Monthly Archives: March 2017

They Asked For A Paper–Charlotte Yonge Letters at the ABL

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Borrowing its title from a collection of essays by C. S. Lewis, this series, “They Asked For A Paper,”  highlights interesting items from the Armstrong Browning Library’s collection and suggests topics for further research.

By Melinda Creech
Manuscripts Specialist, Armstrong Browning Library

Charlotte Mary Yonge

The Armstrong Browning Library owns three letters from English novelist Charlotte Yonge. The first is from Yonge to Anna Butler, written from Otterbourne, September 19, [1856].

Letter from C. M. Yonge to [Anna] Butler. 19 September [1856]. Page 1.

Letter from C. M. Yonge to [Anna] Butler. 19 September [1856]. Pages 2 and 3.

My dear Miss Butler

Your note came as I was meditating enquiries of Glympton on your whereabouts, and just in time for the enclosed, which I hope you will be able to send on to Derby at once as we
[Page 2]
are rather behindhand this month. I am glad your trip was successful, we have made a little one to Sidmouth, a grand affair for us. There was a lame grey haired lady with two foreign looking young ones whom we always called Mde Bronevska and her grand daughters
[Page 3]
making their English visit

Charlotte Mitchell, Senior Honorary Lecturer at University College London and editor of The Letters of Charlotte Mary Yonge (1823-1901), points out that the letter, although undated, is likely from 1856. The lame woman mentioned in the letter, Madame de Bronevska, and her granddaughters are characters in Butler’s story called “Likes and Dislikes,” serialized in Monthly Packet, of which Charlotte Yonge was the first editor, July 1855-Nov 1856. They first appear in the issue of September 1856. Mitchell also points out that Anna Butler’s brother, the Very Rev. William John Butler, was Vicar of Wantage and Dean of Lincoln, quite a well-known Victorian Tractarian clergyman & founder of the Anglican nunnery at Wantage.

A second letter, written on April 5, 1876, has an unknown recipient.

Letter from C. M. Yonge to [Unknown]. 5 April 1876. Page 1.

Letter from C. M. Yonge to [Unknown]. 5 April 1876. Pages 2 and 3.

Dear Sir

I am afraid I cannot boast of much if any fact for the foundation of the Heir of Redclyffe. I had the scenery of Clovelly in my eye when describing Redclyffe bay
[Page 2]
and Malvern with St. Mildred’s, but all the rest is imaginary. The print is Albert Durer’s Knight of Death — There are many photographs of it — and “Sintram” translated from the German is published both
[Page 3]
by Master’s & Warne.

In this letter Yonge answers questions about the “foundation” of her novel The Heir of Redclyffe and the origin of a print in the book. The letter is part of an album of letters collected by John Rooker, possibly the vicar of Coldharbour, Surrey.

A third undated letter is written to Miss Fitzgerald, probably Mabel Purefoy Fitzgerald, from Elderfield. Yonge lived at Elderfield from 1862 until her death in 1897.

Letters from C. M. Yonge to [Mabel Purefoy] Fitzgerald. 28 March [ny]. Page 1.

Letters from C. M. Yonge to [Mabel Purefoy] Fitzgerald. 28 March [ny]. Pages 2 and 3.


My dear Miss Fitzgerald

I know of plenty of dialogues for boys, but those for girls are more uncommon. –
One that would do with a little adapting is the story of the geese that ate the brandy cherries, seemed to die, were plucked
[Page 2]
and came to life again
It is in the G F S book Stories for Our Girls but is told in narrative and would require arranging
Miss Morshead is coming to spend the day with me tomorrow and if she knows of anything better, I will write –
We had some [wax] [works] last
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night, which did famously with a clever exhibition.

In this letter Yonge suggests some “dialogues for girls” and mentions a wax works exhibition that they had attended.

The Armstrong Browning Library  has an 1857 copy of Yonge’s The Heir of Redclyffe with this inscription: “Mary Fitzgerald on her 16th birthday / from her Mother/ 17 July 1859 / London,” possibly in the hand of Elizabeth Purefoy Fitzgerald.

The book also contains a latter inscription: “Never to be/lent or taken/M.P.FG.”

