She was a British song-writer, composer, poet, and author. As well as being admired for her wit and literary talents, she was a fashionable beauty and a well-known figure in London society of the mid-19th century.
After her father died at the Cape of Good Hope, Helen returned to England where she lived in a Hampton Court Palace "grace and favour" apartment with her mother, four brothers and two younger sisters. The sisters' beauty and accomplishments led to them being called the "Three Graces". Caroline was known as the wittiest of the girls and later developed into a talented writer, and Georgiana, considered the prettiest of the sisters, later became the Duchess of Somerset.
She married, firstly, Price Blackwood, 4th Baron Dufferin and Clandeboye, son of Hans Blackwood, 3rd Baron Dufferin and Claneboye and Mehetabel Hester Temple, on 4 July 1825. She married, secondly, George Hay, Earl of Gifford, son of Field Marshal George Hay, 8th Marquess of Tweeddale and Lady Susan Montagu, on 13 October 1862. She died on 13 June 1867.
In October 1862, she agreed to marry her friend George Hay, Earl of Gifford by special license, after he was seriously injured in an accident. Hay, who was heir to the Marquessate of Tweeddale, died of his injuries two months after their marriage.[
She wrote the book The Charming Woman, published 1835, and The Fine Young English Gentleman. She wrote the book The Irish Emigrant, published 1845. She wrote the book Lispings from Low Latitudes or Extracts from the Journal of the Honour Impulsia Gushington, published 1863. She wrote the book Finesse; or a Busy Day in Messina, published 1863, a play.
Child of Helen Selina Sheridan and Price Blackwood, 4th Baron Dufferin and Clandeboye:
•Frederick Temple Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 1st Marquess of Dufferin and Ava+ b. 21 Jun 1826, d. 12 Feb 1902
She died of breast cancer on 13 June 1867 at Dufferin Lodge in Highgate and was buried in Friern Barnet with her second husband. Her son Frederick, who had always had a close and affectionate relationship with his mother, published a volume of Songs, Poems, & Verses by Helen, Lady Dufferin with a memoir in 1894. Earlier he had named the village and railway station built on his land Helen's Bay, and he dedicated Helen's Tower on the Clandeboye estate to her. The tower inspired poems by both Tennyson and Browning who compared this Helen favourably with the beautiful Helen of Troy of legend:
Like hers, thy face once made all eyes elate,
Yet, unlike hers, was bless'd by every glance.
A BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR
OF THE LATE
Marquess of Dufferin and Ava
CHAPTER I
THE BLACKWOOD FAMILY THE SHERIDANS BIRTH OF LORD DUFFERIN DEATH OF PRICE, THE MARQUESS'S FATHER
EARLY LIFE OXFORD TO SKIBBEREEN AN EARLY SPEECH ON IRISH LAND
FREDERICK TEMPLE HAMILTON- TEMPLE-BLACKWOOD, first Marquess of Dufferin and Ava, was born at Florence on June 2ist, 1826. On both the father and mother's sides he came of an old and distinguished stock. The Blackwoods originally belonged to Fifeshire, and passed over into Ulster in the reign of Queen Elizabeth at the same time that James Hamilton, the first Lord Clandeboye, "settled" the northern half of the County Down. The coats of arms of the Blackwoods are displayed as early as 1400: one William Blackwood died fighting against the English at the battle of Pinkie in 1547, and his son Adam was a trusted follower and biographer of Mary Queen of Scots.
Life of Lord Dufferin
The Ulster Blackwoods (there was also a French branch which became extinct in 1837) sat in the Irish Parliament continuously throughout the best part of the eighteenth century. They were created baronets in 1763, and were promoted to the peerage in 1800 as Barons Dufferin and Clandeboye. The father of the first peer was Sir John Blackwood, a strong Whig, who on two occasions refused an earldom; but his eldest son was a personal friend and neighbour of Castlereagh's, and received the offer of a peerage in a more acquiescent spirit. Through his mother he was the heir-general of the Hamiltons, Viscounts Clandeboye, Earls of Clanbrassil, on which account the second title of Clandeboye was conferred.
James, the first Lord Dufferin, was a most kind-hearted as well as a very brave man. When commanding his regiment in the South of Ireland, a soldier, maddened by some supposed grievance, rushed at him with a pistol. He wrenched it from the man's hand and with generous presence of mind contrived to empty the pan of its priming, and then turning to his officers, said, "It is nothing, the pistol is not even loaded." Many similar traits have been repeated to the Marquess by those who knew the old baron.
A second baronetcy was conferred in 1814, on another distinguished member of the family Admiral Sir Henry Blackwood, grand-uncle of the Marquess. He was a fine seaman, and commanded Nelson's squadron of frigates at Trafalgar, Admiral Sir H. Blackwood I and it was on him that fell the sorrowful duty of bringing the hero's body home. He also had the honour of conducting Louis XVIII. and his family back to Paris, and of escorting the allied Sovereigns to England. Two exploits of his are specially memorable: *one, when commanding a 36-gun frigate, the Penelope, he successfully engaged and smashed the Guillaume Tell, an So-gun line-of-battle-ship, and on a previous occasion when, in July, 1798, he, though commanding a small frigate of twenty-eight guns the Brilliant, beat off the attack of two French 44-gun ships. A characteristically generous appreciation of this feat finds place in the "Biographic Generale".
The present representative of this Baronetcy is Sir Francis Blackwood; and the late Sir Arthur Blackwood, Secretary to the General Post Office, was a grandson of the old Admiral. To revert to the main line, Hans, Lord Dufferin, the son of James, the first peer, had three sons; but the eldest was carried off by a chance round-shot in the few days fighting that ranged round Waterloo, and the second died of fever at Naples. These deaths in the family made Price, the 1 Marquess's father, heir to the title and estates; but Price had at first little else than his pay as a naval officer to live upon.
In these circumstances his union to the lady of his choice Miss Helen S. Sheridan, was deemed very imprudent by his relations and friends. She was only seventeen, and a most lovely and fascinating creature. In his filial solicitude to do justice to the memory of his beloved mother, Lord Dufferin seems to have fairly exhausted the language of affection. But the common consent of those who had the privilege of her acquaintance agrees with the following loving description in her son's memoir:
One of the sweetest, most beautiful, most accomplished, wittiest, most loving and lovable human beings that ever walked upon the earth. There was no quality wanting to her perfection; and I say this, not prompted by the partiality of a son, but as one well acquainted with the world, and with both men and women. There have been many ladies who have been beautiful, charming, witty, and good, but I doubt whether there have been any who have, combined with so high a spirit, and with so natural a gaiety and bright an imagination as my mother's, such strong, unerring good sense, tact, and womanly discretion. Her wit or, rather, her humour her gaiety, her good taste she may have owed to her Sheridan forefathers ; but her firm character and abiding sense of duty she derived from her mother; and her charm, grace, amiability, and lovableness from her angelic ancestor Miss Linley.
These references call here for further notice of so charming a personality. Helen Selina, Baroness Dufferin and Clandeboye, was the daughter of Thomas Sheridan, and the grand-daughter of the Right Honourable Richard Brinsley Butler-Sheridan.
THE SHERIDAN LINE
The Sheridans, though they experienced subsequent reverses, were originally an ancient, rich, and
important family, possessing castles and lands in the County Cavan, a tract of which is marked in the
old maps of the period as " the Sheridan County "; but in Queen Elizabeth's time their property was
escheated, as Thomas Sheridan bitterly complained before the Bar of the House of Commons in 1680.
They were driven from their homes and were forced during the next two hundred years to fight the
battle of life under what were always discouraging, and sometimes desperate, conditions. As Lord
Dufferin not unfairly surmises, it is perhaps to these persecutions of Fate that their continuous intellectual activity may be attributed.
The first of the line who fairly could claim to literary eminence was Denis Sheridan, the son of Donald and of a daughter of the O'Neill. He must have been born about the year 1600. He had quitted the Catholic fold to become a Protestant clergyman, and a devoted disciple of Bedell, Bishop of Kilmore, under whose direction he translated the English version of the Bible into the Irish language. Behind the Palace of Kilmore, where Bedell is interred, there lies an intricate network of lake scenery amid hills and wooded lowlands. Here is Trinity Island, where stands a ruined abbey, and many legends about the Sheridans linger round this spot. It is said that the first of the family settled here from Spain, being sent over by the Pope of Rome in the fifth or sixth century, and founded a school of learning on the island, which he enriched with a library of manuscripts. This insular University was presided over from generation to generation by one of the Sheridan family.
Many of the Sheridans claim notice for their eminence in various walks of life: two sons of Denis were bishops, and a third, the Right Honourable Sir Thomas Sheridan, was author of a remarkable work published in 1677, entitled "The Rise and Power of Parliament." In the next generation Dr. Thomas Sheridan, son of Denis' fourth son James, was a person of simple and very agreeable disposition. He adopted the calling of a schoolmaster, and was intimate with Dean Swift, and people used to say that Sheridan's wit and sweet gaiety played the part of David's harp that conjured the evil spirit out of Saul i.e., the Dean. The two used often to meet at Quilcagh, Sheridan's country house, where "Gulliver's Travels" received their final touches, and ''Stella's Bower" was situated.
The son of the foregoing, also called Thomas, was an enthusiastic educational reformer, and both
wrote and lectured on his favourite subject. He was the intimate friend of Garrick and of Johnson,
for whom he was instrumental in getting a pension. He died in 1788, leaving two sons Charles, who
became a member of the Irish Parliament, and the author of " The School for Scandal."
Of the latter, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, his great-grandson remarks that no famous man has been more unfortunate in his biographers; for Moore tired of the task, thereby provoking from George IV. the remark that the writer of the book had better abscond, "for cutting and maiming and barbarously attempting the life of Sheridan!"
The latter has been described by a competent reviewer as "for thirty years the most brilliant talker, the greatest conversationalist of the splendid circle in which he moved." But, as already mentioned, his biographies are not trustworthy, Mr. Smyth's being full of exaggerations and mis representations. Lord Dufferin, however, made a grateful exception in the case of Mr. Fraser Rae's book, to which he himself wrote an introduction.
The " Encyclopaedia Britannica " article remarks: Tradition has attached to his name dozens of mythical anecdotes, as examples of his wit, his frolicsome humour, his habits of procrastination, his pecuniary embarrassments, and his methods of escaping from them, for which there was really no foundation. The real Sheridan as he was known in private life, is irrevocably gone.
As Lord Dufferin remarks in a pathetic passage in his " Memoir " on his mother: Those who have recorded their impressions in regard to Sheridan, knew him only when he was old and broken, his gaiety all quenched (though his wit still flickered in the socket), the adherent of a disorganized party, a man utterly ruined by the burning of Drury Lane Theatre, pestered by petty debts, yet sufficiently formidable to provoke detraction at the hands of his political enemies, while his fame exposed him to the curiosity and criticism of the gossips.
He was without doubt a very fascinating personage, as one might almost gather from the portrait in the library at Clandeboye; he had genially good nature, charming manners his splendid eyes, as his great-grandson remarks, were "the very home of genius," and his extraordinary liveliness and wit made him a favourite with the best English society. His eloquence, his Parliamentary gifts, and his general abilities at once placed him on a level with the greatest orators and statesmen of the time.
Like so many men in those days he was fond of wine, and unfortunately it affected him more than it did his seasoned friends. As a contrast, Lord Dufferin has cited the case of his paternal grandfather, who never had a day's illness and lived till eighty-one. This hale old gentleman would begin a convivial evening with a bottle of port as a "clearer," and continued with four bottles of claret Nevertheless, he always retired to rest in a state of perfect though benevolent sobriety. His grandson amusingly remarks that some of his predecessors by thus overdrawing the family account with Bacchus, had left him a water-drinker who had thereby incurred the reproach of degeneracy.
It is a proof of Sheridan's delicacy of feeling that though he might have added "2000 per annum to his income had he allowed his wife, who had a lovely voice, to sing in public, he would never consent to it. Again, though his was a gambling age, he never touched a card or a dice-box. His political achievements were ever on the side of justice, liberty, and humanity. He opposed the war with America; he deprecated the coalition between Fox and North; he advocated the abolition of slavery; he denounced the tyranny of Warren Hastings; he condemned the trade restrictions on Ireland; he fought for Catholic emancipation; he did his best to save the French Royal Family; and what is more remarkable, he also pleaded for "an eight hours' day."
Of his ever memorable speech against Warren Hastings, it is impossible to refrain from recalling what some of the greatest of his compeers said of it. Mr. Burke declared it to be "the most astonishing effort of eloquence, argument, and wit united, of which there is any record or tradition."
Mr. Fox said "all that he had ever read when compared with it dwindled into nothing and vanished
like a vapour before the sun." Mr. Pitt acknowledged that "it surpassed all eloquence of ancient and modern times, and possessed everything that genius or art could furnish to agitate and control the human mind." While Sheridan was actually speaking, Burke remarked to Fox, "That is the true style something between .poetry and prose, and better than either."
It is worth while here recalling the exalted praise that Byron bestowed on the same talented man:
Whatever Sheridan has chosen to do has been the best of its kind. He has written the best comedy " The School for Scandal "; the best opera " The Duenna," (in my mind far before" The Beggar's Opera ") ; the best farce "The Critic"; the best address "The Monologue on Garrick"; and, to crown all, delivered the best oration ever conceived or heard in this country.
Miss Linley, who became the wife of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, was almost as interesting and fascinating as her husband. Lord Dufferin cites, with an affectionate ancestral reverence, some of
the tokens of loving homage bestowed on her by contemporaries of repute. "The most modest, pleasing, and delicate flower I have seen for a long time"; "Quite celestial"; " A voice as of the cherub choir"; "The connecting link between a woman and an angel " such were some of the tributes of admiration lavished on this charming lady by Wilkes, Dr. Parr, Rogers, Garrick, and other celebrities. She was the daughter of a musician at Bath, but in spite of her origin her transfer, on her marriage, to the first society of London, never turned her head, and her simple and devoted attachment to her husband endured in all its freshness to the last. Her lineaments have been immortalised by Romney, Gainsborough, and Sir Joshua Reynolds; and Macaulay says of her, "There too was she, the beautiful mother of a beautiful race; the Saint Cecilia, whose delicate features, lighted up by love and music, art has rescued from a common decay."
Three Lovely Sheridans
The next Mrs. Sheridan became the mother of Helen, Lady Dufferin (Countess of Gifford). She was a Miss Callander, and of her Frances Kemble remarked that she was a perfect mother of the Graces, more beautiful than anybody but her own daughters Helen, Lady Dufferin (already mentioned); the Duchess of Somerset, who, when Lady Seymour, was chosen to represent the Queen of Beauty at the famous Eglinton Tournament ; and Mrs. Norton, whose husband was Lord Grantley, and whose son eventually succeeded to the title and estates in 1875.
The appearance of these three lovely women is so charmingly described by Lord Dufferin that it were a pity to either omit or abbreviate his language. The beauty of each of the sisters was of a different type, but they were all equally tall and stately. The Duchess of Somerset had large deep blue or violet eyes, black hair, black eyebrows and eyelashes, perfect features, and a complexion of lilies and roses a kind of colouring seldom seen out of Ireland. Mrs. Norton, on the contrary, was a brunette with dark burning eyes like her grand-father's, a pure Greek profile and a clear olive complexion.
The brothers were all over six feet. My mother, though her features were less regular than those of her sisters, was equally lovely and attractive. Her figure was divine the perfection of grace and symmetry, her head being beautifully set upon her shoulders. Her hands and feet were very small, many sculptors having asked to model the former. She had a pure sweet voice; sang delightfully, and herself composed many of the tunes to which both her published and unpublished songs were set Before either of them were twenty-one, she and Mrs. Norton were paid 100 for a collection of songs
they contributed between them. Helen was brought out at the early age of barely seventeen, and the same season she met Price Blackwood, then a Commander in the Navy, soon after his return from the China Seas. A brief courtship ensued, the happy pair were married at St. George's Church, Hanover Square, on July 4th, 1825, and the same day they started for Italy.
They appear to have first visited Siena, the height of which above the sea (1330 feet) affords a more
refreshing air than the heat of the valley of the Arno, whither they subsequently removed. Those familiar with the quiet beauty of this old-world Tuscan city, can form some idea of the fascination
that Siena, with its majestic palazzi, its curiously curved and narrow old streets, and its treasures
of mediaeval art, must have exercised on the poetic mind of so young, untravelled, and pressionable
a girl. The Blackwoods occupied the upper storey of the Palazzo of the Gigli, an old Sienese family,
one of whom married Mr. J. P. Maquay, of the well-known Florentine bank of Maquay, Pakenham
& Smyth, and was the mother of several sons who have achieved popularity and distinction in the British Army and Navy, and other walks of life. One of them, my old friend, William Maquay, a banker, still resides in Florence, and he and his wife are among the most deservedly popular and
esteemed of the English Colony.
