A Woman In Love

Since the whole world seems to be gearing up to celebrate all things romantic, I thought today I'd tell you a romantic - well, romantic-ish - tale of the knights of old...

In 1512, Henry VIII was still young, excited and delighted with his first queen, Catherine of Aragon. They were trying for a baby, but not overly concerned at the time it was taking to get around to it. They spent much of their time doing fun stuff, like jousts and tournaments, pageants and strange devices.

At one particular jousting festival, the Royal Pageant Master had had a bit of a Laurence Llewellyn Bowen moment and created a 'fountain' out of russet satin, covered with fretted gold with eight gargoyles spouting water, while a glamorous knight stood in the centre, fully-armed and looking butch. Behind him came a retinue of coursers, raring for the fight, and ladies, looking for love.

The butch knight in the middle of the satin fountain was Sir Charles Brandon, the burliest of the king's retinue and Henry's best mate. He was handsome, charming, a war hero from Flodden and, some might say 'a bit of a goer.' At 28 he'd already deserted one wife, married another, divorced her, re-married the first one, had somehow got himself betrothed to someone else entirely and now had his eye on Margaret of Savoy.

Through all this, though, he was still on the lookout and, whilst skilfully jousting away in the Greenwich tilt yards, he kept exchanging little meaningful glances with Henry's sister, Mary, widely acknowledged to be the most beautiful princess of her day, smitten with the handsome young knight - and inconveniently betrothed to the elderly, gouty Louis XII of France. Henry had used his sister as a bargaining chip with the vain old man in a political deal that involved a million crowns in hard cash.

Mary, as you can imagine, wasn't wild about the deal, especially since she'd almost certainly seen Louis. She told Henry she'd do her duty, but her next husband was to be her choice, okay? It was fairly clear to all who her choice would be.

The marriage went ahead - by proxy, since the king was too infirm to do much more than sit on a throne back in France. The Duc de Longueville spoke the vows for Louis - and then 'consummated' the marriage for him too, by lying down on a bed with her and touching her body with his naked leg. Oooh err....

As arranged, political marriages go, it wasn't such a bad deal for Mary. She got a brand new outfit, loads of jewels sent over from France, celebrations in her honour - and it was quite clear that Louis wasn't going to outlive the year.

It may well have been the excitement that did for him. By all accounts he did his best to service his young queen when she finally arrived in France (a little green around the gills from a choppy Channel crossing) - the old stager claimed that on the 'proper' wedding night he'd 'crossed the river' three times with his bride.

Sir Charles Brandon probably wasn't the most diplomatic person Henry could have sent on a diplomatic mission to check everything was going okay, but apparently both Mary and Brandon behaved themselves, to the king's relief.

Louis died three months after the marriage, and Henry started looking around for a new husband for his sister. Mary was livid. She coughed rather less than discreetly and told him in no uncertain terms that if she wasn't allowed to choose her next husband she'd become a nun, so there.

Henry, in another one of his not-so-brilliant moments, chose the dashing Charles Brandon to go and fetch her back from France. Mary told him straight - marry me now, or never.

Brandon, who, to be honest, could probably have taken or left this stunningly beautiful, madly-in-love-with-him princess who just happened to be next in line to the throne and richer than Croesus, somehow allowed himself to be cajoled into marrying Louis XII's widow secretly in Cluny. Strange, that...

The king, of course, went berserk when he found out about it, though it's impossible he didn't see it coming. He insisted they paid back her dowry and marriage portion and beg him for forgiveness lots, which they did.

Mary blamed herself, and Brandon was happy to let her take the blame. Henry, for his part, though, found his heart just wasn't into being angry. He couldn't stay cross with his best pal and his favourite sister for long and as soon as he'd got his cash back and they'd grovelled enough, he allowed them to marry properly at Greenwich Palace.

And to give them their romantic dues, they stayed happily married - until Mary's death, when, I'm afraid to say, Brandon found himself someone else very quickly indeed.

It's entirely possible you won't have heard of these two Tudor lovers. But I'm willing to bet you've come across their granddaughter.

Lady Jane Grey.

The Shrew's Tale

I am currently wading my way through Peter Ackroyd's prose 'translation' of the Canterbury Tales. I haven't got very far, mainly because stuff keeps happening in Real Life, but also because it is not a work to be rushed, but sipped and savoured in small doses. It may not be 'verse' but it is still poetry.

Because I want to enjoy every moment of it, I started with the introduction (I'm normally very bad for skipping introductions)and I was very surprised to discover that it's likely that a good part of Chaucer's masterwork was written in Greenwich or Deptford.

Though the Tabard Inn, where the pilgrims set out on their journey, is in Southwark, the merry band passes through Deptford on their way to Beckett's shrine, and Chaucer's own hostelry is mentioned by the host - as 'an inne of shrews.'

Looks like we're back to the Greenwich Birds again - I'm beginning to get quite an image of the female population of Greenwich in medieval times. Or maybe it was the entire population, full stop - apparently, Chaucer was mugged twice in the same day (though other accounts I've read have placed him in Westminster and Hatcham for his total of three robberies) Being mugged seems a bit ironic since he was a Justice of the Peace at the time(annoyingly all the books I can find just say 'in Kent' so I don't know if it was actually at Greenwich.)

One of the reasons he was living in Greenwich seems to have been financial. When his wife died, he was sued for debt - the days when he was granted a daily pitcher of wine by the king must have seemed very distant - and presumably innes of shrews in Greenwich were cheaper than nice houses in the City of London.

In 1390, while he was writing the Canterbury Tales (though he never really actively 'started' them - or indeed, finished them - they were more organic than that - he wrote short stories that he later assigned to sundry pilgrims when he had the portmanteau-volume idea for bringing them together. Some were specifically written for characters; others were just doled out to the boring characters that were left, which is why some really suit the teller and others really don't...) he was doing all manner of odd jobs.

He arranged for scaffolding to be built for jousts at Smithfield, and landed himself the job of Commissioner of Walls and Ditches - with special responsibility for the Thames wall between Woolwich and Greenwich.

But Chaucer's real job was entertaining - in English. I didn't know that the Tales were written here, but I'm delighted that they were, even if Chaucer had a bit of a rough time with the Greenwich shrews whilst composing them. So we can claim the father of the English Novel for our own, too (sort of...)

Now all I have to do is work out why there used to be a banner with a picture of Sir Walter Scott hanging in the old Visitor Centre. As far as I can see, the most we can boast of him is a couple of brief mentions in The Adventures of Nigel, one of the minor Waverley Novels and the worst book I have ever read by a long chalk...

Ought To 'Ave 'Ad An 'Uggins

I tend to think of the Victorian all-rounder John Ruskin as a poet, but it would seem that he's really more known as an art critic, friend of the pre-raphaelites - and JMW Turner fanatic.

Ruskin loved Turner's work from the start - loved that Turner rejected traditional conventions and concentrated on what he saw with an artist's heart - the colours, form, feel and truth of a subject rather than what was literally in front of his eyes.

His view wasn't shared by all, though, and I found a lovely anecdote told by Ruskin over the weekend that made me smile.

He had been taking a turn around the Painted Hall, which was at the time doing service as an art gallery, its nominal 'guides' being grizzled Greenwich Pensioners earning a few pence by showing people round. Ruskin stopped to appreciate Turner's Battle of Trafalgar (see above - it's in the National Maritime Museum, if you want to take a closer look) and stood in front of the painting rather "longer than pleased my pensioner guide."

Thinking that Ruskin was "detained by indignant wonder at seeing it in so good a place, he assented to my supposed sentiments by muttering in a low voice 'Well, sir, it is a shame that that thing should be there. We ought to 'a 'ad an 'Uggins, that's sartin.' "

The old tar wasn't alone in not holding for all that modern art stuff.

"I can't make English of it," admitted another old boy.

"What a Trafalgar!" grumbled another. "'E's a damned deal more like a brickfield!"

Ruskin chuckles enormously at the antediluvian attitudes to art from the old sailors, but I confess I was a bit confused. Who was this 'Uggins?

Turns out the NNM website was able to help there too. William John Huggins was a painter, with a more literal, traditional eye. He was an old sailor himself, so he knew how to get everything absolutely authentic, rigging-wise (Turner got ticked off for not being totally correct in things technical) but to me there's more than that.

Huggins had worked from the bottom up, as an ordinary seaman, seeing the world and paying his dues - in exotic places, like Bombay and China. As far as the salty old sea dogs were concerned, he was one of their own, and they bought prints a-go-go of his work. He also painted the Battle of Trafalgar - apparently they're in the Royal Collection (though I can't find them), but the NMM has 26 works by him - but it was Turner's work that was chosen for the Painted Hall.

I suspect that Huggins was the Jack Vettriano of his day - loved by the public, hated by art critics. Ruskin didn't care for his work at all, saying that it looked like "no better than a correct model sailed across a pond."

It does seem that Time has been kind to Huggins, though. Although he's still not revered in the same way Turner is, his work commands high prices from collectors. The National Maritime Museum says his work is "a valuable record of the shipping of his period" - but I like it rather more than just as anatomical study. Certainly it's inspired me to go back to the NMM to check his work out further. I'll report back...

