Rev Solomon Lyon

http://www.jhse.org/book/export/article/21620

Cecil Roth described Solomon Lyon as one of the rare Anglo-Jewish scholars of the eighteenth century. He lived well into the nineteenth century, and although he was a minor figure his story is worth telling.

He was born in Bohemia in 1755, probably in Kuttenplan, now Chodová Planá in the Czech Republic, about 80 miles northwest of Prague.

Little is known of Lyon’s early life, but before leaving Bohemia, probably in his twenties, he must have received the traditional education of a clever boy with scholarly interests, passing from elementary study of Hebrew and the Talmud to advanced talmudic study at a yeshivah. He is said to have attended the University of Prague, but this is unlikely to have been the famous Charles University since Jews were not admitted there until 1782, by which time he was already established in England. It is more likely that he studied at the so-called Jewish University of Prague, also known as the Prague Talmud University.

It is not surprising that he should have left Bohemia in search of a better life, although it was to be some years before he could earn a living appropriate to his education and interests. It is unknown how he came there, but evidence suggests that he had settled in Portsmouth by 1781, where mainly German Jews had founded a community about forty years before.

A key figure in the community and one of the leaders of the split was Reb Leib Aleph (1723-1814), known in the non-Jewish community as Levy Isaac, a silversmith. He was famous among the Jews of Portsmouth and the south of England for his skill as a mohel (circumciser) and he kept a circumcision register of historic importance. He was to play a significant part in Lyon’s life in Portsmouth.

Lyon first came to public notice in 1781, when he was the victim of an assault by another Jew, a Portsea silversmith, who hit him with a stick and tore his shirt; this led to the first of Lyon’s several encounters with the English legal system. At the time of the assault he was a pedlar, like many other poor Jewish immigrants.

Lyon himself was robbed of a silver seal and a gold ring by a young midshipman in 1783. He had by then moved from Portsmouth to Portsea and had progressed up the commercial ladder to a more settled business as a silversmith.

The next recorded event is Lyon’s marriage in the summer of the next year, 1784, to Rachel Hart, whose parents were said to be ‘of Ely’. Although it has not been possible to trace any other contemporary Jews living in Ely, the records of the Portsmouth Congregation lend support to the accuracy of the statement about his father-in-law’s place of origin.

Five years later, on the Eve of the Jewish New Year in 1789, a significant event occurred in Portsmouth Jewish communal history which also involved Solomon Lyon. The members of the secessionist synagogue rejoined the original one, which had been rebuilt. In the list of new seat holders in the Minute Book, Lyon’s name, like that of Leib Aleph’s, was preceded with an initial Hebrew letter resh, as an abbreviation for Reb (a title for a learned man), or for ‘rabbi’, or as an honorific title, distinguishing Lyon and Leib Aleph from most of the others whose names are preceded with the letter kaf (the equivalent of ‘Mr’).

The signatures of Leib Aleph and Solomon Lyon on the reunification agreement of the Portsmouth communities. Number 2 reads ‘Judah son of Isaac Leib’ followed by the letter alef; and number 7 ‘[The young] Mr Solomon son of the learned Isaac Ari [Aryeh], of blessed memory, of the congregation of Kutin Ploin’. (The numbers do not appear in the original.) From the Portsmouth Old Congregation Minute Book, vol. ii p. 14.

However, by then Lyon and Reb Leib had fallen out. Their dispute was about events five years earlier when Reb Leib had been a lodger in Lyon’s house. Solomon Lyon alleged in court - two months after the two men might be assumed to have been in friendly agreement when they had signed the Minute book - that Levy Isaac (alias Reb Leib Aleph) owed him money for the stay.

Judgement went against Lyon and, perhaps as a consequence, he left Portsmouth; he has no entry in the Portsmouth rate books of October 1789. By later statements, he lived in Cambridge from about that time. Here Solomon Lyon was to spend the next seventeen years as a teacher of Hebrew.

