Sir William Gell’s Later Years

Thompson, Jason

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-98008-9_7

Jason Thompson⁴

Part of the book series: Queenship and Power ((QAP))

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Abstract

In retaliation for Gell’s loyalty to Caroline the government cancelled his pension, which Caroline had intended to be his for life. He found other means to maintain his lifestyle in Naples where he became an intellectual ornament to the city. Writers, artists, and scholars sought him out for information and good company. He became known as a clearing house of ideas, freely imparting his vast store of knowledge. “I glory in communicating all the new discoveries,” he boasted to his friend, the Scottish polymath Thomas Young. There were memorable visits from such luminaries as Sir Walter Scott, Jean François Champollion, and many others. Though increasingly and painfully debilitated, Gell remained intellectually active until his death in February 1836.

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Notes

1.
Gell to the executors of Queen Caroline’s estate, 5 October 1821, Photostat, Gell Papers, Derbyshire Country Record Office. Also see Aspinal, Letters of King George IV , 1812–1830, 2: 497.
2.
Gentleman’s Magazine, 92 (June–December, 1822): 76.
3.
Cobbett’s Collective Commentaries (London: J. M. Cobbett, 1822) , 268, 271.
4.
Burton, The Life of Sir Rich^d. F. Burton, 1: 17. Gell wrote to the executors of Caroline’s estate from Naples on 5 October 1821, recounting his and Craven’s loyal service to Caroline and requesting that their salaries be continued. Gell papers, Derbyshire County Record Office.
5.
Gell to John Gardner Wilkinson, July 1822, Bodleian Library, Department of Western Manuscripts, MS. Wilkinson dep. d. 132, ff. 3–4.
6.
Gell to Godfrey Maynell, 13 September 1822, typescript, Derbyshire County Record Office.
7.
Gell’s annuity is mentioned in J. H. to Gell, n.d. [1815], Windsor Castle, Royal Archives, RA Geo. Add. 21/102/29; and in a letter from Stracey to Gell, May 1819, among the letters from Caroline, Derbyshire County Record Office.
8.
Gell’s record of his dreams, Bodleian Library, Department of Western Manuscripts, MS. Eng. misc. d. 186, ff. 33–34, 52.
9.
Madden , The Literary Life of the Countess of Blessington, 2: 68.
10.
Gell to John Gardner Wilkinson, 25 June 1823, MS. Wilkinson dep. d. 132, f. 5. Photographs of Gell’s drawings of his house are D32874/4/6/1-2, Derbyshire Country Record Office. Edith Clay’s attempts to locate the site of his house were unsuccessful, but she did identify the general area. Clay, Sir William Gell in Italy, 8–9.
11.
Gell to John Gardner Wilkinson , 4 November 1834, Bodleian Library, Department of Western Manuscripts, MS. Wilkinson dep. d. 132, ff. 21–22.
12.
Gell, Narrative of a Journey in the Morea , 306; William St. Clair, That Greece Might Still Be Free: The Philhellenes in the War of Independence (London: Oxford University Press, 1972), 192.
13.
Gell, Narrative of a Journey in the Morea , vii, 302–4.
14.
Gell, Narrative of a Journey in the Morea , 304.
15.
Gell, Topography of Troy , 3.
16.
Marguerite, Countess of Blessington, The Idler in Italy, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (London: Henry Colburn, 1839), 2: 209.
17.
Madden , The Literary Life of the Countess of Blessington, 3: 35.
18.
Mathews, Life of Charles James Mathews, 1: 103.
19.
R. H. Super, Walter Savage Landor (London: John Calder, 1957), 194.
20.
Gell to Henry Stephen Fox-Strangways , n.d. [1828], Bodleian Library, Department of Western Manuscripts, MS. Eng. Letters c. 235, ff. 32–33. When Carrington testified in Queen Caroline’s trial, he told how he came into Gell’s service, although his account of his background was called into question under cross-examination. Hansard, New Series, 3: 363, 489–95.
21.
