ESSEX ASSOCIATIONS OF A DEVONIAN
273
ESSEX ASSOCIATIONS OF A DEVONIAN
BY NORMAN CARRUTHERS GOULD
There are still some active members of the Essex Field Club who can
recall the days when Sir Francis Carruthers Gould took an interest in its
meetings and outings.
Although F.C.G.—by which initials he was most widely known—was
Devon born and of Devon stock, he migrated from his native town of Barn-
staple, North Devon, in 1869—the year of his marriage to Emily Bailment,
also Devon born and of Devon stock—and settled in Essex, where for
twenty-seven years he resided at 10, Knighton Villas, Woodford Wells.
Although he had to travel daily to and from the City, and at home was
surrounded by a young and growing family, he nevertheless found time to
identify himself with local interests and activities. Chief amongst these was
the Essex Field Club, and many were the outings he enjoyed with such
congenial companions as Ernest Thompson Seton and the brothers Cole.
Especially did he enjoy certain week-ends spent on Mersea Island, where he
found many appealing subjects for his pencil. He maintained that Baring-
Gould's Mehalah—the scene of which is laid in Mersea Island—stands in the
same relation to Essex as does Lorna Doone to the Devon and Somerset
borders. Moreover, on visiting the scene of the Essex classic, no sense of
disproportion between romance and reality is felt in the grim story of Eliza-
beth Rebow and Mehalah Sharland. (Germ hunting in Mehalahland. Essex
Review 3, No. 11, July 1894).
Among other souvenirs of Essex days is The New Song of Maldon or The
Belated Barge, descriptive of a not uneventful visit of the Club to Maldon and
the Blackwater estuary on 14 and 15 September, 1888 (see Essex Nat. 2, pp.
229-55). The following are the opening lines :
Come, all ye learned Botanists, and hearken to my tale ;
And list, ye Entomologists, nor let your courage fail ;
Come, all ye Archaeologists who dote on Samian ware,
Or by the neolithic flint and scraper loudly swear ;
Come, all ye Ornithologists, and ye who dig for bones,
And read the story of the earth from records writ on stones ;
And with your nets and microscopes, the while I sing to you
The song of Maldon and the Rose, and what befell her crew.
For Colchester he entertained a special liking on account of its wealth
of historical associations and remains, and he took a lively interest in the
building of its present Town Hall, being responsible for designing the four
majestic ravens which brood over the town from its tower. Bearing on this,
a story is told of how once, when he was a guest of Alderman Egerton-Jones
of East Hill House, he refused rook pie, declaring that he could not partake
of such a dish in Colchester, the rook being too near a relative of the raven.
F.C.G. was also a member of the "Chelmsford Odd Volumes", being
Volume No. 9. His subject matter as such, on 9 January, 1893, was "An
Historical Sketch of Sir Walter Raleigh from the Death of Queen Elizabeth
to his Execution". To The Essex Review F.C.G. contributed, amongst
other illustrations, humorous cartoon-portraits of Sir Walter Gilbey, Edward
North Buxton, Sir F. Carne Rasch, M.P., Col. Lockwood, M.P. (later Lord
Lambourne), and other Essex notabilities.
Surveying the years of F.C.G.'s sojourn in Essex one is impressed with
the remarkable physical and mental energy with which he must have been
endowed, to have enabled him to work daily in the City, which involved,
in all seasons and often in the dead of night, a walk home from Buckhurst
Hill station through Lord's Bushes, and to pursue simultaneously his various
hobbies in one of which—that of political cartooning—he was destined