James Finn’s Diary and Some Previously Unknown Visitors to Petra in 1851

As noted elsewhere on this blog, James Finn was British Consul in Jerusalem from 1845-1863. He kept extensive notebooks which survive in Jerusalem but are very difficult to access – at least from a distance. He and his wife also shared a diary, a copy of that for 1849-1858 is accessible, indeed, was transcribed and published 40 years ago (Blumberg 1980). Much is banal but for my purposes there are several important references to travellers to Petra who seem not otherwise known. More can certainly be extracted from a closer scrutiny but we may start with two gentlemen who not only travelled to Petra but went by the – then, unorthodox but most direct route – from Palestine. As they were accompanied by the Chancellor of the British Consulate it is likely they returned the same way.

The entry in the diary is brief (Blumberg 1980: 92):
November 22 [1851] Cancelliere left for Petra in company with Hon. and Rev^d. A. G. Campbell &Rev^d. Cunliffe.

Neither of these clergymen is previously attested as travelling to Petra and – for the moment at least, I can find no other record of their being in Palestine (or neighbouring countries) at all. How long they remained at Petra and if they experienced any difficulties is unknown.

Both men can be readily identified:-
The Hon. and Rev. George Archibald Campbell (11 January 1827 – 2 May 1902) was the second son of John Frederick Campbell, 1st Earl of Cawdor and grandson through his mother of the 2^nd Marquess of Bath. He married in September 1853. He spent most of his career as Rector of Knipton in Leicestershire from 1853-83.

The Rev. Henry Cunliffe (16 March 1826 – 1 August, 1894) was the third son of General Sir Robert Cunliffe, 4th Baronet. He married in November 1853; a second marriage in 1887 was to the daughter of the 6th Earl of Dunmore. He was Vicar of Shifnal in Shropshire from 1852-1884

In November 1851 they were 24 and 25 respectively. They were evidently friends, having matriculated (1844) and graduated B.A. (1848) and M.A. (1851 and 1850) from Balliol College, Oxford.

Blumberg, A. (1980) A View from Jerusalem, 1849-1858: The Consular Diary of James and Elizabeth Anne Finn, Cranbury, NJ (Associated University Presses) (also available as an eBook).

– David L. Kennedy.

 

 

Travel Diaries of Rev. Thomas Bowles (1822 – 1899)

In 1853 Bowles (aged c. 31) set off on an extended journey to Australia, New Zealand, India, Egypt, and the Near East. He had been employed as tutor, mentor and companion to the young (c. 20) Lord Schomberg Kerr (1833-1900), the second son of the 7^th Marquess of Lothian. Initially they travelled together with a matching pair – the Rev. Henry Stobart (aged c. 29) and his charge, Lord Henry Scott (1832-1905), second son of the 5^th Duke of Buccleuch. The two parties split up and followed different routes home. Stobart and Lord Henry arrived in Egypt in 1855 and subsequently travelled in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. Bowles evidently split even from his charge and reached Egypt in 1854. At that point he undertook the arduous Desert Route across Sinai to Aqaba, Petra and Hebron before going on to Jerusalem, Damascus and Lebanon.

Stobart wrote extensively to his mother and copies of his letters are in the Australian National Library in Canberra. The whereabout of the originals – and any additional items, is unknown. Bowles kept an extensive diary. One volume of the original – covering the journey from Vanuata to Cairo is also Australian National Library in Canberra. It has pages numbered 292-753 implying an earlier volume. Recently, a further volume was offered for sale by a New York antiquarian bookseller. It covers the period from arrival in Cairo to reaching Rouen on 25 May 1854. Its pages are numbered in the original as 754-1057 – i.e. taking up exactly where the ANL diary ends.

The diary has now been acquired for the Special Collections of the University of Western Australia. It is hoped to digitize it soon and carry out a transcription.

It would be nice to locate the missing first volume (pp. 1-291).

