Augusta in Italy
Two years ago I wrote a short “article” for a new-to-the-market magazine. Of course the article had to be shorter rather than longer (I forget the word count; 2000 words?). And magazine articles don’t normally have notes and sources.
The magazine debuted without my article…
So what to _do_ with something that is a viable story – the 1822-1823 trip to Italy by Mrs. Smith and her eldest children, Augusta, Charles, Emma, Fanny and Eliza?
It took a while, and was actually posted on my Academia.edu account pretty much as it went to the editor. Now, however, it’s more fleshed out, two small errors have been corrected, and it contains some notes on sources. (“Private” collections I’m keeping to myself for the present.)
The main source is a group of 13 letters at the Archivio di Stato di Roma. Twelve letters are written (some jointly) by Mrs. Smith and Augusta Smith (her twenty-something daughter) to Don Filippo Lante.
Emma joins in at least once, adding a postscript, after the family has moved on from their lengthy stay in Rome and are headed northward into Austria, homeward to England. The six Smiths never enter Italy again. Charles died in January 1831. Augusta died in July 1836. Other travels to the Continent took the family to Germanic destinations — following Augusta’s edict that she thought the English had more in common with the Germans than the Italians!
Oh, dear…
Perhaps, though, part of that rancor arose from the seeming “neglect” from persons they thought of as firm and fast friends – be they young male correspondents, like Don Filippo.
I have come across one letter and therefore know of a correspondence kept up with an young woman from Ancona. Augusta seemingly sent her a silhouette – such a ‘fragile’ and ‘ephemeral’ item! Regency Silhouettes are TINY, only a few inches in height. Emma’s (above) on the average computer screen is about the same size in “real life.” Silhouettes are easily misplaced or destroyed. It’s doubtful this relic of their friendship exists.
What also does not (seemingly) exist is their correspondence. Only the one letter…
I’ve not (yet?) come across too many letters from Italians, in general. One that I have located is more business-like and from a man who gave them lessons in Italian when the family was in London.
Lost, too, are any letters sent to the family by Don Filippo. Which is why the existence of the few they sent him was a true *find*.
The archive underwent restoration about the time I dilly-dallied about contacting an Archive in ROME. It was a wait, therefore; and even the purchase of copies didn’t go exactly smoothly from my mishandling of payment (do NOT get lazy and use Western Union online — the charges imposed by THAT action nearly cost as much as the purchase of the images! Even the credit card imposed fees – for a CASH advance.)
And it was TOUGH dealing with a slight cropping (around the edges) of images. How to complain when I can’t get my point across in their language? (and it wasn’t just ONE image…)
With hand-written letters, the transcription is difficult enough when written in ENGLISH. But, at least then I can guess, from the meaning of the sentence, at a cut-off word. (NOT every time. Try fill in the blank: “He is such a ________.” Doesn’t work, does it.) In a foreign (to me) language, I transcribe what I SEE not what the sentence says.
Mrs. Smith wrote to Don Filippo in French (my study of which goes back to SCHOOL DAYS – long ago, indeed; and yes, I don’t live far from the border with Quebec… Canada’s French-speaking province). Augusta wrote mainly in French, but she later samples her Italian.
I’ve been told that Augusta’s grasp of the Italian language was QUITE good!
Of course, we are dealing with native English-speakers, writing two hundred years ago languages they learned MORE than two hundred years ago (Mamma’s earliest letters in French are from the 1790s, before her marriage!)
So, think of the tough time I have had:
- images of letters (not original letters); though DECENT digital copies (not xerox)
- handwritten – sometimes “crossed”
- written in foreign languages by people who learned the languages (not native speakers)
- transcribed by someone who is (1) not a native French or Italian speaker; (2) who learned as a school girl (French) or through listening to OPERA (Italian)
- and the letters are TWO HUNDRED years old, showing all the vagaries of spelling, “accents” in French (often non-existent, or backwards), and archaic sentence structure.
IN SHORT, a difficult task – but made wholly WORTHWHILE by the amount of information for a period during which little exists beyond letters. Emma’s 1822 and 1823 diaries are half-complete. In 1822, she leaves people on the shores of the Channel. In 1823, she picks up after their return to London’s shores. Augusta intimated that she kept a travel journal (Emma may have done the same), but I’ve so far found nothing. Even Fanny, whose ENTIRE set of diaries remains unlocated cannot be a ‘source’ for information about the trip.
(Richard Seymour, Fanny’s widower, comments in his diary about reading her diaries, after Fanny’s death. That is my only clue that she KEPT diaries! Even Richard’s diaries have gone missing, although the Warwickshire Record Office has a microfilm copy of them, from the 1980s, if I remember correctly.)
