Lona Manning's Blog

 This month marks the fifth anniversary of my blog, which explores social attitudes in Jane Austen's time, discusses her novels, reviews forgotten 18th century novels, and throws some occasional shade at the modern academy. ​The introductory post is here.  My "six simple questions for academics" post is here. Spoilers abound in my discussion of these forgotten novels, and I discuss 18th-century attitudes which I do not necessarily endorse. CMP#229  Three children's books--one plot. Also, who influenced whom? The Village School, William Henry Knight, detail      In my previous post , I looked at two books for children, published by two different authors, both featuring a spoiled young West Indian heiress coming to England and correcting her behaviour after receiving judicious instruction from her host family. These two books are examples of a then-popular genre for children's books, which combined morally improving narratives with inset fables, scientific discourses, dialogue, and history lectures. As I mentioned, a book by Thomas Day, Sandford and Merton, was an outstandingly popular exemplar of this genre. 
​   According to scholar ​Peter Rowland, Sandford and Merton was published in three volumes in 1783, 1786 and 1789 and quickly gained such popularity that “the next instalment was eagerly and impatiently awaited by a legion of small readers.” The book was reprinted for over a hundred years but it is now largely forgotten.
     As Rowland describes the premise, "rebellious Tommy Merton, the spoilt son of a wealthy plantation owner from Jamaica, and his friend Harry Sandford, the poor but worthy son of a local farmer, are patiently educated by the Reverend Mr. Barlow... Master Tommy is brought, by precept and self-discovery, to see the error of this ways. A host of interpolated stories [are included], providing introductions to ancient history, astronomy, biology, science, exploration and geography” to which I would add the book includes moral fables in which kindness is always rewarded and cruelty is punished.
    Rowland points out that Thomas Day based Sandford and Merton on the educational philosophies of Jean-Jacques Rousseau; for example, Tommy’s tutor starts teaching him to read only after Tommy himself requests to be taught. Letting the child take the lead seems rather peculiar when we consider that it was routine to beat an education into boys at this time. Reverend Barlow is nothing like the typical switch-wielding schoolmaster, and many school boys must have wished they could have been educated along the lines depicted in Sandford and Merton. "And which way is she gone?" "Sir, I don't choose to tell you." Egalitarian message
     Sandford and Merton also features great sympathy for the poor along with a heaping helping of contempt for the upper classes. In the scene depicted at left, Harry refuses to tell a haughty local squire which way the hare he was hunting had run, and takes a whipping for it.
​     When Tommy's father asks Rev. Barlow to undertake his education, Mr. Barlow replies bluntly: “Gentlemen in your situation of life are accustomed to divide the world into two general classes; those who are persons of fashion, and those who are not… their manners, their prejudices, their very vices, must be inculcated upon the minds of children… the second [class of mankind]… are represented as being only objects of contempt and disgust, and scarcely worthy to be put on a footing with the very beasts that contribute to the pleasure and convenience of their superiors.”
    Tommy’s father protests that although he and his wife “wished their son to have the manners of a man of fashion, they thought his morals and religion of infinitely more consequence.”
    “If you think so, sir," said Mr. Barlow, “it is more than a noble lord did, whose written opinions are now considered as the oracles of polite life.” Mr. Barlow is referring, I think, to Lord Chesterfield and his famous letters of advice to his son.
   The message throughout is that "gentlemen" do not deserve any special deference, compared to honest yeomen. Once Tommy overcomes his aversion to doing any manual labour, he and Harry try to make a fire with flint, build a wattle-and-daub house through trial and error, and start their own orchard and vegetable garden.
   Generations of parents approved of Sandford and Merton for its homilies about living a simple and virtuous life and rejecting materialism. Says Rowland, “parents everywhere felt it their bounden duty to ensure that their children read it.”      The runaway financial success of Sandford and Merton was an invitation to other authors to follow suit with imitations and variations. How about a spoiled girl instead of a spoiled boy, like the two books discussed in my  previous post?  How about a nice West Indian sent to live with some spoiled English kids? A prolific author known to us only as “A. Selwyn” reversed the personalities in this way. In The Young Creoles (1825), the gentle and timid Francis and Blanche arrive in England as orphans and are taken into their uncle’s home. Their unruly cousins lure Francis’ youthful black servant Juba into the back yard and pelt him with snowballs. Francis protests on Juba’s behalf, but his cousins sneer: “if we had a little fun with seeing blackey skipping in the snow, I can’t see what concern it is of your’s; particularly, as he do’n’t belong to you, and a’n’t your slave the moment he sets his foot on English ground.” 
    “His not being my slave,’ said Francis, ‘don’t make him your’s’; for I don’t think the poor fellow would wish to change masters.”
   Francis and Blanche are portrayed as weak and enervated, owing to growing up in a tropical climate. This is a common trope, although the heroine of  The Woman of Colour   is an exception in that regard. This stereotype turns our thoughts again to the mystery of Miss Lambe, the "chilly and tender" "half-mulatto" who was to play a role in Jane Austen’s unfinished last novel Sanditon. Was she going to be fretful and entitled like Matilda in The Barbadoes Girl, or gentle and easily imposed upon, like Blanche? Little Fanny is intimidated upon her arrival at Mansfield Park Did Austen influence Hofland?
​     A well-known Austen scholar has recently surmised that The Barbadoes Girl was inspired by Mansfield Park; that is, she suggests that Barbara Hofland inverted the story of Fanny Price, a virtuous waif who goes to live with her haughty cousins, to create her tale about a haughty orphan who goes to live with her virtuous cousins. Further, since Mansfield Park’s anti-slavery message is muted (to say the least), she also suggested that Barbara Hofland decided to amplify the abolitionist message in The Barbadoes Girl as a reaction to Austen’s reticence in Mansfield Park.
     Since there are so many examples of the displaced waif in the literature of this time, I don’t see a compelling case for drawing a direct line from Austen’s novel to Hofland’s children’s book. And since Eliza Kirkham Mathews used the same premise when she wrote The Young West Indian before Mansfield Park was published in 1814, we can be certain that her iteration was not inspired by Austen’s novel. Fanny’s question about the slave trade could not have inspired EKM to add a scene where Miss Mountford beat her maid, and by extension I doubt Austen had anything to do with Matilda throwing a glass of beer in her servant’s face in The Barbadoes Girl.
   We can find many examples of novels written before and during Austen's day which condemned slavery more emphatically and more explicitly than Austen. There is no evidence that Austen's omission of a strong anti-slavery message impelled anyone else to include one.
    Furthermore, it's surprising how few people have grappled with the fact that, at the end of Persuasion, the narrator commends Captain Wentworth for helping the widowed Mrs. Smith regain her lost income from the West Indies, without a hint of disapproval that the money is blood-soaked: Mrs. Smith's "recent good offices by Anne had been enough in themselves, and their marriage, instead of depriving her of one friend, secured her two. She was their earliest visitor in their settled life; and Captain Wentworth, by putting her in the way of recovering her husband’s property in the West Indies, by writing for her, acting for her, and seeing her through all the petty difficulties of the case with the activity and exertion of a fearless man and a determined friend, fully requited the services which she had rendered, or ever meant to render, to his wife." 
      I am not saying that we should assume Austen was indifferent about slavery. In fact, I am willing to stipulate that she opposed slavery, just as her brothers did. But she did not choose to make it a central feature of her novels.
About Thomas Day (1748-1789)
​    Thomas Day was a wealthy and childless British eccentric who somehow wrote an enduring children's classic. His biographer Wendy Moore says Sandford and Merton "was reprinted 140 times by 1870" and "launched an entire new genre in adventure books for boys," I should think that even Louisa May Alcott's Little Women and Little Men owes something to Sandford and Merton. Day himself conducted an extraordinary experiment in education: he selected two pretty girls from the Foundling Home with a view to training them up to be an ideal wife (he intended to marry the "winner"). Moore's book, How to Create the Perfect Wife is the compelling story of Day and his friends--I had no idea that Maria Edgeworth's father was such an eccentric. Really, this story is stranger than fiction. 
​Boulukos, George. The Grateful Slave : The Emergence of Race in Eighteenth-Century British and American Culture. Cambridge University Press, 2008.
​
Rowland, Peter. “Unwelcome Company: Thumbs Down for Sandford and Merton.” The Wildean : Journal of the Oscar Wilde Society, no. 38, 2011, pp. 44–53.
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Thank you to the Special Collection librarians at the University of Iowa. Previous post:   Two books, one plot premise                          

