1799 - A Female Perspective

1799

         A FEMALE PERSPECTIVE

 

ASIA

Gu Taiqing (1799-c. 1876), a Chinese poet, was born.

Gu Taiqing (1799-c. 1876) was a Chinese poet during the Qing Dynasty.  She was of Manchu descent. Like several other women writers and poets, she had Shi Yunyu as a supporter. She was also a friend of Liang Desheng, a female writer of tan-ci.  Gu Taiqing wrote about the modern social reality. Her collection of poems is Poems Written in Tianyou Pavilion.

Rani Velu Nachiyar, the first Tamil Queen to fight against the British, is believed to have died in this year.

Rani Velu Nachiyar was an 18th century Indian Queen from Sivaganga (Siva Gangai). Rani Velu Nachiyar is the first Queen of Tamil Origin to fight against the British in India.  She was the princess of Ramnad, and the daughter of Chellamuthu Sethupathy. She married the king of Siva Gangai and they had a daughter - Vellachi Nachiyar. When her husband was killed, she was drawn into battle. Her husband and his second wife were killed by a few British soldiers and the son of the Nawab of Arcot. She escaped with her daughter and lived under the protection of Hyder Ali at Virupachi near Dindigul for eight years. During this period, she formed an army and sought an alliance with Gopala Nayaker and Hyder Ali with the aim of attacking the British. In 1780, Rani Velu Nachiyar fought the British with military assistance from Gopala Nayaker and Hyder Ali and won the battle. Rani Velu Nachiyar formed a woman's army named “udaiyaar” in honor of her adopted daughter — Udaiyaar, who died detonating a British arsenal. Nachiyar was one of the few rulers who regained her kingdom and ruled it for 10 more years.

The Queen Velu Nachiyar granted powers to the Marudhu Brothers to administer the country in 1780. Velu Nachiyar died a few years later, but the exact date of her death is not known (it may have been as early as 1790 but may have been as late as 1799).

On December 31, 2008, a commemorative postage stamp depicting Rani Velu Nachiyar was released.

 

 

EUROPE

 

 

Pauline Auzou exhibited Young Woman Reading.

 

Pauline Auzou (née Jeanne-Marie-Catherine Desmarquest) (March 24, 1775 – May 15, 1835) was a French painter.  Auzou was born and died in Paris. She was Jacques-Louis David's pupil and she frequented Jean-Baptiste Regnault's atelier.  On Frimaire 19 Year II (December 9, 1793), she married the stationer Charles-Marie Auzou.

 

American historian Hannah Adams published A Summary History of New England.  Adams was the first professional woman writer in the United States.

 

Hannah Adams, (b. October 2, 1755, Medfield, Massachusetts — d. December 15, 1831, Brookline, Massachusetts), was an American compiler of historical information primarily in the study of religion.

Adams was the daughter of a notably eccentric bibliophile father whose lack of business acumen kept the large family in poverty. She inherited his love of books and his remarkable memory, and, although she received no formal schooling, she was well tutored by divinity students boarding in her home. One of these students introduced her to the Reverend Thomas Broughton’s Historical Dictionary of All Religions, which prompted her to read widely and keep voluminous notes in the field of religions. Her notes were published in 1784 as An Alphabetical Compendium of the Various Sects Which Have Appeared from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Present Day. The book was well received, saw three more American editions and three in London, and brought its author a modest financial return. Determined to earn her living in this way, she set to work on A Summary History of New-England, which appeared in 1799.

By the time of publication of her History, Adams’s eyesight had been affected by her constant work. While preparing an abridged version of her work for the use of teachers, she learned that the Reverend Jedidiah Morse, a staunchly conservative Calvinist, was engaged in a similar project. Morse’s book appeared first, and the sale of Adams’s book apparently suffered as a result. A number of Boston intellectuals, motivated by both admiration for Adams and antipathy to Morse, precipitated a public controversy over the matter, in which Morse conducted himself so clumsily as to lose all public support. Adams herself took little part in the celebrated controversy. Several of her Boston supporters established an annuity for her, and the rest of her days were devoted to the compilation of data. She published The Truth and Excellence of the Christian Religion Exhibited (1804), History of the Jews (1812), and Letters on the Gospels (1824). A Memoir of Miss Hannah Adams, Written by Herself appeared the year after her death.

 

Sophie Cottin published Claire d’Albe.

 

Sophie Cottin (1770-1807) was a French writer whose novels were popular in the 19th century, and were translated into several different languages.

Born Marie Sophie Ristaud (sometimes spelt Risteau) in March 1770 at Tonneins, Lot-et-Garonne, she was not yet twenty when she married her first husband, Jean-Paul-Marie Cottin, a banker. She wrote several romantic and historical novels including Elizabeth; or, the Exiles of Siberia (Elisabeth ou les Exilés de Sibérie 1806), a "wildly romantic but irreproachably moral tale", according to Nuttall's Encyclopaedia. She also published Claire d'Albe (1799), Malvina (1801), Amélie de Mansfield (1803), Mathilde (1805), set in the crusades and a prose-poem, La Prise de Jéricho. Her writing became more important to her after her first husband died when she was in her early twenties. She went to live with a cousin and her three children at Champlan (Seine-et-Oise) but died in her thirties, in Paris on 25 August 1807.

 

Hannah More published Strictures on a Modern System of Female Education.  {See also A Humanist Perspective.}

 

Hannah More, (b. February 2, 1745, Stapleton, Gloucestershire, England — d. September 7, 1833, Bristol, Gloucestershire), was an English religious writer, best known as a writer of popular tracts and as an educator of the poor.

As a young woman with literary aspirations, More made the first of her visits to London in 1773–74. She was welcomed into a circle of Bluestocking wits and was befriended by Joshua Reynolds, Dr. Johnson, and Edmund Burke and, particularly, by David Garrick, who produced her plays The Inflexible Captive (1775) and Percy (1777). After Garrick’s death in 1779, More forsook writing for the stage, and her strong piety and Christian attitudes, already intense, became more marked.

Through her friendship with the abolitionist philanthropist William Wilberforce, More was drawn to the Evangelicals. From her cottage in Somerset, she began to admonish society in a series of treatises beginning with Thoughts on the Importance of the Manners of the Great to General Society (1788). In the climate of alarm over the French Revolution, her fresh and forceful defense of traditional values met with strong approval.

Her Village Politics (1792; under the pseudonym of Will Chip), written to counteract Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man, was so successful that it led to the production of a series of “Cheap Repository Tracts.” Produced at the rate of three a month for three years with the help of her sisters and friends, the tracts sold for a penny each, 2,000,000 being circulated in a single year. They advised the poor in ingeniously homely language to cultivate the virtues of sobriety and industry and to trust in God and in the kindness of the gentry.

Like most of her educated contemporaries, More believed that society was static and that civilization depended upon a large body of the poor, for whom the best education was one that reconciled them to their fate.  Accordingly, More established clubs for women and schools for children, in which the latter were taught the Bible, catechism, and skills thought to befit their station. She persevered in her efforts in spite of much opposition and abuse from country neighbors, who thought that even the most limited education of the poor would destroy their interest in farming, and from the clergy, who accused her of Methodism.

Her final popular success as a writer was her didactic novel Coelebs in Search of a Wife (1808). The feminist movement in the second half of the 20th century revived interest in her Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education, 2 volumes (1799; edited by Gina Luria, 1974).

 

Elizabeth Acton (1799-1859), an English poet and cook who produced one of England's first cookbooks for the lay reader, was born (April 17).

 

Elizabeth "Eliza" Acton (17 April 1799 – 13 February 1859) was an English poet and cook who produced one of the country's first cookbooks aimed at the domestic reader rather than the professional cook or chef, Modern Cookery for Private Families. In this cookbook, Acton introduced the now-universal practice of listing the ingredients and suggested cooking times with each recipe. It included the first recipe for Brussels sprouts. Isabella Beeton's bestselling Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management (1861) was closely modeled on it. Modern Cookery long survived Acton, remaining in print until 1914 and available more recently in facsimile reprint. Her recipes are still in wide circulation.

