Today’s word of the day, courtesy of Dictionary.com, is primordial. Primordial is an adjective that means “constituting a beginning; giving origin to something derived or developed; original” or “first formed” (in embryology), or “pertaining to or existing at or from the very beginning” (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/primordial). It is pronounced / praɪˈmɔr di əl /; the apostrophe before mɔr indicates that the second syllable gets the stress. And that weird looking vowel in the middle of that syllable is IPA, and it tells you to pronounce the syllable just like you would pronounce more.

Oddly, primordial was not a primordial part of the English language. It entered the language in the “late 14c., ‘being or pertaining to the source or beginning,’ from Late Latin primordialis ‘first of all, original,’ from Latin primordium ‘a beginning, the beginning, origin, commencement,’ from primus ‘first’ (see prime (adj.)) + stem of ordiri ‘to begin’ (see order (n.)). The sense of ‘first in order, earliest, existing from the beginning’ is from 1785” (https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=primordial). The website adds, “Primordial soup as the name for the conditions believed to have been present on Earth circa 4.0 billion years ago, and from which life began, in J.B.S. Haldane’s theory, is by 1934” (ibid.).

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary webpage adds this: “Early on, there were hints that ‘primordial’ would lend itself well to discussions of the earth’s origins. Take, for instance, this passage from a 1398 translation of an encyclopedia called On the Properties of Things: “The virtu of God made primordial mater, in the whiche as it were in massy thinge the foure elementis were . . . nought distinguishd.” Nowadays, primordial matter is often referred to in evolutionary theory as ‘primordial soup,’ a mixture of organic molecules from which life on earth originated” (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/primordial).

On this date in 1876, Cecil Herbert Edward Chubb was born in Shrewton, a village in Wiltshire, England, on the Salisbury Plain. Chubb’s father was a working-class artisan, making saddles and harnesses for horses. Like most English boys, he went to school, in his case at the local village school and then at Bishop Wordsworth’s School, a Church of England School for 11- to 18-year-old boys that is regularly ranked high amongst English schools. He attended Christ Church, Cambridge, and he finished with a Master’s of Art and a Bachelor of Law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecil_Chubb).

He became a barrister—that’s a kind of lawyer who specializes in courtroom advocacy, among other things—and he was very successful. He married Mary Bella Alice Finch, whose uncle owned Fisherton House, a mental asylum. A few years after their marriage, the Fisherton House became her’s, and they formed a limited company to run it, of which Chubb was Chairman. Eventually, it became the largest mental care institution in Europe (ibid.).

In 1934, Chubb died of heart disease at his home in Bournemouth (pronounced like ‘burn-muth), at the young age of 58, leaving behind his wife and two children (ibid.). He was very wealthy when he died. But why should we care about some rich barrister who died 90 years ago?

On September 21, 1915, during World War I, Mary Chubb sent her husband to an auction, hoping to acquire some dining room chairs (https://www.history.com/news/the-man-who-bought-stonehenge). Sir Edmund Antrobus had died several months earlier, and Mrs. Chubb hoped to get a bargain. Then the auctioneer, Howard Frank, began to call for bids on a tract of land on the Salisbury Plain that included a kind of ancient monument called Stonehenge. Initially, nobody wanted to bid at the opening price of $5,000 pounds (about £640,000 today, or just under $800,000). It took some coaxing, but Frank got the bidding up to £6,000. He called for any more bids, and on a whim, Cecil Chubb jumped in, eventually winning the land at £6,600.

“Chubb, who was born only three miles from Stonehenge, told a local newspaper that he had no intention of purchasing the Neolithic relic when he entered the theater but did so on a total whim. ‘While I was in the room, I thought a Salisbury man ought to buy it, and that is how it was done,’ he said (https://www.history.com/news/the-man-who-bought-stonehenge). But Mrs. Chubb, who sent her husband to the auction for dining room chairs, was not pleased with the purchase. So three years later, Cecil Chubb donated Stonehenge to the British government, indeed, to the British nation.

“In return for his gift, Chubb received the title ‘First Baronet of Stonehenge,’ but locals dubbed Sir Cecil ‘Viscount Stonehenge.’ Chubb, who died at the age of 58 in 1934, stipulated in his donation that those who lived near Stonehenge should receive free admission to the monument. To this day, around 30,000 of the 1.3 million people who visit annually can do so without paying the admission fee, thanks to the impulse buy of Stonehenge’s last private owner” (ibid.).

If you’ve never been to Stonehenge, I recommend it. I got to see it as part of a bus tour more than a decade ago. The fact of it is pretty amazing. The gigantic stones, each weighing around 25 tons (that’s 50,000 pounds), were probably placed around 2500 BC; that’s 4500 years ago. But the use of the site as a place of ritual or worship of some kind predates even that, going back to possibly 4500 BC or even earlier. As a resident of the USA, when I hear people talk about really old stuff, they’re usually talking about things that go back to the 19^th or possibly even the 18^th century. That’s kids’ stuff compared to Stonehenge.

There were two things that struck me about seeing Stonehenge, one good, the other, well, not bad, exactly, but typical. The first is this: we were on this tour bus riding through the English countryside, a narrow two-land row with crops growing on either side, limiting our view. Then we crested a hill and came around a curve in the road, and there it was, just sitting in a field in the jointure of two roads, with nothing around it. I speculated that, had we been in the USA, there would have been signs announcing the upcoming site for miles and miles before we go there. Furthermore, there would have been a Stonehenge McDonalds, and a Stonehenge Duncan, and a Stonehenge who knows what else surrounding the site. But no—nothing. Well, a gift store and a place where you could get an electronic tour guide.

And that’s the other thing: they gave you (for a fee) a hand-held device that allowed you to hear pre-recorded information about the various things at the site. So I was watching all these people with devices that, at that time, looked kind of like cellphones in their hands while walking around this ancient site. I could imagine their conversations: “Yes, Martha, I’ll be leaving Stonehenge soon, and I’ll pick up a loaf of bread on the way home.”

But the latter did not take away from my experience of this primordial site.

Today’s image is Stonehenge, which I think is more interesting to look at than Sir Cecil Chubb. It came from Wikipedia (https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonehenge).