May, Lou & Cass
Page 32
44 – JA to Anna Austen, 10–18 August 1814, Le Faye, Letters, no. 104.
45 – Lord George Hill, Facts from Gweedore, with Useful Hints to Donegal Tourists (Dublin: Philip Dixon, Hardy and Sons, 1845), 25.
46 – Aidan Manning, Donegal Poitin: A History (Letterkenny: Donegal Printing Company, 2002), 216–8.
47 – Hill, Facts from Gweedore (1845), 25.
48 – Evans, Introduction, Facts from Gweedore (1971), vii–viii. See also E.R.R. Green, ‘The Western Seaboard’, in R. Dudley Edwards and T. Desmond Williams, The Great Famine: Studies in Irish History 1845–52 (Dublin: Lilliput Press, 1994), 113–4.
49 – Evans, Introduction, Facts from Gweedore (1971), viii.
50 – Tom Ferris, Irish Railways; A New History
– (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 2008), 115ff.
51 – Lord George Hill to Lord Marcus Hill, 30 June 1839, PRONI, Downshire Papers, D671/C/348/19.
52 – Hill, Facts from Gweedore (1845), 9.
53 – F.H. Aalen and Hugh Brody, Gola: The Life and Last Days of an Island Community (Cork: Mercier Press, 1969), 34.
54 – Hill, Facts from Gweedore (1845), 9.
55 – FCK to Miss Chapman, 9 October 1838, CKS, Knatchbull Archive, U951/C109/20.
56 – CBK, January–March 1841, Diaries, 13, JAHM.
57 – LGH to Lord Downshire, 15 March 1842, PRONI, Downshire Papers, D671/C/348/20.
Notes: Chapter 5
1 – Persuasion, 199.
2 – In Irish, Beal Atha Daire. Legend has it that ‘Turlogh Mac Suibhne … was defeated by O’Donnell and O’Doherty at Fearsad Mhor … was followed and overtaken at Beal Atha Daire where he was slain, “and they say it was his old age and inability to walk that was the cause of his slaying”.’ Seamus McGee, Ramelton (Ramelton Historical Research Association, 1994), 11. Lord George’s house, built in the Georgian era, about 1780, and surrounded by a park of 200 acres, was described in the Ordnance Survey of 1833–5 as ‘a good whitewashed house of two storeys high’. It contained examples of archaeological survivals from the Bronze age within its grounds, undoubtedly of interest to the antiquarian in Lord George. See Angélique Day and Patrick McWilliams, eds., Ordnance Survey Memoirs of Ireland, 38 (Belfast: The Institute of Irish Studies, 1997), 89; Brian Lacy et al., Archaeological Survey of County Donegal, (Lifford: Donegal County Council, 1983), 64.
3 – Lord George Hill, Facts from Gweedore, with Useful Hints to Donegal Tourists (Dublin: Philip Dixon, Hardy and Sons, 1845), 6.
4 – Estyn Evans, introduction to Facts from Gweedore, Compiled from the Notes of Lord George Hill, M.R.I.A., A facsimile Reprint of the Fifth Edition, 1887 (Belfast: Institute of Irish Studies, 1971), xii.
5 – LGH to Lord Downshire, 15 March 1842, PRONI, Downshire Papers, D671/C/348/20.
6 – FCK, 17 March 1842, Pocket Books, CKS, Knatchbull Archive, U951/F24/39.
7 – Cassandra is buried in Conwal Church of Ireland Cemetery in Letterkenny, County Donegal. Her inscription reads: ‘Sacred to the memory of Cassandra Jane, the beloved wife of Lord George Augusta Hill who died March 15th 1842. Aged Thirty-Five years. “The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord”.’
8 – FCK, 28 March 1842, Pocket Books, CKS, Knatchbull Archive, U951/F24/39.
9 – FCK, 30 March 1842, Pocket Books, CKS, Knatchbull Archive, U951/F24/39.
10 – FCK, 7 April 1842, Pocket Books, CKS, Knatchbull Archive, U951/F24/39.
