Isadore Albee’s Civil War Diaries
Whether Isadore Albee gets her own blog or not, I want to talk about her – and will do so here.
A very recent purchase, the Civil War diaries of Isadore Albee (her father spelled his name Allbee), is EXACTLY the project I have long sought. Past purchases have tended to forward my main research, into the Smith and Gosling family — presented online as “Two Teens in the Time of Austen” because Emma Smith married James Edward Austen (later Austen Leigh) AND Mary married Emma’s eldest brother Sir Charles Joshua Smith, baronet.
Isadore – I tend to think of her as ‘Dora‘ (which may or may NOT be what she called herself; I’m still hoping to find that out) – was a “known object” when I purchased the diaries. The seller’s ad had boasted a plethora of characterful excerpts, which caught my eye and fired my imagination. Dora wrote of her everyday life during a period, 1862 through 1871, important to American history, a period of change and national turmoil. That “era” called to me, as it does to many.
Dora is a female diarist. Typically, men‘s war diaries have been preserved for posterity, so Dora’s are a welcome breath of fresh air. Dora is young – she records her 21st birthday in May, 1862. It’s recorded as a day of “no preasants” (sic) and given over to the first effects of “scarlettina.” Dora’s typical “luck”….
The BIG inducement, compounding “female diarist” and “Civil War era” into a trifecta: Dora lived in Springfield, VERMONT. My home state!
I’d *LOVE* to direct you to a new blog. But I may simply delete what I began on WordPress. I liked the blogging platform, as it was; I despise what it is now.
I haven’t yet made up my mind if Dora will somewhat “share” space with my Two Teens or not. It’s a departure in so many ways, AND YET somewhat related – in terms of being a research project.
After fourteen years of researching English diaries and letters, finding related biographies and related artwork, visiting estates now turned into schools or cut into condominiums, there are “challenges” in working on a set of diaries from Vermont. The Smiths & Goslings were important people, wealthy people; they owned estates; they lived in London during “the season.” Traces of their faded tracks pop up in newspapers. The popular literature of their day, monthly items like Gentleman’s Magazine and the Annual Review, are go-to places for a wealth of information on their (wide) circle of English landed gentry.
For Dora‘s diaries, I’m down to a small local newspaper (not digitized) and the U.S. Census. Dora’s friends and presumed neighbors are sometimes only mentioned by first name; it’s my assumption that they are young ladies, like herself.
Mary and Emma, on the other hand, always cite people in a VERY formal manner. Young friends (and even relatives) always are designated by first and last name. Only their own immediate family members rated a first-name-only. Finding information on the many, many servants of their world has been tougher; they, too, could be first name OR last name only.
To confuse the average reader, though, those next-door neighbors were interrelated even before Mary’s marriage to Charles in 1826.
Emma, for instance, differentiates between her sister Charlotte and Mary’s sister Charlotte Gosling. Family also had two Carolines (Caroline Mary Craven Austen and Caroline Wiggett [later Caroline Workman]). In later years, there were not only Mrs. (Augusta) Smith and her eldest daughter, Augusta; but Mary had a daughter named Augusta. Emma had a daughter named Augusta. Fanny had a daughter named Augusta….
You get my drift…. A LOT of duplicate names. Even marriages brought in new but similarly-named family members. Emma’s sister Fanny changed her name from Smith to Seymour a few months before their new sister-in-law, Frances, changed her name from Seymour to Smith. To confuse things, Frances seemed to have been called ‘Pam,’ at least in her girlhood, by her family; though the Smiths always referred to her as Frances. Whereas Fanny was never known as Frances, except in a very youthful letter. Fanny’s husband, the Rev. Richard Seymour, referred to his cousin (and eventual sister-in-law) as “Dora K.” because he also had a sister Dora. Cousin Dora Knighton was the daughter of Sir William Knighton – an important personage known to the Prince of Wales / Prince Regent / King George IV. Lady Knighton’s first name was Dorothea, thus the sprouting of other ‘Doras’. Though, of course, not for my ‘Dora’ Albee.
I’ve already begun a family tree for Dora: her only brother died when a toddler, and she talks most about her elder sister, Jane, and younger sister, Sophia. I have yet to figure out if “Bessie” in 1862 is “Lizzie” in 1870, and whether both refer to her sister Elizabeth. The family tree includes eldest sister Gratia (who married in 1850 and moved to Iowa a decade or more ago) and one who married only in 1860, Ellen.
