By R.W. Morrell
Beyond The Call Of Duty, Memoirs Of An Excise Man. Horace Sheppard, M.B.E. Illustrated. 424pp, Brighton, The Old Museum Press, 1998. ISBN 1 84042 012 X. £15.99
ALTHOUGH this is not a work about, Thomas Paine, or specifically associated with him, not that he goes unnoticed by the author, it is written by an individual who has a connection with him by virtue of having been an excise officer, al though unlike Paine he remained in the excise for the better part of his career. The author was born in Chatham in 1906 and accepted into the Customs and Excise as an `Unattached Officer’ in 1927 at the age of twenty-one, retiring in 1969 after having served forty-two years. This book is essentially a record of his life and experiences in the excise, though well larded with reminiscences of his family and social activities, which seem to have included collecting antiques and antiquarian books, whether these included books on Paine is, however, not stated.
Thomas Paine accompanied by Robert Burns turns up in chapter twenty, the four and a half pages making up this part of the book being devoted exclusively to them. It rapidly becomes clear from what the author writes that he holds both men in very high esteem. It has to be said there is nothing new in this chapter, but Mr.Sheppard does repeat the all too common error about Paine having been charged with treason, whereas in actual fact it was one of seditious libel. Burns, of course, was an admirer of Paine, although he tended to be rather circumspect in regard to the radical ideas he shared in with him; his personal copies of Rights of Man and The Age of Reason, which he would have had to conceal, are still extant.
There are many fascinating and amusing incidents recorded in the pages of this book and though tempted to mention some I will resist doing so, leaving the reader to find these for themselves (it is a great pity there is no index). If pressed to identify any feature giving the book a degree of importance which removes it from simply being a recreational read, I would point to material in it which social historians will find of great value, although this is expressed in an entertaining manner rather than in terms of what one would expect in a scholarly treatise. Whether it was the intention of the author to give his work this measure of importance is doubtful, but whatever be the case he has done so in the most pleasurable manner.
This is a book to be taken to bed, but be warned, once you start reading it you may find it difficult to put down and become so absorbed in it that you will suddenly discover it is time to get up!