I’ve recently been researching 15th century copies of Johannes Hartlieb’s German translation of Andrea Capellanus’ “De Amore“. My plan is to try to work out if any includes a predecessor of the hand-crossing drawing that appeared in the three 1482/1484 incunabula…
…which, if you recall, is the drawing that Koen Gheuens cleverly suggested might well be linked with a Diebold Lauber workshop drawing and the Voynich Manuscript’s Gemini zodiac roundel…
This is all going OK so far (I now have Alfred Karnein’s magisterial book on the subject, and a copy of his 1985 book should land on my doorstep soon), and as always I’ll post more on this in due course.
However, there’s one other German “De Amore” described by Frank Fürbeth in his more recent book “Johannes Hartlieb: Untersuchungen zu Leben und Werk” that I can’t find anything about. This manuscript, which doesn’t appear in either of Karnein’s books, was (says Fürbeth) Number 3 in American antiquarian bookseller Philip J. Pirages’ 1985 catalogue. But when I emailed the bookseller, Phil Pirages himself kindly replied, saying that he had no record of any such book.
It would seem that something a little odd is going on here. 🙁
Can I therefore please ask any Cipher Mysteries reader who just happens to have easy access to a stupendously good academic library with a copy of Frank Fürbeth’s book “Johannes Hartlieb: Untersuchungen zu Leben und Werk” (currently £80+ on bookfinder.com, somewhat out of my range, sadly) to photograph or scan pages 62 and 63 for me? (This is, according to Google, where Fürbeth discusses the Pirages manuscript.) Thanks very much!
Note: I believe that the 2011 edition of the book is simply a reprint of the 1992 original, but please check to see if these two pages do mention Philip J. Pirages, thanks!
There are now, courtesy of Koen Gheuens and others, numerous web pages exploring possible / probable connections between the Voynich Manuscript’s zodiac roundels and 15th century scribal workshops in German Alsace (most notably that of Diebold Lauber).
In one of my own contributions to this (small) canon, I discussed the McKell calendar, an astrological / medical calendar made in Hagenau between 1430 and 1450 by Lauber’s workshop (it has more recently been dated as c. 1445). Though I only knew of black and white scans online, commenter Helmut Winkler very kindly posted up a link to a webpage from BNU Strasbourg, the institution that recently bought it.
This included colour scans of the pages, including the gold-leaf sun/moon framing device at the top of the medical pages, which surely makes it clear what a top-end manuscript this must have been:
The colours too turn out to be remarkably vibrant, notably the red and blue clothes and gold wings on the calendar’s page for August (Virgo):
The McKell Aries
Though the McKell Aries page scan is now (apparently) missing from the website, I found a copy of it online that Darren Worley had posted in a comment to Stephen Bax’s website. Note that the Aries page’s tree is drawn and coloured very similarly to the Virgo page’s tree (above):
Can you spot anything wrong with this image? Having once lived next door to a goat for a few months (who would happily eat your washing given half a chance), I have to say that this looks to me less like a sheep or a ram than a greedy goat with a goatee doing what goats do best (i.e. climbing up to eat anything it can sink its teeth into).
But to be clear, the three simplest ways to tell a sheep from a goat are:
tail direction (goats’ tails go up, while sheep’s tails go down)
what they’re doing (sheep usually graze grass, while goats tend to prefer munching everything else)
goats stereotypically have goatees (the clue’s in the name)
So even though the McKell Aries illustrator got the tail direction right for sheep, I’m still happily scoring this 2-1 in favour of the goats.
Moreover, there are two of the same animals on consecutive pages, firstly a dark Aries…
…followed by a light Aries…
Incidentally, on the VMS list in 2004 Pamela Richards argued that this must be a goat because “[s]heep don’t have dew claws, those tiny hard horns above the hooves; goats do. And those dew claws are very clearly depicted on each foot.”. However, as Rene Zandbergen pointed out much later, sheep actually have dew claws too (though horses and giraffes don’t, so please be reassured that we can at least rule them out), so this isn’t a great argument.
So… is this actually a goat? By my (albeit simplified) scoring system in the preceding section (tail down, no goatee, but grazing), I ought really to instead score this 2-1 to Sheep United. But it’s a game of two halves, I’m sick as a parrot, the seagulls follow the trawler, etc etc.
Model Books and Calendars
In many ways, though, I think it doesn’t greatly matter if either/both is/are a sheep or a goat, because I think we can tell broadly what happened here.
The McKell Aries was (I believe) most likely copied from a previously made goat drawing exemplar, probably from a model book. And perhaps the artist straightened the tail to make it better resemble a sheep, who knows? I also think that the McKell Virgo tree was copied from the same goat picture (the tree was surely integral to the goat design).
Similarly, I think the Voynich Aries was almost certainly copied from an Aries roundel in an existing calendar. Perhaps the score in that original illustration would have been scored 2-1 to the goats or 1-2 to the sheep after extra time, it’s almost futile to try to say.
Incidentally, I have a recollection of Rene Zandbergen once pointing to an Aries calendar roundel where there was a tree in the background that was almost like an optical illusion of something being eaten by the animal in the foreground. But I am unable to dig that up from anywhere, sorry. 🙁
Goats in the Buch der Natur
Finally, Ulrike Spyra’s book might once again be an interesting resource here, because her Synoptic Table of Illustrations lists (on p.384) a number of drawings of goats (“Gaiz / Capra“):
M590 – 61rb (Munchen, BSB, Cgm 590)
A497 – 115va (Augsburg, SuStB, 2o Cod. 497)
GW – 66ra (Gottweig, Stiftsbibl., Cod. 389 rot)
SG – 69rb (Strasbourg BNU Cod. 2264)
HD311 – 79v (Heidelberg UB Cpg 311)
M684 – 84r (Michelstadt, Nic.-Matz-Bibl. Cod D 684)
For one, the location of the cavern (‘grotto’) is now widely reported as being in the Vallée St François in the East of Rodrigues (though given that there are often queues of visitors driving up to have a look now, it’s hardly a secret). This is a valley dipping eastwards towards the sea between two radiating arms of the mountain that makes up the central part of the island. It runs down to the Auberge St Francois B&B on the plage de St François, which one website droolingly describes as having “Miles of fine sand, warm and transparent water, filao trees as far as the eye can see [… and] three of the top ten Rodrigues restaurants on Trip Advisor“.
So, when we read (in the Mauritian press) about the two hikers walking down a dried-up river bed (strong echoes of Bernardin Nageon de l’Estang there, you might say, hohum), I think this is basically the foot of the valley you can see running down the centre of the picture above (facing East).