Birth of the Marquess
During Lord Dufferin's sojourn in Florence, a few years ago, an interesting reminiscence of those early days was brought home to him by a lady who remarked:
"Yes, Lord Dufferin, for many years I have wanted to know you; indeed ever since when at a play at Lord Normanby's, I was sitting behind a lovely young English lady, whose beauty had quite fascinated me, and whom I took for a girl, until I heard her consulting with a friend as to whether her baby's ribbons should be pink or cherry-coloured. And you were the baby! "The "baby" was born on June 2ist, 1826, at No, 1916 Via Maggio, the street leading from the Ponte S.Trinita past the Pitti alace to the Porta Romana, Mrs. Blackwood's accouchement was of a severe and dangerous character; and at one moment it appears to have been a question of life and death, but happily both mother and child were spared. On her convalescence, Captain Blackwood had her removed to an old castle in the Apennines called Barberino 1 di Mugello, belonging to the Riccardi family. It is described
as (a romantic little place with grey towers and battlements, crowning an isolated eminence which rises in the middle of a smiling valley formed by the adjoining hills. A river winds round its foot, and a little feudal town nestles not far off in one of its bends, the whole place being rich with gardens, vines, fig-trees and mulberry leaves."
Two years were spent amid these delightful surroundings, and then the Blackwoods came home and settled in a cottage at Thames Ditton, so as to be near Mrs. Sheridan, who had apartments in Hampton Court Palace. Here Lord Dufferin says he can remember (i) his mother "coming of age" a unique reminiscence, indeed, to which few sons could lay claim and (2) nearly poisoning himself with eating laburnum seeds on that same memorable occasion. Among the brilliant circle of celebrities with whom the Sheridan family were brought into contact was Mr. Disraeli, at whom it appears, it was at that time rather the mode to laugh. Lord Dufferin tells the following characteristic story of the future Premier:
The elder Mr. Disraeli being as yet more celebrated than his son, my mother had expressed a desire to see him. But the introduction could not be managed, inasmuch as at the particular moment Mr. Disraeli had quarrelled with his father. One fine morning, however, he arrived with his father in his right hand, so to speak, in Mrs. Norton's drawing-room at Storey's Gate. Setting him down on a chair and looking at him as if he were some object of vertu of which he wanted to dispose, Mr. Disraeli turned round to my mother and said in his somewhat sententious manner, "Mrs. Blackwood, I have brought you my father. I have become reconciled Price, to my father on two conditions: the first was that he should come and see you; the second, that he should pay my debts.
The peaceful life at Ditton was, however, suddenly broken by the appointment of Commander Blackwood to the Imogene, a 28-gun frigate. He started in 1831 from Portsmouth for a tour which
took him in succession to Rio, the Cape of Good Hope, Calcutta, Australia, and New Zealand. On his recovery from a bad attack of fever he left for the China Seas, where together with the Andromache under Captain Chads, he attacked the Chinese Bogue Forts and forced the passage of the Bocca Tigris. He was absent from England four years altogether on this trip.
It was in 1839 that Price, the Marquess's father, succeeded to the title. Unfortunately just about the same time Helen, Lady Dufferin, fell ill and had to proceed to Italy to recuperate. The son, the future Marquess, was a boy at Eton at the time, and his father came down to see him on June 25th, 1841, and was at once called upon to become the "sitter" in the eight-oar, with the attaching "footing" of a hamper of champagne. He left the next day, having arranged that his boy should join him in Ireland in July. To this meeting the lad was looking forward with unspeakable pleasure. But he recorded certain inexplicable misgivings in the following passage:
On the afternoon before the appointed day, I remember standing on the little bridge over-hanging the stream which forms the boundary of the College precinct, watching the willows waving in the wind, and saying to a friend, "It is very odd, I have every reason to be happy: to-night we have the boats, and to-morrow the holidays begin, and I am going on to my father in Ireland and yet I feel quite wretched! "The next morning as I was packing my clothes, my tutor, Mr. Cookesley sent for me. He looked very grave and said, "I have got bad news for you; your father is very ill; what would you like to do?" I said I would like to go to him. " No, my poor boy, your father is dead."
The unfortunate peer appears to have been poisoned by an accidental overdose of morphia in some pills compounded in a hurry by a Liverpool chemist. He was travelling by the steamer to Belfast, and on arrival thither on July 2ist, 1841, it was discovered he had died suddenly in the night.
This terrible blow, as might be surmised, quite prostrated Helen, Lady Dufferin, and brought on a serious illness. Her boy soon joined her at Naples. After a six months' sojourn in those sunny latitudes, the lad, Lord Dufferin, was compelled to return to his schooling, though his mother was scarcely in a fit state to be left. The day before he started, he attended, in company with his aunt, Lady Seymour, a dance at the Accademia, where a very pretty young lady was persuaded to take pity on, and dance with, the Eton boy, despite his jacket and his wide open collar. The latter was sensibly impressed by his partner's beauty, and with a gallantry which would have done honour
to riper years, expressed his profound regret that instead of returning to his studies at Eton, he could
not stay to rescue the damsel from her doom of celibacy. Twenty years after Lord Dufferin says he
happened to be again in Naples, and met the late Duke of Sant' Arpino on the Chiaja. The Duke had been a playfellow of his in the earlier days, and the two began to talk about old acquaintances. During the conversation a great military funeral rolled past. Referring to his pretty partner of the Accademia ball, Lord Dufferin asked whether she had entered a convent after all, or married. At that very moment the catafalque with the body of the dead man, an ex-Governor of Sicily, arrayed in his uniform with all his orders, came into sight, close to the spot where the two friends were conversing. "Yes," replied the Duke, "she married." Whom?" inquired his companion. " That man!"
rejoined the other, pointing to the bier.
Lord Dufferin's father had desired in his will that the son should reside a good deal in Ireland, and Lady Dufferin taking the same view, the lad's summer holidays were spent at Clandeboye, and
after leaving Eton, the greater part of the following years at the same lovely resort.
Clandeboye is situated on the southern shore of Belfast Lough, a few miles from the sea, on that
part of Ulster which juts out towards the shore of Galloway on the Scottish side, about forty miles
distant. The estate of the Dufferins lies in a bright undulating country diversified by silvery loughs and purple hills, the smiling landscape backed by the Mourne Mountains on the one side, and by broken and picturesque expanses of the North Channel on the other. The nearest town is Bangor; but probably the most interesting way of approaching the house is by a long but excellently made private road leading from the little station of Helen's Bay. The road was, I believe, constructed [as a "relief work" at the time of the Irish famine. The mansion, which is reached after two or three miles saunter through the park, is a solid and eminently comfortable edifice, the earliest part dating, it is said, from
James II.'s time. The present front was formerly a subordinate entry, so the absence of any portico
rather detracts from the exterior effect. But the moment you set foot in the hall, its fine proportions and the mass of varied and interesting objects collected and presented from every quarter of the globe, not only arrest your attention, but tell you are in the house of some one possessed of catholic tastes and opportunities.
The genius loci of this charming home must from the first have impressed itself on young Dufferin's
affections. No doubt it was a sacrifice for a young lady of such exceptional accomplishments as his
mother to settle down for years in the seclusion of an Irish country house. But her devotion to her son's upbringing during the critical years preceding his Oxford education were invaluable to him, and fully repaid in his love and veneration for his beloved parent.
At Christ Church, Oxford, his classical tastes were developed, and though he did not shine in the schools, he imbibed sufficient of the genius loci to retain throughout his life culture and fondness
for scholarship ; witness the punctiliousness with which, when he was addressed in Latin and Greek,
he made a point of replying in the same language. It is curious that he did not at first take readily to books. For the first twenty years he confessed that he had no fondness for poetry, and though his mother read out loud to him Virgil, Dryden, Pope, Byron, and other classics, he found these but ill adapted to his liking.
At the same time he seems to have been drawn instinctively to what was to be the work of his life the appreciation and study of important public questions. He was only twenty years of age when, in company with the Hon. G. F. Boyle (afterwards Earl of Glasgow), a college friend, he determined to visit Ireland and see for himself something of the effects of the famine which was then devastating wide tracts, and of which but vague and unsatisfactory information had drifted over to England. It was, as Lord Dufferin remarked in his pamphlet, a fearfully interesting period, for famine, typhus fever, and dysentery were terribly rife. Young as he was, Dufferin looked upon this self-imposed trip as the duty of an Irish landlord and legislator.
They were advised to visit Skibbereen in the extreme south, and thither bent their steps. Skibbereen is the famous place from whose remote aerie the editor of the local paper kept his "eagle eye" on the devious paths of European statesmanship. The scenes there encountered were, however, calculated on the present occasion to arouse far different thoughts. Although the two young men spent only twenty-four hours in the place, the "Narrative of a journey from Oxford to Skibbereen" presents a truly harrowing picture of the sickness, mortality and misery that prevailed. The normal population was twenty thousand, and this, through an enormous death-rate, accompanied by terrible scenes and recitals which can be better imagined than described, had been reduced to appalling insignificance.
In these days of vastly improved communications and ubiquitous and enterprising newspapers, similar distress, we may assume, would be a practical impossibility. Special correspondents would visit the spot and make vigilant researches, and public opinion would insist on Government making adequate provision for relief. But in those days it was private charity that had to step into the breach. Lord Dufferin's descriptive pamphlet was published in Oxford, quickly ran into a second edition, an "Association" was formed and a brisk subscription to the Relief Fund was the result. The young lord himself also contributed 1000 under the name of "An Irish landlord from Skibbereen" the identity of the donor being only revealed by accident, many years afterwards.
The first public speech of importance by Lord Dufferin, that I find recorded, is one delivered at
a dinner given to his agent, Mr. John H. Howe, on December 3Oth, 1847, at Newtownards. For a
young man only just come of age, it was no small effort of common sense and eloquence. The toast
to which he had to reply was " Lord Dufferin and the improving landlords of Ireland," and the orator, in his reply, led off with the remark that an Irish landlord was unlike any other landlord under the sun.
He lives in a peculiar atmosphere of his own; the daily conditions of his life, and the occasional conditions of his death, are totally dissimilar to those of other men. He is a complete genius of himself an erratic body in the social system (laughter). He may be described as an individual who does not get rent as a well-dressed gentleman who may be shot with impunity, the legitimate target of the immediate neighbourhood a super-ficial index by which to mark the geographical direction
of the under current of assassination a cause of bewilderment to Coroners and of vague verdicts to distracted juries a subject for newspaper paragraphs, and a startling text for leading articles.∼Irish poetess.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE DORSET NATURAL HISTORY AND ANTIQUARIAN FIELD CLUB
VOLUME XXVII
HARVARD UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
The Liberty and Manor of Frompton, Page 180 -
An organ was placed in the Church 30 January last the gift of R. B. Sheridan and Marcia Maria Sheridan.
The stained glass windon in the north aisle of the parish church representing the visit of the three Maries to the tomb of our savior after the resurrection was presented by Helen Lady Dufferin in memory of her mother C. H. Sheridan who is buried in the graveyard.
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She married, firstly, Price Blackwood, 4th Baron Dufferin and Clandeboye, son of Hans Blackwood, 3rd Baron Dufferin and Claneboye and Mehetabel Hester Temple, on 4 July 1825. She married, secondly, George Hay, Earl of Gifford, son of Field Marshal George Hay, 8th Marquess of Tweeddale and Lady Susan Montagu, on 13 October 1862. She died on 13 June 1867.
She wrote the book The Charming Woman, published 1835 and The Fine Young English Gentleman. As a result of her marriage, Helen Selina Sheridan was styled as Baroness Dufferin and Clandeboye on 18 November 1839. She wrote the book The Irish Emigrant, published 1845. She wrote the book Lispings from Low Latitudes or Extracts from the Journal of the Honour Impulsia Gushington, published 1863. She wrote the book Finesse; or a Busy Day in Messina, published 1863, a play.
Child of Helen Selina Sheridan and Price Blackwood, 4th Baron Dufferin and Clandeboye
· Frederick Temple Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 1st Marquess of Dufferin and Ava+ b. 21 Jun 1826, d. 12 Feb 1902
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Helen Selina Blackwood, Baroness Dufferin and Claneboye, later Helen Selina Hay, Countess of Gifford, born Helen Selina Sheridan, (1807–1867), was a British song-writer, composer, poet, and author. As well as being admired for her wit and literary talents, she was a fashionable beauty and a well-known figure in London society of the mid-19th century.
Childhood and marriage
Helen Sheridan came from a literary and theatrical family with political connections. Her father, Thomas Sheridan (1775–1817), an actor, soldier and colonial administrator, was the younger son of famous Irish playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and her mother was Caroline Henrietta Sheridan (Callander) (1779–1851), a novelist. In 1813, Thomas took Helen and his wife with him to a post at the Cape of Good Hope, where he died four years later on 12 September 1817. Helen then returned to England where she lived in a Hampton Court Palace "grace and favour" apartment with her mother, four brothers and two younger sisters. The sisters' beauty and accomplishments led to them being called the "Three Graces". Caroline was known as the wittiest of the girls and later developed into a talented writer, and Georgiana, considered the prettiest of the sisters, later became the Duchess of Somerset.At seventeen, Helen was engaged to Commander Price Blackwood, youngest of three sons of Hans, Lord Dufferin, and Mehetabel Temple; owing to the deaths of his brothers he was to be the future Lord Dufferin, although his parents wanted him to marry more advantageously, mainly based on financial grounds. After their London wedding at St. George's, Hanover Square, London, on July 4, 1825, they went to live in Florence due to the opposition of the marriage by the Blackwood family, but returned two years later with their baby son Frederick, who was born on 21 June 1826. Helen Blackwood's sisters introduced her to fashionable circles where she mixed with prominent figures of the time, Misses Berry, Samuel Rogers, Henry Taylor, Brougham, Lockhart, Sydney Smith, and Benjamin Disraeli most notably Disraeli who in later life said she had been "his chief admiration". In 1839 she became Lady Dufferin when her husband inherited his title. He died in 1841 of an accidental morphine overdose; Helen continued to spend her summers at his family estate at Clandeboye in Ireland, which now belonged to Frederick.
Writing
From childhood Helen had written poems, songs and prologues for private theatrical productions. After she and Caroline jointly brought out a Set of ten Songs and two Duets, she started to publish her verse, sometimes set to her own music. Her name was not usually printed at first, but she did not stay entirely anonymous.
One of her most popular ballads was The Irish Emigrant, which was published in New York and Boston as well as in London. In this and in other work written around the time of the great Irish famine she shows some understanding of "the destructive impact of the famine on love and the family" despite her "social distance", though one critic believes the Irish people's suffering is merely "hinted at" in this "ballad for the English middle class". Alfred Perceval Graves, writing in the early 20th century, was more enthusiastic: "…her warm heart beats in such close sympathy with her peasant neighbours that… she writes as if she were one of themselves, while her sense of fun floats through her Irish poems with a delicate breeziness."
In 1863 a play of hers was staged, and in the same year she published an account of her travels up the Nile with her son. This poked fun at writing by lady travellers; the title Lispings from Low Latitudes, or, Extracts from the Journal of the Hon. Impulsia Gushington echoed Frederick's book Letters From High Latitudes. The purpose of the play was to satire travel literature, specifically that of women, during the time period. Her play, Finesse, or, A Busy Day in Messina, produced at the Haymarket Theatre with John Baldwin Buckstone as one of the actors, was a success, but the writer did not go to any of the performances, nor acknowledge her authorship.
Dufferin's poetry, often set to music by herself or others, reflects important concerns traceable throughout the early and middle periods of Victorian literature: a biting criticism of social class, a spotlight on Irish poverty and emigration, and a despair over loss and separation. While Dufferin infused her early and later writing with an arch wit (particularly in her social satires), the songs and poems written during the middle of her life are marked by sentimentality and often a profound sadness.
