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Birth of Edward Dowden, Critic, Professor & Poet

Edward Dowden, Irish critic, professor and poet, is born in Cork, County Cork, on May 3, 1843.

Dowden is the son of John Wheeler Dowden, a merchant and landowner, and is born three years after his brother John, who becomes Bishop of Edinburgh in 1886. His literary tastes emerge early, in a series of essays written at the age of twelve. His home education continues at Queen’s College, Cork and at Trinity College, Dublin. He contributes to the literary magazine Kottabos.

Dowden has a distinguished career, becoming president of the University Philosophical Society, and wins the vice-chancellor’s prize for English verse and prose, and the first senior moderatorship in ethics and logic. In 1867 he is elected professor of oratory and English literature in Dublin University.

Dowden’s first book, Shakespeare: A Critical Study of His Mind and Art (1875), results from a revision of a course of lectures, and makes him widely known as a critic: translations appear in German and Russian; his Poems (1876) goes into a second edition. His Shakespeare Primer (1877) is translated into Italian and German. In 1878 the Royal Irish Academy awards him the Cunningham gold medal “for his literary writings, especially in the field of Shakespearian criticism.”

Later works by Dowden in this field include an edition of The Sonnets of William Shakespeare (1881), Passionate Pilgrim (1883), Introduction to Shakespeare (1893), Hamlet (1899), Romeo and Juliet (1900), Cymbeline (1903), and an article entitled “Shakespeare as a Man of Science” (in the National Review, July 1902), which criticizes T. E. Webb’s Mystery of William Shakespeare. His critical essays “Studies in Literature” (1878), “Transcripts and Studies” (1888), “New Studies in Literature” (1895) show a profound knowledge of the currents and tendencies of thought in various ages and countries; but his The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1886) makes him best known to the public at large. In 1900 he edits an edition of Shelley‘s works.

Other books by Dowden which indicate his interests in literature include: Southey (1879), his edition of Southey’s Correspondence with Caroline Bowles (1881), and Select Poems of Southey (1895), his Correspondence of Sir Henry Taylor (1888), his edition of William Wordsworth‘s Poetical Works (1892) and of his Lyrical Ballads (1890), his French Revolution and English Literature (1897), History of French Literature (1897), Puritan and Anglican (1900), Robert Browning (1904) and Michel de Montaigne (1905). His devotion to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe leads to his succeeding Max Müller in 1888 as president of the English Goethe Society.

In 1889 Dowden gives the first annual Taylorian Lecture at the University of Oxford, and from 1892 to 1896 serves as Clark lecturer at Trinity College, Cambridge. To his research are due, among other matters of literary interest, the first account of Thomas Carlyle‘s Lectures on periods of European culture; the identification of Shelley as the author of a review (in The Critical Review of December 1814) of a romance by Thomas Jefferson Hogg; a description of Shelley’s Philosophical View of Reform; a manuscript diary of Fabre d’Églantine; and a record by Dr Wilhelm Weissenborn of Goethe’s last days and death. He also discovers a Narrative of a Prisoner of War under Napoleon (published in Blackwood’s Magazine), an unknown pamphlet by Bishop George Berkeley, some unpublished writings of William Hayley relating to William Cowper, and a unique copy of the Tales of Terror.

Dowden’s wide interests and scholarly methods make his influence on criticism both sound and stimulating, and his own ideals are well described in his essay on The Interpretation of Literature in his Transcripts and Studies. As commissioner of education in Ireland (1896–1901), trustee of the National Library of Ireland, secretary of the Irish Liberal Union and vice-president of the Irish Unionist Alliance, he enforces his view that literature should not be divorced from practical life. His biographical/critical concepts, particularly in connection with Shakespeare, are played with by Stephen Dedalus in the library chapter of James Joyce‘s Ulysses. Leslie Fiedler is to play with them again in The Stranger in Shakespeare.

Dowden marries twice, first to Mary Clerke in 1866, and secondly in 1895 to Elizabeth Dickinson West, daughter of the dean of St Patrick’s. His daughter by his first wife, Hester Dowden, is a well-known spiritualist medium.

Dowden dies in Dublin on April 4, 1913. His Letters are published in 1914 by Elizabeth and Hilda Dowden.

A Dublin City Council plaque commemorating Dowden is unveiled on November 29, 2016.


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Death of James Orr, Weaver, Radical & Poet

James Orr, weaver, radical, and poet, dies on April 24, 1816.