John Townsend. MP. Actor. Auctioneer. Radical. Emigrant

While the snow has been falling and I've not wanted to venture out for more than a pint of milk, I've been amusing myself with the shamefully-out-of-print Greenwich and Blackheath Past by Felix Barker, and found myself fascinated by a chameleon-like character of the sort you just don't get to see these days. John Major famously ran away from the circus to join another one but he was such a grey character that he was probably a changeling anyway. John Townsend, on the other hand, ran away from the theatre to become an MP but was a character so full of life and colour that the House was never going to keep him completely amused.

Townsend may not have been born in a trunk in 1819 but I'll wager his dad sold a few. If my experiences down at Greenwich Auctions are anything to go by, you need to be a bit of an actor to do that kind of work and although barking out prices on secondhand furniture wasn't for Townsend Jr, he would have learned projection from his old dad, if nothing else.

The lure of the greasepaint touched him even as a lad, and he appeared on stage from a very early age. He went on to lease the Theatre Royal Richmond straight after Edmund Kean had vacated the premises, then went on the road with his own company. His forte was Shakespearean tragedies, which somehow makes his brush with politics even more surreal.

Perhaps seeing Britain with a jobbing actor's eye gave him his compassion because when his father died and the 33 year-old had to give up acting to take over the family business, Townsend became a Poor Law Guardian and the next thing he knew he was fighting for dockers' rights. I get the feeling that he was elected MP for Greenwich almost by accident.

But once the limelight is in your blood, it's hard to give it up, and John Towsnend MP, even whilst sitting at Westminster, couldn't resist treading the boards. He played Shylock at Marylebone Theatre "to deafening applause" and received "long and prolonged cheers" when he gave his Richard III at Rochester. Ever the showman, he went one better at Astley's Royal Amphitheatre by being the last actor ever to play the doomed king on horseback (presumably not whilst speaking the line about being willing to part with his kingdom for a steed...)

Can you even imagine Nick Raynsford as a Shakespearean character? I'll look forward to hearing your suggestions for parts he might be suitable for. I guess today we're not completely without parliamentary clowns appearing on inappropriate media vehicles - witness George Galloway making an arse of himself on Celebrity Big Brother for that one - but actors?

Trouble was, poor old Townsend was a dreadful businessman and I can't imagine he'd made himself very popular with the local businesses he wanted to make pay their workers decent wages. He was forced into bankruptcy and had to give up his seat. He went back to acting full time and seems to have been much better loved as an actor than an MP, which, I suppose, is hardly surprising.

When he was 40, his health started to deteriorate, and he decided to emigrate. In order to get enough cash to make the crossing, he announced that he would give one last performance, at the Royal Hill Lecture Hall in 1866.

All 900 seats for the evening of "Dramatic Entertainment" had been snapped up faster than a Julie Andrews night at the O2, landing Townsend the princely sum of £200. He, along with his wife and fourteen year-old son ('unanimously pronounced the most accomplished junior swordsman of the day'), performed for his ex-constituents one last time, then boarded a boat for Canada.

Of course, once he was there, he couldn't resist acting any more than he could here. He continued until he retired in 1877, and I'm sure he stayed performing for family friends until his death in 1892. If it's in your blood...

John Julius Angerstein - Monster Hunter

What do we remember John Julius Angerstein for? A railway? A pub? A grubby industrial estate on Greenwich Peninsula? Starting the National Gallery? Some curious theories on interior ventilation? A faux-naive 'accidental' encroachment on Blackheath? As Catherine the Great's illegitimate son? Being a Lloyds Name? Abolitionist slave owner?

I'm willing to bet that whichever of the above - or the many other curious things about his life stick in the mind, the one that hasn't occurred to you so far, but will do forever more is as The Man Who Wrote The Monster Hunter's Handbook.

Of course it didn't have a title anywhere near as snappy as that. He named it An Authentic Account of the Barbarities lately Practised by the Monsters! Being an Unprecedented and Unnatural Species of Cruelty, Exercised by a Set of Men Upon Defenceless and Generally Handsome Women.

Now, those last three words will be important, as will the plural on the word 'monster' - but I think I'm getting ahead of myself. "Monsters, Phantom? What the bloomin' hell are you talking about?"

Well, THE Monster, actually. The London Monster, to be completely accurate (which the rest of this post almost certainly won't be...) A chillingly bizarre 18th Century precursor to all the other perverts, murderers and bugaboos that have stalked the streets of the capital ever since - and a direct link with Jack the Ripper a century later.

But more than that, he was a phenomenon - a classic example of mass hysteria that created its own monster between 1788 and 1790 - and, like all such things, with results that were ridiculous, comic and, ultimately rather tragic.

And in the middle of all this, John Julius Angerstein, a successful merchant living, at the time, in the heart of London's fashionable St James, who volunteered to be the Van Helsing of the story and, in doing so, probably fanned the flames of panic rather than saving the world.

The Monster's speciality was in stabbing women in the thigh or buttocks (naturally the papers and cartoonists of the day seized upon the buttocks-part) as they walked along the street. He'd follow them, muttering obscenities, then quickly plunge his knife into their skirts and disappear.

Sometimes he changed his tactics and carried a nosegay that he would invite girls to sniff. It contained a knife that would cut their faces. Personally I find it a bit odd that any girl would sniff a stranger's posy (and that sounds much ruder than I intended) when all the town talked about was of a monster who got his kicks through such an act but hey - we're not talking sense here, we're talking the Mob.

The newspapers and coffee houses were full of it. Poems were written, ballads sung and lurid caricatures scribbled. Some women became so panicky about walking the same streets as the Monster that they started wearing specially-fashioned copper petticoats. Those who couldn't afford armour contented themselves with cork-rumps (no, I'm not entirely sure what one of those is either) or even giant porridge pots placed over their posteriors - thankfully the fashion for massive skirts meant that the porridge pots probably didn't show much.

Monster Mania only began to take crazy proportions, however, when John Julius Angerstein took it upon himself to start collating all the evidence (despite the handful of John Fielding's Bow Street Runners, the police force was still a bumbling mixture of elderly beadles, useless night watchmen and part time constables, though apparently the Chelsea Pensioners weren't to be crossed...) and create a reward for the capture of the Monster.

The grand sum of one hundred pounds was offered for the capture of the monster, and Angerstein created a series of posters declaring the reward.

Suddenly everyone went berserk. People were accused left, right and centre and it only took someone to point a finger for a mob to form out of nowhere and attack some poor guy for no reason whatsoever.

This had the unfortunate side effect that pickpockets who had been caught by their quarry, merely shouted "Ooh - look! There's the Monster! Quick! He's getting away!" and the poor gent would be chased and beaten up by a crowd of mad people while the pickpocket got away with the loot.

It got to a point where some doughty fellows formed their own group called The No Monster Club and wore badges to prove they weren't the Big Bad, which of course worked really, really well and was completely unfakeable.

Angerstein did his own 'investigations,' which involved him interviewing each of the 'victims' (not all turned out to be - some lied or even cut themselves, for various sordid reasons, the most common being that the monster was only supposed to attack beautiful women, so being attacked by the Monster was a declaration that you were a gorgeous creature...) and making notes, much of which seemed to focus around how attractive he found each one.

His notes got more detailed the prettier the girl, but the annoying thing was that no real picture of the Monster appeared. He was tall, short, thin, fat, big-nosed, small-featured - in short, he could be anyone.

Eventually, just as Angerstein was creating his Monster Handbook, a guy was arrested, and charges (very probably) trumped up. Enough of the women agreed that artificial-flower maker Rhynwick Williams was their man to get him convicted. Despite his cast-iron alibis for several of the attacks and good character witness statements, in the eyes of the mob, he was the Monster.

Williams wasn't actually hanged, which was what I was fearing as I read Jan Bondeson's The London Monster - Terror on the Streets in 1790, (heartily recommended.) He was imprisoned, and people used to go to gawp at him in gaol - using the excuse that they were going to buy his fake flowers - and commented on how weedy and insignificant the Monster looked, unsurprising, since he probably wasn't the Monster.

Reading Bondeson's book, it occurs to me that the Monster was probably many-headed - that the hysteria provoked copycat attacks and there wasn't actually any one Monster but a whole bunch of weirdos who got their kicks from poking women with sharp objects. Angerstein says as much in the title of his pamphlet. The attacks lessened when Williams was banged up, but they didn't stop entirely.

For me this is as much the product of the times as one guy in particular. There was revolution and mass hysteria oing on in Europe; we had our own, almost Carry-On panic. And John Julius Angerstein, however well-intentioned, probably didn't really help matters with his posters, leaflets -and that massive reward...

Moulin a Paroles

Change is in the air. It's been coming for some time, but I first felt it for real in the grounds of the ORNC yesterday. As I passed by the building works and the remains of the Greenwich Comedy Festival (which, from the bits I went to, was great...) a little scurry of wind eddied and swirled a whole bunch of yellowing leaves from the trees.

