Thursday 19th October 2023
Serendipity in Sussex Following on from my post of Friday 18th November 2022, in which I described how I discovered, serendipitously, the close links between one of my great grandfather’s two employers, Frederick DuCane Godman, and the town of Horsham, in West Sussex, I shall now describe how the story evolved from there over the ensuing months. On that rainy day in November last year, when the appalling weather drove me to discover the Horsham Museum, where I spotted a reference to Mr Godman, I introduced myself to one of the curators there, and he told me that they were in the process of putting together an exhibition on Godman’s life and work, to run from May to September 2023. I explained that my great grandfather, amateur entomologist George Charles Champion, had been employed as an insect collector by Godman and Salvin in 1879, and then spent the whole of the rest of his working life in their employ, and had ended up becoming one of the most eminent entomologists of his day. I also mentioned that I had a box of butterfly specimens caught by G C Champion in Central America between 1879 and 1883, and that I would be delighted to lend that to the museum for display in the exhibition. This offer was gladly accepted.
A few weeks later, I returned to Horsham to deliver the butterflies, and I met the other curator, who suggested that I might perhaps like to meet the great niece of Mr Godman, and so it was that I had the extraordinary privilege of enjoying a lunch with a living descendant of the man who had such an extraordinary influence on my family’s lives since the moment when he recruited George Charles Champion, altering his entire career and elevating him from being a relatively humble watch repairman in his father’s small jewellery shop in Walworth Road, London, allowing him to pursue a career that was to lead him to name more than 4500 new species of insect, and to become a Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society, among other achievements. That lunch has led to several very enjoyable meetings between us, and the commencement of a friendship, forged in a pub just opposite the entrance of South Lodge, Godman’s splendid former residence south of Horsham, around 145 years after our respective forebears started their association.
Sadly, I was unable to attend the opening of the exhibition in May due to commitments in Scotland, but I was invited to give a talk on my great grandfather’s journeys as a collector for Godman and Salvin, a talk that was well attended and with an audience that included two Godman descendants…and a former colleague of mine from my former place of work in the Netherlands, who arrived unannounced, a most pleasant surprise for me.
Not only did that chance visit to Horsham last year lead to this talk, but some recent family history research has led me to discover the fact that the Champions, prior to their move to London in the early years of the 19th century, came from West Sussex, in particular the village of Wisborough Green and the towns of Billingshurst and…Horsham! Serendipity indeed!