But I’m used to sorting out people. In “Two Teens,” there are THREE Emma Smiths! Besides my diarist, Emma Smith (Emma Austen), there is: “Aunt Emma” (who never married), Mrs. Smith’s youngest sister, and great aunt Emma Smith (later Lady Dunsany), a sister to grandfather Joshua Smith. Lady Dunsany married late in life, and, from what I’ve found, was as loquacious as Miss Bates (in the Jane Austen novel, Emma).
My prime interest in the Civil War diaries is Isadore Albee, herself.
Where have all the Bloggers gone?
This blog post will be a departure.
I have a new project, and one that I had *wanted* to talk about, get input on, and just share. My frustration, though, comes from trying to create a new “blog”.
I created all three of my blogs QUITE some time ago. They are:
- Two Teens in the Time of Austen – my main research, which looks at the family of Emma Smith and Mary Gosling. The two women were born in 1801 and 1800; Emma married the nephew of writer Jane Austen in December 1828. This is all-consuming, covering from the 1790s through the 1840s (and beyond). They are the subject of my book for Kindle, “Random Jottings,” which is based on blog posts that discuss the extended Smith & Gosling family and other aspects of research.
- Georgian Gems, Regency Reads, Victorian Voices – gives me a place to discuss PRIMARY materials, be it published (books) or online. This pretty much covers my major interests of 18th and 19th century letters and diaries from England. I do diverge every once in a while – to the U.S. (where I live) and Canada (near neighbor). The time period can also migrate into the 20th century. And I am a BIG fan of the travel narrative – so other countries do sometimes appear.
- The Ladies of Llangollen – is based upon a former website, begun after a 2005 trip to Llangollen, and a visit (of course!) to Play Newydd, home to Sarah Ponsonby and Lady Eleanor Butler – known as the Ladies of Llangollen. It was in finding an 1824 diary by Mary Gosling, in which she recorded meeting the ladies, that I discovered the first tidbit belonging to my Two Teens in the Time of Austen project!
My favorite “WordPress theme” remains that used for THIS blog. A sliver of an area for text, bits off to one side that allows readers to visit other pages and gather more information. Overall, the blog serves as a place to focus readers’ attention on the project; as a consequence, it mentions my publications (see About the Author). In the past, the blog bought to my attention several *IMPORTANT* items of research — mainly letters, but also at least one diary. I keep hoping for MORE, along these same lines. Am I being “disappointed” because there’s just no more material to unearth? Or, is it that blogs and bloggers are tired things from the past?
Mine is not an image-heavy subject. Images, generally, are items found on the internet that have become part of my research. Of course, in the days of DIGGING for more information, discoveries led to things that I wanted to crow to someone about – and I took to blogging. But research also makes one hug “finds” close to the chest…
Mary Gosling’s initial diary led me to search for more information about Ponsonby and Butler. And when DIARIES and LETTERS make up 98 percent of my material, it’s easy to also talk about books and websites that have been unearthed, thus the third blog sprang into existence.
As the “Smiths & Goslings” became more reading, deciphering, thinking and less discovery, it wasn’t always EASY to find something I wanted to talk about. Add to that changes to WordPress that have begun to drive me crazy – well: the whole together accounts for lots of silence.
But in trying to launch a new site for a new project, I’ve really thought: Why Bother? “Blogging” seems not supported here at Wordpress any more. My choice of a “theme,” for instance, has stopped me in my tracks. I thought I’d have FUN trying to decide! In the past themes were dazzling, like the blaze of color and swirls used for the “Ladies of Llangollen,” or the sustained quiet of maroon and black background for the “Regency Reads” site.
The day before yesterday I only saw WHITE backgrounds; strips of BLOCK photographs followed by BLOCK text; and what I picked came with a HOMEPAGE and a BLOG.
There once was a time – when the Ladies of Llangollen site was being re-created, because it had originally BEEN a website – when I would have welcomed a “homepage” kind of site. I’m not re-building it a THIRD time…
The new site, the one I would like to create…, where I could drop tidbits as I discovered them, calls out for intimacy. Instead, (DARE I say it?), EVERYthing is full-screen, so f’ing WHITE, and BLOCK-LIKE. _I_ have done better, in the past (ie, before WordPress) with NO “templates,” in creating websites with more style than these static “scroll down” sites. Maybe WP keeps the good stuff for paying customers – but after this “Gutenberg” upgrade, frankly, I give up ever wishing to pay. I had thought of converting THIS site (mainly to get rid of the *gross* ads that show up; if you’ve seen them, you know which I mean). I don’t CARE anymore.