I'd worn a t-shirt, and was rather wishing I'd taken a woolly with me. It was that moment that I realised that Autumn is wiggling her twiggy fingers at us and that it's just going to get cooler now. That's not necessarily a bad thing - just a change. Autumn has great stuff to look forward to.

I am going to get onto that in another post, but for now, a moment of deep embarrassment for me - but that also passed-by the Great British Public (save for Seamus, who reminded a red faced Phantom about it) but is creating a Bit Of A To-Do in Canada.

Yesterday marked the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Quebec - and that means it also marks the 250th anniversary of the death of Britain's greatest military hero (until Nelson came along and rained on his parade.)

We've talked about General Wolfe before (from which, if I paid any attention to my own archives, I would have known about planned celebrations...)

There's something a bit broken on the James Wolfe Society website, so I can't tell if they actually held a ceremony at St Alfeges and a wreath-laying at the statue. I really wish I'd been on the ball - I'd have gone. Did anyone here go?

But ultimately, let's face it - most us just didn't know about it. Even the fab photo was sent to my by Stephen some time ago and I've been waiting for the perfect moment. A great British hero - more or less forgotten.

Not so in Canada. Benedict tells me that there's still a whole load of controversy surrounding the Battle of Quebec across the Atlantic. I guess it's understandable - it was, after all, a time of toughing-up the French in French-speaking Quebec.

There was a massive 24 hour read-a-thon held on the Plains of Quebec on Saturday, according to CBC attended by thousands - but boycotted by many more.

During the Moulin a Paroles 140 texts were read out, relating to the history of Canada from 1759 to the present day. Trouble is, to the disgust of federalists, a text from 1970 was also included - the manifesto of the Front de Libération du Québec - who became notorious when they kidnapped a British diplomat - the manifesto was a statement of their demands.

While the Canadian government officials boycotted the event, the opposition said the boycott was ridiculous and that it was a part of Canadian history. The sort of spat you get all over the world over small but significant changes of attitude. The organisers were a bit shocked and admitted they'd been a bit naive. "We didn't expect this kind of controversy."

Benedict, still a relative newcomer to the 'Canadian' way of life, agrees. "I am surprised a little at how sensitive this all is still," he says. "But then I guess it changed the course of history."

I'm still feeling a bit embarrassed today though. I, of all Greenwichians, should have remembered James Wolfe's big day. I hereby apologise profusely and hang my tricorn in shame.

The Incredible Noakesoscope

Laydeez and Gentlemen. Pray silence for your Chairman as you witness the enlightening (Ooooh!) and elucidatory perambulations (Aaahhh!) of this great and mighty, megascopical (Wooooh!) invention! Cancatervate your praise, lend him your polyphloisboian applause and welcome the prestidigious creator of The Incredible Noakesoscope!

Early Hollywood had the great D.W.Griffiths. Here in Greenwich we had our own D.W. - one D.W.Noakes.

Straw Delivery Man by day, crazy inventor of nutty Victorian magic lantern shows by night...

Considering that he's part of the history of cinema, D.W. Noakes is virtually forgotten these days. I can't find any dates for him at all, but he was most active with his amazing Noakesoscope in the latter part of the 19th Century.
He became lanternist at the Albert Hall, and created his own slides for Dioramic Projection in various venues (The Diorama in Regents Park still exists as a building - it used to be an arts centre but I think it's closed or maybe turned into luxury flats by now.)

Noakes was quite a character. He owned Hay's Wharf at Greenwich, which, as might be guessed from its name, supplied hay for London omnibus horses.

But what he really loved to do was fiddle with stuff, to invent things, to build things, to mend things.

He loved illusions, and especially trick photography. There was already a fair amount of new-fangled photography equipment being created as the race to create the One Magic Lantern Show to Rule Them All gained momentum. That the incredible Noakesoscope would eventually turn out to be the Betamax of Victorian projection equipment does not in any way detract from Noakes's achievement.

He was definitely of the opinion that 'more is more.' According to the accounts I've read, his 'new and original Dioramic entertainment' wasn't much different in concept from other magic lanterns, more that he used a quadruple instead of a triple lantern, and added his own 'dissolver' that he called The Gem, which meant that he could play all four lanterns in any combination or order. Handsomely presented in a mahogany box, the Noakesocope featured all the newest innovations - limelight burners and a gas regulator. In fact, here it is

His screen was the IMAX of its day - massive in comparison to anything that had gone beforehand.

But inventing his own projector was only half of Noakes's vision. He had another idea that could, I guess, make a (frankly rather tenuous) argument to dub him the Father of the Documentary.

Up 'til this point, Magic Lantern shows had tended to be a miscellany of photos - whatever could be scrambled together, all bundled up in a big old mishmash of a variety show that could show a medical operation in one slide, followed by a dog in a hat in the next, followed by a picture of Margate. It was totally random. Noakes liked the idea of creating a themed picture show.

Back in Greenwich, he built his own steam launch, the Lizzie, and took her from London up to the Midlands, gathering priceless footage along the way.
The tantalisingly-titled England Bisected by a Steam Launch attracted a rapt audience of 1500 at the Crystal Palace in 1891. I understand the set of 300 slides still exists. I can only assume it's at the BFI.

Less romantically, he became the official photographer for the Thames Conservancy Board, responsible for photographing all the wrecks on the Thames - a frankly grisly job, but not as bad as that of Gaffer Hexham and his daughter Lizzie (surely Noakes didn't name his steam launch after her? Nah...) in Our Mutual Friend (a book I'm finding almost impossible to read) collecting all the human wrecks washed up on the river...

Noakes eventually became Mayor of Greenwich and a Local Character. He even earned the gratitude of the local working man by repairing a 6ft fracture in the hydraulic cylinder of the lift of the Greenwich Foot Tunnel that no one else had been able to fix.

Noakes's son Ernest, BTW, was quite a character in his own right. A leading light of the Magic Circle, Noakes Jnr. wrote the seminal Magical Originalities - A Chat on Practical Magic in 1914, explaining some of the secrets behind the contraptions he and his father built in their stage-magic properties workshop somewhere in Greenwich (sorry - no clue where.) If I had between £182 and £408 going spare, I'd buy a copy on Abebooks and tell you what was in it, but since I haven't, I'll just have to guess that most of it was done with mirrors, angled glass and a waft of smoke.

I notice that there was a special slideshow of Noakes-a-bilia at Hammersmith in 1961 - nearly fifty years ago. I reckon it's about time for another screening. Myself and the incomparable Julian Watson, in whose book In the Meantime I first discovered our own local cinematic genius, can't be the only two members of the D.W. Noakes Appreciation Society.

How about a glittering "Night of Noakes" at the Picturehouse..?

Stargazing

Holly asks:

"Do you know the names of any celebrities or public figures that were born/grew up or currently live in Greenwich?"

The Phantom replies:

I must start out with the caveat that I am probably the world's worst Phantom to ask about celebrities. One of my most common faux-pas is greeting 'old friends' in the street whilst being hissed at by whoever I'm with that I only know the 'pal' in question off the telly.

But back to celebrities. How low do you want to go? I have to say that one of the (many) reasons I love Greenwich is that it's so unfashionable amongst the sleb-culture that pervades the pages of Heat - random bimbos in long-lens bikini shots either shockingly "too thin" or "too fat" in alternate issues; bum-fluff-chinned teenage boys in bad hats being thrown out of nightclubs having committed acts of mild decadence as though it's the first time anyone's thought of being outrageous.

Oliver's is no Annabel's (or whatever the latest place to be is) - and long may it continue to be so. Our town attracts quirky individuals rather than desperate fame-seekers or z-list soap stars - and though we do have a lot of meedja-types, they're nearly all backstage, creative characters rather than Big-Brother wannabes or has-beens. The kind of producers, musicians, writers, animators, film makers and designers that Greenwich garners don't generally make it to the front pages of the neon-headlined glossies, and they usually have two names, rather than being just referred to as "Flossie" or "George" as though we should know who the bloody hell they are.

Sorry - you've stumbled upon a bit of a hobby horse of mine. I'll move back to your question.

Of course Greenwich used to be the epicentre of Celebrity - when kings and queens were the centre of the gossip pages. And at least the celebrities of olden tymes actually did something for their fame, even if it was only the dissolution of the monasteries.

Nowadays - well, now the 'big' names are fewer (as are are the talents you need to possess to become one) but I'll try to think of as many as possible; I'm sure that other people can add a few more to my paltry list.

Um, well - there's Jools Holland, of course. His very eccentric studio, a fake railway building complete with crenellations, statues, domes and what looks suspiciously like an entire Victorian street including pub, the Holland Arms, is next door to Westcombe Park Station. Sadly for us, he's only made the illusion work one-way, so our view is mainly breezeblocks and sloppy cement rather than the full-Portmeirion-monty.

I haven't read Jools's memoir yet, but it talks about another famous Greenwich-raised ex-resident, Daniel Day Lewis, who lived with his family, including his poet-laureate dad Cecil, at the foot of Crooms Hill, opposite the theatre. I understand Jools was considered a bit of an oik and was only invited round the once...

