Tupper

Tupper, MARTIN FARQUHAR, D.C.L., F.R.S., poet and inventor, was born at Marylebone, 17th July 1810. His father, an eminent London surgeon, who twice refused a baronetcy, came of a family, originally German, which since 1550 had been settled in Guernsey. Martin was educated at the Charter-house and under five private tutors, and at nineteen went up to Christ Church, Oxford. A stammer hindered him from taking orders, so, after graduating in 1831, he entered Lincoln's Inn, and in 1835 was called to the bar. But a single will and marriage settlement was his first and last exploit in the way of law; he had found his vocation in a life of authorship. Its chief events were his election to the Royal Society (1845), two visits to America (1851, 1876), and a series of English and Scotch readings from his own works. Of those works, forty in number, one, Proverbial Philosophy (3 series, 1838-67), brought him and his publisher, Hatchards, a profit of 'something like £10,000 apiece.' His inventions were not such successes (safety horseshoes, glass screw-tops to bottles, steam-vessels with the paddles inside, &c.). A friend 'whose ambition it was to be Tupper's Boswell' predeceased him; but from his own huge 'archives' he compiled My Life as an Author (1886)—a curious self-study of a poet. He died at Albury, his Surrey home, on 29th November 1889.