It is very likely that the inscription above belongs to Mabel Purefoy Fitzgerald.

These letters pose a number of questions: Who was the recipient of the second letter? Does this information about The Heir of Redclyffe offer any new perspectives? Why was Albert Durer’s print chosen? What is the date of the third letter? Is the recipient of the third letter really Mabel Purefoy Fitzgerald? What is the story of the geese that ate the brandied cherries? Who is Miss Morshead? What became of the “dialogues for girls”? What was the wax works exhibition? Is “Mary Fitzgerald” in the inscription Mabel’s sister? If so, was she born on January 17, 1843, and is the inscription in her mother’s hand or her grandmother’s hand?

They Asked For A Paper–Irish Poets at the ABL

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Borrowing its title from a collection of essays by C. S. Lewis, this series, “They Asked For A Paper,”  highlights interesting items from the Armstrong Browning Library’s collection and suggests topics for further research.

By Melinda Creech
Manuscripts Specialist, Armstrong Browning Library

March 15-17, 2017, Baylor will be hosting the 23rd Annual Beall Poetry Festival, featuring Catriona O’Reilly, Margaret Mills Harper, Adrian Rice, Micheal O’Siadhail, and a poetry panel, moderated by Chloe Honum. The festival this year has a decidedly Irish tenor, featuring three Irish poets and an American Yeats scholar, who teaches at the University of Limerick, as the festival’s guests. The festival will also end on St. Patrick’s Day.

However, visits by poets to the Baylor campus were not exclusive to the twenty-first century. Dr. A. J. Armstrong, head of the English Department at Baylor for 40 years, from 1912-1952, made a conscious effort to invite famous literary men and women to speak at Baylor, including many poets, such as Robert Frost, Vachel Lindsay, Amy Lowell, Carl Sandburg, and William Butler Yeats.

The Beall Poetry Festival has invited Irish poets in the past, most notably Seamus Heaney, who spoke here in 2013, shortly before his death. Dr. Armstrong, early in the twentieth century also invited Irish poets to speak at Baylor University.

Padraic Colum

Padraic Colum (1881-1972), Irish poet, novelist, dramatist, biographer, playwright, children’s author and collector of folklore, was one of the leading figures of the Irish Literary Revival. He visited Baylor University on January 23, 1929, giving a lecture on the musical, oral quality of poetry and leaving a manuscript copy of lines from his poem, “An Old Woman of the Roads.”

Padraic Colum. Lines from “An Old Woman of the Roads.” Autograph manuscript signed.

Och! but I’m weary of mist and dark,
And roads where there’s never a house nor bush,
And tired I am of bog and road,
And the crying wind and the lonesome hush!

 

Lennox Robinson

Esmé Stuart Lennox Robinson (1886-1958), an Irish dramatist, poet and theatre producer and director who was involved with the Abbey Theatre, visited Baylor February 11, 1932. The Abbey Irish Players performed at Baylor on February 20, 1932. These telegrams from the Robinsons’s agent accept the engagement and inform of their arrival:

Telegram from M. C. Turner to Dr. A. J. Armstrong, accepting an invitation to speak at Baylor University.

Telegram from M. C. Turner to Dr. A. J. Armstrong, informing him of the Robinsons’s arrival the following day via the Texas Special train.

 

George William Russell (AE)

George William Russell (AE) (1867-1935), an Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, artistic painter and Irish nationalist, spoke at Baylor on December 11, 1930. A manuscript copy of his poem, “Outcast,” is now in the collection at the Armstrong Browning Library.

George William Russell. “Outcast.” Autograph manuscript signed.

Sometimes when alone
at the dark close of day
Men meet an outlawed majesty
and hurry away.

They come to the lighted house,
They talk to their dear,
They crucify the mystery
with words of good cheer

When love and life are over
And light at an end
on the outcast majesty
They lean as a friend.

 

William Butler Yeats, holding a volume of William Blake’s Poetical Sketches. Yeats edited an edition of Blake’s collected works in 1893.

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), one of the greatest poets in the twentieth century, was the first Irishman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923.