Clutching My Pearls is my ongoing blog series about my take on Jane Austen’s beliefs and ideas, as based on her novels. Folks today who love Jane Austen are eager to find ways to acquit her of being a woman of the long 18th century.  Click here for the first post in the series. CMP#228   Two books for children, one plot Meeting the governess      I recently received a digital copy of a rare and obscure children’s book by Eliza Kirkham Mathews (EKM), generously supplied to me by the University of Iowa. Now that I have a copy of The West Indian, I think I have succeeded in tracking down all of EKM’s books, so I can put together a definitive list of attributions and clear up some mistaken attributions.
     The West Indian was published in 1821 in Derby and attributed to “Mrs. C. Mathews,” 19 years after EKM's death. The most logical explanation for the appearance of this title after EKM's death in 1802 is that her husband Charles sought out publishers for the manuscripts Eliza left behind--even though he and his second wife had no great opinion of her writing abilities. The second Mrs. Mathews was also an author who compiled and wrote her husband's memoir after his death. Her effusive, breezy style is very different from EKM's. ​Anne Jackson Mathews said of her predecessor: “She knew nothing of society or of the world. Her reading had been slender, and confined to the generally mawkish style of the novels of that day. From them she gave faint impressions of nature; and no publisher thought them worth much more than the cost of printing. Disappointment followed disappointment.”
    I like to think Charles Mathews worked to find publishers for EKM’s manuscripts out of affection and respect for her, knowing that it would have been something that she wanted. An early composition?
​   The West Indian appears to be an earlier draft of Ellinor, or the Young Governess which was published in 1802). In both stories, young Ellinor Montague is orphaned and needs to support her little sister Sophy. Just like the other children’s books I have reviewed here, both tales contain educational discourses on morality, history, botany and so forth, held together with a narrative in which the governess awakens the children’s love for learning and improves their characters.      Although both books follow this formula and have the same basic premise, the details are different. In The Young West Indian, the Somerville children learn about castles and Stonehenge and ants. In Ellinor, the Selby children learn about ducks and the sources of rivers.
    Ellinor is written with third-person narration in a more highly wrought sentimental style, while The Young West Indian, written in epistolary style, has more of Georgian restraint and periodicity about it. I think it must be an earlier, as opposed to a later, composition. Here Ellinor describes her introduction to her pupils in a letter to her sister:    ​“My dear children,” said Mrs. Somerville, leading me into the room in which [the] Miss Somervilles and Miss Mountford were amusing themselves, “this is the young lady who has kindly undertaken the cultivation of your minds; pay to her that deference and respect which she so highly deserves; treasure her instructions, for they will lead you to virtue, and ultimately to happiness: be attentive to her admonitions, obedient to her commands, and submissive to those punishments, which for your advantage, she may sometimes think it proper to inflict.”  Untangling Misattributions
  ​I was convinced that EKM is the author of Ellinor, or the Young Governess because it includes a poetic tribute to her deceased cousins, which also appeared in her posthumous book of poetry. As well, of course, Ellinor’s desperate situation and fall from gentility after the death of her parents, parallels EKM’s own life. EKM did not use her own poetry in The Young West Indian. Instead, the children recite poems by Parnell and Thomson. But she does describe Kent’s Hole, a cavern on the coast of her native Devonshire.

   Miss Mountford, a ward of the Somerville family, is the spoiled West Indian of the title. As Mrs. Somervile explains to Ellinor: “'Poor child! Early deprived of her mother, she has been left to pursue her own silly inclinations, till this blameable indulgence has destroyed the equanimity of her disposition, and rendered her haughty, impetuous, and almost uncontrollable.’ I have been introduced to my pupils, and find them as Mrs. Somerville described. Miss Mountford, the West-Indian, is indeed… very naughty and very impetuous.”
   Miss Mountford treats her servant, a pidgin-speaking black girl, with cruelty. 
   “Do as I command you, instantly, or I’ll murder you!”
    “Den me go to great good Being, Missy; but if me tell lie me not able to pray to him.”
    “Dost think, you black ugly wretch,” replied Miss Mountford, “you’ll ever go to heaven? Look, how white my skin is compared to yours!”
     “Ah, Missy, but me white heart, and dat’s better den white skin!”
    “’Insolent creature, take that, and that,’ striking her as she spoke, with the utmost violence…
     I entered the room [and] caught her arm and prevented this unjust action….
​   "‘She is only a negro,’ returned Miss Mountford, ‘and negroes one may be allowed to beat.”
   “And why? [Ellinor challenges her] Are they not equally alive to feeling with yourself?...The same Power who created you created them; like you they are formed, and like you have an immortal soul: in what then do they differ? In the colour of their skin?” 
   Ellinor writes to her sister: “How poor, contemptible and mean appears the immensely rich Miss Mountford, when compared with the honest and ingenuous Zelia; while we turn with disgust from this rich and powerful West-Indian, we involuntarily pay the homage of admiration to a poor negro, the innocent and unsophisticated daughter of Nature!     ​Fortunately, thanks to Ellinor’s tutelage, Miss Mountford (we never discover her first name) repents and reforms, especially after she experiences the pleasure of bestowing charity upon some unfortunate poor village girls. As well, Ellinor’s pupils learn to despise the empty pomp and vanity of the fashionable world after visiting with the snobbish Miss Harrington. The story ends rather abruptly and we are given no information about what happens to the Miss Somervilles or Miss Mountford or with Ellinor and her sister in the future.

