|
This page is part of a website based
on the life and achievements of eighteenth-century inventor Henry Cort. Please email site controller Eric
Alexander with any comments or queries. |
Ancestry
of William Thackeray
Grandfather in India William Makepeace
Thackeray, writer of Vanity Fair, is a grandson of John Harman Becher.
Harman has arrived in Calcutta in 1779 or early 1780 as a writer for
the East India Company. His career
prospers at first. In 1786, he marries a local
woman, Harriet Cowper. By 1792 they
have three children: a son John, who dies young, and daughters Harriet and
Anne. |
|
John
Becher m Ann Haysham
John Harman Becher m
Harriet Cowper
John
Harriet
Anne m(1) Richmond Thackeray
Maria William Makepeace Thackeray |
In 1793 Harman becomes
Registrar of the Provincial Court of Appeal and Circuit, Calcutta
Division. Later he is promoted to be
Collector of the 24 Pergunnahs.
This post (later occupied by
Thackeray's father) is of historical significance. Whereas most privileges enjoyed by the East India Company were
granted by the Treaty of Allahabad in 1765, this one dates from the aftermath
of the Battle of Plassey in 1757.
|
The Company were also given control
over an area south of Calcutta, called the Twenty-four Parganas, from which
they could collect revenue to defray their military costs.
From New Cambridge History of India II.2 |
Birth of Aunt
Maria
In October 1795 Harman
Becher's wife Harriet is in England. How do we know? Because
her fourth child, Maria, is baptised in Bury St Edmunds on the eighteenth. No mention of who carries out the baptism. Is it the local priest? Or could it be Maria's uncle Michael, now head of the local grammar school?
Bury’s parish register says
Maria was born "on the sea" on 14 March. Information received in April 2009 shows her embarking for the
voyage on the Manship on 1st February. Assuming these dates are accurate, it is
remarkable that she should leave for England so late in her pregnancy, while an
earlier theory that the child’s father is not Harriet’s husband will have to be
discarded.
The purpose of the voyage is
likely to be bringing the children to England for their education.
|
When a child reached four or five
years of age, he was sent to England, and the mother often accompanied her
infants because of her ill-health or to supervise their education in England. From Suresh Chandra Ghosh, The
British in Bengal (ISBN 81-215-0819-3).
Ghosh also says the cost of passage is “£500 or more for a family
cabin for the single journey”. |
The Company’s ships held a position
analogous to that of the great transatlantic liner nowadays: their galleys,
in particular, set a new standard of marine cookery. The cook might have served his time “in
one of the first Tavern Kitchens in Town, and when the ship was in port,
London Aldermen would not disdain the Captain’s invitation to dine on board.
From J.M. Holtzman, The Nabobs in England (New York, 1926) |
Last years of
John Harman Becher
Around 1797 Harman's career
goes suddenly downhill. So does his
marriage. He and his wife separate: the
next we hear of her is as main beneficiary in the will of Captain Charles Christie,
an officer in the Indian service – her lover, presumably.
During the period of separation from his wife, Harman (now, according to Thackeray's biographer, "out of
employ") lives in what is evidently a bachelor apartment in Writers
Buildings, Calcutta. Here in 1798 he
entertains his cousin Henry Bell Cort, who exhibits paranoid
symptoms.
Harman makes his will in
1799, and dies in Calcutta the following year.
Mother’s early
years
Harman’s daughters grow up
under the watchful eye of their grandmother, widow Ann Becher, in Fareham. Grandmother objects when the
fifteen-year-old Anne forms a romantic attachment to Henry Carmichael-Smyth, who
has seen service with the army in India: we speculate
elsewhere on the reason for her objection.
She goes to extraordinary lengths to stop the liaison,
confining Anne to her room and eventually practising a cruel deception on both
of them, which leads to a dramatic dénouement several years later.
Shortly afterwards, Anne’s
mother turns up and decides to take her two eldest daughters with her to
India. Ann’s beauty causes a stir in
Calcutta.
|
In India she had been accounted "one of the most beautiful
women of her time"... There was a
style about her that gained her recognition as a personage wherever she
went... Nor was her character less
remarkable than her person. Its key,
perhaps, was what her grand-daughter described as "her almost romantic
passion of feeling." She was
incapable of regarding any person or subject dispassionately; her sympathies
were always deeply and earnestly engaged.
