More Ancestor Worship

 My great grandmother's people were Larkins- like the poet, like the characters in The darling Buds of May. My great great great grandfather, John Larkin, back in the 1850s, was landlord of the Artichoke in Orpington- a building that still stands though it has changed names several times- first to the Olde Blacksmith's Arms and then (boringly) to the Priory Tavern. It is currently a Turkish restaurant called the Aksular.

 John's children were- in order of birth- Eliza, Eliza, James (my great grandfather), Charlotte, and then bewilderingly- Nodiah, Abigail and Libish. Well, Abigail is not so very bewildering but Nodiah was an obscure Old Testament propetess and Libish is apparently Sanskrit. What on earth was going on in that family? Did they suddenly get religion?

Oh Those Confusing Victorians!

 My great-great-great grandparents John Larkin and his wife Ann gave their oldest children conventional English names- Eliza, Charlotte, James- but then went wild and gave their two youngest daughters the names of Hebrew prophetesses- Abigail and Nodiah- and their youngest son the Hindu name Libish.  Were they now reading comparative religion and/or attending lectures by advanced thinkers?  Certainly, the books and the lectures were there for them to access if they'd wanted- and this was the age of the working-class auto-didact. Their great grandson Cyril (my grandfather (oh but it gets confusing) grew up in the same mileu- sixty years down the line- and was deeply interested in history, philosophy and comparative religion. Perhaps it was a family tradition.

On my mother's side of the family, my great-greats Richard and Sarah Colenutt, provision merchants of Ryde on the Isle of Wight, were lifelong friends of the writer Mark Rutherford- who wrote semi-autobiographical novels questioning and eventually rejecting the evangelical faith in which he was raised.  Rutherford was a pal of George Eliot's and admired in the 20th century by Arnold Bennett, D.H. Lawrence and George Orwell. Do I need to read him? Probably.

Back to the paternal line and I find my great-grandmother Annie Grist (nee Larkin) was given the unusual middle name Amby in tribute to her maternal grandmother Amby Whiting (nee Lee.) Amby Lee: could that be a Romany name?

What interesting chaps these ancestors are turning out to be!

Visitors

 
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I entertain the notion that today's ETs are the same beings as the fairyfolk, goblins etc that interacted with our ancestors- and that's sort of what these images are about....