Acton was born in Battle, Sussex, the eldest of the five children of Elizabeth Mercer and John Acton, a brewer. The family returned to Suffolk shortly after her birth, and there she was raised. At the age of seventeen she and another woman opened a school for girls in Claydon, near Ipswich, which remained open for four years. Her health was precarious and she apparently spent some time in France where she is rumored to have had an unhappy love affair. She published her Poems in 1826 after returning home, and the book enjoyed some small success. She subsequently published some single, longer poems, but it was her Modern Cookery (1845) that garnered her the widest acclaim. It was an immensely influential book which established the format for modern writing about cookery. Shortly after its publication, Acton relocated to London, where she worked on her next and final book, The English Bread Book (1857). Along with recipes and a scholarly history of bread-making, this volume contained Acton's strong opinions about adulterated and processed food.

Acton died in 1859 and was buried in Hampstead.

 

Mary Anning (1799-1847), a British paleontologist, was born (May 21).  She would become a professional fossil collector whose dramatic finds would create a sensation in London geological circles.  Among her finds would be remains of an ichthyosaur (1811), a pleiosaur, and a pterodactyl.

 

Mary Anning (b. May 21, 1799, Lyme Regis, Dorset, England — d. March 9, 1847, Lyme Regis) was a prolific English fossil hunter and amateur anatomist credited with the discovery of several dinosaur specimens that assisted in the early development of paleontology. Her excavations also aided the careers of many British scientists by providing them with specimens to study and framed a significant part of Earth’s geologic history. Some scientists note that fossils recovered by Anning may have also contributed, in part, to the theory of evolution put forth by English naturalist Charles Darwin.

Mary Anning was one of two surviving children born to cabinetmaker, and amateur fossil collector, Richard Anning and his wife, Mary Moore.  Her rather legendary life actually began on August 19, 1800, when she was 15 months old.  On that day an event occurred that became part of local lore of Lyme Regis. Anning was being held by a neighbor, Elizabeth Haskings, who was standing with two other women under an elm tree watching an equestrian show being put on by a travelling company of horsemen, when lightning struck the tree. The three women were killed, but onlookers rushed the infant home where she was revived in a bath of hot water. A local doctor called her survival miraculous, and her family said that before the event she had been a sickly baby, but that afterwards she seemed to blossom. For years afterwards members of her community would attribute the child's curiosity, intelligence, and lively personality to the incident.

The Anning family relied on the sale of fossils collected from seaside cliffs near their home along England’s Channel coast as a source of income. Indeed, the family trade and, Mary Anning’s later notoriety at it, would become the source of a famous tongue twister in the twentieth century. Terry Sullivan's 1908 tongue twister, "She sells seashells" reads as follows:

 

She sells seashells on the seashore
The shells she sells are seashells, I'm sure
So if she sells seashells on the seashore
Then I'm sure she sells seashore shells.

 

After Richard Anning’s death in 1810, the family mainly relied on charity. Mary, her brother, Joseph, and their mother, who were skilled fossil collectors themselves, supplemented their meager resources by selling fossils of invertebrates, such as ammonoids and belemnoids, to collectors and scholars. In 1817, the fossils attracted the attention of British fossil collector Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Birch, who assisted the family financially by purchasing a number of specimens. Later he auctioned off his collection and donated the proceeds to the Anning family during a particularly desperate period in their lives.

Over the course of her life, Anning also discovered the remains of several large vertebrates embedded in the cliffs of Lyme Regis. The cliffs, which date from the late Triassic to early Jurassic periods (some 229 million to 176 million years ago), a time when the area was submerged and located closer to the Equator, contain the fossil-rich limestone and shale of the Blue Lias formation. In 1810, Anning’s brother found the first known Ichthyosaurus specimen. However, it was Anning who was the one who excavated it, and some sources also give her credit for the discovery. British physician Everard Home described the specimen shortly thereafter in a series of papers. Her most famous find occurred in 1824 when she uncovered the first intact Plesiosaurus skeleton. The specimen was so large and well preserved that it attracted the attention of French zoologist Georges Cuvier, who doubted the finding until he saw the drawings of the specimen in a paper by English geologist and paleontologist William Daniel Conybeare. After Cuvier authenticated the discovery, the scientific community began to recognize the paleontological value of the fossils recovered by Mary Anning and her family.

News of Anning’s fossil excavations made her a celebrity and prompted paleontologists, collectors, and tourists to descend on Lyme Regis to buy from her. She went on to recover additional Ichthyosaurus and plesiosaur skeletons from the cliffs. She uncovered a pterosaur in 1828, which became known as Pterodactylus (or Dimorphodon) macronyx. It was the first pterosaur specimen found outside Germany. In 1829, she excavated the skeleton of Squaloraja, a fossil fish thought to be a member of a transition group between sharks and rays.

Anning taught herself geology, anatomy, paleontology, and scientific illustration.  Despite her lack of formal scientific training, her discoveries, local area knowledge, and skill at classifying fossils in the field earned her a reputation among paleontology’s male and largely upper-class ranks. Her later hunting expeditions sometimes included famous scientists of the time, including British geologist and minister William Buckland and British anatomist and paleontologist Richard Owen, who proposed the term Dinosauria in 1842. She also corresponded with and sold fossils to other leading scientists, such as Cuvier and English geologist Adam Sedgwick.

Nevertheless, Anning was not given full credit for many of the fossils she excavated. Collectors donating specimens to institutions tended to be credited with their discovery. Of the many specimens she found and recovered, several were described in prestigious journals without even a mention of her name. However, some famous scientists of the time, such as British geologist Henry De la Beche and British paleontologist Gideon Mantell, did credit her in their work.

Toward the end of her life, Anning collected annuities from the British Association for the Advancement of Science and the Geological Society of London, which were set up in recognition of her contributions to science. After she died of breast cancer in 1847, the president of the Geological Society eulogized her in his annual address, even though the first women would not be admitted to the organization until 1904. In 2010, Mary Anning was recognized by the Royal Society as one of the 10 most influential women scientists in British history.

 

Anna Atkins [nee Anna Children] (1799-1871), an English botanist and photographer who is considered to be the first woman to create a photograph, was born (March 16).

 

Anna Atkins (maiden name Anna Children) (March 16, 1799 – June 9, 1871) was an English botanist and photographer. She is often considered the first person to publish a book illustrated with photographic images. Some sources claim that she was the first woman to create a photograph.

Anna Children was born in Tonbridge, Kent, England in 1799. Her mother Hester Anne "did not recover from the effects of childbirth" and died in 1800. Anna became close to her father John George Children, who was a scientist of many interests. For example, he was honored by having the mineral childrenite and the python, Antaresia childreni, named after him.

 

Anna received an unusually scientific education for a woman of her time. Her detailed engravings of shells were used to illustrate her father's translation of Lamarck's Genera of Shells, which was published in 1823.

She married John Pelly Atkins in 1825, and they moved to Halstead Place, the Atkins family home in Sevenoaks, Kent. Soon thereafter, she began to pursue her interests in botany by first collecting dried plants.

John George Children and John Pelly Atkins were friends of William Fox Talbot. Anna Atkins learned directly from Talbot about two of his inventions related to photography: the "photogenic drawing" technique (in which an object is placed on light-sensitized paper which is exposed to the sun to produce an image) and calotypes.

Atkins was known to have had access to a camera by 1841. Some sources claim that Atkins was the first female photographer. Other sources name Constance Talbot, the wife of William Fox Talbot, as the first female photographer. However, since no camera-based photographs by Anna Atkins and no photographs by Constance Talbot survive, the issue may never be resolved.

John Herschel, a friend of Atkins and Children, invented the cyanotype photographic process in 1842. Within a year, Atkins applied the process to algae (specifically, seaweed) by making cyanotype photograms that were contact printed by placing the unmounted dried-algae original directly on the cyanotype paper.