Description of Harman Becher's daughter Anne, from Ray's biography of
her son William Makepeace Thackeray. |
One of those stirred is young
Richmond Thackeray, who discards his Indian mistress to win Anne’s hand in
marriage. William is their only child.
Then comes a fateful
encounter between Anne’s husband and a young army officer, whom he invites home
for dinner. “You must meet my wife.”
But they have already met…
|
What
that dinner was like no words can describe.
After what seemed an eternity, Anne and Captain Carmichael-Smyth had a
moment to themselves, and in a low trembling voice she exclaimed: "I was
told you had died of a sudden fever."
And with bitter reproach he replied, "I was informed by your
grandmother that you no longer cared for me and had broken our
engagement. As a proof, all my letters
to you were returned unopened. And
when in despair I wrote again and again begging for an interview, you never
gave me an answer or a sign." From G N Ray, Thackeray:
The Uses of Adversity. |
Anne’s marriage is never the
same. It terminates (mercifully?) in
her husband’s death from fever. She
waits a decent 18 months before marrying Carmichael-Smyth. Meanwhile young William is packed off to
England, where he soon meets his Becher relations and makes a notable
discovery.
A family portrait
|
In the low-pitched front parlor hung the
pictures (a Sir Joshua Reynolds among them) of earlier generations. From Thackeray's description of his
great-grandmother's house in Fareham High Street, quoted in Ray's biography. |
After
a long period during which the subject of the Reynolds’s picture was unknown,
new information has come from “writings
by Thackeray's eldest daughter Annie”,
identifying it as of his great-grandmother Ann Becher.
Yet,
in a supposedly complete catalogue of Reynolds portraits, compiled in 2000 and
based on known portraits by the artist (backed by his record of sittings and
payments), there is no record of this one.
Two deductions can be made.
First,
the portrait, left by Thackeray’s (unmarried) great-aunt Anna
Maria Becher to her nephew Alexander Bridport Becher, has disappeared.
Second,
it was not painted at
Reynolds’s studio in London. The most
likely location is at Hagley Hall.
Hagley underwent a notable transformation at the beginning of the
1760s. There are reasons to suppose
that Reynolds was invited to see this marvel.
Biographies of Alexander Hood say his
portrait was painted by Reynolds at Hagley in 1763. The Reynolds catalogue also mentions a portrait of Hagley owner
George Lyttelton seen by a visitor in 1766, though there is no other record of
this portrait and it is likely that it was destroyed in a fire there in 1926.
This suggests that Reynolds visited Hagley in 1763. Maybe Ann Becher’s was another portrait he
painted during the visit.
The Bechers were probably living only a few miles away, at Kidderminster, at the time. But there is a big question whether they
could afford Reynolds’s prices, quoted in the catalogue as 100 guineas in 1763,
150 guineas in 1764. In 1766 the
Bechers reckoned they didn’t have enough funds to fight a
legal case over the estate of Ann’s uncle Jeremiah Attwick, and there’s no
reason for their fortune to deteriorate between 1763 and 1766.
One
possibility is that someone else paid for Ann’s portrait, as reward for a service the Bechers performed.
Thackeray-Cort
link
I wade through six volumes of
Thackeray's correspondence in search of a possible reference to Cort or any of
his descendants: a four-volume set published in 1946, and a two-volume
supplement in 1994. Since they are
out-of-county loans from the local library, I have to read them, in limited
time, in the order in which they arrive.
Sod's law: in the last volume I read, there it is...
|
This comes to say plainly that I am very happy indeed that you
wrote to me: and shall be delighted to renew an old connexion; it will give me
the greatest pleasure to know Dr. Carpenter and I had rather be
asked to your family dinner than to the very finest banquet you could
possibly devise for me. From letter of Thackeray to Cort's
granddaughter Louisa Carpenter, 26 March 1846. |
Thackeray’s expression “old
connexion” shows that he has met Louisa before. It is easy to conjecture how this connection has arisen.
