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 June
14
Edited by Elizabeth RaisanenElizabeth Raisanen, Ph.D., Drama, Founding Editor,
University of Oregon
Elizabeth Raisanen is the Assistant Dean of Advising & Strategic Partnerships and an Instructor of Literature in the Robert D. Clark Honors College at the University of Oregon. A specialist in the women
writers of the British Romantic era, Elizabeth’s research interests also
extend to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British literature, Romantic
drama, and the Digital Humanities. She has presented papers on Mitford’s
plays at the North American Society for the Study of Romanticism, the
Wordsworth Summer Conference, and the British Women Writer’s Conference, and
her article on Mitford’s play Rienzi
appeared in European Romantic Reviewin 2011
. Other essays on Romantic women writers have appeared (or are
forthcoming) in
Women’s Studies
and an edited collection on Mary Wollstonecraft.
Elizabeth has also taught undergraduate students how to transcribe, code,
and conduct research on a collection of Mitford’s letters stored at Reading Central Library.
.
Sponsored by:
- Mary Russell Mitford Society: Digital Mitford Project
- Penn State Erie, The Behrend College
First digital edition in TEI, date: 1 December 2014. P5.Edition made with help from photos taken by Digital Mitford editors. Digital Mitford photo files: 14June1823BRHaydon4b.JPG, 14June1823BRHaydon4a.JPG, 14June1823BRHaydon3b.JPG, 14June1823BRHaydon3a.JPG, 14June1823BRHaydon2a.JPG, 14June1823BRHaydon2b.JPG, 14June1823BRHaydon1b.JPG, 14June1823BRHaydon1a.JPG, .
Digital Mitford Letters: The Mary Russell Mitford Archive
Repository: The Reading Central Library. Shelf mark: qB/TU/MIT Vol. 4 Horizon No.: 1361550 ff. 473
One quarto sheet of paper folded in half to form two octavo pages, which comprise pages 1-3 of the letter. The fourth page page bears the address of the recipient in the middle and is folded is folded into 3 parts for posting. Address leaf bearing the following postmarks: 1) blue elliptical Receiving House stamp [Reading]2) Sepia-colored indented stamp stamp in on bottom part of the address page folds. reading MORN
8
17*JU
1823 A large 2 denoting the fee for a single-sheet letter has been written in black ink by the postal service above the address, partially over the last name of the addressee The red seal from 1823 is unrecognizable as most of it (from the upper middle region onwards is missing. The seal has left an imprint on the top right corner of page 3. The upper right corner of page is also torn out, perhaps from when the letter was opened as the seal stuck to it. The address page also carries a water mark. In the addressee's address, the first word of the second line is unrecognizable due as parts of it are faint from a brown mark. The word London in the last line of the addressee’s address is striked through. Red wax seal. Partial Red wax seal on top right corner of page 4 when opened.
Hands other than Mitford's noted on this manuscript:
- 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 asauthoress,
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. - Someone, apparently other than Mitford (perhaps cataloging the letters and describing them, or marking them up while creating an earlier edition of Mitford's letters), left grey pencil marks and numbered her letters now in the Reading Central Library's collection. This letter is numbered "12" in the top left of the first leaf, underneath the pen annotated opening line, "B.R. Haydon Esqr." In what appears to be the same hand and the same pencil, the year "1823" appears faintly on the same page just under the number "12"
- 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 pages 1, 2 and 3 of the manuscript.
Maintained by: Elisa E. Beshero-Bondar (eeb4 at
psu.edu) 
Last modified:
2024-11-21T13:47:34.695238Z
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 12 1823 Three Mile Cross June 14th 1823.
You must not imagine, my dear friend, because I answer your long and most interesting communications, by notes as inferior in quantity as in quality, that I am insensible to the distinction & the pleasure of being thought of by you, even in such moments as these. I am—we are all—so deeply interested for you—& so ashamed that such a country as this, such an Artist, such a man should he suffered to undergo the deprivations & losses which you have experienced—I could not help crying when I read the account of your desolated home—It had seemed so serene in its beautiful privacy—& even in its smallness—& snugness & comfort—there was a feeling of serenity & shelter ^ in it page 2
like the covered nest of the long tailed wrenName: long-tailed wren or
Naga wren-babbler
| Genus: Spelaeornis | Family: Timaliidae | Species: Spelaeornis chocolatinus.
The Naga wren-babbler or long-tailed wren-babbler (Spelaeornis
chocolatinus), a bird species in the family Timaliidae.—mq, lmw—but you have still your lovely mateMary 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 & the dear little ones—& your own buoyancy—which is really that of a winged creature—& I doubt not to see ^ you again in as [del: .]^ soft & happy a nest. Government, or ParliamentParliament
Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern
Ireland; supreme legislative body in England.—ajc, or the Public must do something great & permanent for you—they must for shame.
What you say respecting one of your pupils grieves me very much—I hope you are mistaken—It would be an added grief to lose a friend—to be conscious that a friend had been unworthy—& all your pupils had been your friends. I cannot imagine thatany oneanyone who had lived with you could be guilty of such a small & paltry vanity—And yet it is I really believe that evil quality which exists in the greatest abundance in the world, & page 3
which produces most ill co[gap: 3 chars, reason: torn.][nse]quences, to every one—especially to its possessors. I never knew or guessed at the universality of its diffusion till my visits to Town this spring—& really, except [del: .]at your house, the clinging nauseous intolerable weed appeared to me to grow every where. But I still hope that you are mistaken—I will hope so.—
We were exceedingly interested & affected by your account of the pathetic incident of 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 & the Infant—It is indeed a true "bit of nature"—But you are a happy man still! And she is a happy woman!
God bless you, my dear Friend!—Give me good news I beseech you as soon as any happen—at all events let me hear that you are well—for that is good news too—the best. Kindest regards from all.
Ever most affectionately your'syours
M. R. Mitford.Mary 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
page 4
B. R. Haydon EsqreBenjamin 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
Historical Painter
King's Bench PrisonKings Bench Prison, Southwark, London, England | Southwark | London | England | 51.5016303 -0.09155820000000858 A prison in Southwark, south London, that took its name from the King’s Bench court of law, which heard cases of bankruptcy and other misdemeanors. In use from medieval times, during Mitford’s time it was often used as a debtor’s prison.—lmw
LondonLondon, England | London | England | 51.5073509 -0.12775829999998223 Capital city of England and the United Kingdom; one the oldest cities in Western Europe. Major seaport and global trading center at the mouth of the Thames. From 1831 to 1925, the largest city in the world.—lmw