The Spectator

Treasure Hunt: Answers

Caroline Moore

his year's Treasure Hunt, which began on 1. 13 October and ran until Christmas, con- sisted of nine clues, each with three parts. The answers to the first two parts (a and b) were an anagram of the name of the place which formed the answer to the third part (c): First Clue

a) ESTHER. Racine's Esther, commissioned by Madame de Maintenon ('appropriately' since the Biblical Esther was also a royal favourite); Handel's Esther, the first English oratorio; and Esther Waters, by George Moore.

b) ORC. John Milton, Paradise Lost, XI 829-34.

c) ROCHESTER. John Wilmot, Second Earl of Rochester, was banished from court and set up as a mountebank on Tower Hill (quote from his own handbill); Edward Fairfax Rochester's wives were the heroines of Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte, and Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys; Rochester in Kent is the model for 'Cloisterham', in Charles Dickens' Edwin Drood; and Sir Cloudesley Shovell was ship- wrecked on the Bishop and Clerk rocks off the Scilly Isles in 1707. b) GIST. Robert Browning, Sordello, Book III, 909-12.

c) HASTINGS. The poem 'The Battle of Hastynges', one of Chatterton's less convincing forgeries, since `Turgoe is dated the century before the battle; Titus Oates, born 1649, but baptised in Hastings 1660, accused William Parker of pederasty; Dante Gabriel Rossetti, married Miss Siddal 23.May 1860 in St Clement's Church (where his name is mis-written as `Daniel); and Emperor Napoleon III, born (Charles) Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, Prince of Holland, but not baptised until after the title had been ceded, stayed in Pelham Cottage, Hast- ings, in 1840, and imprisoned in the fortress at Ham, where he wrote his pamphlets — after- wards claimed he was educated at the 'Universi- ty of Ham'.

Fourth Clue a) All the names of HUNTS. b) PRES. T. S. Eliot, `Le Directeur'.

c) PENSHURST. Duke Humphrey of Glouces- ter, protector in the minority of Henry VI, and his second wife Eleanor Cobham. To dine with Second Clue

a) AUNTS. Juley and Hester Forsyte are the aunts of the twins Giles and Jesse Hayman, nicknamed the 'Dtomios', in The Forsyte Saga, by John Galsworthy; Teresa and Molly are the aunts of George(s) Hamlet Alexander Diabo- logh in The Polygots, by William Gerhardie; Jane Glegg and Sophy Pullet are the aunts of Maggie Tulliver in The Mill on the Floss, by George Eliot; 'Amram took him Jochebed his father's sister to wife', and produced Moses, Exodus, vi 20; Bertie Wooster found that Aunts Aren't Gentlemen, by P. G. Wodehouse.

b) BLED. Lord Byron, 'The Isles of Greece', from Don Juan, I ccxxii (1819) or III lxxxvi (1821).

c) DUNSTABLE. A new bishopric was planned for the Dissolution, to be founded by spoils from the religious houses, and drawings were made for a cathedral at Dunstable; Moll Flanders, by Daniel Defoe; and Miss Dunstable in Anthony Trollope's Dr Thorne, Ch. XVI.

Third Clue.

a) NASH. Thomas Nash's pseudonyms in his pamphlets; Richard (Beau) Nash, 'King of Bath', rode naked on a cow for a wager; and the architect John Nash, whose bridge across the Teme at Stanford collapsed when a village boy walked across it, a few hours after its opening. (Bridge rebuilt by Nash; but destroyed by Worcs County Council in 1905).

Duke Humphrey' was a popular proverb, mean- ing to go dinnerless (vide Brewer); the quotation is from 'To Penshurst', in Ben Jonson's The Forrest; and Baron Hardinge of Penshurst, Viceroy of India, was bombed in his howdah in Dehli in 1912, but helped to set up the Moslem university at Aligarh and the Hindu one at Benares (Varanasi).

Fifth Clue

a) Nicholas ROWE, dramatist and editor of Shakespeare (from Johnson's Lives).

b) An armorial CREST.

c) WORCESTER. .Cromwell's description of the battle of Worcester, from a letter to the Speaker, Lenthall; his head is carved over the entrance to Thomas White's Guildhall; Saints Dunstan, Oswald, Wulfstan — and Ecgwin, martyrs Latimer and Hooper and (briefly) Pope Clement VII were all bishops of Worcester; and Elgar's Dream of Gerontius — the prayer theme was first inscribed in the Sinclairs' visitors' book as a description of the bulldog Dan — had to have Newman's words 'de-Romanised', by tak- ing out reference to Mary, the Mass etc, before the 1902 Worcs Festival.