Atkins self-published her photograms in the first installment of Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions in October 1843. Although privately published, with a limited number of copies, and with handwritten text, Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions is considered the first book illustrated with photographic images. Eight months later, in June 1844, the first fascicle of William Henry Fox Talbot's The Pencil of Nature was released. Talbot's book was the first photographically illustrated book to be commercially published or the first commercially published book illustrated with photographs.

Atkins produced a total of three volumes of Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions between 1843 and 1853. Only 17 copies of the book are known to exist, in various states of completeness. 

In the 1850s, Atkins collaborated with Anne Dixon (1799–1864) to produce at least three presentation albums of cyanotype photograms:

·     Cyanotypes of British and Foreign Ferns (1853).

·     Cyanotypes of British and Foreign Flowering Plants and Ferns (1854).

·     An album inscribed to "Captain Henry Dixon," Anne Dixon's nephew (1861).

In addition, Atkins published the following books with non-photographic works:

·     Atkins, Anna. The perils of fashion (1852).

·     Atkins, Anna. The Colonel. A story of fashionable life. By the author of "The perils of fashion” (1853).

·     Atkins, Anna. Memoir of J.C. Children, including some unpublished poetry by his father and himself (1853).

·     Atkins, Anna. Murder will out. A story of real life. By the author of "The colonel" (1859).

·     Atkins, Anna. A page from the peerage. By the author of "The colonel” (1863).

Anna Atkins died at Halstead Place in 1871 of "paralysis, rheumatism, and exhaustion" at the age of 72.

 

Sarah Ellis (1799-1872), an English author of numerous books that stressed women's role in society, was born.

 

Sarah Stickney Ellis (1799 – June 16, 1872) was a Quaker turned Congregationalist who was the author of numerous books, mostly written about women's role(s) in society. Particularly well-known are The Wives of England, The Women of England, The Mothers of England, and The Daughters of England, along with her more directly educational works such as Rawdon House and Education of the Heart: Women's Best Work. Related to her principal literary theme of moral education for women, she established Rawdon House in Hertfordshire, a school for young ladies intended to apply the principles illustrated in her books to the moral training, the formation of character, and in some degree the domestic duties of young ladies.

With few exceptions, boys and girls were educated separately in nineteenth century England, and the question of how to educate women was a subject of great debate. It was quite common for women, as well as men, to believe that they should not be educated in the full range of subjects, but should focus on domestic skills. Elizabeth Sandford wrote for women in support of this view, whilst others such as Susanna Corder ran a novel Quaker girl's school at Abney Park instituted by the philanthropist William Allen that dissented from convention by teaching all the latest sciences as early as the 1820s. In Education of the Heart: Women’s Best Work (1869) Sarah Ellis, accepted the importance of intellectual education for women as well as training in domestic duties, but stressed that because women were the earliest educators of the men who predominantly ran and decided upon education in Victorian society, women primarily needed a system of education that developed sound moral character in their offspring.

In 1837, Sarah married the Reverend William Ellis, who held a prominent position in the London Missionary Society, and with whom she worked for the missionary cause and to promote their common interest in temperance. After thirty-five years of marriage they died within a week of each other. Of independent mind, Sarah was buried in the countryside near their home, whilst her husband was laid to rest in the Congregationalists' non-denominational Abney Park Cemetery on the outskirts of Victorian London.

 

Catherine Gore (1799-1861), a British novelist and dramatist who produced over 70 works, was born.

 

Catherine Grace Frances Gore (Moody) (1799 – January 29, 1861) was a British novelist and dramatist and the daughter of a wine merchant of Retford, where she was born. She is amongst the well-known of the silver fork writers - authors of the Victorian era who depicted the gentility and etiquette of high society.

Gore was born in London and raised in East Retford and London. Her first novel Theresa Marchment, or The Maid of Honour was published in 1824. Her first major success was Pin Money, published in 1831. However, her most popular and well-known novel was to be Cecil, or Adventures of a Coxcomb published in 1841. Gore also found success as a playwright, writing eleven plays that made their way to the London stage, although her plays never quite became as famous as her witty novels.

She married a Captain Gore, with whom she resided mainly on Continental Europe, supporting her family by her voluminous writings. Between 1824 and 1862 she produced about 70 works, the most successful of which were novels of fashionable English life. Among these works are Manners of the Day (1830), Cecil, or the Adventures of a Coxcomb (1841), and The Banker's Wife (1843). She also wrote for the stage, and composed music for songs.

Gore's 1861 obituary in The Times concluded that Gore was "the best novel writer of her class and the wittiest woman of her age."

 

Mary Howitt (1799-1888), an English poet and the author of the famous poem The Spider and the Fly, was born (March 12).

 

Mary Howitt (March 12, 1799 – January 30, 1888) was an English poet, and author of the famous poem The Spider and the Fly. She was born Mary Botham at Coleford, in Gloucestershire, the temporary residence of her parents, while her father, Samuel Botham, a prosperous Quaker of Uttoxeter, Staffordshire, was looking after some mining property. Samuel had married his wife Ann in South Wales in 1796 when he was 38 and she was 32. They had four children Anna, Mary, Emma and Charles. Their Queen Anne house is now known as Howitt Place.

Mary Botham was educated at home, and read widely. She commenced writing verses at a very early age. Together with her husband she wrote over 180 books.

On April 16, 1821 she was married in Uttoxeter to William Howitt, and began a career of joint authorship with her husband. They lived initially in Heanor in Derbyshire where William was a pharmacist. It was not until 1823, when they were living in Nottingham, that William decided to give up his business with his brother Richard and concentrate on writing with Mary. Their literary productions at first consisted chiefly of poetical and other contributions to annuals and periodicals, of which a selection was published in 1827 under the title of The Desolation of Eyam and other Poems. William and Mary socialized with many of the important literary figures of the day, including Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. In 1837, they went on a tour of the north and stayed with William and Dorothy Wordsworth. Their work was well regarded, as can be seen from the minister George Byng's present in 1839 from Queen Victoria. She gave him a copy of Mary's book Hymns and Fireside Verses. In the same year, her brother-in-law Godfrey Howitt set out with his wife and her family to emigrate to Australia, arriving at Port Philip in April 1840.

The life of Mary Howitt was completely bound up with that of her husband. She was separated only from him during the period of his Australian journey (1851-4). On removing to Esher in 1837 she commenced writing her well-known tales for children, a long series of books which met with signal success. They moved to London in 1843, and following a second move in 1844 they counted Tennyson amongst their neighbors.

While residing at Heidelberg in 1840 her attention was directed to Scandinavian literature, and in company with her friend Madame Schoultz she set herself to learn Swedish and Danish. She afterward translated and introduced Fredrika Bremer's novels (1842-1863, 18 vols.) to English readers. Moreover, Howitt also translated many of Hans Christian Andersen's tales, such as

·       Only a Fiddler (1845)

·       The Improvisators (1845, 1847)

·       Wonderful Stories for Children (1846)

·       The True Story of every Life (1847).

Among her original works is The Heir of West Way Ian (1847). For three years she edited the Drawing-room Scrap Book, writing (among other articles that would be included therein) "Biographical Sketches of the Queens of England". She edited the Pictorial Calendar of the Seasons, translated Ennemoser's History of Magic, and wrote the chief share in The Literature and Romance of Northern Europe (1852). She also produced a Popular History of the United States (2 vols. 1859), and a three-volume novel called The Cost of Caergwyn (1864).

In June 1852, the three male members of the family, accompanied by Edward La Trobe Bateman, sailed for Australia in the hope of finding a fortune. William would be reunited with his brother Godfrey Howitt, while Mary and her two daughters, the elder, Margaret, who had just returned from a year in Munich with Kaulbach (this adventure was later published as a book) moved into the Hermitage, Mr Bateman's cottage in Highgate. This had previously been occupied by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

In 1851, her husband and her two sons traveled to Australia in the hope of finding their fortune, but they returned a number of years later; William wrote a number of books describing the flora and fauna of Australia. Her son, Alfred William Howitt, was to be renowned as an Australian explorer, anthropologist and naturalist and the discoverer of the remains of the explorers Burke and Wills, which he brought to Melbourne for burial.