– David L. Kennedy

Further Enlightenment on the Composition of the Finn Group ‘Over the Jordan’

“Over the Jordan and return by the West. We were a dozen Englishmen, including three clergymen, undertaking the above journey, … (Finn 1867: 1)

I have now been able to identify – with almost total certainty, ten of the twelve people in Finn’s group. Most of the evidence comes from the letters of Henry Stobart, travelling as mentor and companion with the young Lord Henry Scott.

Finn, James (1806-1872)
Scott, Lord Henry (1832-1905)
Stobart, Rev. Henry (1824 – 1895)

At various times Stobart mentions nine others – usually only by surname, as members of the party, usually pairing the names which suggests they shared a two-man tent and were travelling together:-

Drummond, Edgar Atheling (1825-1893)
Gott, Rev. John (1830-1906)
Fox
Calvert
Rust, George John (1832 – 1922)
Macan, Rev. Henry Sneyd Robert (1831 – 1862)
Thring, Rev. Godfrey (1823-1903)
Cayley, George John (1826-1878)
Sturgis, Russell (1831-1899)

The three clergymen mentioned by Finn are:-

Gott, Rev. John (1830-1906)
Macan, Reverend Henry Sneyd Rob
Thring, Rev. Godfrey (1823 – 1903)

Fox and Calvert still defy identification. They are usually paired including sharing ‘servants’. Stobart mentions them several times but none offers any clue to identity.

– David L. Kennedy

Frederic Hetley (France, 14 April 1821 – London, 13 March 1902) again

Further research has revealed useful details of Hetley’s life which may assist in placing him in the Middle East. We now know that his father was a glass merchant in London and that his two older brothers continued that business. Perhaps because of his father’s involvement in this business with a French glassmaker called Claudet who set up in business in London, Frederic was born in France in 1821 (evidently acquiring the French spelling of his name without the final k). Frederic was apprenticed to an Apothecary to train as a doctor – from 2 January 1838 to February 1844, first to an Apothecary in Battersea called Dugald McKellar then (from 14 October 1840) to a William Fisher. The change of Master presumably causing his five-year Apprenticeship to be extended across six years. We may suppose that he only began his tour in the East after his formal qualification.

“Travellers of 1857 to Petra.”

The first edition of Murray’s Handbook to Syria was published in 1858. The short section on Petra warned that the previous year (1857), western visitors had been treated very aggressively by the inhabitants there including being fired on. The implication of the plural – ‘visitors’, is that there was more than one. That is relevant as the very helpful (unpublished) list of visitors to Petra in the 19th century so generously circulated by Norman Lewis, was that there was a sole visitor that year – Rudolph Roth. However, Roth’s own short report of his journey from Palestine south to Petra then Aqaba, refers to his having heard of parties on their way from Cairo eastwards at the same time. A closer investigation has in fact revealed an extremely busy year for visits – at least six parties, totalling between 57 and 62 westerners and including at least three women.

A paper on the subject, delivered at a conference in Petra in 2017, has now been published:-

Kennedy, D. L. “Travellers of 1857 to Petra”, in Z. M. Al-Salameen & M. B. Tarawneh (eds), Refereed Proceedings of the First Conference on the Archaeology and Tourism of the Maan Governorate, 3rd- 4th October, 2017 Petra- Jordan, 2018, Ma’an (Supplement to Al-Hussein Bin Talal University’s Journal of Research, AHUJ) (Deanship of Scientific Research and Graduate Studies, Al-Hussein Bin Talal University): 187-207

“Mr and Mrs Smith of England”: a tour to Petra and east of Jordan in 1865.

The Thirteenth Biennial ASTENE Conference took place at the University of York in July this year (2019). I read a paper: –
“Mr and Mrs Smith of England”: a tour to Petra and east of Jordan in 1865.