His other old Squeeze-mate, Glen Tilbrook, still lives round here, I understand - or if he doesn't, he's back often enough to make me believe he does. You can often find him jamming with Los Dawsons at Cattleyas in Charlton of a Sunday night.

I'm sure someone once told me a famous guitarist once lived behind the Gipsy Moth pub, but the brain's not working so well this morning, 'fraid. Also in the memory-not-so-clear-these-days section has to be the film maker who won(?) an Oscar who lives in East Greenwich. She may or may not have been an animator. Jeez, I don't know...

We have a lot of writers, but most tend to be mid-list, save for Blake Morrison and Gruffalo illustrator Axel Scheffler, both of whom I believe live in Blackheath. And of course, the one one and only Malcolm Hardee was a Grade A. Greenwich Individual until a couple of years ago.

The closest we get to daytime-TV-style 'celebrity' (apart, of course, from our own beloved - and seemingly omnipresent these days - Robert Gray) is Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen who used to live round here (I'm not sure if he still does.)

Blimey, this is doing my head in. I'm sure there are more - including sports stars, about whom I know absolutely nothing at all - but I guess the answer to your "do we have any famous residents" question, Holly is 'not really' - and Greenwich is generally the better off for it.

The Jolly Pauper

Thomas Creevey, 1768-1838

Had it not been for the efforts of several gentlemen who seriously feared what might be contained within it, the diary of Thomas Creevey might well have been as famous as that of Sam Pepys. Judging from his letters, which didn't get destroyed, it's likely that his journal would have been just as candid as Pepys's - and equally entertaining.

As it was, the very fact that Creevey left the diary in the possession of his mistress, (with whom he lived openly for four years before his death in 1838) and the knowledge that he was one of the most notorious gossips of the Regency period, made several good men sweat.

Lord Brougham was sweating most. 'Bruff' had done some really interesting stuff in his life - not least defending Queen Caroline at her trial, as well as 'discovering' Cannes and inventing the Brougham Carriage - but he'd also done other 'interesting' stuff.

While the Duke of Wellington just said "publish and be damned" to courtesan Harriet Wilson when she tried to blackmail him about their 'arrangement', Brougham coughed up the cash. He wasn't about to let another call-girl do the same thing. Creevey's pal, Charles Fulke-Greville couldn't help but snigger at the efforts of Brougham and other notables to suppress the diary, but it doesn't change the fact that Bruff was ultimately successful.

What survives is a bunch of correspondence that Brougham's gang didn't manage to snaffle.

There must be a whole slew of worthy titles that spend their days alternating between charity shops and people's bookshelves. I found a Penguin edition of Creevey's papers in a charity shop some years ago, with every intention of reading it 'some day.' It was only when clearing my shelves of all the books I'd bought at charity shops to read 'some day,' so that they could - well - go back to where they came from so someone else could buy them to read 'some day,' that I actually looked at it again and discovered a curious thing.

Phantom's Law dictates all interesting people end up in Greenwich at some point. Thomas Creevey did just that - end up here.

Creevey is immediately endearing - not least because he was a truly happy soul. He was a dreadful tittle-tattle - he couldn't help himself - but he meant well.

"...The Duke of York was so tipsy that he fell down and was blooded immediately, and whilst the Queen was delivering her warlike manifesto, the little Pss was making game and turning her back upon her. Poor Courtney has had a paralytic stroke and Nollekens the sculptor..."

After his wife died, the cash ran out. But because of his sunny nature, he was still accepted in Society, even if he didn't have two farthings to rub together.

Fulkes-Greville noted "old Creevey is a living proof that a man may be perfectly happy and exceedingly poor. I think he is the only man I know in Society who possesses nothing."


He refused to take the money left to his stepchildren (his wife had been married before) and instead led a nomadic life between friends and family. His step daughter is the one to thank for keeping the correspondence we have left - she and he were close to the end.

That's not to say there wasn't a mischievous streak in him. A glance at the nicknames he uses in his diaries for various worthies of the day provides some insight into his naughty-boy humour. Here are a few examples:

Comical Bob - The Duke of Marlborough

The Frog - William of Orange

Niffy-Naffy - Lord Darlington

Prinny and Mrs P - Prince Regent and Princess Caroline

Squire Stiffrump - C. Western

Widow's Mite - Lord Russell

And Brougham himself? Alternately Wickedshifts and Beelzebub.

Creevey was a Whig, a political advisor to various politicians of the day, but frankly, that's not what he's known for. Much like Pepys, he was a relatively minor character in a time of world events - but with an excellent front seat view of things such as the death of Nelson, Princess Caroline's scandalous life, the amours of Lord Byron and the ascent to the throne of 'Viccy.'

Although much of his correspondence tends to be more interesting to political historians as he discusses issues of the day, he was also just one of those guys that just happened to be around when the day's celebrities were doing outrageous things, and he just couldn't help telling the world about it.

In 1834, Creevey finally found some stability when he was offered the job of Commissioner of Greenwich Hospital, with a salary of £600 per year and a nice house - I don't know where that would have been. The next year his sister's death ensured his income almost doubled and he decided to find himself a mistress "from the nocturnal pavement."

Some people couldn't be seen to be socialising with Creevey once he'd done such a socially unacceptable thing as finding himself a nice Greenwich hooker, but Emma Murray, in a wonderfully anti-stereotypical fashion, doesn't seem to have latched onto an old man for his cash. She was liked by his step daughters and when he died (in 1838, in Greenwich, from a chill after staying out too late gossiping with Admiral Hardy's daughters) and she was made sole executrix of his will, she took advice on what to do with the diaries, believed to contain 'revelations,' rather than immediately flogging them off to the highest bidder. The diaries did get destroyed - but it doesn't seem to have been because of any gold-digging on Emma's part.

"Old Creevey" loved Greenwich "Oh - that you could have seen the beauty of Greenwich Park and everything about it yesterday," he wrote in 1835. And of the town itself "I have the best victuals London can afford of all kinds within ten yards of me." He never gave up trying to get his mates over to visit him - "you know as well as I do that my apartments are yours" - though he does admit "I am afraid you will find Greenwich at this season a very inconvenient distance from your dentist."

His body, as far as I know, still rests in the grounds of Davenport House. Certainly he is listed on the large monument erected when many of the bodies were exhumed for moving to East Greenwich Pleasaunce. But for a true memorial of the man, try his papers. They don't appear to be in print just now, but they turn up in charity and secondhand shops on a regular basis. Hell - you might even end up with my old copy...

Bye, Bye Benedict

Today, if memory serves, is the day we have to say 'so long' to one of the Phantom's longest-running commenters, contributors and photographers, Benedict. Over the very-nearly three years I've been blogging, Benedict has been making suggestions and comments, wading in to the discussions and, above all, sending some fantastic pictures to me (hell - I'm pretty sure he was even with me when I was at LiveJournal...)

He and Mrs Benedict are off to Canada for a new life and although I'm sure he'll be visiting occasionally - that's what Cyberworlds are for - I'm not expecting quite so many chirpy comments and emails from him from now on.



So today, I thought I'd show you a random selection of Greenwich pics that Benedict's sent me over the years and I haven't thus far had the opportunity to use.




The one above is in Greenwich Park, in the Pinetum at the top, he can't tell if it's a Chinese Handkerchief tree or something else, but it does remind me of the one I saw full decorated for Christmas last year...

Below is a fine example of Modern Art on the Peninsula...

I could never find a reason to use this pic (though strangely, I may have in the next day or so...) but the lighting was so great I have to include it here:

The fabulous almshouses in South Street:



And an example of his great eye for the absurd - the Junk Shop becomes a cake shop for no special reason:

I still have a few Benedict-pics, that I'm saving for other days, but for now,

Bye, bye - and good luck, Benedict. Don't be a stranger now...

The Witch, The Bucket And The Very Naughty Boy

"I'm sorry I'm late mummy but I found two greyhounds in the woods and when they didn't chase a hare I tied them to a bush and I beat them and then they turned into a woman and a boy and the woman put a bridle in the boy's mouth and then he turned into a horse and they made me go to the forest and watch witches dancing and then they ate my homework."

In 1634 no one had actually caught onto ye olde shaggy-dog-tale wheeze from small boys trying to get out of chores. When young Edmund Robinson came up with this howler for bringing the cows in late, it seemed perfectly reasonable. It was far more likely that sixty Lancastrian women had made pacts with the Devil than a small boy would ever tell a porky pie to cover up a simple mistake.

When witches were uncovered in the 17th Century, they seldom fell alone. In a matter of weeks it was the talk of the entire nation. Sir William Pelham wrote to his pal Viscount Conway:

"The greatest news from the country is of a huge pack of witches which are lately discovered in Lancashire whereof nineteen are condemned and that there are at least sixty already discovered and yet daily there are more revealed."

Once rumour got a hold, it went berserk. "It is suspected," he continued, "that they had a hand in raising the great storm wherein His Majesty was in such danger in Scotland. "

It didn't help that at least one of the women was quite happy to admit she was a witch - and rather proud of the fact. Margaret Johnson had been given a hard time by her neighbours and when she men a man in black on the highway, offering to swap her soul for her heart's desire, it seemed like a good trade.

