[Rarebooks] fa: THE LADIES OF LLANGOLLEN - INSCRIBED PRESENTATION COPY of Charlotte Smith

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, July 10. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la. 

http://tinyurl.com/gngvps8

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA



Charlotte Smith: Rural Walks: In Dialogues. Intended for the Use of Young Persons. London: T. Cadell Jun. and W. Davies, 1800. Vol. I only (of two); 12mo (15 cm) in full period green morocco with gilt-stamped spine title, marbled endpapers, all page edges gilt.

PRESENTATION COPY, inscribed on the front free-endpaper: "From Lady Eleanor Butler & Miss Ponsonby to T. B. Parker / J. Parker / M. Parker / E. S. Parker / about 1810 or 12." A rare relic of one of the most famous of nineteenth-century "romantic friendships" and a remarkable ASSOCIATION COPY — presented to their friends' children, among them the girl who would one day sketch the only known portrait of "the Ladies" drawn from life.

THE LADIES OF LLANGOLLEN: Lady Eleanor Butler (1739–1829) and the Honourable Sarah Ponsonby (1755–1832) scandalized and fascinated the late-Georgian world by "eloping" from their upper-class Irish families to set up house together. In 1780 they settled in the Welsh village of Llangollen, where they lived inseparably in "delicious Retirement" for nearly fifty years, sharing bed, books, correspondence, and long walks. They were regarded with something like horror by proper society and with something like awe by many of the leading figures of the time. Their cottage, Plas Newydd, received visits —often more like pilgrimages — from the likes of Edmund Burke, Lady Caroline Lamb (a distant cousin of Sarah Ponsonby's), Josiah Wedgwood, Stéphanie de Genlis, the Duke of Wellington, Anna Seward (who wrote "Llangollen Vale" on her visit) and William Wordsworth (ditto his "Sonnet Composed at Plas Newydd"). Lord Byron, too, admired them: in a letter in 1807, he invoked their constancy to characterize — inaccurately, as it turned out — his enduring love for the Cambridge choirboy John Edleston: "We shall put Lady E. Butler, & Miss Ponsonby to the Blush...", and he later sent them an inscribed copy of The Corsair. Famous in their own time and almost legendary since, the Ladies have been hailed as pioneering feminists and lesbians by later generations (though the nature of their physical relationship has never clearly been established), and their names have become synonymous with the ideal of "romantic friendship."

THE PARKERS: It seems clear that the Parkers to whom the book was presented were the children of Thomas Netherton Parker and Sarah Parker of Sweeney Hall, Oswestry, Shropshire, just 12 miles distant from Llangollen. The Parkers were friends, visitors and correspondents of the Ladies for many years. Thomas Netherton Parker (1772-1848), Oxonian, magistrate, "gentlemen writer" and later mayor of Oswestry, helped design the monument to the Ladies and Mary Caryll, their long-time servant and friend, in St Collen’s churchyard. His wife Sarah (d. 1833) corresponded regularly with the Ladies (see the National Archives catalogue of the holdings in the Denbighshire Record Office, Llangollen Museum Mss.), exchanging books,  sending them her daughter Mary's watercolors, etc. It was to Sarah Parker that Ponsonby boasted of receiving the inscribed Corsair from Byron mentioned earlier: "May we not be proud?"

The presentation is dated "about 1810 or 1812," at which time the Parker children would have been just the right ages to be given Charlotte Smith's book, a work "intended for the use of young persons." The first name in the inscription, "T.B. Parker," is, we believe, Thomas Browne Parker, the eldest son of Thomas and Sarah (née Browne), who died in 1833, aged 36. Second on the list ("J.") is John, the future Rev. John Parker (1798-1860), vicar of Llanyblodwel, dean of Llangollen, and amateur botanist, architect and artist, with over a thousand drawings in the National Library of Wales. The fourth name ("E.S.") is the Parkers' daughter Elizabeth Sarah, who authored a "small work" of verse, A Poesy of Divinity (1845), and in later life became a recluse and purportedly Dickens' model for the character of Miss Havisham. But it is the third name, "M. Parker", that is particularly noteworthy. This is MARY PARKER, the future Lady Leighton, Thomas and Sarah's third child and eldest daughter, who would have been 11-13 years old at the time of the book's presentation. Young Mary was, judging by the number of references to her in books about the Ladies, as well as in the Ladies' own correspondence, a recurring and significant presence in their lives. There is in fact a book dedicated entirely to their relationship (Megan Ellis: Mary Parker (Lady Leighton) and the Ladies of Llangollen, 1948). Mary was a gifted amateur artist all her life; she made numerous sketches and watercolors of the cottage and garden at Plas Newydd and, as we have seen, her mother shared these early works with the Ladies. Most importantly, she produced what is believed to be the only portrait of the Ladies made while they were alive — executing it, apparently clandestinely, ca. 1825.

It's uncertain whether the inscription was written by one of the Ladies or by one of the Parkers (the children's mother Sarah, perhaps?), or whether the date might have been added later, possibly by a different hand — but in any case: a scarce presentation copy from this reclusive couple and one with a unique and evocative association. The first volume only of Charlotte Smith's work, but complete in itself, consisting of six separate "Dialogues." Binding with light wear, some worming to the front cover; two page-gatherings protruding slightly from the text block, leaves with occasional light scattered foxing, else clean and sound.