Benedetto Croce, Uomini e Cose della Vecchia Italia, Serie Seconda (Bari: G. Laterza, 1927); Owen Chadwick, The Popes and European Revolution (Oxford: Clarendon, 1981), 548–49; Blessington, Lady Blessington at Naples, 7–8.
22.
Madden , The Literary Life of the Countess of Blessington, 2: 96.
23.
Blessington, The Idler in Italy, 2: 112.
24.
Clay, Sir William Gell in Italy, 176.
25.
Edinburgh Review 6 (July 1805): 257–83.
26.
Gell, Reminiscences of Sir Walter Scott’s Residence in Italy , 1832 (London: Thomas Nelson, 1957), 3.
27.
#7.
28.
Hare , The Story of My Life, 1: 6–17.
29.
Blessington, The Idler in Italy, 2: 301.
30.
Hare , The Story of My Life, 1: 16.
31.
Walter Savage Landor , from “To Charles Dickens.”
32.
Another member of their Neapolitan social circle.
33.
Walter Savage Landor , from “Sermonis Propriora.”
34.
Blessington, Lady Blessington at Naples, 110.
35.
Elwin, Landor, 99.
36.
Madden , The Literary Life of the Countess of Blessington, 2: 12.
37.
Blessington, Lady Blessington at Naples, 153–54.
38.
Blessington, The Idler in Italy, 2: 261.
39.
Madden , The Literary Life of the Countess of Blessington, 1: 128.
40.
Derbyshire County Record Office, D3287/3/8.
41.
Some information about Lady Blessington and Count d’Orsay can be derived from Michael Sadleir, Blessington-d’Orsay : A Masquerade, rev. ed. (London: Constable, 1947), but Sadleir’s passing evaluations of Gell as “ludicrous” and “comic” are without foundation and should be disregarded.
42.
Madden , The Literary Life of the Countess of Blessington, 2: 24.
43.
Madden , The Literary Life of the Countess of Blessington, 2: 63.
44.
Clay, Sir William Gell in Italy.
45.
As he did with Craufurd Tait Ramage who recounted the excursion in his The Nooks and By-Ways of Italy: Wanderings in Search of Its Ancient Remains and Modern Superstitions (Liverpool: Edward Howell, 1868), 2: 299–300, 307.
46.
Verlyn Klinkenborg and Herbert Cahoon, British Literary Manuscripts: Series II, from 1800 to 1914 (New York: Dover, 1981), 47.
47.
Victor Alexander George Robert Bulwer, 2nd Earl of Lytton, The Life of Edward Bulwer, First Lord Lytton, 2 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1913), 1: 447.
48.
Michael Sadleir, The Strange Life of Lady Blessington (New York: Farrar, Straus, 1947), 205.
49.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton to Gell, 2 December 1833, British Library, Department of Manuscripts, Add. MS. 50135, f. 9.
50.
Madden , The Literary Life of the Countess of Blessington, 3: 35.
51.
Gell, Reminiscences of Sir Walter Scott’s Residence in Italy , xiv.
52.
Gell to Lady Blessington, 20 March 1832, Gell Papers, Derbyshire County Record Office.
53.
Gell, Reminiscences of Sir Walter Scott’s Residence in Italy , 2.
54.
Gell, Reminiscences of Sir Walter Scott’s Residence in Italy , 8.
55.
Gell, Reminiscences of Sir Walter Scott’s Residence in Italy , 17.
56.
Edith Clay , “Rhodes: Sir William to Sir Walter,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 23 (1970): 336.
57.
Gell’s notes on Rhodes for Scott were published in full with a commentary by Edith Clay in her “Rhodes: Sir William to Sir Walter.”
58.
Gell, Reminiscences of Sir Walter Scott’s Residence in Italy , 36.
59.
Gell to Lady Blessington, 19 November 1833, Gell papers, Derbyshire County Record Office.
60.
Gell, Reminiscences of Sir Walter Scott’s Residence in Italy , xxi.
61.
J. G. Lockhart , Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott , 6 vols. (Edinburgh: Cadell, 1837–1838).
62.
Gell, Reminiscences of Sir Walter Scott’s Residence in Italy , 1832.
63.
NPG 1491.
64.
Madden , The Literary Life and Correspondence of the Countess of Blessington, 2: 20, n.
65.
Sarah Uwins, A Memoir of Thomas Uwins , R.A. (London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, & Roberts, 1858), 1: 331.
66.
