SOAS Research Online

Abstract

Solomon Caesar Malan’s (SCM) learning embraced some forty or so languages, and his travels extended far over Europe, Asia and Africa. The reasons are not far to seek in his son’s remarks about their situation in Broadwindsor, where even “a visit to Bridport or Chard was a thing to be talked about.” The online catalogue of county records held at the Dorset History Centre also reveal a further manuscript relating to SCM, not from Broadwindsor, but from Lytchett Matravers, far away in the east of the county between Bere Regis and Poole, the eventual home of a Rev. William Tuckwell's juxtaposition conjures up a contrast between the gloomy Pattison transmuted into Edward Casaubon, a country clergyman with a large house and a “long library,” and the scholar of Hugenot descent, SCM, who may have been in like circumstances a didactic old Tory, but at least had something undeniably convivial about him.