According to my old mate the Reverend L'Strange, the stranger "called himself Mamilion and generally 'took liberties' with her." After a while, he took to appearing in the form of common domestic animals and sucked her blood. She was adamant she'd never hurt anyone.

Everyone else denied the charges. The finger-pointers clutched at straws - one guy accused poor Mary Spenser of having a bucket as a familiar, which would run after her.

I can just hear the frustration in her voice as she patiently explained that sometimes when going for water, she'd amuse herself by rolling the pail down the hill and running beside it.

But it was no good. Once the rumours took hold, no one was safe.

So what has this all got to do with Greenwich?

We tend to forget that in Charles I's time, the town was still an important administrative centre. The 'witches,' who had by this time dwindled to four (presumably not even Seventeenth Century country bigots bought the bucket-story...) were brought to London for trial, and put up in the Ship Hotel by the river.

There have been several Ship Hotels in Greenwich, mainly famous for serving Whitebait to Tories (or maybe Whigs, I can never remember which way round it was...) The last one was bombed to buggery in WWII. I'll get onto the Ship and its various guises some other day.

After staying at the tavern, the 'witches' were thoroughly examined by seven surgeons and ten certificated midwives, under the supervision of William Harvey (yeah, the same guy who discovered the blood-circulation thing...)

This Seventeenth Century medical and scientific elite was unimpressed with the yokels who'd sent these poor women all the way to London and, between them found nothing unnatural at all about them.

To Margaret Johnson's presumed annoyance, the best evidence of the Devil they found on her was a couple of 'teat-like marks' - which they dismissed as being pretty normal, really.

At which point young Edmund Robinson was dragged forward by the ear, and, kicking his heels, he admitted he'd made the whole thing up. History doesn't tell us what happened to the little tyke (or, indeed, the innocent women) but I'm guessing the Naughty Step was occupied for some time...

Trudge-A-Thon

All day tomorrow, this year's slowest marathon 'runner' will be making his way through Greenwich.

There are some people for whom being told they will never walk again is just a red rag to the proverbial. Phil Packer lost the use of his legs when he was injured by a rocket attack in Basra last February, which only made him determined to do the marathon this year.

He's going at a rate of two miles per day - the most his crutches will allow, and today he's 'enjoying' the rather damp hospitality of the Woolwich and Charlton roads.

He begins his long trudge through Greenwich, from the five mile mark around the A102m flyover, past the six mile marker outside Theatre of Wine and onto the seven mile stop at Deptford tomorrow, collecting for Headley Court Rehabilitation Centre.

If you see him, say hello - he can do with all the support he can get...

Allegro Tractorato

Rod has kindly forwarded a priceless jazz gem courtesy of Greenwich Treasure, Billy Jenkins. This appears to be the first outing of the Tractor Quartet, but the drummer's timekeeping has a consistency of which many bands can only dream.

Sadly you will probably not be hearing it exactly as I did - with the addition of a fifth band member - a percussionist in the form of a smoke alarm whose batteries are running down, punctuating the stops rather perfectly.

Lloyd Scott

Blimey - is it Marathon Time already?

I actually don't mind being hemmed in for a few hours once a year. For some reason it doesn't annoy me like that bloomin' Run To The Beat thing last year which cut large swathes of us off completely for hours with virtually no warning. (I confess that much of my anger may have been down to the fact that I had some visitors who'd been hanging around just that leeeetle bit too long and I couldn't get rid of them, but it still bugged the hell out of me, whereas the marathon just doesn't, somehow...)

So, if the weather's nice it's always fun to make a bit of a party out of it, watching it on TV until it gets to, say the Woolwich Ferry, then making a nice cup of tea and wandering up to cheer the people in the stupidest costumes.

And of course, the King of Mad Outfits is the one and only Lloyd Scott.

You know the guy - he's the one who wore the deep sea diving costume a few years ago. He was refused a finishers' medal, because he took too long, but he got the last laugh - last I saw his 'costume' was in the NMM, with its own little plaque. Since then he's devoted his life to raising cash for charity and he prides himself in creating a new daft get-up every year.

So - if you recall, he's been St George (complete with Dragon, natch, though maybe, after yesterday's post, if he repeats that one, he should carry a spare leg with him...) a space man, the Iron Giant - all sorts. My own personal favourite was Indiana Jones And HisPet Rock.

Thing is, it's easy to miss him, as his costumes usually mean he's going at a snail's pace. So I actually got myself together this year and emailed him nice and early to get some kind of timing for when he'll be trudging through Greenwich this year.

He's had a few problems with his costume this year - it was extremely elaborate - but far too slow - even for him, so he's had to completely rebuild with only a short time to go.

But he finally got round to mailing me yesterday - he and the pals he's running with this year have done some trials - and he's now going to be faster than usual this year.

He says "I reckon we will move at 3mph, so if you were at 6 miles, giving us 15 minutes to cross the line, we should be in the area at about noon."

So there you have it, folks. Let's get out and give the guy a cheer - and some money. He's collecting for The Children's Trust - you can donate here.

I was discussing with an American friend yesterday the concept that Britain really does seem to be the only country that doesn't quite take the whole marathon business particularly seriously. Everywhere else you seem to have to be a 'proper' runner and complete time trials to get your place. Here, although there are serious runners (and another pal of mine is one of them - scarily serious...) anyone can give it a go if they can wangle themselves a place.

Not that you'll ever catch me doing it. Even the guys in the silly outfits have made some sort of effort at fitness. So anyone you see running in a cloak, boots and tricorn ensemble is a dastardly Phantom impostor...

Greenwich's Very Own Nazi

A local nazi for local people, probably the best you could say of Sir Barry Domvile is that he was a bit of a character. We've met him before, if you recall, in the week of June 1933, during The One Am-Dram To Rule Them All, the Greenwich Night Pageant, the perky romp through Greenwich history that was pretty much his baby.

Once you know what happened in the years following his presidency of the Royal Naval College, some of the visions we saw during that heady week, which seemed so cute at the time, start to look - well - a bit dodgy, actually.

He started out conventionally enough. The son of an admiral, it was hardly unusual for Domvile to seek a career in the navy himself. He worked his way up the ranks, and distinguished himself during the first World War, becoming commander of a battleship.

By 1927, he was director of British Naval Intelligence, before becoming president of the Royal Naval College in Greenwich in 1932.

Before we go on to find out what happened next, let's just take another peek at that pageant. Alongside all those jolly pics we saw of grannies stitching costumes for tinies to wear in crowd scenes, and the lady Mayoress as Nelson's chief mourner, photos like the one below start to take on - well, perhaps a slightly different hue...

Domvile visited Germany in 1935 and, on being repeatedly turned down for promotion, finally retired from the British navy in 1936 to begin an altogether different career, starting with an invitation to attend the Nuremberg Rally of 1936 as the special guest of the German Ambassador. I understand he hooked up with Himmler and, while he was there, was treated to a tour of Dachau concentration camp.

On his return, he co-founded the fascist organisation The Link, and became more and more deeply embroiled in anti Semitic /pro-nazi propaganda, writing the journal The Anglo German Review. As he became more and more extreme, he presented the world with a truly crackpot conspiracy theory 'Judmas' - a dastardly plot he'd dreamed up between Jews and Freemasons.

But MI5 was on to him. His last trip was to Salzburg in 1939, and on his return, he was jailed under wartime defence regulations. He spent the WWII in gaol, where his views became ever more bonkers. He wrote his memoir From Admiral to Cabin Boy (the 'cabin' being his Brixton cell) whilst incarcerated, though, for perhaps obvious reasons, it wasn't published until later. I understand the volume now changes hands for shovelfuls of cash on the internet.

Domvile died in 1971 - but what happened to him between the end of the war and then is a bit of a mystery to me. No one seems to mention him after that at all - let alone Greenwich Hospital's own book A Royal Foundation 1692 - 1983, which, unless I've missed that bit, discreetly draws a veil over the whole affair, though apparently Domvile's prolific journals are held by the National Maritime Museum.

Of course there's always someone on the internet to whom one can refer for a nice nutty viewpoint on practically any subject, so in the interests of freedom of speech, I refer you to this page, from Spearhead, which describes Domvile as a "neglected prophet."

Paperboy

Christopher Fowler, Doubleday, £16.99

Remember not so long ago when we were discussing the groovy plans drawn up by the GLC for the Blackwall Tunnel Southern Approach in the early seventies? Those full-of-optimism brown and orange hopes and dreams, with little cardboard models and artists impressions of what it was all going to be like?

Dazza wondered at the time if there were any protests or petitions from the people being hoiked out of their homes to make way for Progress.

Apparently not. It would seem that the residents looked at the grand new plans with puzzlement before meekly saying "Oh, okay. I'll be on me way then..."

I can now reveal that the protests amounted to one small boy running away from his family's dodgy new location in Abbey Wood, arriving at his old house in Westerdale Road just in time to see the wrecking ball in full swing. That small boy was Christopher Fowler...

