Here's to Keeping Your Knowledge to Yourself

Yesterday’s 80^th anniversary of VE Day put me in mind of Uncle Bob. Which is a bit surprising considering that I only recall ever meeting him the once.

People think that, having five children, I have a large family and by modern standards I’d say that’s true. My mother’s father was one of 7, and my mother’s mother was one of 6, which meant that my Mum had over twenty first cousins. Coming back to her mother, my Nan, the youngest of her siblings was Uncle Bob. My great grandmother had been crippled by arthritis and so Nan as the oldest girl virtually brought up the rest of the family. According to the family story when she had reached fourteen the Headmaster of her school had asked my great grandfather to let the school keep her for two more years , but he refused because she was so needed at home. However, I am digressing here, so let me come back to Uncle Bob.

The story goes that he lied about his age to get into the RAF at the outbreak of World War II. He certainly served on a largely Australian bomber crew, and Nan believed they had flown Lancaster bombers. Nan had four brothers – Thomas (Wally – the one who had nearly become BBC’s boxing commentator when Eamonn Andrews moved on) – Charlie (Uncle Mac, who had been at Dunkirk) – Uncle Ritchie and Uncle Bob, and all of them served in the armed forces during the war in one capacity or another.

With the surname Cobden, the family were all very proud to boast a direct connection to Richard Cobden. He might not be that well remembered in this day and age, but in the early Victorian era Richard Cobden was a big beast politically. He was a key figure in ending the unfair Corn Laws and turned down a cabinet post on reputedly more than one occasion. There is, I believe, a statue of him not far from Mornington Crescent tube station in London.

When I started researching my family history, a good quarter of a century ago, I did not deliberately set out to be an iconoclast. I wasn’t consciously looking to disprove anything. But I was hoping to get to the truth. Because, in the nicest possible way, the Richard Cobden MP connection looked dodgy to me. To put it simply, he died in the 1860s, while my great grandfather, Nan’s dad was born in the 1870s. If the great man had been his grandfather, or great grandfather, well, he would surely have known. Nan should have been able to say – oh yes, he was my Dad’s grandad -. In all honesty it didn’t take a huge amount of research to determine that, well, yes, there was a family connection, but it’s a distant one, our closest common ancestor being Richard Cobden’s own several times great grandfather.

No, during most of the 19^th century, our Cobdens were a prosperous family of tailors in Windsor. If you know Windsor at all, the business was located in what is now the Lloyds Bank at number 2, Thames Street. Two brothers, Richard Hayllar Cobden and Benjamin Hayllar Cobden set up by the 1820s. Another brother, Thomas Hayllar Cobden was a carpenter in the same town, and it was Thomas’ son, Thomas Richard Cobden, who became apprentice to his Uncle Richard, eventually becoming a partner in the business. One other thing I found out was that Thomas Richard married a lady called Elizabeth Dawe, whose uncle was famous portrait artist George Dawe, one time court portrait painter to Tsar Alexander I of Russia, whose work is prominently displayed in the Hermitage to this day. Thomas Richard and Elizabeth were my Nan’s great grandparents.

Now, to me, this truth was far more interesting and valuable than a tenuous and frankly pretty spurious link to Richard Cobden.

Not long after I had found out all of this, I was invited to bring the family to Cousin Pat’s birthday party. It was a big birthday, and Pat and her husband Alan (two of the nicest and most generous people you could be lucky enough to meet) threw open their beautiful house in Kent to as many of the family as could make it. Pat is the daughter of my Nan’s only sister, Auntie Bet. As a special present, I had written up everything I could find out about our Cobdens and Dawes, illustrating it with contemporary photographs and etchings, and bound it to present it to Pat.

Which is where Uncle Bob comes in. Uncle Bob arrived slightly later than everyone else, as I recall. He presented Pat with his present, a beautifully framed and hand coloured engraving of Richard Cobden MP addressing Parliament. Almost immediately after which he was introduced to me and shown the account of my research I’d presented to Pat which showed that the family legend he and his whole generation were so proud of was, to use the vernacular, bollocks.

I have been more embarrassed at other times in my life, I’m afraid to say. But blimey, I was embarrassed. I hardly spoke much to Uncle Bob then and he passed away some time later, but the memory of the quiet and dignified way he reacted – basically by saying words to the effect of – oh, that’s interesting, I didn’t know that – has stayed with me. Because, I guess that sometimes, well, sometimes showing off your knowledge is just not the right thing to do. I can only hope that Uncle Bob went away thinking – that grandson of Florrie’s, he doesn’t half talk some rubbish, rather than having had his pride in the family connection destroyed.

The fine art of keeping your trap shut. I wish I was better at it.