Topsham Bookshop: Veitch Exhibit

These rare long-stemmed begonias (left and right) are the
prototypes from which all modern begonias were bred

This is slight nepotism, but I'll mention it anyway. This week (23rd-28th July) The Topsham Bookshop, where I work part-time, is hosting a presentation by the horticulturalist Caradoc Doy to commemorate the legacy of the Veitch Nurseries of Exeter and Chelsea.

If you ever go to garden centres - I do, though I'm not as enthusiastic about plants as my wife - you often wonder where the new exotic plants they keep inventing come from. The answer is, generally, that they're hybridised in nurseries from precursors that go back to Victorian times and a vast amount of international prospecting. Veitch had a team of 22 plant-hunters who searched worldwide over the second half of the 19th century.

It was a risky business. One Veitch explorer, Thomas Lobb, suffered a leg injury in the Phillipines, leading to amputation; Gottlieb Zahn drowned near Costa Rica; Gustav Wallis, died of some combination of yellow fever, malaria and dysentery; and Henry Chesterton, also died of tropical disease in Colombia after collecting the 'Dracula orchid' Dracula chestertonii. His obituary in the Shipping List read:

Mr. J. H. Chesterton, the botanist, died at Puerto Berrio on the 26th. He had been quite ill, but left the hotel 'San Nicholas,' thinking that he had sufficiently improved to be able to make his trip up the river. Sad mistake! He continued to decline, and was barely put on shore at Puerto Berrio where he died. Poor Chesterton's reckless spirit rendered him very efficient as a plant-collector.

You can read more in the Lives of Travellers section of Hortus Veitchii itself.

Anyhow, horror stories apart, Veitch were were the largest group of family-run plant nurseries in Europe during the 19th century, and by the outbreak of the First World War had introduced 1281 plants into cultivation. Their legacy continues today with the Chelsea Flower Show, which is the modern incarnation of the International Horticultural Exhibition organised in 1912 by Sir Harry Veitch.

See Caradoc Doy's site caradocdoy.co.uk for further background, and the Topsham Bookshop Veitch Exhibit page for a taster of the bookshop display.

James H Veitch's classic 1906 book Hortus Veitchii : a history of the rise and progress of the nurseries of Messrs. James Veitch and sons, together with an account of the botanical collectors and hybridists employed by them and a list of the most remarkable of their introductions is online at the Internet Archive (ID hortusveitchiihi00veitrich). If you want to see an original copy, The Topsham Bookshop has one on display for the week; and for botany enthusiasts who prefer the real thing to an e-version, Caradoc has a special offer on his very nice centenary reprint.

title page of Hortus Veitchii

Veitch's original Chelsea nursery,
from Hortus Veitchii

- Ray

Girls and Boys in Storyland

An Exeter event for local readers: while in town yesterday, I had a quick glance at the current Exeter Central Library exhibition, Girls and Boys in Storyland, which runs until April 31st.

Topsham Book Swap

A note for your diaries: World Book Night is on Saturday March 5th 2011.

World Book Night represents the most ambitious and far-reaching celebration of adult books and reading ever attempted in the UK and Ireland.

On Saturday, 5 March 2011, two days after World Book Day, with the full support of the Publishers Association, the Booksellers Association, the Independent Publishers Guild, the Reading Agency with libraries, World Book Day, the BBC and RTE, one million books will be given away by an army of passionate readers to members of the public across the UK and Ireland.

The book give-away will comprise 40,000 copies of each of the 25 carefully selected titles, to be given away by 20,000 ‘givers’, who will each distribute 48 copies of their chosen title to whomever they choose on World Book Night. The remaining books will be distributed by World Book Night itself in places that might otherwise be difficult to reach, such as prisons and hospitals.

The twenty-five titles were selected by a wide-ranging editorial committee, chaired by James Naughtie. After looking through the list of titles, you can apply to become a giver on World Book Night itself.

While one might suspect the ultimate reason is promotional for the book industry rather than sheer altruism, World Book Night is marked by various interesting literary events and reading group gatherings that go beyond the chance of a freebie book.

In Topsham, we have Topsham Book Swap at the Globe Hotel on Saturday March 5th, 6.30-8.30pm, when you're invited to "bring a book you love, swap it for another".

See the World Book Night website - www.worldbooknight.org - and the Facebook page for more information.

- Ray

Churches of Exeter

Bedford Circus after the Blitz, Albert Charles Bown.

Churches of Exeter, by Christine Trigger, is now in stock. From the preface:

This seventh book in the series Postcards from Exeter contains over fifty images of churches and chapels.  it includes districts that were once places outside Exeter that are now incorporated within the city boundaries, such as Alphington, Exwick, Pinhoe, Heavitree, Countess Wear and Topsham.