Incidentally, one nearby cove beach is called “Trou d’Argent”, about which Lonely Planet helpfully notes: “Local legend has it that a pirate once hid his treasure here“. And there’s an identically named “Trou d’Argent” on Mauritius’ east coast. So perhaps nobody should have been shocked if pirate gold turns up in, errrm, a hole here. Or indeed there. No, wait… 🙂
A Private Notice Question (PNQ) to the local administration (which I saw reported here) also revealed some things I didn’t know:
The two hikers reported their find to the (Mauritian) authorities on 15th and 22nd March 2019
Their names are Roger de Spéville and Georges Désiré Némorin
The find was reported to the Rodrigues authorities on 11th June 2019
Anyway, in other news reported in the last few days, the roof of the cavern had supposedly collapsed due to heavy flooding since last year (though I’m not sure that’s true). Another news report suggested that the ‘treasure’ may well have just been a mirage, a trick of the light.
And – in a strange update in the last day or so in l’Express – a photo taken in the last few days seems to imply that the cave may have been robbed out. Even former chief commissioner Johnson Roussety is one of those who now believe the treasure has been moved.
Moreover, Roussety is one of those who believe that the “hikers” were (contrary to their affidavit) actually treasure hunters, and has posted (undated) pictures on his Facebook feed showing a bearded person on the beach (presumably de Saint Francois) using a metal detector (though whether this is one of the two hikers he doesn’t say).
(Having said that, I should point out that almost all people who use metal detectors on beaches primarily use them to find jewellery and coins dropped in the sand by modern tourists, not to find pirate treasure. Just so y’know!)
So… while all the politicos have been shouting at each other, might the Lady have quietly vanished in the night? Or might the Lady never have been on the train in the first place? We now seem to have entered a properly Hitchcockian zone, where you would be unwise to trust that anything anyone tells you will leave you any wiser. (Apart from me, of course. 😉 )
PS: given that Rodrigues has beautiful beaches but a desperately struggling economy, why has nobody yet pointed out that the appearance of pirate treasure here is almost too good to be true? (Or indeed ‘to be Trou‘?) Any conspiracy theorist worth their salt should surely now be suggesting that the goat skull and treasure were only ever touristic stage props designed to bring footfall to the island’s beaches. Just a thought! 😉
Back in the 18th century when Île de France was owned by France, the French gave the island their laws. And when the British took it over (and renamed it ‘Mauritius’) at the start of the 19th century, they left (as I understand it, please correct me if I’m wrong) almost all existing laws intact.
Further: because of all the destructive treasure hunting activity that went on in Mauritius in the early 20th century (imagine large groups of overexcited treasure hunters with hundreds of sticks of dynamite, and you’re basically there), additional modern legislation has been passed forbidding treasure hunting: or, rather, making it almost impossible for anyone to benefit from deliberately going treasure hunting.
All which has the side effect of making the Republic of Mauritius – arguably one of the best places in the world to go treasure hunting, in terms of artifacts that are probably buried there (e.g. pirate treasure) – one of the worst places to benefit from being a treasure hunter. Because if you do find something that you went looking for, you then automatically lose the right to benefit from finding it. And so Mauritian treasure hunting lore is full of stories of people not just finding treasure, but also stealing that treasure away to sell via the black market.
In a very significant way, this has had (I think) the effect of criminalizing treasure hunting. Hence the only clear way you can honestly benefit from finding lost treasure in Mauritius is if you literally stumble upon it while doing something else. (Article 716 of the Mauritian Civil Code says that, in this case, 50% should go to the accidental discoverers, and 50% to the Mauritian state.)
What The Two Hikers Found
Back in August 2018, the ‘something else’ that two ecologists were busy doing (while definitely not looking for pirate treasure) was hiking around the island of Rodrigues. (Just so you know, this is according to the affidavit the two filed with Juristconsult Chambers, which L’Express had seen.)
The first thing they did was stumble upon three nearby rock faces with curious signs and marks, and took some photographs. However, when they (later on) enlarged those photos, it became quickly clear to them that the marks were not natural marks, but were instead man-made ones (made using a chisel). Hence they decided to return to take a closer look.
On their next hike to the same place, one of the two squeezed into the narrow gap between the three rock faces and took photographs of the cavity behind them. This time when enlarged, their new photographs revealed (drum roll, please) a rusty chest, decayed rope from a pulley setup, a metal rod that had fallen from the chest, and finally (leaving the best until last) a goat’s skull mounted on a shiny metal body, that might possibly even be gold.
As far as I can tell, this was as far as our two intrepid (and as-yet-not-named-in-public) Mauritian eco-hikers went: that is, they didn’t try to excavate the find (no, not even with dynamite, even if that has become something of a ridiculous Mauritian tradition).
For a bit of local colour, I found this 1:38-long video (that doesn’t, to be honest, show a great deal of interest, apart from blurry shots of the cavity, queues of people driving to visit the site, plus excited locals being interviewed) on MBC here:
What has become clear this week is that the site (in the East of Rodrigues) is very much as the two hikers described it, and that what they found there is indeed almost certainly pirate treasure, all of which the local administration now has soldiers guarding 24/7. Which is nice.
Treasure Finding (Not Treasure Hunting)
Because the two ecologists found their (probable) pirate treasure while hiking (i.e. they weren’t looking for it), this almost certainly counts, under Mauritian law, as a genuine treasure-finding scenario (as opposed to a treasure-hunting scenario).
But here’s where the whole story gets more than a tad political.
By way of background: though Rodrigues was taken over by the British at around the same time as Mauritius, it was made a district of the Republic of Mauritius in 1968 (when Mauritius gained independence); and was then made an ‘autonomously administered region’ within the Republic of Mauritius (though under Mauritian law) in 2002. So even though it’s still part of Mauritius, its politicians like to think of themselves as largely independent of Mauritius.
Hence you can probably guess how the three-way battle is now unfolding. On the one hand, you have the two ecologist hikers, for whom Lady Luck (and indeed Mauritian law) currently seems to be on their side. On the other hand you have the Mauritian central government who is (by way of its own law) the find’s other 50% beneficiary. And on the third hand (just to muck up the whole hand-based thing), you have pretty much everyone in Rodrigues’ autonomous administration, who feel that Mauritian law is clearly an ass, because Rodrigues should obviously benefit from this whole affair, even if the Mauritian treasure-finding legal computer says no.
And so many Rodrigues politicians are now desperately spinning round in circles trying to concoct quasi-legal ways by which ‘their’ pirate treasure can become less of a Mauritian cash cow and more of a Rodriguan regional asset. The word on everyone’s lips seems to be “patrimoine” (patrimony), though the specific details of how that can be mobilized remain rather more than a little challenging. For example, there is talk of applying to make the cave a UNESCO site of special historical significance, even if this perhaps seems a tad optimistic for what seems to be little more than an unexcavated rocky hole in the ground.
