Cecil Vincent Goddard (1858-1933) was an Anglican clergyman, born at Abbots Ann in Wiltshire in 1858; the son of Canon Francis Goddard. His brother was Canon Edward Hungerford Goddard. He became a rector for several different parishes: the Pitt Rivers Museum's records note Goddard lived at the following: The Vicarage, Chideock, near Bridport, Dorset (circa 1892 onwards); Shrewton in Wiltshire (circa 1898); Baverstock Rectory, Salisbury, Wiltshire (1907-1922), and 62 Parkwood Rd, Boscombe, Bournemouth (1926-1931; possibly this was after retirement?).

Goddard has two manuscript archives in public collections, he has items in the Bodleian library (special collections and western manuscripts, record number MS top eccl b 23) and letter to Pitt-Rivers held by the Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum.

Goddard only appears to have donated a single object to the British Museum, a bell from Perugia in 1916. [1916,0705.1] (this is assuming that the BM has mistranscribed his name as Rev C.H. Goddard). His connections with other museums do not appear as strong as they were with Pitt-Rivers and the Pitt Rivers Museum.

A. Goddard and Pitt-Rivers

Pitt-Rivers received 83 objects in total from Cecil Vincent Goddard, a long-term contributor to his collections, that are listed in the catalogue of his second collection held by the Cambridge University Library. Of these 44 came from Switzerland, others came from Mexico, the Canaries, Palestine, Syria, Italy and England.

Goddard seems to have had a curious relationship with Pitt-Rivers. Goddard appears to have used the sale of items purchased during his travels as a  means of making an income, Pitt-Rivers definitely appears to act as a banker, agreeing to Goddard sending objects to him, though it often appears as though Goddard is not sure of their reception. The tone may have been set by what might well have been the first letter from Goddard to Pitt-Rivers, dated 12 August 1887:

“Remembering your interesting agricultural museum I venture to offer for acceptance (or refusal) a large water jar of red earthenware, handmade without wheel ... in general use throughout the Canary Isles and worth 10d ... (and sheath knife and ground meal and cassava from Jamaica) ... If you should care to accept either or all of these objects it will give me great pleasure to make them over to such an excellent museum.” [L352: Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum]

Obviously Pitt-Rivers agreed to accept items for some two months later, on 24 October 1887, Goddard wrote again:

“I am sending in a crate by rail to Tisbury [nearest station to Rushmore] the things from Teneriffe [sic] that you thought might be of use in the Museum. They are all labelled. I have added a few other things but if any are unsuitable pray return them. The glass beads and bangles from Palestine and Syria I cannot give but if you allow of loans it will be a pleasure to me to leave them for exhibition in yr. museum ...

List
Hammock of grass from Mexico
Wicker strainer for cassava
2 cakes cassava bread
2 boxes Teneriffe “Gofio” meal
Canary knife
Canary musical instrument
Canary drinking cup
Canary water jar (unfortunately cracked lately, but mended)
box containing 2 strings of beads, bangles, rings of glass
Fire fan from Mexico

You said when I saw you at Miss Groves that you would like me to get a threshing sledge from Teneriffe. I have not done anything in the matter, as I have been waiting for my own probable return to the island, but in view of that am I to understand that you desire a sledge to be sent? If so should the pole and peculiar yoke be included? You do not want a primitive plough as well, I suppose?” [L397 Salisbury and South Wiltshire Pitt-Rivers papers]

The Swiss Collection

On 11 February 1888, Goddard wrote to Pitt-Rivers:

“Knowing how interested you are in the implements etc in use among peasants I have noticed such things here [Switzerland] during the winter with a view to enquiring if you think it worth while to acquire any; were I able, I would gladly purchase and present some to your museum, but that unfortunately I cant do: [list objects such as sledges, yoke, whips with descriptions]... If you thought any of them worth having I should be happy to obtain and send them.” [L466 Salisbury and South Wiltshire Pitt-Rivers papers]

The items from Switzerland all come from the Engadin or Engadine valley. The Engadin is a long valley in the Swiss Alps, in the canton of Graubünden in southeast Switzerland. According to wikipedia, it is famous for its sunny climate, beautiful landscapes and outdoor activities. Goddard seems to have been based in Samedan, the main town in the district of Maloja, and capital of Upper Engadin.