The Abstract reads:-
Two anonymous articles published in Bentley’s Miscellany in 1866 vividly recount travels the previous year by two ‘Britishers’ –first to Petra and then east of Jordan. Wider research reveals the travellers had previously been in Egypt, travelled in Palestine, and aspired to visit Palmyra. The unnamed writer is clearly a woman and the articles are said to be unvarnished extracts from her travel journal. Her husband is named as Eustace. Fortunately, the couple introduced themselves to a pair of Americans they encountered as ‘Mr and Mrs Smith, of England’. They can now be identified as Eustace and Martha ‘Eustacia’ Smith, then aged 33 and 29, parents already of seven children, prominent London socialites, wealthy patrons of the arts, inveterate travellers, but better-known today for the family’s role in the sexual scandal in 1885 which derailed the political career of Sir Charles Dilke and drove them into self-imposed exile abroad. The fate of the original journals is unknown – a misfortune as the articles provide important details of both the process of their various journeys, the people encountered and places visited as well as adding some small but useful points of history. Especially interesting in the feisty character of the writer herself – both from her own words and actions and the impression made on the Americans, travelling to places which had seldom seen western women.

It is expected that a developed and expanded version of that lecture will appear in a future volume of essays to be published by ASTENE.

[David L. Kennedy]

Ginsburg and Tristram in Moab, 1872

A short Blog on this theme was published on this site on 15 June 2015 –  “Tristram and ….’s Expedition to Moab in 1872”

That was followed in 2017 with a  paper at the ASTENE conference in Norwich.

This latter – developed and expanded, has now been published.

Kennedy, D. L. (2019) “The British Association for the Advancement of Science Expedition to Moab in 1872. Ginsburg and Tristram: an old academic quarrel?”, in N. Cooke (ed.)  Journeys Erased by Time. The Rediscovered Footprints of Travellers in Egypt and the Near East, Oxford (Archaeopress): 267-286

 

Frederic Hetley at Petra in 18**??

The list published by Brünnow and von Domaszewski (1904: 192-4) of the names of western visitors to Petra cut into the walls of the Khazne runs to several score. Most include a date and sometimes a place of origin. Their list ends with 15 names for which there is neither date nor placename. It seems likely that once it became common to provide a date then most subsequent visitors would include one. Consequently, it is probable that names without a date are earlier rather than later.

One of the undated names was read as ‘P. Hetley’ (1904: 194). Although almost all trace of these names has now been erased in the Khazne, a recent photograph shows that Hetley’s survives and clearly reads: ‘F. HETLEY’

Fig. 1: Graffito of F. HETLEY on the wall of the Khazne at Petra (photo R. Bewley, 2014).

The name is uncommon and this is presumably the ‘F. Hetley’ recorded by Budge (1907: 478) on a wall inside the temple at Semna on the Nile in northern Sudan, also without a date. The name is linked there with another – ‘F. HETLEY & J. PAGET’ and both were evidently cut by the same hand as may also be true of ‘A. BURLINGHAM’ above them.

Fig. 2: Temple at Semna, Northern Sudan: Graffiti of western visitors. Now in National Museum, Khartoum (Photo: Neal Spencer)

He appears again as HETLEY (Ramesseum), F. HETLEY (Soleb) and E HETLEY (sic) (Abu Simbel, Great Temple) (Roger O. De Keersmaecker, pers comm. 10 November 2019). In none is there a date.

Fig. 3: Ramesseum, Luxor. Hetley and others. (Photo: Sketchfab/ Monument Men. 3D scan generated from on-site photogrammetry data by Lee Robert McStein. https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/travellers-graffiti-ramesseum-luxor-75cb08a09d294fa897a947c87de2eee6)

Fig. 4: Temple of Soleb, Northern Sudan: Graffiti of western visitors. (Photo: Roger O. De Keersmaecker)

‘F. Hetley’ (1821-1904) seems to have been Frederic Hetley M.D., elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1843. He appears frequently in medical publications. Two references in the pages of non-medical journals seem to clinch his identity with the traveller in Egypt. The Literary Gazette and Journal of Science and Art (No. 1926 (Nov. 19, 1853): 1124) recorded under ‘Proceedings of Societies’:
Syro- Egyptian. —Nov. 8th.—Dr. Camps in the chair. Thomas Hayes, Esq. , Charles Parish, Esq. , and Frederick (sic) Hetley, Esq., travellers in the East, and Mrs. Alex. Kerr, translator of ‘ Ranke’s History of Servia,’ were elected members.