How will this whole affair now play out? Even though SAJ (better known as Rodrigues’ Ministre Mentor Sir Anerood Jugnauth) is keen to stress that the Law is King of this particular jungle, it would seem that there are plenty of legal eagles hovering above this piratical carcass, eager to pick the bones clean for themselves. Anyone who would happily bet on the ultimate outcome at this stage would, in my opinion, be fairly unwise.
Pirate Treasures of the Indian Ocean?
It should be no surprise that virtually every news report so far has name-checked Olivier Levasseur (AKA “La Buse“) and the mysterious cryptogram speculatively linked to him by Charles de la Roncière (and since then by several generations of gullible treasure hunters), all of which I’ve covered numerous times on Cipher Mysteries. (e.g. here, here, here, here, etc).
Some reports have further tried linking the story to Bernardin Nageon de l’Estang, with many claiming (about as incorrectly as can be) that Bernardin was some kind of royal pirate treasure collector (not even close, sorry, and where does that misinformation even come from?) *sigh* (Again, all of which I’ve covered too many times to even link here.)
But in fact, arguably the most genuinely interesting (and apparently unasked) question here is whether any of the curious marks that the two hikers found link up in any way with other stories of curious marks that the Indian Ocean pirate treasure literature abounds with. Most notably, Le Clézio’s “Voyage à Rodrigues” (why do I seem to be the only person commenting on this that mentions Le Clézio? How bizarre is that?) has plenty of specific interest here, but once La Buse gets mentioned, everyone’s minds seem to turn to mush, which is a shame and a half.
For me, there’s a huge amount of historical and research interest to be had here, but the reportage surrounding the story so far just isn’t cutting it yet. I normally like L’Express, but their plucky journalists only seem to have got their teeth into 10% of the (much bigger) story so far. Let’s hope things starts to pick up soon.
Of course, if anyone out there wants to fly me to Rodrigues (purely in the interests of historical research, you understand), I’m sure I could be reasonably accommodating. It really wouldn’t take me that long to pack my factor 50 and special pack of piña colada straws research laptop, I swear. 😉
I keep on looking for John Joseph Keane, our hard-to-pin-down Adelaide bookmaker / bookmaker’s clerk / nitkeeper. However, my search keeps getting tangled up by the 1933 gangland murder of Sydney bookmaker John (‘Jack’ / ‘Jackie’ / ‘Mustard’) Stanislaus Keane. The 01 Oct 1933 Brisbane Truth hauled the story out into the light in its normal breathless style:
Jack Keane, third-rate bookmaker, inveterate gambler and friend of gangsters, threatened to commit the unpardonable sin of the underworld and it was decided that he should die. He had threatened to tell police the full story of the shooting of Jack Finnie and Micky McDonald, so a gunman sealed his lips for ever in death. It was a merciless, cowardly and brutal crime carried out in the deliberate modern manner of Sydney’s underworld human wolves.
And despite having a “pretty young wife” in Waddell Road, Undercliffe, Keane was (if you believe the Truth) seduced by “a gangster’s girl”, who possibly – the Truth insinuated as hard as it could – led him to his execution but had since disappeared. He lived his life, claimed the Truth, as part of the Sydney ‘talent’:
Gathered on the fringe of the underworld and its habitual and professional criminals, gangsters, gunmen, blackmailers and women of the town is a community of men, mostly young men, known as the ‘talent.’ To this social order belonged Keane. Racehorses, poker, billiards and women of their own circle are the main interests of those who comprise the ‘talent.’ They lead a precarious existence, sometimes penniless, and sometimes enriched by their constant gambling. They will do anything except work. Work is an abomination. It is regarded as a form of disease which infects.
The Sydney Truth ran a more bulked-out version of the story, with the femme fatale now described as “married and extremely attractive. She lives in a different locality to where Keane’s body was found.”
There’s a picture of Keane’s tragic death-scene, which I found here:
(According to the Sydney Daily Telegraph of 02 Oct 1933, Keane seems to have met his death after refusing to hand over his winnings to gangsters, a story which seems likely to be closer to the truth than The Truth.)
Mrs Alice Keane was so outraged by the Truth’s coverage that she then wrote them a letter (which they sneeringly called an ‘epistle’) most of which appeared in the 08 Oct 1933 Truth:
You stated that my husband was one of the class of people known as ‘talent,’ by this meaning that he was an associate of criminals and was not following in an honest manner the occupation of a bookmaker. May I inform you that my husband was rarely in Sydney during the last 12 months, and before that time he had an A.R.C. Ledger license as a bookmaker. I know and have been informed by all his friends that his honesty and integrity in his calling could not be questioned, and if he had the misfortune to lose his money and was forced to have a No. 9 license, surely his poverty should not be a reason why he should be designated as a friend of criminals, none of whom I know he was friendly with, but some of whom he might have been known to. You stated that my husband was leading a double life, and may I be permitted to say, for your guidance, that whilst in Sydney my husband rarely ever missed coming home of a night. He was a most upright and loving husband, and one of whom it could never be said that he had led a double life. Your paper stated that he had threatened to give details of the McDonald and Finnie shooting to the police, and that he was known to be a stool pigeon. It will prove how wrong the whole of your story is respecting my husband’s conduct, when you learn that at the time of the shooting my husband was in the country and, I am sure, knew or cared nothing about this gun play. He has always been regarded by his friends as a man to be respected, who keeps his opinions to himself, and one in whom any confidence reposed would be carefully guarded. As my husband had worked in the mines out west until 1920, and had since then been carrying on the calling of a bookmaker in the country, and as be was respected by all who knew him, I am sure that you will help to clear the falsely besmirched name of my dead husband.
By the 15 Oct 1933 Truth, Alice Keane was (apparently) in a terrible state: and, I’m sorry to say, the police investigation into her husband’s murder was never satisfactorily concluded. Looking back (in 1936), Keane’s murder had become merely one of a long series of unsolved Sydney gangland murders:
After seven months of investigation the inquiry before the City Coroner was closed when Detective-sergeant McRae declared, “The police do not desire to give any further evidence on this matter at this juncture. There is a certain amount of silence among those we have spoken to and we are not prepared to say anything further until we break this down. We can only say we have no evidence to offer.” It was a shocking admission of futility.
So why write all this up here? To a large degree, I think the story highlights why relying so heavily on newspapers can sometimes be problematic for historians. Clearly, the Truth’s Aussie brand of yellow journalism (one of Frank Luther Mott’s defining aspects for which is “dramatic sympathy with the ‘underdog’ against the system”) shows that the desire to sensationalize stories at (almost) all costs is far from a recent phenomenon.
