Edinburgh Zen VI

Pale golden lapsang

In my cup; on the Castle,

Pale golden sunlight.

 

On Looking up Lookup

[Updated 7th May 2008--more news as it breaks...]

Posts on this blog are like buses…

Some of the most contented moments I have spent whilst not in company have been spent in the National Library of Scotland.  Tragic, I know, but there it is.  In the course of my work-related historical research there a while back, I came across an interesting sentence in a letter I was transcribing that has had me running a merry goose-chase ever since. 

In a letter dated 17th January 1756 from Robert Dundas of Arniston (1713-1787, Lord Advocate and MP for “Edinburghshire”) to Sir David Dalrymple (3rd Bt. of Hailes, and later Lord Hailes) I came across the following sentence:

I hope the Court of Session will do the Faculty of Advocates justice in expelling from amongst us Mr. Lookup who is a reproach to our body.

That’s it: no follow-up, no references in later letters, and we do not have Sir David’s reply.  Interesting enough for me to do a bit of rooting around to find out a bit more, I thought.  I was right.

I eventually found three rather intriguing pieces of intelligence in connection with the reproachable Mr Lookup.  The first was his entry in The Faculty of Advocates in Scotland 1532-1943 (S.R.O., 1944):

Son of Mr. John Lookup, minister of Mid Calder, born 1710, died 7 Aug. 1757, mar. Mary MyInton (died 7 Aug. 1757). Suspended 23 June 1756, admitted barrister Mid. Temple 16 May 1740.

So Dundas’s wish came true: Lookup was suspended from the Faculty just five months later.  But under what normal circumstances does a man die on the same day as his wife?  Rather soon for either to have pined away for want of the other.  Had his crime been so reprehensible as to have merited the death sentence, and had his wife been criminally complicit too? I wondered rather dramatically.  But surely his entry would have said if that had been the case?  So I went next to look up the record of his suspension.

In The acts of sederunt of the Lords of Council and Session, from the 15th of January 1553, to the 11th of July 1790 (Edinburgh, 1790), I found this account for 23rd June 1756:

Sentence suspending Mr John Lookup, Advocate, for Contempt of Authority.  In the complaint given in and presented to the Lords for Agnes Forbes, relict of the deceased John MacDonald, late merchant and distiller in Laigh Valleyfield, against Mr John Lookup, advocate, and William Chalmers, writer in Edinburgh, his clerk, charging them with unwarrantably detaining and with-holding from her sundry papers, which the said Mr Lookup had got, in order to obtain a suspension of a process at the instance of John Lawson, one of her husband’s creditors, against her; and endeavouring to extort from the complainer, a certain sum of money, as the contents of a pretended account, alleged to be resting by her to them: to which complaint they having given in answers, and a proof being led in the said matter, and several intimations made to the said Mr John Lookup to attend the advising thereof:
The Lords having this day taken under their consideration the complaint at the instance of the said Agnes Forbes, against the said Mr John Lookup, and that the said Mr John Lookup has been guilty of contempt of their authority, by his not compearing in Court, in obedience of the several orders of the Lords intimated to him: They therefore suspend him from his office of an advocate, and whole privileges thereof, ay and until he purges himself of the said complaint. And ordain this sentence to be insert in the sederunt books.

So Mr Lookup was a dodgy geezer, or was alleged to be so—and he failed to turn up to defend himself from these accusations.  Suspension courted, suspension granted.  But this tells us nothing about his later life—nor why there was so little of it left to run, nor yet why he seems to have met his Maker on the same day as his wife.

As it happened, the next referrence to Lookup I could find related to Mrs Lookup.  From Theophilous Cibber’s The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) Vol. II:

[John] Milton had a brother, Mr. Christopher Milton who was knighted and made one of the barons of the Exchequer in King James II’s reign, but he does not appear to have been a man of any abilities, at least if he had any, they are lost to posterity in the lustre of his brother’s. There is now alive a grand-daughter of this Christopher Milton, who is married to one Mr. John Lookup, advocate at Edinburgh, remarkable for his knowledge of the Hebrew tongue. The lady, whom I have often seen, is extremely corpulent, has in her youth been very handsome, and is not destitute of a poetical genius. She has writ several copies of verses, published in the Edinburgh Magazines; and her face bears some resemblance to the picture of Milton.