Goddard's information about the objects, sent to Pitt-Rivers and included in the volumes:

List of articles sent from Switzerland by Rev. C.V. Goddard (Add.9455vol2_bet375_376)

[currency in Francs and Centimes]
1 Wooden Snow Shovel (gift of owner) 00.00
2. 1 iron standing Fat Lamp (gift C.V.G.) 00.00
3. 1 [ditto] Hanging [ditto][Lamp] 03.00
2 Wooden Cream Skimmers 
1 Wooden Cream Ladle 07.80
2 Model Wagons (toys) 05.80
6 long cigars 0.30 Pipe 1.30 01.60
1/4lb Polenta 00.10
2 wooden cheese rings 00.90
2 pieces plaited hide rop & wooden loops 10.00
Pair of wooden Haines with all necessary things 12.50
Small board for making cotton wool wicks for lamps (the gift of owner) 00.00
Two loaves of coarse bread (gifts) 00.00
1 Blue Blouse 3.70 Homespun snow gaiters 5.00 Peasant's silk skullcap 4.00 Countryman's net necktie 1.00 13.70
1 Heavy Sleigh whip 9.50
1 Long handled whip 3.00 1 Twisted handled whip 2.40 1 Horse-0tail grooming brush 4.50 19.40
1 Old double Child's sledge
2 (with) cheese vats 
2 (with) milk sieves 30.00
1 Blue Child's sledge (modern) 06.00
1 Old rough [ditto] 05.00
1 Cowbell, strap & buckle (old) 10.00
1 Ox-Yoke with pad, thongs shafts 15.00
Packing & expenses & fee 10.00

Francs 150.30
the holes. Both from the Engadine Valley, Switzerland
Add.9455vol2_bet375_376_p2 : is blank
Add.9455vol2_bet375_376_p3 :
[Word illegible] articles from Engadine

... Yoke should be place on leather ..ad. flat side to [insert] behind [end insert] horns, which pass thro' holes in pad, whole bound together with long leather straps which passes round yoke in slot. Ends of yoke depend beside face. pieces of wood, to represent shafts, pass through holes in yoke ends & are bound to it by leather thongs.
Blue toboggan is of sort used about Zurich
Old toboggan belonged to Postman at Samaden 4 generations of children have used it.
Cheese rings should be bound round (if come find one in carriage) by drawing string tight through little block & fixing by a "half-hitch" round nose of block [Drawing]

Add.9455vol2_bet375_376_p4 :

Snow shovel to have blade fixed to handle by the two screw bolts observe one screw bent to suit position & must be set accordingly
A lump of tallow or hard grease set on the pan of iron lamp would exhibit its working; especially if one of little wicks, off small wooden board, were placed toward nose of pan near the grease.
One or two of the esparto grass stems might be drawn out of long cigars to exhibit their object - making cigar "draw".
Black silk cap would exhibit better if it could be set on any rounded object for a dummy head.

Add.9455vol2_bet375_376_p5 :
Old frayed piece of rope only requires greasing to make it supple - They will stand any leather if kept greased.

Add.9455vol2_bet375_376_p6 : is blank

Add.9455vol2_bet375_376_p7-8 :
Added note illegible except] ... sent 19 Ap. 88
Thusis
Grisons [another name for Graubünden
Ap. 8 1888
My dear Gen'l Pitt Rivers
I am pleased to inform you that the "curios" I purchased for your museum, as you desired, have been forwarded to England; packed in crates and will I trust arrive in good order. I am unable to see to the final despatch myself but left full directions with the Proprietor of the Hotel Bemuna, Samaden, Engadine, who has, he tells me, forwarded one large case, one long roll of whips & (two small sledges packed in) one (or perhaps two) crates.
I am almost ashamed to send in so large a bill, but as you know private persons always require their own price for such articles: those I c'd obtain in shops were bought at current prices. I have taken the liberty to enclose a few articles of my own, which if you will allow I will [Add.9455vol2_bet375_376_p8]ask you to have forwarded at leisure, to my brother whose address is on each, I think, & also given below for convenience. I shall esteem this a favour: my brother will, of course, pay carriage: He is always glad to exhibit the products of other countries to his Wiltshire yokels.
Enclosed with the articles (opposite) are the foll'g for the Rev E.H. Goddard
Clyffe Vic'e
Wootton Bassett, Wilts

