, which he soon lost, largely by squandering it on every woman shrewd and unscrupulous enough to shower him with praise. If one lady professed admiration of his legs, he gifted her with a bracelet. If another complimented his wit and learning, a necklace was her reward. Naturally, this led to him being surrounded by a swarm of ladies who all professed their greatest esteem for him--as long as his money held out. By 1770, he was forced to sell the family estate in Herfordshire, the last of his resources, and he subsequently spent the rest of his long life in genteel poverty. The only thing that saved him from utter destitution was that friends managed to have him named as a "poor knight of Windsor," which earned him a small pension from the Crown, as well as an apartment in Windsor Castle. At about this time, he dropped the notorious name of "Goodere," and became known merely as "Sir John Dinely."

Although Sir John was quite as unhinged as his brother, father, and uncle, his eccentricities, happily, moved along much more innocuous lines. Although to the outward world, he was a pitiful charity case, peculiar in appearance and with a decidedly unsavory ancestry, the baronet conducted himself as regally as a king--albeit a king dressed in gaudy, if shabby clothes of the style of a previous era. The contemporary "Penny Magazine" described him thus: "He then wore a large cloak called a roquelaure, beneath which appeared a pair of thin legs encased in dirty silk stockings. He had a formidable umbrella, and he stalked along upon pattens...Wherever crowds were assembled—wherever royalty was to be looked upon—there was Sir John Dinely. He then wore a costume of the days of George II—the embroidered coat, the silk-flowered waistcoat, the nether garments of faded velvet carefully meeting the dirty silk stocking, which terminated in the half-polished shoe surmounted by the dingy silver buckle. The old wig, on great occasions, was newly powdered, and the best cocked hat was brought forth, with a tarnished lace edging. He had dreams of ancient genealogies, and of alliances still subsisting between himself and the first families of the land."

Sir John's great ambition was to restore his family fortunes, and he realized that the only practical way in which this could be done was to marry some rich lady. As his combination of poverty, criminal heritage, and familial insanity failed to have women fighting for his hand, he soon lowered his standards enough so that he was willing to marry anyone at all. He became, in short, addicted to proposing to virtually any eligible woman he met. As the "Penny Magazine" noted, "To secure for himself a wife was the business of his existence; to display himself properly where women most do congregate was the object of his savings." He haunted the fashionable gathering places such as Vauxhall Gardens and the London theaters. When he would catch some woman's eye--which, thanks to his strange appearance, happened frequently--he would, in the most dignified manner, approach her, bow with an elegance that would do the most experienced courtier proud, and take from his pocket a printed paper extending his offer of marriage, and gracefully withdraw. This led to a series of what were described as "whimsical interviews" with various ladies. (These occasionally became so whimsical that "when he has expected to see his fair inamorata at a window, he has been rudely saluted with the contents of the jordan.")

And then, of course, there were Sir John's regular ads in the newspapers, reminding the ladies of Britain that one of them could still to be lucky enough to become Lady Dinely. He showed an admirable open-mindedness in his quest. An contemporary biographer enthused, "The woe-begone widow, whose weeds, he conceives, are insupportable, he invites to his arms, to be relieved of her burden; as well as the blooming miss of sixteen, to whom he supposes the restrictions of a boarding-school are quite intolerable." His printed manifestos gave detailed requirements of the financial requirements for leading the last of the Dinelys to the altar. Simply put, the older the lady was, the more money she needed. "Previous to his entering upon a Treaty of Marriage with any Lady, he must be assured of her being possessed of such of the following Summs, as is required according to her age and condition; viz. Those under Twenty-one, only Three Hundred Pounds;—those from Twenty-one to Thirty, Five Hundred; and from Thirty to Forty, Six Hundred. All Spinsters turned of that age, must be treated with according to circumstances; and, probably few will be eligible with less than a Thousand. However, Widows under Forty-five will have such Abatement as personal Charms and accomplishments entitle them to expect."

His own fortune he estimated at some £300,000, "if he could but recover it."