​The Barbadoes Girl
   Since this book must have been written before EKM died in 1802, its composition predates another book about a spoiled West Indian heiress who is sent to live with a family in England, namely, The Barbadoes Girl (1816) by Barbara Hofland, which I reviewed here. 
     In that tale, the bratty Matilda Hanson throws a glass of beer into her servant's face while sitting at the dinner table, to the shock of her hosts. Zebby speaks up in her defence:
    “Poor Zebby, courtesying, said, ‘Sir, me hopes you will have much pity on Missy—she was spoily all her life, by poor massa—her mamma good, very good; and when Missy pinch Zebby, and pricky with pin, then good missis she be angry; but massa say only—‘Poo! Poo! She be child—naughty tricks wear off in time.’”     
    So after reading The Young West Indian, I was really scratching my head—is it just a coincidence that EKM came up with a plot about a spoiled West Indian girl who is abusive to her servant years before Barbara Hofland wrote a best-seller about a spoiled West Indian girl who is abusive to her servant? Hofland could not have copied EKM’s story since it wasn’t published until after The Barbadoes Girl, even though EKM’s version was written before. Was EKM just unfortunate in that she had the idea first, but her manuscript never saw the light of day until after her death? The original story
   Well, I stumbled across a plausible explanation for how both authors could have written two very similar stories—both of these novels were probably written in emulation of a tremendously successful but now forgotten children’s book: The History of Sandford and Merton, first published in 1783. Sandford and Merton is the GOAT (as the kids say) version of a spoiled West Indian boy who comes to live in England and is reformed by wise precept and a bit of deserved suffering. ​
    Here is author Thomas Day’s description of the protagonist: ​     “Tommy Merton, who, at the time he came from Jamaica, was only six years old, was naturally a very good-tempered boy, but unfortunately had been spoiled by too much indulgence. While he lived in Jamaica, he had several black servants to wait upon him, who were forbidden upon any account to contradict him. If he walked, there always went two negroes with him; one of whom carried a large umbrella to keep the sun from him, and the other was to carry him in his arms whenever he was tired. Besides this, he was always dressed in silk or laced clothes, and had a fine gilded carriage, which was borne upon men's shoulders, in which he made visits to his play-fellows. His mother was so excessively fond of him that she gave him everything he cried for, and would never let him learn to read because he complained that it made his head ache.”     Day used the familiar formula for an instructive children’s books; that is, narrative interspersed with improving discourses, but his narration is livelier, more detailed, and features a plot with actual character arcs. 
   Some of the educational material is woven more smoothly into tale. The boys’ tutor challenges Tommy with Socratic dialogues: "And pray, young man," said Mr Barlow, "how came these people to be slaves?"
Tommy.—Because my father bought them with his money.
Mr Barlow.—So then people that are bought with money are slaves, are they?
T.—Yes.
Mr B.—And those that buy them have a right to kick them, and beat them, and do as they    please with them?
T.—Yes.
Mr B.—Then, if I was to take and sell you to Farmer Sandford, he would have a right to do what he pleased with you?    By the conclusion of this dialogue, Tommy vows he will never “will use our black William ill; nor pinch him, nor kick him, as I used to do.”
   A black sailor appears at the climax of the tale to help rescue Tommy from a charging bull. Unlike the servants in EKM and Hofland’s stories, he speaks in correct English, not pidgin: “Is a black horse thought to be inferior to a white one in speed, in strength, or courage? Is a white cow thought to give more milk, or a white dog to have a more acute scent in pursuing the game? On the contrary, I have generally found, in almost every country, that a pale colour in animals is considered as a mark of weakness and inferiority. Why then should a certain race of men imagine themselves superior to the rest, for the very circumstance they despise in other animals?”

More about Sandford and Merton in the next post. And who knows, I might come across more forgotten books with this type of plot in the future. Also, is there a connection to Jane Austen in all this?    An 1823 short story by Mrs. Blackford, The Young West Indian, features the young son of an Army captain who behaves heroically when misfortune throws him and his baby sister into the power of an unscrupulous servant. Little William is not a typical sickly, spoiled Creole child as portrayed in the stories discussed here. The story mentions that British parents typically sent their children to be educated in England and that the heat and the ever-present fear of yellow fever made parents anxious for their children’s health.

​  These fictional portrayals of West Indian children appear drawn from real-life observations about the children of English settlers. According to scholar Chloe Northrop, “European observers noted the overindulgence exhibited in the progeny of the wealthy Caribbean elite, stemming from both their parents and others responsible for their upbringing… According to these narratives, [enslaved people working as nannies and caregivers] irrevocably spoiled the character of the young white inhabitants.
​    "Furthermore, at a young age, these children became accustomed to seeing violence against black slaves, including maimings and whippings.” ​Northrop, Chloe. Fashioning Society in Eighteenth-Century British Jamaica. United Kingdom, Taylor & Francis, 2024.

Rowland, Peter. “Unwelcome Company: Thumbs Down for Sandford and Merton.” The Wildean : Journal of the Oscar Wilde Society, no. 38, 2011, pp. 44–53.
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Thank you to the Special Collection librarians at the University of Iowa. Previous post:   Regency-era children's lit                                                     Next post:  Three children's books, one plot   

