eBay find: Knights at Chawton photo album
A friend whom I just visited before the New Year sent a link to a Daily Mail article. An EXTRAORDINARY find, indeed!
News coming out of Ireland, where Edward Austen Knight’s daughters settled after marriage, concerns an eBay purchase of a Victorian photo album – bought for the research potential, by Karen Ievers.
Readers of Sophia Hillan‘s biography, May, Lou & Cass: Jane Austen’s Nieces in Ireland, will be familiar with the cast of characters whom Ievers has uncovered in these 19th century images. It also shows that publication can later bring important related material to light (though evidently NOT providing an inkling to the seller).
There is even a later-in-life photograph of Fanny Knight (Lady Knatchbull), as well as a host of the next generation – including a wedding at Chawton House!
I’ve written about the GOSLING link to the Hill family via JAMES CRUMP in this blog post.
More can be read about Edward Austen Knight and Chawton in Linda Slothouber’s book:
UPDATE:
- an article from The Telegraph with further photos from the album
- Karen Iever’s own website, with her Instagram link & several more photographs; included: news that her name is erroneously set down as Karen Levers in the newspapers!
- A History of Karen Iever’s Album, Times of Israel
- A brief look at the meaning behind the G. Jones watermark
It is likely the “manuscript pages” with the watermark were paper for letterwriting, used, and bound up with the photographs. For a book on Papermaking in Britain: A Short History, 1488-1988.
- “Daughter of the House: Cassandra Hill, Jane Austen’s Irish great-neice,” an article by Sophia Hillan (Dec 2018)
Russborough House (county Wicklow)
If you attend Love & Friendship you’ll see RUSSBOROUGH House in several shots.
Visiting their website allows for some peeks at the sumptuous interiors – there’s even a short video tour (click photo below).
There’s actually a Smith & Gosling connection to ‘Rusborough’ through Emma Smith’s great Aunt, Mrs. Thomas Smith of Bersted Lodge.
Mrs. Smith’s twin sister was Lady Mayo. She and the Mayos visited Ireland – Lord Mayo’s seat was Palmerstown – and often visited the Milltowns at ‘Rusborough’ (as she spelled it). I’ve no doubt that Mrs. Smith had many tales to tell her great-nieces and nephews, whenever she was newly returned from Ireland.
Bias of Family Histories?
Readers of Jane Austen all recognize the (lack of) funds heroines likes Elizabeth Bennet or Elinor Dashwood have as their marriage portion. And, what happens to the family estate when their fathers die: Norland goes to the only Dashwood son; Mr. Collins, a male relative, will inherit Longbourn.
But, in a highly interesting and exceptionally valuable book, A.P.W. Malcomson tells us that the HEIRESS, such as Wickham’s Miss Grey, may have been as cash poor as anyone else. Marriage portions didn’t always get paid, or paid in a timely manner. Sometimes, the lady’s fortune was quite tied up by trustees, and sometimes “a fortune” ended up meaning that you inherited nothing else other than your marriage portion – even when your parent had a healthy bank account.
This last seems to have been the lot of Mary (Lady Smith; née Gosling) and her sister Elizabeth (Mrs. Langham Christie). A letter written by Augusta Wilder, Emma’s eldest sister, passes on news following the decease of father William Gosling, partner in the Fleet Street firm Goslings and Sharpe, in January 1834. He left the bulk of his HUGE estate to Robert Gosling, the eldest surviving son. (Elder brother William Ellis Gosling predeceased their father by only three weeks.) The main item going to Bennett and Thomas Gosling (the remaining sons) was the country estate of Roehampton Grove, although each were said to be receiving a healthy £135,000. Mary and Elizabeth, who had married, respectively, in 1826 and 1829, surely thought some further monies would come to them – one a widow and the other living “in limited circumstances & with an increasing family” – especially given the size (possibly up to a million pounds, in 1834 currency) of Mr. Gosling’s estate.
Augusta Wilder’s letter passes on information gained from young Charlotte Gosling. Augusta wrote:
“It seems to me perfectly unfair to heap riches so upon the sons & portion off the daughters with comparatively such small sums.”