So, my question is: Where do all the BLOGGERS go?
My research does not fit in with TikTok or Instagram (it’s not visual). I quickly lost interest in (though I have several boards on) Pinterest. Never been a great fan of the Facebook craze, but to satisfy WP, I did open a site for “Two Teens in the Time of Austen: Random Jottings.” I want to “SPEAK”, not post pictures never mind share details of my life. (THAT is no one’s business.)
The idea of “tweeting” about my latest project is possible, but (as you can see by this LONG blog post), what I _LIKED_ is what I once _HAD_.
Why does a platform decide to “new and improve” into something that offers users less than it used to do? Would it have troubled WordPress so much to ask: Do you want a website? Do you want to blog? And tailored things to each specific group. Someone selling product is not going to want the same thing as I do for a research project. Someone who wants to share with the wider world their photographs or drawings is not going to need the same construct, for instance, as I have built for this “Two Teens” project.
My question now is: Will some new text-loving platform arrive to take WordPress’s place?
(If you can answer that, please: Post a Comment.)
An Extraordinary Ordinary Woman (review)
James Boswell sums up in one sentence his idea of good biography:
“I cannot conceive a more perfect mode of writing any man’s life than not only relating all the most important events of it in their order, but interweaving what he privately wrote, and said, and thought.”
Susan M. Ouellette, who presents the entire extant diary of Phebe Orvis Eastman, first provides an adroit clarification of the diary, in a set of essays. The diarist, of course, never wrote with the intention of publication. Her thoughts are personal and private – and, at times, (well-labeled by the editor) cryptic. This layout, of essays then diary, guides the reader to pick up on the crumb-like indicators within the diary. Ouellette has uncovered a good deal of the life of Phebe Orvis Eastman — before, during, and after the diary, which makes for a rounded biographical profile. She also informs the reader about the era in which Phebe lived.
An Extraordinary Ordinary Woman: The Journal of Phebe Orvis, 1820-1830 tells of life on the American “frontier,” first in Vermont and then in the vicinity of Canton, New York. A young nation, the United States was still at war with England during Phebe’s childhood (she lived from 1801 to 1868). The geography of her diary is not the cosmopolitan perspective of Philadelphia, New York, or Washington; nor even from some great plantation. Thereby supplementing those perspectives, it enlarges our knowledge of young women in post-Revolutionary War America.
Phebe’s immediate family had staked claims and worked to clear the land and worked to create their community. (Vermont joined the Union as the Fourteenth State in 1791.) Phebe’s picture of rural Vermont, in the decades beyond that first settlement, offers readers first-hand experience of a growing, interconnected community. And through her move to a less congenial, even “wilder” frontier, Phebe’s own words involve us as witnesses to her personal pain and turmoil.
Phebe Orvis lived a somewhat carefree life as a young woman in Bristol, Vermont. Ouellette’s earliest chapter covers the tragedy of Phebe’s early life: Her mother died when Phebe was just a toddler. The baby’s age and gender (she was the fourth child, but the only daughter) resulted in her living not with her father and siblings, but with her aging maternal grandparents.
Readers of The Midwife’s Tale, featuring Maine’s Martha Ballard, will find a similarity here in the craft-skills taught to young women. Phebe Orvis is a weaver, spinner, and sewer; for instance, when Phebe writes of “Finished my web”, she is telling readers that she has yet again begun a weaving project. Such projects probably helped to fund the classes she took at the Middlebury Female Seminary.
Phebe Orvis is a serious student – and among the early cohort of women attending Willard’s establishment (though Willard herself had moved on by this time). Phebe’s “formal education” is unfortunately cut short, and readers feel her disappointment, and her reticence in doing what is requested of her: She moves to Parishville, New York, to help at her aunt and uncle’s Tavern. This transition led her to marry a man who was not her first choice for a life-partner. Ouellette uncovered in the diary the subtle “ceremony” of gifts exchanged (and ultimately returned), which points out a certain young man as Phebe’s prior attachment.