And yet I also don’t quite believe that the Truth completely fabricated its stories of Sydney’s ‘talent‘ (even if John Stanislaus Keane himself wasn’t one), who we moderns would perhaps see as ‘hustlers’, ‘players’, or maybe even ‘gangstas’ (as opposed to actual gangsters). So perhaps there is a glimmer of historical gold to be found in the bottom of even this mine-dark media coverage.
In a recent post, I traced Jim Kean all the way to January 1949, as he headed off to America accompanying top-performing racehorse Royal Gem to a new home in America. Royal Gem had just been bought for 150,000 USD (a very significant sum at the time) by Mr. Warner L. Jones Jr., owner of Hermitage Stud Farm in Kentucky, most likely on behalf of a syndicate. (The Adelaide News reported that the planned stud fee would be £312.)
Jimmy Kean and Royal Gem
We have a nice picture of Royal Gem (plus siblings) at George Jesser’s stables in Glenelg from the Adelaide News in August 1948, a few months before the sale. Jim Kean is, as always, pictured with Royal Gem:
News of Royal Gem’s sale hit the newspapers on 31 Dec 1948, with the first one in Trove (the Adelaide News) including a happy-looking picture of Jimmy Kean. The caption says: “JIMMY” KEAN, 54, who is in G. R. Jesser’s stables, will look after Royal Gem during the horse’s trip to America.
Royal Gem will be cared for on his voyage to San Francisco next month by Jimmy Kean, 54-year-old strapper, who has looked after him since the horse was trained at Morphettville by George Jesser.
Here’s a nice group photo from the Melbourne Sporting Globe, with (left-to-right) Jimmy Kean, then “Mr W. S. Cox, who handled negotiations for the American buyers; veterinary surgeon, Mr E. N. Wood; and trainer George Jesser”:
The Love Story
The Sydney Daily Telegraph of 23rd Jan 1949 told what can only be described as the secret love story behind the scenes of the sale:
If former jockey Jimmy Kean could have stopped it, champion racehorse Royal Gem would never have been sold to Amercan breeders.
He tried hard enough to prevent the sale.
Royal Gem was now on the high seas, headed for a stud farm in the “blue grass” district of Kentucky.
Plump, shortish, sandy-haired fiftyish Kean was an Adelaide stable-hand.
Newspaper reports that Royal Gem was to be sold hit him hard.
For a few days he refused to believe it. Stable mates had a hard time convincing him.
For more than a year he and the “Brown Bomber” were inseparable pals.
Except for meal breaks and his night rest, they were always together, even at the race tracks, where Jimmy waited in the weighing yard for the horse’s triumphant return, from such class races as the Newmarket Handicap, Futurity Stakes, City Handicap, and Underwood Stakes.
The thought that the friendship had to end was too much for him.
For days he haunted lawyers, racing offices, friends, seeking advice on how to halt the sale.
As a final throw he cornered Royal Gem’s owner, Mr. George Badman, at his Adelaide dairy-farm. Jimmy told Badman that the purchase price of £47,000 was “peanuts” for what he was selling.
“The Brown Bomber” could earn as much in stakes next season, and in later years command high stud service fees.
If Mr. Badman would call the deal off, Jimmy promised to hand over his life savings.
Told that the sale was clinched, Jimmy hesitated, said: “There’ll be no other horse for me!”
Replied Badman: “But there will be. Out of hundreds I’ve picked you to take Royal Gem to America.”
On the steamer Mongaburra in Sydney this week, Jimmy stood outside the horse’s special box, and recalled his experiences as he checked “The Brown Bomber” for injury after the ship’s heavy buffeting on the run from Melbourne.
Nonchalantly the horse, knee-deep in straw, eagerly munched some fresh-picked lucerne.
Jimmy passed him fit.
But things might not always be so pleasant, which accounted for a medical kit he carried.
The case cost £25, held everything from cotton-wool to penicillin.
“The Brown Bomber” also had to have specially filtered water, chopped carrots, picked grasses, and, like, small boys, had to be given regular doses of paraffin oil to keep him pepped up.
Jimmy expected to hand over Royal Gem to the Kentucky owners in about four weeks.
He hoped to persuade them to let the horse have a race or two.
He was confident that anything Shannon did the “Brown Bomber” would do better.
No matter what happened, he was happy to be with his beloved horse, believed the new owners would manage to keep him employed so that they would never have to part.
Back To Australia
Keane stayed as long as he could with Royal Gem in America, flying back in May 1949. There’s a nice piece in the Brisbane Telegraph of 19 June 1949:
Kean is anxious to return to his old favourite and will do so if U.S. immigration problems can be overcome.
Jimmy Kean, well known in racing circles in Adelaide for many years, was so impressed with racing and stud standards in America that he would return tomorrow if there was no limit to the time an Australian can remain in that country. When his time expired last month, he had no option but to return.
But what happened next? Did Jimmy Kean ever get to see his beloved “Brown Bomber” again? On this, Trove is (for the moment) silent: but perhaps, as more papers appear in Trove, one day we will find out…
As an aside, given that we now (from the above) know that Jimmy Kean both was the same “J J Kean” jockey and was 54 years old in December 1948, we can say – with much stronger certainty this time – that he was not the bookmakers’ clerk whose name Byron Deveson found in the S A Police Gazette. And so the search there still goes on…
I am referring, of course, to the opinion (put forward by the highly respected herbal historian Sergio Toresella) that the Voynich Manuscript was in some way connected with the family of “alchemical herbal” manuscripts. Might Sergio have been basically right about this, but not in the way he expected?
If you weren’t actually taking notes during the Alchemical Herbal 1.0.1 lecture, here’s a quick recap to bring you up to speed:
there are about seventy known examples of alchemical herbals
most were made in the 15th century (a few 14th, some 16th)
all bar two were made in the Veneto area in Northern Italy
the plants are mostly real, but accompanied by nutty visual puns
the plant names are, essentially, evocative nonsense
some copies have recipes attached to some/most of the plants
such recipes are often magical spells or incantations
nobody knows why the alchemical herbals were made at all
Given that Toresella thinks the Voynich Manuscript was written in a North Italian humanistic hand typical of the second half of the fifteenth century, it’s hard not to notice the long list of similarities between it and the alchemical herbals. However – and here’s the tricky bit – the question I’m posing here is whether Toresella might have been right about this connection, but not at all in the way he expected.
The Layout Is The Message
Over the years, I’ve discussed a good number of places in the Voynich Manuscript where it seems to have been copied. My argument for this (running right back to The Curse of the Voynich) is based on places where I believe voids in the predecessor document have been copied through to the Voynich Manuscript itself.
