Thomas Nuttall

“ Wyatt, Richard, sculptor, born in London; studied in Home under Canova, and had Gibson for fellow-student; a man of classical tastes, and produced a number of exquisitely-modelled, especially female, figures (1795-1850) .
Wyatt, Sir Thomas, English poet, courtier, and statesman, born at Allington Castle, in Kent, and educated at St. John's College, Cambridge; was a welcome presence at court, a friend of Anne Boleyn, in high favour with the king, and knighted in 1537 ”

“ He arrived at Philadelphia in October, 1835, and settled down to study his treasures. For several years he worked thus and published two important memoirs. At Christmas, 1841, Nuttall went back to England, where he resided the last seventeen years of his life. This was not from choice, but because of the conditions under which an estate was left to him by his uncle, requiring him to live in England nine months of the year. He used his ample grounds for growing rare plants. ”

“ In 1772, however, in consequence of some errors in their private business, probably due to the multiplication of his official duties, Nuthall fell under the censure of that statesman and of Lord Temple, the latter of whom, when writing to Pitt, dubbed him ‘that facetious man of business in so many departments, Mr. Thomas Nuthall, whose fellow is not easily to be met with ”

“ NUTTALL, ENOS (1842–1916) , bishop of Jamaica, primate and first archbishop of the West Indies, was born at Clitheroe 26 January 1842, the eldest son of James Nuttall, farmer and builder, of Coates, St. Mary-le-Gill, Yorkshire, by his first wife, Alice, daughter of William and Martha Armistead, of Aynhams, in the same parish. His education was such as his mother and the parish school could give him, but he developed powers of self-tuition, and being placed by his father in charge of a farm, gave his leisure to learning. ”

“ Whenever James Dutton glanced into the future, it was with a tranquil mind. He pictured himself, should he not fall out of the ranks, a white-haired, possibly a bald-headed old boy, sitting of summer evenings on the doorstep of his shop, and telling stories to the children—the children and grandchildren of his present associates and friends. He would naturally have laid up something by that time; besides, there was his pension. ”

“ Nobody recollected seeing him lately, and nobody recollected not seeing him; a person so seldom in the street as Dutton is not soon missed. Dr. Meeks concluded that he would look in at Nutter's Lane on the way home with his marketing. The man who had remarked the absence of smoke had now a blurred impression that the shutters of Dutton's shop-window had not been taken down. It looked as if things were not quite right with him. Two or three persons were going in Dr. Meeks's direction, so they accompanied him, and turned into Nutter's Lane with the doctor. ”

“ In the year 1705, Sir Isaac gave into the Herald’s Office an elaborate pedigree, stating upon oath that he had reason to believe that John Newton of Westby, in the county of Lincoln, was his great-grandfather’s father, and that this was the same John Newton who was buried in Basingthorpe church, on the 22d December, 1563. This John Newton had four sons, John, Thomas, Richard, and William Newton of Gunnerly, the last of whom was great-grandfather to Sir John Newton, Bart., of Hather. ”

“ I rode the whole night, and saw only from a distance, and by moonlight, Newstead Abbey, Lord Byron’s birth-place and family seat, now much neglected.
Besides the Gothic church (of which nearly every English town possesses one, more or less beautiful,) there is not much to be seen in Nottingham; a remarkable manufactory of net excepted, where the steam-engines do all the work, and only a single man stands by the machinery to take care that nothing goes wrong. ”

“ Townsend being poor, Nuttall waived his intention of publishing in his favor. I have heard that Townsend wishes to make a journey as collector of birds, plants, etc. I wish he would go to the southern Rocky Mountains, and trace them into New Spain. Nuttall has brought home the Grayia. Have you ever received any more of Nuttall’s plants, or has Boott? He is selling them to different persons for ten dollars per hundred; just such specimens as you received through Boott, or sometimes much better and more copious ones. I have some of his Compositæ in my hands, which Webb has ordered. ”

