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)