11 – CBK, 11 April 1842, Diaries, 13, JAHM.
12 – FCK, 29 April 1842, Pocket Books, CKS, Knatchbull Archive, U951/F24/39.
13 – FCK, 2 May 1842, Pocket Books, CKS, Knatchbull Archive, U951/F24/39.
14 – FCK, 13 May 1842, Pocket Books, CKS, Knatchbull Archive, U951/F24/39.
15 – FCK, 16 May 1842, Pocket Books, CKS, Knatchbull Archive, U951/F24/39.
16 – FCK, 31 December 1842, summary of the year, Pocket Books, CKS, Knatchbull Archive, U951/F24/39.
17 – FCK, August 1842, Pocket Books, CKS, Knatchbull Archive, U951/F24/39; Updown was near Betteshanger in Kent. Built in the early eighteenth century, it had a small, handsome park. Margaret Wilson to Sophia Hillan, 18 September 2010.
18 – FCK, December 1842, Pocket Books, CKS, Knatchbull Archive, U951/F24/39.
19 – FCK, September – November 1842, Pocket Books, CKS, Knatchbull Archive, U951/F24/40.
20 – FCK, May 1845, Pocket Books, CKS, Knatchbull Archive, U951/F24/42. It is not clear whether Louisa travelled to Ireland between 1842 and 1845, as no direct reference is made to it by FCK.
21 – FCK, December 1845, Pocket Books, CKS, Knatchbull Archive, U951/F24/42.
22 – LGH to Lord Downshire, 25 May 1842, PRONI, Downshire Papers, D671 /C/348/23.
23 – LGH, Facts from Gweedore (1845), 35–6.
24 – Gweedore Hotel Book, 25 May 1842, 1, 36, Donegal County Archives, Lifford, County Donegal. A second volume, discovered in an attic during renovations of the original building, is held at An Chúirt, Gweedore Court Hotel and Heritage Centre (formerly the Gweedore Hotel), Gweedore, County Donegal. No other volumes are known to have survived.
25 – October 1844, GHB, 1, Donegal County Archives, Lifford, County Donegal.
26 – Lord Downshire, 31 August 1842, GHB, 1, Donegal County Archives, Lifford, County Donegal.
27 – Anon., 1843, GHB, 1, Donegal County Archives, Lifford, County Donegal.
28 – Hill, Facts from Gweedore (1845), 36.
29 – A plaque in the church which Lord George built in Bunbeg describes him as a ‘self-denying Christian [who] devoted his life and fortune to civilise Gweedore, and to raise its people to a higher social and moral level’.
30 – Lord Downshire, 23 October 1844, GHB, 1, Donegal County Archives, Lifford, County Donegal. See also Maguire, Downshire Estates, 42–3, for Lord Downshire’s criteria for valuation of his tenants’ property in 1844.
31 – John Killen, ed., The Famine Decade: Contemporary Accounts 1841–1851 (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1995), 28.
32 – Peter Somerville-Large, The Irish Country House: A Social History (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1995), 250.
33 – Persuasion, 268.
34 – Roy Foster, Modern Ireland, 1600–1972 (London and New York: Allen Lane, Penguin, 1988), 31n, 327–8.
35 – See also Foster, Modern Ireland, 291; 310–16; Dudley Edwards and Williams, The Great Famine, 83; J.C. Beckett, The Making of Modern Ireland, 1603–1923 (London: Faber and Faber, 1966), 331–35.
36 – Frances Anne Edgeworth, A Memoir of Maria Edgeworth (London, 1867, 3 vols.), 3, 85; quoted in Oliver McDonagh, ‘Politics, 1830–45’, New History of Ireland, 5, 1: 1801–1870, 194.
37 – Foster, Modern Ireland, 320.
38 – William Carleton, The Black Prophet: A Novel of Irish Famine (1847: reprint from 1899 edition, Shannon: Irish University Press, 1972), vii.
39 – Ibid., 227.
40 – Ibid., 299.
