#MC3
Ca. 1822-1834
Octavo (ca. 18,5 x12 cm). pp. Brown ink on paper. Presentation inscription on the first leaf "Frances Speke from Her Papa, February 16th, 1822", many entries noting the place as Jordans (Ilminster, Somerset) and date. Period green gilt tooled half sheep notebook with marbled boards and endpapers. Binding slightly rubbed on extremities, otherwise a very good manuscript.
Nice manuscript book of poems and quotations which belonged to Frances Speke, an aunt of the famous African explorer John Hanning Speke (1827-1864). She was a daughter from the second marriage of John Speke’s grandfather, William Speke (1798-1886). The book contains a presentation inscription on the first leaf: “Frances Speke from Her Papa, February 16th, 1822.” There are over a hundred poems or sentences in the book, either written by Frances Speke and her acquaintances or copied from Byron, Thomas Moore and other poets, with occasional ink drawn vignettes. A number of entries was written in Jordans, Ilminster (Somerset) - the hereditary seat of the Speke family.
“The tiny village of Dowlish Wake lies in the heart of Somersetshire, some two miles south-east of Ilminster and about 45 miles from Bath: and here, in the presence of his old travelling companion Grant, of Dr. Livingstone (who had returned to England two months before) and of Sir Roderick Murchinson, Speke was buried. The parish church is the shrine of many generations of the Speke family, and a window and monument have been erected to the explorer’s memory. Jordans, the ancestral home and still in the hands of the Speke family, is in a neighbourhood parish, Ashill, lying about 2 miles to the north of Ilminster” (Thomas, H.B. Notes on the death of Speke in 1864// The Uganda Journal. Vol. 13, 1949. P. 106-107).