Orr is the son of James Orr, who farms a few acres and is a linen weaver. His mother’s name is unknown. They live in the small village of Ballycarry, in the parish of Broadisland, County Antrim. He is an only child, born when his parents are middle-aged. They are unwilling to risk sending him to school, so they carefully educate him at home, his father having been very well educated. A near-contemporary source George Pepper (1829), claims that the youngster is something of a prodigy, able to read Spectator essays at the age of six. Later in life, partly thanks to membership of a local reading society, he is remarkably well read. Handloom weavers are reputedly one of the most literate and politically radical groups in the period, and he certainly fits the stereotype. Pepper also claims that William Orr is James Orr’s uncle, and that the younger man lives for three years with William Orr and his family, where his literary talents are nurtured and where he develops an interest in radical politics. Other sources do not support this account, but if there is a relationship it might explain an almost morbid interest in assizes, executions, and gallows, evident in several poems. This also might have been prompted by witnessing William Orr’s trial and execution.

Pepper “heard from good authority” that Orr in 1797 is secretary to the Antrim Association, of which William Orr is president; presumably this means the Society of United Irishmen. He sings a patriotic song called “The Irishman,” one of his most celebrated compositions, at a meeting of that body. The earliest publications traced are poems published pseudonymously (1796–97) in the Northern Star newspaper. This paper, edited by Samuel Neilson, is sympathetic to United Irish views, and it is clear that Orr, like many of his neighbours, is actively involved in the 1798 rebellion. Several poems dealing with the events of June 1798, provide a rare participant’s perspective. He takes part in the skirmish at Donegore, and flees after the defeat at the Battle of Antrim. Local sources record his successful efforts to prevent cruelty and looting by his colleagues. He goes into hiding in an Irish-speaking area, perhaps in the Glens of Antrim or in the Sperrin Mountains. After a short time, he escapes to the United States, but unlike many of his former comrades he finds himself unable to settle there, and very soon returns home to Ballycarry, and thenceforth makes his living as a weaver. In 1800, he seeks to join the militia set up to counter a feared Napoleonic invasion, but the local gentry in command rejects his application because of his United Irish associations.

Orr’s first verses are composed at meetings of a local singing school, where rival versifiers produce impromptu verses for the company to sing to the psalm tunes being practised, and he later writes songs for masonic meetings. He publishes poems in the Belfast newspapers. A few carefully written essays on morality and education, signed “Censor, Ballycarry,” are apparently also his work. A collection of poems is published in 1804, with almost 400 subscribers, and another selection is published in 1817 after his death by his friend Archibald McDowell. Orr had requested that the proceeds should go to help the poor of Ballycarry. His poems are an excellent source of information about the life and concerns of a fairly humble stratum of late eighteenth-century Ulster society.

Many of Orr’s best poems deal with subjects of interest to his community – weaving, social life, and farming – and are written in the Scots language still widely spoken in the area. He expertly uses Scots stanza forms, and joyously participates in the almost competitive composition of verse typical of the Scots tradition. Several of his poems rework themes found in Robert Burns or other earlier writers. His An Irish Cottier’s Death and Burial is derived from a Burns poem, The Cottier’s Saturday Night, but later critics acknowledge that the Orr poem is much more successful. He and his friend Samuel Thomson are pioneers in the use of written Scots in Ulster and are regarded as the two most skillful Scots poets in Ulster. Both are celebrated in their day, and their work in Scots has been rediscovered in the twentieth-century revival of interest in the traditional literature and history of the north of Ireland.

Orr’s verse in standard English is equally competent, even more ambitious and almost as interesting. The best of his work, particularly in Scots, is characterised by pleasing cadences and assured control of tone and technique. His novel and generally impressive experiments with soliloquies, verse epistles, and versified direct speech, in English and Scots, parallel his interest in extending the registers in which he could use the vernacular Scots language. He seems not to have known of William Wordsworth‘s poetry, but, apparently independently and arguably more successfully, produces verse written in “the language really used by men” (Wordsworth, preface to Lyrical Ballads (1798)). As well as fascinating foreshadowings of romanticism, his work more often reveals the influence of the enlightenment and of New Light presbyterianism. He is a member of the congregation of the Rev. John Bankhead, whose theological views are decidedly liberal, tending even towards unitarianism. His poems provide a great deal of evidence on his reading, interests, radical aspirations and convictions; and in them and in the prose essays, the reader encounters a humane and generous personality. Like many other United Irishmen, he is an enthusiastic freemason, and believes that freemasonry and education will help to usher in a peaceful millennium. His poetry reveals humanitarian concerns, not yet common in the period. He opposess slavery and cruelty to animals and children and expresses support for a contemporary popular rising in Haiti. In 1812, he signs a petition in favour of Catholic emancipation.

