A Woman of Considerable Renown

I attended Marion Roberts' talk last night in the Erasmus Darwin House, which was a fascinating insight into Anna Seward and her literary importance in 18th-century Lichfield and beyond. Roberts has been studying Seward (which, she was keen to point out, should be pronounced See-ward) for 20 years, and certainly knows her stuff! See below for some pictures of the exhibition on Seward's life (apologies for the blurring, but only non-flash photography was allowed).




I loved this letter (above right) in which Seward outlined Erasmus Darwin's advice about preventing the total destruction of her teeth. (It made me smile because it confirmed what Professor Peter Martin told us in passing a few weeks ago about Seward's bad teeth). This was displayed alongside copies of her Memoirs of the Life of Dr. Darwin (the open books above left and right).

But perhaps most exciting was this case (below) containing a first edition of Seward's verse novel Louisa alongside a signed letter by the author. You remember I was recently given a first-edition copy of Louisa, which I thought might contain the author's signature (see top)? Well, I was able to take it out and compare it to the letter, and found the signatures to be the same. Marion Roberts also had a look and confirmed it was Seward's handwriting. She also showed me some photographs of an amazing mourning ring that she owns containing a minute lock of Seward's hair, about the size of a fingernail!





Photographs © Memoirs of the Celebrated Mrs Woffington.

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Anna Seward and Classic Lichfield

I must say I'm enjoying Anna Seward and Classic Lichfield by Stapleton Martin, despite the scary portrait on the cover (see left).

It was written in 1909 both to commemorate her centenary and to try to raise her profile; as the preface says: 'Literature and music and science have been found this year amazingly prolific in centenary commemorations of their great exemplars... yet the death in 1809 of Anna Seward, who "for many years held a high rank in the annals of British literature," to quote the words of Sir Walter Scott, has generally passed unnoticed.'

The book has been reprinted by Dodo Press this year to mark the 200th anniversary of her death (which is tomorrow), and though the writing style is pretty florid, I've learnt some curious things from it.

Martin doesn't pull his punches; on the subject of Seward's Memoirs Of The Life Of Dr. Darwin he says: '[Her] Memoir she called, "The woman's might in biography". This book... is, nowadays, considered but a poor piece of writing.' Yet many thought her a fine poet; let's not forget that Erasmus Darwin actually nicked her work and passed it off as his own in his poem, the Botanic Garden, an act that Stapleton describes as 'ungallant, to say the least'.

Curiously, Anna's family had several pet names for her, including Nancy and Julia (she was baptised Anne but preferred Anna). Sadly, all of Seward's siblings died in infancy, except one beloved sister, Sarah, who died aged 19, almost on the eve of her marriage to Dr Johnson's son-in-law. There's a monument (pictured here) in Lichfield Cathedral which commemorates Seward, her parents and Sarah. It depicts the poetess mourning her relations while her harp hangs, neglected, on a tree.

The epitaph is by Sir Walter Scott:

Amid these Aisles, where once his precepts showed,
The heavenward pathway which in life he trode,
This simple tablet marks a Father’s bier;
And those he loved in life, in death are near.
For him, for them, a daughter bade it rise,
Memorial of domestic charities.
Still would you know why o’er the marble spread,
In female grace the willow droops her head;
Why on her branches, silent and unstrung,
The minstrel harp, is emblematic hung;
What Poet’s voice is smother’d here in dust,
Till waked to join the chorus of the just;
Lo! one brief line an answer sad supplies—
Honour’d, belov’d, and mourn’d, here Seward lies:
Her worth, her warmth of heart, our sorrows say:
Go seek her genius in her living lay.

There's a free e-version of Stapleton Martin's book here.

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A Proper Swansong

March 25th 2009 marks the 200th anniversary of Anna Seward's death, and though I could hardly expect the level of attention that's been paid to Samuel Johnson's this year, I did feel a bit sad that Lichfield - the city with which she is most strongly identified - wasn't doing more to commemorate her.

I was glad I didn't write a long rant about this, though, since Erasmus Darwin House (pictured above) has come to the rescue with an illustrated talk by Seward scholar Marion Roberts, scheduled for 7pm on Tuesday March 24th - the day before her 200th (tickets are £5). There's also an exhibition at the House, celebrating Seward's contribution to 18th-century Lichfield and her relationship with Erasmus Darwin (Mar 24 to Apr 19).

Handily, I've also just been given the new reprint of Anna Seward and Classic Lichfield by Stapleton Martin (originally published in 1909) so I can do some swotting up on the 'Swan of Lichfield' before Roberts' talk.

