Digital Mitford: Letter View

Letter to B.R. HaydonBenjamin Robert Haydon | Born: 1786-01-26 in Plymouth, England. Died: 1846-06-22 in London.
Benjamin Robert Haydon was a painter educated at the Royal Academy, who was famous for contemporary, historical, classical, biblical, and mythological scenes, though tormented by financial difficulties and incarceration. He painted William Wordsworth's portrait in 1842 and painted a cameo of Keats in his epic canvas Christ's Entry into Jerusalem(1814-20). MRM was introduced to him at his London studio in the spring of 1817, and Sir William Elford was a mutual friend, and Haydon’s own acquaintances included several prominent British Romantic literary figures. He completed The Raising of Lazarus in 1823 . He wrote a diary and an autobiography, both of which were published only posthumously, and he committed suicide in 1846. George Paston's Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century (1893) contends that Mitford was asked to edit Haydon's memoir, but declined.—rnes, ebb, 1823 October 1

Edited by Hailey LownHailey Lown, Research Assistant, UCLA
In 2014, Hailey Lown was a third year transfer student at UCLA. She is originally from the state of Maryland. Hailey was an English major, concentrating on British literature and the classics. She worked on Digital Mitford in 2014. .

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Mary Russell Mitford Society: Digital Mitford Project

Penn State Erie, The Behrend College

Digital Mitford Letters: The Mary Russell Mitford Archive

Repository: The Reading Central Library. Shelf mark: qB/TU/MIT Vol. 4, Horizon No.: 1361550 ff. 477

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1823

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1823

Hands other than Mitford's noted on this manuscript:

Someone, possibly B.R. Haydon, drew a picture of what seems to be a cow in black ink on the middle of the back third of the octavo folio. The reasoning behind it having been B.R. Haydon who drew it is that it was drawn in a different hand than Mitford. Also, it would be remiss to forget that B.R. Haydon was an artist.

Someone, apparently other than Mitford, perhaps cataloging letters and describing them, who left grey pencil marks and numbered her letters now in the Reading Central Library's collection. This letter is numbered "15" in the top left of the first leaf.

Red crayon or thick red pencil. Probably a different hand from Mitford's that marks many of her letters, sometimes drawing diagonal lines across pages, and sometimes writing words overtop and perpendicularly across Mitford's writing. On this letter, a red diagonal line is drawn from the top left to the bottom right of page 1 of the manuscript. Another one is drawn from the bottom right to the top left of page 2.

Someone, apparently other than MitfordMary Russell Mitford | Born: 1787-12-16 in New Alresford, Hampshire, England. Died: 1855-01-10 in Swallowfield, Berkshire, England.
Poet, playwright, writer of prose fiction sketches, Mary Russell Mitford is, of course, the subject of our archive. Mary Russell Mitford was born on December 16, 1787 at New Alresford, Hampshire, the only child of George Mitford (or Midford) and Mary Russell. She was baptized on February 29, 1788. Much of her writing was devoted to supporting herself and her parents. She received a civil list pension in 1837. Census records from 1841 indicate that she is living with her father George, three female servants: Kerenhappuch Taylor (Mary’s ladies maid), two maids of all work, Mary Bramley and Mary Allaway, and a manservant (probably serving also as gardener), Benjamin Embury. The 1851 census lists her occupation as authoress, and lists her as living at Three Mile Cross with Kerenhappuch Taylor (lady’s maid), Sarah Chernk (maid-of-all-work), and Samuel Swetman (gardener), after the death of her father. Mitford’s long life and prolific career ended after injuries from a carriage accident. She is buried in Swallowfield churchyard. The executor of her will and her literary executor was the Rev. William Harness and her lady’s maid, Kerenhappuch Taylor Sweetman, was residuary legatee of her estate. —lmw, ebb