Another early advertisement read: "To the angelic fair of the true English breed:--worthy notice. Sir John Dinely, of Windsor Castle, recommends himself and his ample fortune to any angelic beauty of good breed, fit to become, and willing to be, a mother of a noble heir, and keep up the name of an ancient family, ennobled by deeds of arms and ancestral renown. Ladies at a certain period of life need not apply, as heirship is the object of the mutual contract offered by the ladies' sincere admirer, Sir John Dinely. Fortune favours the bold. Such ladies as this advertisement may induce to apply, or send their agents (but not servants or matrons),may direct to me at the Castle Windsor. Happiness and pleasure are agreeable objects, and should be regarded as well as honour. The lady who shall thus become my wife will be a Baronetess, and rank accordingly as Lady Dinely, of Windsor. Goodwill and favour to all ladies of Great Britain; pull no caps on his account, but favour him with your smiles, and paeans of pleasure await your steps."

Some of Sir John's biographers consider this notice to perhaps be his finest matrimonial come-on:

"Ipswich Journal," June 7, 1788, via Newspapers.com

In 1801, newspapers carried the following optimistic entreaty:

"As the prospect of my marriage has much increased lately, I am determined to take the best means to discover the lady most liberal in her esteem, by giving her fourteen days more to make her quickest steps towards matrimony, from the date of this paper until eleven o'clock the next morning; and as the contest evidently will be superb, honourable, sacred, and ' lawfully affectionate,' pray do not let false delicacy interrupt you in this divine race for my eternal love, and an infant baronet. For 'tis evident I'm sufficiently young enough for you." This was followed by a poetic effusion:

"For your rank above half the kingdom fly,
What's two hundred pounds with an amorous eye?
I'm famed for looks of good nature and sense:--
Detect them all envy's impertinence.
Your first step with my fair plan must agree,
By sending your qualified line to me,
A beautiful page shall carefully hold
Your ladyship's train surrounded with gold!"

By 1802, the elderly Sir John was showing hints of desperation. The "Reading Mercury" published his latest cri de coeur:

"Miss in her Teens.—Let not this sacred offer escape your eye. I now call all qualified ladies, marriageable, to chocolate at my house every day at your own hour.—With tears in my eyes, I must tell you that sound reason commands me to give you but one month's notice before I part with my chance of an infant Baronet for ever: for you may readily hear that three widows and old maids all aged above fifty, near my door, are now pulling caps for me. Pray, my young charmers, give me a fair hearing."

Although Sir John became a celebrity in his day as one of the great curiosities of London society, it is sad to report that such gallant persistence never reaped its just reward. In November of 1809, it was noticed that the famed "Windsor Advertiser" was missing from his accustomed haunts. Finally, a search was made of the sad little room at the castle. There, his body was found in his bed, as alone in death as he had been in life.

The Scandalous Mrs. Crane

In the Victorian and Edwardian eras, there were many different ways—both good and bad—in which a woman could earn herself the enigmatic label of “adventuress.” During her relatively brief life, Cora Howarth Murphy Stewart, who eventually became, spiritually if not legally, “Mrs. Stephen Crane,” ran through all those ways, and probably invented a few new ones along the way.

Cora Howarth, daughter of a modestly well-to-do owner of a Boston art gallery, was born in 1868. (Some sources say 1865.) She was given the quintessential Victorian genteel, restrained upbringing, and spent the rest of her life trying to live it down. Tiring of being guarded by chaperones, at a young age Howarth married a usefully nondescript fellow named Thomas Vinton Murray simply so she would be free to do as she liked. As it turned out, one of the first things she liked was a young army captain, Donald William Stewart. No sooner had she become “Mrs. Murray,” than she was running off to England with Stewart. They married after Murray displayed his useful nondescriptness by quietly giving her a divorce.

Cora enjoyed English social life so much that when Stewart was sent to India, she decided she greatly preferred it to her new second husband. She remained behind, earning Stewart’s everlasting enmity by committing adulteries as numerous as they were well-known.