Yeats lectured and read his poetry at Baylor on April 16, 1920. The Lariat, Baylor’s student newspaper, reports that he recounted several literary men who had influenced his life, remarking that “A number of those friends were slaves to intoxicants and their best poems … were written while they were somewhat in the state of sadness or dissipation. Yeats stated that he did not believe men had to lead a dissipated life to be great, but that it had somewhat of an influence over him.”

Letter from George Yeats to Mrs. A. J. Armstrong, 21 April 1920.

This is a transcription of a letter from George Yeats, William Butler Yeats’s wife, to Mrs. A. J. Armstrong. In the letter  George Yeats describes how much she and Willy enjoyed their visit to Baylor. The letter was probably transcribed by Lois Smith Douglas in preparation for her biography of Dr. A. J. Armstrong, Through Heaven’s Back Door. The whereabouts of the original letter is unknown.

The Armstrong Browning Library also has letters, archives, manuscripts, and books from many Irish poets from the nineteenth century, including George Darley, Aubrey de Vere, William Allingham, Lady Jane Wilde, Katharine Tynan, Richard D’Alton Williams, and Lizzie Mary Little.

They Asked For A Paper–Letter Fragment from the Captain of the HMS Terror

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Borrowing its title from a collection of essays by C. S. Lewis, this series, “They Asked For A Paper,”  highlights interesting items from the Armstrong Browning Library’s collection and suggests topics for further research.

By Melinda Creech
Manuscripts Specialist, Armstrong Browning Library

Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier (16 August 1796 – after 1848?)

On September 12, 2016 the wreck of the HMS Terror was discovered in Terror Bay, King William Island, in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago.

The HMS Terror had began her career as a bomb vessel, engaged in the War of 1812. In fact, it was the vision of the HMS Terror bombarding Fort McHenry that inspired Francis Scott Key to write “The Star Spangled Banner.” In 1836, the ship was refurbished for exploration, making trips to the Arctic (1836) and to the Antarctic (1839). After her trip to the Antarctic, she was again refurbished at Woolwich for a trip to the Arctic through the Northwest Passage.

HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, the two ships used by Sir John Franklin on his 1845 ill-fated search for the Northwest Passage. The ships became trapped in ice at King William Sound (Victoria Strait) for three years, leading to the deaths of all 135 men.

She set sail on May 19, 1845, but never returned. A message, dated April 22, 1848, and signed by Captains Crozier and Fitzjames, was found at point Victory stating that they were abandoning both the Terror and the Erebus. Mystery enveloped the fate of the ship and her crew until the discovery last year. Visit the Royal Museum Greenwich to find out more about the discovery of the HMS Terror.

Letter from Captain F. R. M. Crozier to Sir Thomas, 28 March [1842]. Page 1

Letter from Captain F. R. M. Crozier to Sir Thomas, 28 March [1842]. Page 2.

We at the Armstrong Browning Library have also re-discovered in our collection a fragment of a letter probably written in 1842, shortly before Captain Crozier began his fateful voyage. The letter states:

My dear Sir Thomas,

Thanks for yours of 26th which I received this day on my return from Ireland. I was before perfectly satisfied, and believe me my confidence has not been in the least shaken by Commander Beadons test, and very strange…

 

…write him so soon as I get a little of my bustle over.

It is possible that Sir Thomas was Sir Thomas Hamilton, 9th Earl of Haddington, who was the First Lord of the Admiralty at the time. Commander Beadon was conducting tests of lifebuoy in February and March of 1842 (Transactions of the Society, Instituted at London, for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce Royal Society of Arts Great Britain, Vol 54 (1843), 121). However, part of the letter is missing.

There is another interesting inscription in pencil at the bottom of the page:

Capt. Crozier —who commanded the same ship as Sir John Franklin’s expedition & was lost with him in 1843-6 . My brother was lost with him.

This letter was found with other letters removed  from an album of letters and autographs collected by Mr. Lewis R. Lucas. However, no one with the surname Lucas was found among the crew lists of either the Terror or the Erebus.

Mystery still shrouds the letter fragment. Who was Sir Thomas? Can we date the letter by Commander Beadon’s lifebuoy tests? What was very strange? What was Captain Crozier’s bustle? Who has the rest of the letter? Whose brother was lost in the expedition of the Terror?