Michael Peverett: Charlotte Carpenter (1770

Tuesday, November 01, 2016

Charlotte Carpenter (1770 - 1826)

Charlotte Scott in 1810, painted by James Saxon (Abbotsford House)

[Image source: http://www.artuk.org/discover/artworks/lady-scott-nee-charlotte-margaret-charpentier-17701826-208656 . This was a companion painting to the Mancunian James Saxon's 1805 portrait of her husband Walter Scott, shown below.]

While researching my recent post about the poem against cruelty to animals that I found on the horse-trough in Bath (http://michaelpeverett.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/the-silent-cry.html), I kept discovering earlier versions of the poem. The earliest text I could find was in the August 1815 number of The American Magazine, a New York monthly.

It isn't always easy to pin down the date of an old article when it's part of a bound volume, as this one was.

And my confidence in the date of August 1815 took a momentary battering when I spotted the following notice, a couple of pages earlier (p. 125) than the poem:

Sir WALTER SCOTT. -- The poetry of Walter Scott, is probably as much read in this country as in England, and we hasten to inform our readers that this popular poet has lately been knighted by the Prince Regent. He is married, to an illegitimate daughter of the Duke of Devonshire, with whom he got about 44000 dollars, a warm prize, and a rich one for a poet.

Surely Scott had not been knighted as early as 1815?

No, he had not. He did have dinner with the Prince Regent in 1815, but Scott's baronetcy was first mentioned in a letter to Morritt dated 7th December, 1818: "Our fat friend being desirous to honour Literature in my unworthy person..." . The projected ceremony was delayed by Scott's ill-health and family troubles and finally took place on March 30, 1820, by which time the conferrer had become King George IV.

Nevertheless, this certainly is the August 1815 number of the American Magazine, as the surrounding contents abundantly confirm. So it was a dodgy news item (or a prescient one if you prefer), and that's confirmed by the scurrilous remarks about Scott's marriage that follow.

Charlotte Margaret Carpenter (Charpentier)*, whom he married in 1797, had lost both parents and was under the guardianship of Lord Downshire. The precise nature of Lord Downshire's connection with her family remains unclear. The American Magazine seems to be garbling a contemporary rumour that Charlotte was really Lord Downshire's own illegitimate daughter. But it understandably mixed him up with the scandal-ridden fifth Duke of Devonshire, husband of the magnificent Georgiana. (This suggestion about Lord Downshire was brought up again in John Sutherland's 1995 biography of Scott; he thinks that Mme Charpentier was indeed his mistress, but doubts if he was the father of Charlotte as he would have been only sixteen or seventeen.)

The official story, as recounted by Lockhart, is that Mme Charpentier (née Charlotte Volère), an ardent royalist, fled with her son and daughter to England in the wake of the French Revolution, her husband Jean having recently died. [Actually there is evidence that she came to England at least a couple of years before the revolution.] Charlotte junior would have been around 20 at the time, and she always retained a slight French accent. Mme Charpentier died not long after her arrival in England. The Marquis of Downshire took the son and daughter under his protection, having previously known the family (indeed stayed with them) in France.

In 1815 you could get almost 5 dollars to the pound (Ah, those were the days!). So $44,000 = about £10,000. That sounds about right for Charlotte's fortune: Scott in his letter asking for his parents' consent says that she had £500 a year. This was partly on account of the lucrative position her brother Charles had attained in the East India Company. He was the commercial resident at Salem, in southern India. (When he died in 1818, Charlotte inherited £40,000.)

* Her name as given by Lockhart. I've also seen her called Charlotte Genevieve and Margaret Charlotte.