2 small white wooden cream skimmers
1 iron standing fat lamp
2 earthenware bowls
1 loaf
1 small long packet, containing "Biltong" (please avoid breaking in half.)

If there should be any articles sent which you consider unsuitable for your purpose, will you kindly send them to my brother & deduct that cost from the account?

Owing to the "indisposition" of the Proprietor at Samaden I have been unable to get the receipts for certain expences till today I have placed the items [insert] on [end insert] opposite page. The total comes to frcs 150 = £6 (the exchange will make up the 80 cents)

C.V. Goddard

"I need only add that it has given me great pleasure & interest to collect the articles & remain truly yours

Cecil V. Goddard

B. Goddard and the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford

The Pitt Rivers Museum at Oxford acquired 339 objects from Goddard between 1892 and 1931. This includes items from the Inuit in 1907, bought for £7.15.6; other Inuit items from the James Brown of Salisbury collection in 1918 purchased for 56/9 [£2.6.6] (including postage); miscellaneous items from Egypt, Bavaria, the Tyrol, Italy, New Guinea, Fiji, S.E. Asia, South Africa, New Zealand, India, the Pacific and England. It is not thought that he field collected all of these, but he certainly did obtain the German, Swiss and Italian objects whilst travelling in those areas.

The Museum also obtained a large collection of archaeological objects from the Guanche of Tenerife, in the Canary Islands in 1892. These had been found by Goddard who sent a document with the objects entitled ''Notes on some relics found in caves near Orotava, Tenerife, Canary Isles by Rev. C. V. Goddard, Vicar of Chideocke , Dorset in 1887. (These notes apply equally to certain skulls &c. already placed in the University Museum by the same hand.)'  It describes the places specimens were found and how acquired.

Goddard seems to have been a keen archaeologist. On another trip to Switzerland he obtained several other items, and wrote a note to accompany them when he gave them to the Pitt Rivers Museum in 1903:

'1 March 1903: I am enclosing a fragment of a bone comb that I found some 15 years since at what had been a rock shelter near Tiefencastel, Switzerland.  Ihemen told me that when the road was cut several "heads' were found, and I hit on a few vertebrae and other small bones still lying in the yellow matrix or only slightly disturbed - but excavation & sifiting of the lump of matrix chiefly composed of wood ashes and dust yielded nothing of importance.  Such objects as seemed in any way interesting were sent to Zurich Museum but this fragment was not included so I offer it to Oxford University Museum.  Would you mind enquiring if flint sponges from the Chalk would be acceptable in the geological department.  I have some not classified from near Salisbury. ... P.S. Sickles for reaping are absolutely extinct so far as I can hear - though a few remain in old farms and cottages.  I have not an old one, but if the Museum wished for a modern Sheffield sickle with teeth (same as old) I should be happy to give one, as I have 3 that I have purchased (one in Brittany, one in Ireland, and one in Yorkshire.)'

