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.