    “Indeed, Ma’am,” said Lionel, “I may venture to answer for all, that we had rather go to bed supperless, on condition of passing as many more agreeable hours as we have done this evening.”
    --child begs for extra educational instruction in Evenings Rationally Employed, or Moral and Entertaining Incentives to Virtue and Improvement, by W. Helme (1803) CMP#227   Outspoken Regency-era children's literature The soldier's widow; or, school boys' collection, British Museum (detail, colorized by Chatgpt)     On my trip to England this past summer, I had the privilege of spending a morning researching some old books at the Weston library at Oxford—books which, so far as I know, are unique, in that Oxford is the only library in the world that has a copy. These particular books are not Gutenberg bibles by any means—they are forgotten publications of the Regency era, the kind of books offered in subscription libraries or at bookstores for the average reading public. There is a quiet pleasure in stepping into the reading room at an Oxford library and being entrusted with a book more than two hundred years old that has been slumbering in an archive for who knows how long, and being allowed to open and read it.
     One of the books I examined was a book for children written by William Helme, the schoolteacher husband of the hard-working author Elizabeth Helme . His book is a typical example of the children’s literature of the day, and that’s why I want to talk about it—because it is so typical. It is a compilation of material plagiarized (as we would call it today) from authors of natural history, strung together with a narrative about some children and the wise adult who instructs them and judiciously corrects their faults. Other examples of children’s literature of this type discussed in this blog can be found here and also here.  Authors of this type of book did not hold back on their opinions about social issues, as we will see. Botanical print, British Museum ​ Narration and plagiarism
    In this brisk-moving narrative, Mr. Melville, an educated gentleman, has fallen on hard times and takes in some pupils. Luckily for him, his students are eager to be instructed, to put it mildly, and are easily reformed out of their faults. For example, Mr. Melville takes in a crippled child who had been bullied in his previous school. The other kids tease him. As punishment, Mr. Melville doesn’t let them go to a neighbour’s birthday party, but when they instantly apologize, he relents. He awakens their charitable impulses by helping a poor widow and her children, and the book ends with a strong denunciation of slavery. ​
​    I’m rather intrigued by the freedom with which children’s books were cobbled together with plagiarized material. It’s easy to spot the plagiarized bits because they always start right after one of the children says something like, “Pray, madam, tell us about the eider duck.” And the adult launches into a lecture about ducks, to which the children listen with rapt attention. In Evenings Rationally Employed, we have:
     “Mr. Melville offered to instruct them about ants.
    “Every tongue was immediately in motion, to express how highly they should deem themselves gratified by the recital… and Mr. Melville began as follows: 'The ants are a little people, united, like the bees, into a republic, which, if we may be allowed the expression, has its own peculiar laws and politics'” (etc.)
     This same discourse about ants can be found in The Wonders of Nature and Art (1850); The Young Lady’s Introduction to Natural History (1766); and Zoography; or the Beauties of Nature displayed (1807); but originates in Spectacle de la Nature by the Abbe Le Pluche, first translated in 1743. While some authors acknowledge that their children's books were compiled “from the writings of the most eminent authors,” Helme does not. "Sable Brethren"
     The climax of the book, if there can said to be a climax, is a strong denunciation of slavery, followed by an explanation that God’s ways are unknowable to man. There is also a story, no doubt borrowed from somewhere else, about two noble young blacks taken into slavery who commit suicide rather than submit to degradation. Mr. Melville’s neighbour, Mr. Jefferies, begins with a condemnation of the reconquest of Jerusalem in 1099 AD, blaming the Crusaders for barbaric slaughter.   “[Shedding] the blood of upwards of seventy thousand Mahometans, as they spared neither age or sex, nor even infants at the breast. The rage of slaughter then ceased, and strange to tell, a religious frenzy succeeded! – The Christian conquerors, with hands stained with gore, marched over heaps of dead to the holy sepulchre, and chaunted anthems to the mild messenger of peace.”
    “Tis strange indeed,” said Mr. Jefferies, “that the professors of a religion, should entitle any one to be esteemed a real member of it; though there are many of those in question, who will, if asked, gravely tell you, they firmly believe every scriptural text—Should you even enquire whether they suppose all men sprung from Adam, they would answer yes; and yet these motley and equivocal Christians, will not allow their sable brethren to be of the same species with themselves.”
​   “These are the beings whom, with the most barbarous oppression, we deprive of liberty, bow down with unrequired labour, and reward with cruel stripes—Poor heathen negroes, thy day of peace will come! –Blush, civilized European, blush; and when thou art sinking under the baneful poison of the yellow fever, remorse will, perhaps, though late, dictate to thy repentant soul—“'Tis by such means as these, Afric, that Providence doth avenge thee.''” Taking of Jerusalem by the Crusaders, Émile Signol (detail) (1847)
    “Why does Providence permit the poor blacks to be so badly treated?” [one of the children asks].
    “It is not for frail mortality to pry into the secret and hidden paths of unerring wisdom, —the most sublime act of human reason, is to submit and adore. --While man confines himself to things that are unveiled, he so far performs his duty; but he hath no right to scrutinize into the system by which he is governed.—His knowledge and strength are most judiciously limited by bounds suitable to his wants. The sum total of all human knowledge ought, therefore, to consist in making a prudent use of our Creator’s benevolence, in what he has vouchsafed to reveal, and in giving him the glory.”
    The discourse here ceased for the evening, and the young gentlemen immediately retired to their apartments.  THE END.      This passage is yet another exhibit, though no more evidence is needed, to refute the idea that Mansfield Park is a bold but subversive statement against slavery and in fact was as far as Austen could go in her times in denouncing slavery. If a children’s book can call down death by yellow fever on slaveholders, then I think an unspecified question about the slave trade from Fanny Price, made after the slave trade was abolished, would not have made much of an impression on the readers of Austen’s time.  The Helmes lived for a time in this apartment building at Paddington Street in London. About William Helme (??-1822) and his wife Elizabeth (1753--1810)
    Mr. Helme’s book received an approving review from The Literary Journal: “Several remarkable and entertaining facts in some branches of natural history, and a number of interesting events in the history of nations, are here related in a plain, easy, and natural style.” [I myself would describe Mr. Helme’s style as stiff and unimaginative, but whatever]. The important thing is, “The object of the authoress (for we believe it to be the production of a lady) appears to be to inspire young minds with a taste and desire for useful knowledge, and in the execution of this object we think she has been very successful. The morality is pure, and no dangerous principles are inculcated, to give a wrong bent to the minds of unwary youth. There is nothing in this book to hurt or offend (no small comparative merit) but much to instruct and amuse.”
    The character of Mr. Melville appears to be a self-portrait. “Mr. Melville had, from an early period in life, lived in what is called the great world; for his family being respectable, and his fortune affluent, he was, of course, deemed sufficiently qualified to associate with those, whose only merit consisted in hereditary acquirements. In his journey through life, he had also attracted the notice of that judicious few, who wisely discriminate between mere superficials, and the more rare possession of good sense, humanity, and rectitude.” Jane Austen was never so open in taking a jab at the class system of England as is Mr. Helme when he describes how he fell out of genteel society:
    Just as occurred to the Helmes in real life, a disastrous loan to a friend sunk Mr. Melville into poverty. “By such [a false friend] Mr. Melville was undone, and left at the age of forty, with barely two hundred a pounds a year, in lieu of as many thousands.”
    Mr. Helme has been described as a schoolmaster, but I cannot find any advertisements for his school or seminary in the British Newspaper archive. I imagine therefore that he, like Mr. Melville, quietly took on students through personal referrals.
      No copies appear to have survived of William Helme's 1794 novel, Henry Stukely, or the Effects of Dissipation, but the Corvey Collection in Germany has a copy of his 1801 novel, Mysterious Friendship. His 1788 novel Adventures of a Watch contains some social commentary and a bigoted (intended to be comic) portrayal of a Jewish moneylender. Scholars of "it narrative" novels (stories narrated by an object or animal such as a coin or a pony) explain that this book is written in imitation of Laurence Sterne.
      Elizabeth Helme achieved greater success in the publishing world than her husband. She authored several best-sellers, including Louisa, or, the Cottage on the Moor, and The Farmer of Inglewood Forest. I think it’s very likely Jane Austen read Helme’s novels because of allusions she made to them in her own writing. She was also a translator and author of children's books.
       Despite her best-seller status (The Farmer was republished for at least fifty years), the Helmes were desperately poor in their later years. We know about their travails because of their applications to the Royal Literary Fund for indigent authors. Both Elizabeth and William received small occasional payouts (as in, five or ten pounds) from the fund when invalidism put an end to their teaching and writing careers. About Abbé Pluche:--pioneer in children's literature
    Noël-Antoine Pluche (1688 –1761) may have been the originator of changing “boring and disagreeable” dissertation into dialogue between a teacher and children. “Some will furnish our conversation with their knowledge and others will animate the discussion with their curiosity.” (Pluche quoted in Immel, Andrea, and Witmore, Michael. Childhood and Children's Books in Early Modern Europe, 1550-1800. United Kingdom, Taylor & Francis, 2013.)

​    P. Norbury & Son published at least three of Elizabeth Helme’s novels, including the posthumously-published Modern Times which was completed by her husband. Fun fact: the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley was an enthusiast for gothic novels as a teenager. He “would haunt the circulating library of Mr. P. Norbury in Brentford High Street” who carried “the same kind of extravagant fiction to which Shelley was addicted.” (from Shelley in England, New Facts and Letters from the Shelley-Whitton Papers, by Roger Ingpen, 1917.) Previous post:  My discovery published              