I bought Fowler's (of the Bryant & May mysteries) memoir Paperboy last Friday. By Saturday evening I'd gobbled up the lot. In an age where everyone can be a TV star, a micro-celebrity or a self-published writer(ahem) it's great to sit back and enjoy an autobiography written by a professional.

Even if it hadn't been about the 'wrong' end of Greenwich, for which I have a particular soft spot, or about a white collar working class world that I recognise only too painfully (Fowler may be writing about the sixties - but this stuff was going on well into the seventies and even eighties. Hell - I bet it still goes on in pockets all over Britain...) and even if it hadn't discussed my favourite kids' TV shows and games (though I disagree with him over Noggin the Nog - that prog rocked...) I would have still enjoyed Paperboy for its sheer joy of narrative, fun with words - and sarky footnotes.

As it is, it's a tender, unsentimental part of Greenwich's history that's never going to make it to the Pepys Centre or into most conventional history books, but which is just as real as any tale I'll happily recount for the nth time about Sir Walter Raleigh and Queen Elizabeth I. The characters of Christopher Fowler's childhood might be working class, but stereotypes they're not. They're real people - which makes a fair few of them all the scarier.

Fowler himself, a speccy, bookworm of a child, was as much of a puzzle to his parents as they were to him. As is customary in such tales, true understanding came all too late. To avoid the fights and arguments, he hid himself in East Greenwich Library, immersed in whatever reading matter came to hand until one day when - well, I'll let him tell you about that.

This is a book intended for a market beyond Greenwich, unlike most local memoirs, which although often sweet - and, of course, important documents in their own right, can tend towards the "After blacking the fireplace, we always used to go down the Co-op of a Friday, before we sat in the sixpenny stalls at the Regal. That was how it was done in those days...." method of storytelling. Therefore, when Fowler does move onto the cinema (of which there were a fair few in Greenwich) his concern is more with entertaining the reader and building a picture of childhood than namechecking as many locations as possible. He no longer lives around here - and hasn't for many years.

Nevertheless, this is still a local book - to be cherished by local people. Don't be put off by the lukewarm quote by Joanne Harris on the front cover (was that really the best he could get?) I recommend it with all my spectral heart. It's funny and touching - and beautifully written.

Taking a quick break from my almost one-sitting Paperboy readathon, (and in the same trip that I visited Lauren's bench) I took a little pilgrimage over to what's left of Westerdale Road (see top) on Saturday, as well as the hallowed - if a bit battered - East Greenwich library, which, despite the best efforts of several generations of town planners, still stands (just about.)

I daresay that the young Christopher Fowler would have gobbled up the meagre selection of kiddie-fare and large-print romances purveyed there, but the poor old place has really seen better days. Reading Paperboy, I just struggle to work out when those better days actually were...

The Littlest Australian

Wasn't it incredible on Saturday? It seemed the entire universe had descended on Greenwich Park as the first decent day of the year saw almost as many people enjoying the slightly freaky weather as did a few weeks ago in the snow.

But it was an email I received during the snowiest snow for 18 years that took me into the park this weekend.

The day after the snow, I was slightly puzzled (but rather flattered) to recieve a truly international postbag - from Greenwichians-at-heart around the world who'd logged on to get pictures of their favourite town in the snow. The furthest two (within an hour or so of each other) came from either side of Australia - which was receiving its own share of freak weather conditions, albeit at the other end of the scale.

It's always great to hear from people around the world - especially the ones who have great stories to tell, but one in particular really touched my heart. James and Kay, who now live in Canberra, told me to look out for a special bench in Greenwich Park, along Lovers' Walk. It is a memorial to their baby daughter Lauren...

I decided that Lauren deserved more than the cold, grey weather we've been having, so when I went to look for it, it would be on the first day of Spring - or at least the first promise of the season.

So I worked my way up Lovers' Walk in Saturday's sunshine, looking, I guess, rather dodgy, peering at the little plaques on the benches in between the people who were actually sitting on them. I missed it at first - a man and his large dog were enjoying its dappled sun - but when I did find it, I was rather surprised to find that I'd actually photographed it before - in the snow two years ago:

It's on the left, set a little back from the path - and a lovely spot to sit in the spring sunshine and think of the "Littlest Australian."

Don't Save It Too Long

Since tomorrow is the most romantic day of the year (at least for Hallmark...) I thought I'd tell you a cautionary Greenwich tale of unrequieted love.

Did you know that General James Wolfe was ginger? No, nor did I. It's amazing the snippets you find when delving far too deep on a really shallow level. It sounds as though it was that really sexy Damian Lewis ginger, too, as he was described as having an ardour that flamed like his hair. Blimey.

He was also 6'2" - which in the 18th Century was approaching giant proportions - and with strong features. He was only let down by a chin weaker than the beer being served up at Greenwich Hospital. (I have a friend who has a beautifully-cultivated goatee beard to hide such a chin. It works rather well...)

Even the kindest pictures have to show that chin, though there seem to have been more-than-necessary profile portraits done of him.

Still, if you were careful to only look at him from the front, he was, by all accounts, a bit of a catch, especially when you add all that derring-do heroism to the mix. And he wasn't short of cash, either. His parents were pretty well off - they lived in McCartney House, which still backs onto the park up among all the Greenwich toffs.

Next door, lived the charming Elizabeth Lawson, niece of General Sir John Mordaunt. She was sweet-tempered, sensible and polite, just the kind of simpering attributes that would make me heave, but Georgian men found captivating. Young James, who was back home recuperating after getting wounded at Lauffeldt in 1747, was smitten.



Happily, Lizzy did have one flaw. Sadly, that flaw seems to have been coquette-ishness. Suitors flocked around like seagulls, and she toyed with them all. She'd already turned down the proposals of a clergyman who had £1300 a year, and was currently enjoying the attentions of ' a very rich knight.' Luckily for Wolfe, the knight's wealth wasn't matched by his mental health.

Wolfe did a little sniffing around, and found that the object of his affections carried a dowry of £12,000 - which, though considerable, wasn't huge bucks. His mum and dad were against the idea - they wanted him to marry a Miss Hoskins of Croydon with a much-more-like-it thirty grand.

Still, it was good enough for James - they could live on Love, couldn't they? (the twelve grand would come in handy) but he couldn't immediately propose, because by now he was stuck in Scotland. He worried that out-of-sight might become out-of-mind "Young flames must be constantly fed or they'll evaporate," he wrote to his best mate.

I guess it would have been best if his ardour had dampened. It would have saved him the misery of being turned down.

It's hardly surprising that in his disappointment he started thinking that maybe thirty thousand wasn't so bad after all. But poor old James Wolfe may have been lucky in War, but he was most definitely unlucky in Love. That one didn't happen either.

In 1750, Mum 'accidentally' let it slip in a letter that Elizabeth Lawson was to marry, just as soon as she got better from an illness. Wolfe, who had thought he was over her, realised he wasn't. He was furious with the way he'd found out. "I don't think you believe she ever touched me at all," he wrote, in a right tizz.

We've all been there. And I guess a lot of us have done exactly what poor old James did next. He had what we might now call a lost long-weekend...

"I went to London in November and came back in the middle of April," he confessed to his pal. "In that short time I committed more imprudent acts than in all my life before. I lived the idlest dissolute abandoned manner that could be conceived."

Heavens.

There's been all sorts of speculation over what exactly Wolfe got up to in those months, given the manifold delights available to a wealthy young man disappointed in love in 18thC London. It's been suggested he got himself into a homosexual relationship - and it's possible, though it's just as likely he got himself a copy of Harris's List, and worked his way around the bawdy houses of Covent Garden, or gambled and drank his way around Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens.

You know what? I think I'll move on quickly...

He woke up with one hell of a hangover in April and went back to war, taking himself to ever higher and higher celebrity as a hotheaded General.

George II heard of his crazy behaviour on the battlefield and exclaimed "Mad, is he? Then I wish he would bite some of my other generals." But for all his bravery, Wolfe just couldn't get Elizabeth out of his mind. For ages afterwards he "could not hear her name mentioned without a twitch or hardly ever think of her with indifference."

In between battles, he went to stay with Sir Mordaunt at his country pile in Hampshire, and was completely put off his stroke by a portrait of Elizabeth hanging there.

*

There's a poem, Brave Wolfe, written about an unknown man, later adapted to mark the victory (and death) of Wolfe at Quebec. One verse reads:

I went to see my love only to woo her
I went to gain her lover not to undo her
Whene'eve I spoke a word my tongue did quiver
I could not speak my mind while I was with her.

The odd thing about this, is that it's not written about Elizabeth Lawson. There are no names mentioned, but this is actually about what I can only assume is what would have been a rebound marriage - had it ever taken place.

Katherine Lowther's father was a former governor of Barbados and her brother, Sir James Lowther, was worth a few bob. They fell in love very quickly. And hey. Why not? She was beautiful and rich. He was a national hero. Besides, Elizabeth had been stringing him along for years (despite all the engaments and wooing, she still wasn't wed...)

