Darwin

1871 · réf. 2200159 — Oblong 8vo pp. 4 with nine anastatic plates by 'V H D'arwin the first folding and with poetic verses facing two leaves of introduction in the original publisher's bind stamped green cloth upper board lettered in gilt inner joints lightly cracked else a very good sound copy. Published to capitalise on the infamous Tichborne case then beginning to run its course through the courts. The poem recounts the history of the Tichborne dole of bread a charity festival active until the 1790's and held at the village of Tichborne in Hampshire during the Feast of the Annunciation. The tale concerns a curse by twelfth century Lady Mabella Tichborne on her descendants. This predicted that should the dole stop the family would produce only daughters and die out which indeed did happen with the male issue cut down by early death and shipwreck all of which paved the way to the interminable Tichborne claimant cause. The illustrations are very clearly in the style of Richard Doyle's The Manners and Customs of Ye Englyshe which first appeared in Punch in 1849 they capture many of the more absurd parts of the tale in a mock medieval manuscript technique replete with a border of a dragon. The illustrator Violetta Harriot Darwin 1826-1880 was a half cousin to the famous Charles both sharing Erasmus Darwin as a grandfather. Although Charles descended through Erasmus' first wife Polly and Violetta through his second wife Elizabeth the cousins despite being near contemporaries appear to have had very little contact. A number of Violetta's anastactic topographical views were published in the 1860's and her illustrated version of Southey's Bishop Hatto: a legend of the Mouse-Tower on the Rhine in 1861 but these are both in a quite different style. The author of the poems Lord Nugent unlike many of the Grenville clan supported the cause of anti-slavery parliamentary reform religious liberty penal reform and the amelioration of the condition of the rural poor. He also inherited an aptitude for literary and scholarly pursuits as well as their tendency to corpulence and financial ineptitude. He was not a great poet however some of his smaller works found a willing space in the 'Annuals'. Under the less antiquated title 'The Dole of Tichborne' the poem first appeared first in the 1830 volume of The Gem. OCLC records only a second edition at the National library of Wales only. Bemrose and Sons