I’ve been reading The Biography of Barnaby Tage, the Victorian explorer (as it proclaims on the back cover) most famous for discovering the real Borrioboola-Gha famously mentioned in Dickens’s Bleak House as the object of Mrs. Jellyby’s philanthropic enthusiasm.
Tage was the son of a milliner and a milliner’s wife, and grew up not far from his home in Berkshire, and within spitting distance of the River Thames. He witnessed the first steam train to run on what was then the Great Western railway; before that, it had been a railway staffed by horse-drawn donkeys.
It was the sound of the steam engine’s coughing and spluttering, and other equally galling sounds coming from the construction site of what is now The Royal Berkshire Hospital, that inspired the young Barnaby Tage to think about getting out of what he called “the rat-hole of home” and go looking for somewhere if not better then at least different. But he first had these thoughts at the age of eight, and was forced to wait until he was much older before his parents would allow him to leave home unaccompanied.
That day finally arrived on his 39th birthday. He had been dressed and ready for several hours when the omnibus that was to take him beyond the boundary of his village for the first time in his life broke down outside the blacksmith’s half a mile from his home. But, to cut a long story short, he eventually reached Southampton and went looking for a boat for to take him o’er the sea.
To continue cutting the story, and to get quickly to the bit that I’m itching to tell you about, one day he finally reached what was then known as Darkest Africa. It’s not surprising that someone of Tage’s background and limited education should have thought that Darkest Africa was called that because it was, well, dark. He was very surprised to find it was very light.
Throwing away his torch, he found a road rarely travelled by anyone, and went to the very end of it. Then he went a bit further, and found Borrioboola-Gha lurking behind what is now a thriving industrial complex but was then a jungle. It was very small, but very interesting, and ripe for exploitation by the first huge colonial power that might come along.
Tage couldn’t wait to phone home and tell his parents about it, but the telephone hadn’t been invented so he wrote the first of a series of letters that have since become famous as "The Tage Letters". To judge from the very brief extracts in this excellent biography by Sheldon Orr, the eagerly-anticipated publication of a 4-volume edition of the complete letters is deservedly eagerly-anticipated. Here is an extract from a letter Tage wrote to his mother (the italics are mine):
The rash on the inside of my upper thighs has now spread to the skin under my pubic hair. The doctors here have seen nothing like it and want me to have daily baths in the local river. But the local river is always infested with young native lads and lasses cavorting in nakedness, and I know that it is better to suffer than to run the risk of contamination. Hence I am here on my bed of bark, thinking of you and father and ignoring the burning and itching around my private parts that would drive a lesser man insane.
They don’t make men like Barnaby Tage anymore. I can’t imagine why. Plus, I’ve always been fond of the epistolary form, and would rather read letters than books, especially if they are from someone else to someone else, and none of my business.
("The Biography of Barnaby Tage", by Sheldon Orr, is available from most branches of most supermarkets.)
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