Wolfe spent the last couple of months before Quebec charging around seeing Katherine and getting his army ready for war. We all know what happened next.

Wolfe died in 1759.

So did Elizabeth Lawson.

Neither ever married anyone.

In the words of the immortal Julia Lee, Don't Save It Too Long, girls...

Whitworth Street

JB asked me

"Any idea after whom, or what, Whitworth St is named (or how to find out?)"

The Phantom wrangled with this one for some time, before JB very kindly answered his/her own question. I thought I'd pass this on for anyone who's ever wondered about it - but I can't claim any laurels for research on this one...

I vaguely remembered that Whitworth Street is part of the East Greenwich Estate, built by Morden College between 1842-69 (designed by George Smith, BTW, who was responsible for much of Victorian Greenwich). All you need to do is look at those tell-tale plaques on the sides of the houses in the area

Many of the streets in the nearby Pelton Estate are named for mining towns - I'm pretty sure it was built on mining money (hence the Pelton Arms having the picture of a colliery on the pub sign) but I've been unable to get hold of a copy of The development of an Early Victorian Artisan Estate in East Greenwich by Michael Kerney (which is in Transactions of the Greenwich and Lewisham Antiquarian Society Vol IX, No. 6 1984, if you have access to it...) which would, I'm sure reveal all.

Sadly the only book I have on Morden College's history is far more concerned with individuals than what it actually stood for and did, and I was definitely skating on thin ice.

I did find a contender. Sir Joseph Whitworth, an engineer famed for standardising screw threads (well - someone had to do it...) - an idea that was taken up by the rapidly expanding railways. Also for the 'Whitworth Rifle' - which, apparently, was superior to the Enfield and was about the right period, but didn't seem to have any connection. He was from Manchester...

It's a very good job that JB got back to me at that point, after having done some sleuthing. Sir Joe was Right Out, proving that the Phantom can be utter rubbish at times. I hand over to JB and bow to his/her infinite wisdom...

"It transpires that Whitworth Colliery, later Whitworth Park Colliery, was just 16 miles from Pelton. The old colliery was exhausted in 1882, just about as Whitworth St was being built, I should think. However, Whitworth Park Colliery was still going as recently as the Seventies."

Hooray for people who Ask The Phantom and then answer the questions by themselves, letting me in on the answer in the process...

Naming new roads and developments, BTW, isn't as easy as it sounds. I have a friend whose job (not in this borough, I'm happy to say) includes naming new developments. I thought it was a brilliant perk, but she soon put me right. The red-tape is scary in the extreme.

She recently had to name all the apartment blocks created from an old mental asylum. It didn't seem to matter how innocuous the name was that she tried, someone at the council always managed to find some dodgy PC reason why it sounded like she was being offensive to people with mental health problems.

Her solution? She asked if there were any councillors that might merit commemoration in the new blocks.

She never had any problems again...

The Untalented Mr Ripley

1682-1758

It was Donovan who directed me (some time ago, now, ahem) to one of Greenwich's unsung heroes, a curious character who seems to have been an odd combination of civil-servant pedantry and puppyish enthusiasm, but who I reckon I would have liked to know.

Thomas Ripley (no - not that one...) was a carpenter and former coffee-house owner who rose to the heady position of Comptroller of the King's Works, but that didn't stop him being (in fact it may have been the reason for his being) mercilessly ribbed by the great artists and architects of his day.

Sir John Vanbrugh merely sniggered at him behind his back, but Alexander Pope launched a full-on public humiliation programme. He never missed an opportunity to refer to Ripley in one or other of his tedious odes - here's an example from the dazzlingly-titled Epistle IV To Richard Boyle, Earl of Burlington:

Heav'n visits with a taste the wealthy fool,
And needs no rod but Ripley with a rule.

Thank me now for not including all 204 lines from this sizzler. I sometimes wonder why Pope's so revered. I certainly don't think he was so highly-qualified in the talent department that he could afford to lay into poor old Thomas Ripley - but talent doesn't really come into this tale.

Because this is a a classic case of snobbery. Okay, Ripley's buildings aren't the stuff of genius. Okay, his work can be a bit on the clumpy side - for one whose big hero was Andrea Palladio, his proportions were all over the shop. Okay, he was never going to eclipse the architectural firmament of the day - Jones, Wren, Hook - or, for that matter, even Vanbrugh himself, but he was solid and diligent and he got things done.

Ripley was never allowed to forget where he came from - and he often did himself no favours in the social-mountaineering department - or not at first glance, anyway. His first wife was a servant, which caused no end of hilarity. She just happened to be, however, a servant in Robert Walpole's household.

And, hand-on-heart, he was a tad shameless when it came to holding onto Walpole's frock coat tails as he rose to become England's first Prime Minister. Walpole (who wasn't renowned for immaculate taste, bless him) liked Ripley's work and after getting him to rework a couple of his own gaffs, started to get him onto public buildings.

They weren't architectural triumphs. He got things wrong all over the place. Mainly the proportions, though there were also a few anachronisms and it all ended up looking slightly old-fashioned. Quite a few of his buildings have been tarted up over the years to hide his mistakes.

And he started to get a bit jumped-up, which also didn't help his image among the great architects of the day. Sir John Vanbrugh (who wasn't at all jealous of Ripley's influence with Walpole, no...) saw that Ripley had started signing himself 'Esquire' and laughed so much "that I had to beshit myself."

But Ripley did improve. In fact he tried a couple of things which worked rather well - incorporating decorations usually found on the exterior inside houses, for example. Think Madonna, in the satin pointy-bra phase...

But he just couldn't shake that image of his. Pope made him a model for his interminable poem about 'dulness' (I'm not mentioning anything about pots and kettles here) and never failed to point out Ripley's humble origins. Here's another howler:

See under Ripley rise a new Whitehall
While Jones' and Boyles' united labours fall.

So - where does Greenwich come in? Well, as Comptroller of the King's Works, it was Ripley who saw the Chapel and the Queen's Block of Greenwich Hospital finished. Because however unexciting he may or may not have been as an architect (and I for one am now going to seek out some of his stuff to find out just how bad he really was...) what he was good at was being a Site Manager.

The hospital was finished by Thomas Ripley, and, thanks to him, was fit for purpose. He actually gave a damn about the project. He even paid Hawksmoor out of his own pocket when cash got tight. And I think that's worth something. We can't all be geniuses. We need foot soldiers too.

And, I note, he had the last laugh. His second wife was an heiress who brought him £40,000 - and he was one of the only people who actually made money on the South Sea Bubble.

Or maybe the last laugh. It would seem History is never going to be kind to Tom Ripley. According to Wikipedia, which is never wrong, the poor sod "is commemorated by a plague at the Guildhall, London." Even on the worldwide web, dignity evades him...

Greenwich Geese

While reading about cut-purses, highwaymen and general cozenry around Greenwich, I discovered that, far from being the angelic old gentlemen that was the popular image of the Greenwich Pensioners, many of the descriptions of wanted men in the 17th and 18th centuries included desperadoes who'd scarpered with "a suit of blue clothes, one hat, a pair of shoes, three pairs of stockings, a shirt marked G.R., a stock, cup, spoon, and towel."

They acquired their nickname 'Greenwich Geese' from a tale of light-fingeredness told by a disgruntled local farmer whose flocks kept going missing. He woke up one night to hear a cacophony of cackling from his barnyard and on peering out of the window, saw no geese at all - but he did see a bunch of rapidly-disappearing elderly gentlemen in blue outfits making a quick getaway in a boat. (Given that virtually every picture I ever see of Greenwich Pensioners seems to involve at least one wooden leg, I can't help feeling there's a sitcom in there somewhere.)

"There, go my geese, there go my geese!" he shouted - and the name stuck. History does not tell us whether he ever got his birds back or whether they went to supplement what was, admittedly, a pretty rubbish diet.

Looking at how the pensioners lived from day to day, it's sort of understandable, even if not exactly condonable, that they'd take to a spot of farmyard-breaking. I was reading The Pictorial Guide to Greenwich from 1844 recently (mostly fascinating for its less-than-appreciative remarks about Thornhill's murals in the Painted Hall..."uninteresting"..."want of taste"..."extremely ludicrous...") which has descriptions (and the engraving above) of the living quarters - which, it would seem, tourists could just wander around at will.

"It has a rather sombre look; and despite the cleanly neatness of the sleeping places, which are something between ship's cabins and civilised bedchambers, the thought will force itself upon us, that the old men, after their lives of stirring danger, must find this place dull. "

It goes on to describe the different ways that each cabin's effort towards personalisation - one "gay in coloured prints," others had sheaves of naval songs, models of ships, books or carvings, which had "occupied the leisure of seven long years of an old pensioner who thus whiled away the tedium..."

It's exactly the excuses we hear for crime purveyed by Youf Of Today, isn't it, only this is Senile Delinquency. Nothing to do, nowhere to go. Presumably providing table tennis bats and once-a-month discos wouldn't have cut it for them, either. In fact when I think of all the almshouses, with their frequently-ignored rules, the hospital with its Geese and the highwaymen of the heath, I begin to think that we've got it soft these days...