Orr never marries. His friend McDowell believes that the resulting lack of domestic comforts drives the poet to socialise in taverns, and it is said that local fame and popularity encourages his excessive drinking. He suffers from ill health in later life. A neglected cold in 1815 leads to tuberculosis. He dies on April 24, 1816, and is buried in the old Templecorran graveyard at Ballycarry. Some years later, freemasons erect an impressive monument over the grave.

Orr’s poems are republished by a group of local enthusiasts in 1935. Another selection appears in 1992. A plaque put up by the local district council commemorates “the bard of Ballycarry,” probably the most significant eighteenth-century English-language poet in Ulster.

(From: “Orr, James” by Linde Lunney, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)


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Birth of Eleanor Charlotte Butler, Recluse of Llangollen

Eleanor Charlotte Butler, recluse of Llangollen, is born in Cambrai, France, on May 11, 1739.

Butler is the youngest daughter of Walter Butler of Garryricken, County Tipperary, and his wife, Ellen (née Morres), of Latargh, County Tipperary. Her family are members of the old Catholic gentry, and her father is the sole lineal representative of James Butler, 2nd Duke of Ormonde. In 1740 her family returns to the Garryricken estate, where she spends part of her childhood. She is educated by the English Benedictine nuns of the convent of Our Lady of Consolation in Cambrai, where her Jacobite grand-aunt is a pensioner. Reared in the liberal and anti-clerical environment at Cambrai, she is open about her opposition to Irish Catholicism. She is also well read in literature.

By the time Butler returns to Ireland, her brother John had claimed the family titles and was recognised as 16th Earl of Ormond. Though he never uses the title, his sisters are recognised as the daughters of an earl. As the family is impoverished, and she is not disposed to marriage, a decade is passed in unhappiness. Then, in 1768, the thirteen-year-old Sarah Ponsonby arrives in Kilkenny to attend a local school. Following her visit to the Butler home at Kilkenny Castle, and despite the difference in age, the two form an immediate friendship and corresponded secretly, having discovered their mutual interest in the arts and Rousseau‘s ideal of pastoral retirement.

Ponsonby, upon finishing school, is sent to live with relatives at nearby Woodstock Estate, and there is subject to the uninvited attention of a middle-aged guardian. Butler is discontented with her life and the prospects of her family’s wish to send her back to Cambrai, so the two plan to leave their difficulties behind and settle in England. In their first attempt to flee in March 1778, they leave for Waterford disguised as men and wielding pistols, but their families manage to catch up with them. Butler is then sent to the home of her brother-in-law, Thomas ‘Monarch’ Kavanagh of Borris, County Carlow, but makes a second, successful attempt and runs away to find Ponsonby at Woodstock Estate. Her persistence wins out when both families finally capitulate and accepted their plans to live together.

Butler and Ponsonby set out for Wales in May 1778 and, after an extensive tour of Wales and Shropshire, eventually settle in Llangollen Vale, where they rent a cottage which is renamed Plas Newydd. They are accompanied by Mary Carryll, a former servant of the Woodstock household, who remains in their service until her death in 1809. Having made a deliberate decision to retire from the world, they spend the greater part of their days corresponding with friends, reading, building up a large library and making alterations to Plas Newydd, which takes on a fashionable Gothic look. Their garden, landscaped under their direction, becomes a popular attraction for visitors. Butler meticulously records their daily routine in a series of journals, some of which are now lost.

Their seclusion, eccentricities, semi-masculine dress and short-cropped powdered hair gain them notoriety, and it becomes fashionable to call on them. Their numerous and illustrious visitors include Hester Lynch Piozzi, Charles and Erasmus Darwin, Sir Walter Scott, Sir Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Gloucester and Josiah Wedgwood. In 1792 they entertain Stéphanie Caroline Anne Syms, later that year to become the wife of Lord Edward FitzGerald, and her mother, Madame de Genlis. Following the arrest of Edward FitzGerald in 1798, Stéphanie and her suite flee to London and on May 27 pass through Llangollen, where the events in Dublin are already known. On hearing that she is staying in the local inn, Butler and Ponsonby invite her to call in. However, when she wishes to stay for the day, their apprehension of Jacobinism leads them to persuade her “principally for her own sake and a little for [our] own to proceed as fast and as incognito as possible for London.”

