The True History of the First Mrs. Meredith and Other Lesser Lives
Page 24
Noted British painter and lifelong friend of Henry Wallis. The injured picture mentioned in the text was his famous Light of the World.
Kingsley, Charles (1819–1875)
A “radical liberal” clergyman of the Church of England. Mary Ellen wrote an essay in praise of his The Saint’s Tragedy for the Monthly Observer. Author of Westward Ho, The Water Babies, Alton Locke, and many other novels and stories.
L’Estrange, Thomas
An obscure Irish gentleman who interested himself in Peacock’s affairs.
Love, Harriet
Cousin to Thomas Love Peacock on his mother’s side. She gave helpful biographical details for the earliest memoirs of Peacock.
Meredith, Arthur (1853–1890)
The son of Mary Ellen and George Meredith.
Meredith, George (1828–1909)
Important English novelist and poet. He was known in his day for his “advanced” views on such matters as women’s lot.
Meredith, Mary Ellen Peacock Nicolls (1821–1861)
An unfortunate but courageous woman.
Mill, James (1773–1836)
Peacock’s predecessor at India House; British political philosopher whom tradition has held Peacock did not like very much, which is apparently not true. They went on many long walks together, in any case.
Mill, John Stuart (1806–1873)
British philosopher, author of On Liberty, and Peacock’s successor at India House.
Milton, the first Mrs (d. 1652)
Mary Powell, who ran away from John Milton a month after they were married. Evidently she did not like him, and could hardly be persuaded to come back again. She is said to have inspired Milton’s pamphlets in favor of divorce. Ultimately, she died of childbearing, so her first impulse may have been correct.
Morris, William (1834–1896)
The artist, printer, designer, poet, decorator, socialist reformer, inventor, and a dozen other things. He lived at a beautiful place called Kelmscott and really started the Arts and Crafts Movement.
Nicolls, General Sir Edward, K.C.B. (1779–1865)
“Fighting Nicolls,” father of Edward Jr., and “the most distinguished officer” of which the Royal Marines can boast.
Nicolls, Lt. Edward (d. 1844)
First husband of Mary Ellen and father of Edith.
Peacock, Edward Gryffydh (1825?–1867)
Peacock’s son and Mary Ellen’s brother. Said to be a “wild” young man.
Peacock, Jane Gryffydh (1789–1851)
Wife of Thomas Love Peacock and mother of Mary Ellen.
Peacock, Sarah (1754–1833)
Mother to Thomas Love Peacock, and his great friend and “best critic.”
Peacock, Thomas Love (1785–1866)
English poet, novelist, and principal Examiner of the East India Company—or, important bureaucrat.
Petrie, Sir William Matthew Flinders (1853–1942)
A great archaeologist, whose most notable feat was to preside over the diggings at Abydos.
Read, Sir Charles Hercules (1857–1929)
Keeper of the Department of British Medieval Antiquities and Ethnography, old friend of Henry Wallis.
Rosewell, Mary Anne (1823?–1883)
The adopted daughter of Thomas Love Peacock, known as “May.”
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel (1828–1882)
English poet and painter, one of the founders of Pre-Raphaelitism.
Rossetti, Elizabeth Siddal (d. 1862)
She was the unhappy model and mistress of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who married her after a “long engagement.” She died shortly thereafter of an overdose of laudanum, and Rossetti, in his extravagant grief, buried his manuscript poems with her, so that in a few years he had to have her dug up again to get them back.
Rossetti, William Michael (1829–1919)
Brother to Dante and Christina, William Michael was the writer and scholar and “straight” member of this otherwise eccentric family.
St. Croix, Marianne
Nothing whatever is known about her, beyond her early attachment to T. L. Peacock, whom she decided not to marry. She was probably related to George and Mary Meredith’s friend Hilary de St. Croix.
Scott, William Bell (1811–1890)
A poet and painter and friend of Henry’s.
Shelley, Harriet Westbrook (1795–1816)
First wife to Mr. Shelley, and the one Tom Peacock always preferred. Harriet committed suicide by drowning after Mr. Shelley ran off with Miss Godwin. She was pregnant when she died, which allowed her detractors to circulate ugly rumors about her, in defense of Shelley’s desertion of her. But a recent scholar, Mrs. Boas, has shown that the poor girl was probably pregnant—once again—by Shelley.