Sixth Clue a) John KEBLE, elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford 1831, in dispute with Buckland. He died after getting up by mistake at 6 a.m., and getting into a cold bath, thinking it was hot.

b) RYE. The Rye-House plot to murder Charles II in 1683, foiled when a fire at Newmarket disrupted the royal schedule; and 'Tilling' In E' F. Benson's Mapp and Lucia. c) BERKELEY. The quotation is from Thomas Gray, The Bard', about the murder of Edward II at Berkeley Castle; Bishop George Berkeley (who once persuaded Goldsmith's uncle to hang him, as an experiment) wrote Siris: a Chain of Philosophical Reflexions and Inquiries concern- ing the virtues of Tar-Water; Humphry Berkeley was sent down from Pembroke for writing Wee letters to real headmasters in the guise of the headmaster Rochester Sneath (published as rh Life and Death of Rochester Sneath), an crossed the floor as MP; the Berkeley (Hotel) in John Betjeman's poem, 'The 'Varsity Students Rag'.

Seventh Clue a) Dr Johnson's household in BOLT court, described by Mrs Thrale.

b) SIR. Jonathan Swift, The Life and Character of Dean Swift', 11. 79-83. c) BRISTOL. Southey and Coleridge (and Lovell and Burnett) formed their plans for an ideal society while lodging in 48 College Street; Edmund Burke wrote his Letter to the Sherres of Bristol on the affairs of America, and John Farr and John Harris were the sheriffs; Miss Augusta Hawkins4becomes Mrs Elton in Jane Austen's Emma, Vol II, Ch. V.

Eighth Clue

a) Laurence STERNE fell through a mill-race at Animo, but was unhurt; last words reporter' 11 the footman James Macdonald; his body Was allegedly dug up by resurrection men and sold to Collignon, Professor of Anatomy at Cambridge, where a friend recognised it upon the table. b) CIRCE. Christopher Marlowe, Edward Act 1, Scene IV. c) CIRENCESTER. A legend found in Caoti den, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Polydore Virg' and many Chronicles claims that in a siege of Cirencester flaming materials were tied to sPar- rows and loosed over the town by Gormand Gurmundus or Godmundus: I was even pre- pared for Gormwynt, from the Welsh Chront- cies!), who was an 'African king' fighting for f Saxons (probably a mercenary Vandal chic'. tain); the quotation is from Alexander PoPe' The Second Epistle of the Second Book of Horace Imitated, 11. 257-61 — the landowner is Lord Bathurst; and Edward Jenner went to school with Dr Washbourn in Cirencester. His innovation, of course, was inoculation.

Ninth Clue

a) THOMAS. Dylan Thomas married Caitlin Macnamara, and was planning a libretto for Stravinsky when he died; George Thomas, Speaker of the House of. Commons, and speaker of the first words (`Order, Order!') in its first broadcast; and J. H. (Jimmy) Thomas leaked budget secrets to A. C. Bates in 1936.— the Pa°, current at the time was that he had said 'tea up while playing golf. b) PUNTO. William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Sc. IV.' c) SOUTHAMPTON. King Canute; General Charles Gordon, returning to Southampton as a Ti-tu or Chinese general, with the insignia of a first class mandarin, after putting down the Taiping Rebellion (Hung-seu-Tsuen, or Tien Wang, believed in the Trinity of God the Father, Jesus the elder brother, and himself the younger brother); and Chevalier/Chevaliare d'E,c)r. (Charles - Genevieve - Louise -Auguste -Ana': Timothee d'Eon de Beaumont), diplomba tic agent in Russia before his post in London, dly wounded in the armpit when a button came off one of the foils during a fencing display.

The Final Rhyme

Select the first letter of the first place name, the econd of the second, and so on; and you will descend diagonally from R (the 'dog's letter', or snarling letter', from the classical tag 'littera c4nina. — also the end of the ouR and of the SpeetatoR) to T ('to fit to a T'). Thus:

Rochester DUnstable HaStings PenShurst WorcEster BerkeLey BristoL CirenceSter SouthampTon

The answer is connected with the beginnings of Street Spectator. Button's coffee-house in Russell 4,,,n.eet was where Addison headed the circle of wits, and, Pope said, 'like Cato, gives his little Senate laws' (Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot, 'Atticus'; a satirical reference to Pope's own prologue to

Addison's Cato); and contributions to the maga- zine were handed in through the famous lion- headed letter-box of Button's. Rose's Coffee House and the Red Cow were also famous establishments: according to some, the Red Cow became the Rose, which later became Will's coffee house on the corner of Bow Street, the great rival of Button's. The Turkish bathing- house Hummums, established in the 1630s and the first of its kind in London, was on the corner at the end of the street; it became a coffee- house, and then an hotel. The poet's words of warning are Pope's in `To Mr John Moore, Author of the Celebrated Worm Powder'; `Ev'n Button's Wits to Worms shall turn, Who Mag- gots were before'.

I disclaim all responsibility for the picture `clue' set above the clues for Rochester; and was vastly surprised to see it there. The culprit has fled from your justified wrath and my inquiries to America. I'd like to think that the scene represented Russell St, or Rochester; but I have a nasty suspicion that it may be a print by Robert Bevan, 1924, described in the catalogues as 'The Church of St John the Evangelist, Waterloo Road, Lambeth', though I haven't checked by going there. A mean trick!