Other children included: Herbert Charlton Howitt, who was drowned while engineering a road in New Zealand; Anna Mary Howitt, wife of Alfred Alaric Watts, the biographer of her father, and author of Art Work in Munich, who died at Dietenheim on July 23, 1884; and Margaret Howitt, the writer of the Life of Fredrika Bremer and of the memoir of her own mother.

Howitt’s name was attached as author, translator, or editor to upwards of 110 works. She received a silver medal from the Literary Academy of Stockholm, and on April 21, 1879 was awarded a civil list pension of £100 a year. In the decline of her life she joined the Church of Rome, and was one of the English deputation who were received by Pope Leo XIII on January 10, 1888. Her interesting Reminiscences of my Later Life was printed in Good Words in 1886. The death of her husband in 1879, and of her eldest child, Anna Mary Watts, in 1884, caused her intense grief.

Mary Howitt was away from her residence in Meran in Tyrol spending the winter in Rome when she died of bronchitis on 30 January 1888.

 

Mary Howitt's poem the "Spider and the Fly" was originally published in 1829. The poem reads:

"Will you walk into my parlor?" said the spider to the fly;
"'Tis the prettiest little parlor that ever you may spy.
The way into my parlor is up a winding stair,
And I have many curious things to show when you are there."
"Oh no, no," said the little fly; "to ask me is in vain,
For who goes up your winding stair can ne'er come down again."

"I'm sure you must be weary, dear, with soaring up so high.
Well you rest upon my little bed?" said the spider to the fly.
"There are pretty curtains drawn around; the sheets are fine and thin,
And if you like to rest a while, I'll snugly tuck you in!"
"Oh no, no," said the little fly, "for I've often heard it said,
They never, never wake again who sleep upon your bed!"

Said the cunning spider to the fly: "Dear friend, what can I do
To prove the warm affection I've always felt for you?
I have within my pantry good store of all that's nice;
I'm sure you're very welcome - will you please to take a slice?"
"Oh no, no," said the little fly; "kind sir, that cannot be:
I've heard what's in your pantry, and I do not wish to see!"

"Sweet creature!" said the spider, "you're witty and you're wise;
How handsome are your gauzy wings; how brilliant are your eyes!
I have a little looking-glass upon my parlor shelf;
If you'd step in one moment, dear, you shall behold yourself."
"I thank you, gentle sir," she said, "for what you're pleased to say,
And, bidding you good morning now, I'll call another day."

The spider turned him round about, and went into his den,
For well he knew the silly fly would soon come back again:
So he wove a subtle web in a little corner sly,
And set his table ready to dine upon the fly;
Then came out to his door again and merrily did sing:
"Come hither, hither, pretty fly, with pearl and silver wing;
Your robes are green and purple; there's a crest upon your head;
Your eyes are like diamond bright, but mine are dull as lead!"

Alas, alas! how very soon this silly little fly,
Hearing his wily, flattering words, came slowly flitting by;
With buzzing wings she hung aloft, then near and nearer grew,
Thinking only of her brilliant eyes and green and purple hue,
Thinking only of her crested head. Poor, foolish thing! at last
Up jumped the cunning spider, and fiercely held her fast;
He dragged her up his winding stair, into the dismal den -
Within his little parlor - but she ne'er came out again!

And now, dear little children, who may this story read,
To idle, silly flattering words I pray you ne'er give heed;
Unto an evil counselor close heart and ear and eye,
And take a lesson from this tale of the spider and the fly.

When Lewis Carroll was readying Alice’s Adventures Under Ground for publication, he replaced a parody he had made of a Negro minstrel song with a parody of Mary's poem. The Lobster Quadrille, which is an important part of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, is a parody of Mary's poem concerning a spider and a fly.

Avdotia Istomina (1799-1848), the most celebrated Russian ballerina of the 19^th century, was born.

Avdotia (or Evdokia) Ilyinichna Istomina (1799–1848) was the most celebrated Russian ballerina of the 19th century.

A pupil of Charles Didelot, she debuted in the Imperial Russian Ballet in 1815 to immediate acclaim. Several people were killed duelling for her heart, and her honor was defended in the fourfold duel (1817) wherein Count Zavadovsky killed Count Sheremetev, while the Decembrist Yakubovich shot through a palm of the playwright Alexander Griboedov. Her dancing is the subject of a brilliant stanza in Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, which was described by Vladimir Nabokov as the most mellifluous lines in the whole of Russian poetry.

 

Pauline-Marie Jaricot (1799-1862), the French founder of the Society of the Propagation of the Faith and the Association of the Living Rosary, was born (July 22).  {See A Christian Perspective.}

 

Marie Lesieur (1799-1890), a French ballet dancer, was born (October 8).

Marie Lesieur (October 8, 1799, Paris - April 6, 1890, Ixelles, Brussels), known as Lesueur, was a French ballet dancer.

The daughter of Hébert Lesieur and Marie Calliaud, Lesieur made her debut at the Théâtre de Marseille in 1816, as a 'sujet de la danse'. In the course of a production of the ballet La Naissance de Vénus (The Birth of Venus) in July 1817 she was noted for turning her back on the public, in an inconvenient attitude, but she was pardoned for this and quickly became Marseilles's favorite dancer. Two years later she moved to Brussels to join the ballet troupe formed there by Jean-Antoine Petipa with some of the dancers from Marseille.

She made her Brussels debut at the Théâtre de la Monnaie on May 20, 1819 in the ballet Almaviva et Rosine and was an immediate and massive success with the public. Very quickly she won a reputation as a major dancer, but also as a woman of character, who was in the ballet come rain or shine. The famous painter Jacques-Louis David made her the model for Venus in his 1824 Mars Being Disarmed by Venus (in which Lucien Petipa also appeared as Cupid). In 1824, a lithograph by Eeckhout also portrayed her as Venus.

In January 1826, Marie fell seriously ill and, after a few brief returns to the stage, she announced that her health would not allow her to continue her career. With her protector, the comte van Gobbelschroy, interior minister to William I, she set up a home on the rural property (later known as the château Malou) he had acquired at Woluwe-Saint-Lambert near Brussels. Van Gobbelschroy committed suicide in 1850, having used up his fortune setting up the first candle factories in France and Belgium. Some sources state that he and Marie married, however, the comte's death certificate states he was unmarried. After the comte's death, Marie devoted herself to acts of charity, taking a small apartment in rue de la Grosse Tour, before moving to Ixelles. She died in complete poverty aged 90 in a small house on rue Keyenveld.

 

Maria Frederica von Stedingk (1799-1868), a Swedish composer noted for her composition of Nocturne for melodiinstrument, was born (October 31).

Maria Frederica von Stedingk (31 October 1799 - 15 June 1868), was a Swedish composer, noble and lady-in-waiting.

Stedingk was born in Saint Petersburg to the Swedish Field Marshal Count Kurt von Stedingk and Ulrika Fredrika Ekström. She was a lady-in-waiting to the queen of Sweden, Désirée Clary .

Among her compositions are the Nocturne för melodiinstrument (written down by Mathilda Berwald).

The composer Mathilda d'Orozco dedicated her composition Sex Sånger för Piano to her (1842).

 

 

Elizabeth Yates (1799-1860), an English actress, was born (January 21).

Elizabeth Yates (née Brunton) (1799–1860) was an English actress. She appeared on the stage under the names Miss Brunton, Elizabeth Brunton, Elizabeth Yates, Mrs. Yates, and Mrs. Yates late Miss Brunton.