It is not clear how she came to go from London party girl to Florida madam. One story claims that she happened to sail into American waters on the private yacht owned by one of her current lovers. They quarreled during the voyage, and she angrily leaped overboard and swam ashore, ending up on the beaches of Jacksonville.

However this change in scenery came to be, she decided to start a new life in what was then a booming, lively resort town. Renaming herself “Cora Taylor,” she opened what was tactfully termed a “nightclub.” In reality, it was an upscale brothel. (“Class-A,” according to the helpful guides available to male tourists.)

It was in Jacksonville that, in 1896, she first met Stephen Crane, who had already achieved fame with “The Red Badge of Courage.” He came there as one of the journalists covering the burgeoning war fever against the Spanish presence in Cuba, but he soon found the lively brothel-keeper at least as fascinating. Crane and Cora were similar wild, restless spirits, and they felt an immediate mutual sympathy. When he wound up in a shipwreck (the inspiration for his story “The Open Boat,”) and she nursed him back to health, this sympathy turned to love.

When Crane left to cover the war in the Balkans, Cora accompanied him. She filed dispatches for the Hearst papers under the name “Imogene Carter,” becoming the world’s first female war correspondent. By this time, she was certain she had at last found the man with whom she wanted to spend the rest of her life. However, Stewart spitefully refused her a divorce. Her response was to simply shrug off the formalities. For the rest of her life, she called herself “Mrs. Cora Crane.”

The Cranes eventually settled in Brede Place, a rambling, rundown, allegedly haunted 14th century mansion in Sussex, England. They lived as precursors to Scott and Zelda, leading a stereotypically bohemian life of drink, nonstop house parties—they both craved living in crowd scenes--and chronic personal disarray. The couple became deeply in debt—they were just the generous, careless types who make perfect targets for spongers. Their personal relationship was equally turbulent—at one point, Stephen even walked out on his chagrined “wife.”

Brede Place, via Wikipedia

The party ended when Crane left to cover the Spanish-American war. Already suffering from tuberculosis, the combination of the Cuban climate and the physical strains of being in the midst of war destroyed his health. To add to the couple’s troubles, they were broke—both of them were incapable of handling practical affairs—ostracized from society, and at a loss as to what on earth to do.

The sad climax to their story came during one of their typically crowded house parties, when, on December 29, 1899, Crane began hemorrhaging and collapsed. Cora somehow managed to raise enough funds to bring him to a sanatorium in Bavaria, but soon after their arrival, in June of 1900, Crane died. He was only twenty-eight.

Crane’s death robbed Cora of the closest thing to stability she ever had, and the loss sent her on a downward spiral. She suffered a nervous breakdown after Stephen’s death, but she pulled herself together enough to return to Jacksonville. She managed to borrow enough money to open “The Court,” one of the city’s most elegant brothels. It proved so successful that she became part owner of other bordellos, as well.

Cora saw her little prostitution empire as a form of social work, giving men a needed break from the humdrum. She once wrote, “I wonder if husbands are so often unfaithful because their wives are good? I think so. They cannot stand the dreary monotonies and certainties.”

It could have been interesting to hear what the wives would have made of this doctrine.

Captain Stewart died in Africa, finally leaving her free to remarry. She used her new-found freedom in the most disastrous way possible. In 1905, after a very short acquaintance, she impulsively married one of her establishment’s clients, a good-looking, lively young wastrel named Hammond McNeil. He soon showed himself to be an unstable, hotheaded alcoholic. Even worse was to come. One day in 1907, she went out on a picnic with a man named Harry Parker. McNeil followed them and shot Parker dead.

McNeil’s defense was the “unwritten law” that supposedly allowed a man to kill his wife’s seducer, causing Cora’s public reputation to go from merely notorious to infamous. She refused to testify, and McNeil was acquitted. They divorced soon afterward. (During their divorce, McNeil, showing a rather quaint amount of gall, accused Cora of beating him on numerous occasions. She retorted, “Yes, I did it, and I only wish I had beaten him to death.”)