For example, I would argue that the man-made hole (the same one that Toresella concluded [quite wrongly, I think] had been rubbed through the vellum in a sexual frenzy) was in fact a copy of a hole that had had been elaborated around in the predecessor document. Similarly, I think a large space running down the page edge in Q20 was highly likely to be a copy of a (probably stitched) vertical tear in the predecessor document. (Which is also why I think we can tell that the predecessor document was also written on vellum, because you can’t stitch paper.)
Codicologically, the overall conclusion I draw is quite subtle: from all this, I believe one of the key design criteria driving the way the Voynich Manuscript was constructed was to allow the writer to retain the predecessor document‘s layout. In short: Layout Is King.
But this has a rather odd logical implication. Similarly to Marshall McLuhan’s famous dictum “The Medium Is The Message”, might it be the case here that, in fact, The Layout Is The Message? By which I mean: might it be that Voynich researchers have spent such a long time looking for matches with the plants, when in fact the important detail was actually the shape of the void on the page that had been filled in by the plants?
What I’m suggesting here is not only that the plants chosen to fill in the voids on the Voynich Manuscript’s pages might largely be meaningless filler (literally), but also that I suspect we might possibly also be able – with a bit of herbal help from Sergio Toresella and others – to use the shapes of these voids to reconstruct the plants that had originally filled them.
And if we can identify any page’s original plant, we would have a gigantic source crib that would suggest a block paradigm match with any recipe associated with that plant, particularly from any of the (relatively small) number of herbals that have recipe text attached to that plant. So you should be able to see where I’d like to go forward with this. 🙂
The 98 Secret Herbs And Spices
All the same, I suspect more than a few Cipher Mysteries readers are now thinking something along the lines of “well, even if that kind of approach is theoretically possible, it must surely be impossible in practice“.
And without any additional information to work with, I’d basically agree. However, I also think we have a large number of additional angles we can pursue in combination with this that might offer up the kind of additional information we would need to narrow down our overall search space.
The first one is the list of 98 named plants that Vera Segre Rutz lists as being present in the bulk of alchemical herbal manuscripts. Philip Neal helpfully offers up a list of these 98 plants:
Herba Antolla minor
Herba Bortines
Herba Torogas
Herba Nigras
Herba Stellaria
[…]
…all the way through to Herba Consolida mayor and Herba Consolida minor. On the face of it, these might appear to be of no use to us at all. However, I have long argued that the way that Herbal A pages are mixed up with Herbal B pages tends to confuse many issues: and it is a little-known fact that there the Herbal A pages contain 95 drawings of plants (and that there is also a Herbal A folio missing, bringing the total up to 97 or so drawings).
And so I strongly wonder whether the 97 or so Herbal A drawings (or rather their underlying voids) correspond to Segre Rutz’s 98 plants in the mainstream of the alchemical herbal tradition. Otherwise it’s a coincidence, for sure, and nobody likes coincidences much.
Again, you may object that this is not specific enough to be helpful. However, I’d point out that the alchemical herbal plants were very often included in specific orders: and that even if all the Voynich Manuscript’s bifolios have ended up in the wrong order, every pair of images on consecutive pages is guaranteed to be in the right order (i.e. the recto side then verso side of the same folio).
It might well be that an inspired guess plus a bit of cunning detective work will be enough to build the crucial missing linkage here. After all, we don’t need much.
Punning Clans
Puns (specifically visual puns) are another key way we might able to find a way in here. Toresella, in his “Gli erbari degli alchimisti”, lists examples where alchemical herbal drawings reflect the name of the plant, e.g. Herba Brancha Lupina can have its root stylized to look like a wolf. Here’s a wolf-root from Vermont MS 2 (as discussed by Marco Ponzi):
Note I’m not suggesting here that we should literally look for exact parallels in the Voynich Manuscript. However, my guess is that the intellectual temptation offered to the author by the chance to include / adapt / appropriate visual puns when creating filler plant drawings would be almost impossible to turn down.
And so I’m wondering whether there might turn out to be entire families (nay, clans) of Voynich herbal drawings that contain curious punny echoes of the original (though now invisible) herbal drawings.
One visually striking example of the kind of thing I have in mind is the pairs of red-outlined eyes in the roots of Voynich Manuscript f17r. I’m specifically wondering here whether these eyes might be a punny reference to Herba Bososilles (one of the alchemical herbal set of 98), which is – according to the paragraph of text in BNF Latin 17844 – good for the eyes. Here’s a picture with the coloured drawing from Canon Misc 408 with the text from BNF Latin 17844 cut’n’pasted below it:
Reminding vs Remembering
Ultimately, though, I have to say that I don’t believe that the plants we see on the pages of the Voynich Manuscript are likely to directly help us in the way that Voynich researchers over the last century (and more) have hoped. Calling them “phantasmagorical” (as I think Karen Reeds once did) may be technically accurate, but it is certainly practically unhelpful: we do not have long lists of phantasmagorical 15th century mss to compare it with.
The primary function of these plant drawings, I therefore suggest, may well lie not in their literality (i.e. in their ability to encode external information, to remember information for the author), but in their evocativity (i.e. their ability to stimulate recollection, to remind the author of that-which-was-there-before).
If this is right, we must find ways of resisting the temptation to try to literally read what we see in these plant pages, and instead attempt to start looking at them far more indirectly. Who know what we will see out of the sides of our eyes?
Given that I couldn’t find any page on the Internet providing links to scans of alchemical herbals, I thought it would be good to try to fill that gap. Not as many as I hoped turned out to be fully accessible, but there are still a good number.
Before I begin, it’s important to remember that Vera Segre Rutz reconstructed the cladistic tree of alchemical herbal manuscripts: this framework has dominated discussion of alchemical herbals ever since. The root of this tree was a Manuscript X (now lost), which begat Manuscripts Y and Z (both of which are also now lost). All the “direct tradition” manuscripts derived from Manuscript Y or Manuscript Z.
In addition, here’s Alexandra Marraccini’s tree, which laid out where she thought the Voynich Manuscript sat in relation to alchemical herbal manuscripts. Note that the top part of the tree is Segre Rutz’s direct tradition, while the bottom (yellow) part contains Marraccini’s proposed two groups of derived manuscripts:
Florence, Biblioteca di Botanica dell’Universita MS 106 – book by Stefania Ragazzini (as Rene Zandbergen has pointed out, this ms has a simple cipher key on fol. 1r)
Florence, Biblioteca Marucelliana MS 168/C – discussed in the book “I Segreti della medicina verde nell’epoca medicea, da due manoscritti inediti della città di Firenze : (secoli XV e XVI)“
London, Wellcome Historical Medical Library MS 261 – catalogue entry
London, Wellcome Historical Medical Library MS 334 – catalogue entry – ‘A contemporary copy of a famous MS herbal preserved at [the] Laurentian Library in Florence. Bought for 700 fr. by Woynich [Voynich] 1912‘.
