When I was a boy one of the oldest persons I knew was my Great Gran who I wrote about in this blog post a few days ago.
Yet, she was not the very oldest person I knew. That was Mr Thomas Evershed Skinner, a little man who was born in 1884, survived the Western Front in World War One, became a Strict Baptist minister and was still driving a car to chapel in the mid 1970s.
A Thousand Shall Fall At Thy Side
I liked it when Mr Skinner was the preacher because there was always a chance that he would slip in an anecdote about the Great War. One I remember was how a German artillery shell landed in the mud between him and a fellow soldier, but did not explode; hence he was able to tell us about it from the pulpit, and how that experience brought this verse from the Psalms into his mind:
A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee.
(Psalm 91 v. 7)
This Mud-Walled Cottage
Once when another minister inquired after his health he replied,
“I feel this mud-walled cottage shake.”
What I didn’t know at the time was that it was an oft-quoted line from a verse in one of John Newton’s hymns:
I feel this mud-walled cottage shake,
And long to see it fall;
That I my willing flight may take
To Him who is my All.
I was fifteen when Mr Skinner departed his mud-walled cottage in 1978, at the ripe old age of 93.
In The Generation of Victoria...
If one generation is around 20 to 30 years, Mr Skinner was born two or three generations before me. When he was a child it is quite possible that he also knew people who were in their nineties at that time.
Okay, that may seem like an obvious statement, but it is the sort of apparent banality that can blow a fuse in an addled noddle like mine…
Here’s what I’m getting at…
I knew Mr Skinner when I was about ten years old, well old enough to have sensible conversations with him about the past.
Now imagine if I had asked him about the oldest person he knew when he was ten.
That would have been back in 1894, when Victoria was on the throne.
Now suppose that he told me that he remembered a conversation he’d had with a chap who was 95 at the time.
In The Generation of George III and Wellington
That takes us back to the generation born in 1799 when George III was on the throne, the colonials had revolted, and the Corsican Upstart had seized power in France.
Let’s suppose that, by sheer coincidence, the young Thomas Evershed Skinner was just as curious about “the old days” as I am, and that he had asked this old boy to tell him about his childhood.
Now suppose that ancient fellow had told the young Thomas that he had been a drummer boy who had marched with the Iron Duke and had had the honour of being spoken to by him.
Speaking Across The Generations
What it would mean is that I knew someone who had spoken to someone who had been spoken to by the Duke of Wellington, who was born in 1769, two hundred years and seven to ten generations before me!
Perhaps I should pretend that it is a true story and if perchance I live into my nineties, retain a relatively sound state of mind, and have an opportunity to chat to one of the young generation, I can tell the tyke that he is speaking to somebody who spoke to somebody who spoke to the Duke of Wellington, who was born nearly 300 years before!
Doubtless, he will be singularly unimpressed!
Cheers.
David Hurley