H. R. H. Hall, “Letters of Champollion le Jeune and of Seyffarth to Sir William Gell” and “Letters to Sir William Gell from Henry Salt , (Sir) J. G. Wilkinson , and Baron von Bunsen,” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 2 (1915): 76–87, 133–67; Jason Thompson, “‘Purveyor-General to the Hieroglyphics’: Sir William Gell and the Development of Egyptology ,” in Views of Egypt Since Napoleon Bonaparte: Imperialism, Colonialism and Modern Appropriations, David Jeffreys, ed. (London: University College London Press, 2003), 77–85. Three of Gell’s Egyptological notebooks are preserved in the Archives, Griffith Institute, Ashmolean Museum.
67.
William Richard Hamilton Hamilton, William Richard, Remarks on Several Parts of Turkey. Part I. Ægyptiaca, or Some Account of the Antient and Modern State of Egypt, as Obtained in the Years 1801, 1802. Accompanied with Etchings, from Original Drawings Taken on the Spot by the Late Charles Hayes of the Royal Engineers. 1 vol. text and 1 of plates (London: Payne, 1809–1810).
68.
Alexander Wood and Frank Oldham, Thomas Young , Natural Philosopher 1773–1829 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954).
69.
Gell notebook #3, 2, Archives, Griffith Institute, Ashmolean Museum.
70.
Young, Miscellaneous Works of the Late Thomas Young , 3: 471.
71.
Gell to Lady Blessington, 6 June 1828. Gell Papers, Derbyshire County Record Office.
72.
Hermine Hartleben, Champollion: sein Leben und sein Werk, 2 vols. (Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1906), 2: 52.
73.
Gell notebook #3, 144, Archives, Griffith Institute, Ashmolean Museum. For Champollion and Gell, also Hartleben, Champollion, 1: 454, 470, 570, 2:47, 49, 51, 54, 83, 91–92, 98, 113, 158, 352, and 421; Jean-François Champollion, Lettres de Champollion le Jeune, 2 vols. (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1909); Jean Lacouture, Champollion: Une vie de lumières (Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1988) repeats some pertinent information. Several of Champollion’s letters are in British Library, Department of Manuscripts, Add. MS. 50135.
74.
T. G. H. James, Egypt Revealed: Artist-Travellers in an Antique Land (London: Folio Society, 1997), 113.
75.
Some of Gell’s letters from Egyptologists are in the British Library, Department of Manuscripts, Add. MS. 50135.
76.
Jason Thompson, Sir Gardner Wilkinson and His Circle (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992).
77.
Bodleian Library, Department of Western Manuscripts, MS. Wilkinson dep. d. 114, f. 74.
78.
Young, Miscellaneous Works of the Late Thomas Young , 3: 224–26.
79.
Gell to John Gardner Wilkinson , July 1822, Bodleian Library, Department of Western Manuscripts, MS. Wilkinson dep. d. 132, ff. 3–4.
80.
Gell to John Gardner Wilkinson , 10 August 1824, Bodleian Library, Department of Western Manuscripts, MS. Wilkinson dep. d. 132, ff. 8–9.
81.
Champollion, Lettres, 1: 213–14, 220, 376, 382, and 2: 141.
82.
Blessington, Lady Blessington at Naples, 110.
83.
Gell notebook #3, 127, Archives, Griffith Institute, Ashmolean Museum.
84.
Gell to Thomas Young , 10 March 1824, in Young, Miscellaneous Works of the Late Thomas Young , 3: 374.
85.
Gell notebook #1, 11, Archives, Griffith Institute, Ashmolean Museum. So far, just one of Wilkinson’s compete letters to Gell has come to light, and that is a careful copy that Wilkinson made of it and kept in his collection (3 October 1832, Bodleian Library, Department of Western Manuscripts, MS. Wilkinson dep. d. 132, ff. 29–30). Among the Wilkinson manuscripts are rough, incomplete drafts of “Letters to Sir William Gell” that Wilkinson intended to develop into a publishable volume, as he informed his publisher John Murray III. Wilkinson to John Murray, undated, John Murray Archives.
86.
Wilkinson’s papers are in the Bodleian Library, Department of Western Manuscripts, Wilkinson MS. dep.
87.
John Gardner Wilkinson , Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians, 6 vols. (London: John Murray, 1837–1841), 1: ix–x.
88.
Gell to Thomas Young , 25 May 1821, National Library of Scotland, Department of Manuscripts, 584, no. 789, ff. 168–69.