The Eastmans married in 1823; it is the marriage, the arrival of children, and the constant scratching for a living in New York, which concerns the remainder of the diary, which ends in October 1830. The blank pages that follow serve as silent testament that life went on, even if the woman writing could see no reason to spare the time to record more of that life. Phebe Orvis Eastman retained her diary, and even placed a few later inserts inside it. The diary meant enough to her, at the very least as evidence of early concerns and feelings, to have preserved it.
And others preserved it after Phebe’s death.
Special mention should be made of the late Mary Smallman, who encountered the diary after it surfaced again in Plattsburgh, NY. She transcribed the diary and dug about for information about the mystery diarist. Safe in her hands at a time when few put value on such manuscripts, Smallman ultimately deposited the diary and support materials with the Saint Lawrence County Historical Association (NY).
As with any primary source, records helped to fill out details, but aspects remain that can never truly be known. This book, with the diary in its entirety, ably supported by informative essays, is a window into early 19th century America. That its roots begin in Vermont makes it special to me, a native Vermonter, like Phebe. The physical world she knew nearly two hundred years ago can still be discerned.
Maps provide visuals for those needing to conceptualize the placement of Bristol, Middlebury, and Vergennes, Vermont; also, Saint Lawrence County, New York. An index is included. The size of the book – being both taller and wider than the average hardcover – somehow makes it a bit unwieldy; being produced in hardcover rather than paperback might have minimized that sensation. A tighter layout of the diary entries might have allowed for slightly larger type without increasing page count. Generous spacing between lines tries to compensate for the font and font size. Notes and a bibliography bring the book to 380 pages (Excelsior Editions, SUNY Press; $29.95).
Diaries, in general, are filled with the insignificant, and Ouellette has done the hard work of teasing out the significance behind the diarist’s little clues of life-events. This single volume diary indeed covers (as Boswell prescribed) “all the most important events” in the life of this Vermont girl, from her days as a single woman seeking education at the Middlebury establishment founded by Emma Willard; to her employment in New York, which brought her into the company of Samuel Eastman, whom she eventually married. The diary tells her story; the essays and finely-tuned editing makes Phebe’s history accessible to all readers.
*
Susan Ouellette, a history professor from Saint Michael’s College (VT), has written on Phebe Orvis Eastman over the decade that researches into the diary have taken. One of the more accessible (it’s ONLINE) is her article “Religion and Piety in the Journal of Phebe Orvis“, in the Vermont History magazine. The book An Extraordinary Ordinary Woman: The Journal of Phebe Orvis, 1820-1830 is the richer for this lengthy gestation.
See also:
- The Diary Review’s May 2017 book review, by Paul Lyons (which includes some diary extracts)
- Antebellum Women’s History through the Journal of Phebe Orvis Eastman; Susan Ouellette in a video presentation on RETN (60 minutes w/questions)
- also: the original ‘ad’ for the 2010 talk
An Extraordinary Ordinary Woman
More than a decade ago I worked on a typescript of a diary; this now has been turned into a book by the Saint Michael’s College (History Department) professor I used to work with, Dr. Susan Ouellette.
An Extraordinary Ordinary Woman: The Journal of Phebe Orvis, 1820-1830 tells – in her own words – the story of Phebe Orvis, born in Vermont and educated in Middlebury; her marriage to Samuel Eastman settled them in Upstate New York. So, geographically, the diary is much involved with the area near where I live.
Thanks SUNY for providing a review copy – it arrived in yesterday’s mail! So keep on eye out for my review.
It’s a HUGE book (10 x 7 format; 380 pages). Includes a half-dozen essays, that extract and expound on information from the diary; and then the entire journal transcription is presented.
I include the Table of Contents:
Introduction
Part I. “The sweet, single life”
1. “A delightful prospect of my Nativity”
2. “I conclude there are some strange intentions”
3. “rendered . . . more ignorant than others”
Part II. “New modes of living among strangers”
4. “perhaps the partner of his joys”
5. “Retired, much fatigued”
6. “He cumbers the ground no more”
Conclusion. “beneath the spreading Oak and Hickory”
The Journal
Maps
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Vermont: Reclaim History thru Re-creation
click to enlarge
If you’re in Vermont, check out this Town BrainTap event in Twinfield, Vermont on 8 April 2015!
“A Talk and Trunk Show” by Justin Squizzero, with Eliza West – The aim is to showcase Early American Apparel, 1770 to 1815. I’ve seen Eliza West’s beautiful “Jane Austen” creations, and can say that anyone able to attend will not be disappointed. A $10 donation is suggested; a non-profit, proceeds are donated.