In relation to her writing, The Westminster Review gave a very good approximation of her literary skill and emotion laden works. "Of the songs and verses which have beeu collected in the volume it must be confessed that few of them rise above respectable mediocrity. "The Irish Emigrant" is her best song, and is full of true feeling. "Sweet Kilkenny Town" is intensely Irish, and might fittingly be sung by any of the obscure thousands from Erin who toil for bare existence in the great Republic of the West. In many of her other lyrics we find an echo of Moore, but she lacks his perfection of form and exquisite imagery. It is when she writes in the vernacular that she is in her happiest vein. She sympathised with the peasantry of the land in which she was born, and the great charm of her nature lay, not in the gift of genius—for that she did not possess—but in her sweet and loving Irish heart. That she was endowed with some dramatic power is shown by her comedy, entitled Finesse; or, a Busy Day in Messina. She cannot take rank in literature beside her gifted sister, Mrs. Norton, but her womanhood was richer and more perfect than that of many members of her sex to whom was given "the vision and the faculty divine." It is right that the world should know something of one of the womanliest women that ever breathed, and for this reason Lord Dufferin's biography and the verses which accompany it will be treasured in many homes."
Despite her nineteenth-century popularity, Dufferin's work is now largely obscured, in part by the current critical focus on her sister, Caroline Norton.
Later life
Lady Dufferin was for many years a close friend of George Hay, Earl of Gifford (1822–1862) but had always refused to marry him. After he had a serious accident in 1862, she agreed "at his earnest request". She explained to his father that this would allow her to devote herself to him, bring him comfort in the last few weeks of life, and then mourn him openly.
She died of breast cancer on 13 June 1867 at Dufferin Lodge in Highgate and was buried in Friern Barnet with her second husband. Her son Frederick, who had always had a close and affectionate relationship with his mother, published a volume of Songs, Poems, & Verses by Helen, Lady Dufferin with a memoir in 1894. Earlier he had named the village and railway station built on his land Helen's Bay, and he dedicated Helen's Tower on the Clandeboye estate to her. The tower inspired poems by both Tennyson and Browning who compared this Helen favourably with the beautiful Helen of Troy of legend:
Like hers, thy face once made all eyes elate,
Yet, unlike hers, was bless'd by every glance.
After her father died at the Cape of Good Hope, Helen returned to England where she lived in a Hampton Court Palace "grace and favour" apartment with her mother, four brothers and two younger sisters. The sisters' beauty and accomplishments led to them being called the "Three Graces". Caroline was known as the wittiest of the girls and later developed into a talented writer, and Georgiana, considered the prettiest of the sisters, later became the Duchess of Somerset.
She married, firstly, Price Blackwood, 4th Baron Dufferin and Clandeboye, son of Hans Blackwood, 3rd Baron Dufferin and Claneboye and Mehetabel Hester Temple, on 4 July 1825. She married, secondly, George Hay, Earl of Gifford, son of Field Marshal George Hay, 8th Marquess of Tweeddale and Lady Susan Montagu, on 13 October 1862. She died on 13 June 1867.
In October 1862, she agreed to marry her friend George Hay, Earl of Gifford by special license, after he was seriously injured in an accident. Hay, who was heir to the Marquessate of Tweeddale, died of his injuries two months after their marriage.[
She wrote the book The Charming Woman, published 1835, and The Fine Young English Gentleman. She wrote the book The Irish Emigrant, published 1845. She wrote the book Lispings from Low Latitudes or Extracts from the Journal of the Honour Impulsia Gushington, published 1863. She wrote the book Finesse; or a Busy Day in Messina, published 1863, a play.
Child of Helen Selina Sheridan and Price Blackwood, 4th Baron Dufferin and Clandeboye:
•Frederick Temple Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 1st Marquess of Dufferin and Ava+ b. 21 Jun 1826, d. 12 Feb 1902
She died of breast cancer on 13 June 1867 at Dufferin Lodge in Highgate and was buried in Friern Barnet with her second husband. Her son Frederick, who had always had a close and affectionate relationship with his mother, published a volume of Songs, Poems, & Verses by Helen, Lady Dufferin with a memoir in 1894. Earlier he had named the village and railway station built on his land Helen's Bay, and he dedicated Helen's Tower on the Clandeboye estate to her. The tower inspired poems by both Tennyson and Browning who compared this Helen favourably with the beautiful Helen of Troy of legend:
Like hers, thy face once made all eyes elate,
Yet, unlike hers, was bless'd by every glance.
A BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR
OF THE LATE
Marquess of Dufferin and Ava
CHAPTER I
THE BLACKWOOD FAMILY THE SHERIDANS BIRTH OF LORD DUFFERIN DEATH OF PRICE, THE MARQUESS'S FATHER
EARLY LIFE OXFORD TO SKIBBEREEN AN EARLY SPEECH ON IRISH LAND
FREDERICK TEMPLE HAMILTON- TEMPLE-BLACKWOOD, first Marquess of Dufferin and Ava, was born at Florence on June 2ist, 1826. On both the father and mother's sides he came of an old and distinguished stock. The Blackwoods originally belonged to Fifeshire, and passed over into Ulster in the reign of Queen Elizabeth at the same time that James Hamilton, the first Lord Clandeboye, "settled" the northern half of the County Down. The coats of arms of the Blackwoods are displayed as early as 1400: one William Blackwood died fighting against the English at the battle of Pinkie in 1547, and his son Adam was a trusted follower and biographer of Mary Queen of Scots.
Life of Lord Dufferin
The Ulster Blackwoods (there was also a French branch which became extinct in 1837) sat in the Irish Parliament continuously throughout the best part of the eighteenth century. They were created baronets in 1763, and were promoted to the peerage in 1800 as Barons Dufferin and Clandeboye. The father of the first peer was Sir John Blackwood, a strong Whig, who on two occasions refused an earldom; but his eldest son was a personal friend and neighbour of Castlereagh's, and received the offer of a peerage in a more acquiescent spirit. Through his mother he was the heir-general of the Hamiltons, Viscounts Clandeboye, Earls of Clanbrassil, on which account the second title of Clandeboye was conferred.
James, the first Lord Dufferin, was a most kind-hearted as well as a very brave man. When commanding his regiment in the South of Ireland, a soldier, maddened by some supposed grievance, rushed at him with a pistol. He wrenched it from the man's hand and with generous presence of mind contrived to empty the pan of its priming, and then turning to his officers, said, "It is nothing, the pistol is not even loaded." Many similar traits have been repeated to the Marquess by those who knew the old baron.
A second baronetcy was conferred in 1814, on another distinguished member of the family Admiral Sir Henry Blackwood, grand-uncle of the Marquess. He was a fine seaman, and commanded Nelson's squadron of frigates at Trafalgar, Admiral Sir H. Blackwood I and it was on him that fell the sorrowful duty of bringing the hero's body home. He also had the honour of conducting Louis XVIII. and his family back to Paris, and of escorting the allied Sovereigns to England. Two exploits of his are specially memorable: *one, when commanding a 36-gun frigate, the Penelope, he successfully engaged and smashed the Guillaume Tell, an So-gun line-of-battle-ship, and on a previous occasion when, in July, 1798, he, though commanding a small frigate of twenty-eight guns the Brilliant, beat off the attack of two French 44-gun ships. A characteristically generous appreciation of this feat finds place in the "Biographic Generale".
The present representative of this Baronetcy is Sir Francis Blackwood; and the late Sir Arthur Blackwood, Secretary to the General Post Office, was a grandson of the old Admiral. To revert to the main line, Hans, Lord Dufferin, the son of James, the first peer, had three sons; but the eldest was carried off by a chance round-shot in the few days fighting that ranged round Waterloo, and the second died of fever at Naples. These deaths in the family made Price, the 1 Marquess's father, heir to the title and estates; but Price had at first little else than his pay as a naval officer to live upon.
In these circumstances his union to the lady of his choice Miss Helen S. Sheridan, was deemed very imprudent by his relations and friends. She was only seventeen, and a most lovely and fascinating creature. In his filial solicitude to do justice to the memory of his beloved mother, Lord Dufferin seems to have fairly exhausted the language of affection. But the common consent of those who had the privilege of her acquaintance agrees with the following loving description in her son's memoir:
One of the sweetest, most beautiful, most accomplished, wittiest, most loving and lovable human beings that ever walked upon the earth. There was no quality wanting to her perfection; and I say this, not prompted by the partiality of a son, but as one well acquainted with the world, and with both men and women. There have been many ladies who have been beautiful, charming, witty, and good, but I doubt whether there have been any who have, combined with so high a spirit, and with so natural a gaiety and bright an imagination as my mother's, such strong, unerring good sense, tact, and womanly discretion. Her wit or, rather, her humour her gaiety, her good taste she may have owed to her Sheridan forefathers ; but her firm character and abiding sense of duty she derived from her mother; and her charm, grace, amiability, and lovableness from her angelic ancestor Miss Linley.
These references call here for further notice of so charming a personality. Helen Selina, Baroness Dufferin and Clandeboye, was the daughter of Thomas Sheridan, and the grand-daughter of the Right Honourable Richard Brinsley Butler-Sheridan.
THE SHERIDAN LINE
The Sheridans, though they experienced subsequent reverses, were originally an ancient, rich, and
important family, possessing castles and lands in the County Cavan, a tract of which is marked in the
old maps of the period as " the Sheridan County "; but in Queen Elizabeth's time their property was
escheated, as Thomas Sheridan bitterly complained before the Bar of the House of Commons in 1680.
They were driven from their homes and were forced during the next two hundred years to fight the
battle of life under what were always discouraging, and sometimes desperate, conditions. As Lord
Dufferin not unfairly surmises, it is perhaps to these persecutions of Fate that their continuous intellectual activity may be attributed.
The first of the line who fairly could claim to literary eminence was Denis Sheridan, the son of Donald and of a daughter of the O'Neill. He must have been born about the year 1600. He had quitted the Catholic fold to become a Protestant clergyman, and a devoted disciple of Bedell, Bishop of Kilmore, under whose direction he translated the English version of the Bible into the Irish language. Behind the Palace of Kilmore, where Bedell is interred, there lies an intricate network of lake scenery amid hills and wooded lowlands. Here is Trinity Island, where stands a ruined abbey, and many legends about the Sheridans linger round this spot. It is said that the first of the family settled here from Spain, being sent over by the Pope of Rome in the fifth or sixth century, and founded a school of learning on the island, which he enriched with a library of manuscripts. This insular University was presided over from generation to generation by one of the Sheridan family.
Many of the Sheridans claim notice for their eminence in various walks of life: two sons of Denis were bishops, and a third, the Right Honourable Sir Thomas Sheridan, was author of a remarkable work published in 1677, entitled "The Rise and Power of Parliament." In the next generation Dr. Thomas Sheridan, son of Denis' fourth son James, was a person of simple and very agreeable disposition. He adopted the calling of a schoolmaster, and was intimate with Dean Swift, and people used to say that Sheridan's wit and sweet gaiety played the part of David's harp that conjured the evil spirit out of Saul i.e., the Dean. The two used often to meet at Quilcagh, Sheridan's country house, where "Gulliver's Travels" received their final touches, and ''Stella's Bower" was situated.
The son of the foregoing, also called Thomas, was an enthusiastic educational reformer, and both
wrote and lectured on his favourite subject. He was the intimate friend of Garrick and of Johnson,
for whom he was instrumental in getting a pension. He died in 1788, leaving two sons Charles, who
became a member of the Irish Parliament, and the author of " The School for Scandal."
Of the latter, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, his great-grandson remarks that no famous man has been more unfortunate in his biographers; for Moore tired of the task, thereby provoking from George IV. the remark that the writer of the book had better abscond, "for cutting and maiming and barbarously attempting the life of Sheridan!"
The latter has been described by a competent reviewer as "for thirty years the most brilliant talker, the greatest conversationalist of the splendid circle in which he moved." But, as already mentioned, his biographies are not trustworthy, Mr. Smyth's being full of exaggerations and mis representations. Lord Dufferin, however, made a grateful exception in the case of Mr. Fraser Rae's book, to which he himself wrote an introduction.
The " Encyclopaedia Britannica " article remarks: Tradition has attached to his name dozens of mythical anecdotes, as examples of his wit, his frolicsome humour, his habits of procrastination, his pecuniary embarrassments, and his methods of escaping from them, for which there was really no foundation. The real Sheridan as he was known in private life, is irrevocably gone.
As Lord Dufferin remarks in a pathetic passage in his " Memoir " on his mother: Those who have recorded their impressions in regard to Sheridan, knew him only when he was old and broken, his gaiety all quenched (though his wit still flickered in the socket), the adherent of a disorganized party, a man utterly ruined by the burning of Drury Lane Theatre, pestered by petty debts, yet sufficiently formidable to provoke detraction at the hands of his political enemies, while his fame exposed him to the curiosity and criticism of the gossips.
He was without doubt a very fascinating personage, as one might almost gather from the portrait in the library at Clandeboye; he had genially good nature, charming manners his splendid eyes, as his great-grandson remarks, were "the very home of genius," and his extraordinary liveliness and wit made him a favourite with the best English society. His eloquence, his Parliamentary gifts, and his general abilities at once placed him on a level with the greatest orators and statesmen of the time.
Like so many men in those days he was fond of wine, and unfortunately it affected him more than it did his seasoned friends. As a contrast, Lord Dufferin has cited the case of his paternal grandfather, who never had a day's illness and lived till eighty-one. This hale old gentleman would begin a convivial evening with a bottle of port as a "clearer," and continued with four bottles of claret Nevertheless, he always retired to rest in a state of perfect though benevolent sobriety. His grandson amusingly remarks that some of his predecessors by thus overdrawing the family account with Bacchus, had left him a water-drinker who had thereby incurred the reproach of degeneracy.
It is a proof of Sheridan's delicacy of feeling that though he might have added "2000 per annum to his income had he allowed his wife, who had a lovely voice, to sing in public, he would never consent to it. Again, though his was a gambling age, he never touched a card or a dice-box. His political achievements were ever on the side of justice, liberty, and humanity. He opposed the war with America; he deprecated the coalition between Fox and North; he advocated the abolition of slavery; he denounced the tyranny of Warren Hastings; he condemned the trade restrictions on Ireland; he fought for Catholic emancipation; he did his best to save the French Royal Family; and what is more remarkable, he also pleaded for "an eight hours' day."
Of his ever memorable speech against Warren Hastings, it is impossible to refrain from recalling what some of the greatest of his compeers said of it. Mr. Burke declared it to be "the most astonishing effort of eloquence, argument, and wit united, of which there is any record or tradition."
Mr. Fox said "all that he had ever read when compared with it dwindled into nothing and vanished
like a vapour before the sun." Mr. Pitt acknowledged that "it surpassed all eloquence of ancient and modern times, and possessed everything that genius or art could furnish to agitate and control the human mind." While Sheridan was actually speaking, Burke remarked to Fox, "That is the true style something between .poetry and prose, and better than either."
It is worth while here recalling the exalted praise that Byron bestowed on the same talented man:
Whatever Sheridan has chosen to do has been the best of its kind. He has written the best comedy " The School for Scandal "; the best opera " The Duenna," (in my mind far before" The Beggar's Opera ") ; the best farce "The Critic"; the best address "The Monologue on Garrick"; and, to crown all, delivered the best oration ever conceived or heard in this country.
Miss Linley, who became the wife of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, was almost as interesting and fascinating as her husband. Lord Dufferin cites, with an affectionate ancestral reverence, some of
the tokens of loving homage bestowed on her by contemporaries of repute. "The most modest, pleasing, and delicate flower I have seen for a long time"; "Quite celestial"; " A voice as of the cherub choir"; "The connecting link between a woman and an angel " such were some of the tributes of admiration lavished on this charming lady by Wilkes, Dr. Parr, Rogers, Garrick, and other celebrities. She was the daughter of a musician at Bath, but in spite of her origin her transfer, on her marriage, to the first society of London, never turned her head, and her simple and devoted attachment to her husband endured in all its freshness to the last. Her lineaments have been immortalised by Romney, Gainsborough, and Sir Joshua Reynolds; and Macaulay says of her, "There too was she, the beautiful mother of a beautiful race; the Saint Cecilia, whose delicate features, lighted up by love and music, art has rescued from a common decay."
Three Lovely Sheridans
The next Mrs. Sheridan became the mother of Helen, Lady Dufferin (Countess of Gifford). She was a Miss Callander, and of her Frances Kemble remarked that she was a perfect mother of the Graces, more beautiful than anybody but her own daughters Helen, Lady Dufferin (already mentioned); the Duchess of Somerset, who, when Lady Seymour, was chosen to represent the Queen of Beauty at the famous Eglinton Tournament ; and Mrs. Norton, whose husband was Lord Grantley, and whose son eventually succeeded to the title and estates in 1875.