I should perhaps point out Greenwich Geese have nothing to do with Winchester Geese despite the two existing around the same time as each other and being just a few miles apart. At least, I assume they didn't have anything to do with each other. Given the tales of drunkenness and half-inchery, I'm beginning to wonder...

Remembrance

Stephen's sent me some truly moving photos for Remembrance Sunday. There's always something profoundly sad about seeing rows and rows of graves of young men but it's when one stops looking at the whole, and begins to see the individuals behind the sea of white stones that they are most powerful.

Stephen says, "Gunner Pierce from Canada probably never met Private Hammond from New Zealand, but for over ninety years now they've been neighbours in a quiet corner of the London Borough of Greenwich."

We know practically nothing about these two young soldiers - save that they died within a couple of months of each other in 1916. Where or how, who knows - but I'll wager it wasn't a pleasant death.

Stephen points out "The very least they could have asked was that they'd not be forgotten," so here, today, let us say their names out loud, honour and remember them alongside the thousands of others, not just in the Commonwealth section of Greenwich Cemetery but scattered across the world. Individuals, each of them.

Like Private J D Thistle who fell on 3rd July 1916 aged just seventeen.

I wish I could say we'd learnt from the past. But today of all days, we must not forget.

Greenwich's Phileas Fogg

I am currently reading a new book about Ruth Belville, the Greenwich Time Lady we talked about last year - review to follow as soon as I've finished it, but once again I'm entertained by the way that everything in Greenwich history seems to intertwine. Stories don't just stand alone, they work with (and against) others, characters in one tale knew characters in a totally different one.

It must be great to live in a house with a blue plaque, and I'm really rather jealous of number 20, Dartmouth Hill who have a splendid one, and clearly, when Benedict took this picture, felt they needed to bring the rest of the house up to the standard of the plaque - which explains the scaffolding.

James Glaisher FRS (1809 - 1903) was a meteorologist who worked up at the Observatory for much of his life, with coming up with ways to measure humidity and co-founding the Meteorological Society all in a day's work. But what he's best known for is his Great Balloon Ascent in 1862, where he flew higher than anyone had ever flown, conducted animal experiments which may or may not upset you, depending on your attitude to pigeons - and fainted before he could do his final measurement that would prove he actually went up seven miles.

Balloons had been around for just under 100 years - and not just as scientific experimental equipment, but for fun, too. The Prince Regent wrote a general letter for Edward Hawke Locker, a commissioner of Greenwich Hospital (and, incidentally, the guy who turned the Painted Hall into an art gallery) for a balloon flight he took in 1805, which requested that they were 'well-entertained' by the local toffs wherever they landed.

But back to Glaisher, who was very serious about this particular flight. He and his mate Henry Coxwell travelled up to Wolverhampton to get the best wind. They got more than they bargained for and at first they thought they might not go up. But as soon as they did, Glaisher busied himself with taking measurements and conducting experiments.

They'd brought a basket of six pigeons up, and he chucked the first one out of the basket at three miles high. It staggered about a bit, then "endeavoured to fly." A second, released at four miles, flew vigorously." The next one, between four and five "dropped like a stone."

In the meanwhile, Glaisher was having a few problems of his own. At first he couldn't read his instruments properly, next he noticed that "I seemed to have no limbs." His head fell onto his shoulder and he couldn't make any of his body work. As he slipped into unconsciousness, he started to hallucinate, although, ever the scientist, he was trying to make observations about his condition. "The perfect stillness and silence of the regions six miles from the earth...is such that no sound reaches the ear."

By calculations they did later, they almost certainly reached seven miles, but by this time the pair of them were out of their heads - and bodies. Hoar frost had formed all over the balloon and they were beginning to get frost bite. They decided they'd probably had enough Science for one day.

They released another pigeon between four and five miles. This one flew in a circle, looked down, came to the sensible conclusion that it was a very long way down and hitched a ride on the top of the balloon. They didn't bother with the other two. One was dead on landing; the other very dazed. When it came-to, it flew back to its loft in Wolverhampton as fast as its wings could take it, set up with seed-party conversation for life.

There's a great account of the whole affair in the New York Times of the trip, and what I love about it is that Glaisher doesn't try to brazen-out the fact that he passed out, but deals with it in the same detached manner as the rest of the experiment.

It certainly didn't put him off trying again. He and Coxwell made numerous ascents, and founded the Aeronautical Society of Great Britain in 1866 - very Jules Verne, don't you think...

So what's all this got to do with Ruth Belville? Well, according to the book I'm reading, the dashing aeronaut also had an eye for the ladies. He went to John Belville, Ruth's father, who was also working at the Observatory and asked for the day off. When Belville asked the reason, he was told it was so the 34 year-old could marry Belville's daughter (and Ruth's' sister) Cecilia, who was 15. Naturally, the father wasn't' best-pleased and the whole thing ended in tears. But that's all for another day...

In the meanwhile, if you're gagging to see what Greenwich would have looked like from a balloon, Stanfords do a curious map of London as seen from a balloon in 1851. Enjoy.

Ghostwriter

Ok - so she's not actually from Greenwich - but she lived in Blackheath and then Eltham for 23 years; a mildly scandalous woman for whom I have a lot of time, and of whom virtually nothing remains at her old home...

A few months ago I went for a cup of tea at Well Hall Pleasaunce where I fell in with one of Life's characters, whom I will call Alf. Alf was determined that I shouldn't just see the Pleasaunce as a pretty park, but as the ex-home of Edith Nesbit, one of our greatest children's writers. He virtually frog-marched me round the grounds, pointing out the wiggly wall, heavily buttressed to support its ancient bricks,


the secret pond in the corner,

the formal gardens

...and the fabulous barn itself, but of the actual 18th Century mansion Nesbit lived in between 1899 and 1922, absolutely nothing remains. There's a picture of it here, which shows it as pretty impressive, but I'm still not entirely sure why it was pulled down in 1931 - the closest I can find out is that it was to make way for the current park. I'm guessing local 'politics' - perhaps even a desire by 1930s social climbers to expunge a mildly scandlalous figure from Eltham's genteel history? Who can tell...

There's been loads written about Nesbit's 'unconventional' life - her sort-of open marriage to the Fabian Hubert Bland, who apparently 'could not by any effort of nature leave women alone' and her bringing up of his various children fathered on herself and, ahem, the assistant secretary of the Society, who also moved in. Gregarious and kind, she threw parties at Eltham for political big-hitters of the day - George Bernard Shaw, Annie Besant, Eleanor Marx. She was also the epitome of early 20th Century Bohemian Woman - tall and striking, dressed in trailing gowns of peacock blue satin, dripping with pearls and Indian bangles - and chain-smoking cigarettes from a long holder. And when Hubert died, she married, if memory serves, an engineer on the Woolwich Ferry, one Tommy Tucker, whose name sounds like it's straight out of one of her books.

Doesn't that put a different slant on The Phoenix and the Carpet or The Railway Children? And don't you just love her more for it?

But I'm not writing a biography here - there's plenty about her knocking around. I'm not even writing about the place - I know virtually nothing about Eltham. What I'm writing about today, it being the day before Hallowe'en and all, is the little-known fact that Edith Nesbit was also a horror writer.

I only found this out when I was in New York a few days ago, in Strand Bookshop, looking for something to read on the way home. I was initially drawn to the display because I thought someone had spilled something sticky on it - the imprint of obscure ghost and supernatural writers has a skull marked out in shiny on a matt background. But there, among the Aylmer Vances and the Gertrude Athertons, was The Power of Darkness - Tales of Terror, by Edith Nesbit.

It's of its time. The golden age, some might argue, of of ghost and horror writing - the Victorian/ Edwardian eras. The stories are at once cosy and really rather disturbing, and not all of them follow classic 'story' pattern. Many are more like incidents - statements, even, rather than plots with beginnings, middles and ends. And they are much crueller than I have found other writers to be. The endings are often harsh and dark, though they include the odd practical joke. There's no let-off for her characters - they make one mistake and are doomed for life. Apparently she was taken to visit the mummified corpses of St Michel in Bordeaux as a small child, and she had a relative who was accidentally put in their coffin ready for burying whilst still alive, something that stayed with her for the rest of her life. Both of these incidents clearly influence her work, as does, I'd guess, Poe.

With the best will in the world, I'd say the collection was patchy. When she's good, she's utterly terrifying, but other stories left me a bit bewildered. The most famous, Man-Size In Marble is creepy and atmospheric, something at which she's very good, and yet it, like all the stories, carries an Edwardian patina of snugness that belies the somewhat sudden and pretty grim ending. The Five Senses is bloomin' scary and From the Dead is singularly callous, but other stories, like Uncle Abraham's Romance and the mightily puzzling Power of Darkness left me wondering what to make of them.

Hand on heart, she's no M. R. James. But if you want a shiver for Hallowe'en you could do a lot worse than checking out Edith Nesbit's non-kiddie stories. In the meanwhile one thing at least remains of her at Eltham. The suitably satanic-looking bell hanging from the east end wall of the Tudor Barn comes from her house.