 |
| St. Swithun's, Hempstead |
All was in readiness for the wedding feast at Hempstead Court, the country home of the Rev. Samuel Lysons of St. Luke's, Gloucester. Tuesday, October 9, 1855, was his daughter Alice's wedding day. The groom was a popular local clergyman, the Rev. Hugh Hovell Baskerville Farmar. From a prominent Irish family, Farmar was curate at St. Nicholas in the nearby village of Hardwicke. The little Hempstead church of St. Swithun was decorated with flowers and filled with the local gentry and friends of the young couple. But the appointed hour of 11:00 passed and neither party to the nuptials appeared. By noon, guests were told that owing to the bride's indisposition the wedding would be the following day. Within hours, the truth was known - the Rev. Farmar had disappeared. He had visited his betrothed the night before and had not been seen since. The trains were checked, canals were dragged, and several tramps at a local "mop fair" were questioned by police. But days passed with no sign of the missing curate. "The affair is altogether wrapped in mystery."
Detectives were employed. "A Thousand and One Rumours" were circulated. Reported sightings in London and Ireland were busts. It wasn't until December that Farmar was traced to America. The Gloucester Chronicle reported, "Some expression fell from the lips of the intended bride during the last interview which was misconstrued by the gentleman into something like regret at the step she was about to take." Farmar despaired; his only plan was to flee, an act he will ever regret. He wanted all the friends of Miss Lysons to know that the blame for this unhappiness was all his.
The sequels to the wedding mystery are equally interesting. The Lysons name was well-known in Gloucestershire, a family of clergymen, physicians, and antiquarians. Jilted Alice Lysons did eventually marry; in 1861, she wed a young man named George Hacker. George was the son of a local railway porter and he was being educated in Cheltenham at the Rev. Lysons' expense. Alice, apparently, couldn't wait for the schooling to be finished. That May, the papers reported, "This week, she left home secretly to be married to him."
As for the Rev. Farmar, he joined the Episcopal church in the midwestern state of Illinois. He invested well, mostly in agricultural land, and became quite wealthy. He left the clergy and settled near Springfield, Missouri on a 300-acre farm. In January 1890, he was found dead in his burned-out log home. One of the local papers speculated the fire was set by some of his "negro tenants" angry over recent evictions. If he was murdered, it was never solved. Farmar kept to himself, he was an eccentric. All the locals knew about him was he came from England about forty years earlier. "Great excitement prevails," readers were told. Farmar never married.
If you have not yet checked out Clerical Errors, A Victorian Series, Vol. 2, please go here. Thank you. Comments, criticism, additions, and suggestions are welcome below.