The appearance of these three lovely women is so charmingly described by Lord Dufferin that it were a pity to either omit or abbreviate his language. The beauty of each of the sisters was of a different type, but they were all equally tall and stately. The Duchess of Somerset had large deep blue or violet eyes, black hair, black eyebrows and eyelashes, perfect features, and a complexion of lilies and roses a kind of colouring seldom seen out of Ireland. Mrs. Norton, on the contrary, was a brunette with dark burning eyes like her grand-father's, a pure Greek profile and a clear olive complexion.
The brothers were all over six feet. My mother, though her features were less regular than those of her sisters, was equally lovely and attractive. Her figure was divine the perfection of grace and symmetry, her head being beautifully set upon her shoulders. Her hands and feet were very small, many sculptors having asked to model the former. She had a pure sweet voice; sang delightfully, and herself composed many of the tunes to which both her published and unpublished songs were set Before either of them were twenty-one, she and Mrs. Norton were paid 100 for a collection of songs
they contributed between them. Helen was brought out at the early age of barely seventeen, and the same season she met Price Blackwood, then a Commander in the Navy, soon after his return from the China Seas. A brief courtship ensued, the happy pair were married at St. George's Church, Hanover Square, on July 4th, 1825, and the same day they started for Italy.
They appear to have first visited Siena, the height of which above the sea (1330 feet) affords a more
refreshing air than the heat of the valley of the Arno, whither they subsequently removed. Those familiar with the quiet beauty of this old-world Tuscan city, can form some idea of the fascination
that Siena, with its majestic palazzi, its curiously curved and narrow old streets, and its treasures
of mediaeval art, must have exercised on the poetic mind of so young, untravelled, and pressionable
a girl. The Blackwoods occupied the upper storey of the Palazzo of the Gigli, an old Sienese family,
one of whom married Mr. J. P. Maquay, of the well-known Florentine bank of Maquay, Pakenham
& Smyth, and was the mother of several sons who have achieved popularity and distinction in the British Army and Navy, and other walks of life. One of them, my old friend, William Maquay, a banker, still resides in Florence, and he and his wife are among the most deservedly popular and
esteemed of the English Colony.
Birth of the Marquess
During Lord Dufferin's sojourn in Florence, a few years ago, an interesting reminiscence of those early days was brought home to him by a lady who remarked:
"Yes, Lord Dufferin, for many years I have wanted to know you; indeed ever since when at a play at Lord Normanby's, I was sitting behind a lovely young English lady, whose beauty had quite fascinated me, and whom I took for a girl, until I heard her consulting with a friend as to whether her baby's ribbons should be pink or cherry-coloured. And you were the baby! "The "baby" was born on June 2ist, 1826, at No, 1916 Via Maggio, the street leading from the Ponte S.Trinita past the Pitti alace to the Porta Romana, Mrs. Blackwood's accouchement was of a severe and dangerous character; and at one moment it appears to have been a question of life and death, but happily both mother and child were spared. On her convalescence, Captain Blackwood had her removed to an old castle in the Apennines called Barberino 1 di Mugello, belonging to the Riccardi family. It is described
as (a romantic little place with grey towers and battlements, crowning an isolated eminence which rises in the middle of a smiling valley formed by the adjoining hills. A river winds round its foot, and a little feudal town nestles not far off in one of its bends, the whole place being rich with gardens, vines, fig-trees and mulberry leaves."
Two years were spent amid these delightful surroundings, and then the Blackwoods came home and settled in a cottage at Thames Ditton, so as to be near Mrs. Sheridan, who had apartments in Hampton Court Palace. Here Lord Dufferin says he can remember (i) his mother "coming of age" a unique reminiscence, indeed, to which few sons could lay claim and (2) nearly poisoning himself with eating laburnum seeds on that same memorable occasion. Among the brilliant circle of celebrities with whom the Sheridan family were brought into contact was Mr. Disraeli, at whom it appears, it was at that time rather the mode to laugh. Lord Dufferin tells the following characteristic story of the future Premier:
The elder Mr. Disraeli being as yet more celebrated than his son, my mother had expressed a desire to see him. But the introduction could not be managed, inasmuch as at the particular moment Mr. Disraeli had quarrelled with his father. One fine morning, however, he arrived with his father in his right hand, so to speak, in Mrs. Norton's drawing-room at Storey's Gate. Setting him down on a chair and looking at him as if he were some object of vertu of which he wanted to dispose, Mr. Disraeli turned round to my mother and said in his somewhat sententious manner, "Mrs. Blackwood, I have brought you my father. I have become reconciled Price, to my father on two conditions: the first was that he should come and see you; the second, that he should pay my debts.
The peaceful life at Ditton was, however, suddenly broken by the appointment of Commander Blackwood to the Imogene, a 28-gun frigate. He started in 1831 from Portsmouth for a tour which
took him in succession to Rio, the Cape of Good Hope, Calcutta, Australia, and New Zealand. On his recovery from a bad attack of fever he left for the China Seas, where together with the Andromache under Captain Chads, he attacked the Chinese Bogue Forts and forced the passage of the Bocca Tigris. He was absent from England four years altogether on this trip.
It was in 1839 that Price, the Marquess's father, succeeded to the title. Unfortunately just about the same time Helen, Lady Dufferin, fell ill and had to proceed to Italy to recuperate. The son, the future Marquess, was a boy at Eton at the time, and his father came down to see him on June 25th, 1841, and was at once called upon to become the "sitter" in the eight-oar, with the attaching "footing" of a hamper of champagne. He left the next day, having arranged that his boy should join him in Ireland in July. To this meeting the lad was looking forward with unspeakable pleasure. But he recorded certain inexplicable misgivings in the following passage:
On the afternoon before the appointed day, I remember standing on the little bridge over-hanging the stream which forms the boundary of the College precinct, watching the willows waving in the wind, and saying to a friend, "It is very odd, I have every reason to be happy: to-night we have the boats, and to-morrow the holidays begin, and I am going on to my father in Ireland and yet I feel quite wretched! "The next morning as I was packing my clothes, my tutor, Mr. Cookesley sent for me. He looked very grave and said, "I have got bad news for you; your father is very ill; what would you like to do?" I said I would like to go to him. " No, my poor boy, your father is dead."
The unfortunate peer appears to have been poisoned by an accidental overdose of morphia in some pills compounded in a hurry by a Liverpool chemist. He was travelling by the steamer to Belfast, and on arrival thither on July 2ist, 1841, it was discovered he had died suddenly in the night.
This terrible blow, as might be surmised, quite prostrated Helen, Lady Dufferin, and brought on a serious illness. Her boy soon joined her at Naples. After a six months' sojourn in those sunny latitudes, the lad, Lord Dufferin, was compelled to return to his schooling, though his mother was scarcely in a fit state to be left. The day before he started, he attended, in company with his aunt, Lady Seymour, a dance at the Accademia, where a very pretty young lady was persuaded to take pity on, and dance with, the Eton boy, despite his jacket and his wide open collar. The latter was sensibly impressed by his partner's beauty, and with a gallantry which would have done honour
to riper years, expressed his profound regret that instead of returning to his studies at Eton, he could
not stay to rescue the damsel from her doom of celibacy. Twenty years after Lord Dufferin says he
happened to be again in Naples, and met the late Duke of Sant' Arpino on the Chiaja. The Duke had been a playfellow of his in the earlier days, and the two began to talk about old acquaintances. During the conversation a great military funeral rolled past. Referring to his pretty partner of the Accademia ball, Lord Dufferin asked whether she had entered a convent after all, or married. At that very moment the catafalque with the body of the dead man, an ex-Governor of Sicily, arrayed in his uniform with all his orders, came into sight, close to the spot where the two friends were conversing. "Yes," replied the Duke, "she married." Whom?" inquired his companion. " That man!"
rejoined the other, pointing to the bier.
Lord Dufferin's father had desired in his will that the son should reside a good deal in Ireland, and Lady Dufferin taking the same view, the lad's summer holidays were spent at Clandeboye, and
after leaving Eton, the greater part of the following years at the same lovely resort.
Clandeboye is situated on the southern shore of Belfast Lough, a few miles from the sea, on that
part of Ulster which juts out towards the shore of Galloway on the Scottish side, about forty miles
distant. The estate of the Dufferins lies in a bright undulating country diversified by silvery loughs and purple hills, the smiling landscape backed by the Mourne Mountains on the one side, and by broken and picturesque expanses of the North Channel on the other. The nearest town is Bangor; but probably the most interesting way of approaching the house is by a long but excellently made private road leading from the little station of Helen's Bay. The road was, I believe, constructed [as a "relief work" at the time of the Irish famine. The mansion, which is reached after two or three miles saunter through the park, is a solid and eminently comfortable edifice, the earliest part dating, it is said, from
James II.'s time. The present front was formerly a subordinate entry, so the absence of any portico
rather detracts from the exterior effect. But the moment you set foot in the hall, its fine proportions and the mass of varied and interesting objects collected and presented from every quarter of the globe, not only arrest your attention, but tell you are in the house of some one possessed of catholic tastes and opportunities.
The genius loci of this charming home must from the first have impressed itself on young Dufferin's
affections. No doubt it was a sacrifice for a young lady of such exceptional accomplishments as his
mother to settle down for years in the seclusion of an Irish country house. But her devotion to her son's upbringing during the critical years preceding his Oxford education were invaluable to him, and fully repaid in his love and veneration for his beloved parent.
At Christ Church, Oxford, his classical tastes were developed, and though he did not shine in the schools, he imbibed sufficient of the genius loci to retain throughout his life culture and fondness
for scholarship ; witness the punctiliousness with which, when he was addressed in Latin and Greek,
he made a point of replying in the same language. It is curious that he did not at first take readily to books. For the first twenty years he confessed that he had no fondness for poetry, and though his mother read out loud to him Virgil, Dryden, Pope, Byron, and other classics, he found these but ill adapted to his liking.
At the same time he seems to have been drawn instinctively to what was to be the work of his life the appreciation and study of important public questions. He was only twenty years of age when, in company with the Hon. G. F. Boyle (afterwards Earl of Glasgow), a college friend, he determined to visit Ireland and see for himself something of the effects of the famine which was then devastating wide tracts, and of which but vague and unsatisfactory information had drifted over to England. It was, as Lord Dufferin remarked in his pamphlet, a fearfully interesting period, for famine, typhus fever, and dysentery were terribly rife. Young as he was, Dufferin looked upon this self-imposed trip as the duty of an Irish landlord and legislator.
They were advised to visit Skibbereen in the extreme south, and thither bent their steps. Skibbereen is the famous place from whose remote aerie the editor of the local paper kept his "eagle eye" on the devious paths of European statesmanship. The scenes there encountered were, however, calculated on the present occasion to arouse far different thoughts. Although the two young men spent only twenty-four hours in the place, the "Narrative of a journey from Oxford to Skibbereen" presents a truly harrowing picture of the sickness, mortality and misery that prevailed. The normal population was twenty thousand, and this, through an enormous death-rate, accompanied by terrible scenes and recitals which can be better imagined than described, had been reduced to appalling insignificance.
In these days of vastly improved communications and ubiquitous and enterprising newspapers, similar distress, we may assume, would be a practical impossibility. Special correspondents would visit the spot and make vigilant researches, and public opinion would insist on Government making adequate provision for relief. But in those days it was private charity that had to step into the breach. Lord Dufferin's descriptive pamphlet was published in Oxford, quickly ran into a second edition, an "Association" was formed and a brisk subscription to the Relief Fund was the result. The young lord himself also contributed 1000 under the name of "An Irish landlord from Skibbereen" the identity of the donor being only revealed by accident, many years afterwards.
The first public speech of importance by Lord Dufferin, that I find recorded, is one delivered at
a dinner given to his agent, Mr. John H. Howe, on December 3Oth, 1847, at Newtownards. For a
young man only just come of age, it was no small effort of common sense and eloquence. The toast
to which he had to reply was " Lord Dufferin and the improving landlords of Ireland," and the orator, in his reply, led off with the remark that an Irish landlord was unlike any other landlord under the sun.
He lives in a peculiar atmosphere of his own; the daily conditions of his life, and the occasional conditions of his death, are totally dissimilar to those of other men. He is a complete genius of himself an erratic body in the social system (laughter). He may be described as an individual who does not get rent as a well-dressed gentleman who may be shot with impunity, the legitimate target of the immediate neighbourhood a super-ficial index by which to mark the geographical direction
of the under current of assassination a cause of bewilderment to Coroners and of vague verdicts to distracted juries a subject for newspaper paragraphs, and a startling text for leading articles.∼Irish poetess.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE DORSET NATURAL HISTORY AND ANTIQUARIAN FIELD CLUB
VOLUME XXVII
HARVARD UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
The Liberty and Manor of Frompton, Page 180 -
An organ was placed in the Church 30 January last the gift of R. B. Sheridan and Marcia Maria Sheridan.
The stained glass windon in the north aisle of the parish church representing the visit of the three Maries to the tomb of our savior after the resurrection was presented by Helen Lady Dufferin in memory of her mother C. H. Sheridan who is buried in the graveyard.
__________________
She married, firstly, Price Blackwood, 4th Baron Dufferin and Clandeboye, son of Hans Blackwood, 3rd Baron Dufferin and Claneboye and Mehetabel Hester Temple, on 4 July 1825. She married, secondly, George Hay, Earl of Gifford, son of Field Marshal George Hay, 8th Marquess of Tweeddale and Lady Susan Montagu, on 13 October 1862. She died on 13 June 1867.
She wrote the book The Charming Woman, published 1835 and The Fine Young English Gentleman. As a result of her marriage, Helen Selina Sheridan was styled as Baroness Dufferin and Clandeboye on 18 November 1839. She wrote the book The Irish Emigrant, published 1845. She wrote the book Lispings from Low Latitudes or Extracts from the Journal of the Honour Impulsia Gushington, published 1863. She wrote the book Finesse; or a Busy Day in Messina, published 1863, a play.
Child of Helen Selina Sheridan and Price Blackwood, 4th Baron Dufferin and Clandeboye
· Frederick Temple Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 1st Marquess of Dufferin and Ava+ b. 21 Jun 1826, d. 12 Feb 1902
_________________
Helen Selina Blackwood, Baroness Dufferin and Claneboye, later Helen Selina Hay, Countess of Gifford, born Helen Selina Sheridan, (1807–1867), was a British song-writer, composer, poet, and author. As well as being admired for her wit and literary talents, she was a fashionable beauty and a well-known figure in London society of the mid-19th century.
Childhood and marriage
Helen Sheridan came from a literary and theatrical family with political connections. Her father, Thomas Sheridan (1775–1817), an actor, soldier and colonial administrator, was the younger son of famous Irish playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and her mother was Caroline Henrietta Sheridan (Callander) (1779–1851), a novelist. In 1813, Thomas took Helen and his wife with him to a post at the Cape of Good Hope, where he died four years later on 12 September 1817. Helen then returned to England where she lived in a Hampton Court Palace "grace and favour" apartment with her mother, four brothers and two younger sisters. The sisters' beauty and accomplishments led to them being called the "Three Graces". Caroline was known as the wittiest of the girls and later developed into a talented writer, and Georgiana, considered the prettiest of the sisters, later became the Duchess of Somerset.At seventeen, Helen was engaged to Commander Price Blackwood, youngest of three sons of Hans, Lord Dufferin, and Mehetabel Temple; owing to the deaths of his brothers he was to be the future Lord Dufferin, although his parents wanted him to marry more advantageously, mainly based on financial grounds. After their London wedding at St. George's, Hanover Square, London, on July 4, 1825, they went to live in Florence due to the opposition of the marriage by the Blackwood family, but returned two years later with their baby son Frederick, who was born on 21 June 1826. Helen Blackwood's sisters introduced her to fashionable circles where she mixed with prominent figures of the time, Misses Berry, Samuel Rogers, Henry Taylor, Brougham, Lockhart, Sydney Smith, and Benjamin Disraeli most notably Disraeli who in later life said she had been "his chief admiration". In 1839 she became Lady Dufferin when her husband inherited his title. He died in 1841 of an accidental morphine overdose; Helen continued to spend her summers at his family estate at Clandeboye in Ireland, which now belonged to Frederick.
Writing
From childhood Helen had written poems, songs and prologues for private theatrical productions. After she and Caroline jointly brought out a Set of ten Songs and two Duets, she started to publish her verse, sometimes set to her own music. Her name was not usually printed at first, but she did not stay entirely anonymous.