Check out the BrainTap website – as well as the recent 7 Days’ article: Reaping what was Sewn.
Fabulous Find in Ludlow
Last night’s newscast told of an historic “find” in Ludlow, Vermont:
(click picture to open video page at WCAX.com)
The thrill of the find centers around PETER THATCHER WASHBURN, a Vermont hero of the US Civil War, and late in life 33rd governor of the state. Read all about the marriage ledger and Washburn at the United Church of Ludlow (scroll down to the story “Historic Record of Vermont Civil War Hero and Governor Discovered”).
Irene Damages Vermont
Very humbling, living in the Champlain Valley, to hear of the extreme devastation southern Vermont has undergone in the aftermath of Irene.
A college friend hailed from Chester – Chester is one of several places literally cut off: no one can get out or in, due to roads, bridges, etc etc.
The Bartonsville historic Covered Bridge got washed away, and Quechee’s covered bridge lost both its approaches.
Bennington and Brattleboro, two communities near the Massachusetts border, were under water.
Sad news continues to reach us:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/08/29/national/main20098866.shtml
http://www.telegram.com/article/20110829/NEWS/110829681/1160/SPECIALSECTIONS04&source=rss
http://uservideos.smashits.com/video/bWE5m6PNahw/hurricane-irene-flooding-in-chester-vermont.html
http://www.wcax.com/story/15356637/400-trapped-at-killington-ski-resort-after-floods?redirected=true
http://news.yahoo.com/vermont-reels-historic-flooding-003048120.html
Undoubtedly, some of the same regions hits with “historic” flooding this past spring were victims of the hurricane’s flooding: places like Waterbury, Montpelier (the state capital), and Barre. On the news last night was more the “aftermath”: quick-rising water that had by then departed — leaving a trail of devastation and mud.
Vermont Bookworms
Great article in our local “7 Days” magazine on bookstores — most of which sell used books (my personal favorites). I’ve been to most of them over the years. It’s always great fun to find a book you never ever knew about, sitting, dusty, on some piled upon shelf… But I have to admit that I internet book-look almost as much, intent on particular titles. The farthest away a book has ever come? Australia! That was a bio on Queen Charlotte (1976; the only one around really), by Olwen Hedley. She also wrote a terrific “biography” of Windsor Castle! (among other offerings, I see, when I search her name on bookfinder.com [my favorite site])
In fact, up in St. Albans this summer, I stopped by The Eloquent Page; I hadn’t been in since their move into the present building. Found a great book in which WILLIAM GOSLING (Mary’s father) was mentioned!!!
Unless you seek, you never find books you didn’t know to be out there….
Enjoy the article — and patronize these shops, if you get the chance.
Queen Charlotte, of England – royal bookworm?
Read: Miss Smith meets the Queen Read the rest of this entry »
Martha Ballard’s Diary
As I hone the earliest chapter of my book — which will set the tone for the whole, I pick up once again a book owned since 1990: A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, based on her Diary, 1785-1812.
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich won the Pulitzer for this history of Martha Ballard, Hallowell (Maine), and Ballard’s life as midwife.
I remember well finding this book. We used to have a small “family” bookstore not too far from where I lived in Essex (this, in the years before stores like Burlington’s Chasman & Bem and then the mega-mega Barnes & Noble in South Burlington). In its earliest years it was called The Little Professor; another branch (same owner? I’ve no idea) did once exist on Church Street, in Burlington — but I’m not sure it was still there at this time. In both shops, there were creaky wooden floors, the cash to the right of the door, and simple shelves along the walls and in the middle of the store.
In Essex, I always took a look at the foreign coins on sale in the case straight ahead from the door; bought a couple over the years: British shillings and old Irish pence. Then you came to the modest “History” section. Just four or five shelves, with room to display some books face on, while others just showed their spine-titles.
Crouched to look at the shelves nearest the floor is how I came face-to-face with Martha Ballard. Was it the title? Maybe it sat with its front cover peering straight at you. But I can bet it was the earliest book based on a diary that I purchased; as well, the earliest in which a woman from some historical period of the past was discussed.
Needless to say, my collection has grown since!
But it is interesting, as my book begins with Mary Gosling’s travels, in particular to Oxford, and I envision the hubbub of readying horses and carriages in the stables attached to a grand London home of a rich banker, to see that Ulrich begins with the mighty river of the Kennebec – frozen river, rushing river, spring freshets. There is much for a writer to learn in READING the writing of others.