Augusta’s mention of “to cut off I may say the daughters with 20.000 is inexplicable” reflects the marriage portion Mary was said to have brought with her in 1826 (which was a decided surprise to Mrs. Chute! She wrote of it in a letter).
Charlotte Gosling, one of two children born to her mother, formerly the Hon. Charlotte de Grey (the Walsingham barons of Norfolk were her siblings), still had a living mother – which circumstance was seen as a blessing to Augusta: “Charlotte who if her mother were dead would be very poorly off after what she has been used to…”
Augusta said of the news of William Gosling giving so little to his daughters, in comparison to his sons: “It really passes our comprehension & is quite distressing – for it is irreparable; no wonder Mary did not wish to talk about the will.–”
Writing on the same day (but from a different place), Spencer Smith, Emma’s brother, passed on knowledge (gleaned from a Gosling cousin, Henry Gregg) “that Mr Gosling out of his vast wealth has left her [Mary] & Elizabeth nothing, or what is next door to it”. Bennett Gosling could tell Spencer about his own inheritance (Roehampton and a sum of money): “The bulk of the property … is entailed in the most strict & inconvenient manner possible, & the Will … is most exceedingly complicated.”
Such documents – diaries, letters, wills, settlements, court documents – are the bread and butter of Malcomson’s edifying research into THE PURSUIT OF THE HEIRESS: Aristocratic Marriage in Ireland, 1740-1840.
Books.google has a “healthy” preview of the book – it is what convinced me to buy a copy. You cannot beat BooksIreland, which has the hard cover for £9.99 (on sale from £24.99) or the eBook at £7.99. Although the airmail postage to the U.S. from Northern Ireland was as much as the book, even U.S. readers will want to plump for the hard cover; it is so fully illustrated and a handsome book.
Malcomson discusses a range of topics. His first chapter introduces the idea of “the by-passed heiress” => the woman who seems on the brink of inheriting, but who in fact may not only be “by-passed” in favor of a male – she may also have her “fortune” so tied up in the estate of her deceased parent that funds aren’t even forthcoming to her! Mention is made, for instance, of two sisters – daughters of Edmond Sexten Pery (Viscount Pery). The father’s estate passed to a nephew (son of the Viscount’s brother), “the 1st Earl of Limerick. In toto, the ladies seem to have received c.£20,000 each. £5,000 of which represented their original (and still unpaid) marriage portions. (These figures are belied by the usual family anecdotage, according to which one daughter got £60,000 in cash and the other the equivalent in land.)”
On the heels of the Pery girls comes the tale of the co-heiresses of Sir Arthur Brooke, bart. Selina and Letitia Charlotte received marriage portions – which, along with another debt, were evidently “charged” to the estate (ie, monies taken out after the owner’s death; in short, while his bank account remained healthy, “less” was there to be inherited). The Brooke “estates were not huge, and Francis Brooke, the nephew who succeeded to them, and Francis Brooke’s descendants considered themselves aggrieved and impoverished by the open-handedness of Sir Arthur. This is typical of the male whingeing of the period and of the bias of family history written by men. It would be more to the point to suggest that the two by-passed heiresses… were not well done by.”
Makes me glad to come from a family with no money or landed estate…
Other chapters touch on “the younger son”; “The ‘marriage of affection'”; and “Elopements, mésalliances and mis-matches”. All are fascinating topics, and relevant to Smith and Gosling research, as well as Austen studies.
As mentioned, the volume is generously illustrated (full color more often than not), and the writing is engaging and always informative. The research is deep and well presented; the focus (geographically and chronologically) is tight and always on point. Generous notes; a useful bibliography; a handy index.
HIGHLY recommended. Five full inkwells.
* * *
- a note: Malcomson’s earlier treatise on the same subject, from which this book grew – given new information and sources, has the same title. This edition was published in 1982 and has the years “1750 to 1820” in its title (70 pages). Malcomson rightly claims in his preface that the volume under discussion above (published in 2006 by the Ulster Historical Foundation [same as in 1982]) is “new, greatly enlarged and more widely focused”.
the 1982 edition
(not to be confused with the 2006)
One Man Band: Life of an Independent Scholar
Curious about what a project like this Smith & Gosling research entails?