One of her most popular ballads was The Irish Emigrant, which was published in New York and Boston as well as in London. In this and in other work written around the time of the great Irish famine she shows some understanding of "the destructive impact of the famine on love and the family" despite her "social distance", though one critic believes the Irish people's suffering is merely "hinted at" in this "ballad for the English middle class". Alfred Perceval Graves, writing in the early 20th century, was more enthusiastic: "…her warm heart beats in such close sympathy with her peasant neighbours that… she writes as if she were one of themselves, while her sense of fun floats through her Irish poems with a delicate breeziness."
In 1863 a play of hers was staged, and in the same year she published an account of her travels up the Nile with her son. This poked fun at writing by lady travellers; the title Lispings from Low Latitudes, or, Extracts from the Journal of the Hon. Impulsia Gushington echoed Frederick's book Letters From High Latitudes. The purpose of the play was to satire travel literature, specifically that of women, during the time period. Her play, Finesse, or, A Busy Day in Messina, produced at the Haymarket Theatre with John Baldwin Buckstone as one of the actors, was a success, but the writer did not go to any of the performances, nor acknowledge her authorship.
Dufferin's poetry, often set to music by herself or others, reflects important concerns traceable throughout the early and middle periods of Victorian literature: a biting criticism of social class, a spotlight on Irish poverty and emigration, and a despair over loss and separation. While Dufferin infused her early and later writing with an arch wit (particularly in her social satires), the songs and poems written during the middle of her life are marked by sentimentality and often a profound sadness.
In relation to her writing, The Westminster Review gave a very good approximation of her literary skill and emotion laden works. "Of the songs and verses which have beeu collected in the volume it must be confessed that few of them rise above respectable mediocrity. "The Irish Emigrant" is her best song, and is full of true feeling. "Sweet Kilkenny Town" is intensely Irish, and might fittingly be sung by any of the obscure thousands from Erin who toil for bare existence in the great Republic of the West. In many of her other lyrics we find an echo of Moore, but she lacks his perfection of form and exquisite imagery. It is when she writes in the vernacular that she is in her happiest vein. She sympathised with the peasantry of the land in which she was born, and the great charm of her nature lay, not in the gift of genius—for that she did not possess—but in her sweet and loving Irish heart. That she was endowed with some dramatic power is shown by her comedy, entitled Finesse; or, a Busy Day in Messina. She cannot take rank in literature beside her gifted sister, Mrs. Norton, but her womanhood was richer and more perfect than that of many members of her sex to whom was given "the vision and the faculty divine." It is right that the world should know something of one of the womanliest women that ever breathed, and for this reason Lord Dufferin's biography and the verses which accompany it will be treasured in many homes."
Despite her nineteenth-century popularity, Dufferin's work is now largely obscured, in part by the current critical focus on her sister, Caroline Norton.
Later life
Lady Dufferin was for many years a close friend of George Hay, Earl of Gifford (1822–1862) but had always refused to marry him. After he had a serious accident in 1862, she agreed "at his earnest request". She explained to his father that this would allow her to devote herself to him, bring him comfort in the last few weeks of life, and then mourn him openly.
She died of breast cancer on 13 June 1867 at Dufferin Lodge in Highgate and was buried in Friern Barnet with her second husband. Her son Frederick, who had always had a close and affectionate relationship with his mother, published a volume of Songs, Poems, & Verses by Helen, Lady Dufferin with a memoir in 1894. Earlier he had named the village and railway station built on his land Helen's Bay, and he dedicated Helen's Tower on the Clandeboye estate to her. The tower inspired poems by both Tennyson and Browning who compared this Helen favourably with the beautiful Helen of Troy of legend:
Like hers, thy face once made all eyes elate,
Yet, unlike hers, was bless'd by every glance.
She was a British song-writer, composer, poet, and author. As well as being admired for her wit and literary talents, she was a fashionable beauty and a well-known figure in London society of the mid-19th century.
After her father died at the Cape of Good Hope, Helen returned to England where she lived in a Hampton Court Palace "grace and favour" apartment with her mother, four brothers and two younger sisters. The sisters' beauty and accomplishments led to them being called the "Three Graces". Caroline was known as the wittiest of the girls and later developed into a talented writer, and Georgiana, considered the prettiest of the sisters, later became the Duchess of Somerset.
She married, firstly, Price Blackwood, 4th Baron Dufferin and Clandeboye, son of Hans Blackwood, 3rd Baron Dufferin and Claneboye and Mehetabel Hester Temple, on 4 July 1825. She married, secondly, George Hay, Earl of Gifford, son of Field Marshal George Hay, 8th Marquess of Tweeddale and Lady Susan Montagu, on 13 October 1862. She died on 13 June 1867.
In October 1862, she agreed to marry her friend George Hay, Earl of Gifford by special license, after he was seriously injured in an accident. Hay, who was heir to the Marquessate of Tweeddale, died of his injuries two months after their marriage.[
She wrote the book The Charming Woman, published 1835, and The Fine Young English Gentleman. She wrote the book The Irish Emigrant, published 1845. She wrote the book Lispings from Low Latitudes or Extracts from the Journal of the Honour Impulsia Gushington, published 1863. She wrote the book Finesse; or a Busy Day in Messina, published 1863, a play.
Child of Helen Selina Sheridan and Price Blackwood, 4th Baron Dufferin and Clandeboye:
•Frederick Temple Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 1st Marquess of Dufferin and Ava+ b. 21 Jun 1826, d. 12 Feb 1902
She died of breast cancer on 13 June 1867 at Dufferin Lodge in Highgate and was buried in Friern Barnet with her second husband. Her son Frederick, who had always had a close and affectionate relationship with his mother, published a volume of Songs, Poems, & Verses by Helen, Lady Dufferin with a memoir in 1894. Earlier he had named the village and railway station built on his land Helen's Bay, and he dedicated Helen's Tower on the Clandeboye estate to her. The tower inspired poems by both Tennyson and Browning who compared this Helen favourably with the beautiful Helen of Troy of legend:
Like hers, thy face once made all eyes elate,
Yet, unlike hers, was bless'd by every glance.
A BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR
OF THE LATE
Marquess of Dufferin and Ava
CHAPTER I
THE BLACKWOOD FAMILY THE SHERIDANS BIRTH OF LORD DUFFERIN DEATH OF PRICE, THE MARQUESS'S FATHER
EARLY LIFE OXFORD TO SKIBBEREEN AN EARLY SPEECH ON IRISH LAND
FREDERICK TEMPLE HAMILTON- TEMPLE-BLACKWOOD, first Marquess of Dufferin and Ava, was born at Florence on June 2ist, 1826. On both the father and mother's sides he came of an old and distinguished stock. The Blackwoods originally belonged to Fifeshire, and passed over into Ulster in the reign of Queen Elizabeth at the same time that James Hamilton, the first Lord Clandeboye, "settled" the northern half of the County Down. The coats of arms of the Blackwoods are displayed as early as 1400: one William Blackwood died fighting against the English at the battle of Pinkie in 1547, and his son Adam was a trusted follower and biographer of Mary Queen of Scots.
Life of Lord Dufferin
The Ulster Blackwoods (there was also a French branch which became extinct in 1837) sat in the Irish Parliament continuously throughout the best part of the eighteenth century. They were created baronets in 1763, and were promoted to the peerage in 1800 as Barons Dufferin and Clandeboye. The father of the first peer was Sir John Blackwood, a strong Whig, who on two occasions refused an earldom; but his eldest son was a personal friend and neighbour of Castlereagh's, and received the offer of a peerage in a more acquiescent spirit. Through his mother he was the heir-general of the Hamiltons, Viscounts Clandeboye, Earls of Clanbrassil, on which account the second title of Clandeboye was conferred.
James, the first Lord Dufferin, was a most kind-hearted as well as a very brave man. When commanding his regiment in the South of Ireland, a soldier, maddened by some supposed grievance, rushed at him with a pistol. He wrenched it from the man's hand and with generous presence of mind contrived to empty the pan of its priming, and then turning to his officers, said, "It is nothing, the pistol is not even loaded." Many similar traits have been repeated to the Marquess by those who knew the old baron.
A second baronetcy was conferred in 1814, on another distinguished member of the family Admiral Sir Henry Blackwood, grand-uncle of the Marquess. He was a fine seaman, and commanded Nelson's squadron of frigates at Trafalgar, Admiral Sir H. Blackwood I and it was on him that fell the sorrowful duty of bringing the hero's body home. He also had the honour of conducting Louis XVIII. and his family back to Paris, and of escorting the allied Sovereigns to England. Two exploits of his are specially memorable: *one, when commanding a 36-gun frigate, the Penelope, he successfully engaged and smashed the Guillaume Tell, an So-gun line-of-battle-ship, and on a previous occasion when, in July, 1798, he, though commanding a small frigate of twenty-eight guns the Brilliant, beat off the attack of two French 44-gun ships. A characteristically generous appreciation of this feat finds place in the "Biographic Generale".
The present representative of this Baronetcy is Sir Francis Blackwood; and the late Sir Arthur Blackwood, Secretary to the General Post Office, was a grandson of the old Admiral. To revert to the main line, Hans, Lord Dufferin, the son of James, the first peer, had three sons; but the eldest was carried off by a chance round-shot in the few days fighting that ranged round Waterloo, and the second died of fever at Naples. These deaths in the family made Price, the 1 Marquess's father, heir to the title and estates; but Price had at first little else than his pay as a naval officer to live upon.
In these circumstances his union to the lady of his choice Miss Helen S. Sheridan, was deemed very imprudent by his relations and friends. She was only seventeen, and a most lovely and fascinating creature. In his filial solicitude to do justice to the memory of his beloved mother, Lord Dufferin seems to have fairly exhausted the language of affection. But the common consent of those who had the privilege of her acquaintance agrees with the following loving description in her son's memoir:
One of the sweetest, most beautiful, most accomplished, wittiest, most loving and lovable human beings that ever walked upon the earth. There was no quality wanting to her perfection; and I say this, not prompted by the partiality of a son, but as one well acquainted with the world, and with both men and women. There have been many ladies who have been beautiful, charming, witty, and good, but I doubt whether there have been any who have, combined with so high a spirit, and with so natural a gaiety and bright an imagination as my mother's, such strong, unerring good sense, tact, and womanly discretion. Her wit or, rather, her humour her gaiety, her good taste she may have owed to her Sheridan forefathers ; but her firm character and abiding sense of duty she derived from her mother; and her charm, grace, amiability, and lovableness from her angelic ancestor Miss Linley.
These references call here for further notice of so charming a personality. Helen Selina, Baroness Dufferin and Clandeboye, was the daughter of Thomas Sheridan, and the grand-daughter of the Right Honourable Richard Brinsley Butler-Sheridan.
THE SHERIDAN LINE
The Sheridans, though they experienced subsequent reverses, were originally an ancient, rich, and
important family, possessing castles and lands in the County Cavan, a tract of which is marked in the
old maps of the period as " the Sheridan County "; but in Queen Elizabeth's time their property was
escheated, as Thomas Sheridan bitterly complained before the Bar of the House of Commons in 1680.
They were driven from their homes and were forced during the next two hundred years to fight the
battle of life under what were always discouraging, and sometimes desperate, conditions. As Lord
Dufferin not unfairly surmises, it is perhaps to these persecutions of Fate that their continuous intellectual activity may be attributed.
The first of the line who fairly could claim to literary eminence was Denis Sheridan, the son of Donald and of a daughter of the O'Neill. He must have been born about the year 1600. He had quitted the Catholic fold to become a Protestant clergyman, and a devoted disciple of Bedell, Bishop of Kilmore, under whose direction he translated the English version of the Bible into the Irish language. Behind the Palace of Kilmore, where Bedell is interred, there lies an intricate network of lake scenery amid hills and wooded lowlands. Here is Trinity Island, where stands a ruined abbey, and many legends about the Sheridans linger round this spot. It is said that the first of the family settled here from Spain, being sent over by the Pope of Rome in the fifth or sixth century, and founded a school of learning on the island, which he enriched with a library of manuscripts. This insular University was presided over from generation to generation by one of the Sheridan family.
Many of the Sheridans claim notice for their eminence in various walks of life: two sons of Denis were bishops, and a third, the Right Honourable Sir Thomas Sheridan, was author of a remarkable work published in 1677, entitled "The Rise and Power of Parliament." In the next generation Dr. Thomas Sheridan, son of Denis' fourth son James, was a person of simple and very agreeable disposition. He adopted the calling of a schoolmaster, and was intimate with Dean Swift, and people used to say that Sheridan's wit and sweet gaiety played the part of David's harp that conjured the evil spirit out of Saul i.e., the Dean. The two used often to meet at Quilcagh, Sheridan's country house, where "Gulliver's Travels" received their final touches, and ''Stella's Bower" was situated.
The son of the foregoing, also called Thomas, was an enthusiastic educational reformer, and both
wrote and lectured on his favourite subject. He was the intimate friend of Garrick and of Johnson,
for whom he was instrumental in getting a pension. He died in 1788, leaving two sons Charles, who
became a member of the Irish Parliament, and the author of " The School for Scandal."
Of the latter, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, his great-grandson remarks that no famous man has been more unfortunate in his biographers; for Moore tired of the task, thereby provoking from George IV. the remark that the writer of the book had better abscond, "for cutting and maiming and barbarously attempting the life of Sheridan!"
The latter has been described by a competent reviewer as "for thirty years the most brilliant talker, the greatest conversationalist of the splendid circle in which he moved." But, as already mentioned, his biographies are not trustworthy, Mr. Smyth's being full of exaggerations and mis representations. Lord Dufferin, however, made a grateful exception in the case of Mr. Fraser Rae's book, to which he himself wrote an introduction.
The " Encyclopaedia Britannica " article remarks: Tradition has attached to his name dozens of mythical anecdotes, as examples of his wit, his frolicsome humour, his habits of procrastination, his pecuniary embarrassments, and his methods of escaping from them, for which there was really no foundation. The real Sheridan as he was known in private life, is irrevocably gone.
As Lord Dufferin remarks in a pathetic passage in his " Memoir " on his mother: Those who have recorded their impressions in regard to Sheridan, knew him only when he was old and broken, his gaiety all quenched (though his wit still flickered in the socket), the adherent of a disorganized party, a man utterly ruined by the burning of Drury Lane Theatre, pestered by petty debts, yet sufficiently formidable to provoke detraction at the hands of his political enemies, while his fame exposed him to the curiosity and criticism of the gossips.
He was without doubt a very fascinating personage, as one might almost gather from the portrait in the library at Clandeboye; he had genially good nature, charming manners his splendid eyes, as his great-grandson remarks, were "the very home of genius," and his extraordinary liveliness and wit made him a favourite with the best English society. His eloquence, his Parliamentary gifts, and his general abilities at once placed him on a level with the greatest orators and statesmen of the time.
Like so many men in those days he was fond of wine, and unfortunately it affected him more than it did his seasoned friends. As a contrast, Lord Dufferin has cited the case of his paternal grandfather, who never had a day's illness and lived till eighty-one. This hale old gentleman would begin a convivial evening with a bottle of port as a "clearer," and continued with four bottles of claret Nevertheless, he always retired to rest in a state of perfect though benevolent sobriety. His grandson amusingly remarks that some of his predecessors by thus overdrawing the family account with Bacchus, had left him a water-drinker who had thereby incurred the reproach of degeneracy.
It is a proof of Sheridan's delicacy of feeling that though he might have added "2000 per annum to his income had he allowed his wife, who had a lovely voice, to sing in public, he would never consent to it. Again, though his was a gambling age, he never touched a card or a dice-box. His political achievements were ever on the side of justice, liberty, and humanity. He opposed the war with America; he deprecated the coalition between Fox and North; he advocated the abolition of slavery; he denounced the tyranny of Warren Hastings; he condemned the trade restrictions on Ireland; he fought for Catholic emancipation; he did his best to save the French Royal Family; and what is more remarkable, he also pleaded for "an eight hours' day."
Of his ever memorable speech against Warren Hastings, it is impossible to refrain from recalling what some of the greatest of his compeers said of it. Mr. Burke declared it to be "the most astonishing effort of eloquence, argument, and wit united, of which there is any record or tradition."
Mr. Fox said "all that he had ever read when compared with it dwindled into nothing and vanished
like a vapour before the sun." Mr. Pitt acknowledged that "it surpassed all eloquence of ancient and modern times, and possessed everything that genius or art could furnish to agitate and control the human mind." While Sheridan was actually speaking, Burke remarked to Fox, "That is the true style something between .poetry and prose, and better than either."