 

Elizabeth Brunton was born at Norwich on January 21, 1799 to a theatrical family. Her grandfather, John Brunton, acted at Covent Garden in 1774. Her father, also John Brunton, went on the stage in 1795, and later appeared at Covent Garden in 1800 as Frederick in Louisa's Vows. Additionally, Brunton managed theaters, including those in Brighton, Birmingham, and Lynn. Elizabeth's aunt, Anne Brunton, appeared at Bath in 1785 as Euphrasia in Grecian Daughter, as the original Amanthis in Child of Nature at Covent Garden and a complete round of parts in comedy and tragedy. Brunton was also niece of Louisa, Countess of Craven.

Brunton married Frederick Henry Yates, a fellow actor with whom she worked at Drury Lane, in November 1823.

Elizabeth Brunton made her theatrical debut in 1815, in her father's theater at Lynn, playing Desdemona opposite Charles Kemble as Othello. Her father thought her talents more suited to comedy, and she therefore next played Letitia Hardy in the 'Belle's Stratagem', opposite Robert William Elliston as Doricourt. Elliston hired Brunton for his theatre at Birmingham. She also played in Worcester, Shrewsbury, and Leicester.

Brunton made her London debut at Covent Garden in 1817 in the role of Letitia Hardy, which she played several times over the course of her debut week; she also played Rosalind in As You Like It. The Theatrical Inquisitor gave some praise to her Letitia, but pronounced her Rosalind a failure. Her first season included roles as Violante in the Wonder, Miss Hardcastle in She Stoops to Conquer, Beatrice in Much Ado about Nothing (a role in which she was praised), Viola in Twelfth Night, Imogen, Cora in Pizarro, Lady Elizabeth Freelove in the Day after the Wedding, and Myrtillo in the Broken Sword. She played the original Rosalia in Reynolds's Duke of Savoy.

In the 1818-1819 season, Brunton reprised her role as Letitia Hardy, in Edinburgh and, at Covent Garden, played Lady Teazle, Fanny in The Clandestine Marriage, Widow Bellmour in The Way to Keep Him, Lydia Languish, Rosara in She Would and She Would Not, Miss Tittup in Bon Ton, and Miss Wooburn in Every One Has His Fault. She had an original part in A Word for the Ladies, and was the first Jeanie Deans in Terry's adaptation, The Heart of Midlothian.

In her final season at Covent Garden (engagements at the patent theatres generally lasted three years) Brunton played Miss Prue in Love for Love, Sophia in the Road to Ruin, Dorinda in Dryden's Tempest, Elvira in Love Makes a Man, and was the first Clotilde de Biron in Thomas Morton's Henri Quatre.

Following her departure from London, Brunton joined her father at the West London Theatre in Tottenham Street, where she played in Rochester, Three Weeks after Marriage, She Stoops to Conquer, and other pieces.

In the 1823-4 season, Brunton appeared in Bath as Albina Mandeville in The Will; as Belinda in All in the Wrong, Clarinda in the Suspicious Husband, The Peasant Boy, Helen Worrett in Man and Wife, Aladdin, Widow Cheerly in The Soldier's Daughter, Miss Dorillon in Wives as They Were, Cynthia in Oberon and Cynthia, Biddy Tipkin in The Tender Husband, Dolly Bull in Fontainebleau, Clara in Matrimony, Olivia in Bold Stroke for a Husband, Lydia Languish in Actress of All Work and Harriet in Is he jealous?.

Brunton played with her husband at Cheltenham, and made her first appearance at Drury Lane as Violante in 1824. In the 1825-1826 season, Yates played the first Guido in Massaniello, the first Agnes in Knowles's William Tell, Mrs. Frail in Love for Love, Clarissa in The Confederacy, Aurora in The Panel, Isabinda in The Busy Body, Constantia (an original part) in Lunn's White Lies, and Countess Wintersen in The Stranger, among other parts.

After 1828, Yates played primarily at Drury lane. Throughout the 1830s, she played several leading roles in plays by Buckstone, including in Wreck Ashore, Victorine, Henriette the Forsaken and Isabelle. Additionally, she played Orynthe in Fitzball's Earthquake, Mona in Charles Mathews's Truth, Elizabeth Stanton in Fitzball's Tom Cringle, Valsha in Stirling Coyne's Valsha, Grace Darling in Stirling Coyne's Grace Darling, and Miss Aubrey in Peake's Ten Thousand a Year.

Yates played in Surrey in 1839, as Margaret Mammon in Reynoldson's Curse of Mammon.

After the death of her husband, in June 1842, Yates essayed a year's management at the Adelphi Theatre with Gladstane, but found the task too much for her strength. She played one season at the Lyceum in 1848-9, where she played Tilburina in the Critic, among other parts.

Yates then withdrew from the stage, and, after a long and painful illness, died on August 30, 1860 at Kentish Town, according to her son's book [or on September 5, 1860 at Brighton, according to the Era newspaper and the Era Almanack].

In her early career, Yates challenged comparison with other leading actresses. Before she married, she had lost some of her vogue. She sang with taste and feeling, but had little voice. She was better in comedy—her style being very natural and unaffected—than in the emotional parts she was, in her late years, called upon to play.

 

Mathematician Maria Agnesi (1718-1799) died at the age of 80 (January 9). She had turned her home into a hospital and had spent the last fifteen years of her life administering the Po Alberto Trivulzio Public Institution for Care of the Elderly and Homeless.

 

Maria Gaetana Agnesi (b. May 16, 1718, Milan, Habsburg crown land [now in Italy] - d. January 9, 1799, Milan, Italy) was an Italian mathematician and philosopher.  She is considered to be the first woman in the Western world to have achieved a reputation in mathematics.

Agnesi was the eldest child of a wealthy silk merchant who provided her with the best tutors available. She was an extremely precocious child who mastered Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and several modern languages at an early age, and her father liked to host gatherings where she could display her knowledge. Propositiones philosophicae (“Propositions of Philosophy”), a series of essays on natural philosophy and history based on her discussions before such gatherings, was published in 1738.

Agnesi’s best-known work, Instituzioni analitiche ad uso della gioventù italiana (1748; “Analytical Institutions for the Use of Italian Youth”), in two huge volumes, provided a remarkably comprehensive and systematic treatment of algebra and analysis, including such relatively new developments as integral and differential calculus. In this text is found a discussion of the Agnesi curve, a cubic curve known in Italian as versiera, which was confused with versicra (“witch”) and translated into English as the “Witch of Agnesi.” The French Academy of Sciences, in its review of the Instituzioni, stated that: “We regard it as the most complete and best made treatise.” Pope Benedict XIV was similarly impressed and appointed Agnesi professor of mathematics and natural philosophy and physics at the University of Bologna in 1750. Agnesi was the first woman to be appointed professor at a university.

After the death of her father in 1752 she carried out a long-cherished purpose by giving herself to the study of theology, and especially of the Fathers and devoted herself to the poor, homeless, and sick. After holding for some years the office of directress of the Hospice Trivulzio for Blue Nuns at Milan, she herself joined the sisterhood, and in this austere order ended her days, though the terms of her death are unknown. A crater on Venus is named in her honor.

 

Barbarini Campanini (1721-1799), an Italian dancer, died (June 7).

 

Barbara Campanini, known as La Barberina, (b. June 7, 1721 in Parma - June 7, 1799 in Prussia) was a famous Italian ballerina.

Barbara Campanini was a student of Fossano Rinaldi, with whom she debuted in Paris in 1739. In 1739, Campanini made a success in Paris. After a tour in London she performed in Vienna, Austria. She returned to Paris in 1743. She was admired by King Frederick II of Prussia, who offered her a position with the Opera in Berlin, where she performed from 1744 to 1748. Before she arrived in Berlin, however, she breached her contract and eloped with her lover Stuart de Mackenzie to Venice. Frederick II used political pressure to have her turned over to Prussia. In Berlin, she had a privileged position, demonstrated by the fact that she negotiated her own salary, which was unusually high. There were speculations that she had an affair with Frederick II, as well as many other persons. She ended her contract suddenly by an engagement to Carl Ludwig von Cocceji, son of Samuel von Cocceji, in 1749. She eloped to London, but ultimately returned to Berlin. Her spouse was appointed ambassador to Schlesia by the king. She was divorced in 1788. In 1789, she was given the title Countess Campanini. During her last years, she was active with charity. She donated her money by will to a foundation for poor noblewomen, which lasted until World War I.

