The Oldest Book in the House

Always read an old book before you start a new one, C S Lewis once advised. About a week ago I found myself going to the shelf where the oldest book in the house stood unnoticed between dustings.


It's the book John Hawkesworth (1715 – 1773), writer and editor, was commissioned by the British Admiralty to write about the first voyage of Captain James Cook in the Endeavour to the South Seas. Given Cook's papers, but also the notebooks of ardent naturalist, Joseph Banks who was also on the voyage, he created an entertaining story told in first person as the commander. Cook returned in 1771, the book was published in 1773 and John Hawkesworth died the same year. He was aged 58, distressed, some would say, by the reception his last book received. Through his accounts of the customs of the people those on board the Endeavour met, he was accused of undermining public morality. Perhaps Cook's assertion that people with minimal material possessions appeared to be as happy as his wealthy compatriots, was also considered subversive.


This is a book that was published before the French Revolution, before the American War of Independence, before the rebellion of the United Irishmen. It comes from an age when sailors were flogged for petty theft and when marines jumped overboard rather than face the anger of fellow soldiers, who felt their honour was sullied by someone who stole a piece of pigskin. It also comes from a time before print was standardised. Capitals are occasionally written with great flourish, where ct occurs, the top of the c is joined by the finest of curves to the tip of the t, but the most striking difference to modern print is the existence of two forms of the letter s. The modern s occurs only in the terminal position in a word. Elsewhere s is denoted by a letter very similar to the modern f. This can be very confusing to someone from the twenty-first century. I was taken aback, when reading a passage about cooking a cuttlefish, until I realised that the organs on its tentacles were suckers.


This book also held surprises unconnected to the voyage of the Endeavour. Inside the leather cover, at the top, were two lines written in firm, male, forward-slanting handwriting. Although it is now barely legible I could read:
At the Halfmoon, Halfmoon Alley, Bishopsgate, London.
I took down my Visitors' London and found Bishopsgate in the East end, but there was no Halfmoon Alley leading from it. John solved the problem when he discovered that Liverpool Street Station now occupies the site where the Halfmoon and Halfmoon Alley once were.


The other surprise was a tiny piece of paper with the name, Thomas Graves, Royal Navy, written in fine Italics on two lines. Thomas Graves, born in Belfast in 1802, entered the navy in 1816. As Lieutenant in Adventure, he travelled to the South American Station before surveying Lough Neagh in 1831 and 1832. By 1836 he was in charge of his own ship undertaking survey work in the Mediterranean. He was a keen naturalist and brought with him someone who shared his passion, Edward Forbes.
In 1853 he was made Superintendent of the Ports of Malta, and it was here he died in 1856, stabbed in the stomach by an aggrieved Maltese boatman whose boat he had ordered to be tied up for fifteen days for having overcharged a passenger. The planks of the boat had dried up making it unseaworthy, and depriving its owner of a means of earning his living.