*

Lockhart (Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Chapter VIII):

She was the daughter of Jean Charpentier, of Lyons, a devoted royalist, who held an office under Government,[139] and Charlotte Volere, his wife. She and her only brother, Charles Charpentier, had been educated in the Protestant religion of their mother; and when their father died, which occurred in the beginning of the Revolution, Madame Charpentier made her escape with her children, first to Paris, and then to England, where they found a warm friend and protector in the late Marquis of Downshire, who had, in the course of his travels in France, formed an intimate acquaintance with the family, and, indeed, spent some time under their roof. M. Charpentier had, in his first alarm as to the coming Revolution, invested £4000 in English securities—part in a mortgage upon Lord Downshire's estates. On the mother's death, which occurred soon after her arrival in London, this nobleman took on himself the character of sole guardian to her children; and Charles Charpentier received in due time, through his interest, an appointment in the service of the East India Company, in which he had by this time risen to the lucrative situation of Commercial Resident at Salem. His sister was now making a little excursion, under the care of the lady who had superintended her education, Miss Jane Nicolson, a daughter of Dr. Nicolson, Dean of Exeter, and granddaughter of William Nicolson, Bishop of Carlisle, well known as the editor of The English Historical Library. To some connections which the learned prelate's family had ever since his time kept up in the diocese of Carlisle, Miss Carpenter owed the direction of her summer tour.

*

There's a few more details in this article by the Belfast antiquarian Francis Joseph Bigger (1863 - 1926). (From a newspaper clipping pasted into my copy of Scott's Poems.)

SIR WALTER SCOTT'S ROMANCE

By FRANCIS JOSEPH BIGGER, M.R.I.A.

There is a nice literary item told before but not now very well known locally that is worth repeating. In 1788 there was an Arthur Hill, Earl of Hillsborough, afterwards Marquis of Downshire, who was making the grand tour with Lady Hillsborough when his carriage broke down near the city of Lyons in France. Shelter and assistance were freely obtained from a neighbouring chateau, the occupant of which was M. Jean Carpentier, a high official in the service of Louis the Sixteenth. The genial Frenchman and his family housed and entertained Lord and Lady Hillsborough for several days whilst their equipage was being repaired. This laid the foundation of an enduring friendship, which Lord Hillsborough tried to increase by inviting his hosts to visit him in London the following summer. This was frustrated, however, by the breaking out of the French Revolution that year, when much tribulation fell on the Carpentier household, and Jean fell ill and died, having first by his will appointed Lord Hillsborough trustee of any property remaining to him and guardian of his widow, son, and daughter. The Carpentiers were forced to fly from their own land, taking refuge in London, as many other French emigrees had to do at that time of upheaval. Madame Carpentier found out Lord Hillsborough, and was sheltered by him in his mansion in Burlington Street until other arrangements were made, but the noble lady was so stricken with her troubles that she soon passed away, leaving her son and daughter to the sole care of the kindly lord from County Down. The son was appointed to a good position in Madras, whilst the daughter's education was completed, and then she was taken into the family circle of Dr. Nicholson, Dean of Exeter. In 1797 the Dean and his family made a tour through the English lake district, where they met Walter Scott, then a young barrister of little practice or literary fame. The future author of the Waverley Novels at once fell in love with the handsome Charlotte Carpentier, to whom he was united in wedlock on the 21st December of the same year, having first obtained the approval and consent of the Marquis of Downshire, as Lord Hillsborough had then become. Small events often lead to large issues; thus the accidental breaking-down of a touring carriage in a foreign land was the means of bringing about, through the sympathy and warm heart of a County Down nobleman, an alliance between a lovely French refugee and the illustrious Sir Walter Scott, who made her mistress of the lordly towers of Abbotsford.

*

The Marquis committed suicide in 1801. He was said to be distraught after being dismissed from various government and military positions as a result of his opposition to the 1800 Union of Great Britain and Ireland.

Charlotte was just 56 when she died. I think of her as older. I suppose because the "Lady S" I feel I know is the woman in rapidly failing health who appears in the first part of Scott's journal. His account of her decline and death is unbearably moving; her importance in her husband's life was evidently profound.

.... My dear wife, the partner of early cares and successes, is, I fear, frail in health—though I trust and pray she may see me out. Indeed, if this troublesome complaint goes on—it bodes no long existence. ...