Although I worked (as staff) in academia for nineteen years, being an “independent scholar” (ie, without academic affiliation) means you don’t have the “interaction” of colleagues. That I really miss — and that’s why I’m so grateful for the readers of Two Teens in the Time of Austen! If I can’t bend your ears, you at least allow me to bend your eyes. And it’s a two-way street – I value your comments and “likes” and dialogue.
So here’s my summary of Life as an Independent Scholar:
- the location of diaries, letters, sketch books, portraits and miniatures, ephemera
- a transcription of handwritten items
- identification of people, places, and also the political, social, economic history of the era (approximately 1760-1845)
- “getting the word out” through blog spots, journal, magazine and local history articles
- finding obscure sources, including private collectors, for single items that once belonged to the Smiths, Goslings and friends/family
- tracking down book citations
- tracking down oblique references to family members in printed or manuscript sources
- obtaining copies (xerox, digital photographs, microfilm) of relevant source material (thereby owing great debts to many blog readers)
- corresponding with lots of libraries, record offices, and other depositories
- TONS of internet searching
- accepting the help of anyone who offers (see “obtaining copies”)
- asking for help, when the distance is too great to make a personal visit (ditto)
- spending precious hours/days/weeks at wonderful libraries and archives
- typing-transcribing-writing-rewriting-proofing-searching-questioning-rewriting-proofing
No research assistants – No typists – No funding = A One-Man Band!
Erin go bragh
…Éirinn go brách… Ireland forever!
The following words are those of Margaret Fountaine (published in Love Among the Butterflies):
“…then we were off, speeding across Holyhead Harbour out into the open sea…. We amused ourselves… by rampaging all over the boat, A strong breeze was blowing so we left our hats in the cabin for safety. The sky was almost cloudless, blue in the sky above, blue in the rolling water below. Close to the side of the boat, with my hair in long shreds streaming in the wind, I leaned forward straining my eyes to catch the first glimpse of the Irish coast.”
Margaret, in 1890, was 28 years old. When I first travelled to Ireland, along that same route — Holyhead to Dún Laoghaire, arriving as dawn (and an autumn mist) rose over the intensely-blue waters — I was about 23 years old.
Mary Gosling travelled to Ireland in 1821, when she was 21 years old; it was the culminating landing of a trip that brought the Gosling family (“Papa, Mamma, my Sister and myself”) from Roehampton, through Shrewsbury, to Chirk and North Wales, then a boat ride across to Ireland. On September 9th, they “arrived at Howth eight miles from Dublin at three o’clock, after rather a rough passage of seven hours. We went to Dublin in the Mail coach and arrived at Morrison’s hotel in Dawson Street at five o’clock.” Mary reports “we were all very ill” during the sea journey. Emma, who received a letter from her dear friend, passed similar news on to Aunt [Mrs Judith Smith, of Stratford] in a letter dated 28 September: “We have heard again from the Goslings they have been in Ireland, but suffered so much from sea sickness both in coming & going that it has in a great degree spoilt their enjoyment, they say that those who cross the water as they did in steam boats suffer more from sickness than in any other way.”
This Irish part of the trip was most curious when I first read it. (This 1821 diary was the very first piece of this research! and I had NO idea who Mary was, never mind what her ‘Papa’ did for a living). Mary accompanies Papa “to see the Bank, the exterior of which is very handsome forming a very fine object almost in the centre of the City with Trinity College…. We saw the whole process of making bank notes, which is all done by steam engines and is very curious.” She then goes on to describe the process: what is done with and to the paper; the printing of notes; the finishing and “signing” — “which must be done by hand”. Knowing the identity of William Gosling — a banker, with his own ‘family’ firm — it all makes such perfect sense; for who, but a banker, could gain such immediate access to the making of currency!
They toured a little of the island, then headed back to Dublin — where they again see the process of “making money” on September 17th. They prepared for a return to England the following day, going to Holyhead: “We got up at half past four…we had a very favorable passage of seven hours and a half though very ill all the time”. Their return was leisurely: they arrived at Roehampton on October 6th, “well pleased with our six weeks Tour. We travelled all together 845 miles.”
Two Teens in the Time of Austen 