I therefore invite Readers to do your own reading about this fabulous trip taken by the Smiths in 1822-1823. The focus here is on Rome and their friendship with Don Filippo Lante – and his curious reticence to stay in touch.
I’ve long thought of the article as “Augusta in Italy” – she was my focus, as was this segment of their year-long trip. But the actual article is called, “Forget me not: Sealing Friendships from Italy, 1823-1827.”
I touch on their Italian leg of the journey, because of the musical richness of their activities in places like Milan and Naples, in my new book chapter “Prima la musica: Gentry Daughters at Play – Town, Country, and Continent, 1815-1825,” to appear in the book Women and Music in Georgian Britain. The chapter was just handed over to the editors (Mimi Hart and Linda Zionkowski) at the beginning of August (2020), so you’ve a bit of a wait for the actual book! But that chapter was the impetus for *finally* tackling the re-write.
Back to “Augusta in Italy” and its true title. There are MANY lovely wax seals on letters in the collections I have seen. (That topic in itself would make a great blog post!) But the “forget-me-not” – the little flower – is certainly a recurrent theme in the “impression” of seals from the period.
This is NOT a forget-me-not of course. But it is a favorite seal – and a fine photo. The 19th century letters are SMALL (3 inches by 5 inches, many of them; like an index card in the U.S.); the seals smaller. My camera would have problems focusing on BLACK seals, from the “density” of the wax’s color AND the effort to get CLOSE to something small. So the above IS an image I’m proud of having obtained.
And the article’s title mentions the one thing the Smiths were intent on doing: Sealing friendships with their Italian acquaintances. With Don Filippo they were only marginally successful – but I’ll leave you to read the article (7 pages; PDF) to learn WHAT actions of his the Smith family most objected to, which nearly cut the correspondence.
Special thanks to Clemente Fedele – his initial interest in a short postal history article I wrote for Jane Austen’s Regency World magazine brought about this article in the first place. He also helped in SO MANY WAYS while I was bumbling along anxiously trying to obtain copies of the baker’s dozen (the 13 letters include one from Lady Compton) from a repository so “foreign” and LARGE as Rome’s Archivio di Stato di Roma. Grazie tante!
Sheila Hancock presents…
30 August 2020 – technical difficulties (thanks, WordPress) in displaying “ginormous” images and the rest of the blog crowding in on the posts. SICK of the block editor – so a project I will come back to. But it impacts the last few block posts. Used to display JUST FINE.
Two exceptionally interesting “documentaries” (from circa 2011 and 2013) hosted by Sheila Hancock are what I bring to your attention today. Youtube comments are super-positive about her style, delivery, and information. I heartily concur!
The first I found and watched is, The Brilliant Bronte Sisters.
It was a tough day with _NO_ TV reception (all our channels here in northern Vermont are powered by the same antenna atop Mount Mansfield). I went youtube hunting – but I wasn’t sure WHAT I wanted to watch, other than something interesting. This program on the Brontë Sisters ultimately fit the bill. I especially loved the items we, the audience, were shown – drawings and paintings done by the sisters; portraits of the sisters; interviews with scholars like Juliet Barker (I have her Brontës biography and volume of family letters).
The other program is Sheila Hancock Brushes Up: The Art of Watercolours.
Her father was a watercolourist – and her enthusiasm translates well to her audience. In my research, which you (dear reader) glimpse on this blog, Two Teens in the Time of Austen — there are so many artists! I, on the other hand, have never dabbled (paint-by-numbers, maybe counts). So seeing and hearing about these pieces (and, of course, their artists) was exceptionally informative.
I join others in saying I wish there were more documentaries from Sheila Hancock. Very well done!
Sighting: Miss Sarah Ashley, 1851
2020 is, of course, a census year in the United States. In the spring, the government bombarded with postcards and letters: Get online, Count in the 2020 Census! All _I_ wanted was the FORM. When it *finally* arrived in the mail, it was so short, that it was back in the post next day. Now a plethora of TV commercials… The deadline extended into October.
Censuses for historical research are a useful component. Though I remember looking for Mary (Lady Smith, née Mary Gosling) in the 1841 census – I _KNEW_ her birth date (1800); could NOT find her. Thank GOODNESS she had a diary for 1841 still in existence. The surprise was on me: She was at the Cavendish Square address of the Curries (her brother-in-law). Emma’s younger sister, Charlotte Currie, had died the year previous, so in the household was her widower Arthur Currie and their children. Took a LONG time for me to find the correct census that covered Cavendish Square, I can tell you! She wasn’t “searching” properly because her birth date was “rounded” down. So, a case where KNOWING the information was NOT a help. (After all, I’m searching for a woman called MARY SMITH; the one point in my favor, having “1800” as her absolute birth year.)