Both Anna Seward and William Wordsworth, who stay at Plas Newydd, write poems celebrating their friendship, and Lord Byron sends them a copy of The Corsair. Owing to her support of the Bourbons, Butler is sent the Croix St. Louis, which she wears about her neck. Though generally considered a hospitable couple, Seward, who is a good friend, admits that the “incessant homage” they received could make Butler “haughty and imperious,” while Lady Lonsdale thinks her “very clever, very odd.” Their celebrity does have its drawbacks: an article in the General Evening Post of July 24, 1790, entitled “Extraordinary female affection,” suggests indirectly that their relationship is unnatural. Butler is particularly angered by this publicity and appeals to Edmund Burke for legal advice. Their retirement is also continually dogged by financial difficulties. They live mainly off their respective allowances and Butler’s royal pension (granted through the influence of Lady Frances Douglas), but spend beyond their means and are often in debt. To add to their problems, Butler receives no mention in her father’s will. However, the Gothic eccentricities of their cottage, which they succeed over time in purchasing, and garden attract even the interest of Queen Charlotte.

Though it is claimed that neither woman spends a night away from Plas Newydd, in January 1786 they stay with their friends, the Barretts of Oswestry, and that September they visit Sir Henry Bridgeman of Weston Park, near Staffordshire. In June 1797 they take their only holiday, at the coastal resort of Barmouth. Despite their isolation they are well informed about international events and society gossip. The Irish serjeant-at-law Charles Kendal Bushe recalls how they gave him all the news of Dublin, London, Cheltenham, and Paris.

In later years Butler’s eyesight deteriorates, preventing her from keeping her journal. She is secretly painted as an old woman with Ponsonby by Lady Mary Leighton and sketched by Lady Henrietta Delamere. A distinctive, anonymous silhouette shows the two generously proportioned women in traditional riding habits (National Portrait Gallery, London). Butler dies on June 2, 1829, and is buried alongside Carryll at Llangollen church. Sarah Ponsonby is subsequently buried with them.

(From: “Butler, Lady (Charlotte) Eleanor” by Frances Clarke, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie)


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Birth of Richard Chenevix Trench, Anglican Archbishop & Poet

Richard Chenevix Trench, Anglican archbishop and poet, is born in Dublin on September 9, 1807.

Trench is the son of Richard Trench (1774–1860), barrister-at-law, and the Dublin writer Melesina Chenevix (1768–1827). His elder brother is Francis Chenevix Trench. He is educated at Harrow School, and graduates from Trinity College, Cambridge in 1829. In 1830 he visits Spain. While incumbent of Curdridge Chapel near Bishop’s Waltham in Hampshire, he publishes The Story of Justin Martyr and Other Poems (1835), which is favourably received, and is followed by Sabbation, Honor Neale, and other Poems (1838), and Poems from Eastern Sources (1842). These volumes reveal the author as the most gifted of the immediate disciples of William Wordsworth, with a warmer colouring and more pronounced ecclesiastical sympathies than the master, and strong affinities to Alfred, Lord Tennyson, John Keble and Richard Monckton Milnes.

In 1841 Trench resigns his living to become curate to Samuel Wilberforce, then rector of Alverstoke, and upon Wilberforce’s promotion to the deanery of Westminster Abbey in 1845 he is presented to the rectory of Itchen Stoke. In 1845 and 1846 he preaches the Hulsean Lectures, and in the former year is made examining chaplain to Wilberforce, now Bishop of Oxford. He is shortly afterwards appointed to a theological chair at King’s College London.

Trench joins the Canterbury Association on March 27, 1848, on the same day as Samuel Wilberforce and Wilberforce’s brother Robert.

In 1851 Trench establishes his fame as a philologist by The Study of Words, originally delivered as lectures to the pupils of the Diocesan Training School, Winchester. His stated purpose is to demonstrate that in words, even taken singly, “there are boundless stores of moral and historic truth, and no less of passion and imagination laid up” — an argument which he supports by a number of apposite illustrations. It is followed by two little volumes of similar character — English Past and Present (1855) and A Select Glossary of English Words (1859). All have gone through numerous editions and have contributed much to promote the historical study of the English tongue. Another great service to English philology is rendered by his paper, read before the Philological Society, On some Deficiencies in our English Dictionaries (1857), which gives the first impulse to the great Oxford English Dictionary. He envisages a totally new dictionary that is a “lexicon totius Anglicitatis.” As one of the three founders of the dictionary, he expresses his vision that it will be “an entirely new Dictionary; no patch upon old garments, but a new garment throughout.”