Fascinating!  Having made certain that there was only one John Lookup in the Faculty of Advocates at the time, I was pleased to have found out such a curious piece of information about his personal life.  Was “MyInton” a misspelling of “Milton” (or perhaps “Mylton”) then?  And was Lookup the accomplished Hebrew scholar Cibber claims?  Certainly, there was a “John Lookup, Esq.” who was the author (in 1739 and 1740 respectively) of a work on the biblical evidence for the doctrine of the Trinity (deemed heretical by its dedicatee, the Archbishop of Canterbury) and a translation from the Hebrew of the book of Genesis (which had been remarked upon for its mastery of that tongue).   But too little information on this author exists, either to make the identification with our Lookup certain or to eliminate him from our enquiries.  Notwithstanding his being a son of the Manse (the theological connection) and his admission to the English bar in the year of the work in question (the Anglican link), “our John” may be thought an unlikely candidate for authorship of such a book.  But John Lookup is a sufficiently uncommon name for the attribution to be plausible, and one never knows.

But what of the sychronous carking-it of Mr and Mrs Lookup?  I have, so far, found nothing either in the parish registers or the records of the law courts relating to them.  But good old Google dredged up one more tantalising lead.

In the legal records of the County of York, Virginia from 1775 we find the “Inventory and appraisement of the estate of John Lookup deceased taken on the 17th day of August 1774″.  Listed amongst the meagre leavings of this man (several items of livestock, an unharvested crop of corn, argricultural equipment, “six old wigs” and a very few other personal effects) are more than a dozen books on English law. 

My brain ran amok.  Could this be our man?  Were the reports of his 1757 death ”greatly exaggerated”?  Did he fake his own death?  Did he fake his wife’s?  Was he instead transported along with his wife to the American colonies when the long arm of the law eventually collared him?  (Just such a fate–transportation to the American colonies–was narrowly escaped by a George Lookup, a suspected swindler and convicted perjurer, on a technicality in England in 1762…)  Could this John Lookup instead be our advocate’s son, who perhaps fled to Virginia to escape the shame brought upon his name by his father’s misdeeds but who took some of pa’s law books with him?  Are there too many shrill, fanciful questions in this paragraph? We (or at any rate, I) may never know.  This is as far as I’ve got so far.

But I do know that there are the makings of a rip-roaring historical novel in all of this: crime, literature, beauty, mystery, death, celebrity, wigs–it’s got the lot. 

UPDATE: Gawd bless Google!  I just found the report below, which can only very recently have been uploaded, and isn’t available thorough the otherwise excellent Eighteenth-Century Collections Online— er, because it wasn’t printed till 1826. 

From Decisions of the Lords of Council and Session from 1766 to 1791 (Vol. II, Edinburgh 1826), commonly known as “Hailes’s Decisions” because it was compiled by… Lord Hailes himself!  Now, why didn’t I think of looking there in the first place, eh?  Never mind, here’re the goodies:

 1775.  February 2.  ANDREW and ROBERT LOOKUPS, Petitioners. THE petitioners, having heard of the death of one John Lookup in Virginia, desired to have evidence of their propinquity to him. The first point to be established was, who is the John Lookup ? The petitioners imagined that he was Mr John Lookup, advocate, and that his identity might be proved by comparing his handwriting with the handwriting of the Virginia John Lookup. With that view, they applied to the Court for a warrant to deliver up on receipt, and under an obligation to restore, certain writings of Mr John Lookup, advocate, which lay in a process before the Court of Session. On the 2d February 1775, ” The Lords granted the desire of the petition, on finding caution for L.5, and ordered notarial copies to be taken before the clerk delivers up the writings.”

Had I a gast it would be well and truly flabbered.  (Instead, I have flab which is well and truly ghastly).  My guess that the Virginia Lookup might be our man was clearly shared by some of his (presumed) relatives (I am guessing the petitioners were advocate Lookup’s sons).  Thus, my hunch is in part borne out–and only 233 years too late.  I will endeavour to find out more (Oi! You! Stop snoring at the back!), but in the meantime…

Levate oculos!

