I do think I shall soon be like Richmond at Eton, everyone wants my pictures.
In October 1857 Mary stayed with Rev. Wharton Booth Marriott to draw boys in Eton College and took her sister Eleanor with her as a chaperone, who was 15. Marriott occupied The Hopgarden (boarding house) from 1853 to 1871, so it is likely that Mary stayed there. She was drawing the sons of Sir Charles Wood (presumably the politician better known as the First Lord Halifax as his sons Charles and Francis were at Eton at that time). These portraits arrived by 7 October ‘so well framed’ but she had another ‘com’ (commission). She drew a portrait of Marriott’s wife Julia, (nee Soltau), who he had married in 1851. This house group photo shows him, and presumably his wife Julia, centre, surrounded by Eton boys.
Mary was staying with both Edward and Harriet Balston and the Marriotts but asked her mother to send things to the Marriotts, writing to her mother that:
I am in great spirits for Mr Marriott saw Mrs Marriott's picture today, not knowing a word about it & was so pleased with it. Really delighted. He came down and shook hands with me & said it really was the thing of all others he wanted – it is a 'Com' from Mrs Marriott & her present to him. But I really did take such care about it, I found it very difficult but as it happens it turned out all the better. I feel that I am improving, for hers was one of the faces I thought I could not do.
Unfortunately, there is no trace of that picture, so we must make do with the blurred photo of her above. Marriott was an antiquarian and early church historian as much as a clergyman and tutor – he was elected to the Society of Antiuties the same year that Mary stayed with him at Eton. He was influenced by, but not part of the High Church Oxford Movement. His work amongst the poor and being on a board to improve housing around Eton may have been influenced by that as well as the Muscular Christianity espoused by F. D. Maurice, whom Mary also knew, and the campaigner clergyman and writer Charles Kingsley. This sort of Christianity stressed that faith was about social action and improvement as much as worship.
She noted that Mr. Coleridge was ‘very friendly’. Perhaps too friendly as biographer Sue Brown reported that an Eton schoolmaster, Edward Coleridge, got carried away during a sitting and jumped up and kissed her, much to her parents’ consternation (Brown, 2009: 277). Edward Coleridge (1800-1883) was a Lower Master in 1850, then a Fellow in 1857 and married to Mary, the daughter of a former headmaster Dr Keate. It is more likely to be his youngest son Francis – if it was a Coleridge - or one of his students and so he had to get involved. He was the nephew of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Mary knew the extended Coleridge family since both her father and her tutor the artist George Richmond did. In any case, the likelihood that an incident did occur shows her vulnerability as a female portrait artist when painting boys and men, even with a chaperone.
The portrait of a ‘seated boy’ (FDA-D.731-2012) dated to 1858 may be one of the ones that Mary made when she stayed at this time.
Interestingly, on the back of the portrait is a stamp of a business ‘G. Luff 28 Elizabeth Street, Eaton Sq Pimlico’, the framer that was very near – in fact round the corner – from where the Severns lived. It was while staying at Eton that Mary was commissioned to make a portrait of the Duchess of Kent, Queen Victoria’s mother, and then the Queen’s younger children at Windsor Castle. But more about that in another post. . . Eton is only over the bridge from Windsor, where the Castle dominates the skyline but is barely seen once along the high street of this merged college-town.
A year later Mary stayed with the Balstons at their family home at Boxley Abbey in Kent, where his father owned paper mills. It is now the subject of a conservation programme https://www.spab.org.uk/old-house-project. George Richmond was doing Edward Balston’s portrait while Mary was drawing his two nieces, presumably to be taken back to Eton as she wrote: ‘So many of my pictures will be at Eton. I am doing a group of a dark girl & a fair one, like the oil one, only they are grown up girls - I wish we were doing it in oils.’ (MarytoES_26August1856_BoxleyAbbeyKent). In March 1859, Mary returned to Eton and was staying with the Balstons and Marriotts again. On this occasion she appears to have been staying on her own as she excitedly wrote to her mother to request Eleanor to come as there is to be a ball in honour of Mr Vidal:
Let her look lovely, there are no nice-looking ladies here. Send a white fan. They say it will not be stiff a bit but that people will really enjoy themselves [. . .]. Don't you think I shall have enough of clergymen that evening, every man here is a clergyman nearly - & yet they are so manly & honest, & have no humbug, & I hear they dance to their hearts content. (MarytoES_2March?_BalstonEton).
I hope Mary and Eleanor had fun amongst all these dancing clergymen with no ‘nice-looking ladies’!
There is a portrait dating from 1859 still at Eton, among the four still there, hung on a staircase with Richmond’s portraits starting at the bottom and Mary’s at the top. This is my favourite of the boys Mary drew – the boy reading with a pensive expression and wispy moustache.
It feels like something of the soul of the sitter is seen. It is remarkable that these portraits are still on display and enjoyed at Eton and I’m very grateful to the college for allowing me to visit and see them.
Marriott Wharton married Mary Severn and Charles Thomas Newton in May 1861 – his name and signature are on the marriage register. This was a year after he left Eton due to poor health. Sadly, he was also the clergyman that buried her at Kensal Green on 6 January 1866. Letter to Eleanor after her death. Julia Marriott wrote from Eton to Eleanor on 22 January 1866 with condolences on Mary's Death and said she hadn't seen her since the summer as her two children were so seriously ill could not leave them. She observed Newton’s great love for Mary, writing:
[. . .] am so glad your brother Arthur is to live with Mr Newton . . . But really it is terrible to think of the desolation it must be to him. They were so wrapped up in each other. Your brother will seem like a part of her, for she was so fond of him and that will be such a tie to Mr Newton. (22Jan1866_Eton_JuliaMarriotttoESa)
Sources:
Brown, S. (2009), Joseph Severn A life: The Rewards of Friendship. Oxford University Press,
Birkenhead, Against Oblivion (AO)
Clewlow, Ellie (2004), Marriott, Wharton Booth (1823–1871), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/18094
Severn – Letters, Birkenhead (Severn): Private Collection
Eton Collections Archive: https://catalogue.etoncollege.com
With thanks to Philippa Martin, Keeper of Fine and Decorative Art, Eton College.
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