William Frend, the reforming and controversial clergyman resident in Cambridge until 1793, who later became an actuary and a subscriber to the Hebrew grammar which Lyon published in 1815, was a keen Hebrew scholar and spent a vacation living with a Jewish family in London to learn the language. The list of those who studied with Lyon and the much longer one of those who subscribed to his grammar show that quite a number of people in Cambridge had an interest in Hebrew.

In a vain attempt to make ends meet he seems to have tried his hand at something quite different, for in May 1791 the London Gazette announced that Solomon Lyon and his partner Jonas Hart, ‘late of Ratcliffe Highway, Middlesex, but now of Cambridge . . . Dealers, [and] Chapmen’, had been declared bankrupt. They had to appear at the Hoop Inn in Bridge Street, Cambridge on 9, 19 and 25 June before their creditors,70 and in January the following year they received their certificate of discharge from bankruptcy. No other details exist, but there were so few Jews in Cambridge at this date that the bankrupt Solomon Lyon and the university teacher are likely to have been identical. The address in London may well refer only to Jonas Hart, who could have been a relation of Solomon’s wife.

There was indeed a Solomon Lyon in London around this date who has been understandably confused with Solomon Lyon of Cambridge. In 1794 he was an expert witness on Jewish marriage law at the celebrated case of Mendes Belisario v. Lindo, and his circumstances were surprisingly similar to those of Solomon Lyon of Cambridge: he was aged thirty-eight, had gained a rabbinical qualification eleven years before after studying at Prague, Frankfurt and Metz, and had had a school for more than three years at 7 Little Minories where he taught Hebrew. A man of this name was also the secretary of the New Synagogue in 1808.

Lyon himself probably taught Hebrew, Chaldean (Aramaic), Latin and German.

Lyon needed money and by 1806 his creditors were pressing. At the last minute the university rewarded him with a substantial sum and a tribute: ‘Since Samuel [sic] Lyon has applied himself for sixteen years to the instruction of young academics in Hebrew literature, and by his diligence, and scholarship and teaching skill has merited the testimonials of his students, lest all his goods be distrained on account of the debts which he has accumulated on account of his numerous offspring and his very small income; and his departure from Cambridge, which he is contemplating, is so beset with difficulties; May it please You, that one hundred pounds be granted from the common chest, and paid to his creditors by Master Chilcot.’

Despite this, Lyon set off very soon after with his wife and about nine children for a risky venture in London. In about June 1806 he moved into what had once been a grand mansion - Ormonde House at the eastern end of Paradise Row, Chelsea. Paradise Row is now part of Royal Hospital Road and the house, which has gone, used to stand opposite the west gate of the Royal Hospital for veteran soldiers.95 The history of the house is well documented. It was built in 1691, lived in by Lord Pelham at the beginning of the eighteenth century and took its name from its next occupant, the wife of the second Duke of Ormonde. It was in a pleasant spot with the Royal Hospital to the east, the Physic Garden to the west and the Thames three hundred yards away with views across to ‘the meadows and windmills of Battersea and the slopes of Streatham’.

By the time Lyon arrived the house was no longer a private dwelling, since it had been turned into an unusual school in 1779. This was the Maritime School, later the Naval Academy, for deserving boys intending to become officers in the Royal Navy. The house had been altered to accommodate twenty-six boys aged eleven to fourteen.99 Its most striking feature was the scaled replica of a fully rigged ship in the playground. The ‘Cumberland’, named after the school’s president, the Duke of Cumberland, had all the usual masts, sails and tackle and was large enough for twenty-four boys to go aloft at one time; it moved on swivels to mimic tacking or wearing. Other teaching aids included a battery of two six-pounders, an observatory and a rope house. The Maritime School proper closed in 1787, but the former mathematics master continued it under its new name of the Naval Academy until about 1805.

Lyon arrived the following year, presumably with the intention of setting up his own school. It is surprising that he took on the responsibility of such a large establishment, but since he answered for the rates - which were among the highest in the parish - he must have been in charge. Perhaps he hoped to attract Jewish boys from well-off London families whose parents were reluctant to send them as far as Cambridge for their education. His main competitor in the provision of good-quality tuition would have been Hyman Hurwitz, whose academy in Highgate had opened in 1799.

