A highly unusual feminist and the pre-cursor of the haiku

What came before the English haiku?

Many of us learned in school about the beguiling Japanese haiku poetry form, which was adapted for English and American use, and is still popular today.  Basically, the poem consists of three lines, the first five syllables long, the second seven syllables, and the last five.  There must also be a reference to a season, and the linking of two poetic images.

An example, from American poet Richard Wright's haiku collection:

Whitecaps on the bay
a broken signboard banging
in the April wind


To my surprise, while researching the short life of Sydney Parkinson, the talented natural history draughtsman who sailed (and died) on the Endeavour, I found that the cousin he admired and loved, Jane Gomeldon, was the inventor of the 'maxim,' the pre-cursor of the English haiku.

The World in general is a State

Of Surprise

Each wondering at the Conduct of their

Neighbour

Jane is more famous (or infamous) for the remarkable life she led than for being the originator of this neat, satirical form of poetry.  Born Middleton, she was a Quaker, born in Newcastle to a family of Quaker glassmakers, and because of this background was unusually well educated for a woman of that time.  Unfortunately, however, she fell in love with a cad at a very young age, and had the bad judgement to marry him.  This was Francis Gomeldon, an officer in a Regiment of Foot. 

Quickly realizing her blunder, she fled to France, where she had many adventures in the guise of a man, including paying court to a pretty young nun, who was silly enough to elope with her.  In 1740 her estranged husband placed an advertisement in the Newcastle Journal, announcing that she had left him.  Jane responded with her own advertisement, describing his cruelty, and accusing him of ransacking the fortune her mother had left her, despite the legal requirement written into it reserving it for her own use.  In 1742 she brought a suit against him, on the grounds of cruelty.

Eight years later, her husband died, but -- surprise, surprise -- left nothing to her in his Will.  Luckily, it seems, she was still solvent, because after cousin Sydney was hired by Joseph Banks to travel with him, she hatched a plan to voyage on the Endeavour, too.  It came to naught, unfortunately.  While she would not have been the first woman to go around the world dressed as a man, she certainly would have written a very good book, revealing who knows what ...