Edna Healey - Lady Unknown: The Life of Angela Burdett-Coutts

The Life of
Angela Burdett-Coutts

Edna Healey

This electronic edition published in 2011 by Bloomsbury Reader
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ISBN: 9781448207541
eISBN: 9781448207237
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To my Mother

Many Years ago we came to live on the Holly Lodge Estate, Highgate, in a house built with others in the grounds of what had once been the home of the nineteenth-century philanthropist, Baroness Burdett-Coutts. Intrigued by the old gardens, with their cedars and high rhododendrons, urns and crumbling summer houses, and by the strange, enclosed Victorian Gothic village that she built at the edge of her estate, I searched in vain for a full biography.

There was a short history of her philanthropy compiled by command of the Duchess of Teck in 1893. A biography written in old age by Mrs Patterson, a descendant of her sister, was tantalizingly incomplete, but it gave some indication of the extraordinary richness and variety of her life. Two selections of the letters to her by Charles Dickens have been published, one with an excellent biographical introduction by her former secretary, Charles C. Osborne.

Edgar Johnsons scholarly The Heart of Charles Dickens was of immense value and led me to the complete collection of Dickenss letters to Angela Burdett-Coutts in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York.

Her friendship with Rajah Brooke, of Sarawak, and their correspondence has been dealt with in great detail by Dr Owen Rutter in his Rajah Brooke and Baroness Burdett-Coutts. Extracts from the Duke of Wellingtons letters to her in Wellington and His Friends by the 7th Duke of Wellington directed me to the letters at Stratfield Saye among the archives of the present Duke of Wellington. For his kind help I am most deeply grateful. The advice and assistance of Mrs Joan Wilson, the archivist at Stratfield Saye, has been of immense value to me.

Apart from these and articles in newspapers and magazines, a chapter in Noble Lives of Noble Women, and scattered references in memoirs of the

After her death her husband had hoped to write her biography, but faced with what he described as a house as full of documents as the Records Office, his courage failed. Her own modesty and reticence discouraged biographers in her lifetime, and she outlived most of her friends and was therefore able to destroy most of her letters to them. Dickens, with her consent, burned most of her letters with those of his other friends in a great bonfire at Gads Hill. So that, although there are in existence hundreds of letters to her from famous people of the nineteenth century, comparatively few of her own still remain. And these are in a handwriting that is almost deliberately obscure.

So began my absorbing search for sources in public and private archives. Nothing in this biography has been invented. Wherever possible I have given exact references, although sometimes this has not been possible, the evidence has often been a scrap of paper in an old tin box.

I have to acknowledge the gracious permission of H.M. the Queen for the use of material in the Royal archives. I am indebted to Sir Robin Mackworth-Young and his staff at Windsor Castle for their generous help.

I am deeply indebted to Lord Latymer, Mr David Money-Coutts and the Directors of Coutts and Co. for the use of material in their archives. I am most particularly grateful for the unfailing kindness and competent assistance of their archivist Miss Veronica Stokes, who also helped me to compile the family tree. The Earl of Harrowby has most kindly allowed me to see the family records at Sandon Hall. For his help and the pleasure of working in his well-ordered muniment-room I am most grateful.

My warmest thanks are due to Mrs Betty Coxon, daughter of Mrs Patterson and direct descendant of Sir Francis Burdett. She has helped me from the first and placed her mothers material at my disposal. Mr Ashmead Burdett-Coutts of Cape Town has most generously lent me letters from the archives of the Baronesss husbands family which are in his possession. He and his sister Whimbrell gave me from the first invaluable help and encouragement. To them I am most profoundly grateful.

I have to thank the librarians and staffs of the British Library, Lambeth Palace Library and the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and the Keeper of the Muniments at Westminster Abbey. The Librarian of Highgate Literary Institute gave me kind assistance at the beginning of my research. The Librarians of the Public Libraries of Camden, Westminster, Edinburgh, Manchester, Carlisle, Brighton, Tunbridge Wells and Torquay gave me much assistance. In Torquay the local historian, Miss Hilda Walker, was particularly helpful, as were the former owners of Rosetor Hotel (the old Ehrenberg Hall).

Miss Pillars and the staff at Dickens House have been most helpful. For access to the unpublished letters of Charles Dickens in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, I am most grateful. The Editors of the Pilgrim Edition of the Letters of Charles Dickens have kindly given me permission to publish short extracts of those letters.

To the authorities of the following institutions I express my gratitude for permitting me to make use of the letters in their possession: Kunsthaus, Zurich; Muse des Beaux-Arts, Paris; The Henry E. Huntington Library, California. The Director of the Folger Museum, Washington, kindly allowed me to see the First Folio Shakespeare which had belonged to the Baroness and is now in their possession. The Director of the Museum at the Chteau de Chantilly was most helpful and discovered letters from the Baroness to the Duc d Aumale concerning her lease of the Chteau.

I am deeply grateful to the High Commissioners of Canada and Australia and to their Excellencies the Ambassadors of France and Belgium for the valuable assistance given me by their Librarians.

Sir Anthony Wagner has kindly allowed me to see his collection of letters from Henry Wagner to the Baroness. Mr Laurence Irving directed me to his grandfathers manuscripts in the keeping of the National Theatre Museum. His Life of Sir Henry Irving has been of great interest, to him and to the museum staff I am most grateful.

I have to thank the executors of the late Reginald Colby, who have allowed me to see his unfinished biography of the Baroness. The late Mrs Twining, wife of the Reverend Twining, Vicar of St Stephens from 1889, wrote an interesting unpublished biography and journal, now in the Westminster City Libraries, Archives Department.

Her Royal Highness Princess Alice, Queen Victorias granddaughter, graciously described for me the Baroness as she remembered her; she still wears the opal ring the Baroness gave her as a little girl.