41 – Lord John Russell to Lord Lansdowne, October 1846, G.P. Gooch, ed., The Later Correspondence of Lord John Russell 1840–1878 (London: Longmans, Green and Co, 1925), 151.
42 – Foster, Modern Ireland, 320; Cormac O’Grada, Ireland Before and After the Famine; Explorations in Economic History, 1800–1925 (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1993), 127.
43 – Margaret Wilson, Almost Another Sister: The Family Life of Fanny Knight, Jane Austen’s Favourite Niece (Kent: Kent Arts & Libraries, 1990), 104.
44 – JA to FCK, 20–1 February 1817. Deirdre Le Faye, ed. Jane Austen’s Letters (1995; reprint, London: The Folio Society, 2003), no. 151; Le Faye, ‘The Nephew Who Missed Jane Austen,’ Notes and Queries, NS 31/4 (December 1984): 471–2.
45 – CBK, 5–31 May 1843, Diaries, 13, JAHM.
46 – CBK, 23 March 1845, Diaries, 14, JAHM.
47 – William Austen Leigh and Montagu George Knight, Chawton Manor and its Owners: A Family History (London: Smith, Elder & Co, 1911), 171. The Jane Austen Soci
ety had been founded by Dorothy Darnell in 1940 to gain possession of Chawton Cottage with the intention of making it a museum. It was finally purchased in 1947 by Thomas Edward Carpenter, in response to an appeal published in The Times in December 1946, and was administered by the Jane Austen Memorial Trust, set up by Mr Carpenter in memory of his son who had been killed in action. The house was formally opened in 1949. See Elizabeth Jenkins, Introduction, Collected Reports of the Jane Austen Society, vol. 2, 1949–1965.
48 – FCK to Miss Chapman, 17 September 1845, CKS, U951/C109.
49 – Maguire, Downshire Estates, 8.
50 – 21 February 1845, GHB, 1, Donegal County Archives, Lifford, County Donegal.
51 – 30 May 1845, GHB, 1, Donegal County Archives, Lifford, County Donegal.
52 – 19 August 1845, GHB, 1, Donegal County Archives, Lifford, County Donegal.
53 – Maureen Wall, ‘County Donegal in 1845: Excerpts from the Journal of John O’Hagan, giving an account of a tour in Ulster in the summer of 1845, presented, with an introductory note, by Maureen Wall,’ Donegal Annual, 1970, 167.
54 – Ibid., 167. The Young Irelanders, thinkers and writers, Catholic and Protestant, had broken with O’Connell over the question of university education in Ireland – they favouring secular education, O’Connell a system based on religious segregation. At the time of their visit to Gweedore, Mitchel and his colleagues had formed the Irish Confederation, under the leadership of William Smith O’Brien, ‘by birth and possession amongst the most distinguished of the Protestant gentry’. Denis Gwynn, Young Ireland and 1848 (Oxford: Blackwell Ltd, and Cork: Cork University Press, 1949), 18. See also Ireland 1815–1870: Emancipation, Famine and Religion, ed. Donnchadh Ó Corráin and Tomás Ó Riordan (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2011), 27–8. Smith O’Brien’s daughter Charlotte Grace would later prove a loyal friend to Cassandra Hill, youngest daughter of Lord George and Cassandra.
55 – ‘In April Lord Downshire died suddenly in Ireland … 15 May Lord G. Hill & his 4 children & Louisa went to Ireland … 19th December Lord G. Hill returned to Godmersham & published his book, “Facts from Gweedore”.’ FCK, Summary, 31 December 1845, Pocket Books, CKS, Knatchbull Archive, U951/F24/42.
56 – FCK to Miss Chapman, 31 January 1846, Pocket Books, CKS, Knatchbull Archive, U951/C109/25.
57 – FCK to Miss Chapman, February 1846, Pocket Books, CKS, Knatchbull Archive, U951/C109/26.
58 – FCK to Miss Chapman, 10 February 1846, Pocket Books, CKS, Knatchbull Archive, U951/C109/27.