After Parker’s murder, Cora was painted as the Black Widow and Scarlet Woman combined, but she was doggedly determined to carry on with her life. She had always shown a talent for writing, and this creative outlet became increasingly important to her. Her stories appeared in the leading publications of the time, and she began to consider moving to Europe and devoting herself full-time to a literary career.

This uncharacteristically quiet daydream was not to be. Cora continued to run the Court until 1910, when she suffered a mild stroke. She turned the management of the brothel over to her housekeeper, who reportedly repaid this trust by embezzling from her employer. Cora Crane died not long afterward, from heat stroke brought on when, with her usual impulsive generosity, she tried to help push out a car that had been stuck in the sand.

A woman too famous to be ignored, but too notorious for frank public description, presented a unique challenge to the local obituary writers. Her death notices emphasized her Boston Brahmin heritage, her literary talents, her personal charm, and her stature as “the wife of Stephen Crane, the novelist.” The more unconventional side of her career—which summarized everything she was—found itself quickly dismissed as merely a flirtation with “the Bohemian life.”

I doubt she would have been pleased by such airbrushing.

The Leg-Stretcher of Odcombe

Thomas Coryat

You would think that someone who was a popular Early Modern travel writer, and who also knew pretty much everybody who was anybody in his era--half Baedeker, half Zelig--and who was dubbed "The Odd," would be better remembered today. But such are the vagaries of history.

This week, let us pay tribute to this undeservedly obscure Englishman, one of the quirkier figures of a decidedly quirky era.

Thomas Coryat (or Coryate) was born circa 1577 in the Somerset town of Crewkerne, although he grew up in the village of Odcombe, where his father George Coryat was rector. The family was not wealthy, but George was able to see to it that his son got a good education at Winchester College and Oxford. After Thomas left the university, he found himself unable to decide what to do with his life. His class-conscious era offered few desirable opportunities for a young man who had more brains than he did money.

Coryat, like so many people in his situation, made use of his wits as best he could. He had enough "connections" to get himself a place in the court of James I's son Henry. Coryat was a gregarious, witty fellow with a gift of gab, so he managed to earn his keep by keeping his wealthy, important acquaintances amused. Prince Henry granted him ten pounds a year to act as his unofficial court jester. His contemporary Thomas Fuller wrote that "Sweetmeats and Coryate made up the last course of all court entertainments. Indeed, he was the courtiers' anvil to try their wits upon; and sometimes the anvil returned the hammers as hard knocks as it received, his bluntness repaying their abusiveness."

It was a comfortable enough job, but a demeaning one.  Like so many other comedians, Coryat wanted to be taken seriously. He cared little for mere money, but he longed for fame and, even more importantly, respect. Playing the fool for the entertainment of the nobility was no way to achieve either of those desires. He came up with a remarkable career plan. He would travel--alone--across Europe, then write a book about his adventures. Surely, then, he would win lasting acclaim?

Coryat set off on his journey in May 1608. His limited funds meant that he had to walk a good part of the way. (He proudly dubbed himself "The Oddcombe Legge-Stretcher.") In the course of nearly half a year, Coryat "leg-stretched" his way through France, Italy, Venice, Switzerland, Germany, and the Netherlands. Once back in England, he gave thanks for his safe return by donating his well-worn clothes and shoes to Odcombe Church, apparently with the thought that they should be venerated as relics. (The items, rather remarkably, remained on display until the 18th century.) In 1611, he recorded his achievement in a book, "Coryat's Crudities, hastily gobbled up in Five Months Travels in France, Italy, &c." His friend Ben Jonson arranged to have the work published, and also wrote a forward where he described Coryat as "an Engine, wholly consisting of extremes, a Head, Fingers, and Toes. For what his industrious Toes have trod, his ready Fingers have written, his subtle Head dictating." Coryat enlisted his other literary friends, such as John Donne and Inigo Jones, to write promotional verses (the 17th century equivalent of "blurbs") for the beginning of the book. He perhaps did not anticipate that his pals would gleefully take this as an opportunity to satirize and mock him. This literary celebrity roast proved so popular that a pirated reprint of the verses was published, omitting Coryat's material "for thine and thy purses good."

