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HANDEL FESTIVAL, 1900.
ORCHESTRAL REHEARSALS
IN CRYSTAL PALACE,
June 8th and 15th.
M [R. Suggate, handwritten]
BAND.
NOT TRANSFERABLE
130
The Doors will be opened at 6:30, and the Rehearsal commence at 7 precisely.
Deliver up the slip (signed) at Entrance to Palace, and retain this part, which must be produced, whenever required, to the Superintendents.
HENRY GILLMAN, General Manager
Sign your name here [R. Suggate, handwritten]
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p. 260
DEATH OF MR. REGINALD SUGGATE OF LUDHAM
[D. 12.12.1927 (handwritten)]
REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS EXPLORERS.
At the Rose Cottage, Ludham, the death occurred on Monday night of Mr. Reginald Suggate, a pensioner of the Royal Geographical Society's clerical staff. A native of Yarmouth, at the age of 14, when the office of the R.G.S. was in Saville Row, London, he received an appointment under the then president, Sir Clements Markham, retiring in 1913 after 53 years' service. During that period he came in contact with, as he himself phrased it, a long procession of makers of history.
His duties as a shorthand writer, which he learned under Fred Pitman, son of Sir Isaac Pitman, the inventor of phonography, made him familiar at the R.G.S. office with some famous explorers. Livingstone, wearing his gold laced cap as Consul for Central Africa, was a frequent visitor, and Suggate recalled the measured tones in which, in his hearing, the great discoverer declared that his wife had been the principal spoke in his wheel. Amongst Suggate's treasures was the official pass by which he attended Livingstone's funeral in Westminster Abbey. With all his appreciation of the career of Henry M. Stanley, Suggate confessed that he never felt quite at ease in Stanley's presence; the office junior staff were nettled by Stanley's imperious manner.
Amongst all the distinguished men he met the outstanding personality was Nansen. From the moment Nansen entered the room to the moment he quitted it the eyes of the office staff turned admiringly on the manly form of the modest spoken Arctic explorer. Suggate had conversed with Speke, Captain Scott, and Shackleton. Selous, whose name the office staff pronounced as "Sluice," once set down one of his big game guns in the office, and Suggate, picking it up, was astonished at its heaviness.
Paul du Chaillu, in 1860, deposited three stuffed Congo gorillas at the R.G.S. office, and Suggate heard him describe how in an encounter with a gorilla the animal seized his gun, and in its powerful grasp it bent the barrel as a strong man bends a poker. Suggate gave the writer the following transcript of the society's award : "1866. P. B. Du Chaillu, the sum of one hundred guineas for his astronomical observations on the interior of Western Equatorial Africa."
Mr. Suggate was an accomplished musician. The proudest moments, he said, of his boyhoood were the occasions on which he had the satisfaction of hiolding the music sheet for one of the instrumentalists during a performance by the band of the Grenadier Guards. He studied music under Sir John Stainer, and played the 'cello in oratorio at the Crystal Palace when the orchestra was directed by Sir Michael Costa. He was personally acquainted with Sims Reeves and expressed high admiration of the sympathetic quality of that singer's intonation. Next to music, his recreation was fishing, and he told the writer that in his early days on Oulton Broad the only crafty to be seen there were occasional trading wherries.
Unobtrusive , kindly and gentle mannered, and of a singularly happy disposition, a book and a pipe solaced the frailties of age, and the end came peacefully.
T. M.