 This blog explores social attitudes in Jane Austen's time, discusses her novels, reviews forgotten 18th century novels, and throws  some occasional shade  at the modern academy. ​The introductory post is here.  My "six simple questions for academics" post is here. Spoilers abound in my discussion of these forgotten novels, and I discuss 18th-century attitudes which I do not necessarily endorse. CMP#226   My article about one of Austen's youthful satires now online     I've been juggling a few different topics here at Clutching My Pearls -- my investigation into who wrote the Regency novel The Woman of Colour, sorting out the tangled attribution chains of Mrs. E.G. Bayfield and Mrs. E.M. Foster, and recovering the tragic life of Eliza Kirkham Mathews . These three women are forgotten novelists of Jane Austen's era, but perhaps I should also write about Jane Austen now and then as well! After all this is a big anniversary year for her, the 250th anniversary of her birth. There are books and celebrations and articles and lectures galore. 
    Oh, and--lookee here! One article is by me! My short article, "An inspiration for Austen’s juvenile story Frederic and Elfrida" has been published by the venerable journal Notes & Queries. It's available online but only for those with a subscription or university access.
   Frederic and Elfrida is a short juvenile piece of Jane Austen's and thought to be one her earliest, composed when she was only eleven or twelve years old. It begins with a satiric poke at the delicate reticence of the sentimental hero and heroine: THE Uncle of Elfrida was the Father of Frederic; in other words, they were first cousins by the Father's side. Being both born in one day & both brought up at one school, it was not wonderfull that they should look on each other with something more than bare politeness. They loved with mutual sincerity, but were both determined not to transgress the rules of Propriety by owning their attachment, either to the object beloved, or to any one else.              My article suggests that the novel Elfrida, or Parental Ambition (1786), which I reviewed here, supplied the names and some of the plot points for Austen's juvenilia, and that we can reasonably assume that young Austen read Elfrida. I picture her reading, or listening to the book as it was read aloud in the family circle, and sharing a laugh with her family members over some of its sentimental excesses. 
​     I suppose you'd have to be a real Janeite to find this discovery at all interesting! But I am convinced that there are lots of discoveries waiting to be made in the texts of the forgotten novels of the long 18th century. Discoveries about Austen, about women writers, about how English society viewed itself, and about the development of the novel.
    Speaking of discoveries, I had already submitted my article when I came across an article by my dissertation supervisor, Professor Jennie Batchelor, sharing the discovery that forgotten novelist Phebe Gibbes was the author of Elfrida. Luckily, I was able to add a footnote to my article.
    More discoveries to share in the future! Frederic and Elfrida has been published with a scholarly forward by Juvenilia Press. It is also available in various anthologies of Austen's juvenilia. 

 This blog explores social attitudes in Jane Austen's time, discusses her novels, reviews forgotten 18th century novels, and throws  some occasional shade  at the modern academy. ​The introductory post is here.  My "six simple questions for academics" post is here. Spoilers abound in my discussion of these forgotten novels, and I discuss 18th-century attitudes which I do not necessarily endorse. Back from England with sore feet and great memories    My husband and our youngest son joined me for a trip to the UK, touring Edinburgh, St. Andrews, York, Oxford, and London. Had to put my feet up and rest after we got home! In London, we stayed in Bloomsbury, near Brunswick Square. Janeites will know why that matters.
    One reason for my visit--to walk in my graduation ceremony for my Masters degree (by research) from the University of York. The "by research" part means I wrote a dissertation for my degree and did not take classes. I did it as a distance student, under the encouraging supervision of Professors Alison O'Byrne and Jennie Batchelor. My dissertation looks at Austen's use of novel tropes in Emma (such as Harriet as the long-lost foundling heroine and Jane Fairfax being rescued from drowning).
   While there, I visited some more locales that I had put into my novels but have never been to! Last year, I visited the site of the Peterloo Massacre and St. Pancras church. This time I went to St. James's Park in London, where Fanny Price is taken hostage in my second novel, A Marriage of Attachment. On this return trip, I got to visit libraries in York and Oxford to continue my research into the lives of some forgotten female authors. On our narrowboat cruise in the canals of London. Victorian splendour at the Museum of Natural History in Oxford. Beautiful building and so nice to see parents showing the displays to their children. St. Andrews castle at St. Andrews, home of the famous golf course. A beautiful day, as you can see from the photo. Do you like cemeteries? I highly recommend Brompton cemetery in London.  The compact and colourful Chinatown in London. Left: We have majestic, towering groves of old growth forests in British Columbia. But we don't have cathedrals with vaulted ceilings rising up halfway to heaven.  ​ Botanic Gardens at Oxford. Thanks to my son Joe for all the best photos. A  pot of tea and a delicious scone with clotted cream and jam (mixed together so you can't tell what went on first) aboard a narrowboat in London. Right: I saw this lady, who looks like a dead ringer for 1995 Mrs. Gardiner in my opinion, during my 2024 visit to England. It is at the Merchant Guildhall in York. Previous post:   Off to England           

     I am busy packing up for another trip to England and won't have time to blog for the rest of the month. Below are some photos of a trip my husband and I took last year to Ireland, Wales and England. In Manchester, I visited the site of the Peterloo Massacre, an event I wrote about in my third novel, A Different Kind of Woman. A lowlight was staying at a posh B&B in Wales and feeling that the host regarded me as riff-raff. The house was much nicer than Fawlty Towers but the welcome wasn't so nice. But overall, we had a wonderful time--entranced by the beauty of the scenery in Ireland and Wales.
      I am making lots of interesting research discoveries and am happily rabbit-holing. I'll be visiting some archives in the UK. Back soon! Trinity Library, Dublin A private library in Manchester A train festival in Wales Yorkminster A tribute to Mary Wollstonecraft at Trinity Library, so much better than that monstrosity they erected at Newington Green Visiting St. Patrick's at Evensong. Upside, transporting music. Downside, I think this is where I caught COVID. Peterloo Massacre memorial Only another researcher can understand the pleasures of taking a seat at a library and digging in...