Went again to the Solicitor on a wrong night, being asked for to-morrow. Lady Scott undertakes to keep my engagements recorded in future. Sed quis custodiet ipsam custodem? ...

[News of his bankruptcy ....]

.... Lady Scott is incredulous, and persists in cherishing hope where there is no ground for hope. I wish it may not bring on the gloom of spirits which has given me such distress. If she were the active person she once was that would not be. ....

May 10.—To-morrow I leave my home. To what scene I may suddenly be recalled, it wrings my heart to think. If she would but be guided by the medical people, and attend rigidly to their orders, something might be hoped, but she is impatient with the protracted suffering, and no wonder. ...

.... Charlotte was unable to take leave of me, being in a sound sleep, after a very indifferent night. Perhaps it was as well. Emotion might have hurt her; and nothing I could have expressed would have been worth the risk. I have foreseen, for two years and more, that this menaced event could not be far distant. I have seen plainly, within the last two months, that recovery was hopeless. And yet to part with the companion of twenty-nine years when so very ill—that I did not, could not foresee. It withers my heart to think of it, and to recollect that I can hardly hope again to seek confidence and counsel from that ear to which all might be safely confided. But in her present lethargic state, what would my attentions have availed? and Anne [their daughter] has promised close and constant intelligence. I must dine with James Ballantyne to-day en famille. I cannot help it; but would rather be at home and alone.

May 15.—Received the melancholy intelligence that all is over at Abbotsford.

[Abbotsford,] May 16.—She died at nine in the morning, after being very ill for two days,—easy at last. ....

.... Yet, when I contrast what this place now is, with what it has been not long since, I think my heart will break. Lonely, aged, deprived of my family—all but poor Anne, an impoverished and embarrassed man, I am deprived of the sharer of my thoughts and counsels, who could always talk down my sense of the calamitous apprehensions which break the heart that must bear them alone. Even her foibles were of service to me, by giving me things to think of beyond my weary self-reflections.

I have seen her. The figure I beheld is, and is not, my Charlotte—my thirty years' companion. There is the same symmetry of form, though those limbs are rigid which were once so gracefully elastic—but that yellow masque, with pinched features, which seems to mock life rather than emulate it, can it be the face that was once so full of lively expression? I will not look on it again. Anne thinks her little changed, because the latest idea she had formed of her mother is as she appeared under circumstances of sickness and pain. Mine go back to a period of comparative health. If I write long in this way, I shall write down my resolution, which I should rather write up, if I could. I wonder how I shall do with the large portion of thoughts which were hers for thirty years. I suspect they will be hers yet for a long time at least. ...

May 18.—Another day, and a bright one to the external world, again opens on us; the air soft, and the flowers smiling, and the leaves glittering. They cannot refresh her to whom mild weather was a natural enjoyment. Cerements of lead and of wood already hold her; cold earth must have her soon. But it is not my Charlotte, it is not the bride of my youth, the mother of my children, that will be laid among the ruins of Dryburgh, which we have so often visited in gaiety and pastime. No, no. She is sentient and conscious of my emotions somewhere—somehow; where we cannot tell; how we cannot tell; yet would I not at this moment renounce the mysterious yet certain hope that I shall see her in a better world, for all that this world can give me. The necessity of this separation,—that necessity which rendered it even a relief,—that and patience must be my comfort. I do not experience those paroxysms of grief which others do on the same occasion. I can exert myself and speak even cheerfully with the poor girls. But alone, or if anything touches me—the choking sensation. I have been to her room: there was no voice in it—no stirring; the pressure of the coffin was visible on the bed, but it had been removed elsewhere; all was neat as she loved it, but all was calm—calm as death. I remembered the last sight of her; she raised herself in bed, and tried to turn her eyes after me, and said, with a sort of smile, "You all have such melancholy faces." They were the last words I ever heard her utter, and I hurried away, for she did not seem quite conscious of what she said. When I returned, immediately [before] departing, she was in a deep sleep. It is deeper now. This was but seven days since.

