Charles Bardsley - The Romance of the London Directory

When the enterprising and energetic editor of The Fireside wrote suggesting that he should print my articles on the London Directory, published at various intervals during the last two years in that magazine, I was somewhat taken aback. I will candidly confess that half of them, or thereabouts, were written with some degree of care: I will as honestly admit that the rest were indited amid the press of heavy ministerial labours, and had to take their chance, as regards manner, method, and matter. Nevertheless, I may add that, however wanting in order and sequence several chapters appeared on paper, I was not afraid for the accuracy of their contents. My only credit for this, supposing my lack of fear to be well founded, is that which attaches to diligent research. The only true means of discovering the origin of our surnames is to find the earliest form of entry. Light upon that, and half the difficulty vanishes. This is a means which is as open to any of my readers as myself – more so in the case of those who dwell in the metropolis.

I take this opportunity of apologising to many readers of The Fireside , who have written to me asking for information in respect of their own, or some other name they were interested in. A few I have been able to answer; the rest have had to lie by, for I have not had the time or health to attend to them. I only wish there was the possibility of this preface meeting the eye of my American cousins. I have a large batch of letters of inquiry, from the other side of the Atlantic, to scarcely one of which have I been able to make reply. I feel truly sorry, for I would not seem to be wanting in courtesy to one of them. These more distant inquiries have resulted rather from the publication of “English Surnames” (issued by Messrs. Chatto and Windus, Piccadilly), than the articles in The Fireside . And I would take this opportunity of recommending such of my readers as have become interested in the science of nomenclature, through a perusal of these elementary papers, to study that work. I can do this the more readily as I have no pecuniary interest in the sale thereof!

Not the least of the pleasures attending the writing of these papers has been the opportunity it gave me of making personal acquaintance with the Editor. I trust God will bless him in his most useful enterprise.

St. Mary’s Vicarage, Ulverston.

All proverbs are not necessarily true, but that which asserts that “every man has his hobby” few will gainsay. Nothing in a house so well betrays this hobby as the owner’s bookcase. It may be large, or it may be small, but there the secret lies. One man’s hobby is angling, and his shelf begins with quaint Isaac Walton, and ends with the Field newspaper of last week. Another has a liking for natural science, and his library is a vade mecum of its mysteries. A third – oftentimes a lady – loves ferns, and her study is a little compendium of that curious literature that has all but wholly sprung up within the present generation. Even the young lady’s shelf of poems, or novels, or histories, betrays, if not the bent of her mind, the bias of her education.

My hobby is Nomenclature, and my library betrays my weakness in – what class of books, do you think? – directories! You would think I was a postal official. I have London Directories, Provincial Town Directories, and County Directories. I have even a Paris and a New York Directory. But herein lies a strange truth. I find as much pleasure in perusing these directories as any schoolgirl over her first and most sensational novel. The grand finale of murders, suicides from third-storey windows, and runaway weddings, all so thrillingly blended, cannot be half so absorbing to her – not that I recommend her to read such things – as the last chapter of the London Post Office Directory, from Y to Z, is to me. It is the conclusion of one of the grandest and most highly wrought romances ever put together by the ingenuity of man. Oftentimes in the evening I take it down from my shelf, and I never feel tempted to skip the pages. Nay, when I have at last got to Z, I can begin at A again with but freshened interest; for the Directory will bear reading twice.

The London Directory, to every one who has the key that unlocks its treasures, is at once an epitome of all antiquarian knowledge. In it I can trace the lives of my countrymen backwards for many a century. In it is furnished a full and detailed account of the habits and the customs of my ancestry – the dress they wore, the food they ate, six hundred years ago; though that it is not so far back as the Welshman’s pedigree, which hung from his sitting-room ceiling to the floor, and half-way up had a note to the effect that “about this time Adam was born.” No, I can but pretend to go up some eighteen or twenty steps of the ladder of my family nomenclature. Nevertheless, by one glance at your name I can tell you – unless its spelling be hopelessly corrupted – whether the progenitor of your race was Scotch, Irish, English, Norman, French, German, or even Oriental. I can tell you what was his peculiar weakness, or his particular vocation in life. I can declare the complexion of his hair; whether he was long or short, straight or crooked, weak or strong. I can whisper to you what his neighbours thought of him; whether they deemed him generous or miserly, churlish or courteous. Yes, sometimes I must tell you unpleasant truths about your great, great, great ( ad infinitum ) grandfather. For the Directory is remarkably truthful; it won’t spare anybody, high or low, rich or poor. I have heard people telling of the greatness of their ancestral name, and the said name on their visiting card was laughing at them all the time “behind its back.” I have seen men dwelling in back slums contented with their sphere, and yet ignorant of the fact that they bore a sobriquet which six centuries ago would have brought them respect from the king on his throne down to the humblest cottager in the land. Oh, the ups and downs of life, as related in this big romance, put to paper by prosaic clerks, who never smiled at the fun, nor dropped a tear at the distress, simply because they lacked the manual that should explain its merriment and interpret its pathos! Hieroglyphics, believe me, are not confined to Egyptian obelisks or Oriental slabs.

But some reader, perchance, will say, “What do you mean? Is there anything more in a surname than the individuality it gives to the present bearer? In itself is it not purely accidental?” Of course it is accidental. A fossil shell is accidental; but place it in the hand of a geologist, and he will talk for five days upon it, barring the time he will want for eating and sleeping. And a surname is a fossil – not millions of years old, may be, like the shell; only six hundred – still a fossil, and therefore stereotyping the state and condition of human life at the period when it came into being. A surname not only gives individuality to the present bearer, but is a distinct statement of some condition or capacity enjoyed or endured by the first possessor. An instance will prove this. Take the name of “Cruikshank.” There must have been some particular ancestor so designated because he had a “crooked leg.” That is a fact to start with. Do you want to know where he lived, and when? Well, there is no great difficulty in the matter. The very spelling “cruik,” and not “crook,” proves that he was a north countryman. Is that all? No. The word “shank” shows that he received this nickname before “leg” had come into ordinary use. Leg is always used for shank now, yet it is first found in England about the year 1250. It is comparatively modern. Hence there is no surname that I know of with “leg” as an ingredient. 1 1 Legge or Leg is Leigh, a meadow, and therefore local . John de Leg is found in the Hundred Rolls . In later days he would have been called “Bow-leg.” Once more, nickname-surnames are scarcely ever found to be hereditary before the year 1200. Here then I glean four facts about “Cruikshank”: —