 This blog explores social attitudes in Jane Austen's time, discusses her novels, reviews forgotten 18th century novels, and throws  some occasional shade  at the modern academy. ​The introductory post is here.  My "six simple questions for academics" post is here. Spoilers abound in my discussion of these forgotten novels, and I discuss 18th-century attitudes which I do not necessarily endorse. CMP#225    The mysterious deaths of EKM's teen cousins Frontispiece for Ellinor. I suspect this is a reused etching from an older book.     I've uncovered more information about the life and family of obscure writer Eliza Kirkham Mathews (referred to in this blog as EKM ). Her aunt Sarah Strong lost her husband Richard in 1786, when her children were still young. But he seems to have left her financially secure, as compared to EKM's mother Mary, whose husband George was also an apothecary. Although raised in genteel circumstances, EKM was poverty=stricken and alone in the world, receiving very little help from her better-off relatives. EKM left her native Devon and ended up in Wales, working as a teacher. There she met the youthful comic actor Charles Mathews who was struggling to make a name for himself on the theatre circuit. They married in September, 1797. That same month, Eliza got heart-wrenching news from her aunt Sarah; her teenage cousins, Sarah Amelia and Maria, had both died within a few days of each other, in an inexplicable fashion.
   EKM’s writing contains many autobiographical elements, and this tragic tale found expression in one her elegies (quoted below) and was narrated in one of her children's books.
    Ellinor, or, the Young Governess was published in 1802—the year EKM died--by the York publisher, Thomas Wilson & Son, who also published  more children’s books posthumously. This suggests that EKM approached this local publisher in the final years of her life with some of her novel manuscripts,  and was encouraged to write some children’s books instead. Her earnings, if any, would have been meagre, but it was better than nothing. Paint-by-numbers children's books
   Producing a children’s book, in those days, was not so very difficult. As I’ve learned, authors simply plagiarized freely from popular poets, biographers, historians and books of natural history. They interspersed these plundered lessons within a morally improving narrative. Another case of a plagiarized children’s book is discussed here. In Ellinor, as is typical, a governess corrects the faults of the children in the Selby household while giving them mini-lectures about ducks, evaporation and rain (cribbed from Goldsmith’s Natural History), Demosthenes and Richard the Lion Heart, (from Dodd’s The Beauties of History), and Archbishop Fenelon (from Augustus Toplady).
​     But one of the story's moral lessons is from the pen of EKM herself--the story of her cousins. This occurs when the Selby family receives a letter and Lady Selby calls her children to attention to hear the news: 
    “My dear children,” said Lady Selby, “you were well acquainted with the beautiful Maria, and Emily.”
​   “O yes, Mamma,” said Amelia; “I have often envied their extreme beauty.”
    Well of course, Lady Selby can't let that pass by unremarked, and lands on her little daughter like a ton of bricks: “Envy is a vile passion, Amelia, and expressive of a weak mind.” Then she tells Ellinor to read the letter aloud, which she does: ChatGPT image.    ​“An affecting circumstance has happened here, which I wish to relate. Maria and Emily were, as you know, two of the most lovely young women within the circle of your acquaintance; Their beauty and accomplishments have long been the topic of conversation, in the gay and fashionable society which they frequented; they were surrounded by every luxury which the most unreasonable could desire, and received a tribute of flattery to their charms, such as might have gratified the vainest. The delight of their fond mother, she indulged them in every wish of their unexperienced hearts. About a week since, a splendid ball was given by the officers -------, at which the lovely Maria and Emily were invited. The day arrived, and was spent in preparations for their making an elegant appearance at the ball; the evening drew near; the lovely sisters were decked in all the brilliancies of dress and fashion.
    Emily, the youngest, was already arrayed; one moment her eyes elicited the fire of youth and health, and the blush of her cheeks showed the bright glow of the damask rose; the next, an ashy paleness overspread her countenance. She complained of a violent pain in her stomach, and was advised by Maria to apply to her mother for some cordial restorative. Racked with the most excruciating pain, she quitted her chamber, entered with difficulty the drawing-room, and dropped in strong convulsions at her mother’s feet. Alarmed by the shrieks which the unhappy parent sent forth, Maria flew to the drawing-room, where she found the once beautiful Emily, the fondly beloved sister of her heart, in the agonies of death. From that moment, Emily never breathed a syllable, and died the next morning, at ten o’clock. To paint the speechless agony of sorrow the poor Maria endured, is beyond the power of language.
    The third day after Emily’s death was appointed for her funeral. It was impossible to prevent the noise and bustle which bringing her lifeless remains over the stairs occasioned, from reaching Maria: She heard the death-like sound, uttered a piercing shriek, and instantly expired in the arms of her distracted mother.” Former office of Wilson & Spence, EKM's publishers, Google Maps  "Strictly True"
    EKM added in a footnote, *These affecting incidents are strictly TRUE—The young ladies were nearly related to the Author, and have not been dead three years." 
  Through genealogical (parish) records, I was able to confirm that Sarah Amelia and Emily Strong were EKM's first cousins and they died in 1797. There may be an error in the transcription of records, because both girls were buried on the 25th, but one was buried in November and the other in September. I’d like to see a copy of the original parish record from St Peter church in Tiverton, because I am inclined to believe EKM when she says her account was “strictly true” and that Maria died a few days after Sarah Amelia. Maria was 19 years old and Sarah Amelia was 16.  "Three years" since their death means that EKM was writing Ellinor in 1800, at the same time she was preparing her novel What Has Been for publication.
​   Charles Mathews' second wife, in her memoir of her husband, suggested that EKM published only one novel and hid her other manuscripts from her husband, but the evidence suggests that this just isn't true. She must have had several children's books being prepared for publication before her death. I can picture her walking from her little apartment on Stonegate in York to the offices of Thomas Wilson & Son (aka Wilson & Spence) on High Ousegate, clutching a manuscript or some corrected proofs--at least before she was too ill with tuberculosis to go anywhere. 
​   As for the cause of her cousins' deaths, at first I supposed that Sarah Amelia had died of appendicitis, but in re-reading the passage, I must say that poisoning comes to mind as a possible cause of death for both sisters. The story also suggests, as I mentioned, that Sarah Strong was better-off than her impoverished sister-in-law, EKM's mother, if she was able to indulge her daughters in "every luxury."  A cautionary tale
   EKM uses the deaths of her cousins for a moral purpose, in accordance with Christian doctrine that one should live acceptably in the eyes of God so as to be judged worthy of heaven. After listening to the tragic tale, "[E]very one present expressed a conviction of the necessity... of living in a constant preparation for death… The sudden death of Maria and Emily, had such an effect on the mind of Henrietta... that what love of virtue could not bring to pass, fear did. She was continually thinking how terrible it would be to die in an unprepared state; and therefore studied to be good and virtuous."
   But alas, little Frederick…. He was “proud, obstinate and cruel,” and none of the admonitions and punishments he gets are sufficient to save him from his early death. He disobeyed his parents and fell into the pond, dying three weeks later. “During his illness, he expressed the utmost contrition for his past follies, and hoped that every child would learn from his fate, that wickedness and disobedience to parents, never go unpunished.” Thus at least we understand that Frederick will not go to the Bad Place when he dies.
   The dire tone of these children's books may come as a surprise to modern readers. But Ellinor, or, the Young Governess is quite typical in meting out death to a disobedient child, pour encourager les autres.
    In a future post, more about EKM's books for children.  And now, time to strum the lyre
   I left the poetry for last, to make it easier to skip over... here is an extended excerpt from the elegy EKM wrote for her cousins, which appeared in Ellinor and in a posthumous book of her poetry. St Peter, Tiverton, Devon, where members of the Strong family were baptized and buried. (1828 Gentlemens Magazine) Elegy on the Deaths of Maria & Sarah Amelia Strong

The midnight breeze sighs hollow thro’ the glade,
And wearied nature’s wrapt in soft repose;
Pale melancholy courts the gloomy shade,
And piteous tells her tale of many woes.
Now let the muse her solemn station seek,
On yon fall’n ruin, desolate and drear,
In sacred song, with resignation meek,
Breathe her sad numbers to the humid air…
O! death! Insatiate monster! Mortals dread,
Why drink the heart’s blood of the young and gay;
Why come in cunning ‘guise with silent tread
To crop those maids—sweet as the vernal day;
Chaste as the lilly—gay as the vermeil rose,
Light as the rein-deer, sprightly as the fawn;
The LOV’LY SISTERS every charm disclose!
Pure as the silver tints of early dawn.
Allur’d by pleasure’s bland enchanting call,
They sought the mazy, gay, fantastic train;
Smil’d at the concert—grac’d the festive ball,
Their young hearts throbbing to the tuneful strain,
While innocence was their’s—and sportive mirth,
And filial tenderness, and innate worth.
Maria! Emily! Lamented nymphs!
Who lately bloomed in all the pride of youth…
What, tho’ no trophied honours round them shine,
Love’s HOLY TEAR shall gem the turfy sod,
Maternal tenderness sigh o’er their shrine,
And resignation point our hopes to God!
To innocence like their’s ecstatic bliss is given,
Virtue’s unerring sure reward is heaven.     EKM adds, “Theirs was the gaiety of innocence: No malignant passions destroyed the tranquility of their bosoms: their lives were short, but lovely.” Previous post:   I gave a talk about Jane                                         