It is worth while here recalling the exalted praise that Byron bestowed on the same talented man:
Whatever Sheridan has chosen to do has been the best of its kind. He has written the best comedy " The School for Scandal "; the best opera " The Duenna," (in my mind far before" The Beggar's Opera ") ; the best farce "The Critic"; the best address "The Monologue on Garrick"; and, to crown all, delivered the best oration ever conceived or heard in this country.
Miss Linley, who became the wife of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, was almost as interesting and fascinating as her husband. Lord Dufferin cites, with an affectionate ancestral reverence, some of
the tokens of loving homage bestowed on her by contemporaries of repute. "The most modest, pleasing, and delicate flower I have seen for a long time"; "Quite celestial"; " A voice as of the cherub choir"; "The connecting link between a woman and an angel " such were some of the tributes of admiration lavished on this charming lady by Wilkes, Dr. Parr, Rogers, Garrick, and other celebrities. She was the daughter of a musician at Bath, but in spite of her origin her transfer, on her marriage, to the first society of London, never turned her head, and her simple and devoted attachment to her husband endured in all its freshness to the last. Her lineaments have been immortalised by Romney, Gainsborough, and Sir Joshua Reynolds; and Macaulay says of her, "There too was she, the beautiful mother of a beautiful race; the Saint Cecilia, whose delicate features, lighted up by love and music, art has rescued from a common decay."
Three Lovely Sheridans
The next Mrs. Sheridan became the mother of Helen, Lady Dufferin (Countess of Gifford). She was a Miss Callander, and of her Frances Kemble remarked that she was a perfect mother of the Graces, more beautiful than anybody but her own daughters Helen, Lady Dufferin (already mentioned); the Duchess of Somerset, who, when Lady Seymour, was chosen to represent the Queen of Beauty at the famous Eglinton Tournament ; and Mrs. Norton, whose husband was Lord Grantley, and whose son eventually succeeded to the title and estates in 1875.
The appearance of these three lovely women is so charmingly described by Lord Dufferin that it were a pity to either omit or abbreviate his language. The beauty of each of the sisters was of a different type, but they were all equally tall and stately. The Duchess of Somerset had large deep blue or violet eyes, black hair, black eyebrows and eyelashes, perfect features, and a complexion of lilies and roses a kind of colouring seldom seen out of Ireland. Mrs. Norton, on the contrary, was a brunette with dark burning eyes like her grand-father's, a pure Greek profile and a clear olive complexion.
The brothers were all over six feet. My mother, though her features were less regular than those of her sisters, was equally lovely and attractive. Her figure was divine the perfection of grace and symmetry, her head being beautifully set upon her shoulders. Her hands and feet were very small, many sculptors having asked to model the former. She had a pure sweet voice; sang delightfully, and herself composed many of the tunes to which both her published and unpublished songs were set Before either of them were twenty-one, she and Mrs. Norton were paid 100 for a collection of songs
they contributed between them. Helen was brought out at the early age of barely seventeen, and the same season she met Price Blackwood, then a Commander in the Navy, soon after his return from the China Seas. A brief courtship ensued, the happy pair were married at St. George's Church, Hanover Square, on July 4th, 1825, and the same day they started for Italy.
They appear to have first visited Siena, the height of which above the sea (1330 feet) affords a more
refreshing air than the heat of the valley of the Arno, whither they subsequently removed. Those familiar with the quiet beauty of this old-world Tuscan city, can form some idea of the fascination
that Siena, with its majestic palazzi, its curiously curved and narrow old streets, and its treasures
of mediaeval art, must have exercised on the poetic mind of so young, untravelled, and pressionable
a girl. The Blackwoods occupied the upper storey of the Palazzo of the Gigli, an old Sienese family,
one of whom married Mr. J. P. Maquay, of the well-known Florentine bank of Maquay, Pakenham
& Smyth, and was the mother of several sons who have achieved popularity and distinction in the British Army and Navy, and other walks of life. One of them, my old friend, William Maquay, a banker, still resides in Florence, and he and his wife are among the most deservedly popular and
esteemed of the English Colony.
Birth of the Marquess
During Lord Dufferin's sojourn in Florence, a few years ago, an interesting reminiscence of those early days was brought home to him by a lady who remarked:
"Yes, Lord Dufferin, for many years I have wanted to know you; indeed ever since when at a play at Lord Normanby's, I was sitting behind a lovely young English lady, whose beauty had quite fascinated me, and whom I took for a girl, until I heard her consulting with a friend as to whether her baby's ribbons should be pink or cherry-coloured. And you were the baby! "The "baby" was born on June 2ist, 1826, at No, 1916 Via Maggio, the street leading from the Ponte S.Trinita past the Pitti alace to the Porta Romana, Mrs. Blackwood's accouchement was of a severe and dangerous character; and at one moment it appears to have been a question of life and death, but happily both mother and child were spared. On her convalescence, Captain Blackwood had her removed to an old castle in the Apennines called Barberino 1 di Mugello, belonging to the Riccardi family. It is described
as (a romantic little place with grey towers and battlements, crowning an isolated eminence which rises in the middle of a smiling valley formed by the adjoining hills. A river winds round its foot, and a little feudal town nestles not far off in one of its bends, the whole place being rich with gardens, vines, fig-trees and mulberry leaves."
Two years were spent amid these delightful surroundings, and then the Blackwoods came home and settled in a cottage at Thames Ditton, so as to be near Mrs. Sheridan, who had apartments in Hampton Court Palace. Here Lord Dufferin says he can remember (i) his mother "coming of age" a unique reminiscence, indeed, to which few sons could lay claim and (2) nearly poisoning himself with eating laburnum seeds on that same memorable occasion. Among the brilliant circle of celebrities with whom the Sheridan family were brought into contact was Mr. Disraeli, at whom it appears, it was at that time rather the mode to laugh. Lord Dufferin tells the following characteristic story of the future Premier:
The elder Mr. Disraeli being as yet more celebrated than his son, my mother had expressed a desire to see him. But the introduction could not be managed, inasmuch as at the particular moment Mr. Disraeli had quarrelled with his father. One fine morning, however, he arrived with his father in his right hand, so to speak, in Mrs. Norton's drawing-room at Storey's Gate. Setting him down on a chair and looking at him as if he were some object of vertu of which he wanted to dispose, Mr. Disraeli turned round to my mother and said in his somewhat sententious manner, "Mrs. Blackwood, I have brought you my father. I have become reconciled Price, to my father on two conditions: the first was that he should come and see you; the second, that he should pay my debts.
The peaceful life at Ditton was, however, suddenly broken by the appointment of Commander Blackwood to the Imogene, a 28-gun frigate. He started in 1831 from Portsmouth for a tour which
took him in succession to Rio, the Cape of Good Hope, Calcutta, Australia, and New Zealand. On his recovery from a bad attack of fever he left for the China Seas, where together with the Andromache under Captain Chads, he attacked the Chinese Bogue Forts and forced the passage of the Bocca Tigris. He was absent from England four years altogether on this trip.
It was in 1839 that Price, the Marquess's father, succeeded to the title. Unfortunately just about the same time Helen, Lady Dufferin, fell ill and had to proceed to Italy to recuperate. The son, the future Marquess, was a boy at Eton at the time, and his father came down to see him on June 25th, 1841, and was at once called upon to become the "sitter" in the eight-oar, with the attaching "footing" of a hamper of champagne. He left the next day, having arranged that his boy should join him in Ireland in July. To this meeting the lad was looking forward with unspeakable pleasure. But he recorded certain inexplicable misgivings in the following passage:
On the afternoon before the appointed day, I remember standing on the little bridge over-hanging the stream which forms the boundary of the College precinct, watching the willows waving in the wind, and saying to a friend, "It is very odd, I have every reason to be happy: to-night we have the boats, and to-morrow the holidays begin, and I am going on to my father in Ireland and yet I feel quite wretched! "The next morning as I was packing my clothes, my tutor, Mr. Cookesley sent for me. He looked very grave and said, "I have got bad news for you; your father is very ill; what would you like to do?" I said I would like to go to him. " No, my poor boy, your father is dead."
The unfortunate peer appears to have been poisoned by an accidental overdose of morphia in some pills compounded in a hurry by a Liverpool chemist. He was travelling by the steamer to Belfast, and on arrival thither on July 2ist, 1841, it was discovered he had died suddenly in the night.
This terrible blow, as might be surmised, quite prostrated Helen, Lady Dufferin, and brought on a serious illness. Her boy soon joined her at Naples. After a six months' sojourn in those sunny latitudes, the lad, Lord Dufferin, was compelled to return to his schooling, though his mother was scarcely in a fit state to be left. The day before he started, he attended, in company with his aunt, Lady Seymour, a dance at the Accademia, where a very pretty young lady was persuaded to take pity on, and dance with, the Eton boy, despite his jacket and his wide open collar. The latter was sensibly impressed by his partner's beauty, and with a gallantry which would have done honour
to riper years, expressed his profound regret that instead of returning to his studies at Eton, he could
not stay to rescue the damsel from her doom of celibacy. Twenty years after Lord Dufferin says he
happened to be again in Naples, and met the late Duke of Sant' Arpino on the Chiaja. The Duke had been a playfellow of his in the earlier days, and the two began to talk about old acquaintances. During the conversation a great military funeral rolled past. Referring to his pretty partner of the Accademia ball, Lord Dufferin asked whether she had entered a convent after all, or married. At that very moment the catafalque with the body of the dead man, an ex-Governor of Sicily, arrayed in his uniform with all his orders, came into sight, close to the spot where the two friends were conversing. "Yes," replied the Duke, "she married." Whom?" inquired his companion. " That man!"
rejoined the other, pointing to the bier.
Lord Dufferin's father had desired in his will that the son should reside a good deal in Ireland, and Lady Dufferin taking the same view, the lad's summer holidays were spent at Clandeboye, and
after leaving Eton, the greater part of the following years at the same lovely resort.
Clandeboye is situated on the southern shore of Belfast Lough, a few miles from the sea, on that
part of Ulster which juts out towards the shore of Galloway on the Scottish side, about forty miles
distant. The estate of the Dufferins lies in a bright undulating country diversified by silvery loughs and purple hills, the smiling landscape backed by the Mourne Mountains on the one side, and by broken and picturesque expanses of the North Channel on the other. The nearest town is Bangor; but probably the most interesting way of approaching the house is by a long but excellently made private road leading from the little station of Helen's Bay. The road was, I believe, constructed [as a "relief work" at the time of the Irish famine. The mansion, which is reached after two or three miles saunter through the park, is a solid and eminently comfortable edifice, the earliest part dating, it is said, from
James II.'s time. The present front was formerly a subordinate entry, so the absence of any portico
rather detracts from the exterior effect. But the moment you set foot in the hall, its fine proportions and the mass of varied and interesting objects collected and presented from every quarter of the globe, not only arrest your attention, but tell you are in the house of some one possessed of catholic tastes and opportunities.
The genius loci of this charming home must from the first have impressed itself on young Dufferin's
affections. No doubt it was a sacrifice for a young lady of such exceptional accomplishments as his
mother to settle down for years in the seclusion of an Irish country house. But her devotion to her son's upbringing during the critical years preceding his Oxford education were invaluable to him, and fully repaid in his love and veneration for his beloved parent.
At Christ Church, Oxford, his classical tastes were developed, and though he did not shine in the schools, he imbibed sufficient of the genius loci to retain throughout his life culture and fondness
for scholarship ; witness the punctiliousness with which, when he was addressed in Latin and Greek,
he made a point of replying in the same language. It is curious that he did not at first take readily to books. For the first twenty years he confessed that he had no fondness for poetry, and though his mother read out loud to him Virgil, Dryden, Pope, Byron, and other classics, he found these but ill adapted to his liking.
At the same time he seems to have been drawn instinctively to what was to be the work of his life the appreciation and study of important public questions. He was only twenty years of age when, in company with the Hon. G. F. Boyle (afterwards Earl of Glasgow), a college friend, he determined to visit Ireland and see for himself something of the effects of the famine which was then devastating wide tracts, and of which but vague and unsatisfactory information had drifted over to England. It was, as Lord Dufferin remarked in his pamphlet, a fearfully interesting period, for famine, typhus fever, and dysentery were terribly rife. Young as he was, Dufferin looked upon this self-imposed trip as the duty of an Irish landlord and legislator.
They were advised to visit Skibbereen in the extreme south, and thither bent their steps. Skibbereen is the famous place from whose remote aerie the editor of the local paper kept his "eagle eye" on the devious paths of European statesmanship. The scenes there encountered were, however, calculated on the present occasion to arouse far different thoughts. Although the two young men spent only twenty-four hours in the place, the "Narrative of a journey from Oxford to Skibbereen" presents a truly harrowing picture of the sickness, mortality and misery that prevailed. The normal population was twenty thousand, and this, through an enormous death-rate, accompanied by terrible scenes and recitals which can be better imagined than described, had been reduced to appalling insignificance.
In these days of vastly improved communications and ubiquitous and enterprising newspapers, similar distress, we may assume, would be a practical impossibility. Special correspondents would visit the spot and make vigilant researches, and public opinion would insist on Government making adequate provision for relief. But in those days it was private charity that had to step into the breach. Lord Dufferin's descriptive pamphlet was published in Oxford, quickly ran into a second edition, an "Association" was formed and a brisk subscription to the Relief Fund was the result. The young lord himself also contributed 1000 under the name of "An Irish landlord from Skibbereen" the identity of the donor being only revealed by accident, many years afterwards.
The first public speech of importance by Lord Dufferin, that I find recorded, is one delivered at
a dinner given to his agent, Mr. John H. Howe, on December 3Oth, 1847, at Newtownards. For a
young man only just come of age, it was no small effort of common sense and eloquence. The toast
to which he had to reply was " Lord Dufferin and the improving landlords of Ireland," and the orator, in his reply, led off with the remark that an Irish landlord was unlike any other landlord under the sun.
He lives in a peculiar atmosphere of his own; the daily conditions of his life, and the occasional conditions of his death, are totally dissimilar to those of other men. He is a complete genius of himself an erratic body in the social system (laughter). He may be described as an individual who does not get rent as a well-dressed gentleman who may be shot with impunity, the legitimate target of the immediate neighbourhood a super-ficial index by which to mark the geographical direction
of the under current of assassination a cause of bewilderment to Coroners and of vague verdicts to distracted juries a subject for newspaper paragraphs, and a startling text for leading articles.∼Irish poetess.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE DORSET NATURAL HISTORY AND ANTIQUARIAN FIELD CLUB
VOLUME XXVII
HARVARD UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
The Liberty and Manor of Frompton, Page 180 -
An organ was placed in the Church 30 January last the gift of R. B. Sheridan and Marcia Maria Sheridan.
The stained glass windon in the north aisle of the parish church representing the visit of the three Maries to the tomb of our savior after the resurrection was presented by Helen Lady Dufferin in memory of her mother C. H. Sheridan who is buried in the graveyard.
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She married, firstly, Price Blackwood, 4th Baron Dufferin and Clandeboye, son of Hans Blackwood, 3rd Baron Dufferin and Claneboye and Mehetabel Hester Temple, on 4 July 1825. She married, secondly, George Hay, Earl of Gifford, son of Field Marshal George Hay, 8th Marquess of Tweeddale and Lady Susan Montagu, on 13 October 1862. She died on 13 June 1867.
She wrote the book The Charming Woman, published 1835 and The Fine Young English Gentleman. As a result of her marriage, Helen Selina Sheridan was styled as Baroness Dufferin and Clandeboye on 18 November 1839. She wrote the book The Irish Emigrant, published 1845. She wrote the book Lispings from Low Latitudes or Extracts from the Journal of the Honour Impulsia Gushington, published 1863. She wrote the book Finesse; or a Busy Day in Messina, published 1863, a play.
Child of Helen Selina Sheridan and Price Blackwood, 4th Baron Dufferin and Clandeboye
· Frederick Temple Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 1st Marquess of Dufferin and Ava+ b. 21 Jun 1826, d. 12 Feb 1902
_________________
Helen Selina Blackwood, Baroness Dufferin and Claneboye, later Helen Selina Hay, Countess of Gifford, born Helen Selina Sheridan, (1807–1867), was a British song-writer, composer, poet, and author. As well as being admired for her wit and literary talents, she was a fashionable beauty and a well-known figure in London society of the mid-19th century.