59 – The Illustrated London News made the point, four years later in 1849, that ‘few of [the landowners] have it in their power to be merciful or generous to their poorer tenantry … they are themselves engaged in a life and death struggle with their creditors’. Illustrated London News, 3 October 1849, quoted in Ó Corráin and O’Ríordan, Ireland 1815–1870, 73.
60 – LGH to Famine Relief Commission, 13 September 1846, stamped by Relief Commission, RLFC/3/2/7/12, National Archives of Ireland, Dublin.
61 – The Hill children were quarantined at Godmersham with measles and mumps during the spring of 1846, and spent the summer in recuperation at Dover, in a house lent by the Rices, while Lord George commuted between England and Ireland. FCK to Miss Chapman, 25 April 1846, CKS, Knatchbull Archive, U951/C109/29; 19 June 1846, CKS, U951/C109/31.
62 – FCK to Miss Chapman, 30 November 1846, CKS, Knatchbull Archive, U951/C109/32.
63 – See Famine Relief Commission Papers 1845–1847, National Archives of Ireland, RLFC3/2/7/12. Description reads: ‘Lord George Hill, chairman, requesting further aid, justifying the sale of food at below cost price, because of the district’s remoteness and the people’s great need and requesting that seed be provided for the committee at one of the western Donegal ports rather than at Longford. Encloses certified subscription lists, including some for soup kitchens at Stranacorcragh, and Dunlewey. Also includes printed appeal for subscriptions to supplement the funds already provided by Hill.’ The similarity in tone and layout of this appeal to Lord George’s earlier plea for funds to build a glebe house indicates his grasp of the power of the media in garnering support, and the involvement of Louisa shows how quickly she developed an astute understanding of advertising.
64 – Foster, Modern Ireland, 327; J.C. Beckett, A Short History of Ireland (London: The Cresset Library, 1986), 136–7.
65 – See Foster, Modern Ireland, 328.
66 – Louisa Knight (Lady George Hill) to FCK, 1847, CKS, Knatchbull Archive, U951/C109/35.
67 – J.C.Beckett, The Making of Modern Ireland, 1603–1923 (London: Faber and Faber, 1966), 350.
68 – Captain John Knight, 17 September 1847, GHB, 1, Donegal County Archives, Lifford, County Donegal.
69 – FCK to Miss Chapman, August 1847, CKS, Knatchbull Archive, U951/C109/34.
70 – Ibid.
71 – CBK, 18 May 1847, Diaries, 14, JAHM.
72 – CBK, 12 March 1835, Diaries, 8, JAHM.
73 – Fanny’s approval is indicated in a letter to Miss Chapman, ‘I am … very glad to learn your favourable opinion of my sister’s marriage. It is a subject upon which people differ so much that I seldom introduce the subject unasked, but it is of course a satisfaction to know when our friends see it in the same light as we do ourselves.’ 11 September 1847, CKS, Knatchbull Archive, U951/C109/36.
74 – CBK, 9 January 1836, Diaries, 9, JAHM.
75 – Despite his lack of enthusiasm for the marriage, Charles Knight’s diaries for the following years indicate that he was later fully reconciled with his sister and Lord George Hill. See CBK, Diaries, 15, 14 August 1847 – 24 March, 1851.
76 – FCK to Miss Chapman, 25 August 1847, CKS, Knatchbull Archive, U951/C109/34.
77 – Ibid.
78 – Margaret Wilson to Sophia Hillan, re second reading of the Marriages Bill in the House of Lords, 25 February 1851.
79 – 12 June 1846, Protection of Life (Ireland) Bill, Adjourned Debate, House of Commons. http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1846.
80 – Thomas Carlyle, Preface, Reminiscences of My Irish Journey in 1849 (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, and Rivington, 1882), v.
81 – Ibid., 223.
82 – Ibid., 229–30.
83 – Ibid., 230.
84 – M.C. Hammond, Relating to Jane: Studies on the Life and Novels of Jane Austen with a Life of her Niece Elizabeth Austen/Knight. (London; Minerva Press, 1998), 247; 292.
85 – Carlyle, Reminiscences, 231.
86 – Ibid.