The imposing (over 200,000 words) "Crudities" is entirely characteristic of its author: Energetic, garrulous, amusing, eclectic, and slightly cracked. (It is the only book I know of to feature a frontispiece showing the author being pelted with eggs.) The streets of Paris "are the dirtiest, and so consequently the most stinking of all that ever I saw in any citie in my life." After describing a harrowing trip through the Alps, he noted that Aiguebelle featured many people with throat goitres, which he attributed to "the drinking of snow water." Savoy had beds so high "that a man could hardly gette into his bedde without some kind of climbing." Coryat deplored the Italian habit of sprinkling cheese over their food, "which I love not so well as the Welchmen doe." He did, however, appreciate one aspect of Italian dining: how they "doe alwaies at their meales use a little forke when they cut their meat...This forme of feeding I understand is generally used in all places of Italy, their forkes being for the most part made of yron or steele, and some of silver...The reason of this their curiosity is, because the Italian cannot by any means indure to have his dish touched with fingers, seeing all mens fingers are not alike cleane." Forks were not entirely unknown in England, but it took Coryat's promotion of their hygienic benefits to bring them into wider use.

Coryat also took note of another Italian innovation: "what they commonly call in the Italian tongue umbrellaes, that is, things that minister shadow unto them for shelter against the scorching heate of the Sunne. These are made of leather something answerable to the forme of a little canopy, & hooped in the inside with divers little wooden hoopes that extend the umbrella in a pretty large compasse." This is believed to be the earliest use of the word "umbrella" in English, although it would take about a century for the instruments to come into general use among Coryat's countrymen.

Venice fascinated him. It "yeeldeth the most glorious and heavenly shew upon the water that ever any mortal eye beheld." He described the architecture in astounding detail (often borrowed wholesale from earlier guide books.) Coryat earned the undying gratitude of music historians for his vivid descriptions of performances of the Venetian School, considered to be one of Europe's most well-known and influential musical movements.

On a less sublime note, he recorded the city's ubiquitous brothels, complaining that "if a stranger entereth into one of their Gondolas, and doth not presently tell them whither he will goe, they will incontinently carry him of their accord to a religious house [his sarcastic term for a bordello] forsooth, where his plumes shall be well pulled before he commeth forth againe." Coryat estimated that Venice had at least 20,000 prostitutes, "whereof many are esteemed so loose, that they are said to open their quivers to every arrow." He added his fear "least I shall expose my selfe to the severe censure and scandalous imputations of many carping Criticks, who I thinke will taxe me for luxury and wantonnesse to insert so lascivious a matter into this Treatise of Venice." Our Thomas knew that nothing sells books like a little sex.

Coryat followed up the success of "Crudities" with a sequel, "Coryats Crambe," a grab-bag of material consisting of some verses that had been submitted too late for inclusion in the previous book, petitions to Prince Henry and other members of the Royal Family, and the text of a speech Coryat made in the Court of Chancery. It too had a respectable sale, earning the author a decent amount of fame. Coryat became an accepted member of London's lively literary society, hobnobbing with (in the words of John Aubrey,) "all the witts then about the towne." John Hoskyns wrote a lengthy poem about this Jacobean Algonquin Round Table where Coryat ("This orator of Odcombe towne") was immortalized with lines such as,

But yet the number is not righted;
If Coriate bee not invited,
The jeast will want a tiller.
For wittily on him, they say,
As hammers on an anvil play,
Each man his jeast may breake.
When Coriate is fuddled well,
His tongue begins to talke pel-mel,
He shameth not to speake.

Hoskyns concluded his "tribute" by noting,

But Coriate liveth by his witts,
He looseth nothinge that he getts,
Nor playes the fool in vayne.