Shelley, Mary Godwin (1797–1851)
The author of Frankenstein. She was the second wife to Mr. Shelley, daughter of William Godwin and the great feminist Mary Wollstonecraft.
Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792–1822)
Major English poet who tragically drowned.
Smith, Madeleine
The defendant in a famous murder trial in 1857. She was accused of giving her lover arsenic.
Stephens, Frederic George (1828–1907)
An early associate of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and for forty years art critic of the Atheneum. His son Holly (Holman) was notably handsome, and a friend of Felix Wallis.
Swinburne, Algernon Charles (1837–1909)
British poet.
Wallis, Harold Felix (1858–1933)
Born Harold Meredith, because Mrs. Meredith was still married to Mr. Meredith at the time she bore him to Mr. Wallis. He grew up to have a successful career in banking.
Wallis, Henry (1830–1916)
Pre-Raphaelite painter, distinguished authority on Far Eastern ceramics, and the villain—or the hero—of this work.
Watts, George Frederic (1817–1904)
Painter and sculptor. In 1886, when he was almost seventy, he married a “friend and disciple,” Miss Mary Fraser Taylor—which accounts for the amusement of his friends.
Wollstonecraft, Mary (Godwin) (1759–1797)
The author of A Vindication of the Rights of Women, the first major feminist work. Miss Wollstonecraft did not believe in marriage, but in the end did marry Mr. Godwin, the father of her child (Mary Shelley), for the sake of giving the child a name. She died just after, of childbed fever.
IMAGES
A LIST OF MANUSCRIPTS USED
Oxford, England. Bodleian Library. MS Don e. 79. Henry Wallis letters. MS Autog. C. 9. m. 143. Mary Shelley to Mary Ellen Meredith, letters. MS Eng. Misc. c. 435. Edith Nicolls from Cole and L’Estrange, letters. No. 73. Translation of an Anapestic Ode to Christ: Matthew X, 34.
London, England. British Museum. Add MS 38, 831. Papers presented by Henry Wallis of the St. Marks Committee. Add MS 38, 794, I. Letter from Robert Browning to Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Add MS 38, 763, 70ff. Memo to Lord Bathhurst, 1822, from Edward Nicolls. Add MS 47225 ff., 1–175. Thomas Love Peacock to Lord Broughton letters. Ashley 5730. Thomas Jefferson Hogg to Thomas Love Peacock and Mary Ellen Meredith, letters.
Cambridge, Mass. Harvard University. Widener Library. The Monthly Observer, January–July, 1849.
San Marino, Calif. Huntington Library. Edward Nicolls to Thomas Clarkson letters.
New York City. Pforzheimer Library. P’ana 2. Memo by John Laird on Thomas Love Peacock and steam navigation. 497b MS. Receipts on scraps of paper. MS. Science of Cookery. ALS. Mary Ellen Meredith to Eddy, letters. ALS. Mary Ellen Meredith to Thomas Love Peacock, letters.
London, England. Victoria and Albert Museum. 86/BB/30 Henry Wallis. 38 letters to Albert Van de Put. Box IV, 86. S. Henry Wallis notebooks. Henry Wallis. Original drawings to Nicolà du Urbino.
Purley, England. Wallis Estate. Unp
ublished letters to Henry Wallis.
New Haven, Conn. Yale University. Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library. George Meredith’s manuscript notebooks. Mary Ellen Meredith’s Commonplace Book.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cameron, K. N., ed. Shelley and his Circle. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1961.
Clarke, Edith Nicolls. High-Class Cookery. 7th ed. London: William Clowes & Son, 1897.
Cline, C. L. “The Betrothal of George Meredith to Marie Vulliamy,” Nineteenth Century Fiction 16 (December 1961): 231–243.
——. Letters of George Meredith. 3 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970.
Clodd, Edward. Memories. London: Chapman and Hall, 1916.
Constant, Benjamin. Adolphe. Translated by B. W. Tancock. Baltimore: Penguin, 1964.
Dawson, Carl. His Fine Wit. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970.
Ellis, S. M. George Meredith: His Life and Friends in Relation to His Work. London: Grant Richards, 1919.
——. The Letters and Memoirs of Sir William Hardman. Second Series. London: Cecil Palmer, 1925.
Field, Col. C. Britain’s Sea-Soldiers. Liverpool: Lyceum Press, 1924.