Then, the following year, The Journal of Sacred Literature (NS VI, 1854: 533) recorded:
At the Syro-Egyptian Society, April 11th—1. A communication was made by Frederick (sic) Hetley, Esq., regarding some stamped terra cottas found by him among the ruins of Palmyra, and specimens of which, as well as an enlarged drawing, were exhibited to the Society. The reliefs represented two personages, apparently male and female, seated on a sofa, like a Roman victinium, and both wearing head-dresses not unlike some modern Asiatic crowns. Others represented the busts of the same personages.

In short, Hetley had already before November 1853 established his credentials as a traveller in the East and on 11 April 1854 was reporting on art work obtained by him at Palmyra. We may suppose that Hetley’s journies through Egypt and to Petra, then – presumably, Palestine, then, via Damascus we may presume, to Palmyra and finally he would surely have added Baalbek on his way to Beirut, were in late 1852/ early 1853 or earlier.

Keersmaecker suggests that ‘J. Paget’ may be Arthur John Snow Paget who is reported to have “… spent the winter of 1861-62 in ascending the Nile to the second cataract; his love of knowledge, here as ever, making him plunge with avidity into all the mysteries of Egyptian lore.” (“Arthur Paget”, Gentleman’s Magazine, June 1863: 798-799). There were many travellers to Petra in 1862 but – as noted above, Hetley’s journey had been at least 9 years earlier nor is there any good reason to identify Arthur Paget with the ‘J. Paget’ paired with Hetley’s name at Semna.

Also at Semna one of the names not far from that of Hetley and Paget is: ‘A. Burlingham 1852’ (Fig. 2). In the Khazne at Petra Brünnow and von Domaszewski (1904: 193) record ‘A. Hanbury 1852’ This seems more likely to be an error for the well-known ‘B. Hanbury’ who descended the Nile in 1820-21 together with G. Waddington, both recorded in graffiti in Egypt (Fig. 3; Waddington and Hanbury 1822). Perhaps ‘A. Hanbury 1852’ should have been read as ‘B. Hanbury 1822’, a date consistent with his journey on the Nile the previous year.

The most likely date at this stage is that Frederic Hetley crossed Sinai and visited Petra in Spring 1853 or a year or two earlier. It would be useful and interesting to be able to place his trip and the man himself. A trip down the Nile to Nubia was increasingly common and not especially fraught. In contrast, the Long Desert Route to Petra, the tour of the Decapolis cities ‘east of Jordan’ and an expedition from Damascus to Palmyra were all physically hard and very challenging. As the brief reports above make clear, Frederic Hetley undertook at least two of those – a relative rarity.

 

[David L. Kennedy – 22/11/2019]

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R. E. Brünnow and A. von Domaszewski, Die Provincia Arabia, auf grand Zweier in den Jaahren 1897 und 1898 Unternommenen Reisen und den Berichte Früherer Reisender, 3 vols. (Strassburg, 1904-1909)
Budge, E. A. (1907) The Egyptian Sudan, its History and Monuments, London
Keersmaecker, R. O. de (2016) “John Gardner Wilkinson”, ASTENE Bulletin 68: 15-20
Waddington, G. and Hanbury, B. (1822) Journal of a Visit to some Parts of Ethiopia, London

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Finn Expedition ‘East of Jordan’ in May 1855

Following on from the previous post about Godfrey Thring, it is now possible from a preliminary reading of some of the letters of the Rev. Henry Stobart, to reconstruct the full composition of the ‘Finn Group’, as Finn himself never names a single member. The group evidently comprised two or more parties. This how Finn began his published account:

“Over the Jordan and return by the West. We were a dozen Englishmen, including three clergymen, undertaking the above journey, … (Finn 1867: 1)