 This blog explores social attitudes in Jane Austen's time, discusses her novels, reviews forgotten 18th century novels, and throws  some occasional shade  at the modern academy. ​The introductory post is here.  My "six simple questions for academics" post is here. Spoilers abound in my discussion of these forgotten novels, and I discuss 18th-century attitudes which I do not necessarily endorse. CMP#224    Speechifying in Victoria A toast to Jane: "Blessed be her shade"!     I recently spent a weekend with the Jane Austen Society of North America--Victoria Chapter to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Austen's birth. Celebrations and special events are planned for all over the world, but Victoria is an especially beautiful place for Janeites to gather together. The weather was fabulous, sunny but not too hot, and many participants were decked in their best Regency finery. 
 The weekend featured knowledgeable speakers talking about crafts, quilts, and fashions in Austen's time. I met some fellow authoresses of JAFF (Jane Austen fan fiction). We are all research junkies, I think. We love learning more about Regency life and putting these events in context for our readers.
     The theme for the conference was "The Wit and Wisdom of Jane Austen," so I turned to some research I've posted here on my blog, concerning the social and even religious strictures against female wittiness in Austen's time. Since Austen knew she was a superb comic genius, what was it like for her to live in a world where moralists and authors of conduct books basically condemned female wittiness?
    I really enjoyed sharing my research with a knowledgeable audience of Janeites. Who else would get my Fordyce's Sermons joke? Jane with attitude
   I was too busy listening to the interesting talks and enjoying myself to take many photos, but Michelle S. of our Vancouver chapter pulled us together for a group photo of the Vancouver delegation. That's my power point presentation behind us. "Snarky" Jane Austen was created by feeding the standard prettified version of Jane Austen into Chat GPT and asking for a snarky version of her.      Victoria is a city with heritage architecture in a gorgeous natural setting. It is also a city famed for its gardens. Our ingathering reception was held at beautiful Goward House, placed amongst the arbutus trees in a quiet road near the university. The back yard was peaceful and gorgeous, my photo doesn't do it justice. The view from the breakwater near the conference venue was just stunning, and the Costume promenade on Sunday morning drew a lot of local publicity!  I'm always so impressed by the detail and creativity that the costumers put into their elegant ensembles! A peaceful evening at Goward House, Victoria, BC     Thanks to all the volunteers of JASNA Victoria for all the hard work they put into making this event happen! Jane lies in Winchester, blessed be her shade!
Praise the Lord for making her, and her for all she made.
​And while the stones of Winchester—or Milsom Street—remain,
Glory, Love, and Honour unto England's Jane!
                                                     -- Rudyard Kipling

 This blog explores social attitudes in Jane Austen's time, discusses her novels, reviews forgotten 18th century novels, and throws  some occasional shade  at the modern academy. ​The introductory post is here.  My "six simple questions for academics" post is here. Spoilers abound in my discussion of these forgotten novels, and I discuss 18th-century attitudes which I do not necessarily endorse. CMP#223 The Standing Stone on the Moor, another engrossing tale from Allie Cresswell     I just had the pleasure of losing myself in the new release of Allie Cresswell's Talbot family series. Allie Creswell has created another story that pulls you into a different world with her skilful evocation of time and place—in this case, a small village on the Yorkshire moors during the Industrial Revolution, when the labouring classes of England were moving from their isolated farms to crowded tenements and the "dark satanic mills." What I love about Allie's heroine, Beth Harlish, is that she is not as a raving beauty. She's nice-looking, but her qualities of intelligence and character are what make two men fall in love with her. This romantic triangle was so exquisitely balanced that I had no idea who would prevail until the very end.
​   Allie keeps her storylines and all her varied characters in motion and you just want to keep turning the page. It's no easy feat to create so many vivid and distinct characters. It's almost Dickensian.
​   Another thing I really love about Allie’s historical fiction is her descriptions of every day life. With her skillful touch for the telling detail, you are right there, moving between a desolate group of Irish refugees from the Great Famine, to the dangerous depths of a Yorkshire coal mine, to the cloistered lives of genteel spinsters, to the brash, crude, rising class of the newly-prosperous mercantile class and the impoverished nobility clinging to their rank and privileges. Beth Harlish navigates a society dominated by class barriers and open bigotry. She follows her own convictions of right and wrong, but the most important person in her life—her brother Frank—turns her world upside down.
   The Standing Stone on the Moor can be read as a stand-alone novel, but I suspect that after finishing it, you will want to turn to the other books in the Talbot family trilogy.
   If you haven't read any Allie Cresswell and you are a Janeite, you will enjoy her Emma prequel, the Highbury Trilogy. I also loved The House on Winter Moss, in which--as with this book--the weather is a character in the novel.  The north Yorkshire coast was a hotbed for smugglers bringing in luxury goods like tea and wine to avoid taxation. Smuggling is featured in The Standing Stone in the Moor. Here is an article about the Yorkshire smugglers and their techniques--sort of a smugglers' how-to. Previous post:   The wealthy aunt who didn't help her nieces 

