Monday, November the 22nd, 2010
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Back in the summer of 2008, I had cause to mention Sabine Baring-Gould, author of innumerable works including a sixteen-volume Lives Of The Saints, a study of werewolves, grave desecration and cannibalism, and a biography of Robert Stephen Hawker (1803–1875), the eccentric country vicar who spent much of his time smoking opium in a clifftop hut made from driftwood, talked to birds, dressed up as a mermaid, excommunicated his cat, and kept a pet pig.
I am pleased to report that this morning, at the London Library, recalling Baring-Gould, and brimming with glee, I borrowed his Hawker biography (The Vicar Of Morwenstow, 1886), a collection of pieces entitled Curiosities Of Olden Times (1869), and a biography of the great man himself, Onward Christian Soldier : A Life Of Sabine Baring-Gould, Parson, Squire, Novelist, Antiquary 1834–1924 by William Purcell (1957).
This trio of tomes will, I expect, contain much that is diverting and instructive and I shall share the more startling bits with you when I buckle down to reading them.