The book records ancient places of worship long vanished for various reasons: destroyed by enemy action in World War II, demolished due to neglect or rebuilding schemes, or have been converted to different uses.

Some old postcards may bring nostalgic memories to older Exonians - St. Lawrence, High Street, the St. Kerrian's church tower, North Street, St. John's in Fore Street and the Methodist churches at The Mint and Mount Pleasant.

Researching family history has become a popular hobby and postcards of buildings where ancestors were baptised, married or buried can give an added dimension when compiling a family tree.

All the postcards in this book have been selected from the Exeter postcard collection owned by local historian Christine Trigger who has also written the text.

Churches of Exeter costs £7.99 from Joel Segal Books, or by mail order from Precious Moments (www.preciousmomentsexeter.co.uk).

Leaving, by Richard Bradbury

Leaving - a new play by Richard Bradbury.

Jack has lived in the same place all his life but now he is being pushed into leaving. His powerful attachment to the land, though, brings with it contradictory emotions that can only really be explained by understanding his past. "Leaving" is about the fierce passions provoked by a sense of being rooted in a locality. Jack's love for his farm and his rage at what has happened to it over the last 40 years is tempered by the knowledge that the place also has him and his family caught in its tight, almost suffocating embrace.

April 30th and May 1st, 7.30pm at the White Hart, Woodbury, Devon.  Tickets £8 from Joel Segal Books / phone 07917 850258 / or e-mail riversmeetplays@btinternet.com

From the flyer: Richard's novel Riversmeet, about the ex-slave and anti-slavery and social campaigner Frederick Douglass, won an "Exclusively Independent" award earlier this year, and his last play, Become a Man, was commissioned in 2007 by the Greater London Authority as the first play to be performed in the new City Hall. It went on to play to sell-out audiences at the Hackney Empire. He is currently writing a new play, Blood Meadow, about the 1549 Cornwall and Devon rebellion.
- Ray

Immortal Longings - launch

Portrait, platinum print by Eveleen Myers, from frontispiece to Fragments of Prose & Poetry, 1904

.Immortal Longings: FH Myers and the Victorian Seach for Life after Death: Trevon Hamilton, Imprint Academic.

On Thursday 8th October, 2009,  I went to the launch at Joel Segal Books of the above biography.

From the press release:

This is the first full-length biography of Frederic WH Myers, unjustly neglected Victorian classicist, poet and psychologist, whose systematic and pioneering exploration of nineteenth century spiritualism, mesmerism and related phenomen convinced him of the reality of life after death.

Myers was a friend or acquiantance of Balfour, Browning, Conan Doyle, George Eliot, Prince Leopold, Sidgwick, Stevenson, Swinburne, Tennyon, William and Henry James, and other "Eminent Victorians". His wife, Eveleen, was a wealthy society beauty (painted by Watts and Millais) and an outstanding photographer whose photographs are now in the National Portrait Gallery.

"FWH Myers ... a man of various and remarkable gifts ... yet no full biography of him has hitherto been written ... Altogether a fascinating read!"
- Alan Gould, author, The Founders of Psychical Research

"Frederic Myers was one of the great pioneers in the scientific exploration of consciousness ... In this well-researched book, Trevor Hamilton sheds new light on his life and shows how Myers' work was embedded in the rich social and intellectual life of late nineteenth-century Britain. I read it with great interest".
- Rupert Sheldrake

"With his objective and unsensational approach, Trevor Hamilton provides a valuable new insight into the early days of organized ghost hunting .... the rivalries and deceptions, the scandals and contoversies, the great mediums and researchers of the time."
- Geoff Ward, Western Daily Press

Publisher's page

For a quick overview of the subject, see Frederic William Henry Myers at Wikipedia. The Internet Archive has Arthur Christopher Benson's The leaves of the tree; studies in biography (1911), which has a 33-page biography, and Myers' own Lectures on Great Men (1856), Human Personality And Its Survival Of Bodily Death (Volume I and Volume II) and Fragments of prose & poetry (1904 - posthumously compiled by his wife). A few more can be previewed via Google Books.

Also check out the National Portrait Gallery - Eveleen Myers (née Tennant) (1856-1937), Photographer - for Eveleen Myers' work (really do check it out - her portrait photography in particular is superb). From the NPG: "Eveleen and her sister Dorothy, who later married the explorer Henry Morton Stanley, were painted by George Frederic Watts and John Everett Millais. Both sisters played an active role in the salon their mother established in the early 1870s at which they entertained political figures, artists and intellectuals of the day".

- Ray