At the same time, WHAT can a census tell me? I know more about the Smiths and Goslings, from letters, from diaries, than any census could tell. I certainly know where they lived – if not quite where they were on census night… I know their age, their birthday, their family members. But: I don’t always know all of their staff. So it’s very useful for that. Nor do I always know who was visiting.
But what I found for 1851 – not involving Mary (who died in July 1842), but her younger half-sister Charlotte Gosling – has me scratching my head. A visitor? A (paid) companion?
The 1851 census mentions Eliza Ann Ashley – this young woman was a couple years younger than Emma (born c1803), and yet she came to the Smith household in 1824 as the governess to Emma’s younger sisters; she staid until Maria (the youngest of all the nine Smith siblings) turned 18. Maria would have been just ten-years-old at the time of Miss Ashley’s arrival.
I believe her sister, Sarah Edmonstone Ashley, was a couple of years younger (born c1805); the 1851 census lists her as _13_ years younger (“35” to Miss Ashley’s “48”) [this could be a transcription error; I need to find the original].
Eliza is listed, in 1851’s census, as a “visitor” to Suttons, “Charles C. Smith,” the Landed Proprietor. This is the son of Sir Charles Joshua Smith and Mary, Lady Smith = Sir Charles Cunliffe Smith. He was only four-years-old when his father died, and he inherited the baronetcy. Born in 1827, by 1851 he was “of age” and has moved into Suttons (it had been let for a time); his two younger sisters Mary Charlotte Smith and Augusta Elizabeth Smith with him. The younger, Augusta, was born in July 1830 – so too old to _now_ be in need of a governess; BUT: Miss Ashley had acted as their governess after Mary’s death. Therefore, she was a visitor, but one who knew Suttons and the family very well.
Miss Ashley’s sister, Sarah, hovers around the fringes of diaries and letters. She crops up as a visitor, or, I should say, a person visited. So my extreme surprise was to see her in the 1851 census — as a “visitor” not to anyone in the extended Smith family, but in the household of Charlotte Gosling.
Charlotte Gosling, of an age with Charlotte Smith (Mrs. Arthur Currie), would have been in her 40s in 1851. Charlotte Gosling incurred a fall, inside the house at No. 5 Portland Place, London, in early 1828. The fall injured her in such a way, perhaps exacerbated by a bout of whooping cough, that she never walked again. She had been the glittering Mrs. Gosling’s social companion. How much Charlotte’s social life was curtailed by her inability to walk is only rarely touched upon. Except for mentions of Charlotte’s extreme grief over her mother’s death in the late 1830s (Mr. Gosling had died weeks after his eldest son William Ellis Gosling, in 1834), so little mention is made of Charlotte – especially after Mary’s death (when, let’s face it, my source of information dries up).
So my surprise last night: Sarah Edmonstone Ashley was evidently in the household of Charlotte Gosling on census night, 1851! And a wholly *new* address to me, for Charlotte is listed as living at: 10 Clarence Street, Cavendish Square.
Of course No. 5 Portland Place (renumbered to No. 15 Portland Place) still remained in the Goslings’ hands, but it now housed the family of Mary and Charlotte’s brother, Robert Gosling and his wife Georgina Vere Gosling (née Sullivan) and many children and MANY servants. For CHARLOTTE to be down as the householder she could not have been living with her young brother, Thomas George Gosling (another sibling that gets only a few mentions). Both of her parents certainly had money, so if Charlotte’s mother had left her enough, it would be no surprise that she lived on her own, rather than with her unmarried brother.
But that begs the question: WAS Miss Sarah Ashley truly a visitor? Or, had she become a (paid) companion to Miss Gosling? Or: Was Miss Sarah Ashley “sleeping out” – this is where a person “living” at another address, is given a bed in another household (even in the household of a merchant; so not just with family “friends”) – and just happened to be with Charlotte Gosling on census night?
It’s possible that one Miss Ashley came into the household on Portland Place by 1855 (remember, Robert and Georgina had a LOT of children), for there is a subscription list that gives the names, one after the other, of MISS GOSLING and MISS ASHLEY – but by that time the eldest Gosling girl would certainly have been called “MISS” Gosling. Robert and Georgina had married nearly the same time as Mary and Charles – in mid-1825. Their first children were all daughters.
But the 1851 sighting of Sarah Ashley with Charlotte Gosling is a given…
New, if slim, information. But: Useful information.
- see also, “Dido Belle” – a post that discusses Dorothy Thomas, the “Queen of Demerara,” who evidently was grandmother (?) to the Misses Ashley. I know the Ashley sisters were _cousins_ to Henrietta Simon, Mrs. Sala, the singer, and mother of writer George Augustus Sala. But I do not know who the Ashleys’ parents were. [information always gratefully accepted!]
Two Teens in the Time of Austen 