So I close this brief mention of Martha Ballard, by including a link to a long-standing website in which the original diary — in transcription as well as in its handwritten form — can be seen: DoHistory.org. It is also a great opportunity for blog readers to see an original diary!
Few realize that I wear many hats in this research: research “assistant”, transcriber, typist among them. Pick up any published book by a well established writer and there’s someone who helps find material, someone else who prepares material for the author. Sometimes I feel like a one-man band! Just wish I could pursue it 24/7. So this website is a wonderful opportunity for readers to see not only an original document, but what can be done with and to it. I sure wish I had the possibility of ‘enhancing faded ink’, as mentioned on this page. And as I’ve worked both with microfilm as well as original documents, the photos displaying glare retouched and shadows lightened shows what technology can do.
I have had such “technology” thoughts, when transcribing Augusta Smith’s 1798 diary (the Mark Woodford Diary) — she must have recorded IN PENCIL many of her petty purchases and wins or losses at cards, now only faint indentations on the page. Each gives information about life in English society at that moment, and is precious; I managed to decipher just a few — I’m sure “technology” could uncover more. Though few beyond me would revel in such ‘trivia’.
An interesting item to note is Ulrich’s discussion of earlier uses of Martha Ballard’s diary: an 1870 history of Augusta, Maine by James W. North; another History of Augusta by Charles Elventon Nash, in which “a third” of Nash’s 600-page book consisted of an abridgement of Martha Ballard’s diary (mainly birth/death information evidently); as well as a 1970s “feminist” history of midwifery. Each time Ulrich gives readers what those earlier authors thought of Ballard’s diary: “with some exceptions not of general interest”, “trivial and unimportant”, “filled with trivia about domestic chores and pastimes”. But life is “trivia”-filled and often not more than “daily chores”. Whenever I read about The Memoir of Jane Austen or Henry Austen’s short “biography” being negatively cited because they claim that Austen’s life was nothing more than “uneventful”, I ask myself: whose life IS truly “eventful”?? I could never say mine is. So what do present-day English professors really want Austen’s life to have been characterized as? Was Martha Ballard’s life “eventful”? To her, even the tragedies of her life were just everyday occurrences. But that can never remove from lives like hers, like Austen’s, like Mary’s or Emma’s, the human drama bound up in that very “trivia” of daily life.
Ulrich discusses how Ballard would be nothing more in the history books than a birth date, a death date and in between notations of marriage and children. But — because her diary was written, kept and still exists — she too exists.
Rediscoveries – old item newly found
One newspaper article that recently grabbed headlines concerned a piece of FABRIC long kept at the Coolidge Museum in Plymouth, Vermont. Why was it news? Why is Kelly blogging about it? Read the article for yourself (from The Burlington Free Press):
Historic-site officials were cataloging artifacts recently when a handwritten note by Grace Coolidge fluttered out of what had been believed to be a shawl.It turns out the brown and white linen was the table covering in place on the night of Aug. 3, 1923, when Coolidge was sworn in by his father following the sudden death of President Warren Harding.
The note read: “Cover which was on the mahogany-topped table in the sitting room of father Coolidge’s house in Plymouth, Vermont on the night of August 3rd, 1923” and was initialed “G.C.,” said Amy Mincher, a collections manager at the site.
It had been thought that a green tablecloth with an embroidered border had been on the table that night.
The research was funded by the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services. The money allowed the site to hire Mincher to inventory and catalog the site’s holdings.
So what items out there, besides portraits of course, have been found to have once been owned by the Goslings and Smiths; what items might have been alluded to, in letters or diaries (LOTS!).
Writing about the Oxford days of William and his younger brother Robert, I find it curious that William attended Oxford, but seems never to have taken his degree. Am investigating why that might have been the case!
Anyway, was this a parting gift? He matriculated in 1812 (aged 17), was still at Brasenose when the family visited campus in summer 1814. By 14 July 1815, he would have obtained his majority, and perhaps left school to work in the family banking business. That I know so much about William, and yet so little, is very annoying.
He was obviously a passionate collector of art; not only had he commissioned portraits of his dogs, he owned other pieces — like this engraving of The Widow, also be Edwin Landseer:
William Ellis Gosling also endowed schools, left money (in his will) to colleges and universities, and even for the organ of St. Dunstan’s in the West.
Two Teens in the Time of Austen 