 

Apologia pro haiku sua

Haikus are, in general, best dished up without any prefatory comment.  But in this case, I think some explanation is required. [More, alas, than I had initially forseen: see comments...]

For me (and I pretty much made this rule up myself) a haiku should capture one particular insight or reflection as conceived in a particular moment.  The other rule I bind myself to is that of strict veracity: what I write must be a faithful expression of what I actually thought or felt, not what I think it would have been cool or clever to have thought or felt.  If they’re not sincere, they’re no good.  

I can only apologise that the sincere “insight” below came to me in a Starbucks loo: no gratuitous grossness [of any description] was intended.

 

Starbucks Bonhomie

Not minding the pan’s

Streaked from someone else’s trip

Must count for something.

 

 

Loquebantur variis linguis

Listening to a putative display of glossolalia (apparently to-order) on the old tube last night, I caught myself smiling. 

The glossolalist in question was making a bit of a pig’s breakfast out of explaining the phenomenon with any degree of clarity.  Apart from my usual thought that it would be much more sporting of the Holy Ghost to inspire these people with the gift of actual, recognisable languages (and, as the Catholic Encyclopædia says: “The charisma of interpretation is [...] the necessary complement of glossolalia; when interpretation is not forthcoming, the speaker with tongues shall hold his peace.”), another thought also flitted through the draughty chasm of my mind.  I know, two at a time: working to capacity.

Isn’t it odd, I mused, that those who appear to be most effortlessly eloquent in these strange tongues are frequently those who are least eloquent in talking about them (or anything else) in tongues which are familiar to the rest of us?  Do these tongue-tied individuals, I wonder, ever reflect with chagrin on the irony of that?

 

‘Struth!

I saw in a banner-ad at the bottom of a website this morning that the M*rmons are advertising themselves under the slogan of “Truth Restored” these days.  I choked on my biscuit. 

Truth “restored”.  Uhuh.  Like Henry VIII “restored” the monasteries.  I think I’ll take my Truth fully un-restored, thanks.

 

Tago, Tagas, Tagat

Well, there’s not been a new post here for a wee while, so you’ll just have to be grateful for whatever you get. 

I’ve been tagged.  No, no, no—not for shoplifting or ram-raiding or defacing headstones in pet cemeteries.  Not this time, anyway.  I mean I’ve been sent a meme, a wee questionnaire.  By the next big thing in Canadian literature, Seraphic Single.  No, it’s no use asking me what possible interest any of the answers I’ve provided are, or to whom: just read and be grateful if I haven’t tagged you in turn.  Go on, you might even enjoy yourselves…

1. The rules of the game get posted on the beginning.
2. Each player answers the rules about himself.
3. At the end of the post, the player tags five people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they’ve been tagged and asking them to read his blog.

What I was doing ten years ago:
I was a teaching-monkey (official title: “Lecturer in Social Science”) at an FE college. I taught philosophy (and other random stuff) there part-time, whilst researching for an MLitt. at my alma mater.

Five things on my To-Do list today:
1. Go to work.
2. Discuss some random stuff with the boss (who’s been off for a week).
3. Call the the relevant authority to discuss declaring my car off-road (and therefore tax-exempt).
4. Clear up the house (properly) after Friday night’s dinner party.
5. Read more of that inestimable tome, The Widow of Saint-Pierre.

Things I would do if I were a billionaire:
1. Pay off the bank.
2. Buy and furnish a house.
3. Endow/fund assorted Catholic charities, projects, institutions, etc.
4. Offer help to family and friends.
5. Invest a small amount for personal use and ensure nothing was left after all of the above.

Three of my bad habits:
1. Surfing the net (yeah, like this is gonna help…).
2. General procrastination.
3. Fibbing to barbers/taxi-drivers.

Five places I’ve lived:
1. Dundee, Scotland.
2. W–lb–k (near Dundee).
3. Aberdeen, Scotland.
4. Old Aberdeen, Scotland.
5. Edinburgh (Athens Borealis, innit).