Trench’s advocacy of a revised translation of the New Testament (1858) helps promote another great national project. In 1856 he publishes a valuable essay on Pedro Calderón de la Barca, with a translation of a portion of Life is a Dream in the original metre. In 1841 he had published his Notes on the Parables of our Lord, and in 1846 his Notes on the Miracles, popular works which are treasuries of erudite and acute illustration.

In 1856 Trench becomes Dean of Westminster Abbey, a position which suits him. Here he introduces evening nave services. In January 1864 he is advanced to the post of Archbishop of Dublin. Arthur Penrhyn Stanley had been first choice, but is rejected by the Church of Ireland, and, according to Bishop Wilberforce’s correspondence, Trench’s appointment is favoured neither by the Prime Minister nor the Lord Lieutenant. It is, moreover, unpopular in Ireland, and a blow to English literature, yet it turns out to be fortunate. He cannot prevent the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland, though he resists with dignity. But, when the disestablished communion has to be reconstituted under the greatest difficulties, it is important that the occupant of his position should be a man of a liberal and genial spirit.

This is the work of the remainder of Trench’s life. It exposes him at times to considerable abuse, but he comes to be appreciated and, when he resigns his archbishopric because of poor health in November 1884, clergy and laity unanimously record their sense of his “wisdom, learning, diligence, and munificence.” He finds time for Lectures on Medieval Church History (1878), and his poetical works are rearranged and collected in two volumes (last edition, 1885). He dies at Eaton Square, London, on March 28, 1886, after a lingering illness. He is buried at Westminster Abbey.

George W. E. Russell describes Trench as “a man of singularly vague and dreamy habits” and recounts the following anecdote of his old age:

“He once went back to pay a visit to his successor, Lord Plunket. Finding himself back again in his old palace, sitting at his old dinner-table, and gazing across it at his wife, he lapsed in memory to the days when he was master of the house, and gently remarked to Mrs. Trench, ‘I am afraid, my love, that we must put this cook down among our failures.'”


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Death of Lady Eleanor Charlotte Butler, Recluse of Llangollen

Lady Eleanor Charlotte Butler, daughter of the 16th Earl of Ormonde and recluse of Llangollen, dies on June 2, 1829.

Butler is born in Cambrai, France, the youngest daughter of Walter Butler, 16th Earl of Ormonde, of Garryricken, County Tipperary, and his wife, Ellen (née Morres), of Latargh, County Tipperary. Her family are members of the old Catholic gentry, and her father is the sole lineal representative of James Butler, 2nd Duke of Ormonde. In 1740 her family returns to the Garryricken estate, where she spends part of her childhood. She is educated by the English Benedictine nuns of the convent of Our Lady of Consolation in Cambrai, where her Jacobite grand-aunt is a pensioner. Reared in the liberal and anti-clerical environment at Cambrai, she is open about her opposition to Irish Catholicism. She is also well read in literature.

By the time Butler returns to Ireland, her brother John has claimed the family titles and is recognised as 17th Earl of Ormonde. Though he never uses the title, his sisters are recognised as the daughters of an earl. As the family is impoverished, and she is not disposed to marriage, a decade is passed in unhappiness. Then in 1768 the thirteen-year-old Sarah Ponsonby arrives in Kilkenny to attend a local school. Following her visit to the Butler home at Kilkenny Castle, and despite the difference in age, the two form an immediate friendship and correspond secretly, having discovered their mutual interest in the arts and Jean-Jacques Rousseau‘s ideal of pastoral retirement.

Ponsonby, on finishing school, is sent to live with relatives at the nearby Woodstock Estate, and there is subject to the uninvited attention of a middle-aged guardian. Butler is discontented with her life and the prospects of her family’s wish to send her back to Cambrai, so the two plan to leave their difficulties behind and settle in England. In their first attempt to flee in March 1778, they leave for Waterford disguised as men and wielding pistols, but their families manage to catch up with them. Butler is then sent to the home of her brother-in-law Thomas ‘Monarch’ Kavanagh of Borris, County Carlow, but makes a second, successful attempt and runs away to find Ponsonby at the Woodstock Estate. Her persistence wins out when both families finally capitulate and accept their plans to live together.

The two set out for Wales in May 1778 and, after an extensive tour of Wales and Shropshire, eventually settle in Llangollen Vale, where they rent a cottage which is renamed Plas Newydd. They are accompanied by Mary Carryl, a former servant of the Woodstock household, who remains in their service until her death in 1809. Having made a deliberate decision to retire from the world, they spend the greater part of their days corresponding with friends, reading, building up a large library and making alterations to Plas Newydd, which takes on a fashionable Gothic look. Their garden, landscaped under their direction, becomes a popular attraction for visitors. Butler meticulously records their daily routine in a series of journals, some of which are now lost.