“ Isaac Newton, public Professor of the Mathematicks in Cambridge, the greatest philosopher, and one of the best men of this age, was, by a great and wise statesman, recommended to the favour of the late King for Warden of the King's Mint and Exchanges, for which he was peculiarly qualified, because of his extraordinary skill in numbers, and his great integrity, by the first of which he could judge correctly of the Mint accounts and transactions as soon as he entered upon his office ”

“ Having made this deprecation on behalf of my own criminality in using such a word as 'genteel,' I go on to say that whilst Northampton was (and is, I believe) of all towns the most genteel, Nottingham for more than two centuries has been the most insurrectionary and in a scarlet excess democratic. Nottingham, in fact, has always resembled the Alexandria of ancient days; whilst Northampton could not be other than aristocratic as the centre of a county more thickly gemmed by the ancestral seats of our nobility than any beside in the island. ”

“ Had Newton been alone in the world, or his father able to support himself, he would have immediately applied to Captain Carrington to receive him in some capacity on board of his frigate, or have entered on board of some other man-of-war. Newton’s heart was too generous, and his mind too truly English, not to bound when he read or heard of the gallant encounters between the vessels of the rival nations, and he longed to be one of the many thousands so diligently employed in twining the wreath of laurel round their country’s brow. ”

“ The constant employment he found at his trade helped him to forget that he had not two legs. A man who is obliged to occupy a cobbler's bench day after day has no special need of legs at all. Everybody brought jobs to his door, and Dutton had as much work as he could do. ”

“ And for awhile turning from the fierceness of politics, raging all the year round in Nutts’ shaving-shop, it was beautiful to see how Nutts and the customers, with wives and sweethearts, danced on New-Year’s night. Mr Nutts led off Mrs Biggleswade from over the way; the hornpipe of the “British Lion” was danced to admiration;—and, in the full flush of the festivity, it is said that Mr Peabody, the scholarly policeman, furtively saluted Mrs Nutts, when that unsuspecting woman stood immediately beneath the mistletoe. ”

“ Both naturalists were more than once in extreme danger, but Nuttall brought back with him many treasures of seeds, plants and other objects of interest. The next eight years he remained at Philadelphia, studying in the winter the collections which he made during his summer excursions to various parts of the country east of the Mississippi, from the Great Lakes to Florida. At about this time he was preparing the manuscript
Fig. ”

“ Ought they not, on their own principles, to look at the results of the experiments which have already been made, instead of predicting frightful calamities at random? How do the facts which are before us agree with their theories? Nottingham is a city with a franchise even more democratic than that which this bill establishes. Does Nottingham send hither mere vulgar demagogues? It returns two distinguished men, one an advocate, the other a soldier, both unconnected with the town. Every man paying scot and lot has a vote at Leicester. This is a lower franchise than the ten pound franchise. ”

“ What really sent James Dutton to the war? Had he some unformulated and hitherto unsuspected dream of military glory, or did he have an eye to supposable gold ingots piled up in the sub-basement of the halls of the Montezumas? Was it a case of despised love, or was he simply tired of re-heeling and re-soling the boots of Rivermouth folk; tired to death of the river that twice a day crept up to lap the strip of sandy beach at the foot of Nutter's Lane; tired to death of being alone, and poor, and aimless? His motive is not positively to be known, only to be guessed at. ”

“ Nuttall married in 1867 Elizabeth Duggan, daughter of the Rev. Philip Chapman, a Wesleyan minister, by whom he had two sons and three daughters. In his later years, in spite of frequent visits to England, his health failed, though his hold on the diocese did not relax nor did his pastoral zeal abate. ”

“ In Isaac Newton two kinds of intellectual power, which have little in common, and which are not often found together in a very high degree of vigour, but which nevertheless are equally necessary in the most sublime departments of physics, were united as they have never been united before or since. ”

“ Some years after, the dwelling-house was again purchased for the residence of the minister, when they had a settled pastor at Weldon.
While Mr. Nutt was living, his business calling him very much from home, the services were irregular, being ordered so as to suit the convenience of Mr. Nutt and the ministers that he invited to preach: what little expense was incurred was borne by him. After his decease, the services were held with greater regularity ”

