Hull Packet & East Riding Times
13 Feb 1880
THE MILITARY TIMBER MERCHANT
TO THE EDITOR OF THE "HULL PACKET"
SIR, – I am both surprised and amused at the hasty valour displayed by the gallant ex-Captain Horsley in support of his chief – ex-Lieutenant-Colonel Saner – in your contemporary of the 7th February. Ex-Captain Horsley asserts that "everyone connected with the trade knows that the ex-Lieutenant-Colonel is a timber broker". To this I for one respectfully demur. I have been connected with the trade for a period antecedent to the year 1859, and I venture to assert that the ex-Lieutenant-Colonel has not called on my employers, who are extensive timber merchants, ten times during the last 20 years with a view to business, and I further find on making enquiries from fellow-clerks in the other principal timber merchants' offices that he has been just as attentive to them.
The facts are that the ex-Lieutenant Colonel has a friend who owns some sawmills, and ships a few cargoes of deals from one or two Finland ports, and he [Saner] has very occasionally been commissioned as his [the friend's] agent to dispose of the same, so the most that can be said of his connection with the trade is that he has sometimes acted as agent for one shipper, which is a very different thing to being a "timber broker" in the usually accepted sense of the designation.
I have always regarded the gallant ex-Lieutenant-Colonel as an amateur soldier, a justice of the peace, and a present help for the Hull Dock Company in time of need, and I fancy that if anyone had ventured to salute him three or four years ago as a "broker" he would have scorned the soft impeachment. Ex-Captain Horsley may be excused for standing forward in support of his ex-Lieutenant-Colonel, for he had the advantage of buying from him the parcel of deals referred to when other timber merchants had no such opportunity offered them by the quasi broker.
– Yours obediently, A TIMBER MERCHANTS' CLERK
Notes
J H Horsley, a well-known timber-merchant in Hull, must clearly have had the rank of Captain in the 4th East Riding of Yorkshire Artillery Volunteer Corps, and I think he was probably one of the junior officers who supported Saner's allegations against Lieutenant-Colonel-Commandant Humphrey, and were dismissed as a result.
I must admit that the phrase "to own the soft impeachment" seems entirely new to me – though with youthful relentlessness I absorbed (and very much appreciated) The School for Scandal, The Rivals and The Rehearsal during an otherwise unbearably dull weekend in Basil Mansions some sixty years ago, Mrs Malaprop's (mis)usage went entirely over my head.
"Own" clearly means to admit or acknowledge, as in owning up to something, and "impeachment" is of course an accusation, but why "soft"? Maybe it simply means mild or harmless, just as it says on the tin.
The pseudonymous clerk's use of irony was a little bit uneven, or in places ambiguous, but there's no doubt about his distaste for those who exaggerated the commercial and social credentials of themselves or their pals.
Hull Packet, 13 Feb 1880
'ECHOES OF THE WEEK'
FLANEUR
I hear, with reference to the testy letter of Mr J H HORSLEY in one of your contemporaries on Saturday [7 Feb 1880], that Mr HORSLEY made a particularly good thing out of the one transaction he had in timber with Mr SANER. So much for Mr SANER'S knowledge of timber; so much for Mr HORSLEY'S shrewdness; and so much for his championship of Mr SANER as a Military Timber Merchant!
Notes
It's odd that Flaneur (Findlay, of course) refers to the newspaper in which Horsley's letter had been published as "one of your contemporaries", where the "you" is presumably the public. In contrast, the Timber Merchant's Clerk, in his letter to the Packet editor Findlay, also refers to it in this way, but the "you" is now the Packet itself.
Perhaps Flaneur was simply quoting an unattributed letter from another correspondent – which would be a further pointer to the public disquiet about Saner's pretensions to savoir faire.
I suppose I should make some effort to identify which of the Packet's contemporaries had printed the letter from Horsley, and what the letter actually said. Unfortunately, the British Newspaper Archive website, admirable in so many ways, provides no alternative to the Packet in this connection.
There are a number of useful links, from which the likely contemporary can be identified, but whether the text of the letter can be retrieved remains to be seen.
www.hullwebs.co.uk/content/k-victorian/newspapers/directory.htm
Saner was sometimes described as being a timber merchant or a timber broker (or indeed, as above, as being neither of these). One may well ask what the difference is?
As far as I understand these things, a merchant (or retailer) is someone who sells a commodity to its end-user. The merchant sources this commodity from a supplier (or wholesaler), who in turn has to obtain it from the producer (whoever originates that commodity). A broker is simply somebody who mediates between the merchant and the supplier, or the supplier and the producer, ensuring that both parties to the deal are satisfied, and obtaining a commission fee from one or both of them for his services.
- Saner was also, on occasion, grandiloquently described as a military timber merchant. What is meant by that? I think it simply means that the customer is the War Office (or as we say these days, that incompetent bunch of scoundrels, the Ministry of Defence). In those days of course the Armed Forces simply comprised the Army and the Royal Navy, and one can feel confident that the Navy were by far the larger customers for timber – almost all of it imported from Scandinavia and Finland. And 'Pedant' being my secret alternative middle name, military relates only to the army and not really to the navy (miles versus nauta).