Illustrating Mamma’s Diary, 1805 (part 2)
Since I was a bit long-winded yesterday, I now continue with the Smith portraits by John Downman (1749-1824), digitized at The British Museum. For Part 1, click link and read how & why I was looking through these images.
In 1805, Mamma Smith (Augusta Smith, senior) was a young bride (married 1798), with four children. Her fifth – Spencer, would be born in March of the next year. Few letters exist, but Mamma’s diary for that year DOES exist. I love her diaries; she always summed up the year (personal as well as “public” news) at the end of the volume – and sometimes one learned what she did NOT write in the journal area. For instance, at the summation of 1805 we learn that Mrs. Smith miscarried in March. When noted within the journal, she would always express such delicate thoughts in French. The “fausse couche” is found, noted on 17 March, a Sunday.
March is filled – since everyone was, as always, in London – with Card Parties and Concerts. Her parents are both alive and active. The children are in good health. Her very good friends, Mrs. Gosling, neighbor next door at No. 5 Portland Place, and Mrs. G’s sister Mrs. Drummond Smith (technically Mamma’s Aunt), are both in their graves – December 1803 and February 1804, respectively. These were daughters of Lady Cunliffe. Widower William Gosling (with his own clutch of little children) is found as a frequent visitor – or host of small dinners. Mr. Charles Smith (her husband) is the one she shows attending just such a dinner and a concert at the END of MARCH. She must therefore be convalescing. On the 29th a new milestone is mentioned: The Smiths marked being married seven years, “very happy ones”.
The evening before, Mr. Smith attended an Assembly hosted by his Aunt by marriage. The widowed Lady Burges went by SEVERAL names in her lifetime. Her birth-name was Margaret Burges (daughter and heiress of Ynyr Burges). When she married Augusta senior’s uncle John, she became yet another “Mrs. Smith” (has to be one of the hardest names to trace correctly, or even differentiate within such a vast family – with, it must be said, SMITHS on both sides!). The couple had married in 1771. In June 1790, by Royal License, they took the name Smith-Burges. In May 1793, with a baronetcy, they were now styled Sir John and Lady Smith-Burges. The family, however, seem to have often referred to her as “Lady Burges“, especially after Sir John’s death in 1803.
Margaret, born in 1744, was ten years younger than her husband. With little information to go on, there is too little to speculate whether she was looking for a second husband, or if one simply appeared. In July 1816 she married John 4th Earl Poulett.
Whew! so many names for the SAME woman!
Lord Poulett was a dozen years younger, but even he soon (1819) left her a widow. Poulett’s first countess left him his heirs; he and Margaret had no children – nor did she have any with John Smith.
In Downman’s albums, volumes entitled “First Sketches of Portraits of distinguished persons,” there is one portrait denoted “Study for a portrait of Mrs Smith, 1787“.
As usual, the “Mrs. Smith” would be tough to identify any given sitter. There were too many, related and unrelated to each other.
But it is Margaret Smith-Burges’ last appellation – by which she went for nearly another twenty years (she died in 1838) – that catches my eye and and fires my imagination.
I swear, there are times that the handwritten name, in Smith-related letters or diaries, often LOOKS “Paulet”. Trouble is, this was a familial name – of Lord Bolton’s family, and often spelled POWLETT. For instance, Thomas Orde-Powlett, 1st Baron Bolton – mixed up with the Dukes of Bolton (and even Jane Austen’s Hampshire family), but I leave you to “google” the family. I’ve not looked very hard, but I do not believe any “Mrs. Smith” held the title “Lady Paulet”.
The “Lady Paulet”, in association with the name Mrs. Smith — not, as the Curator Notes seem to posit, a “re-attribution,” but a true secondary attribution, to my eyes, leads me to believe I’ve the answer to THIS sitter’s identify.
The pencil, although it mistakes “a” for “o” and omits one “t,” misspells POULETT, giving, after 1816, Mrs. Smith’s last appellation. I believe BM’s sitter to be Mrs John Smith, AKA Margaret Smith-Burges.
Click the photo to be taken to the full portrait at The British Museum. But compare the face and profile to this profile (c1786):
And this face – an 1805 etching:
Both can be found on the Two Teens in the Time of Austen’s page, PORTRAITS & PEDIGREES.
I don’t think I’m wrong.
Do you ????
(I’d welcome thoughts on both sides of the argument.)
The artist of the etching – at the National Portrait Gallery, London – is Robert Cooper; the work’s artist is “unknown”. Given that Downman’s sketch is profile, it’s unlikely he would have produced a full-face official portrait. So it’s doubtful he produced the original image that the etcher etched. But, I will keep my eyes open.
She can also be seen, at NPG, in a lengthy (literally, it’s over 84-inches long) picture, “The installation-supper as given at the Pantheon, by the Knights of the Bath on the 26th of May 1788.” It’s difficult to identify what she LOOKS like (small image), but the NPG website makes it possible to pop up a little box around her — she appears towards the right end, back to the audience, with a plump bum (blame it on the clothes), dressed in pink with white. The thin stick of a man beside her is ID’ed as Earl Poulett. Which, the more I think about it, probably means the Countess depicted is his first rather than his second wife…. Sophia Pocock married John Poulett in 1782; she died in 1811. Hmmm…., should drop a note to NPG’s website, marking the mis-attribution. The cartoon is by James Gillray.
Of course, in 1788, Margaret’s name was merely “Mrs. Smith,” and not the Countess Poulett.
Goodness! I’ve chatted on – and still have a lengthy discourse to share on my other “Mrs. Smith” *find*. I will make a Part 3…
* * *
Part 1 of the series Illustrating Mamma’s Diary, 1805
Part 3 of the series Illustrating Mamma’s Diary 1805
Two Teens in the Time of Austen 
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