In 1826 Thackeray’s mother
Anne and her husband Henry Carmichael-Smyth, having left India a few years
earlier, settle at Larkbeare in Devonshire, mid-way between Exeter and
Honiton. At this point two of Henry
Cort’s children, Harriet Dowell and Louisa Powell, are a few miles away in
Exeter.
Consider Anne’s experience of
her father. Parted from him at the age
of two, she will have heard tales of his earlier days from his relations in
England.
But one of the few people
close by who have known him in India is Harriet Dowell. What’s more, Harriet’s husband, like Anne’s,
has seen army service in India.
It would be surprising if Anne hasn’t kept in touch with
Harriet; in the course of which she will have met Harriet’s sister Louisa and
their children.
Thackeray spends most of his
holidays from school (Charterhouse) and university (Cambridge) with his mother
at Larkbeare: most likely source of his acquaintanceship with the future Mrs.
Carpenter.
The 1846 correspondence also
shows that Thackeray recognises a family link, while there is reference to a
dinner “at Mr. Evans’s”.
Since Frederick Mullett Evans is Thackeray’s publisher, we can
conjecture that he is also publishing work by Carpenter, and has held a dinner
for some of his authors.
Most likely Louisa is not
present at the dinner, but when her husband mentions meeting Thackeray there
she recognises an old acquaintance and determines to invite him to her house.
At the time her husband has
attained more eminence than Thackeray, who is merely a writer appealing to a
limited readership. Carpenter, on the
other hand, is Professor of Physiology at the Royal Institution, and already a
Fellow of the Royal Society.
The collection of
correspondence does not reveal whether Thackeray does dine with the Carpenters
in 1846. But two years later he replies
to another invitation to visit. By this
time, however, he is becoming known as the author of Vanity Fair, which
has been appearing in serial form: a name to drop to one’s friends!
So what can we suppose about
Thackeray’s knowledge of Henry Cort?
It’s most unlikely that he
has never heard of Cort during earlier encounters with descendants like
Louisa. Presumably he has also been
spun a story of how Cort was deprived of the just rewards for his labour. No evidence of this from the surviving
correspondence, however; nor of any involvement by Thackeray in the attempt to obtain restitution in the 1850s. A pity, since his advocacy would have
brought the case to a wider audience.
Carpenter, however, is
involved in the attempt, at least to the extent of signing the Society of Arts
petition of July 1856. Perhaps he and
Thackeray have lost contact by this time.
Certainly Thackeray is visiting the USA between October 1855 and April
1856.
Another matter for curiosity
is whether Thackeray is ever aware of the activity in
Guiana of Cort’s sons William and Frederick. There is certainly evidence of contact between Thackeray and his
mother’s brother-in-law James Carmichael Smyth, who becomes Governor of British
Guiana in 1833, not long after its formation from the colonies of Berbice,
Demerara and Essequibo.
Thackeray-Becher
links
Apart from his mother, most
family correspondence is with his father's side. But contacts are evident with grandfather Becher's siblings Anna
Becher and Elizabeth Turner; also some of Elizabeth’s descendants (notably
Richard Bedingfield, whose son will be christened Richard Thackeray
Bedingfield), and Alexander's son Alexander Bridport Becher.
|
Tell Aunt Becher I have bought her - But I will not say what it is
for fear of diminishing that delightful suspense and agitation wh
a present of such extraordinary value and beauty must needs occasion. From letter of William Makepeace Thackeray
in Paris to his mother, 6 August 1829. |
We went to the Bedingfields' (delicious rencontre!)... The evening passed off with a splendid
festival at Captn Bechers, where the Bedingfield family were
present. From letter of William Makepeace Thackeray
to Charlotte Ritchie, 9-11 June 1845. |
Another of Alexander's sons,
Henry Corry Rowley Becher, has moved to Canada. Letters to him from Thackeray, while visiting America, in 1852
and again in 1856, reply to invitations to visit. On both occasions Thackeray agrees to come while in Canada, but
evidently doesn't manage to fit Canada into his itinerary.
|
RELATED TOPICS |
henrycort.net
hr