Coryat was still feeling restless and unfulfilled. His wanderlust urged him on to tackle even more exotic adventures. On October 20, 1612, he set out on another solo journey. He walked through Greece, the eastern Mediterranean, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and India. Coryat was one of the few Englishmen to tour the Ottoman Empire while it was still nearly at the height of its power and renown. He joined up with a caravan traveling through Palestine to Jerusalem. Coryat was utterly charmed by the region. His letters carry rapturous descriptions of monasteries with beautiful walled gardens, grand mosques with a thousand pillars, and cheap but excellent food. He called Damascus "an earthly paradise." In Jerusalem, Coryat piously had his arm tattooed with the arms of Jerusalem and the words "Via, Veritas, Vita" ["the Way, the Truth, the Life"] and visited the Temple of the Holy Sepulchre and other religious sites. By July 1615, he had arrived in India, where he was pleased to encounter a small group of Englishmen who were doing negotiations on behalf of the East India Company. He had been walking for some nine months, and was ready to take a rest in this little British enclave. The letters he sent home during this period were published in 1616 under the title of "Greetings from the Court of the Great Mogul." (A sequel appeared in 1618.)

Coryat made an appearance the court of the Emperor Jahangir in Ajmer. He presented a petition to Jahangir where he described himself as a "poore traveler and World-Seer," come to see "the blessed face of your Majesty," elephants, and the Ganges, presumably in that order. He asked the Emperor's permission to travel to Samarkand. Jahangir replied that his hostile relations with the Tartars made it impossible to help Coryat make the journey, but he did give the traveler a small sum of money. Coryat was grateful for this donation, as "I had but twentie shillings sterling left in my Purse."

Coryat visited Agra, which was then a great trading city. He observed religious festivals (as a devout Protestant, he did not really approve of any of them,) and toured grand tombs and exotic holy sites.

However, Coryat was tired. The strain of months of foot travel through largely inhospitable lands was finally taking its toll. He confided to an Englishman of his acquaintance that as he usually traveled alone, he feared he might die and "be buried in obscurity and none of his friends ever know what became of him."

In November 1617, Coryat made his way to Surat, popular as both a trade city and a port of embarkation for Mecca pilgrimages. It was his final journey. According to Edward Terry, an East India Company chaplain who had befriended the wanderer, Coryat's end was characteristically serio-comic: "He lived to come safely thither, but there being over-kindly used by some of the English, who gave him sack which they had brought from England; he calling for it as soon as he first heard of it, and crying: 'Sack, sack, is there such a thing as sack? I pray give me some sack'; and drinking of it (though, I conceive, moderately, for he was a very temperate man,) it increased his flux which he had then upon him."

This combination of English wine and Indian dysentery proved fatal for Coryat in December 1617. The location of his grave is now uncertain. Just outside of Surat is a domed Muslim-style monument which legend says is his burial site, but it is also possible that Coryat was laid to rest in Surat's English graveyard.

It is a sadly anonymous fate for someone so eager to make his mark in the world. However, although Coryat did not achieve the level of permanent historical recognition he probably craved, his could not be called an unsuccessful life. He was a brave, likable man who had adventures unheard of by most of his contemporaries and, for the most part, he seems to have had a jolly good time doing them. He deserves to be remembered.

I for one raise my fork to him.

The Adventures of "Indian Peter"

Edinburgh, Scotland is a city with a long history of colorful characters. Among the most famous was Peter Williamson, better known to history as "Indian Peter." It is no small tribute to the man that being kidnapped by Indians was arguably the most normal thing about him.

Our main source of information about him comes from his autobiography, which was first published in 1758. This "accurate and faithful Account of a Series of Misfortunes" was enormously successful, going through several editions, the last of which appeared in 1812.

Peter was born in 1730 near Aberdeen, "if not of rich, yet of reputable Parents." In January 1743, he was playing "near the Key" with some friends. Being of "a stout robust Constitution," he caught the eye of two press-gangers, who lured him aboard their ship. Before he knew what was happening, he was sailing for America, destined to be sold as an indentured servant.