London, Wellcome Historical Medical Library MS 337 – catalogue entry
New York, Pierpont Morgan Library MS 22.222 – I believe this is actually “PML 22222.4” – catalogue entry – “Text derives from an herbal in Pavia, see Bühler, “An anonymous Latin herbal.“
Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Add. A. 23
Padua, Biblioteca Universitaria MS 604 – manuscript reference looks incorrect (see here)
Trent, Museo Provinciale d’Arte MS 1591 – some images are online here
Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, MS It. III.11 (MS 5004)
Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, MS It II.12 (MS 4936)
Tractatus de Herbis Tradition
The herbals forming the “Tractatus de Herbis” tradition deriving from Firenze MS 106 are divided by Marraccini into two groups. Firstly, the group she calls the “Non Flattened Asphaltum” group:
Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Chig F VIII. 188 (not yet digitized)
Secondly, the “Flattened Asphaltum” group (which Marraccini believes may well include the Voynich Manuscript):
London, British Library, MS Sloane 4016 – this is described in the catalogue entry as “An Italian Herbal, classified by Baumann as one of the ‘North Italian group’ and as a copy of Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Beaux-Arts, MS Masson 116 (see Baumann, Das Erbario Carrarese, 1974).“
To this group I expect we should also add the herbal from which MS Sloane 4016 was copied (according to some, though Alain Touwaide vigorously disagrees):
Over the years, a small drawing on page 80v of the Voynich Manuscript has triggered what can only sensibly be described as all manner of Unholy Theory Wars.
The mysterious creature-like thing on page f80v of the Voynich Manuscript, posed above one of the Ms’s various wolkenbanden
This drawing has been used as ‘definitive’ proof of the manuscript’s supposed New World origins (i.e. because it is ‘obviously’ an armadillo); or that the manuscript was faked (i.e. according to Rich SantaColoma over at Koen’s blog, “Everybody who was anybody [in the 17th century] had a stuffed armadillo hanging in their kunstkammer“, which may yet turn out to be the Voynich comment of the year); and so forth, endlessly.
Whatever the drawing is actually supposed to represent, all we know for sure is that it appears in a quire / section of the manuscript that seems to be almost entirely related to different aspects of water (there are baths, bathing nymphs, showers, fountains, pipes, and even a rainbow in there). Hence it has long seemed highly likely to me that this will turn out to represent an animal somehow connected to water.
As an aside, I can’t help but pass on that in Janick and Tucker’s (2018) “Unraveling the Voynich Codex” (whose nutty New World Voynich theory – naturally – relies on this being an armadillo), they mention my 2009 catoblepas page: and on p.360 describe me sweetly as “one of the most expansive and intemperate of bloggers”. Which they can, of course, stick right up their hairy arses, bless them. (Happy now? Good. So let’s move swiftly on.)
But it turned out that Andrew Sweeney had first suggested the catoblepas on the old VMs mailing list back in 2004. Hence I thought it was now time to revisit the entire secret history of the catoblepas, and see what I could find…
Pliny the Elder on the Catoblepas
Our first source is Pliny the Elder (AD 23–79), the well-known Roman writer and naturalist, who is also famous for having died trying to rescue friends and family from Pompeii following the eruption of Vesuvius. He describes the Catoblepas (named from the Greek Κατωβλεψ, ‘looking down’) in his 37-book Naturalis Historia as follows:
In Western Aethiopia [Ethiopia, i.e. West Africa] there is a spring, the Nigris, which most people have supposed to be the source of the Nile… In its neighbourhood there is an animal called the Catoblepas, in other respects of moderate size and inactive with the rest of its limbs, only with a very heavy head which it carries with difficulty — it is always hanging down to the ground; otherwise it is deadly to the human race, as all who see its eyes expire immediately.
Pliny the Elder, Natural History 8. 77 (trans. Rackham)
Aelian on the Catoblepas
When Claudius Aelianus (c. 175 – c. 235 AD) wrote his 17-book encyclopaedia of nature, Pliny the Elder’s book was one of many he shamelessly recycled in his own ‘honey-tongued’ prose. So it should be no great surprise that the account of the catoblepas we find there is little more than an elaborated reworking of Pliny’s account:
Libya [Africa] […] produces the animal called the Katobleps [Catoblepas]. In appearance it is about the size of a bull, but it has a grimmer expression, for its eyebrows are high and shaggy, and the eyes beneath are not large like those of oxen but narrower and bloodshot. And they do not look straight ahead but down on to the ground: that is why it is called ‘down-looking’. And a mane that begins on the crown of its head and resembles horsehair, falls over its forehead covering its face, which makes it more terrifying when one meets it. And it feeds upon poisonous roots. When it glares like a bull it immediately shudders and raises its mane, and when this has risen erect and the lips about its mouth are bared, it emits from its throat pungent and foul-smelling breath, so that the whole air overhead is infected, and any animals that approach and inhale it are grievously afflicted, lose their voice, and are seized with fatal convulsions. This beast is conscious of its power; and other animals know it too and flee from it as far away as they can.
Aelian, On Animals 7. 6 (trans. Scholfield) (Greek natural history 2nd Century A.D.):
Thomas de Kent
From there, we fast forward to the Middle Ages and to Thomas de Kent, the Anglo-Norman author of the 12th century Roman de toute chevalerie, one of several Alexander-themed romances written at the time. There are several manuscript versions of his poem (listed on Arlima), of which Trinity College O. 9. 34. (made circa 1250) is online here. However, even though some monsters are depicted in the Trinity Ms, I don’t believe that any of them is a catoblepas, e.g the sea monster on f24r:
However, the BnF has a digitized copy of the (much more exciting-looking, particularly if you like ornate towers and nicely-coloured horseback battles with swords) 14th century Français 24364, which on fol.68r (in what seems to be an inserted section on mythical animals) has this enchanting image of a catoblepas using its +10 Eyes That Paralyze to kill some poor sap:
Durham’s copy (C. IV. 27 B) I had no luck finding at all, but perhaps others will do better than me.
To be honest, though, this set of manuscripts seems not to have formed the start of any long-running tradition. So this – unless you know better – probably marks the end of this particular line of manuscripts.