Nothing more is known about Lyon's school which ended in disaster, for in November 1807 one Thomas Norris sued him for a debt of about £20. Standing bail were Joseph Lee, a hatter of Houndsditch, Isaac Isaacs, a china and glass warehouseman of Newington Causeway, and David Solomon Aaron, a merchant of Fenchurch Street. Bankruptcy proceedings started in February 1808 against Lyon, who was described as a schoolmaster of Ormond House Academy, Chelsea, although in the subsequent announcement in the London Gazette he was called a chapman and dealer. (This term was often used loosely as a general description of occupation in order to qualify as a bankrupt instead of an insolvent debtor.) The creditor’s meetings were scheduled for March and April at the Guildhall.. Just after this, on 7 May, unable to pay his debt, he followed professorial footsteps when he was committed to the notorious Fleet prison. He languished there for two months until he obtained his certificate of bankruptcy. On discharge he did not revive his school but left Chelsea that summer - with vet another child to feed and clothe.

Two years later in 1810 he was still in London but at a less fashionable address. This was 87 Prospect Place, Newington Butts, Southwark, south of St George’s Street, in the area now known as the Elephant and Castle. There was a local Jewish community and Nathan Henry’s synagogue was close by. While there he published a scholarly work entitled Explanation of and Observations on an Antique Medal.

Soon after the publication of this book Lyon must have gone to teach at Oxford. Although his appointment is not recorded in the university archives, he was probably privately employed by colleges or individuals, as at Cambridge. It is likely to have been before 1812 because in that year his daughter Emma published her book of poems at Oxford and it had many Oxford subscribers, although she wrote the preface from London.

Lyon’s daughter had been forced to publish her poems because of a new disaster affecting the family. Her father had developed cataracts and become blind, threatening the family with poverty. She wrote: ‘The piercing thorns which still spring in our rugged path, force me to yield to the glaring eye of day the employment of my lonely hours. It is the only means in my power of contributing to the support of a large family, the object of my tenderest solicitude . . . these compositions are the production of a young female, whom necessity, not choice, has forced thus publicly to appear.’ Lyon’s loss of sight continued for more than three years. It was restored in about 1815 after the operation of couching, an unpleasant procedure performed without anaesthetic. The patient, having had some drops of opium in a little wine beforehand if he were especially nervous, and perhaps a little bloodletting, sat in a chair opposite the surgeon, who inserted a needle into the eye and displaced the cataract downwards, but did not remove it.

Once Lyon could see again, he was able to continue with the preparation for publication of his second Hebrew grammar. He had published an earlier one, called A Compendious Hebrew Grammar, in 1799. It was probably that work which he sold to the Junior Bursar of Trinity College, Cambridge, for 10s 6d during the academic year 1799-80. Another copy was probably ‘the sheet Hebrew Grammar which ... for many years hung on the wall of the library of Cambridge University....’

Lyon was probably pleased to be able to announce in his advertisements and on the title page of his book that he was a teacher of Hebrew at Eton College as well as at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. After 1812 he is described as the ‘Rev.’ Solomon Lyon, an unofficial title giving him added status and denoting respect and esteem and perhaps referring to past rabbinic training.

After the restoration of his sight, Lyon continued his itinerant life, no doubt still short of money. In 1815 he was in Cheltenham, soon after his eye operation and prior to the publication of his grammar, advertising his special method of teaching Hebrew. Cheltenham was then a spa with a small Jewish community, but his advertising was directed towards the Christian majority. After the first lesson any pupil of Lyon’s would be able to read Hebrew accurately and after another eleven two-hour lessons he or she would know the grammar. Lyon gave the lessons in his genteel private apartment or in his pupils’ homes and he was also willing to visit local hoarding schools. He claimed experience of teaching at several classical schools in town and country as well as at Eton.

Lyon turns up next in Bristol in 1817, where there was an established Jewish community. At the end of the year he was advertising for pupils, although this time he offered a course of twenty-four lessons of unspecified duration.