Before the ship could reach its destination, it wrecked off Cape May. The crew and its human cargo were rescued by a passing vessel bound for Philadelphia, where the captain sold his "villainous Loading." Peter was bought by a fellow Scot named Hugh Wilson. Being a former indentured servant himself, Wilson treated his "property" with unusual decency. He provided Williamson with an education and when he died a few years later, he left the 17-year-old with a horse, a wardrobe, and £120.

Williamson did well in his new life. He married the daughter of a prosperous planter, and his new father-in-law gave him 200 acres to farm in Berks County. All was well until the night of October 2, 1754. Peter was alone in his house when it was attacked by local Indians. They plundered the farm, set it on fire, and carried Williamson back to their village. One night, he managed to make his escape. Although his captors gave chase ("The bellowing of Lyons, the Shrieks of Hyenas, or the roaring of Tygers, would have been Music to my Ears in Comparison to the Sounds that then saluted them") he managed, after many misadventures, to return safely to his father-in-law's farm on January 4, 1755. Sadly, he was greeted by news of the recent death of his wife, which "greatly lessen'd the Joy and Rapture he otherwise felt at his Deliverance."

Feeling the need to get a bit of his own back against his tormentors, Peter enlisted in a regiment assembled to fight against the French and their allies, the local Indian tribes. In 1756, he was among the men taken prisoner at the siege of Oswego. He and his fellow soldiers were sent to England in a prisoner-of-war swap. Peter had been too badly wounded during the siege to be considered of any further use as a soldier, so the English discharged him with nothing to show for his army service but "the sum of Six Shillings paid."

Williamson attempted to go back to his hometown of Aberdeen, but could only make it as far as York. In that city, certain gentlemen took enough interest in him and his troubles to arrange to have his sole remaining possession--a manuscript detailing his adventures--printed. The pamphlet earned him enough money to continue his journey to his old home, which he finally reached in June 1758.

He did not exactly receive a hero's welcome. His memoirs had caused offense among certain of his former townspeople. No sooner had he arrived in Aberdeen that he was hauled before the town officers, charged with "publishing and dispersing this scurrilous and infamous libel, reflecting greatly upon the characters and reputations of the merchants in Aberdeen and on the town in general, without any ground or reason." He was found guilty, with the result that all available copies of his book were burnt in the town square by the public hangman. Williamson himself was ordered to make written apology for his offensive tome, fined ten shillings sterling, and banished from the city.

Peter was not the man to take such treatment quietly. He marched off to Edinburgh, where "A Gentleman versant in the Law" helped him to file a lawsuit against the Aberdeen magistrates. In their defense, the magistrates said that when Williamson arrived in Aberdeen, he appeared to be merely "an idle stroller," who sought to "draw money from the credulous vulgar" with an obviously fictitious pamphlet. Williamson countered this charge of dishonesty by producing numerous witnesses attesting to all the details of his early kidnapping. The root of the trouble was that the magistrates and town officers of Aberdeen had for many years been actively complicit in this human trafficking, and they resented Williamson's publicizing of that fact. It emerged during the trial that between the years of 1740-46, some six hundred boys and young men had been kidnapped to be indentured servants in the colonies--some of them sold by their own relatives.

After nearly two years of legal wrangling, the Court of Sessions ruled in Peter's favor, ordering the defendants to pay one hundred pounds sterling, plus costs. "It is the peculiar happiness of this land of liberty," Peter gloated afterward, "to be blessed with a Supreme Court wherein justice is dispensed with an equal hand to the poor and rich." (A quaint literary footnote: Sir Walter Scott's father was part of the legal team assisting the defendants.)

Williamson followed up his legal triumph with an action of damages against the particular bailies he believed were responsible for his kidnapping. The judge who was to arbitrate the matter was notoriously fond of drink, which led to both parties in the suit taking turns carrying off this estimable justice for rounds at the local pubs. Unfortunately, both sides carried their attempts at bribery a bit too far. After several days of the defendants and the plaintiff plying him with wine, punch, claret, rum, and other potent spirits, the judge, "very merry and jocose," took to his bed, and never got up again.