 

Rose Perrine le Roy de la Corbinaye [Madame Bellecour] (1730-1799), a French actress, died (August 5).

 

Rose Perrine le Roy de la Corbinaye (December 10, 1730 – August 5, 1799) was a French actress, best known under the name of Madame Bellecour.

She was born at Lamballe as the daughter of an artillery officer.

Under the stage name of Beaumenard, she made her first Paris appearance in 1743 as Gogo in Charles Simon Favart’s Le Coq du village. After a year at the Opera-Comique, she played in several companies, including that of Marshal Saxe, who is said to have been not insensible to her charms. In 1749, she made her debut at the Comedie-Francaise  as Dorine in Tartuffe, and her success was immediate.

She retired in 1756, but after an absence of five years, during which she married Bellecour (Jean Colson), she reappeared as Madame Bellecour, and continued her successes in soubrette (stock character) parts in the plays of Moliere and Jean-Francois Regnard. She retired finally at the age of sixty, but turbulent times had put an end to the pension which she received from Louis XVI and from the theatre.  She died in abject poverty in 1799.  

 

 

Dorothea Maria Losch (1730-1799), a Swedish master mariner, died (February 2).

 

Dorothea Maria Lösch [as married, Dorothea Maria Theslof] (1730-2 February 1799) was a Swedish master mariner. She was the first woman in Sweden to be given the rank of a sea captain.

Dorothea Maria Lösch took over and commanded the ship Armida to safety after its officers had been killed or abandoned it during the Battle of Svensksund 9 July 1790. For this act, she was awarded with the rank of a master mariner of the Swedish fleet, something unique for a woman of this period. Although this was a pure ceremonial title, she was nevertheless the first woman in such a position.

Etta Lubina Johanna Palm d’Aelders (1743-1799), a Dutch feminist and spy, died (March 28).

Etta Lubina Johanna Palm d'Aelders (April 1743 – 28 March 1799) was a Dutch feminist outspoken during the French Revolution. She gave the address Discourse on the Injustice of the Laws in Favor of Men, at the Expense of Women to the French National Convention on 30 December 1790.

Etta Aelders was the daughter of Jacob Aelders van Nieuwenhuys, a merchant, and Agatha Petronella de Sitter. She was born in Groningen and received a good education, which was remarkable for a girl in her age in a non-aristocratic family. She married Christiaan Ferdinand Lodewijk Palm, the son of an attorney, in 1762. The marriage was not happy and Christiaan disappeared to the East Indies.

In 1768 she traveled with Jan Munniks, a young attorney and brother of the celebrated professor of botany Wynoldus Munniks, who had been appointed consul at Messina for the Dutch Republic to France. Munniks returned to the Dutch Republic but Etta stayed behind because of illness. On the way to France, she met Douwe Sirtema van Grovestins, a former equerry to the widow of Stadtholder William IV, Prince of Orange, who became her lover, and introduced her in higher circles. She left him in 1773 and moved to Paris, where she settled in the Palais Royal area, and became a courtesan for the better classes, taking a number of lovers. In these circumstances she was recruited for the French secret service, possibly by Jean-Frédéric Phélypeaux, comte de Maurepas himself. He sent her to The Hague in 1778 for a short mission, where she again met Jan Munniks, who himself now was a spy in British service.

The financial revenues of this mission enabled Etta to move to a grander house at the Rue Favard in Paris, where she set up a salon where many "political" people met. From this time dates her affectation of the title of "baroness." Among these “political” people were Dutchmen like Gerard Brantsen, who negotiated the peace between the Republic and Austria in Paris in 1784, and Apollonius Jan Cornelis Lampsins, a prominent Patriot, who sought refuge in France in 1787. Around this time she apparently started working for the Dutch Grand Pensionary Laurens Pieter van de Spiegel, to whom she became especially valuable after the events of July 14, 1789, when her salon was frequented by prominent revolutionaries like Jean-Paul Marat, François Chabot and Claude Basire.

Etta became involved in revolutionary politics, and she was especially active in feminist circles, like the Société fraternelle de l'un et l'autre sexe , Société Patriotique des Amis de la Vérité , and Société Patriotique et de Bienfaisance des Amies de la Vérité.  She set up shop in The Hague where she spied on French émigrés like Beaumarchais and Dumouriez. However, events in France forced her to change sides again and she imposed on the Stadthouder himself, referring to her old services. Then in early 1795 the French revolutionary armies invaded the Netherlands. The Batavian Republic was proclaimed and Etta became suspect, because she tried to persuade the French representatives at the negotiations for the Treaty of The Hague (1795) to use the right of conquest to the detriment of the new Republic. These machinations, in cohorts with her old acquaintance Jan Munniks, brought her to the attention of the Hague Comité van Waakzaamheid (the Dutch equivalent of the French Comité de surveillance révolutionnaire). Munniks was sentenced to banishment, and Etta was put under arrest in the fortress of Woerden together with her old spymaster Van de Spiegel. She was released at the end of 1798, but her health had suffered so much, that she died the next March.

 

Eleonora Anna Naria Felice de Fonseca Pimentel [Leonor da Fonseca Pimentel Chaves] (1751-1799), an Italian poet, died in Naples (August 20).

 

Eleonora Anna Naria Felice de Fonseca Pimentel (Leonor da Fonseca Pimentel Chaves, Rome, January 13, 1751 - Naples, August 20, 1799) was an Italian poet and revolutionary connected with the Neapolitan revolution and subsequent short-lived Neapolitan Republic (alternately known as the Parthenopean Republic) of 1799, a sister republic of the French Republic and one of many set up in the 1790s in Europe.

Pimentel was born in Rome of Portuguese nobility. She was a precocious child who wrote poetry and read Latin and Greek. As a child, she moved with her family to Naples as a result of political difficulties between the Papal States (of which Rome was the capital) and the Kingdom of Portugal.

In the 1770s, Pimental became an important part of literary circles of the day in Naples. Much of her literary output was given over to voluminous exchanges of letters with other literati. Most prominent of these is a long correspondence in the 1770s with Metastasio, the Italian court poet in Vienna and greatest librettist of the 18th century.

In the 1790s, Pimental became involved in the Jacobin movement in Naples that was working to overthrow the monarchy and establish a local version of the French Republic. She was one of the leaders of the revolution that overthrew the Bourbon monarchy and installed the republic in January 1799.

For the short life of that republic, she wrote most of the material for, and edited, the Monitore Napoletano, the newspaper of the Neapolitan Republic - named in emulation of "Le Moniteur Universel" in France. When the republic was overthrown and the Bourbon monarchy reinstalled later that year, she was one of those revolutionaries executed by the sham royal tribunals implemented by Horatio Nelson.

Pimental tried to avert the death penalty by claiming to be pregnant. When she was discovered not to be, she asked at least to be beheaded, not hanged, but there was no mercy. The public hanging of a noblewoman was seen as something quite outrageous. Eleonora Pimentel had not committed any crimes during the revolution, only edited newspapers and worked as a journalist.

Reportedly, a main reason for the resorted monarchy (read the Queen) insisting on her execution were pamphlets she wrote denouncing Queen Maria Carolina for lesbianism.

Marie Louise Therese Victoire (1733-1799), a Princess of France, died (June 7).

 

Marie Louise Thérèse Victoire [Victoire de France, Princess of France] (May 11, 1733 – June 7, 1799) was the seventh child and fifth daughter of King Louis XV of France and his Queen consort Maria Leszczyńska. As the daughter of the king, she was a Fille de France – a Daughter of France.