Their seclusion, eccentricities, semi-masculine dress and short-cropped powdered hair gain them notoriety, and it becomes fashionable to call on them. Their numerous and illustrious visitors include Hester Lynch Piozzi, Charles and Erasmus Darwin, Sir Walter Scott, Sir Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Gloucester and Josiah Wedgwood. In 1792 they entertain Pamela Sims, later that year to become the wife of Lord Edward FitzGerald, and her mother Madame de Genlis. Following the arrest of Edward FitzGerald in 1798, Pamela and her suite flee to London and on May 27 pass through Llangollen, where the events in Dublin are already known. On hearing that Pamela FitzGerald is staying in the local inn, Butler and Ponsonby invite her to call in. However, when Pamela wishes to stay for the day, their apprehension of Jacobinism leads them to persuade her “principally for her own sake and a little for [our] own to proceed as fast and as incognito as possible for London.”

Both Anna Seward and William Wordsworth, who stay at Plas Newydd, write poems celebrating their friendship, and Lord Byron sends them a copy of The corsair. Owing to her support of the Bourbons, Butler is sent the Croix St. Louis, which she wears about her neck. Their celebrity does have its drawbacks: an article in the General Evening Post of July 24, 1790, entitled ‘Extraordinary female affection’, suggests indirectly that their relationship is unnatural. Butler is particularly angered by this publicity and appeals to Edmund Burke for legal advice. Their retirement is also continually dogged by financial difficulties. They live mainly off their respective allowances and Butler’s royal pension, granted through the influence of Lady Frances Douglas, but spend beyond their means and are often in debt. To add to their problems, Butler receives no mention in her father’s will. However, the Gothic eccentricities of their cottage, which they succeed over time in purchasing, and garden attract even the interest of Queen Charlotte.

Though it is claimed that neither woman spent a night away from Plas Newydd, in January 1786 they stay with their friends the Barretts of Oswestry, and that September they visit Sir Henry Bridgeman of Weston Park, near Staffordshire. In June 1797 they take their only holiday, at the coastal resort of Barmouth. Despite their isolation they are well informed about international events and society gossip. The Irish serjeant-at-law Charles Kendal Bushe recalls how they gave him all the news of Dublin, London, Cheltenham, and Paris. In later years Butler’s eyesight deteriorates, preventing her from keeping her journal. She is secretly painted as an old woman with Ponsonby by Lady Mary Leighton and sketched by Lady Henrietta Delamere. A distinctive, anonymous silhouette shows the two generously proportioned women in traditional riding habits (National Portrait Gallery, London).

Butler dies on June 2, 1829, and is buried alongside Mary Carryl at St. Collen’s Church in Llangollen. Sarah Ponsonby is subsequently buried with them.

(From: “Butler, Lady (Charlotte) Eleanor” by Frances Clarke, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie)


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The Death of Stopford Brooke, Chaplain & Writer

Stopford Augustus Brooke, churchman, royal chaplain and writer, dies in Ewhurst, Surrey, England, on March 18, 1916.

Brooke is born in the rectory of Glendoen, near Letterkenny, County Donegal on November 14, 1832, the eldest son of the Rev. Richard Sinclair Brooke, later incumbent of the Mariners’ Church, Kingstown (now Dún Laoghaire). His maternal grandfather, Joseph Stopford, is then rector of the parish. He is educated at Trinity College, Dublin. He is ordained in the Church of England in 1857, and holds various charges in London. From 1863 to 1865 he is chaplain to Victoria, Princess Royal in Berlin. In 1869, with his brother Edward, he makes long tours of Counties Donegal and Sligo, and spends much time at Kells, County Meath studying Irish antiquities. Between 1866 and 1875 he is the minister at St. James’s Chapel, a proprietary chapel. After it closes he takes services at Bedford Chapel, Bloomsbury where he continues to attract large congregations. In 1875, he becomes chaplain in ordinary to Queen Victoria. But in 1880 he secedes from the Church, being no longer able to accept its leading dogmas, and officiates as an independent preacher for some years at Bedford Chapel, Bloomsbury.

Bedford Chapel is pulled down about 1894, and from that time Brooke has no church of his own, but his eloquence and powerful religious personality continues to make themselves felt among a wide circle. A man of independent means, he is always keenly interested in literature and art, and a fine critic of both. The two-volume Life and Letters of Stopford Brooke, written by his son-in-law L. P. Jacks and published in 1917, contains many details of different facets of his life.

