Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 751, May 18, 1878 — John Shaqi
Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 751, May 18, 1878Various
History
Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 751, May 18, 1878
Various
Periodicals
Our next plate represents two very disagreeable-looking Hungarian
specimens of humanity, named ‘Sarah Roffin or Rovin, and John Rovin,
man and wife.’ They are depicted as enjoying the sweets of domestic
life. John Rovin is entering the hovel in which they live, with a
long staff in his hand, a bundle of some kind on his back. Sarah
is aged one hundred and sixty-four; her husband is one hundred and
seventy-two! In these circumstances, the expression of utter disgust
and weariness to be seen on both faces is scarcely to be wondered at.
They had at the time their likenesses were taken ‘lived together one
hundred and forty-seven years, and were both born at Stadova in the
directory Casanseber in Temeswaer Banat; their children, two sons
and two daughters, being then alive. The youngest son is one hundred
and sixteen years of age, and he has two great-grandsons, the one in
the twenty-seventh, the other in the thirty-fifth year of his age.’ A
description of the picture from which this engraving is taken has been
given in the following terms: ‘The dress of John Rovin consists of a
white frock reaching almost to the knees, and confined round the waist
by a girdle made of rushes, in which is hung a knife. He is standing
supported by a stick; his knees are rather bent; in his left hand are
some heads of Indian corn, which he is presenting to his wife. His hair
and beard are a light gray; his eyes are quick, clear, and penetrating;
and though his whole aspect proclaims his life to have been a long one,
there are no such traces of old age in him as appear in his wife. _She_
stoops very much, is wrinkled, old, and yellow, and in her whole aspect
is displayed extreme old age in its most revolting form. Near her feet
and on the ground is seated a large handsome tortoise-shell cat, which
also appears very old.’
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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