Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Part the First
Part the Second
Part the Third
The last entry
Extract from The Windvale Sprites
About the Author
By the Same Author
Copyright
Part the First
Monday 18th April 1768
My name is Benjamin Tooth. This is my journal.
One day I will be remembered as the greatest scientist that the world has ever known and so it is my duty to mankind to record my thoughts that future generations are able to study the progress of a genius.
I am eleven years old.
*
Today for supper I ate of a buttock of ham with plum pudding and greens.
Tuesday 19th April 1768
Up early with the lark collecting caterpillars. I found several interesting specimens and sketched them carefully before mashing them into a pulp.
This foul puree I use to feed a hatchling bird that I rescued and am raising.
I have long known that a baby bird should be left alone, for even though it may seem abandoned its parents are usually close by, looking for food. But this particular creature did not fall from or fly the nest, it was pushed. I had been observing a pair of warblers on my way to the schoolhouse. They were a type of warbler I had not seen before and was unable to identify from any picture books. For a week I watched as the birds collected twigs and meticulously built a perfect nest in the hawthorn and lined it with feathers and grass. Soon there appeared two brown speckled eggs. The next day another. Then on the third day a surprise. Another egg, similar in colour but nearly twice the size. I soon realised that this was an intruder. The cuckoo I have heard but never spotted had found my warblers’ nest.
This was the most exciting opportunity to study a phenomenon I have oft read about but never witnessed. Within very few days the cuckoo egg hatched, even though it was laid after the warbler’s. Its adopted parents must have been horrified when they saw their huge offspring but set to dutifully collecting insects to fill its ever-gaping beak. The next day the first of the warblers hatched and, realising it would now have to share the supply of food, the cuckoo took action and pushed its stepbrother and the remaining eggs out of the nest. I must have arrived soon after this happened as, though the eggs were sadly smashed, the bewildered hatchling was sitting in the grass, indignantly squeaking at the injustice of it all.
The tiny, shivering creature was no more than a wrinkled skin-bag of jelly bones with a beak.
I have named the bird Lucky and he is thriving well on his nutritious maggot-paste diet. I take him with me to school each day in a feather-lined teacup hidden in the pocket of my coat. In the other pocket I keep a snuffbox of caterpillar mash with which to feed him. I have told nobody about Lucky, though his hungry squeaking has almost led to discovery on more than one occasion. Miss Ormeroid is convinced that there is a sparrows nest in the rafters of the schoolhouse roof.
*
Dined today of a hot boiled green tongue with a butter pond pudding and turnips.
Wednesday 20th April 1768
I should probably say something about my circumstances so that in centuries to come scholars will have a full picture of my life and ascent to excellence.
I live at number 7 Church Street, in the market town of Mereton, with my horrible mother and ancient great-grandfather.
My father Josiah was a merchant in the fur trade and by the time I was born had done well. He decided to put most of his wealth into a ship which would travel to the New World to collect a cargo of beaver skins and sail back to England. This one ship would have made our family’s fortune and we were to move to a mansion in the country. However, the ship left Hudson Bay fully loaded but failed to arrive in Portsmouth. Fierce storms on the crossing were presumed to have claimed it but no trace was ever recovered.
On my father’s death my horrible mother received a small pension and it is that which we now live off. We don’t have much, my clothes are years old and threadbare, our furniture is older than Great-grandfather and we have only one servant, Eleanor, who cooks and cleans. It will be wonderful for the students of the future to think how from such humble beginnings I rose to such brilliance.
My horrible mother (I will now dispense with the prefix ‘horrible’ when mentioning my mother in order to save on ink, but let it be understood that she is, indubitably, horrible) has had a difficult life so brimful of tragedy that it’s little wonder she is a dry, cruel husk of a woman. The accumulated horrors of having seen seven of your children to their graves would turn any devoted mother into a bitter, miserly, spiteful, wrinkled old crab-trout.
The reason, I hope, that I am able to get on in life without being so thoroughly unpleasant is that I don’t have to live with the burden of the memories of my siblings. Four passed away before I was even born and the other three I hardly remember, so tender an age was I when they each met their particular and peculiar fate.
Camilla died of the Winds, Peter of the Leg Sweats, Eliza got the Canker and Louisa succumbed to Dropsy. Pippa passed over after falling down the stairs, Charley after falling up them, and Martin died, aged five, of the Bending Disease.
My great-grandfather is a mystery. How, in a world where my poor brothers and sisters perished so young, he can live for a century or more is baffling.
Great-grandfather (I will, from hereon, dispense with the prefix ‘great’ when mentioning my great-grandfather, but please be assured that he is, unquestionably, great) hardly speaks any more. It is a theory of mine that we all are born with a fixed number of words to speak in our lifetime (255,507,143) and Grandfather has very few left so he uses them sparingly and wisely. Actually, not always wisely. Last month at supper he blurted out ‘Cock-a-doodle-doo!’ apropos of nothing. He then looked very downcast, as if he knew he’d wasted five valuable syllables, and didn’t speak again for a week.