In 1890-1891 Brooke takes the lead in raising the funds to purchase Dove Cottage, William Wordsworth’s home in Grasmere from 1800 to 1808, and establishing it “for the eternal possession of those who love English poetry all over the world.” Dove Cottage is now administered by the Wordsworth Trust.

Brooke publishes in 1865 his Life and Letters of FW Robertson (of Brighton), and in 1876 writes an admirable primer of English Literature, followed in 1892 by The History of Early English Literature down to the accession of Alfred the Great, and English Literature from the Beginnings to the Norman Conquest (1898).

Brooke gives the inaugural lecture to the Irish Literary Society, London, on “The Need and Use of Getting Irish Literature into the English Tongue” at Bloomsbury House, March 11, 1893. He delivers a sermon on “The Kingdom of God Within” to the International Council of Unitarian and Other Liberal Religious Thinkers and Workers, meeting in London in May 1901. He continues preaching at Bedford Chapel and to unitarian congregations throughout Britain until forced to retire because of ill-health in 1895.

Brooke lives in London until 1914 and then retires to Ewhurst, Surrey, where he dies on March 18, 1916. His published letters record that his work brought him into touch with most of his famous contemporaries – including Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Philip Burne-Jones, William Morris, James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce, James Martineau and Matthew Arnold.


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Birth of Stopford Brooke, Chaplain & Writer

stopford-brooke

Stopford Augustus Brooke, churchman, royal chaplain and writer, is born in the rectory of Glendoen, near Letterkenny, County Donegal on November 14, 1832. His maternal grandfather, Joseph Stopford, is then rector of the parish.

Brooke is the eldest son of the Rev. Richard Sinclair Brooke, later incumbent of the Mariners’ Church, Kingstown (now Dún Laoghaire), and is educated at Trinity College, Dublin. He is ordained in the Church of England in 1857, and holds various charges in London. From 1863 to 1865 he is chaplain to Victoria, Princess Royal in Berlin. In 1869, with his brother Edward, he makes long tours of Counties Donegal and Sligo, and spends much time at Kells, County Meath studying Irish antiquities. Between 1866 and 1875 he is the minister at St. James’s Chapel, a Proprietary Chapel. After it closes he takes services at Bedford Chapel, Bloomsbury where he continues to attract large congregations. In 1875, he becomes chaplain in ordinary to Queen Victoria. But in 1880 he secedes from the Church, being no longer able to accept its leading dogmas, and officiates as an independent preacher for some years at Bedford chapel, Bloomsbury.

Bedford chapel is pulled down about 1894, and from that time Brooke has no church of his own, but his eloquence and powerful religious personality continues to make themselves felt among a wide circle. A man of independent means, he is always keenly interested in literature and art, and a fine critic of both. The two-volume Life and Letters of Stopford Brooke, written by his son-in-law L. P. Jacks and published in 1917, contains many details of different facets of his life.

In 1890-1891 Brooke takes the lead in raising the funds to purchase Dove Cottage, William Wordsworth’s home in Grasmere from 1800 to 1808, and establishing it “for the eternal possession of those who love English poetry all over the world.” Dove Cottage is now administered by the Wordsworth Trust.

Brooke publishes in 1865 his Life and Letters of FW Robertson (of Brighton), and in 1876 writes an admirable primer of English Literature, followed in 1892 by The History of Early English Literature down to the accession of Alfred the Great, and English Literature from the Beginnings to the Norman Conquest (1898).

Brooke gives the inaugural lecture to the Irish Literary Society, London, on “The Need and Use of Getting Irish Literature into the English Tongue” at Bloomsbury House, March 11, 1893. He delivers a sermon on “The Kingdom of God Within” to the International Council of Unitarian and Other Liberal Religious Thinkers and Workers, meeting in London in May 1901.

Stopford Brooke dies on March 18, 1916. His published letters record that his work brought him into touch with most of his famous contemporaries – including Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Philip Burne-Jones, William Morris, James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce, James Martineau and Matthew Arnold.


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Birth of Sir Aubrey (Hunt) de Vere

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Sir Aubrey (Hunt) de Vere, 2nd Baronet, Anglo-Irish poet and landowner, is born on August 28, 1788.

De Vere is the son of Sir Vere Hunt, 1st Baronet and Eleanor Pery, daughter of William Pery, 1st Baron Glentworth. He is educated at Harrow School, where he is a childhood friend of Lord Byron, and Trinity College, Dublin. He marries Mary Spring Rice, the daughter of Stephen Edward Rice and Catherine Spring, and sister of Thomas Spring Rice, 1st Baron Monteagle of Brandon, in 1807. He succeeds to his father’s title in 1818.