Childhood and marriage
Helen Sheridan came from a literary and theatrical family with political connections. Her father, Thomas Sheridan (1775–1817), an actor, soldier and colonial administrator, was the younger son of famous Irish playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and her mother was Caroline Henrietta Sheridan (Callander) (1779–1851), a novelist. In 1813, Thomas took Helen and his wife with him to a post at the Cape of Good Hope, where he died four years later on 12 September 1817. Helen then returned to England where she lived in a Hampton Court Palace "grace and favour" apartment with her mother, four brothers and two younger sisters. The sisters' beauty and accomplishments led to them being called the "Three Graces". Caroline was known as the wittiest of the girls and later developed into a talented writer, and Georgiana, considered the prettiest of the sisters, later became the Duchess of Somerset.At seventeen, Helen was engaged to Commander Price Blackwood, youngest of three sons of Hans, Lord Dufferin, and Mehetabel Temple; owing to the deaths of his brothers he was to be the future Lord Dufferin, although his parents wanted him to marry more advantageously, mainly based on financial grounds. After their London wedding at St. George's, Hanover Square, London, on July 4, 1825, they went to live in Florence due to the opposition of the marriage by the Blackwood family, but returned two years later with their baby son Frederick, who was born on 21 June 1826. Helen Blackwood's sisters introduced her to fashionable circles where she mixed with prominent figures of the time, Misses Berry, Samuel Rogers, Henry Taylor, Brougham, Lockhart, Sydney Smith, and Benjamin Disraeli most notably Disraeli who in later life said she had been "his chief admiration". In 1839 she became Lady Dufferin when her husband inherited his title. He died in 1841 of an accidental morphine overdose; Helen continued to spend her summers at his family estate at Clandeboye in Ireland, which now belonged to Frederick.
Writing
From childhood Helen had written poems, songs and prologues for private theatrical productions. After she and Caroline jointly brought out a Set of ten Songs and two Duets, she started to publish her verse, sometimes set to her own music. Her name was not usually printed at first, but she did not stay entirely anonymous.
One of her most popular ballads was The Irish Emigrant, which was published in New York and Boston as well as in London. In this and in other work written around the time of the great Irish famine she shows some understanding of "the destructive impact of the famine on love and the family" despite her "social distance", though one critic believes the Irish people's suffering is merely "hinted at" in this "ballad for the English middle class". Alfred Perceval Graves, writing in the early 20th century, was more enthusiastic: "…her warm heart beats in such close sympathy with her peasant neighbours that… she writes as if she were one of themselves, while her sense of fun floats through her Irish poems with a delicate breeziness."
In 1863 a play of hers was staged, and in the same year she published an account of her travels up the Nile with her son. This poked fun at writing by lady travellers; the title Lispings from Low Latitudes, or, Extracts from the Journal of the Hon. Impulsia Gushington echoed Frederick's book Letters From High Latitudes. The purpose of the play was to satire travel literature, specifically that of women, during the time period. Her play, Finesse, or, A Busy Day in Messina, produced at the Haymarket Theatre with John Baldwin Buckstone as one of the actors, was a success, but the writer did not go to any of the performances, nor acknowledge her authorship.
Dufferin's poetry, often set to music by herself or others, reflects important concerns traceable throughout the early and middle periods of Victorian literature: a biting criticism of social class, a spotlight on Irish poverty and emigration, and a despair over loss and separation. While Dufferin infused her early and later writing with an arch wit (particularly in her social satires), the songs and poems written during the middle of her life are marked by sentimentality and often a profound sadness.
In relation to her writing, The Westminster Review gave a very good approximation of her literary skill and emotion laden works. "Of the songs and verses which have beeu collected in the volume it must be confessed that few of them rise above respectable mediocrity. "The Irish Emigrant" is her best song, and is full of true feeling. "Sweet Kilkenny Town" is intensely Irish, and might fittingly be sung by any of the obscure thousands from Erin who toil for bare existence in the great Republic of the West. In many of her other lyrics we find an echo of Moore, but she lacks his perfection of form and exquisite imagery. It is when she writes in the vernacular that she is in her happiest vein. She sympathised with the peasantry of the land in which she was born, and the great charm of her nature lay, not in the gift of genius—for that she did not possess—but in her sweet and loving Irish heart. That she was endowed with some dramatic power is shown by her comedy, entitled Finesse; or, a Busy Day in Messina. She cannot take rank in literature beside her gifted sister, Mrs. Norton, but her womanhood was richer and more perfect than that of many members of her sex to whom was given "the vision and the faculty divine." It is right that the world should know something of one of the womanliest women that ever breathed, and for this reason Lord Dufferin's biography and the verses which accompany it will be treasured in many homes."
Despite her nineteenth-century popularity, Dufferin's work is now largely obscured, in part by the current critical focus on her sister, Caroline Norton.
Later life
Lady Dufferin was for many years a close friend of George Hay, Earl of Gifford (1822–1862) but had always refused to marry him. After he had a serious accident in 1862, she agreed "at his earnest request". She explained to his father that this would allow her to devote herself to him, bring him comfort in the last few weeks of life, and then mourn him openly.
She died of breast cancer on 13 June 1867 at Dufferin Lodge in Highgate and was buried in Friern Barnet with her second husband. Her son Frederick, who had always had a close and affectionate relationship with his mother, published a volume of Songs, Poems, & Verses by Helen, Lady Dufferin with a memoir in 1894. Earlier he had named the village and railway station built on his land Helen's Bay, and he dedicated Helen's Tower on the Clandeboye estate to her. The tower inspired poems by both Tennyson and Browning who compared this Helen favourably with the beautiful Helen of Troy of legend:
Like hers, thy face once made all eyes elate,
Yet, unlike hers, was bless'd by every glance.
After her father died at the Cape of Good Hope, Helen returned to England where she lived in a Hampton Court Palace "grace and favour" apartment with her mother, four brothers and two younger sisters. The sisters' beauty and accomplishments led to them being called the "Three Graces". Caroline was known as the wittiest of the girls and later developed into a talented writer, and Georgiana, considered the prettiest of the sisters, later became the Duchess of Somerset.
She married, firstly, Price Blackwood, 4th Baron Dufferin and Clandeboye, son of Hans Blackwood, 3rd Baron Dufferin and Claneboye and Mehetabel Hester Temple, on 4 July 1825. She married, secondly, George Hay, Earl of Gifford, son of Field Marshal George Hay, 8th Marquess of Tweeddale and Lady Susan Montagu, on 13 October 1862. She died on 13 June 1867.
In October 1862, she agreed to marry her friend George Hay, Earl of Gifford by special license, after he was seriously injured in an accident. Hay, who was heir to the Marquessate of Tweeddale, died of his injuries two months after their marriage.[
She wrote the book The Charming Woman, published 1835, and The Fine Young English Gentleman. She wrote the book The Irish Emigrant, published 1845. She wrote the book Lispings from Low Latitudes or Extracts from the Journal of the Honour Impulsia Gushington, published 1863. She wrote the book Finesse; or a Busy Day in Messina, published 1863, a play.
Child of Helen Selina Sheridan and Price Blackwood, 4th Baron Dufferin and Clandeboye:
•Frederick Temple Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 1st Marquess of Dufferin and Ava+ b. 21 Jun 1826, d. 12 Feb 1902
She died of breast cancer on 13 June 1867 at Dufferin Lodge in Highgate and was buried in Friern Barnet with her second husband. Her son Frederick, who had always had a close and affectionate relationship with his mother, published a volume of Songs, Poems, & Verses by Helen, Lady Dufferin with a memoir in 1894. Earlier he had named the village and railway station built on his land Helen's Bay, and he dedicated Helen's Tower on the Clandeboye estate to her. The tower inspired poems by both Tennyson and Browning who compared this Helen favourably with the beautiful Helen of Troy of legend:
Like hers, thy face once made all eyes elate,
Yet, unlike hers, was bless'd by every glance.
A BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR
OF THE LATE
Marquess of Dufferin and Ava
CHAPTER I
THE BLACKWOOD FAMILY THE SHERIDANS BIRTH OF LORD DUFFERIN DEATH OF PRICE, THE MARQUESS'S FATHER
EARLY LIFE OXFORD TO SKIBBEREEN AN EARLY SPEECH ON IRISH LAND
FREDERICK TEMPLE HAMILTON- TEMPLE-BLACKWOOD, first Marquess of Dufferin and Ava, was born at Florence on June 2ist, 1826. On both the father and mother's sides he came of an old and distinguished stock. The Blackwoods originally belonged to Fifeshire, and passed over into Ulster in the reign of Queen Elizabeth at the same time that James Hamilton, the first Lord Clandeboye, "settled" the northern half of the County Down. The coats of arms of the Blackwoods are displayed as early as 1400: one William Blackwood died fighting against the English at the battle of Pinkie in 1547, and his son Adam was a trusted follower and biographer of Mary Queen of Scots.
Life of Lord Dufferin
The Ulster Blackwoods (there was also a French branch which became extinct in 1837) sat in the Irish Parliament continuously throughout the best part of the eighteenth century. They were created baronets in 1763, and were promoted to the peerage in 1800 as Barons Dufferin and Clandeboye. The father of the first peer was Sir John Blackwood, a strong Whig, who on two occasions refused an earldom; but his eldest son was a personal friend and neighbour of Castlereagh's, and received the offer of a peerage in a more acquiescent spirit. Through his mother he was the heir-general of the Hamiltons, Viscounts Clandeboye, Earls of Clanbrassil, on which account the second title of Clandeboye was conferred.
James, the first Lord Dufferin, was a most kind-hearted as well as a very brave man. When commanding his regiment in the South of Ireland, a soldier, maddened by some supposed grievance, rushed at him with a pistol. He wrenched it from the man's hand and with generous presence of mind contrived to empty the pan of its priming, and then turning to his officers, said, "It is nothing, the pistol is not even loaded." Many similar traits have been repeated to the Marquess by those who knew the old baron.
A second baronetcy was conferred in 1814, on another distinguished member of the family Admiral Sir Henry Blackwood, grand-uncle of the Marquess. He was a fine seaman, and commanded Nelson's squadron of frigates at Trafalgar, Admiral Sir H. Blackwood I and it was on him that fell the sorrowful duty of bringing the hero's body home. He also had the honour of conducting Louis XVIII. and his family back to Paris, and of escorting the allied Sovereigns to England. Two exploits of his are specially memorable: *one, when commanding a 36-gun frigate, the Penelope, he successfully engaged and smashed the Guillaume Tell, an So-gun line-of-battle-ship, and on a previous occasion when, in July, 1798, he, though commanding a small frigate of twenty-eight guns the Brilliant, beat off the attack of two French 44-gun ships. A characteristically generous appreciation of this feat finds place in the "Biographic Generale".
The present representative of this Baronetcy is Sir Francis Blackwood; and the late Sir Arthur Blackwood, Secretary to the General Post Office, was a grandson of the old Admiral. To revert to the main line, Hans, Lord Dufferin, the son of James, the first peer, had three sons; but the eldest was carried off by a chance round-shot in the few days fighting that ranged round Waterloo, and the second died of fever at Naples. These deaths in the family made Price, the 1 Marquess's father, heir to the title and estates; but Price had at first little else than his pay as a naval officer to live upon.
In these circumstances his union to the lady of his choice Miss Helen S. Sheridan, was deemed very imprudent by his relations and friends. She was only seventeen, and a most lovely and fascinating creature. In his filial solicitude to do justice to the memory of his beloved mother, Lord Dufferin seems to have fairly exhausted the language of affection. But the common consent of those who had the privilege of her acquaintance agrees with the following loving description in her son's memoir:
One of the sweetest, most beautiful, most accomplished, wittiest, most loving and lovable human beings that ever walked upon the earth. There was no quality wanting to her perfection; and I say this, not prompted by the partiality of a son, but as one well acquainted with the world, and with both men and women. There have been many ladies who have been beautiful, charming, witty, and good, but I doubt whether there have been any who have, combined with so high a spirit, and with so natural a gaiety and bright an imagination as my mother's, such strong, unerring good sense, tact, and womanly discretion. Her wit or, rather, her humour her gaiety, her good taste she may have owed to her Sheridan forefathers ; but her firm character and abiding sense of duty she derived from her mother; and her charm, grace, amiability, and lovableness from her angelic ancestor Miss Linley.
These references call here for further notice of so charming a personality. Helen Selina, Baroness Dufferin and Clandeboye, was the daughter of Thomas Sheridan, and the grand-daughter of the Right Honourable Richard Brinsley Butler-Sheridan.
THE SHERIDAN LINE
The Sheridans, though they experienced subsequent reverses, were originally an ancient, rich, and
important family, possessing castles and lands in the County Cavan, a tract of which is marked in the
old maps of the period as " the Sheridan County "; but in Queen Elizabeth's time their property was
escheated, as Thomas Sheridan bitterly complained before the Bar of the House of Commons in 1680.
They were driven from their homes and were forced during the next two hundred years to fight the
battle of life under what were always discouraging, and sometimes desperate, conditions. As Lord
Dufferin not unfairly surmises, it is perhaps to these persecutions of Fate that their continuous intellectual activity may be attributed.
The first of the line who fairly could claim to literary eminence was Denis Sheridan, the son of Donald and of a daughter of the O'Neill. He must have been born about the year 1600. He had quitted the Catholic fold to become a Protestant clergyman, and a devoted disciple of Bedell, Bishop of Kilmore, under whose direction he translated the English version of the Bible into the Irish language. Behind the Palace of Kilmore, where Bedell is interred, there lies an intricate network of lake scenery amid hills and wooded lowlands. Here is Trinity Island, where stands a ruined abbey, and many legends about the Sheridans linger round this spot. It is said that the first of the family settled here from Spain, being sent over by the Pope of Rome in the fifth or sixth century, and founded a school of learning on the island, which he enriched with a library of manuscripts. This insular University was presided over from generation to generation by one of the Sheridan family.
Many of the Sheridans claim notice for their eminence in various walks of life: two sons of Denis were bishops, and a third, the Right Honourable Sir Thomas Sheridan, was author of a remarkable work published in 1677, entitled "The Rise and Power of Parliament." In the next generation Dr. Thomas Sheridan, son of Denis' fourth son James, was a person of simple and very agreeable disposition. He adopted the calling of a schoolmaster, and was intimate with Dean Swift, and people used to say that Sheridan's wit and sweet gaiety played the part of David's harp that conjured the evil spirit out of Saul i.e., the Dean. The two used often to meet at Quilcagh, Sheridan's country house, where "Gulliver's Travels" received their final touches, and ''Stella's Bower" was situated.
The son of the foregoing, also called Thomas, was an enthusiastic educational reformer, and both
wrote and lectured on his favourite subject. He was the intimate friend of Garrick and of Johnson,
for whom he was instrumental in getting a pension. He died in 1788, leaving two sons Charles, who
became a member of the Irish Parliament, and the author of " The School for Scandal."
Of the latter, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, his great-grandson remarks that no famous man has been more unfortunate in his biographers; for Moore tired of the task, thereby provoking from George IV. the remark that the writer of the book had better abscond, "for cutting and maiming and barbarously attempting the life of Sheridan!"
The latter has been described by a competent reviewer as "for thirty years the most brilliant talker, the greatest conversationalist of the splendid circle in which he moved." But, as already mentioned, his biographies are not trustworthy, Mr. Smyth's being full of exaggerations and mis representations. Lord Dufferin, however, made a grateful exception in the case of Mr. Fraser Rae's book, to which he himself wrote an introduction.
The " Encyclopaedia Britannica " article remarks: Tradition has attached to his name dozens of mythical anecdotes, as examples of his wit, his frolicsome humour, his habits of procrastination, his pecuniary embarrassments, and his methods of escaping from them, for which there was really no foundation. The real Sheridan as he was known in private life, is irrevocably gone.
As Lord Dufferin remarks in a pathetic passage in his " Memoir " on his mother: Those who have recorded their impressions in regard to Sheridan, knew him only when he was old and broken, his gaiety all quenched (though his wit still flickered in the socket), the adherent of a disorganized party, a man utterly ruined by the burning of Drury Lane Theatre, pestered by petty debts, yet sufficiently formidable to provoke detraction at the hands of his political enemies, while his fame exposed him to the curiosity and criticism of the gossips.
He was without doubt a very fascinating personage, as one might almost gather from the portrait in the library at Clandeboye; he had genially good nature, charming manners his splendid eyes, as his great-grandson remarks, were "the very home of genius," and his extraordinary liveliness and wit made him a favourite with the best English society. His eloquence, his Parliamentary gifts, and his general abilities at once placed him on a level with the greatest orators and statesmen of the time.