He must have been unsuccessful in Bristol because by the next month he had moved a short distance to Bath. Perhaps he hoped for more luck from prosperous visitors and inhabitants of the fashionable spa or from the local Jewish community, and he advertised for pupils as before. Whether his fortunes improved is unknown, but within two years he had returned to London.

A final advertisement appeared in The Gentleman’s Magazine in August 1820. It was a death notice: ‘At No. 4 Gerrard St. Soho, the Rev. Solomon Lyon for many years Hebrew teacher to the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and Eton College. He published “a Compendious Hebrew grammar, 1789 [sic]” 8vo; and “Observations on an Antique Medal, 1810 8vo”.’ After his unsettled and troubled life he was buried in the peaceful surroundings of Queen’s Elm, a half acre of former parkland in Chelsea, purchased by the Western Synagogue for its cemetery in 1815. ‘Queen’s Elm’ is said to refer to the tree which once sheltered Queen Elizabeth I from the rain, and the site had been planted in the 1720s with mulberry trees forming part of a plantation of 2000 trees for a raw silk factory. The cemetery now lies incongruously by a busy traffic junction in the Fulham Road, and Lyon’s tombstone stands near the wall of the adjacent building. The inscription reads: ‘Sacred to the memory of the Rev. Solomon Lyon, died 24th August, 1820 (5580) aged 65 years’.

Lyon’s numerous offspring remarked on by Cambridge University eventually numbered sixteen. Isaac Leo (1787-1850) was the eldest. Emma (1788-1870) and Kate (c. 1807-82) married two merchants, Abraham Henry (1789-1840) and George Henry (1803-75),153 the sons of Levi Abraham (1752-1847) of Ramsgate. Susan (c. 1800-82) joined the Sephardi community when she married Elias (1797-1875), eldest son of David Abarbanel Lindo (1772-1852), the wealthy merchant and prominent member of Bevis Marks Synagogue. Three sons -Joshua, Hart (1791/96-1876) and Abraham Septimus (1804-72) - and about three daughters emigrated and lived variously in Surinam, Curaçao, Barbados and Jamaica, although Hart and one widowed daughter returned to England. On his return Hart became active in the London Sephardi community through his marriage in Jamaica to Sarah Miriam Mendes da Costa.155 David, another son, died at Brixham aged twenty on a voyage to Naples. James, Louisa, Nathan, Eliza and Jacob were probably other children.

Isaac, the eldest, whose extraordinary early career has been described elsewhere,could be said to have been the first ‘free’ Jewish migrant to Australia. He became a schoolmaster like his father and at the age of twenty-one (having concealed his Jewish background) became, with another man one of the first two professional schoolteachers whose salaries were paid from the British treasury. They were sent out to the newly founded penal colony of New South Wales to help educate the large number of illegitimate and abandoned children of convicts. Unfortunately Isaac arrived in 1809 during a particularly chaotic period in Australian history to find that the school he had been promised had not been built. After various adventures and misadventures he returned to England, where he taught Hebrew and English literature in Whitechapel. He published a translation of the daily and Sabbath liturgy, two editions of a Hebrew textbook (which he claimed to be the first written especially for young people), and a funeral oration in honour of the Duke of Sussex. Active in Jewish affairs, at his last public appearance he referred to his own education. The Jewish Chronicle reported: ‘no one could appreciate the blessing of education more than he did, having passed his life in scholastic pursuits; and often he had cause to regret that, in his youth, he had not more freely availed himself of the great benefits which were placed within his grasp ... In his experience, as an instructor of youth, he had met with many children with excellent capacities, but whose intellectual powers remained dormant for want of means of cultivation. Therefore he did not think that money could be better bestowed than in the cause of education. . . .’

Evidence of Lyon’s educational ability and influence is seen most clearly in the lives of the two eldest children, Isaac and Emma. Their father must have been their main teacher, but growing up in ‘the society of learned men connected with the University’ no doubt contributed, as stated in Emma’s obituary and suggested by her own words. She was far better educated than most young women of the period and was the first Jewish woman writer to be published in England. She was only twenty-three when her book of poems, which received favourable reviews, appeared. She had been writing poetry for many years, as she described in flowery prose: ‘From earliest infancy, my bosom has been animated with her inspiring glow, and the Muse smiled when I endeavoured to harmonize the scenes she drew. Allured by her fairy charms, and impelled to seek solace from the gloom of surrounding embarrassments, I soothed my anxieties in her mazy bower, twining garlands to deck the dark brow of fate.’

