Bottled Letter

[Joseph Egert]

The tide of time has washed ashore a bottled letter from the past---the bottle, in this instance, being a library copy of Frederick James Furnivall's SOME 300 FRESH ALLUISIONS TO SHAKSPERE (1886) (see Fig. 1). On the blank recto side of the unnumbered front flyleaf, an earlier owner, Robert North Green-Armytage (1878-1966) has signed his name both in pencil near the center as "R. N. Green=Armytage, Middle Temple: E.C. 1904" and in ink at the top as "R. N. Green=Armytage: Bath: '21". Also on this page are pasted three short letter-to-editor clippings (two by C.R. Haines; the third by Gordon Crosse) proposing additional allusions (see Fig. 2).

 

On page ii, a 113x177mm single-leaf handwritten ink letter may be found centered on the blank 180x240mm book page and attached there by a thin strip of tape at its lateral margin. The undated letter to Henry Gay Hewlett (1832-1897) is from Frederick James Furnivall (1825-1910), or "Furnie", as his scull-ery maid-ens fondly dubbed him (the model for Ratty the Water Rat in Grahame's THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS).

 

The letter reads as follows (see Figs. 3a and 3b for facsimiles):

 

                                                            3 Old Square

                                                                     Thursday

 

                                              Dear Sir

                                                             I am sorry to

                                              say that it is too true

                                              that your & my friend

                                              Girling Tupling did start

                                               for America in the Pacific.

                                                 I did not know it till

                                               his father told me a few days

                                               after he had gone.  By

                                               calling on, or writing to,

                                               his father, Mr John Tupling

                                               23 Paternoster Row, you

                                               could learn whether he

                                               still hopes that the vessel

                                                             [over]

                                                is not lost.  I have given

                                                up the hope,--holding still

                                                the assurance that it is better

                                                for him to be where he is, for

                                                this earth could never have

                                                satisfied his longings & aspi-

                                                rations,  & now with God

                                                they will be fulfilled.

                                                               

                                                               Faithfully yours

                                                                    F. J. Furnivall

 

                                                 H.G. Hewlett Esquire junior 

                                                               [End of letter]

 

 

Who then was this lost soul Girling Tupling (c. 1835-1856)? His father John Tupling (c. 1810-1873), after failing as a Cambridge bootmaker in 1849, became accountant to a London publisher, while his young son Girling (spelled elsewhere "Gurling" or "Gertling") learned the bookselling business. Dissatisfied with his name, Girling later renamed himself "John" with his father's consent---a name that "was not likely to prove a hindrance to a man!". At age seventeen (c. 1852), young John agreed to his father sponsoring and financing him in a small London bookshop on the Strand against the church at St Mary's. During his brief career young John authored, along with his quaint eccentric catalogs, FOLIOUS APPEARANCES in 1854, and published Donne's ESSAYS IN DIVINITY (1855), newly edited by his friend Augustus Jessopp.

 

But young John had grander dreams beyond his dingy bookshop. "I'm tired of it," he told Jessopp. "I want to see the world; and, above all, I want to see the bottom of the Atlantic" with its "Kraken", its "monstrous sea-weeds", and its "undisturbed and imperturbable quiet". So, young John left his father after bitter argument and "lit out for the territories". The Golden Land,  America, beckoned to him with her siren song. He debarked from Liverpool for New York on Jan 23, 1856, one ("W. Topling") among 45 passengers and 141 crewmen, on the American Collins Line steamer PACIFIC.. The ship was never seen again, with all aboard lost at the bottom of the Atlantic.

 

Young John Tupling's wish had been granted, R.I.P.

 

Joe Egert     

---

Be a better Globetrotter. Get better travel answers from someone who knows.
Yahoo! Answers - Check it out.

[bobgr...@nut-n-but.net]

Interesting post, Joe--thanks.

--Bob, mostly just doing his bit to keep this discussion group not
completely dead