He was obviously a man of many talents because he recorded some of his finds in watercolour. In 1910 he gave three watercolour sketches he had made of finds in Tenerife, including a 'native threshing floor', modern cave dwelling and 'a Guanche sepulchral cave' to the Pitt Rivers Museum. On the latter he carefully recorded several pieces of information:

'Cliff entrance to bone cave of La Paz. Orotave, Teneriffe. 1887' and 'Cliff of Martianez, near Orotava, in which is a sepulchral Guanche cave. it was opened by digging down to it from the surface above; the old cliff entrance being unapproachable. C.V. Goddard'. [1910.43.1-3]

He also collected archaeological objects from Egypt and Italy. The large collections in the Museum at Oxford reflect the relationship he built up over time, with Henry Balfour, the Curator. After Balfour's death in 1939, an unaccessioned object was found, in his office, which was from Goddard. It was with a note from Goddard dated 28 November 1914, presumably when he sent Balfour the axe. Goddard had apparently been impressed by the superficial similarity of the ornamental carving with that of the Hervey and Austral islands, and had suggested a provenance from the Pacific, which Balfour considered impossible. Balfour believed the specimen was clearly of African origin, and its shape and design seemed to suggest Lake Nyasa region, possibly the 'Manganja of British Nyasaland', or also the 'Wayao of NW Portuguese East Africa'. [1942.8.54]

Such was Goddard's interest in material culture that he even sent Henry Balfour a set of seven 'old-fashioned leaden weights' for 'weighting ladies dresses' in Victorian times on 9 April 1931. The tone of his relationships with both Pitt-Rivers and Balfour can perhaps be gauged by this note to Balfour towards the end of his life:

'9 October, 1929. Years ago I obtained in Canton Grisons Switzerland near Chur, a nicely worked iron tripod fat-lamp and have treasured it (as the last of my large collection of 'obsoletes') for its good hammer, file & chisel work.  You will be receiving it soon sent on the by the Victoria and Albert Museum, which took some artistic bits of old iron casements (English) but declined this.  As it would fit in with your special fire & light collection, and (as I think) you only have a very poor specimen of this sort of Swiss lamp (of my providing during the same visit to Graubünden) I rather hope you may be willing to purchase it.'

Collection from Italy

Goddard collected similar items on trips he made to Italy, these collections are similar in content to the one he obtained in Switzerland, if slightly smaller. He collected a set of items from around Merano in the northern Italy of the Tyrol in 1890. This trip seems to have pre-dated his trip to Switzerland outlined above, although he did not give the items to the Pitt Rivers Museum until several years later:

1907.11.1-2 Ornaments of brass from old Austrian cart-horse harness, obtained at Meran, TYROL, viz: - 2 ornamental horse-combs, one of the older useful type, the other conventionalized & purely decorative.

1907.11.3-4 2 large harness buckles

1907.11.5 disc like ornament attached to collar fittings

1907.11.6 perforated large disc worn on shoulder with three straps through the hole.

Goddard gave the following items to the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford some 32 years after his trip:

1919.22.1 Green cloth braces worn outside the waistcoat by men of the Tyrol.

1922.58.2 Small xylophone with striker Meran Tyrol 1890

Goddard collected more objects on a trip he obviously made to the area around Rapallo and Genoa in Italy in or before 1912. The Pitt Rivers Museum at Oxford paid a total of 11 shillings for the collection, including postage. This collection included:

1912.74.1 Open olive oil lamp

1912.74.2 Covered olive-oil lamp

1912.74.3 Petroleum (parafin) lamp on primitive model

1912.74.4 Broad bladed knife for splitting hard cheeses

1912.74.5-6 2 grooved wooden rolling pins for marking sheets of paste in making maccaroni

1912.74.7 Brass wheel cutter used for cutting maccaroni paste after marking with the roller

1912.74.8 Pottery bell for attaching to floats of fishing nets to indicate their position at night

1912.74.9 Fan of turkey feathers used in Central and N. Italy for blowing up charcoal fires, Faenza Emilia

Some 10 years later he sold another item from the same trip to the Museum:

1922.58.1 Orciola, long spouted glass flask used by Italian sailors and fishermen for pouring water into the mouth from a distance, without touching the lips, Rapallo, 1912

1922.58.22 Pipe with red pottery bowl (mermaid design) and cherry wood stem, Italy (the last two were sold with items from other countries for an unknown cost.

Find transcriptions of letters from Goddard to Pitt-Rivers here [from Salisbury & South Wiltshire Museum Pitt-Rivers papers]

AP, June 2010, updated September 2010.