Thomas of Cantimpré (c.1200-c.1272)
The mainstream medieval reception of the catoblepas seems to begin with Vincent de Beauvais (1190-1264), who mentions it in Book XVIII of his Biblioteca mundi. However it is with Thomas of Cantimpré’s De naturis rerum that things start to get properly interesting.
Even though De naturis rerum was initially just text descriptions, adaptations and illustrations appeared in manuscript copies before very long. And these were then followed by incunabula and (of course) printed books. Hence Thomas of Cantimpré’s book is a lot like the long shadow of the Batcape that falls over Gotham’s seedy streets: by which I mean that just about everywhere we will find the catoblepas depicted from 1300 onwards, it will turn out to be either in a version of De naturis rerum, or in a book adapted from or strongly influenced by it.
In short, De naturis rerum is the source of the catoblepas Niger. And here’s the ‘cathapleba’ in Valenciennes 320, one of the earliest illustrated mss:
And here’s another (slightly later) one, Brugge MS 411 (1451-1500), found by Ger Hungerink:
Der Naturen Bloeme (ca.1350)
One book adapted (and abbreviated) from Thomas of Cantimpré’s De naturis rerum was Der Naturen Bloeme by Jacob van Maerlant (1230/35-ca.1291). There’s a 2011 edition by Herman Thys, and a detailed 2001 book on its reception by Amand Berteloot and Detlev Hellfaier: in Dutch circles, it’s quite a famous medieval manuscript, so there is plenty of academic literature on it out there if you’re interested.
It is in one of the illustrated copies of Der Naturen Bloeme that we find another early visual representation of the catoblepas. The KB KA 16 manuscript copy (ca.1350) contains miniatures of all the standard Mandevillean monstrosities (people with giant feet, people with no heads, people with two faces, etc), plus an odd-looking catoblepas on this page:
Cathaplebas is een dier zeer vreselijk en onguur en is op de Nijl, de rivier, van de vreselijkste manieren. Traag is het en niet bar groot. De last heeft het zwaar ter nood van zijn hoofd dat hem zwaar weegt. Van deze beesten is het dat men zegt komt het op je aan onvoorzien en tussen de ogen ziet het je dan ben je weg van het lijf. Dit dier lijkt op een deel der wijven die het hoofd dragen gehoornd zo zeer dat het stinkt voor Onze Heer en schijnt of het hen verwurgde dan komt er een dwaas die onge past op haar ziet en wordt zo gevangen en van hart alzo ontdaan dat hij ziel en lijf verliest en de dood daarom kiest. Van de c dat neemt hier een einde, nu hoort wat ik van de d vindt.
In the KB KA 16 copy, Der Naturen Bloeme is preceded by a calendar for Utrecht with local saints’ days (but no Dutch Cisioianus). I should mention that KB KA 16 includes an illustrated zodiac (though no crossbows), plus plenty of marginal whimsy, such as this horny rabbit:
…which is nice.
Here’s another Maerlant catoblepas in the British Library, also found by Ger Hungerink:
Conrad von Megenberg’s “Buch Der Natur”
The other well-known book derived from Thomas of Cantimpré’s De naturis rerum is Conrad von Megenberg’s “Buch der Natur”, which I and Koen Gheuens have both discussed on our respective blogs.
The main reference work for this is Ulrika Spyra’s book “Das ‘Buch der Natur’ Konrads von Megenberg”, a magisterial tome sitting next to me which I have already mentioned here a fair few times. The index references “Cathapleba”, but there’s also Spyra’s extraordinarily helpful “5.2.1 Synoptische Tabelle der Illustrationen in den Buch der Natur Handschriften” (p.382). From this (p.385), we learn that illustrations of the “cathaphleba” are to be found in 68rb of GW (Göttweig, Stiftsbibl., Cod. 389 rot), 83v of HD311 (Heidelberg, UB, Cpg 311), and 87v of M684 (Michelstadt, Nic.Matz-Bibl., Cod. D 684).
Firstly, Heidelberg UB Cpg311 (1455-1460), because it’s easy to get to. 🙂 However, the surprise here is that the drawing on 83v (reproduced as Abb 35 in Spyra) actually depicts a cockatrice rather than a catoblepas, so isn’t a lot of use to us:
This is copied faithfully in Nurnberg GNM Hs. 16538, fol. 50r (Spyra’s Abb. 47), which is hence also no use to us. 🙂
Spyra also mentions (pp.304-305) Olim Erbach, Graflich Erbach-Erbach und Wartenberg-Rothische Rentkammer, Cod. cart. ohne Signatur /Mscr. Nr 2. This has (she says) a Cathehaba on fol 50r.
Leonardo da Vinci on the Catoblepas
Leonardo briefly mentions the catoblepas in his Notebooks, though editors have noted that this derives from Pliny rather than from Aelianus:
CATOBLEPAS.
It is found in Ethiopia near to the source Nigricapo. It is not a very large animal, is sluggish in all its parts, and its head is so large that it carries it with difficulty, in such wise that it always droops towards the ground; otherwise it would be a great pest to man, for any one on whom it fixes its eyes dies immediately.
‘Are you surprised that the body of one man is contaminated by the rational soul of another? But you are not surprised that one soul is harmed by another when we gulp down alien vices from the company we keep. You are not surprised that your body is easily infected with disease by the vapor of another body as is obviously the case with consumption, epidemy, leprosy, the itch, dysentery, pleurisy, and conjunctivitis. Among the western Ethiopians purportedly lived beasts called the catoblepas that would kill men simply by looking at them (…), so effective is the power in the vapors of [their] eyes (…). Such is the power of the imagination and especially when the vapors of the eyes are subject to the emotions of the soul’
Ficino, TP, XIII, 4; Allen, IV, 195-197: Ficino, De vita III, XVI; K&C, 325.
John Jonston (1614)
Skipping past the 16th century (for now), once we get to the 17th century interest in the catoblepas somewhat wanes. Of the two famous 17th century drawings, the first was from John Jonston, which depicts something much closer to the gnu or wildebeest, which was (almost certainly) the source of the original description many centuries previously:
This was from John Johnston’s Historia naturalis de quadrupedibus, Amsterdam 1614.
Edward Topsell (1607)
Finally, Edward Topsell’s description of the Catoblepas in his (1607) Historie of foure-footed beastes (which was basically an English translation of Conrad Gessner’s epic 1551-1558 “Historia animalium“) was reproduced in John Swan’s 1643 “Speculum Mundi”, p.649:
The Gorgon or Catoblepas is for the most part bred in Lybia and Hesperia. It is a fearfull and terrible beast to look upon, it hath eye-lids thick and high, eyes not very great, but fiery and as it were of a bloudie colour. He never useth to look directly forward, nor upward, but always down to the earth; and from his crown to his nose he hath a long hanging mane, by reason whereof his body all over as if it were full of scales. As for his meat, it is deadly and poison full herbs; and if at any time this strange beast shall see a Bull or other creature whereof he is afraid, he presently causeth his mane to stand upright, and gaping, wide he sendeth forth a horrible filthy breath, which infecteth and poysoneth the aire over his head and about him, insomuch that such creatures as draw in the breath of that aire, are grievously afflicted, and losing both voice and fight, they fall into deadly convulsions.