Five jobs I’ve had:
1. Bookshop assistant.
2. Beadle.
3. College lecturer.
4. University tutor.
5. Education/interpretation officer for “heritage” organisation.

Five books I’ve recently read:
1. Mary and the Fathers of the Church (Fr Gambero).
2. The Tragical Tale of Aelianus of England (Seraphic Single).
3. On (Hilaire Belloc).
4. The Red Door (Iain Crichton Smith).
5. The Temple of Death: The Ghost Stories of A.C. and R.H. Benson.

And of course I am reading The Widow of Saint-Pierre.  But who isn’t, right?

Five people or communities I’m going to tag:
In an effort to keep a Catholic and/or Scottish theme going, poor Mark, Cirdan, Catholic Teuchtar, Ebo and Cath are so getting tagged. Sorry, chaps…

 

 

One good widow deserves another

To combine one shameless plug with another, I’m ostensibly posting this to celebrate the publication of the book puffed below. 

But since I’d already mentioned the widow Clicquot down there, and since the non-vintage bottle is so very attractive and so powerfully evocative of joyous good fun and bonhomie (for me at any rate—you lot can get your own Proustian-madeleine-type-thingie), I thought I’d pop this piccie up.

The thought that some lovely rep from said bubbly-co might drop by and see that I’ve directly linked to their website, and then, perhaps, casually reward my disinterested plug (it really is marvellous stuff, you know: if need be, sell your children to ensure a regular suppy) with a bottle magnum case of this very nectar, never crossed my simple mind.  No, not even once, I tell you.

[After this case, VCP would no doubt be delighted to take this opportunity to foster Canadian goodwill by an act of spontaneous largesse to celebrate the publication!  I for one would drink a toast to such a gesture... ]

 

Do yourself another favour…

Never has there been such rejoicing over the making of a widow (excepting maybe Mme Clicquot).  I’ve ordered mine—when will you be ordering yours? 

Buy, buy, buy this fabulous new tome, freshly penned by the fair hand of a deserving Canadian gentlewoman keen to rediscover her Caledonian patrimony.

What—you’ve read this far into the post without yet having purchased copies for your self, family, friends and pets?  Rectify that immediately! 

See?  That feels better, now doesn’t it?  Think how much better still it’ll feel when the wee beauty pops through your wee letterboxes.  Why, it’ll make you want to begin the buying process all over again!

The author of this ‘blog would like to make it quite clear that he is not working on commission for sales of the aforementioned book—it’s just his natural kindness shining through…

 

Image problem

Perusing idly (I don’t do “searching energetically”) my blog stats today, I noticed that not a few people were finding their way here via a Google search for “cumbernauld”.  Oh dear, I thought.  Still, never mind—this site must be way down the list of the million-and-then-some sites featuring that fair town.  Said I to myself said I, I’ve probably blown what little chance I had of being presented with the Freedom of the Toon now—I’ll take that one manfully on the chin—but I’m likely enough to remain unmolested by the Loyal Cumbernauldian Crew (”ye bas”). 

But.  It then ocurred to me to check Google images.  A very recent search for “cumbernauld” there brought up a link to my wee post as the… very first result.  That’s the very first result out of 33,400.  *Gulp*. 

In addition to a concern for my own physical welfare (some of those chaps from Lanarkshire Borealis can be a tad rough—and that’s to say nothing of their womenfolk), I suppose I feel a wee bit guilty too.  If it helps at all, I’m happy to explain to anyone who may thereby have stumbled hereupon that the offending poyum in question was nothing but a happenstantial whimsy, a totem more to my desire to see my febrile nonsense in e-print than to any genuine animosity to her or hers.  Let them by all means allow their opinions of said toon to be influenced by less biased and better informed judgements than mine (and they shouldn’t be too hard to find).

In related news, someone found their way here today by googling “hate picasso” (though TT is currently way down on the list for that one).  It takes all sorts.

[Er,  I suppose this post has just made the very problem it raises worse.  Bum.]

 

McCritics

“That’s no a haiku!”

“Aye it is!”  “No it’s no!”  “Is!”

“No!”  “Is!”  ”Shut it, youse!”