Laudator Temporis Acti

Dear Mike,

Eric Thomson's note on Axemanship prompts me to send you this footnote from Chris Stray's Mushri Dictionary:

The curiously neglected history of recreative lumberjacking surely demands a small book of its own and perhaps even a Wellcome symposium. In the prolegomena might figure such forerunners as Andrew Willett (1562-1621); to the clerical renaissance of the early 19th century belong such woodsmen as the Rev. Joseph Buckminster (1751-1812), H.F.R. de Lamennais (1782-1854) and Lyman Beecher (1755-1863), father of the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. But it is not until woodcutting and tree-felling becomes the occupation of presidents and prime-ministers that its heyday arrives. The spectacle of a statesman splitting rails in youth, or a scholar, late in life, over-burdened by grave affairs, forsaking the desk for the woodpile and the copse must have seemed as piquant to the Victorian mind as to a later generation might appear a Hollywood starlet quoting Kant or Kierkegaard. In Lincoln and Gladstone woodcutting reached its zenith, although only for the latter was it a true recreation. To Gladstone’s example, one may surely attribute the tree-felling of a host of minor Victorian diplomatists, mayors, colonial officials, and ordinary citizens, including the Australian governor-general Sir R.C.Mungo-Ferguson (1860-1934); the Unitarian Dantist Philip Henry Wicksteed (1844-1927); F.W. Hirst (1873-1953), official biographer of Gladstone’s official biographer; the Irish astronomer Sir William Parsons, third Earl of Rosse (1800-1867); the second Duke of Wellington (1797-1884); the sixth Lord Vernon (1829-1883); and even the Oxford antiquary H.E. Salter (1863-1951).

Christopher Stray (editor), The Mushri-English Pronouncing Dictionary, a chapter in 19th-century public school lexicography: the text of the 'Seventh' Edition (1901) with an introduction and notes (Berkeley, Swansea and Wellington, 1996), p. 70. n. 2.

Was the vogue among the God-fearing, I wonder, inspired by Psalm 74:5: 'A man was famous according as he had lifted up axes upon the thick trees'? Lewis Carroll's anagram on William Ewart Gladstone was "A Wild Man Will Go At Trees."

Let me add a couple of classical references. Harriet Lewin, wife of George Grote, wrote (from Burnham Beeches) to her brother William Lewin in India on 27th January 1845:

We have purchased a pretty property hard by, in which we spend a good deal of time, planting and cutting down timber. It does George a power of good to use the axe and saw for a couple of hours, and enables him to resume Greek history with fresh zeal. George's history waxes steadily, and two volumes will appear in the course of the coming summer at latest. I will send you a copy.

Text from The Lewin Letters ... 1756-1885, edited by Thomas Herbert Lewin, London, Archibald Constable, printed for private circulation, 1909, 2 volumes. Vol.2, p. 34.

And according to the Classical Association News no. 38 (June 2008), one of their members was "arrested by four policemen in a train at Carlisle station, while carrying an axe. 'It's what I use to chop wood.' 'It's a dangerous weapon.' 'But there is no room in a carriage to get a decent swing.' (Facetious comment — very dangerous) 'What else do you have in your bag?' 'Just a small axe for chopping kindling.' (Worse and worse). 'What is your occupation?' 'Retired Professor of Latin at Newcastle University.' (Ah, all is explained.) And so David West, for it was he, was released, minus his axes."

As ever,
Ian Jackson

Labels: arboricide