Topsell’s drawing / engraving looks like this:
So… What To Make Of All This?
It is, alas, a complicated picture. If there is a common thread to be had, it is that nobody prior to John Johnston seems to have had the faintest idea of what it was they were drawing. Catoblepas get rendered as cockatrices, catty things, doggy things, odd blue things, whatever.
The one detail that got Ger Hungerink most excited was the apparent visual parallel between the Voynich Manuscript’s scaly ‘armadillo’ and Topsell’s scaly catoblepas. But at the same time, I should immediately caution that commentators on Topsell usually conclude that Topsell got confused in his translation, and so merged Gessner’s catoblepas with Gessner’s gorgon.
If you want to read Gessner’s chapter on the catoblepas, it is online here (pp.137-139), though there is no drawing or artwork illustrating it (and the chapter swiftly moves on to discuss the Gorgon). But really, unless someone can dig up a sixteenth century catoblepas print that Topsell could well have referred to, I’m currently not at all sure that we can, on the visual evidence we have so far, trace any kind of viable copying path from any of the Cantimpre versions all the way through to Topsell’s scaly catoblepas.
However, there are still many missing mss above, and there are also two sets of entirely different sources which I still need to go through properly, which I’ll have to cover in a separate post (because this one, I think it’s fair to say, has ended up somewhat out of control). So there’s a little way to go yet…
The nice people at the Australian Racing Museum (a tip of the padded jockey hat to Alison Raaymakers) very kindly had a look for me, but weren’t able to find any historical jockey index card, nor any reference to him in the ARM collection records. And because the various volumes of the Australasian Turf Register would only really give a list of races he was involved in (much of which I already had from Trove), that angle wasn’t likely to yield any result.
So, it was – as has so often been the case – back to Trove for a fresh trawl through the papers. This time, I took a different tack, by restricting my search solely to mentions of Kean / Keane in the Adelaide Sport. And, I’m pleased to say, I found a lot more stuff than before…
The Adelaide Sport on Kean
Might Kean have been a great Australian jockey? The writer of the Cheltenham Comment column in the 24 Dec 1919 Adelaide Sport didn’t think so, and was indeed less than complimentary about him:
I’m waiting for McGahan to put up a jockey on Warcast, when it may be a case of look out! Last two starts Kean has been on top, and backers have been a bit shy. Perhaps he will try to slip in with this slather-and-whack rider with the chance of a good dividend, or he may wait and put up a jockey.
It’s also possible that Kean was a drinker, as per the 31 Aug 1923 Adelaide Sport, depending on what you think “indisposition” means:
Both F. Cameron and J. Kean were absent from the tracks on Thursday morning on account of indisposition, and it is just possible that Clarrie Northway will have to look elsewhere for riders for his candidates at Murray Bridge to-morrow.
Adelaide Sport 14 Mar 1924 shows Kean still riding St. Ality for Clarrie Northway (including a nice photo!). And the breakthrough here being that this shows that he was known as Jim Kean:
St. Ality’s trainer, Clarrie Northway, has not experienced much luck for some time, but his ability has never been doubted. His faith in the St. Spasa gelding, who is only a four-year-old, was vindicated on Saturday. If one of his charges fails to come up to standard on the flat, Northway has little hesitation in popping him over the sticks, and he also believes in giving chances to his own boys.
Jim Kean is not one of those reckoned as “fashionable” horsemen, but no fault could be found with the dashing manner in which he handled St. Ality.
[…]
St Ality’s pilot, Jim Kean, also had the mount on Miss Nethey, and the Macigwyn mare, who was down nearly a stone compared with her impost when Pistoleno downed her at Gawler, hung on pretty tenaciously to gain second money.
Caption: “ST ALITY RETURNING TO SCALE AFTER WINNING THE HURDLE RACE AT CHELTENHAM LAST SATURDAY, WITH J. KEAN IN THE SADDLE. W. DICK “SPORT” PHOTO.1″
Jim Kean rode a well-judged race on St. Ality at the Amateur Meeting, but the same could hardly be said of his effort on the gelding last Saturday. Had he waited for another three or four furlongs to be put past before attempting to hit the front, St. Ality would have been either first or second, instead of only third.
Incidentally, there’s a nice description of Northway’s “commodious racing stables” (and cockatoo rather than a guard-dog) here.
UNTRIED GELDING DESTROYED. Andrewella, a five-year-old bay gelding by Bangonie from Floundress, which was attached to stables of the Victoria Park mentor, J. C. Neate, came to an untimely end on Thursday morning. While working on the training track he dislodged his rider, J. Kean, and then galloped through the training enclosure into Wakefield Street where he collided with a passing motor. As a result of the impact he sustained severe injuries to his off hind leg which necessitated his destruction. His trainer had hopes of the Bangonie gelding turning out a successful performer. Andrewella was owned by Mr. Ern Hoffrichter, of Denial Bay.
By 11 Oct 1934, Kean was still riding at Tailem Bend:
[…] Mr. H. W. Reichstein saddling up the veteran, Gold Metal, and Miss Paruna, while Sam Saunders was represented by Lady Devon. Both are well-known on the Murray circuit, and Jim Keane (rider of Lady Devon) is also becoming an institution up that way.
And Finally, It All Comes Together…
Just when I thought I had exhausted this whole line of research, I found a man who I think can only be the same person.In January 1949 (i.e. just too late to be the Somerton Man) Jim Kean was an Adelaide strapper, accompanying thoroughbred Royal Gem to America. If you can’t tell from the picture (and there were plenty of them in the press), Royal Gem is on the left and Jim Kean is on the right:
Hence I think this is probably the finishing post for this particular research thread: “J. J. Kean” the young jockey became Adelaide strapper Jim Kean, but it seems highly likely that he was a different person to “John Joseph Keane” (the bookmaker / bookmaker’s clerk). And so my search for the latter still goes on.
Incidentally, there is a wonderful irony to this, in that because Jim Kean was an Adelaide strapper for the thoroughbred Royal Gem in January 1949, there was surely a good chance Kean took Royal Gem for an early morning run on Somerton Beach on 1st December 1948. So I may not have found the Somerton Man here, but I may instead have found one of the very first people to see him dead on the beach. And what are the chances of that?