The suit was transferred to the Court of Session, where in December 1768, Williamson was awarded £200 damages, plus one hundred guineas costs.

Having finally won some measure of justice for his early trials, Williamson capitalized on his experiences by taking to the lecture circuit. "For several years," records one of his early biographers, "he used to exhibit himself in the dress of an American Indian, performing the war-whoop, etc., and by this, I believe, he obtained a very good livelihood." He appeared as far afield as London.

Williamson invested his new-found gains by turning vintner, opening a successful tavern near the courthouses, which became commonly known as "Indian Peter's coffee-room." His establishment was immortalized by poet Robert Fergusson with these lines:

"This vacance [vacation] is a heavy doom
  On Indian Peter's coffee-room
For a' his china pigs are toom [bottles are empty]
  Nor do we see
In wine the soukar biskets soom [sugar biscuits swim]
  As light's a flee."

I guess you had to have been there.

Williamson continued his career as an author, publishing an expanded version of his memoirs, along with political tracts and details of a device he had invented for reaping corn.

In 1769, his literary endeavors caused him to take the natural next step of becoming a printer. When announcing his new venture, he commented dryly on his qualifications for the job: "I was born in Aberdeenshire, where it is thought a crime to be honest; and I think such precepts the best lesson a Printer can get." In 1773, he had the proud achievement of publishing the first directory of Edinburgh.

He became so successful as a printer that he abandoned tavern-keeping altogether to devote himself to the congenial world of literature. In 1776, he set up Edinburgh's first penny-post system, which he managed until 1793, when it was taken over by the Government. It was the first continuous postal service in all of Britain.

Alas, Williamson's personal affairs were not as happy and prosperous as his professional endeavors. In 1770, he married a mantua-maker named Jean Wilson. The pair had nine children, of whom four lived to adulthood. For sixteen years, all apparently went well. However, then Mrs. Williamson seems to have gone through what we today would call a "mid-life crisis." As the subsequent divorce suit tells us, "the said Jean Wilson, casting off all fear of God and forgetting her conjugal vows and engagements, has for these several years bygone followed a tract of keeping fellowship, company, and society with godless, lewd, and abandoned men, known not to be the pursuer, one of more; treating, entertaining, and conversing with them privately...and other ways unseemly." Worse still, "the said Jean Wilson has been in the practice of frequenting different houses of bad fame both in this city and neighbourhood, where she used to meet with lewd and wicked men...in which houses she has often got herself intoxicated with liquor."

In short, Jean was having herself far too much fun.

Her husband--never averse to turning personal woes into profitable copy--edited, printed, and published a report on their divorce. To his wife's charge that he himself was not averse "to tippling and intoxication with mean and low people," he merely wrote haughtily that "These are reflections which in prudence she ought not to have made." He complained that when he insisted on a separation, his wife stripped their house of everything not nailed down, and removed herself and their children to her father's house. This despoliation forced Williamson to "leave his house, which he had possessed for thirty-three years with honour and credit, and betake himself to strange lodgings." Not content with robbing him blind, he asserted that his estranged wife and father-in-law spread slanderous reports about him and set up a rival penny-post office.

The divorce suit was heard in December 1788. Although Mrs. Williamson asserted that she had never been involved in anything other than innocent dress-making, her husband produced a plethora of witness testifying that her mantua-making shop was little more than a cover for her older, far less respectable, real profession. Tellingly, the defendant produced no witnesses in her behalf.

Peter's luck in courts of law continued to hold. His divorce was granted, along with custody of his children. Thereafter, his life was uncharacteristically quiet until his death in January 1799. His obituary described him as "well known for his various adventures." It has been theorized that he has gained a more lasting fame as the model for David Balfour in Robert Louis Stevenson's "Kidnapped."