Forman, Maurice Buxton. George Meredith and the “Monthly Observer.” Edinburgh, 1928.
Fredeman, William E. Pre-Raphaelitism. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965.
Galland, René. George Meredith: les cinquante premières années. Paris: Les presses françaises, 1923.
Globe and Laurel (The Journal of the Royal Marines). January 1897.
Hornby, Sir Edmund. Autobiography. London: Constable, 1929.
Houghton, Walter. The Victorian Frame of Mind. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957.
Jesse, F. Tennyson. The Trial of Madeleine Smith. Edinburgh: W. Hodge, 1928.
Jones, Frederick L., ed. The Letters of Mary W. Shelley. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1947.
Le Gallienne, Richard. George Meredith: Some Characteristics. London: Elkin Matthews, 1890.
Lehman, R. C., ed. Charles Dickens as Editor. London: Smith, Elder, 1912.
Matz, B. W. “Some Unknown Poems of George Meredith.” TP’s Weekly (February 17, 1911): 209–210.
Meredith, George. The Poetical Works of George Meredith. With some notes by G. M. Trevelyan. London: Constable, 1912.
Meredith, Mary Ellen. “Gastronomy and Civilisation.” Fraser’s Magazine, 44 (December 1851): 591–609.
——. “Soyer’s Modern Housewife, or Menagere.” Fraser’s Magazine 44 (August 1851): 199–209.
Oxford Dictionary of English Art. Ed. T. S. R. Boase. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959.
Peacock, Thomas Love. Letters to Edward Hookham and Percy Bysshe Shelley (with fragments of unpublished manuscripts). Ed. Richard Garnett. Boston: The Bibliophile Society, 1910.
Peacock, Thomas Love. The Works of Thomas Love Peacock. Ed. F. B. Brett-Smith and C. E. Jones. 10 vols. London: Constable, 1924–1934.
——. Works. Ed. Henry Cole. 3 vols. London: Richard Bentley, 1875.
Rossetti, William Michael. Some Reminiscences. London: Brown and Langham, 1906.
Ruskin, John, M.A. Notes on the Principal Pictures in the Royal Academy. 1856. Pamphlet.
Sassoon, Siegfried. Meredith. London: Constable, 1948.
Scott, Winifred. Jefferson Hogg. London: Jonathan Cape, 1951.
Shorter, Clement. “Literary Letter.” Sphere 64 (March 1916): 328.
Van Doren, Carl. The Life of Thomas Love Peacock. London: J. M. Dent, 1911.
Yonge, Charlotte M. Heartsease: or the Brother’s Wife. London: Macmillan, 1847.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I WOULD like to express my grateful thanks to the many people who have helped me with this book: To the librarians of the Huntington Library, the Victoria and Albert and British Museum and Bodleian Libraries, the Carl H. Pforzheimer Library, the Widener Library of Harvard University, the Beinecke Library of Yale University, the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library, to the Royal Marines Historian in England, and to Miss Rose Lambert of the Louisiana State Museum Library in New Orleans. I am grateful also to Professors Ada B. Nisbet and John Espey for their advice and encouragement, to Lionel Stevenson, C. L. Cline, Eleanor L. Nicholes, and Phyllis Bartlett for their kindness in responding to my queries with expert knowledge and assistance, and to Mrs. Elizabeth David, for graciously sending me a copy of a cookbook of Edith Nicolls’s. Thanks are also owing to the American Association of University Women, to the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, and to the University of California, Davis and Los Angeles campuses, for financial assistance. I am grateful to Mr. and Mrs. Roberts, present owners of Peacock House, and to Peter Hawkins for his invaluable research assistance and photographs, to Robert Hopkins; to Lady de Montmorency, and to Mr. and Mrs. C. A. Whiting, without whom much of this book could not have been written at all, and to Dan Wickenden for his helpful suggestions; to Toni Roby for her translations from the French; to Betty Kimura, Judy Kalivas, and to my patient family.
Reference to and quotations from the following documents are given with the permission of The Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation, Inc.: letters to “My own darling Eddy” and to “My kind dear father” from Mary Ellen Peacock. Letters to Henry Wallis are given with the kind cooperation of the Wallis estate, and selections from the Commonplace Book of Mary Ellen Meredith are given with permission of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.