Cataloguing the Anne Ramsden Bennett Archive
My name is Louise Roberts, and I’m a Reading Room Assistant at Gladstone’s Library. One of the projects that I am currently working on is an exciting venture to catalogue an archive of the letters and papers of Anne Ramsden Bennett.
Louise Roberts, Reading Room Assistant
Anne Ramsden Bennett was the cousin of William Ewart Gladstone. She was born in Liverpool in 1817 to David Gladstone and Emmeline Ramsden and was the eldest of seven children. Her father, David Gladstone, a Liverpool merchant, was the younger brother of Sir John Gladstone, 1st Baronet. In 1836 she married a Liverpool merchant, Thomas France Bennett, and they had eight children.
After leaving her husband, Ramsden Bennett moved to London and began work as a literary assistant and translator of modern language texts,[1] a profession in which a considerable number of women were employed in the nineteenth century[2].
Ramsden Bennett died in Switzerland at La Favorite Vevey Vaud on the 24th January 1906. Her papers and correspondence were inherited by Anne Ramsden Bennett’s grandchild, Miss Adele Mary Bennett, then passed down the family, until Mrs Patricia Mary Walsh deposited them as a gift in St. Deiniol’s Library through her mother, Mrs P. Grindrod. The archive has connections with the Glynne-Gladstone Archive which contains 51 letters from Sir Stephen Richard Glynne, 9th Baronet, and Emmeline Gladstone to Ramsden Bennett, letters from Ramsden Bennett to Robertson Gladstone and some recollections of Ramsden Bennett including ‘My Studies at School 1831-1832’.
The contents of the Anne Ramsden Bennett Archive date from 1804 to 1949. They contain personal correspondence and letters related to Ramsden Bennett’s work, as well as correspondence and papers from other members of the Ramsden and the Gladstone families. It includes some fascinating notes taken by Ramsden Bennett based on the recollections of her mother and grandparents ‘during a residence of many years at Dunkirk’ and the visits of Napoleon and Josephine during Napoleon’s time as First Consul, when they stayed in the adjacent property, as ‘house No. 2 sat at the other end of the courtyard, assigned to Napoleon Bonaparte’. They include her grandmother’s recollection of Josephine ‘joining Bonaparte at Dunkirk’ and ‘the yellow satin dress and turban she wore on that occasion’, and how kind Josephine had been to Ramsden Bennett’s mother, who was then a child. Bennett also recorded in her notes how her grandfather had lent his telescope to Napoleon and loaned furniture for the ‘drawing room and bedroom’, which had been sparsely furnished. Her grandparents had ‘frequently watched Napoleon and his generals walking up and down the courtyard’.
Correspondence from W. E. Gladstone to Anne Ramsden Bennett
The archive also includes correspondence and papers sent to Ramsden Bennett by members of the Gladstone family, including Ramsden Bennett’s father, David Gladstone, her brother, David Thomas Gladstone, and her cousin, Robert Gladstone, which relate to their Gladstone ancestry and her literary work. A letter in the archive, dated 9th October 1899, from Robert Gladstone, thanks Ramsden Bennett for her ‘last installment of your Recollections’ and states it ‘was quite equal in interest to the earlier ones, and my father was immensely entertained by all that you said regarding his grand-father’.
Anne Ramsden Bennett shared a long literary collaboration with W.E. Gladstone. He read Ramsden Bennett’s work such as her translation of Goethe’s Iphigenia in Tauris, and her article on Lucrezia Borgia in Weldon’s Register. In a letter in the Ramsden Bennett archive, dated 6th April 1853, W.E. Gladstone mentions a translation of Farini’s History of The Roman State and his hopes she ‘may be induced to undertake it.’