89.
Gell to John Gardner Wilkinson , 25 June 1823, Bodleian Library, Department of Western Manuscripts, MS. Wilkinson dep. d. 132, f. 5.
90.
Gell to John Gardner Wilkinson , 5 March 1824, Bodleian Library, Department of Western Manuscripts, MS. Wilkinson dep. d. 132, ff. 6–7.
91.
Gell to John Gardner Wilkinson , 10 August 1824, Bodleian Library, Department of Western Manuscripts, MS. Wilkinson dep. d. 132, ff. 8–9.
92.
Young, Miscellaneous Works of the Late Thomas Young, 3: 410; Hartleben, Champollion, 2: 49.
93.
Young, Miscellaneous Works of the Late Thomas Young , 3: 471.
94.
The “triumvirate” was Young, Champollion, and Gustavus Seyffarth. Young, Miscellaneous Works of the Late Thomas Young , 3: 396–98, 408.
95.
Milnes , review of Extracts of the Journals and Correspondence of Miss Berry, 173.
96.
Gell, Topography of Rome, 3: 305.
97.
Clay, Sir William Gell in Italy, 34, n. 1.
98.
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, “Sir William Gell.”
99.
Gell, Topography of Rome, 2: 305.
100.
Gell to Henry Stephen Fox-Strangways , undated [1828], Bodleian Library, Department of Western Manuscripts, ff. 36–37. Beaufort apparently is Sir Francis Beaufort (1774–1857), author of Karamania, or a Brief Description of the South Coast of Asia Minor and of the Remains of Antiquity with Plans, Views, etc. (London: R. Hunter, 1817), which identified several classical sites. He also devised the Beaufort scale for classifying wind conditions at sea.
101.
Jacob Ludwig Salomon Bartholdy (1779–1825) served as the Prussian consul-general at Rome from 1816 until his death. He acquired a good collection of Egyptian antiquities which ultimately went to the Berlin Museum.
102.
Gell’s record of his dreams, Bodleian Library, Department of Western Manuscripts, MS. Eng. misc. d. 186, f. 11.
103.
Greville, The Greville Memoirs, 1: 475.
104.
Bodleian Library, Department of Western Manuscripts, MS Eng hist c. 54.
105.
Giuseppe Campanile , Storia della Regione del Kurdistan e delle Sette di Religione ivi esistenti (Naples: Fratelli Fernandes, 1818).
106.
Madden , The Literary Life of the Countess of Blessington, 2: 64.
107.
Metropolitan Magazine (September 1836): 106.
108.
Etruscan notebook, Bodleian Library, Department of Western Manuscripts, MS. Eng. Misc. e. 152.
109.
Madden , The Literary Life of the Countess of Blessington, 2: 63.
110.
Basil Hall to Gell, undated [c. August 1834], British Library, Department of Manuscripts, Add. MS. 50135, ff. 70–71.
111.
Madden, The Literary Life of the Countess of Blessington, 2: 83.
112.
Gell to John Gardner Wilkinson , 9 September 1834, Bodleian Library, Department of Western Manuscripts, MS. Wilkinson dep. d. 132, ff. 8–9.
113.
Madden , The Literary Life of the Countess of Blessington, 2: 204. Auldjo dedicated to Gell his book Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands, in the Spring and Summer of 1833 (London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, & Longman, 1833).
114.
Madden , The Literary Life of the Countess of Blessington, 2: 14, 2: 138.
115.
The tomb was dismantled sometime in the mid-twentieth century. Photographs of it are in the Gell papers, Derbyshire Country Record Office.
116.
Madden , The Literary Life of the Countess of Blessington, 2: 136.
117.
Some of the papers that Craven inherited from Gell are among Craven’s correspondence, journals, etc., which are in the British Library, Department of Manuscripts, Add. MSS. 63609–63623.

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Thompson, J. (2019). Sir William Gell’s Later Years. In: Queen Caroline and Sir William Gell. Queenship and Power. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98008-9_7

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98008-9_7
Published: 26 September 2018
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
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