'IMPOSTOR AND MADMAN'
Christopher Howse explores
some of the wilder byways of the Dictionary of National Biography
IN THE words of the obituary notice of Geoffrey Madan intended for the Times but never sent: 'A genius for friendship with all and sundry, infectious enthusiasm, selfless devotion to progressive causes, a deep and touching love of animals and of natural beauty — he would not have claimed for himself any of these so fre- quent attributes of the lately dead.'
Geoffrey Madan (1895-1947) had an eye for the odd, humorous or well-expressed, and he put together a commonplace book, published after his death as Geoffrey Madan's Notebooks (edited by J.A. Gere and John SparroW, Oxford Paperbacks £2.95). In it he listed 17 lives in the Dictionary of National Biography which are of interest and not usually read. I decided to look them up. The prose of the DNB allows for a slow-burn effect whereby a catalogue of unextraordinary facts sud- denly explodes into the fantastic or bathe- tic, but even an epitome of four of these lives may give the flavour.
Joshua Barnes (1654-1712), Greek scho- lar and antiquary. He was chosen professor of Greek in 1695. In 1675 he had published Gerania, or the discovery of a little sort of people anciently discoursed of called Pyg- mies, a whimsical voyage imaginaire that may have given Swift some hints for the voyage to Lilliput. A friend of his, Dr Stukeley the antiquarian, wrote thus of his later years: 'He was very poor at last. I carried my great frd., the learned La Winchilsea, to see him, who gave him money & after that Dr. Mead.' Bentley, in his Dissertation on Phalaris, describes him as 'one of a singular industry and a most diffuse reading'.
His enthusiasm apparently led him to undertake work for which he was in no way qualified. Not content with writing a life of Edward III and editing Homer, he had determined to write the life of Tamerlane, though he had no knowledge of oriental languages. He also wrote verses to show that Solomon was the author of the Iliad. He is said to have perpetrated this absurdi- ty to humour his wife and induce her to contribute more freely towards his scholas- tic expenses. He possessed no little vanity, but the judgment upon him was that this
fault could readily be forgiven in one whose charity was such that he gave his only coat to a poor fellow who begged at his door.
John Nicholas Tom (1799-1838), impost- or and madman. In 1826 with the assist- ance of his wife, who brought him a handsome fortune, he set up in Truro as a maltster and hop-dealer. About the begin- ning of 1832 he is said to have had an epileptic fit, and was regarded by his family as of unsound mind. He is next heard of in Canterbury in August 1832. His own story of intermediate travels in the Holy Land is purely fictitious. He now assumed the name of Sir Percy Honeywood Courtenay, and also inconsistently claimed the Kentish estates of Sir Edward Hales. Other names under which he passed were: the Hon. Sydney Percy, Count Moses Rothschild and Squire Thompson. In 1833 at the trial of some smugglers he swore falsely that he had witnessed the fight between them and the revenue officers off the Goodwin Sands. He was sentenced to three months' imprisonment and seven years' transporta- tion for perjury, but was placed in the lunatic asylum at Barming Heath. In 1835 he issued a wild address recommending a list of candidates for the town council, and, stranger still, these candidates (including a doctor and two ministers) adopted this address as their own.
In 1837 he was granted release into the care of his father. Unfortunately he was handed over to one of his former suppor- ters who shared his religious delusions and is believed to have lent him large sums of money. Now he began to assert for the first time that he was the Messiah, showing the stigmata and professing to work miracles. He armed a band of more than 100 disciples with cudgels and led them about the countryside, mounted on a white horse with a flag bearing the emblem of a lion.
His career culminated on 31 May 1838 when his band clashed with the forces of
law and order. A constable and an army officer were killed, as were Tom and eight of his followers. Tom was a tall man with a full beard and is said to have borne a striking resemblance to the traditional representation of Christ. A watercolour by H. Hitchcock shows him in Eastern dress with a scimitar, looking something like Henry VIII.
The father of John Henderson (1757- 1788) kept a lunatic asylum at Hanham near Bristol. The son early showed talent as a student, teaching Latin and Greek by the age of 12. Dean Tucker, after a chance meeting in a stagecoach, paid for his further education at Pembroke College, Oxford, where he lived in the rooms that Dr Johnson once occupied, He knew Per- sian, Arabic, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Span- ish, Italian and German. After he acquired a knowledge of medicine, his benevolence led him to practice freely among the poor during an epidemic in Oxford. He sold his polyglot Bible to buy drugs for them. Johnson met him in 1782, and found him a good Tory and churchman. Boswell called him 'celebrated for his wonderful aquire- ments in alchemy, judicial astrology and other abstruse and curious learning'.
Before he took his BA degree he began to show signs of eccentricity, dressing oddly, going to bed at daybreak and rising in the afternoon. He would strip himself to the waist, splash water from the pump in the quad over himself and put on a wet shirt before going back to his rooms. He smoked nearly all day long, took opium and drank a great amount of wine and spirits. He once went without food for five days. After taking his degree he withdrew from all society. He believed in the possi- bility of communicating with the dead, He died on All Souls Day in his 32nd year.
The scholars of foreign countries were puzzled by the habit of Edmund Henry Barker (1788-1839) of putting on the title pages of his works, after his name, the initials OTN. It stood for nothing more than 'Of Thetford Norfolk', where he had gone to live. He was a classical scholar 'of greater industry than judgment'.
After ten years' research he successfully brought a legal action to prove his father's legitimacy, but failed to gain estates worth £3,000 a year on the grounds of a lost will of a great-uncle. The failure ruined him; he sold his library and was thrown into the Fleet Prison, where he remained for some years. On his release he continued to involve himself in rash adventures, adding to the voluminous extent of his published works. He died in a mean lodging-house in Covent Garden market.
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