, who occasionally left notes in a spidery thin hand to explain or document details in Mitford's letters in the margins of her pages, noted in the manuscripts held at Reading Central LibraryReading Central Library
The principal archive of Mary Russell Mitford’s personal papers and related documents, holding approximately 1,000 manuscripts and a nearly comprehensive collection of her printed publications.—ghb. This may be William HarnessWilliam Harness | Born: 1790-03-14 in Wickham, Hampshire, England. Died: 1869-11-11 in Battle, Sussex, England .
A lifelong friend of Mary Russell Mitford who knew her from their childhood in the 1790s, Harness launched the first major effort to collect and edit Mitford’s letters into a series of volumes, which was completed by his assistant, Alfred Guy Kingan L’Estrange a year after Harness’s death, and published as The Life of Mary Russell Mitford, Related in a Selection from her Letters to her Friends. This collection was originally intended to be six volumes, but was cut back to three by the publishers, to Harness’s distress. Harness and Byron were also friends from their schooling at Harrow, as Byron sympathized with Harness’s experience of a disabled foot, crushed in an accident in early childhood. Byron considered dedicating the first two cantos of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage to Harness, but refrained so as not to taint Harness’s reputation as he was taking orders as an Anglican curate. Harness admired and encouraged Mitford’s playwrighting in particular, and she commented that he was one of the few of her friends who thought she should prioritize the drama over prose. When William Macready was attacked in an anonymous Blackwood’s Magazine piece in 1825 for his demands and rudeness to Mitford over revisions to Rienzi, Macready assumed that Harness was the author of the anonymous piece, though in 1839 after many years of distance, Harness assured Macready in person that he was not the writer, though he may have shared word of the poor treatment his friend had endured. William Harness was the son of John Harness, M.D. and Sarah Dredge; he was baptized at Whitchurch, Hampshire on April 13, 1790. He received his B.A. in 1812 and his M.A. in 1816 from Christ’s College, Cambridge. He served as curate at Kelmeston, Hampshire (1812) and Dorking (1814-1816). He was preacher at Trinity Chapel, Conduit Street, London and minister and lecturer at St. Anne’s in Soho. He was Boyle lecturer in London (1822) and was curate at Hampstead from 1828 to 1844. In 1825, he published an eight-volume edition of Shakespeare, including a biography; his friends would later endow a prize in his name at Cambridge for the study of Shakespearean literature. He also authored numerous essays and reviews, some for the Quarterly Review. From 1844 to 1847 he was minister of Brompton Chapel in London. He undertook to raise the funds to build the church of All Saints, Knightsbridge, in the parish of St. Margaret’s Westminster, which opened in 1849, and he then became perpetual curate of that congregation. At the 1851 and 1861 censuses, he lived at 3 Hyde Park Terrace, Westminster St. Margaret, Middlesex, with his sister Mary Harness and his first cousin Jemima Harness, daughter of his uncle William. He died while on a visit to one of his former curates in Battle, Sussex. At the time of his death he living at the same address at 3 Hyde Park Terrace; he is buried in Bath.Sources: Duncan-Jones, Miss Mitford and Mr. Harness (1955); Lord Byron and His Times: —ebb, lmw
or A. G. L'EstrangeAlfred Guy Kingan L’Estrange | Born: 1832. Died: 1915.
L’Estrange was a curate working for William Harness, and assisted him with the first edition of Mary Russell Mitford’s letters until Harness’s death, at which point L’Estrange took over the editing and produced the collection of letters as the three-volume The Life of Mary Russell Mitford under his own name. [Sources: Frances Needham’s notes on Mitford’s papers and the Harness/L’Estrange edition. VIAF ] —ebb. This annotator left a note at the top of the first leaf that documents the recipient of the letter as B.R. Haydon Esqr. Also written in pen beside the recipient is "Oct. 1823." and underneath, "Fragment—"