I remember a time when he used to speak more.
In the years following my father’s disappearance Grandfather would tell me stories before bed. These he never read from a book but would invent from his imagination. My favourite, and one that I requested again and again, was about a tribe of tiny, flying people that lived in a far-off place where they were safe from humans.
Grandfather is also named Benjamin Tooth and has a wooden leg. A curious thing is that he will often absentmindedly scratch this wooden appendage or rub it after a long walk as though he still has feeling in it.
Most of his days are spent looking out of the window or looking at his collection. It’s not much of a collection, to be honest. In fact it is hard to surmise a link between each of the objects. It comprises a spoon, a small ball of hair, several acorns, a shoe, and various other apparently random objects. But Grandfather gets a lot of enjoyment from his collection, regularly taking it out and arranging the objects in a very specific order on the table, examining them and cataloguing them in a notebook. He rarely adds to the collection but when he does he shows me his new acquisition with great pride and I congratulate him on finding such a beautiful example.
He is profoundly deaf and his eyesight is almost gone, but his sense of smell is astounding. He smells me coming home from school each day and has a dish of steaming tea waiting for me as I walk in the door.*
If I bring him a newspaper he reads it by smell, inserting one end of his ‘reading straw’ into a nostril and then sniffing along the lines from left to right.
He wears a periwig of the old-fashioned style and the red coat he wore at the Battle of Blenheim where he lost his leg. (He didn’t lose his leg. It was shattered by a grea
t shot. A grenadier, who was a butcher by trade, happened to be passing and, with his cleaver, chopped off the limb at a blow. The grenadier subsequently went on to become Surgeon General of the whole army. Or so the story goes.)
I attend the dame school at Stonebridge, which is a three-mile walk across the fields from my house. The schoolmistress, Miss Ormeroid, is a crotchety old hag who has no more idea of how to teach children than I do of making lace. I already feel I have learnt as much from her as I can. We spend hours reciting aloud number tables or verses from the scriptures. We also have to copy out and commit to memory whole chapters from Miss Ormeroid’s (to the best of my knowledge) only book. A Practical Discourse on the Benefits of Serious-Minded Contemplation of Various and Diverse Philosophies by the Reverend James Diggens is without doubt the dullest book ever written. I worry that my brain is being filled with these utterly mind-numbing passages, that it will soon have no space left and something really important will be pushed out, like how to stand up. I fear I will memorise one sentence too many, forget how to stand up and just crumple to the floor.
For the past two years I have been secretly collecting woodworms from the old timbers in our attic and pushing them into the spine of the confounded volume before school. However, they must find it as boring as I and soon crawl out in favour of the leg of Miss Ormeroid’s desk. At least one day the desk might collapse, which will provide a momentary distraction.
(The woodworms are the larvae of the death-watch beetle. These tiny insects make a clicking noise that I sometimes hear on very still and quiet nights. This sound is thought by some to be a premonition of a death in the house. I imagine this must be a superstition although it must be said that Death has been a constant visitor to our home. He barges in without invitation and never wipes his feet.)
Once a week on a Thursday we are visited by Mrs Butterford who comes to instruct us in Natural History and Botany. It is these Thursday lessons that I live for and that are my greatest joy. The weather being fair we leave the confines of the schoolhouse and venture into the surrounding countryside. There we collect specimens, one day catching butterflies with a net, another day dipping in ponds and streams or counting the different species of tree in a hedgerow. (They say you can tell the age of a hedgerow by the number of species growing in it: a new species will establish itself every hundred years. If this is true, the hedge that borders the eastern side of Farmer Gantry’s pasture has been there since the time of the Romans.)
If the weather is inclement we stay at school and write up our findings, pressing flower and leaf samples, mounting butterflies and beetles, and painting watercolours from the sketches taken in the field.
Mrs Butterford is a wonderful painter and has taught me much. Her renderings of wild flowers are as freshly delicate as the real thing, such that I imagine I can smell their perfume.
It is during these study periods that I dream of one day being a great naturalist and fellow of the Royal Society, travelling to far-off lands, discovering new species of flora and fauna and bringing them back to the astonishment of the scientific community.
To achieve this dream though I would need to win a place at university and that is as likely to happen as Grandfather’s leg growing back. To study at university one needs much wealth and much wealth is something my family has very little of.
Nevertheless I will continue my studies lest a rich benefactor should one day decide to patronise me and I can take my place amongst the hallowed stones of Oxford or Cambridge.
Saturday 23rd April 1768
Today I helped the Archdeacon to drain and clear the fish pool without the gardens of the deaconry. It is thought that the pond has not been cleared these fifty years and it was choked with reeds and lilies. The pond is fed from the south by a dyke, which we stopped off with sandbags. Then, stretching a net over the channel to the north, we widened it with shovels allowing the water to drain away. It was dirty, smelly work but fun!