 This blog explores social attitudes in Jane Austen's time, discusses her novels, reviews forgotten 18th century novels, and throws  some occasional shade  at the modern academy. ​The introductory post is here.  My "six simple questions for academics" post is here. Spoilers abound in my discussion of these forgotten novels, and I discuss 18th-century attitudes which I do not necessarily endorse. CMP# 222  Rich widowed aunts and disappointed legatees Jane Leigh Perrot at the time of her trial    When you are a country clergyman of modest means with a large family, prudence requires that you stay on good terms with your wife's wealthy relations. So it was with the Rev. George Austen, his wife Cassandra, and his wife's relatives, the Leigh Perrots. The Austens lived in expectation and hope of receiving an inheritance from the childless Leigh Perrots (see Brenda Cox's blog post for an explanation of the family tree and the monies involved). When Mrs. Leigh Perrot was arrested in 1799 for shoplifting Mrs. Austen offered to send Cassandra and Jane to keep her company while she was held awaiting trial but the offer was declined. (She was acquitted). When the Rev. Austen retired, he and his family moved to Bath--where the Leigh Perrots lived. And, I wouldn't be at all surprised if Mrs. Austen dissuaded Jane from looking for a publisher for her novels for fear that the Leigh Perrots wouldn't like it, but that is speculation.
   The Austens were to be disappointed. When James Leigh Perrot died in 1817, he left everything to his wife. This happened near the end of Jane Austen's life and in fact, she believed the bad news set her health back. Mrs. Leigh Perrot lived on until 1836.
    The Austens were not the only family to be disappointed by the last will and testament of a wealthy relative. The same blow fell--even more severely--upon authoress Eliza Kirkham Mathews, then Eliza Kirkham Strong. I will continue referring to her as "EKM" even though for this part of her story, she is "EKS." Faithful readers of this blog know I have written about EKM's life and her poetry and novels before. This is not because she has earned a significant place in the history of the novel. The only slight scholarly notice she has received is owing to her heroine in What Has Been, who tries to earn money by writing a novel. (EKM returns to this theme in a sub plot in Griffith Abbey). My affectionate interest in EKM first arose because I thought her poetry was maudlin, then I realized I had been too harsh on her because her life story truly was tragic. Now I'm hooked on delving up as much information as I can about her via the internet. I love a research rabbit hole. At any rate, here comes another sad chapter from EKM's life. It's easy to see how Eliza’s tragic experiences informed her writing...  Croan House, Egloshayle, Cornwall, in 1960, Country Life magazine, Vol 128 ​ A disappointed legatee
   EKM's mother Mary was a Kirkham, a large, respectable and landed family in Devonshire. She married George Strong, an apothecary/surgeon who must have been moderately successful but who fell on hard times before his death. And he was evidently the son of a tradesman--a reasonably prosperous tradesman, but still! You can imagine how that went down with the Kirkhams. It's rather like Mrs. Price in Mansfield Park.
   Mrs. Strong's oldest brother Fraunceis Kirkham owned lands in Exeter and Cornwall, including Croan House in Egloshayle, which he acquired when he married the heiress Damaris Hoblyn in 1751. 
  George and Mary Kirkham Strong named their first-born son George after his father but their second son was named Francis Kirkham Strong. Fraunceis Kirkham died in 1770 leaving Eliza’s Aunt Damaris a wealthy widow with a carriage and a houseful of servants. No doubt her sister-in-law Mary Kirkham Strong hoped that some of that wealth would find its way to her own family, especially after her husband George's business failed and the family sank into poverty. The last will and testament of another of Mary Kirkham Strong's siblings gives us a glimpse into the troubles of the Strong family. When Elizabeth Kirkham died in 1781, she left legacies of one hundred pounds to a niece and nephew. But her sister "Mary Strong, wife of George Strong, apothecary," received an annuity of five pounds per year, to be placed "in the hands of my said sister," for the rest of "her natural life." The other relatives could be entrusted with their entire inheritances, but the money was to be doled out to Mary. One certainly suspects that Elizabeth wanted to prevent Mary's husband George getting his hands on it, or perhaps it was to protect it from George's creditors.
   Damaris Kirkham survived her husband by almost 25 years, dying in March of 1794. By then Mary and George Strong had also died, their sons Francis and George were dead, and their daughter Mary was dead, leaving Eliza (EKM) alone in the world. Eliza, then 23 years old, wrote a pleading letter to the executor of her aunt’s will. I discovered this letter in the Cornwall (Konsel Kernow) archives and have transcribed it below:
   She addresses a "Mr. Tremayne" and she mentions a "Mr. Tincombe," who is another one of her uncles, married to her Aunt Henrietta Kirkham Tincombe.    ​Knowing you are the executor of the late Mrs. Kirkham of Croan; an Orphan Legatee impressed with an idea of yr Benevolence, and [honour?] presumes to address you, -- Mr. Tincombe sometime since informed me that my Aunt Kirkham had in her Will, bequeathed to my late revered Mother, sixty one guineas, my sister, and self 20 each; as Heiress to both, am told I can claim these legacy’s.
     I trust [?] this is legal, as I am poor, --a hundred guinea’s would to me be of infinite service, were I rich, never would I intrude on Mr. Tremayne but poor and an Orphan, I appeal to his humanity and flatter myself no objection will be raised to this claim.
     I never offended my Aunt – yet she left me, the niece of a much-loved husband, less than her servants, this astonishes me as I have heard her benevolence was unbounded, believe me Sir I do not repine, my Sainted Mother was a bright example of patience, she taught me to be submissive to the Will of Heaven, in her steps I would fain tread, -- I trust Sir you’ll peruse with an eye of Christian Humanity the request of an Orphan—And “may that Being who is a Father to the Fatherless, reward you for it.”
                          –I am Sir with every good wish,
                           yr humble Srvnt,
                            Eliza Kirkham Strong.        It looks like EKM pleaded in vain for the legacies intended for her late mother and sister. On the outside of the letter, a clerk jotted a note that £20 was remitted to Eliza, in keeping with Damaris Kirkham’s will. Or perhaps it was an additional £20, over and above the £20 she had already been given. The relevant section of Damaris Kirkham's will reads: ​“Also give unto my Sister in Law Mary Strong widow of George Strong Surgeon late of Exeter the sum of fifty guineas to be paid at the end of six months after my decease and I also give twenty pounds to each of her two Daughters Mary Strong and Elizabeth Strong to set them up in some Business the said twenty pounds to be paid to them each one year after my decease.” Lucky legatee: Rev. Henry Hawkins Tremayne (1741-1829)     A measly twenty pounds apiece “To set them up in some Business”? Clearly Auntie Damaris believed that Mary and Eliza should resign all pretensions of belonging to the genteel class, despite being Kirkhams on their mother's side. Like EKM's frosty Mrs. Elton in What Has Been, Mrs. Kirkham thought that Mary and Eliza should get busy with their needles and become milliners or seamstresses.

The late lamented Damaris Kirkham
     Damaris Kirkham bequeathed monies to dozens of people to purchase mourning clothes and mourning rings in her memory. She left forty pounds to be distributed amongst the poor of Elgoshayle. She gave her carriage-driver, who had a large family, a small yearly annuity. Her housekeeper, footman, dairy maid, gardener and housemaid got, so far as I can make out, five or ten pounds apiece along with the said monies for mourning clothes. In a codicil, she also left some furniture to her housekeeper. So yes, the widow Kirkham definitely had a closer and more affectionate relationship with her servants in Cornwall than she did with her sister-in-law or her nieces. There were no keepsake mourning rings for the Exeter branch of the family, either. The loss of her own sons and daughter in childhood did not incline her to be generous to her nieces.
   Eliza's mother may have been thrown off by her family when she made her imprudent match to a man of undistinguished pedigree. Or, for all we know, her brother Francis had already stepped in to help the Strong family just as Sir Thomas Bertram helped the Prices in Mansfield Park. Perhaps they felt they had done enough. Perhaps a rift arose later. Or perhaps Mrs. Kirkham was just not interested in her late husband's side of the family and only felt close to her own family.
  At any rate, an 1867 history of Cornwall explains that Damaris Hoblyn “[m]arried Francis Kirkham, Esq., of the Cornwall Militia; and having buried her husband and all of her children, she bequeathed his and other estates to her cousin, the Rev. Henry Hawkins Tremayne."
    Croan House passed down through the Tremayne family for several generations and still stands today. The Rev. Hawkins was already well-to-do, thanks to the death of his older brother and his marriage to an heiress. He was not a blood relation of the Strong family of Exeter, and may have felt no connection with them. EKM made her feelings clear about rich people who wouldn't help their poor relations in What Has Been.
    Jane Austen's family always insisted that her characters were not portraits of real people. I have trouble believing that she resisted that temptation. Perhaps Fanny Dashwood of Sense and Sensibility and Lady Denham of Sanditon are partly based on real, disagreeable, rich relations. Church of St Petroc, Egloshayle, Derek Harper Fiction imitates life
     And yes, I noticed that EKM uses the possessive apostrophe "S" when she should be using the plural. I am also surprised that she uses the same idioms and ideas that dominate her poems and her fiction--poetic language and resignation to the will of God.
​    In a short postscript to her letter, EKM told Mr. Tremayne that she was going to London "in a few days." She doesn’t explain why, but one assumes she planned to make the rounds of the publishers with some manuscripts, or a collection of her poems. Her interactions with publishers are referenced in What Has Been and Griffith Abbey.
     EKM's first book of poetry, published by subscription (i.e. crowdfunded by benevolent people), came out the following year. Most of the subscribers are from Exeter, and a few are from Cornwall, including Lady Molesworth, the owner of a stately home near Elgoshayle, but "Tremayne" does not appear on the subscriber list. The Tincombes bought three copies.
    Eliza Kirkham Strong met Charles Mathews in Swansea while she was working as a schoolteacher. They were married in September 1797 and lived mostly in Hull and York, until her death in 1801. 
   Janeites lament that so many of Jane Austen's letters were destroyed after her death--but in comparison to many obscure authoresses of the period, we have an absolute treasure-trove of biographical material. At least, by identifying EKM as a niece of Fraunceis and Damaris Kirkham, I have filled in her family genealogy on her mother's side.
   In her fiction, EKM gave herself the inheritance she was denied in real life.

Previous post:  Who wrote Griffith Abbey? Clifford, H. Dalton. “Far From the Madding Crowd,” Country Life, July 28, 1960, pp 196-197.

Polsue, Joseph. A Complete Parochial History of the County of Cornwall: Compiled from the Best Authorities & Corrected and Improved from Actual Survey ; Illustrated. United Kingdom, W. Lake, 1867.

The Kirkhams family was laid to rest in St. Petroc churchyard. The church bells of this ancient church inspired a Cornish folksong, "The Ringers of Elgoshayle."