Originally known as Madame Quatrième (her older sister died in February 1733, before her birth) she was later known as Madame Victoire. She outlived eight of her nine siblings, and was survived by her older sister Madame Adélaïde by less than a year.

Marie Louise Thérèse Victoire de France was born at the Palace of Versailles. However, unlike the older children of Louis XV (including Adélaïde, just one year her senior), Madame Victoire was not raised at the Palace. Rather, she was sent to live at the Abbey of Fontevraud. She would remain there until 1748 when she was 15.

At the age of 15, she was allowed to return to her father's court. Close to her religious mother, brother and sisters, she shared their moral indignation at the king's frequently open adultery, a situation which served to push the king's immediate family away from him as he turned more and more to Madame de Pompadour and later Madame du Barry.

Often thought to be the most beautiful of the king's daughters, she never married. In 1753, it was suggested that she marry her brother-in-law, Ferdinand VI of Spain, as his wife was seriously ill at the time. Despite her illness, though, the Queen of Spain survived another five years.

In 1765, her older brother died of consumption at Fontainebleau at the age of 36. Victoire, like all of her sisters, mourned intensely. The family was again pushed closer together. By 1768, Versailles was again in mourning for the death of the Queen, her mother Maria Leszczyńska. This sorrow was exacerbated by the fact that her father had acquired a new maîtresse-en-titre [chief mistress of the King], the comtesse du Barry. Victoire, like all her sisters, was jealous of the amount of time the king spent with his many mistresses.

On May 16, 1770, Madame Victoire's nephew, Louis-Auguste, the Dauphin of France, married the Archduchess Maria Antonia of Austria. The wedding occurred at Versailles. Victoire and her older sister, Madame Adélaïde, met the girl and tried to use her influence over the king in order to get rid of La du Barry. This idea only worked temporarily. Although, she initially snubbed the comtesse du Barry, the new Dauphine quickly changed course when she was advised by her powerful mother, the Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, that she was worsening Austria's relationship with King Louis XV by such behavior. The king's daughters, however, got their way when Louis XV sent Madame du Barry away from Versailles just before he died in 1774 in order that he could receive the last rites of the Catholic Church. His successor Louis XVI, Victoire's nephew, then permanently exiled the powerless mistress from court.

Life changed greatly for the "Mesdames", as the surviving daughters of Louis XV were collectively known, during the reign of Louis XVI. Although the princesses were allowed to stay at court and keep their apartments at Versailles, the courtiers of Versailles soon forgot about the ladies as they were much more concerned with showing their loyalty to Louis XVI and his wife. As a result, Victoire and her older sister Madame Adélaïde, began touring the country, travelling in a lavish style. Such expensive travels became a constant financial burden on the state and thus helped fan the flames of the French Revolution.

After the storming of Versailles by an army of hungry Parisian women on October 6, 1789, Victoire and Adélaïde, now alone as the only surviving children of Louis XV, took up residence at the Château de Bellevue. Horrified by new revolutionary laws against the Catholic Church, the religious sisters left France for Italy on February 20, 1791.  However, they were arrested and detained for several days at Arnay-le-Duc before they were allowed to depart.

In Italy, they first visited their niece, Clotilde, Queen of Sardinia, the sister of Louis XVI, in Turin. They arrived in Rome on April 16, 1791.

As a result of the increasing influence of Revolutionary France, the sisters were forced to constantly move. They went to Naples in 1796, where Marie Caroline, the sister of their niece, Marie Antoinette, was queen. They then moved to Corfu in 1799, and finally ended up in Trieste, where Victoire died of breast cancer. Adélaïde died one year later in Rome. The bodies of both princesses were later returned to France by their nephew, King Louis XVIII, and buried at the Abbey of Saint-Denis.

Madame Victoire's nephews included (among others) Ferdinand, Duke of Parma, Louis XVI of France, Louis XVIII of France, Charles X of France. Her nieces included Madame Élisabeth and Queen Maria Louisa of Spain. Her goddaughter was Angélique Victoire, comtesse de Chastellux.

 

Polly Young (1749-1799), an English soprano, died (September 20).

 

Polly Young [also known as Mary Young, Maria Young, Polly Barthélemon and Maria Barthélemon] (July 7, 1749 – September 20, 1799) was an English soprano, composer and keyboard player. She was part of a well-known English family of musicians that included several professional singers and organists during the 17th and 18th centuries. Her husband, François-Hippolyte Barthélémon, was a composer and violinist, and their daughter, Cecilia Maria Barthélemon, was also a composer and opera singer.

Polly Young was born in Covent Garden, London on July 7, 1749. Her father, Charles Young, was a clerk at the Treasury. She was the youngest of three daughters, her oldest sister Isabella becoming a successful soprano and her other sister Elizabeth, a successful contralto. Both her grandfather, Charles Young, and her great-uncle, Anthony Young, were notable organists and composers. She also had three famous aunts who were all notable singers. Her aunt Cecilia (1712–1789) was one of the greatest English sopranos of the 18th century and the wife of composer Thomas Arne. Their son, Michael Arne, was also a successful composer. Her aunt Isabella was a successful soprano and the wife of composer John Frederick Lampe, while her aunt Esther was a well-known contralto and wife to Charles Jones, a successful music publisher in England during the 18th century.

Young was a child prodigy and began performing as a singer and harpsichordist at a young age. In 1755, at the age of 6, she travelled to Ireland with her aunt Cecilia and her husband Thomas Arne. While there she performed for Dublin audiences in Arne’s opera Eliza, impressing them with her singing "perfectly in Time and Tune". The trip, however, was somewhat ill-fated as the Arnes' marital problems came to a head, partly arising from a dispute over Young's education, and Thomas left his wife. Young remained in Ireland with Cecilia Arne for the next seven years where she studied music with her aunt and performed in concert and on the stage in Dublin. In 1758, Cecilia Arne's friend Mrs Delany wrote "the race of Youngs are born songsters and musicians" after hearing Young play the harpsichord. She notably portrayed the role of Ariel in William Shakespeare's The Tempest at the Smock Alley Theatre in 1761. Playwright John O'Keeffe was particularly taken by her performance and complimented her on her "charming face and small figure".

In September 1762 Young returned to London to make her début on the London stage at the Covent Garden theatre where she sang and played the harpsichord between acts. The Theatrical Review commented on her charming, innocent appearance: "Her performance on the harpsichord, is equal to her excellence in singing". Young continued to perform in this way at Covent Garden for the next two seasons and then went on to sing minor parts with the Italian opera company at the King’s Theatre in the autumn of 1764. While there she met the French violinist and composer François-Hippolyte Barthélémon, who was the leader of the company's orchestra. The two became romantically involved soon after and Young married Barthélemon in December 1766.

Following her marriage, Young mostly appeared in performances with her husband at the Italian opera, in oratorios and in performances at the pleasure gardens. Young also began to compose and publish music.  Most notably a set of six sonatas for harpsichord or piano and violin was published in 1776 under the name Maria Barthélemon. The Barthélemons travelled to Ireland to perform fairly often and had a highly successful tour of Europe in 1776–77. While on tour, Young sang in her husband’s oratorio Jefte in Florence and gave concerts before Marie Antoinette and her sister Maria Carolina of Austria, the de facto Queen of Naples. The Barthélemons' daughter, Cecilia Maria, also sang in these performances. The family continued to prosper after returning to London in 1777, giving numerous lauded concerts in venues throughout the city.

In the 1780s the Barthélemons' careers became less successful and they found work increasingly hard to get. Young complained in a letter to The Morning Post on November 2, 1784 that she was refused engagements, styling herself "an English Woman, of an unblemished reputation". Regardless, the Barthélemons managed to scrape by and were never outside of the important music circles in London. Haydn visited the couple while he was in England in 1792. In May of that year he accompanied Young in airs by Handel and Sacchini in a London concert.

