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A Biography of Percy Bolingbroke St.John
Our Stockport Chartist Friends
Newspapers of the nineteenth century reviewed periodicals as much as they reviewed books and ‘The Northern Star and Leeds General Advertiser of Nov 9, 1844 was true to form when it reviewed ‘SIMMONDS COLONIAL MAGAZINE.’
“This is an excellent number of this very entertaining periodical,’ enthused the newspaper’s critic. After mentioning that ‘A Visit to a Chinese City,’ had been an amusing account of a visit paid to Ningpo by an English Lady who was nearly ‘surfeited to death by dinners and the staring of Chinese sightseers’, he draws his readers’ attention to ‘The Yankee Boarding House’ by Percy. B. St.John, a record of adventures in Texas’
‘The article is a most entertaining one, and from it we have selected two or three extracts.’ explains the critic, adding; ‘Our Stockport Chartist friends will be surprised to read the following account of an old friend of theirs now keeping a boarding house in the land of snakes and alligators. We should premise that the scene is Galveston.’
Robert Mellor, landlord of an eating house, in the largest street of the largest town, in the littlest country in the world, was a native of Stockport, born doubtless of honest parents, by trade a weaver.
During the first Chartist agitations he made himself too conspicuous and notorious to be able henceforth to reside in peace in that locality, and accordingly made himself scarce, took ship for New Orleans, and landed in Texas. In this free and independent republic he could give utterance to his most secret thoughts in safety; no one quarreled there with his opinions; that is, if he never said a word about slavery, never said a word in praise of England, never breathed a syllable derogatory to the high and lofty and sublime position of the United States among the nations of the earth. These things excepted, he could abuse Sam Houston to his heart’s content, cry for the ballot, universal suffrage - save that it was scarcely worth while; they were the customs of the locality. But, removed from his native sphere, old Bob retained but three ideas - his boarding house, his bottle, and bell-ringing. In devotion to this cause he rivaled the Hunchback of Notre Dame. True, there were no bells in Galveston to be rung; but when on the subject the old fellow was sublime - he crossed the Atlantic, and was ringing changes in Norwich peal in a second. Still the sound was necessary to him, and at every meal hour you would see him stoop down beneath the counter, take from thence an old tinkler with scarcely a handle enough for his fingers to clutch, and advancing to the front of his dwelling, summoning all those to whom it might concern to their breakfast, dinner or supper. He said he played a tune; and by saying so three times three hundred and sixty five times in the year, his auditors became almost convinced of the truth of his assertion.
Bob was a slight and rather tall man, with a thin gaunt visage, which had once been handsome. But Bob’s peculiarity was his right leg. Some six years before, how he could not tell, he had lost the lower of bending his right knee; the joint became stiff, the muscles contracted, and no stick was more capable of bending than his leg. When he walked, this gave him the most comic appearance, especially when parading before his door, summoning his retainers to matins, mid-day, or evening refraction. And then his old broad-brimmed and crownless hat, his long green baise coat, patched and re-patched, his tight pantaloons, his moccasins. Bob Mellor was an original.”
The newspaper included two more extracts of Percy. B. St John’s descriptions before concluding: ‘We cannot afford room for further extracts, but the whole article will be found highly entertaining’
On Sunday, May 17, 1846. The ‘court’ section of ‘Lloyd’s Weekly London Newspaper’ reported:
Did Percy b. St;.John recall Bob Mellor to his library audience?
A radical press had also been established to inform and entertain this new public as
knowledge had previously been restricted to a relatively few, expensive papers catering for
a metropolitan elite.
Reynold’s Miscellany became the most widely read of these radical journals and G.W.M. Reynold’s popularity — especially that of his fiction which had been partially inspired by Penny Dreadfuls’ - exceeded that of Charles Dickens. (Dickens considered Reynolds to "pander to the basest passions of the lowest natures - whose existence is a national reproach")[1].
Reynolds also became known as a figure in the ‘Chartist’ movement and his newspapers advertised the virtues of ‘The Freehold Society’. It was argued that the working classes, through the purchase of land, would have their natural birthright restored to them - a birthright that had been purloined by the aristocracy. It was even further argued that this theft of land had taken place after the Norman Conquest when the French conquerors appropriated the land of England as booty to be re-distributed among their friends. [2]
One wonders if this view of the French persisted in the early nineteenth century - a view that seems to have been recorded by James Augustus St John in his ‘History of the Conquests of Britain;. (see ‘A Footnote to Stevenson’)
It is not known in Percy B St.John and his brothers knew G.W.M Reynolds - they may well contributed to his various journals.