The twelve can be identified as:

• James Finn (1806-1872)
• Lord Henry Scott (1832-1905)
• Rev. Henry Stobart (1824 – 1895)
• Edgar Atheling Drummond (1825-1893)
• Gott
• Fox
• Calvert
• Rust
• Macan (?)
• Rev. Godfrey Thring (1823-1903)
• George John Cayley (1826-1878)
• Sturgis

At this stage it is not clear who was the third clergyman. Lord Henry Scott, a younger son of the Duke of Buccleuch, was one of at least three younger members of that family to travel in the region from Egypt to Syria.

Finn, J. (1867) Byeways in Palestine, London (Nisbet)*

Godfrey Thring and the Finn Tour ‘East of Jordan’ in May 1855

As is well-known from his own publications, in May 1855, James Finn, the British Consul in Jerusalem, led a group of 12 (including himself) on a tour of several archaeological sites east of the R. Jordan: notably Hesban, Amman (Philadelphia), As-Salt, Jarash (Gerasa) and Umm Qeis (Gadara). This is how Finn began his published account:

“Over the Jordan and return by the West. We were a dozen Englishmen, including three clergymen, undertaking the above journey, accompanied by the large train of servants, interpreters, and muleteers usually required for travelling in the East. And it was on Wednesday, the 9th day of May 1855 that we started.” (Finn 1867: 1)

As was common in such published accounts, Finn never names any of his companions. He also uses – as we now know, ‘English’ to mean British as at least one of the 11 was a Scottish aristocrat.

Unpublished letters written to his mother by another of the 11 and now being transcribed, frequently do name other members of the group. One of particular interest is the man he refers to not by his surname alone as with the others but as “my friend Godfrey Thring”.

The Rev. Godfrey Thring (25 March 1823 – 13 September 1903), an Anglican clergyman, is well-known as a composer of Hymns but has not previously been identified as one of those westerners who travelled in the East. These new letters reveal him participating in Finn’s expedition ‘East of Jordan’ but they go further. The letter-writer explicitly tells his mother that while in Jerusalem, he was concerned for the delayed arrival there of parties of travellers.

On Saturday 28^th April 1855 he records:

“We are getting anxious about three or four parties who have been due for some days from their journey by the Long Desert. We trust no evil has befallen them on the way.”

Then in the evening of 30^th April 1855:

“This even(in)g all the Long Desert parties reached Jerusalem. Mr, 2 Misses and Rev. David Buchanan – and Messrs Drummond, Gott, Fox, Calvert, Rust, Macan & my friend Godfrey Thring.”

Some of the names are not transcribed with confidence but the last one is – Godfrey Thring. Thring was then 32. His clerical career is quite well documented but it is notable that he cannot be placed in any position for the years 1853-58. The implication of this for his participation is clear enough – and may be spelled out clearly in the earlier letters when its writer was also in Egypt. Thring had previously been in Egypt and had joined a party on the Long Desert Route to Palestine. Although some parties that set out on that route over the years abandoned their intended itinerary, the intention normally was to trek by camel from Suez for c. 40 days across Sinai Peninsula to St Catherine’s Monastery, climb the holy mountains, continue to Aqaba where they would change guides and escorts to be conducted to Petra then on to Hebron and Jerusalem.

The only known account of a visit to Petra in 1855 is that of Edward Philbrick. He was there with companions in March and mentions and English party a few days behind his. He reached Jerusalem about 8^th April and the English party would likely have arrived soon after. That is 2-3 weeks before the dates of the parties mentioned by the letter-writer that included Godfrey Thring.

The implication of these letters and the Philbrick narrative is that there was a considerable cavalcade passing through Petra that season. At the very least:

– Philbrick and companions;

– the English party;

– then – probably, the “three or four parties” reported by the letter-writer and including Thring.

Photo: James Finn

 

Finn, J. (1867) Byeways in Palestine, London (Nisbet)*