In 1786 Young published a set of six English and Italian songs, Op. 2. Subsequently the Barthélemons began attending the chapel at the Asylum for Female Orphans which was near their home in Vauxhall. While there they became heavily influenced by the Swedenborgian preacher Duché. This influence led Young to compose and publish a number of hymns and anthems. In 1795 she composed three hymns and three anthems (Op. 3) for use at the Magdalen Chapels and the Asylum. That same year she composed The Weaver’s Prayer for a benefit concert that raised money to help unemployed weavers and an ode on the preservation of the king (Op. 5) that used words by Baroness Nolcken, another Swedenborgian.

 

Mariya Voinovna Zubova (1749-1799), a Russian composer and concert singer, died in Saint Petersburg.

 

Mariya Voinovna Zubova (1749-Saint Petersburg 1799) was a Russian composer and concert singer, known for her folksongs.

She was the daughter of Vice Admiral V. Ya Rimsky-Korsakov and married to A. Zubov, governor in Kursk. Zubov wrote poems and songs, of which some where published in Saint Petersburg in 1770. She was known for her performances as a singer at private concerts and was described as: "The best singer in the early reign of Catherine II.” As a person, she was described as an intelligent and gracious woman in the style of Marquise de Merteuil from the novel Les Liaisons dangereuses by Choderlos de Laclos.

 

 

UNITED STATES

 

Margaret Eaton (1799-1879), the wife of United States Senator John Henry Eaton and the woman who had a central role in the Petticoat affair that disrupted the Cabinet of Andrew Jackson, was born (December 3).

 

Margaret O'Neill (or O'Neale) Eaton (December 3, 1799 – November 8, 1879), better known as Peggy Eaton, was the daughter of Rhoda Howell and William O'Neale, the owner of Franklin House, a popular Washington, D.C. hotel. Peggy was noted for her beauty, wit and vivacity. Through her marriage to United States Senator John Henry Eaton, she had a central role in the Petticoat affair that disrupted the Cabinet of Andrew Jackson.

About 1816, at age 17, Margaret O'Neale married John B. Timberlake, a 39-year-old purser in the Navy. Her parents gave them a house across from the hotel, and they met many politicians who stayed there. In 1818 they met and befriended John Henry Eaton, a 28-year-old widower and newly elected senator from Tennessee. Margaret and John Timberlake had three children together, one of whom died in infancy.

John Timberlake died in 1828 while at sea in the Mediterranean in service on a four-year voyage. When Margaret married Senator John Henry Eaton (1790–1856) shortly after the turn of the year, there were rumors that Timberlake had committed suicide because of despair at an alleged affair between the two.

Senator Eaton was a close personal friend of President Andrew Jackson, who in 1829 appointed him Secretary of War. This sudden elevation of Mrs. Eaton into the Cabinet social circle was resented by the wives of several of Jackson's appointees. They criticized Margaret for allegedly having had an affair with Eaton prior to her marriage.

The wives of the Cabinet members snubbed Margaret socially, which angered President Jackson. He tried unsuccessfully to coerce them. Eventually, and partly for this reason, he almost completely reorganized his Cabinet, an event referred to as the Petticoat affair.

The effect of the incident on the political fortunes of the vice president, John C. Calhoun, whose wife, Floride Calhoun, was one of those who snubbed Margaret, was perhaps most important. Partly on this account, Jackson transferred his favor to widower Martin Van Buren, the Secretary of State, who had taken the Eatons' side in the quarrel and had shown positive social attention to Margaret Eaton. Some attributed his subsequent elevation to the vice-presidency and presidency through Jackson's favor as related to this incident.

Three years after the death of her second husband, Margaret Eaton married an Italian music teacher and dancing master, Antonio Gabriele Buchignani, on June 7, 1859. She was 59 and he was 19. The marriage re-ignited much of the social stigma Margaret had carried earlier in life. In 1866, their seventh year of marriage, Buchignani ran off to Europe with the bulk of his wife's fortune as well as with her 17-year-old granddaughter Emily E. Randolph, whom he married after he and his wife divorced in 1869.

Eaton obtained a divorce from Buchignani but was unable to recover her financial standing. She died in poverty in Washington, D.C. on November 9, 1879.

 

Elizabeth van Valkenburgh (1799-1846), an American murderer who was hanged for poisoning her husband, was born (July).

 

Elizabeth van Valkenburgh (July 1799 - January 24, 1846) was an early American murderer who was hanged for poisoning her husband.

 

Elizabeth Van Valkenburgh was born in Bennington, Vermont. Her parents died when she was around five years old and she was sent to Cambridge, New York, to live, but had little education or religious upbringing.

She first married at the age of 20, moving with her husband, with whom she had four children, to Pennsylvania. After living there for six years, the family moved near to Johnston, New York, where she remained for the next 18 years. In 1833, her first husband died, which she initially stated was due to dyspepsia and exposure. Later, she admitted that she had poisoned him by adding arsenic to his rum, because she was "provoked" by his drinking in bars. In an addendum to her confession to Van Valkenburgh's murder, she noted that her first husband had been able to go to work the following day after being poisoned, although he suffered after effects until he died, and that she did not intend to kill him.

She married John Van Valkenburgh, with whom she had two more children, in 1834. In her confession, she stated that he was an alcoholic, that he "misused the children", and that "we frequently quarrelled" when he was drunk. Her son had offered to buy "a place" for her and the other children in the west, but John Van Valkenburgh opposed this. She stated in her confession that "John was in a frolic for several weeks, during which time he never came home sober, nor provided anything for his family." She managed to purchase arsenic and poison his tea, although he recovered from the first dose of poison. Several weeks later, she mixed another dose in his brandy. So gruesome was his death, however, she said that "if the deed could have been recalled, I would have done it with all my heart."

She ran away, hid in a barn, and broke her leg in a fall from the haymow. She was captured, tried and convicted. She was sentenced to death by hanging. Many people, including ten of the jurors, petitioned Governor Silas Wright for clemency, but having studied the materials related to the crime, and despite being moved by her gender and poverty, Wright could find no new evidence to stop the execution.

 

Elizabeth van Valkenburgh was executed on January 24, 1846. Because of her broken leg and her obesity, Van Valkenburgh was hanged in an unusual way. She was carried to the gallows in her rocking chair and was rocking away when the trap was sprung.

 

Ann Wood Henry (1734-1799), the treasurer of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, died (March 8).

 

Ann Wood Henry (January 21, 1734 - March 8, 1799) was the wife of William Henry of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, a gunsmith, inventor, and patriot in the American Revolution.

Born Ann Wood in Burlington, New Jersey on January 21, 1734, she married William Henry in 1756; the couple had thirteen children, including John Joseph Henry (1758-1811), a judge; William Henry, who moved to Nazareth, Pennsylvania, and carried on his father's gunsmith business; and Benjamin West Henry (1777-1806), a painter, named after the famous painter who had, in 1756, lodged in the Henry home. Benjamin West painted portraits of both Ann and William Henry, as well as the precocious "Death of Socrates", which was passed down in the Henry family until 1989 (when the will of Mary Henry Stites bequeathed it to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania).

The Henry household during the Revolutionary War was an important military and intellectual center. During the British occupation of Philadelphia, David Rittenhouse, then Treasurer for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, stayed in the Henry home, as did Thomas Paine, who wrote his fifth Crisis there. According to John Joseph Henry, who was in Lancaster recuperating from injuries suffered while serving with Benedict Arnold in Quebec, Paine's indolence and irreligion disgusted Ann Henry.

After the death of her husband, Ann Wood Henry assumed his duties of Treasurer of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. She was appointed to serve out the remainder of his term, and served for several additional years. She died on March 8, 1799, and was buried two days later in the Moravian cemetery in Lancaster.

 

Toypurina (1760-1799), a Tongva/Gabrielino (Indigenous American) medicine woman who led a revolt in California, died (May 22).  {See An Indigenous Peoples' Perspective.}