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Last modified: 2024-04-25T23:57:49.264558Z

I have a sneaking kindness for portraits—I do not mean the faces on the Royal AcademyRoyal Academy of ArtsThe private arts institution The Royal Academy of Arts was founded by George III on 10 December 1768, at the behest of architect Sir William Chambers. Chambers and other artists and architects sought to establish a British national Society for promoting the Arts of Design, a society that would sponsor an annual exhibition (later the Summer Exhibition) as well as a School of Design (later the Royal Academy Schools.) Thirty-four founding members were elected; today, the society elects no more than eighty members at one time as Royal Academicians (Members of the Royal Academy, RA). During Mitford’s time, the Royal Academy was housed at Somerset House, a building designed and built by Chambers beginning in 1776 and likely not completed until after 1819. The institution moved to Trafalgar Square in the 1830s, to share space with the newly-founded National Gallery, and remained there until 1867. Mitford’s friend and correspondent Benjamin Robert Haydon, was a Member of the Royal Academy.—lmw walls—but those portraits which escaped from the great painters—TitianTiziano Vecelli | Born: 1488-1490 in Pieve di Cadore, Italy. Died: 1576-08-27 in Venice, Italy.
16th-century Italian painter, based in Venice, with an international clientele. Painted frescoes, portraits, and public religious paintings. Worked in styles ranging from mannerism to magic impressionism.—lmw
—RubensPeter Paul Rubens, Sir | Born: 1577-06-28 in Siegan, Nassau-Dillenburg. Died: 1640-05-30 in Antwerp, Spanish Netherland.
A portrait, landscape, and history painter in oils, Rubens is best-known for his female nudes of biblical, allegorical, and mythological subjects; he also produced commissioned Counter-Reformation altarpieces. At the height of his career, he ran a large studio in Antwerp, and he was knighted by both Charles I of England and Philip IV of Spain. He used the production of prints and book title-pages, based on his drawings, to extend his fame in Europe, working with the renowned Plantin-Moretus publishing house.—lmw
—RembrandtRembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn | Born: 1606-07-15 in Leiden, Netherlands. Died: 1669-10-04 in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Famous Dutch Golden Age painter and printmaker. A prolific painter and printmaker, Rembrandt is usually regarded as the greatest artist of the Netherlands’ Golden Age. Best known for his portraits in oil, particularly his many self-portraits, he also painted landscapes and narratives, including biblical and mythological scenes. He was also a skilled printmaker, employing etching as well as dry point techniques. See The Met’s Rembrandt site at . —hbl, lmw, ebb
—& that is the way that yours will be considered not only by posterity but by that main part of posterity the next generation the Englishmen of twenty years hence. Paint plenty of portraits—& plenty of humourous pictures—it is your peculiar talent—& do tell me what this one is about—I am so stupid that I have not been able to guess—Tell me this secret—& I will tell you one in return. & you must mot even let any [gap: 1 word, reason: torn.][one] know that there is in my care a secret to tell.—I am sorry for what you tell me of Mr. HazlittWilliam Hazlitt | Born: 1778-04-10 in Maidstone, Kent, England. Died: 1830-09-18 in Soho, London, England.
Essayist and critic, acquaintance of Mary Russell Mitford. Author of Table Talk (1821) and The Spirit of the Age (1825). Also authored collections of critical essays such as Characters of Shakespeare (1817), A View of the English Stage (1818), and English Comic Writers (1819). In a letter of 2 October 1820 , Mary Russell Mitford writes of Hazlitt to their mutual friend Haydon, He is the most delightful critic in the [world]— puts all his taste, his wit, his deep thinking, his matchless acuteness into his subject, but he does not put his whole heart & soul into it [. . . ] What charms me most in Mr. Haslitt is the beautiful candour which he bursts forth sometimes from his own prejudices [ . . . ] I admire him so ardently that when I begin to talk of him I never know how to stop. I could talk on for an hour in a see saw of praise and blame as he himself does of Beaumont & Fletcher & some of his old [favourites]. —lmw, cmm
—because the good faith his writings was their greatest charm—but in the Fonthill affair [2] William Hazlitt visited Fonthill Abbey from September to October 1823. In a letter from Haydon to Mitford of September 1823, Haydon mentions that Hazlitt left Fonthill for a night or two to visit a couple of his "flames" after he had just recently divorced his wife.—bas much may be said on page 2
[gap: 2 words, reason: torn.]—& at all events there is nobody like him.—Tell dear Mrs. HaydonMary Hyman Haydon
The daughter of the Rev. Benjamin Cobley, the Rector of Dodbrooke, Kingsbridge, Devon, she was widowed with two children when she married Benjamin Robert Haydon on 10 October 1821.—ghb with my kindest love that now Mr. MacreadyWilliam Charles Macready | Born: 1793-03-03 in London, England. Died: 1873-04-27 in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England.
English actor, one of the most prominent tragedians of his era. He appeared at Covent Garden and Drury Lane Theatres in London and also toured the United States. He appeared in Sheridan Knowles's William Tell, Byron's Sardanapolus, and Bulwer-Lytton's Money (1840), as well as in many Shakespearean roles. He also managed both Covent Garden and Drury Lane Theatres. In his role as actor-manager, Macready was a correspondent and collaborator with Mary Russell Mitford. The first play on which they worked was Mitford's Julian. Mitford dedicated to Macready the print edition of Julian: To William Charles Macready, Esq., with high esteem for those endowments which have cast new lustre on his art; with warm admiration for those powers which have inspired, and that taste which has fostered the tragic dramatists of his age; with heartfelt gratitude for the zeal with which he befriended the production of a stranger, for the judicious alterations which he suggested, and for the energy, the pathos, and the skill with which he more than emhodied its principal character; this tragedy is most respectfully dedicated by the author. Macready retired from the stage in 1851. —lmw
has left Covent gardenTheatre Royal, Covent Garden, London, England | Covent Garden Theatre | Covent Garden | Westminster | London | England | 51.5129211 -0.12219759999993585 A West End theater located in Covent Garden in the London borough of Westminster. One of the royal patent theaters. The first theater on this site was opened in 1732 by John Rich, renovated by architect Henry Holland in 1792, and destroyed by fire on 20 Sept. 1808. The second theater, designed by Robert Smirke, opened on 18 Sept. 1809 and was managed by John Phillip Kemble. Because of rent increases by the Duke of Bedford, the landowner, J.P. Kemble increased ticket prices. This led to the old price (or O.P.) riots and the eventual lowering of ticket prices, although the proprietors proved they would lose money at those prices. The second theater was destroyed by fire on 5 March 1856. The third theater, designed by Edward Middleton Barry, opened in 1858 and remains at the center of today’s theater complex. The theater became the Royal Opera House in 1892 and the building was renovated and expanded in the 1980s and 1990s. —lmw. I hope the FoscariFoscari: A Tragedy. Mary Russell Mitford. London : G. B. Whittaker . 1826. will be brought out there this season.—And now goodbye and God bless you—

Edited by Hailey LownHailey Lown, Research Assistant, UCLA In 2014, Hailey Lown was a third year transfer student at UCLA. She is originally from the state of Maryland. Hailey was an English major, concentrating on British literature and the classics. She worked on Digital Mitford in 2014. .

Edited by Hailey LownHailey Lown, Research Assistant, UCLA
In 2014, Hailey Lown was a third year transfer student at UCLA. She is originally from the state of Maryland. Hailey was an English major, concentrating on British literature and the classics. She worked on Digital Mitford in 2014. .