RUSSELL HENRY MANNERS (1800-1870) AND THE MAP OF THE MOON

Russell Manners was a brother-in-law of my cartoonist cousin Charles de Noé. Although a great many of my ancestors made their mark, good or bad, here on Earth, Russell is as far as I know the only one to have an extra-terrestrial legacy.

Russell Henry Manners (1800-1870),

a Manners on the Moon

(picture from www.sciencephoto.com)

His career was in the Royal Navy, but his interest was in astronomy. His enthusiasm led to his election to the Royal Astronomical Society in 1836 where, although not a practicing astronomer, he proved himself an administrative asset to the Society. He served for ten years as its honorary secretary and in 1868 was elected its president. When the time came to hand out names for features on the Moon, he had earned his place in the queue.

It turns out that there are rules for this sort of thing, administered by the International Astronomical Union. Planets are named after Gods and Goddesses, and their moons after the offspring of those gods. For example Mars  is named after the Roman god of war; its two moons are called Deimos and Phobos, the sons of Ares, the Greek god of war (something which would probably have my father, a classical scholar, turning in his grave; that mixing of Greek and Roman traditions would offend his purist soul!). Deimos means Panic and Phobos means Fear, two inescapable products of War. Comets are named after their discoverers, and it is possible for more than one person to discover a comet simultaneously – hence Comet Hale-Bopp, discovered and reported separately on 23^rd July 1995 by both Alan Hale and Thomas Bopp.

The features on our own moon are reserved for those who have explored the moon, either in person or through telescopes as astronomers. So for example three small craters near the Apollo 11 landing site are named Aldrin, Collins and Armstrong in honour of the pioneering crew of the first manned mission to the moon. And, only 100 miles to the north-west across the Mare Tranquillitatis from Apollo 11's historic Tranquility Base, you will find the rather larger Manners Crater.

The Sea of Tranquility:

Manners Crater (M) and the Apollo 11 landing site (A)

As I write these words, I’ve been staring at images of it all afternoon; and I must say it’s becoming rather beautiful to me! Manners is a perfectly circular crater about 15km in diameter and 1.7km deep, with a distinct mountain in the centre of it. It’s a banded crater, which means that it has streaky sides – illustrating I think the movement of material outwards at the time of impact.

Any further technical description would be well beyond my comfort zone or qualifications grade. I’m just pleased as punch to think every time I look at the Moon that one of my ancestors has made his mark there.

Manners Crater (the large crater on the right)

photographed from Apollo 10 in 1969

CHARLES AMÉDÉE HENRI DE NOÉ (1818-1879) AND THE ECCENTRICITIES OF THE MOMENT

I don’t know how I am related to Charles de Noé, only that I must be! His mother Frances Caroline Halliday is, somehow, at the heart of the closely knit circle of Hallidays, Tollemaches and Delaps from which my 6x great grandmother Rebecca Delap emerged. Frances’s connections by name, through wills and property are too numerous to be coincidences, but as far as I know, no one has been quite able to pin her to any specific part of the Halliday tree. There have been suggestions that she was the illegitimate daughter of Francis Delap Halliday and Frances Tollemache; but that would make her eventual marriage to the Count Louis Pantaléon Judes Amédée de Noé, a member of the French aristocracy, a socially unlikely union.

That said, scandal was never far from that generation of Tollemaches. Frances Tollemache’s sister Jane eloped with Francis Delap Halliday’s brother John (see my earlier blog about Jane); and Frances Caroline Halliday’s marriage to the Count was witnessed by another Tollemache sister, Louisa. It seems entirely possible that they might all have closed ranks over an illegitimacy in order to see Frances Caroline married off, and married off well at that.

Charles Amédée Henri de Noé (1818-1879)

Charles Amédée Henri de Noé was the fifth son of the marriage, and could therefore have little expectation of inheritance. He was expected to go out and work for a living, and was lined up for a career in engineering after education at an institut de technologie. Instead, he went to painting classes led by Paul Delaroche and Nicolas Charlet and began a hugely successful career as a satirical cartoonist.

In the same way that Belgian cartoonist Georges Remi adapted his initials to sign his work Hergé (the sound of R.G. in French), Charles Amédée took the pen name Ch-Am – Cham. Since his surname is the French for [son] of Noah, Cham was also a  jokey reference to Ham son of Noah. Probably not a belly-laugh even in the 1840s, but perhaps enough to trigger a smile which might become a laugh as you read his cartoons.

"Noah and his family prepare for the rainy season."

Cham wasn’t above inserting his own image into his drawings.

From the rear: Charles, his brothers Franck and William,

and as Noah himself, Charles’s father Louis de Noé

Cham’s strength was as a social rather than a political commentator. In a career lasting 40 years he is credited with over 40,000 drawings, an invaluable resource in the twenty-first century for studying the French nineteenth-century middle class and what one reviewer, R.L. Mayer, describes as “all eccentricities of the moment.”

If your French is better than my schoolboy understanding, you will enjoy http://amedeedenoe.unblog.fr/ a blog dedicated to Cham’s memory.

Cham, son of Noah