To know or not to know

There are some things that are best not to know.

I was well into my thirties before I gave serious thought to the family tree I'd dropped from. You'd think I could have coped with all kinds of droppings by then, but I couldn't. The antics of some of my forbears were of the humbling, face-burning, downcast eyes kind. From what I discovered about Amos, Seth, Ruth and Esther, bearing religious names in no way influenced their activities. Oh dear no. Our family tree had a very twisted look to it by the time I appeared among its branches.

The bones of one of my forebears, Clara de Voyant, shook and rattled as I discovered and then checked one particular branch of my ancestors. I mean, ‘de Voyant’! Evidence of ‘Clara’, yes, that was clear, but the ‘de Voyant’ appendage was decidedly dodgy. An interesting woman, her name Clara was derived from ‘C.L.R.S.’, which, my research informed me, was a term used on the English stock exchange, and stood for The Chatham, London, and Dover Railway Ordinary Stock.

Clara joined our twisted family tree in through her long gone grandfather, who had been a herbalist. How to find out more? Old trade directories supplied the basic information as to where and when, while district court records uncovered the steamy but fascinating stuff. The rest I gleaned from chats with certain uncles and aunts, where the line between fact and fiction was far from straight. However, while there's not a great deal of interest in long straight roads, life is never dull where you find a few kinks.

The herbalist shop was still there in the main street, and that is where I gained more of an insight into this herbalist forbear from a former elderly employee. Apparently, he had had several children, induced it seems by imbibing the concoctions he was trialling for lady customers, one uncle told me. Some potions worked the wrong way, he said, hitting below the belt for a few who'd taken secret sips intended for their spouse. A resultant dampening of virility for the spouse-potion-sipping-boyos was akin to Samson's loss of hair. Sadly, close, lingering encounters of the intimate variety, became short shift, angry, angry outbursts, with banishment to the spare room. My imagination soared as it brought those words to life, especially when my uncle added that not all was lost. Most of the chappies found themselves able to top C as easily as any boy soprano and were snapped up by tenor sections of choirs in the district before you could say do, so or fa. And wouldn't you know it? It introduced them to whole new life style too. Critics said it was a wonder some trees continued to branch to branch at all considering the new branches had such little sap. (Critics can be cruel.)

But as I said, Clara was a descendant of this herbalist grandfather. According to an aunt Clara was never just ordinary; she was known to spend a great deal of time outdoors, standing in the railway stations touting for clients. Clara laughed it off. ‘But of course,’ she said, her voice husky after sucking grand-daddy extra strong lozenges, and in a fair imitation of a bass singer in a Cossack choir. ‘I seek clients for my séances wherever I can.’

A local newspaper reported it differently. The word was finances, not séances, which is as good a reason as any for a lady to be standing at railway stations. (I've met them that way myself.)

Further research dispelled any doubts as to her ability to foretell the future, despite the plaque outside her door stating it as a fact. Alongside a PhD, if you please! She never won a raffle, always got wet when it rained, while the doggies she bet on preferred to end up at the rear of the pack. And to the embarrassment of those researching our family tree, was delivered of seven children, none related to the seaman or brewer men friends nor optician she married, all three of whom expired before the normal ‘use by’ age in those days, which says a great deal for Clara's production facilities.

I had hopes that her PhD would prove there was some quality in the family, some stray intellectual trait lying dormant in our line. Alas, it was not to be. The photograph of her in imitation leopard skin weight-lifting gear shows she was a powerfully built lady. The muscles on her arms and thighs, caught in sepia colour, illustrated what is possible without resorting to illegal performance enhancing drugs. To what end did Clara build the body beautiful? I mused, and had the photographs enlarged by laser print. The detail in those old photographs can be quite outstanding. One photograph shows her standing in a paddock, fence post under one arm, rammer, a box of staples and roll of number eight fencing wire by her feet. A stoutish man holding a scroll stands to her left. The caption reads: Ted Shipley, President of the Waikato Horticultural Association, congratulates Clare de Voyant, the first English lady immigrant in the Waikato to graduate PhD, for Post Hole Digging.

You can see what I mean about it being best not to know some things. The trouble is, the other day one of my sons brought home a young lady who’s into sumo wrestling. She's built like one too. It can be tough being a Daddy.

Dennis Crompton © 1998
(first published www.denniscrompton.wordpress.com 2013)