Many distinguished clerics, en route to higher promotions, passed through the rectory of Stanford Rivers. One of the more unlikely holders of the living, the Rev. Henry Tattam 1789-1868), was presented by the Crown in 1849. Educated at Christ’s College, Cambridge, there is circumstantial evidence that he was taught by, or at least known to, the remarkable Samuel Lee (1783-1852). Lee, a self taught carpenter, was said to have mastered 18 languages by the age of 40 and was appointed the first professor of Arabic at Cambridge University.
Tattam himself was a talented and industrious linguist. He translated the Gospels into Arabic and Coptic. He published an eight part grammar entitled, not very succinctly, “A Compendious Grammar of the Egyptian Language, as contained in the Coptic and Sahidic dialects, with observations on the Bashmuric, together with alphabets and numerals in the hieroglyphic and enchorial characters”. He also translated the New Testament into Arabic. Much of this work was done before he came to Stanford Rivers when he was looking after two parishes in Bedfordshire doubtless with the assistance of a curate or two!). While in Essex, he translated the Gospels into Coptic, providing a commentary in Latin to accompany it. In addition to his local responsibilities, he was archdeacon of Bedford and chaplain-in-ordinary to Queen Victoria. One is tempted to wonder how much time he had for his parishioners, though it is probable that much of the bread-and-butter parochial work was done by a curate.
However, one of his published works seem, strikingly out of character and may reveal a different side of the dusty Coptic scholar. The book is entitled Memoirs of the late John Camden Neild of Chelsea “ and was published in 1852, the year of Neild’s death. This sounds unremarkable until discovering the facts of Neild’s life. Born about 1780, his education was conventional enough proceeding from Eton to Trinity College, Cambridge. He was called to the Bar in 1808. He was said to have had considerable knowledge of both legal and general literature, and a great enthusiasm for the classics. But this normal progression was radically changed by the death of his father eight years later, when Neild inherited the princely sum of £250,000. Thereafter his life changed radically, and he spent the rest of his life in miserly squalor, obsessed with increasing his fortune. His house in Chelsea was barely furnished, without even a bed for him to sleep in. Rather than travel by coach, he walked huge distances to visit his estates where he stayed with tenants and shared their humble meals to avoid the expense of inns. While staying with one tenant he was rescued from an attempted suicide. On his death, apart from a few minor legacies, he left his doubled fortune to Queen Victoria who to her credit) enhanced the few legacies and restored his estate church at North Marston.
What was Tattam’s connection with this eccentric miser with whom he would appear to have nothing in common?
Michael Leach