There is also a letter addressed to Anne Ramsden Bennett from Alex Macmillan (of the publishers Macmillan) written in 1870 to discuss her ideas about the publication of a new version of Gladstone’s Juventus Mundi. Gladstone owned Ramsden Bennett’s translations of Imitation of the Most Blessed Virgin (1897)[3](pictured on the left) and Saint Francis de Sales’ Guide for Confession and Communion (1896)[4], both originally written in French, as well as an enlarged edition of Meditations for all the days of the year for the use of priests, religious, and the faithful,[5] (pictured on the right) and these can now be found in Gladstone’s Library’s Reading Rooms. After Ramsden Bennett converted to Catholicism Gladstone ended their collaboration, telling her in 1871 that it was ‘really not a matter of principle but of prudence’ due to his position in which he was ‘held responsible for the religious colour & proceedings of any & every one connected with [him]’.[6]
Ramsden Bennett was also employed by the historian James Anthony Froude to copy manuscripts, and the work she undertook for him is discussed in letters between the two in this archive. Froude was considered a somewhat controversial figure because as a literary executor of Thomas Carlyle he had been entrusted by Carlyle to publish Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle (1883) and The Life of Carlyle (1884), which revealed details of the unhappy state of the Carlyle marriage. Ramsden Bennett and Froude appear to have corresponded frequently as 78 letters, dated between 1857-1872 survive in the archive.
The archive also includes correspondence of John William Parker, the Editor of Fraser’s Magazine, and a friend of Ramsden Bennett. Parker introduced her to Mary Ellen Meredith in around 1860 and the two became close friends. Mary Ellen Meredith was a controversial figure. She had met the writer George Meredith when she was a widow with a five-year-old daughter. They married, but after the birth of their son, Arthur, she left George Meredith for Henry Wallis, the Pre-Raphaelite painter of The Death of Chatterton (1856). The model for the dead Chatterton in Wallis’ painting was George Meredith. Meredith and Wallis had a son together, Harold, who later became known as Felix Wallis. When Mary separated from Henry Wallis in 1858, she took their young son Harold with her to England.
Left: Ramsden Bennett's handwritten notes about her grandparents' time in Dunkirk; Right: Objects inherited by Ramsden Bennett, including a model silver rudder presented to G. H. Gladstone for his role as cox for Trinity College, Oxford, and drawings belonging to her friend, Mary Ellen Meredith
When she died in 1861 Meredith left Harold in the charge of Ramsden Bennett[7] who also seems to have inherited some of Meredith’s papers. As well as correspondence between Meredith and Ramsden Bennett the archive contains three small but beautiful drawings of Mary and her children which are thought to have been drawn by Henry Wallis. The portrait of the baby is on a small envelope that contains a pressed flower. Meredith was the daughter of the writer, Thomas Love Peacock, and the archive contains some of his papers, including corrected proofs of parts of his Chapelle and Bachaumont and Gryll Grange (1861) and a beautiful handwritten music manuscript dated 1841 and addressed to ‘Master Edward Peacock’s Dear Mama’ with ‘words and music’ composed by the sender, ‘John Pearce, Clerk of St. Paul’s, Kilburn,’ entitled ‘Acrostic.’ There is also a letter from Mary Shelley to Meredith, written not long before Shelley’s death, in which Shelley asks if Mary Ellen’s newborn baby daughter is doing well and states that her own health is not as good as the winter months do not agree with her.
The Anne Ramsden Bennett Archive is the first collection that I have catalogued. It has given me the unique opportunity to learn about cataloguing, and to learn more about the role of women in the publishing industry in the nineteenth century. To enable me to progress with the archive, I have researched Anne Ramsden Bennett and her work, researched her literary acquaintances and close family, then made the decision as to how the archive will be best organised.
If you would like to arrange to view items from this archive, please complete our Request to Read Restricted Archival Items Form and email it to us at [email protected] at least 14 days before your intended visit. Our archivist will then be in touch to confirm details with you. We hope to hear from you soon!
[1] Nicholas A. Joukovsky, ‘According to Mrs Bennett: A Document Sheds a New and Kinder Light on George Meredith's First Wife’, Times Literary Supplement (8 October 2004), pp. 13, 15.
[2] Judith Johnston, Victorian Women and the Economies of Travel, Translation and Culture, 1830-1870 (London: Routledge, 2016)
[3] Classmark WEG/F 36/BEN
[4] Classmark G/30/12
[5] Classmark F 36/110
[6] British Library Add MS 44431, fol. 8
[7] British Library Add MS 44108, fol. 73