They are arranging the chamber of death; that which was long the apartment of connubial happiness, and of whose arrangements (better than in richer houses) she was so proud. They are treading fast and thick. For weeks you could have heard a foot-fall. Oh, my God! ....

.... Dull, drooping, cheerless has the day been. I cared not to carry my own gloom to the girls, and so sate in my own room, dawdling with old papers, which awakened as many stings as if they had been the nest of fifty scorpions. Then the solitude seemed so absolute—my poor Charlotte would have been in the room half-a-score of times to see if the fire burned, and to ask a hundred kind questions. Well, that is over—and if it cannot be forgotten, must be remembered with patience. ....

(Extracts from Scott's journal, Nov 1825 to May 1826.)

But I was curious, and perhaps you are too, to hear more of Charlotte herself, not just how much she meant to her celebrated husband.

Maybe there's something voyeuristic about that; not everyone wants to parade themselves to posterity. Anyway, I haven't had much success. Lockhart quoted some of Charlotte's letters to Walter, after their whirlwind courtship but before their marriage (she was nearly 27, eight months older than Walter). The letters are clear-eyed and playful, but perhaps what comes across most strongly is that she had no great taste for writing; that, for her, writing would always seem an unnatural activity that stopped her from getting on with something more rewarding. And you have to admire her for being so upfront about it. (Of course Walter wasn't a famous author at the time, indeed barely an author at all, but his literary enthusiasms must have been apparent.)

Anyway here's one of her letters:

Carlisle, November 27.

You have made me very triste all day. Pray never more complain of being poor. Are you not ten times richer than I am? Depend on yourself and your profession. I have no doubt you will rise very high, and be a great rich man, but we should look down to be contented with our lot, and banish all disagreeable thoughts. We shall do very well. I am very sorry to hear you have such a bad head. I hope I shall nurse away all your aches. I think you write too much. When I am mistress I shall not allow it. How very angry I should be with you if you were to part with Lenore. Do you really believe I should think it an unnecessary expense where your health and pleasure can be concerned? I have a better opinion of you, and I am very glad you don't give up the cavalry, as I love anything that is stylish. Don't forget to find a stand for the old carriage, as I shall like to keep it, in case we should have to go any journey; it is so much more convenient than the post-chaises, and will do very well till we can keep our carriage. What an idea of yours was that to mention where you wish to have your bones laid! If you were married, I should think you were tired of me. A very pretty compliment before marriage. I hope sincerely that I shall not live to see that day. If you always have those cheerful thoughts, how very pleasant and gay you must be.

Adieu, my dearest friend. Take care of yourself if you love me, as I have no wish that you should visit that beautiful and romantic scene, the burying-place. Adieu, once more, and believe that you are loved very sincerely by

C. C.

[Lenore was the volunteer cavalryman's charger, "a tall and powerful animal" according to Lockhart.]

[Walter had prattled on about his favoured resting-place at Dryburgh Abbey; Charlotte is quoting his own words "beautiful" and "romantic" back at him. They were indeed both buried there.]

They had five children:

1. A son; he was born on 14 October 1798 but died the next day.

2. (Charlotte) Sophia, b. 24 Oct 1799. Married J.G. Lockhart, later Scott's biographer, in 1820. Died in 1737. Three children. The youngest (Charlotte) inherited Abbotsford in 1847.

3. Walter, b. 28 Oct 1801. Military career. Married Jane Jobson in 1825. No children. Died in 1847.

4. Anne, b. 2 Feb 1803. She died in 1833, just 30, perhaps worn out after caring for both her parents in their final years.

5. Charles, b. 24 Dec 1805. Diplomatic career. At the British Embassy in Naples from 1831. Died of fever in 1841, soon after arriving in Tehran (he's buried in the Armenian church).