87 – Ibid., 236–43.
88 – CBK, 31 December 1835, Diaries, 9, JAHM.
89 – Cecil Woodham-Smith, The Great Hunger (London, Hamish Hamilton, 1962), 24.
90 – Ibid., 266.
91 – Carlyle, Reminiscences, 251.
92 – Ibid., 253.
93 – FCK to Miss Chapman, July 1846, CKS, Knatchbull Archive, U951/C109/33.
94 – Persuasion, 199.
Notes: Chapter 6
1 – MK to FCK, 23 July 1849, CKS, Knatchbull Archive, U951/C113/6.
2 – Margaret Wilson, Almost Another Sister: The Family Life of Fanny Knight, Jane Austen’s Favourite Niece (Kent: Kent Arts & Libraries, 1990), 87–9.
3 – FCK moved to the Hugessen family home at Provender, close to Faversham in Kent, where her husband had lived during his father’s lifetime. ‘Fanny was expected to live there and to leave it to her eldest son.’ Wilson, Almost Another Sister, 90.
4 – JA to CEA, 3 January 1801. Deirdre Le Faye, ed. Jane Austen’s Letters (1995; reprint, London: The Folio Society, 2003), no. 29.
5 – MK to FCK, 23 July 1849, CKS, Knatchbull Archive, U951/C113/6. John’s friend ‘Mr Hill’ is not identified but, since no name or indication of acquaintance is made by Marianne, seems unlikely to be a member of the Hill family to whom the Knights had by 1849 been related for fifteen years.
6 – M.C. Hammond, Relating to Jane: Studies on the Life and Novels of Jane Austen with a Life of her Niece Eli
zabeth Austen/Knight. (London; Minerva Press, 1998), 299; 271. George Finch-Hatton was a descendant of the poet Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea (1661–1720). One of the descendants of the marriage between Lizzy’s daughter Fanny Margaretta and George Finch-Hatton was Denys Finch-Hatton (1887–1931), later the lover of Karen, Baroness Blixen who, as Isak Dinesen, wrote of their affair in her memoir, Out of Africa. Another is Anna Chancellor, who played Caroline Bingley in the 1995 BBC production of Pride and Prejudice.
7 – Louisa Rice to Edward Rice, 1852, quoted in Jane Corder, Akin to Jane: Family Genealogy of Jane Austen’s Siblings and Descendants, 1760–1953, MS compiled 1953, Jane Austen’s House Museum, Chawton, Hants, 287–8.
8 – Edward Austen Knight to Edward Knight Jr, June 1822, HRO, Knight Archive, 39M89/F111/5.
9 – Ibid., Postscript, 1835.
10 – George Oxenden to MK, 1838, HRO, Knight Archive, 39M89/F117/ 2–5.
11 – CBK, 11 October 1835, Diaries, 9.
12 – Jane Austen, Lady Susan, The Watsons, Sanditon, ed. Drabble, 208–9.
13 – CBK, 10 October 1835, Diaries, 9.
14 – Morland Rice to Edward Rice, 18 September 1850, Rice Archive, CKS, EKU116/ uncatalogued, Hammond no. 1/40. Morland Rice does not seem to have been a naturally unkind man, yet it was noted in the family that he tended, especially after two severe head injuries, to be rather more disconcertingly sharp than accorded with his essential good nature, demonstrated by his kindness to his grandfather. See Hammond, Relating to Jane, 282–6.
15 – Louisa Rice, 1850, quoted in Hammond, Relating to Jane, 291–2.
16 – EKR to Caroline Cassandra Rice, May 1850, quoted in Hammond, Relating to Jane, 247–8. Charlotte was Henry Knight’s daughter, born in 1837 to his second wife, Charlotte Northey.
17 – William Austen Leigh and Montagu George Knight, Chawton Manor and its Owners: A Family History (London: Smith, Elder & Co, 1911), 172.
18 – FCK to Miss Chapman, 2 March 1853, CKS, Knatchbull Archive, U951/C109/53.
19 – Ibid.
20 – Ibid.
21 – Ibid.