Photograph © Memoirs of the Celebrated Mrs Woffington.

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Every Little Helps

A quick look at the Samuel Johnson Project website confirms the exciting news that Tesco has stumped up over £50,000 to fund a public art project in Lichfield addressing the works of Johnson, Darwin and Anna Seward.

Part of the grand plan is the creation of three sculptures, developed around Johnson’s life and work, placed around the city (one will be at the Samuel Johnson Hospital, with the other sites to be confirmed). Limited space is being created on the bases of the sculptures to have supporters’ names cast in bronze; apparently immortality can be yours for a minimum donation of £27.50.

More details on the website.

Photograph © Memoirs of the Celebrated Mrs Woffington.

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Louisa Comes Home

I've been totally spoilt this Valentine's with a remarkable gift - what's thought to be a first edition of Anna Seward's sentimental verse novel, Louisa, published in Lichfield in 1784.

Before I tell you the story of the book, allow me to do a quick recap. You'll remember that I wrote about Seward (above), who was a poet of some renown by the 1780s (dubbed The Swan of Lichfield, and credited by Erasmus Darwin as the inventor of a poetic form, the epic elegy). She lived almost her entire life in the cathedral city and knew many of the major artistic and scientific figures of her day, including Samuel Johnson (whom she thought 'an overrated ranter') and James Boswell ('nought but a Scottish coxcomb'). In fact, Boswell rather fancied her; she rebuffed his attentions twice but did give him a lock of hair tied with pink ribbon, which was found in his papers after his death.

We still have Seward to thank for preserving aspects of Lichfield which survive to this day: in 1773, she approached the town clerk with an idea to stop Minster Pool from silting up (she proposed it should be 'serpentined' by digging out certain areas), and she decried attempts by the church authorities to remove every other lime tree from The Dean's Walk, comparing it to 'removing every other tooth from a mouth'. The monument to her in Lichfield Cathedral (below) carries an epitaph by Walter Scott.


Anyway, my partner, knowing my interest in Seward, tracked down Louisa from a bookseller in Delanson, New York, who then shipped it back home to the place it was published over 200 years ago. When it arrived in Lichfield, he was surprised to find just a bundle of pages, so he contacted a bookbinder called Henry Mills, a family business since 1855, based in Aston, near Birmingham, and got it bound, complete with the beautiful marbled end papers (below). You can see that the pages are brown with age; I can't begin to describe the excitement of handling them.

But the biggest thrill was on the back page (see bottom picture), which Seward appears to have signed. Could this have been one of her own copies, kept in her house, The Bishop's Palace, just a stone's throw from where we live? I'd like to think so!





Photographs © Memoirs of the Celebrated Mrs Woffington.

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Swan of Lichfield

A little while ago I wrote a short story on bonkers Lunar Man Thomas Day, who took up two foundling children with the intention of making one of them into the perfect wife. That's a whole post in itself, but anyway, one of Day's friends during his days living at Stowe (on the outskirts of Lichfield) was the poet Anna Seward, otherwise known as the Swan of Lichfield.

I won't go into her biog here, but her entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is online if you're interested. She admired Darwin (and wrote his Memoirs), treated Johnson with a dim regard, and wrote some seriously witty and rather waspish letters (she once said that an unanswered letter was an 'expatiated sin'). Some regard her verse as doggerel, which is rather unfair. After all, Darwin saw fit to steal some of it for his long poem Botanic Garden, without either permission or acknowledgment. But I love her rather sarcastic defence of Darwin's descriptions of the sexual reproduction of plants in the above book: 'do not suppose that a virtuous girl, or young married woman, could be induced, by reading the Botanic Garden, to imitate the involuntary libertinism of a fungus or flower'.

Here's one of her poems:

"SONNET IV"

And now the youthful, gay, capricious Spring,
Piercing her showery clouds with crystal light,
And with their hues reflected streaking bright
Her radiant bow, bids all her warblers sing;
The lark, shrill carolling on soaring wing;
The lonely thrush, in brake, with blossoms white,
That tunes his pipe so loud; while, from the sight
Coy bending their dropt heads, young cowslips fling
Rich perfume o'er the fields.--It is the prime
Of hours that beauty robes:--yet all they gild,
Cheer and delight in this their fragrant time,
For thy dear sake, to me less pleasure yield
Than, veil'd in sleet, and rain, and hoary rime,
Dim Winter's naked hedge and plashy field.

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