The Hunt/de Vere family estate of 300 years (1657–1957), including the period of the de Vere Baronetcy of Curragh, is the present day Curraghchase Forest Park, in County Limerick. De Vere spends most of his life on the estate and is closely involved in its management. He suffers much trouble from his ownership of the island of Lundy, which his father, who was not much of a businessman, had unwisely purchased in 1802, and which becomes a heavy drain on the family’s finances. Sir Vere is never able to find a purchaser for Lundy, and it takes his son until 1834 to dispose of it.

De Vere stands for election in the 1820 General Election and comes in third with 2,921 votes.

De Vere changes his surname from Hunt to de Vere in 1832, in reference to his Earl of Oxford ancestors, dating back to Aubrey de Vere I, a tenant-in-chief in England of William the Conqueror in 1086. He serves as High Sheriff of County Limerick in 1811.

De Vere is a poet. William Wordsworth calls his sonnets the most perfect of the age. These and his drama, Mary Tudor: An Historical Drama, are published by his son, the poet Aubrey Thomas de Vere, in 1875 and 1884.

De Vere produces numerous works over his lifetime. The most notable are Ode to the Duchess of Angouleme (1815), Julian the Apostate: A Dramatic Poem (1822), The Duke of Mercia: An Historical Drama [with] The Lamentation of Ireland, and Other Poems (1823), A Song of Faith: Devout Exercises and Sonnets and his most famous work, Mary Tudor: An Historical Drama.

Sir Aubrey de Vere dies on July 5, 1846.


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Birth of Aubrey Thomas de Vere, Critic & Poet

aubrey-de-vereAubrey Thomas de Vere, a critic and poet who adapts early Gaelic tales, is born on January 10, 1814 at Curraghchase House, now in ruins at Curraghchase Forest ParkCurraghchase Forest Park, Kilcornan, County Limerick.

Hunt de Vere is the third son of Sir Aubrey de Vere, 2nd Baronet and his wife Mary Spring Rice, daughter of Stephen Edward Rice and Catherine Spring, of Mount Trenchard, County Limerick. He is a nephew of Thomas Spring Rice, 1st Baron Monteagle of Brandon and a younger brother of Sir Stephen de Vere, 4th Baronet. His sister Ellen marries Robert O’Brien, the brother of William Smith O’Brien. In 1832, his father drops the original surname “Hunt” by royal licence, assuming the surname “de Vere.”

de Vere is strongly influenced by his friendship with the astronomer Sir William Rowan Hamilton through whom he comes to a knowledge and reverent admiration for William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He is educated privately at home and in 1832 enters Trinity College, Dublin, where he reads Immanuel Kant and Coleridge. Later he visits Oxford, Cambridge, and Rome, and comes under the potent influence of John Henry Newman. He is also a close friend of Henry Taylor.

The characteristics of de Vere’s poetry are high seriousness and a fine religious enthusiasm. His research in questions of faith leads him to the Roman Catholic Church where in 1851 he is received into the Church by Cardinal Henry Edward Manning in Avignon. In many of his poems, notably in the volume of sonnets called St. Peters Chains (1888), he makes rich additions to devotional verse. For a few years he holds a professorship, under Newman, in the Catholic University in Dublin.

In A Book of Irish Verse, W. B. Yeats describes de Vere’s poetry as having “less architecture than the poetry of Ferguson and Allingham, and more meditation. Indeed, his few but ever memorable successes are enchanted islands in gray seas of stately impersonal reverie and description, which drift by and leave no definite recollection. One needs, perhaps, to perfectly enjoy him, a Dominican habit, a cloister, and a breviary.”

de Vere also visits the Lake Country of England, and stays under Wordsworth’s roof, which he calls the greatest honour of his life. His veneration for Wordsworth is singularly shown in later life, when he never omits a yearly pilgrimage to the grave of the poet until advanced age makes the journey impossible.

de Vere is of tall and slender physique, thoughtful and grave in character, of exceeding dignity and grace of manner, and retains his vigorous mental powers to a great age. According to Helen Grace Smith, he is one of the most profoundly intellectual poets of his time. His census return for 1901 lists his profession as “Author.”

Aubrey de Vere dies at Curraghchase on January 20, 1902, at the age of eighty-eight. As he never married, the name of de Vere at his death becomes extinct for the second time, and is assumed by his nephew.