I think I am going deaf. And/or memory is even more malleable than I had believed it to be. I know this blog is for family consumption and I make no pretensions to journalistic precision, but I do like to get things right. So, even though these clarifications will matter to no one who reads this blog but me:
1. Linda has one son in Boston. Her other children, daughters, are in Winchester, not Brazil. Julia has a son in Brazil.
2. Margaret and David Grantham (not Graham) live in Warwick, etc.
3. [An error of omission] T.E. Lawrence and Florence Hardy were friends, even though Lawrence had no use for women in the romantic sense. As per Stephen Mottram’s handout, Lawrence wrote to another good female friend, Charlotte Shaw (wife of GBS): Poor Mrs. Hardy, though. She has given up so many years, just to keep him alive, & he was so difficult, so unlike a great man. Not serene, not over-seeing, not happy. No health in him: she can’t have liked him really. He would not let her have any life of her own, & now it is too late to start. They couldn’t laugh together, you know, heartily. And she is so nice… Hardy and Lawrence knew each other after both were famous. Maybe they gave each other peace from pushing and star-struck fans.
4. The shaggy little ponies are called “heath croppers,” not “tree croppers.”
5. Judge Jeffries’ Bloody Assize was in 1685. I’m still not sure what it was about. The Tolpuddle Martyrs were six Dorset farm laborers tried and sentenced to deportation for forming a union. The Yetties sang a song about them (I don’t know how old): apparently, one of the union’s activities was to threaten farmers with fire if they didn’t get rid of the newly invented thrashing machines, which were starving out the laborers and their families. “The flames grow high in Dorset,” begins the chorus, “the ricks of corn are burning.” Maybe it will be on John’s CD.
6. “Puddle” was “Piddle” until a visit by Queen Victoria. I know I won’t remember them all, but there is Tolpuddle, Affpuddle, Briantspuddle, Piddlehinton, Piddletrenthide, Puddletown, and Poole, of course (although I don’t think the last one’s actually related).
7. I was commiserating with a librarian at the Dorchester Library (at the Top o’ Town near the car park and the Hardy statue) about her job as a tech consultant now that everybody uses computers and the internet. “They took all the really interesting old things out of the library and put them in the Dorset Records Office, and now I don’t ever do those lovely long searches through the archives for people--it’s no longer the job I signed up for.” So I asked her the difference between heath and moor, and she got out the big old volumes of the OED, unabridged, to look them up (while people waited impatiently in line for help with the internet). The two words were used as synonyms for each other, and there was no definite difference, except under “moor” was mentioned bog, marsh, peat, and fen, but not under “heath.” Heath was equated with “down” and “upland,” too, however, so I guess altitude isn’t a difference. Both have the flora of “heath, heather, and ling,” and the same fauna listed. Does that clarify everything?
8. It is the Corn Exchange, not the Corn Hall, although the Town Hall is in the same building, on the upper level. Here is a photo of the Town Pump with the Corn Exchange behind it, across the High Street.
1. Linda has one son in Boston. Her other children, daughters, are in Winchester, not Brazil. Julia has a son in Brazil.
2. Margaret and David Grantham (not Graham) live in Warwick, etc.
3. [An error of omission] T.E. Lawrence and Florence Hardy were friends, even though Lawrence had no use for women in the romantic sense. As per Stephen Mottram’s handout, Lawrence wrote to another good female friend, Charlotte Shaw (wife of GBS): Poor Mrs. Hardy, though. She has given up so many years, just to keep him alive, & he was so difficult, so unlike a great man. Not serene, not over-seeing, not happy. No health in him: she can’t have liked him really. He would not let her have any life of her own, & now it is too late to start. They couldn’t laugh together, you know, heartily. And she is so nice… Hardy and Lawrence knew each other after both were famous. Maybe they gave each other peace from pushing and star-struck fans.
4. The shaggy little ponies are called “heath croppers,” not “tree croppers.”
5. Judge Jeffries’ Bloody Assize was in 1685. I’m still not sure what it was about. The Tolpuddle Martyrs were six Dorset farm laborers tried and sentenced to deportation for forming a union. The Yetties sang a song about them (I don’t know how old): apparently, one of the union’s activities was to threaten farmers with fire if they didn’t get rid of the newly invented thrashing machines, which were starving out the laborers and their families. “The flames grow high in Dorset,” begins the chorus, “the ricks of corn are burning.” Maybe it will be on John’s CD.
6. “Puddle” was “Piddle” until a visit by Queen Victoria. I know I won’t remember them all, but there is Tolpuddle, Affpuddle, Briantspuddle, Piddlehinton, Piddletrenthide, Puddletown, and Poole, of course (although I don’t think the last one’s actually related).
7. I was commiserating with a librarian at the Dorchester Library (at the Top o’ Town near the car park and the Hardy statue) about her job as a tech consultant now that everybody uses computers and the internet. “They took all the really interesting old things out of the library and put them in the Dorset Records Office, and now I don’t ever do those lovely long searches through the archives for people--it’s no longer the job I signed up for.” So I asked her the difference between heath and moor, and she got out the big old volumes of the OED, unabridged, to look them up (while people waited impatiently in line for help with the internet). The two words were used as synonyms for each other, and there was no definite difference, except under “moor” was mentioned bog, marsh, peat, and fen, but not under “heath.” Heath was equated with “down” and “upland,” too, however, so I guess altitude isn’t a difference. Both have the flora of “heath, heather, and ling,” and the same fauna listed. Does that clarify everything?
8. It is the Corn Exchange, not the Corn Hall, although the Town Hall is in the same building, on the upper level. Here is a photo of the Town Pump with the Corn Exchange behind it, across the High Street.
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