Michael Henry (1830-75), Emma Lyon’s youngest child, is the best-known descendant of Solomon Lyon. His life, and especially the period between 1868 and 1875 while he was editor of the Jewish Chronicle, has recently been described in detail,167 but a few additional remarks about some less-well-known aspects of his education and his continuing interest in the education of children and young people are relevant. His critical early development was strongly influenced by his mother and therefore indirectly by Solomon Lyon. Michael said that he attributed many of his achievements to his mother. He was a precocious child: ‘at a very early age he showed evidence of genius and poetical imagination far beyond his years and it was deemed necessary to prevent him from pursuing any studies lest he should overtax his strength. He however managed to acquire a larger amount of knowledge than most of his companions and when about six years old used to astonish visitors at the house by the extent and variety of his information. His favourite play-thing was a terrestrial globe and his favourite amusement to write scraps of poetry, which even at that early age he did with amazing facility.’ Aged nine he composed prayers for his own use and aged thirteen wrote a novel. He attended the City of London School where he did very well, but had to leave to earn a living when he was fourteen. He had a keen interest in many aspects of education all his life and was a benefactor and frequent visitor to the Stepney Jewish Schools.His stance on the duties of Jewish parents to have their children educated in Jewish schools and the nature of the funding of such schools has been described. It could almost be said that his involvement with education led to his death, because it was while waiting to go to a lecture intended to induce Jewish boys to obtain a technical education that his fatal accident occured. He was in his office in Fleet Street where, after becoming editor of the Jewish Chronicle, he still worked as a patent agent acting especially for French clients when a candle flame set fire to his shirt and he suffered dreadful burns. It has been said that he is the only editor of the Jewish Chronicle to have caught fire and to have had a sea-going vessel named after him, but it is less widely known that the lifeboat built and named in his honour saved 136 lives between its launch in 1878 and its last replacement in 1912. He must also be the only editor of that paper whose gruesome death has been used to educate the medical profession about the pathology of burns. The Lancet, then as now an eminent medical journal, concluded that ‘the exhausting work of a literary career had doubtless no slight influence in causing the fatal result’.

Alfred Henry (1853-1939), Emma’s grandson, should also be mentioned here as he was the founder of the firm of Jeffreys Henry, the present chartered accountants to the Jewish Historical Society of England.

Solomon Lyon’s most distinguished intellectual descendant was his great-great-grandson, also the great-grandson of Isaac Leo Lyon. This was the psychiatrist Aubrey Lewis (1900-75). Lewis’ early secular education had an interesting religious slant. He was born in Adelaide, South Australia, to Orthodox Jewish parents of modest means. They tried to obtain financial assistance for their son’s education at the prestigious Anglican St Peter’s College in Adelaide on the grounds of a distant family connection with the school’s Jewish benefactor, Benjamin Mendes da Costa. However, their application was turned down and Lewis went instead to the Christian Brothers’ College, where he was very well educated by the Roman Catholic brothers. He became Professor of Psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry in the University of London, received a knighthood and was an influential teacher of many young psychiatrists. He was also a member of the Jewish Historical Society of England for many years.

After an inauspicious start, Solomon Lyon, a poor Jewish immigrant, achieved modest recognition and moved in established English society. Although he had no commensurate financial success and many misfortunes befell him, he was lucky in stumbling on the opportunity to put his knowledge of Hebrew to good use in Cambridge, where his scholarship and teaching ability were appreciated and confirmed by other scholars. His professional life was mostly among Christians, but he maintained his attachment to Judaism and passed his religious beliefs on to his numerous children.

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http://www.cemeteryscribes.com/getperson.php?personID=I4021&tree=Ce...

Inscription: Sacred to the memory of the Rev. Solomon Lyon, died 24th August, 1820 (5580) aged 65 years.