The Archdeacon is a capital fellow and insisted upon helping. Indeed he seemed to relish the opportunity to cast off his clerical robes and wallow around in the mud and sludge dressed solely in a pair of old britches.
Each time a fish was caught in the net he would hold it above his head with a cry of ‘Lo! Another of God’s eels!’ or ‘Holy roach!’
By midday the pond was half-emptied and we sat on the bank to eat our lunch.
We got back to work and the remaining fish were removed in time for Mr Whitbourne the monger to collect them and take them to market: in total a dozen large eels, two dozen fat roaches, the same of perch and five handsome tench. The archdeacon made me a present of a brace of eels for my help.
The day nearly over I arranged to come back on the morrow to stop up the gap and re-flood the pool. It was only then that we noticed a movement in the mud. Something large was pushing through the shallow water left in the bottom of the pond. With a twinkle in his eye the archdeacon turned to me, cried, ‘Here be monsters!’ and leapt into the ditch. There, with great effort, the two of us wrestled from the silt a magnificent, gigantic beast of a catfish, seven feet from head to tail with coral rings in its fins! I have never seen anything like it.
Dined tonight of a pigeon pudding and green salad.
*
Mother very bad with a Swelled Face. Dr Lamprey came and bleeded her with leeches.
Thursday 28th April 1768
Today I discovered a most rare and beautiful creature.
Her name is Izzy Butterford and she is the daughter of Mrs Butterford who teaches us of a Thursday and quite the gentlest and kindest thing on Earth. She has joined Miss Ormeroid’s school and sits next to me in class.
Today Mrs Butterford issued us all with butterfly nets and took us out to the meadow. Izzy refused to join us in mounting the butterflies we caught but instead painted them in the meadow and set them free. Even more extraordinary (and I wouldn’t have believed it had I not seen it with mine own eyes) she sat on a tuffet with her paints beside and paper on lap while a butterfly sat patiently on her skirts. When she had done she said, ‘There now, it is finished, thank you, goodbye,’ whereupon the butterfly fluttered its wings and was gone! I might have thought this a coincidence but, Journal, I saw it three times!
Izzy is almost as good an artist as her mother and knows the names of all the birds and flowers. I so wanted her to think well of me that I broke my vow and showed her the baby bird in my pocket. She was enchanted and asked if she could help look after it. I of course agreed and she is to come to the house Monday next after school.
Dear Journal I cannot tell you but she is the prettiest maid and I am truly smitten.
This even I shall eat a great deal of cheese that I may dream tonight of sweet Izzy Butterford.
*
Mother abed with Fatigue of the Blood.
Friday 29th April 1768
The cheese I ate made me dream of great fat frogs with human hands.
There is a shop in Stonebridge that draws me to it every time I pass. It is an establishment called Gadigun’s Taxidermology: Stuffing, Embalming, Preserving, Mounting. Behind the grimy windows stuffed animals are frozen in action, real animals in realistic poses caught in a moment of time. I would like to learn how to do that one day.
Monday 2nd May 1768
Today Izzy Butterford came with me back to Church Street after school.
I took her to the woodshed where I have built the nesting box in which Lucky roosts at night. I have made it comfortable with moss but Izzy insisted that ‘such a perfect darling should not have to sleep in such a cobwebby hovel’ and before long she had me sweeping the shed and garlanding the walls with posies of flowers. Then I had to lay a fragrant carpet of lavender and rose petals that the smell of damp would not offend his ‘pretty nostrils’. I felt sure that Lucky eyed me with a sneer as if to say, ‘What creature is this that has you sprinkling whimsy like a bridesmaid?’
Izzy left for home at five of the clock and though I was sad to see her go I am glad she
left before evening as I feel sure she would have had me singing lullabies to send the bird to sleep.
Tuesday 3rd May 1768
Today I showed Izzy the warblers’ nest. She was at first excited but soon became melancholy when she saw how hard the warblers have to work to keep their foster child fed.
‘Oh how can such beautiful creatures behave so cruelly to one another?’ she lamented. I told her there was no room for kindness or sentimentality in the struggle for life but she called me ‘unfeeling and cold’.
The cuckoo chick is now a monster. It has outgrown the tiny nest and sits atop it like a turkey on a flowerpot. The warblers will be looking forward to the day it fledges and they can get some respite from the continual gathering of food. They must surely be put off raising children for good by that greedy parasite who bears no family resemblance.
Thursday 5th May 1768
Lucky is almost fully fledged and Izzy has said that I should set him free.
I reluctantly own that she is probably right. I had thought that he could be my pet and companion but small birds cannot be tamed like a jackdaw or a jay and, unless I kept him in a cage, he would eventually fly away.
Izzy thinks that we should take him far away, for he is so trusting that if he stayed in Mereton he would fall prey to a cat before long. I will keep him a few days more until I am satisfied that his wings are strong and he can find his own caterpillars. Then I will take him to Windvale Moor, a wild and isolated area several miles to the south-west of here.
The Lost Journals of Benjamin Tooth Page 1