“ He makes his children, Richard Newton and Christopher Newton, executors; and his brother Leonard Beckwith, and George Mallory, supervisors. Proved at York, by Richard Newton only, April 8, 1605.
Richard was the testator’s son by his first wife, Eleanor, daughter of Thomas Collins. Christopher and Henry were the sons of his second wife, Jane Beckwith. According to the pedigree of the Newtons, recorded at the visitation of 1585, the grandmother of Miles Newton, was one of the distinguished family of Roos, of Ingmanthorpe. ”

“ He was now a very tolerable French scholar, and his narratives and adventures were to his benefactors a source of amusement, which amply repaid them for the trouble and kindness which they had shown to him. Newton was, in fact, a general favourite with every one on the plantation, from the highest to the lowest; and his presence received the same smile of welcome at the cottage of the slave as at the boudoir of Madame de Fontanges. ”

“ Nuttia eyed them suspiciously, but ate her sweetmeats. This incident did not increase her confidence in humanity; on the other hand, the attitude of the brute creation was a sore disappointment to her. She might have had a heart instinct with greed of capture and sudden death, instead of that dim desire of companionship, for all the notice taken by the birds, and the squirrels, and the rats, of her outstretched handful of crumbs. She would sit for long hours, silent as a little bronze image set in the sunshiny sand ”

“ It is this last characteristic that imparts real value to Dunton's book, and makes it, despite its verbiage and tortuosity, throb with human interest. For example, he gives us a short sketch of no less than 135 then living London booksellers in this style: 'Mr. Newton is full of kindness and good-nature. He is affable and courteous in trade, and is none of those men of forty whose religion is yet to chuse, for his mind (like his looks) is serious and grave ”

“ Nicholas backed his chair from the table again, with an air of resignation, as Newton continued:
"Indeed, father, I think we must try our fortune elsewhere. What's the use of staying where we cannot get employment? Everything is now gone, except our wearing apparel. We might raise some money upon mine, it is true; but had we not better, before we spend it, try if fortune will be more favourable to us in some other place?"
"Why, yes, Newton, I've been thinking that if we were to go to London, my improvement on the duplex—"
"Is that our only chance there, sir?" replied Newton, half smiling. ”

“ More than once some irrepressible small boy, prowling at night in the neighborhood and drawn like a moth by the flame of Dutton's candle, had set his eye to a crack in the door-panel and seen the shoemaker sitting on the edge of his bed with the medal in his hand.
Until within a year or eighteen months, Dutton had regularly attended the Sunday morning service at the Old Brick Church. One service was all he could manage, for it was difficult for him to mount the steep staircase leading to his seat in the gallery. ”

“ This is another of the books that Charles Lamb classes among the no-books. As in the case of Nuttall, there was no Whitaker in his{40} day, and certainly no almanac at all as good. At first glance this book may seem dry and sapless as the elm ready sawn for conversion into parish coffins. But how can anything be considered dry or dead when two hundred thousand of its own brothers are at this moment dwelling in useful amity among our fellowmen? It in one way contrasts unfavourably with almanacs which can claim a longer life, there are no vaticinations in it. ”

“ All through the silent sunny days, as she watched the big black buffaloes grazing on the muddy flats--for Nuttia was advanced to the dignity of a herd-girl by this time--Sirdar Begum was with her as guide, counsellor, and friend. Whether the doll fared best with a heart's whole devotion poured out on her wooden head, or whether Nuttia's part in giving was more blessed, need not be considered ”

“ We believe, on the contrary, that her early popularity was no more than the just reward of distinguished merit, and would never have undergone an eclipse, if she had only been content to go on writing in her mother tongue. If she failed when she quitted her own province, and attempted to occupy one in which she had neither part nor lot, this reproach is common to her with a crowd of distinguished men. Newton failed when he turned from the courses of the stars, and the ebb and flow of the ocean, to apocalyptic seals and vials. ”