[Vwoolf] Miss Ormerod

[Stuart N. Clarke]

I tried to do a wicked thing by trying to attach two photos in my message to the list; anyway, for the 1816 iron bridge between Chepstow (Wales) and England, see: http://www.fotolibra.com/gallery/592327/chepstow-iron-wye-bridge-south-wales/like

‘But what is this crowd gathered round the door of the George Hotel in Chepstow?  A faint cheer rises from the bottom of the hill.  Up comes the mail coach, horses steaming, panels mud-splashed.  ‘Make way!  Make way!’ cries the ostler and the vehicle dashes into the courtyard, pulls up sharp before the door.  Down jumps the coachman, the horses are led off, and a fine team of spanking greys is harnessed with incredible speed in their stead.  Upon all this – coachman, horses, coach, and passengers – the crowd looked with gaping admiration every Wednesday evening all through the year.  But to-day, the twelfth of March, 1852, as the coachman settled his rug, and stretched his hands for the reins, he observed that instead of being fixed upon him, the eyes of the people of Chepstow darted this way and that.  Heads were jerked.  Arms flung out.  Here a hat swooped in a semi-circle.  Off drove the coach almost unnoticed.  As it turned the corner all the outside passengers craned their necks, and one gentleman rose to his feet and shouted, ‘There! there! there!’ before he was bowled into eternity.  It was an insect – a red-winged insect.  Out the people of Chepstow poured into the high road; down the hill they ran; always the insect flew in front of them; at length by Chepstow Bridge a young man, throwing his bandanna over the blade of an oar, captured it alive and presented it to a highly respectable elderly gentleman who now came puffing upon the scene – Samuel Budge, doctor, of Chepstow.  By Samuel Budge it was presented to Miss Ormerod; by her sent to a professor at Oxford.  And he, declaring it ‘a fine specimen of the rose underwinged locust’ added the gratifying information that it ‘was the first of the kind to be captured so far west.’  



‘And so, at the age of twenty-four Miss Eleanor Ormerod was thought the proper person to receive the gift of a locust.’


More info. on Chepstow: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chepstow
Search on: Ormerod, then link on n.62.
Also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_Anne_Ormerod

By the way, for those of you who have Vol. IV of “The Essays”, but not (yet) Vol. VI, I draw to your attention that the text is out of order in Vol. IV, but appears correctly in Vol. VI.

For pictures of Capt Fenton’s house (see Vol. IV, p. 145 n.4, & Vol. VI, pp. 636-7), see:
http://www.archerandco.com/cgi-bin/view.pl?ref=ar8779


Stuart
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