Like so many men in those days he was fond of wine, and unfortunately it affected him more than it did his seasoned friends. As a contrast, Lord Dufferin has cited the case of his paternal grandfather, who never had a day's illness and lived till eighty-one. This hale old gentleman would begin a convivial evening with a bottle of port as a "clearer," and continued with four bottles of claret Nevertheless, he always retired to rest in a state of perfect though benevolent sobriety. His grandson amusingly remarks that some of his predecessors by thus overdrawing the family account with Bacchus, had left him a water-drinker who had thereby incurred the reproach of degeneracy.
It is a proof of Sheridan's delicacy of feeling that though he might have added "2000 per annum to his income had he allowed his wife, who had a lovely voice, to sing in public, he would never consent to it. Again, though his was a gambling age, he never touched a card or a dice-box. His political achievements were ever on the side of justice, liberty, and humanity. He opposed the war with America; he deprecated the coalition between Fox and North; he advocated the abolition of slavery; he denounced the tyranny of Warren Hastings; he condemned the trade restrictions on Ireland; he fought for Catholic emancipation; he did his best to save the French Royal Family; and what is more remarkable, he also pleaded for "an eight hours' day."
Of his ever memorable speech against Warren Hastings, it is impossible to refrain from recalling what some of the greatest of his compeers said of it. Mr. Burke declared it to be "the most astonishing effort of eloquence, argument, and wit united, of which there is any record or tradition."
Mr. Fox said "all that he had ever read when compared with it dwindled into nothing and vanished
like a vapour before the sun." Mr. Pitt acknowledged that "it surpassed all eloquence of ancient and modern times, and possessed everything that genius or art could furnish to agitate and control the human mind." While Sheridan was actually speaking, Burke remarked to Fox, "That is the true style something between .poetry and prose, and better than either."
It is worth while here recalling the exalted praise that Byron bestowed on the same talented man:
Whatever Sheridan has chosen to do has been the best of its kind. He has written the best comedy " The School for Scandal "; the best opera " The Duenna," (in my mind far before" The Beggar's Opera ") ; the best farce "The Critic"; the best address "The Monologue on Garrick"; and, to crown all, delivered the best oration ever conceived or heard in this country.
Miss Linley, who became the wife of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, was almost as interesting and fascinating as her husband. Lord Dufferin cites, with an affectionate ancestral reverence, some of
the tokens of loving homage bestowed on her by contemporaries of repute. "The most modest, pleasing, and delicate flower I have seen for a long time"; "Quite celestial"; " A voice as of the cherub choir"; "The connecting link between a woman and an angel " such were some of the tributes of admiration lavished on this charming lady by Wilkes, Dr. Parr, Rogers, Garrick, and other celebrities. She was the daughter of a musician at Bath, but in spite of her origin her transfer, on her marriage, to the first society of London, never turned her head, and her simple and devoted attachment to her husband endured in all its freshness to the last. Her lineaments have been immortalised by Romney, Gainsborough, and Sir Joshua Reynolds; and Macaulay says of her, "There too was she, the beautiful mother of a beautiful race; the Saint Cecilia, whose delicate features, lighted up by love and music, art has rescued from a common decay."
Three Lovely Sheridans
The next Mrs. Sheridan became the mother of Helen, Lady Dufferin (Countess of Gifford). She was a Miss Callander, and of her Frances Kemble remarked that she was a perfect mother of the Graces, more beautiful than anybody but her own daughters Helen, Lady Dufferin (already mentioned); the Duchess of Somerset, who, when Lady Seymour, was chosen to represent the Queen of Beauty at the famous Eglinton Tournament ; and Mrs. Norton, whose husband was Lord Grantley, and whose son eventually succeeded to the title and estates in 1875.
The appearance of these three lovely women is so charmingly described by Lord Dufferin that it were a pity to either omit or abbreviate his language. The beauty of each of the sisters was of a different type, but they were all equally tall and stately. The Duchess of Somerset had large deep blue or violet eyes, black hair, black eyebrows and eyelashes, perfect features, and a complexion of lilies and roses a kind of colouring seldom seen out of Ireland. Mrs. Norton, on the contrary, was a brunette with dark burning eyes like her grand-father's, a pure Greek profile and a clear olive complexion.
The brothers were all over six feet. My mother, though her features were less regular than those of her sisters, was equally lovely and attractive. Her figure was divine the perfection of grace and symmetry, her head being beautifully set upon her shoulders. Her hands and feet were very small, many sculptors having asked to model the former. She had a pure sweet voice; sang delightfully, and herself composed many of the tunes to which both her published and unpublished songs were set Before either of them were twenty-one, she and Mrs. Norton were paid 100 for a collection of songs
they contributed between them. Helen was brought out at the early age of barely seventeen, and the same season she met Price Blackwood, then a Commander in the Navy, soon after his return from the China Seas. A brief courtship ensued, the happy pair were married at St. George's Church, Hanover Square, on July 4th, 1825, and the same day they started for Italy.
They appear to have first visited Siena, the height of which above the sea (1330 feet) affords a more
refreshing air than the heat of the valley of the Arno, whither they subsequently removed. Those familiar with the quiet beauty of this old-world Tuscan city, can form some idea of the fascination
that Siena, with its majestic palazzi, its curiously curved and narrow old streets, and its treasures
of mediaeval art, must have exercised on the poetic mind of so young, untravelled, and pressionable
a girl. The Blackwoods occupied the upper storey of the Palazzo of the Gigli, an old Sienese family,
one of whom married Mr. J. P. Maquay, of the well-known Florentine bank of Maquay, Pakenham
& Smyth, and was the mother of several sons who have achieved popularity and distinction in the British Army and Navy, and other walks of life. One of them, my old friend, William Maquay, a banker, still resides in Florence, and he and his wife are among the most deservedly popular and
esteemed of the English Colony.
Birth of the Marquess
During Lord Dufferin's sojourn in Florence, a few years ago, an interesting reminiscence of those early days was brought home to him by a lady who remarked:
"Yes, Lord Dufferin, for many years I have wanted to know you; indeed ever since when at a play at Lord Normanby's, I was sitting behind a lovely young English lady, whose beauty had quite fascinated me, and whom I took for a girl, until I heard her consulting with a friend as to whether her baby's ribbons should be pink or cherry-coloured. And you were the baby! "The "baby" was born on June 2ist, 1826, at No, 1916 Via Maggio, the street leading from the Ponte S.Trinita past the Pitti alace to the Porta Romana, Mrs. Blackwood's accouchement was of a severe and dangerous character; and at one moment it appears to have been a question of life and death, but happily both mother and child were spared. On her convalescence, Captain Blackwood had her removed to an old castle in the Apennines called Barberino 1 di Mugello, belonging to the Riccardi family. It is described
as (a romantic little place with grey towers and battlements, crowning an isolated eminence which rises in the middle of a smiling valley formed by the adjoining hills. A river winds round its foot, and a little feudal town nestles not far off in one of its bends, the whole place being rich with gardens, vines, fig-trees and mulberry leaves."
Two years were spent amid these delightful surroundings, and then the Blackwoods came home and settled in a cottage at Thames Ditton, so as to be near Mrs. Sheridan, who had apartments in Hampton Court Palace. Here Lord Dufferin says he can remember (i) his mother "coming of age" a unique reminiscence, indeed, to which few sons could lay claim and (2) nearly poisoning himself with eating laburnum seeds on that same memorable occasion. Among the brilliant circle of celebrities with whom the Sheridan family were brought into contact was Mr. Disraeli, at whom it appears, it was at that time rather the mode to laugh. Lord Dufferin tells the following characteristic story of the future Premier:
The elder Mr. Disraeli being as yet more celebrated than his son, my mother had expressed a desire to see him. But the introduction could not be managed, inasmuch as at the particular moment Mr. Disraeli had quarrelled with his father. One fine morning, however, he arrived with his father in his right hand, so to speak, in Mrs. Norton's drawing-room at Storey's Gate. Setting him down on a chair and looking at him as if he were some object of vertu of which he wanted to dispose, Mr. Disraeli turned round to my mother and said in his somewhat sententious manner, "Mrs. Blackwood, I have brought you my father. I have become reconciled Price, to my father on two conditions: the first was that he should come and see you; the second, that he should pay my debts.
The peaceful life at Ditton was, however, suddenly broken by the appointment of Commander Blackwood to the Imogene, a 28-gun frigate. He started in 1831 from Portsmouth for a tour which
took him in succession to Rio, the Cape of Good Hope, Calcutta, Australia, and New Zealand. On his recovery from a bad attack of fever he left for the China Seas, where together with the Andromache under Captain Chads, he attacked the Chinese Bogue Forts and forced the passage of the Bocca Tigris. He was absent from England four years altogether on this trip.
It was in 1839 that Price, the Marquess's father, succeeded to the title. Unfortunately just about the same time Helen, Lady Dufferin, fell ill and had to proceed to Italy to recuperate. The son, the future Marquess, was a boy at Eton at the time, and his father came down to see him on June 25th, 1841, and was at once called upon to become the "sitter" in the eight-oar, with the attaching "footing" of a hamper of champagne. He left the next day, having arranged that his boy should join him in Ireland in July. To this meeting the lad was looking forward with unspeakable pleasure. But he recorded certain inexplicable misgivings in the following passage:
On the afternoon before the appointed day, I remember standing on the little bridge over-hanging the stream which forms the boundary of the College precinct, watching the willows waving in the wind, and saying to a friend, "It is very odd, I have every reason to be happy: to-night we have the boats, and to-morrow the holidays begin, and I am going on to my father in Ireland and yet I feel quite wretched! "The next morning as I was packing my clothes, my tutor, Mr. Cookesley sent for me. He looked very grave and said, "I have got bad news for you; your father is very ill; what would you like to do?" I said I would like to go to him. " No, my poor boy, your father is dead."
The unfortunate peer appears to have been poisoned by an accidental overdose of morphia in some pills compounded in a hurry by a Liverpool chemist. He was travelling by the steamer to Belfast, and on arrival thither on July 2ist, 1841, it was discovered he had died suddenly in the night.
This terrible blow, as might be surmised, quite prostrated Helen, Lady Dufferin, and brought on a serious illness. Her boy soon joined her at Naples. After a six months' sojourn in those sunny latitudes, the lad, Lord Dufferin, was compelled to return to his schooling, though his mother was scarcely in a fit state to be left. The day before he started, he attended, in company with his aunt, Lady Seymour, a dance at the Accademia, where a very pretty young lady was persuaded to take pity on, and dance with, the Eton boy, despite his jacket and his wide open collar. The latter was sensibly impressed by his partner's beauty, and with a gallantry which would have done honour
to riper years, expressed his profound regret that instead of returning to his studies at Eton, he could
not stay to rescue the damsel from her doom of celibacy. Twenty years after Lord Dufferin says he
happened to be again in Naples, and met the late Duke of Sant' Arpino on the Chiaja. The Duke had been a playfellow of his in the earlier days, and the two began to talk about old acquaintances. During the conversation a great military funeral rolled past. Referring to his pretty partner of the Accademia ball, Lord Dufferin asked whether she had entered a convent after all, or married. At that very moment the catafalque with the body of the dead man, an ex-Governor of Sicily, arrayed in his uniform with all his orders, came into sight, close to the spot where the two friends were conversing. "Yes," replied the Duke, "she married." Whom?" inquired his companion. " That man!"
rejoined the other, pointing to the bier.
Lord Dufferin's father had desired in his will that the son should reside a good deal in Ireland, and Lady Dufferin taking the same view, the lad's summer holidays were spent at Clandeboye, and
after leaving Eton, the greater part of the following years at the same lovely resort.
Clandeboye is situated on the southern shore of Belfast Lough, a few miles from the sea, on that
part of Ulster which juts out towards the shore of Galloway on the Scottish side, about forty miles
distant. The estate of the Dufferins lies in a bright undulating country diversified by silvery loughs and purple hills, the smiling landscape backed by the Mourne Mountains on the one side, and by broken and picturesque expanses of the North Channel on the other. The nearest town is Bangor; but probably the most interesting way of approaching the house is by a long but excellently made private road leading from the little station of Helen's Bay. The road was, I believe, constructed [as a "relief work" at the time of the Irish famine. The mansion, which is reached after two or three miles saunter through the park, is a solid and eminently comfortable edifice, the earliest part dating, it is said, from
James II.'s time. The present front was formerly a subordinate entry, so the absence of any portico
rather detracts from the exterior effect. But the moment you set foot in the hall, its fine proportions and the mass of varied and interesting objects collected and presented from every quarter of the globe, not only arrest your attention, but tell you are in the house of some one possessed of catholic tastes and opportunities.
The genius loci of this charming home must from the first have impressed itself on young Dufferin's
affections. No doubt it was a sacrifice for a young lady of such exceptional accomplishments as his
mother to settle down for years in the seclusion of an Irish country house. But her devotion to her son's upbringing during the critical years preceding his Oxford education were invaluable to him, and fully repaid in his love and veneration for his beloved parent.
At Christ Church, Oxford, his classical tastes were developed, and though he did not shine in the schools, he imbibed sufficient of the genius loci to retain throughout his life culture and fondness
for scholarship ; witness the punctiliousness with which, when he was addressed in Latin and Greek,
he made a point of replying in the same language. It is curious that he did not at first take readily to books. For the first twenty years he confessed that he had no fondness for poetry, and though his mother read out loud to him Virgil, Dryden, Pope, Byron, and other classics, he found these but ill adapted to his liking.
At the same time he seems to have been drawn instinctively to what was to be the work of his life the appreciation and study of important public questions. He was only twenty years of age when, in company with the Hon. G. F. Boyle (afterwards Earl of Glasgow), a college friend, he determined to visit Ireland and see for himself something of the effects of the famine which was then devastating wide tracts, and of which but vague and unsatisfactory information had drifted over to England. It was, as Lord Dufferin remarked in his pamphlet, a fearfully interesting period, for famine, typhus fever, and dysentery were terribly rife. Young as he was, Dufferin looked upon this self-imposed trip as the duty of an Irish landlord and legislator.
They were advised to visit Skibbereen in the extreme south, and thither bent their steps. Skibbereen is the famous place from whose remote aerie the editor of the local paper kept his "eagle eye" on the devious paths of European statesmanship. The scenes there encountered were, however, calculated on the present occasion to arouse far different thoughts. Although the two young men spent only twenty-four hours in the place, the "Narrative of a journey from Oxford to Skibbereen" presents a truly harrowing picture of the sickness, mortality and misery that prevailed. The normal population was twenty thousand, and this, through an enormous death-rate, accompanied by terrible scenes and recitals which can be better imagined than described, had been reduced to appalling insignificance.
In these days of vastly improved communications and ubiquitous and enterprising newspapers, similar distress, we may assume, would be a practical impossibility. Special correspondents would visit the spot and make vigilant researches, and public opinion would insist on Government making adequate provision for relief. But in those days it was private charity that had to step into the breach. Lord Dufferin's descriptive pamphlet was published in Oxford, quickly ran into a second edition, an "Association" was formed and a brisk subscription to the Relief Fund was the result. The young lord himself also contributed 1000 under the name of "An Irish landlord from Skibbereen" the identity of the donor being only revealed by accident, many years afterwards.
The first public speech of importance by Lord Dufferin, that I find recorded, is one delivered at
a dinner given to his agent, Mr. John H. Howe, on December 3Oth, 1847, at Newtownards. For a
young man only just come of age, it was no small effort of common sense and eloquence. The toast
to which he had to reply was " Lord Dufferin and the improving landlords of Ireland," and the orator, in his reply, led off with the remark that an Irish landlord was unlike any other landlord under the sun.
He lives in a peculiar atmosphere of his own; the daily conditions of his life, and the occasional conditions of his death, are totally dissimilar to those of other men. He is a complete genius of himself an erratic body in the social system (laughter). He may be described as an individual who does not get rent as a well-dressed gentleman who may be shot with impunity, the legitimate target of the immediate neighbourhood a super-ficial index by which to mark the geographical direction
of the under current of assassination a cause of bewilderment to Coroners and of vague verdicts to distracted juries a subject for newspaper paragraphs, and a startling text for leading articles.∼Irish poetess.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE DORSET NATURAL HISTORY AND ANTIQUARIAN FIELD CLUB
VOLUME XXVII
HARVARD UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
The Liberty and Manor of Frompton, Page 180 -
An organ was placed in the Church 30 January last the gift of R. B. Sheridan and Marcia Maria Sheridan.
The stained glass windon in the north aisle of the parish church representing the visit of the three Maries to the tomb of our savior after the resurrection was presented by Helen Lady Dufferin in memory of her mother C. H. Sheridan who is buried in the graveyard.
__________________
She married, firstly, Price Blackwood, 4th Baron Dufferin and Clandeboye, son of Hans Blackwood, 3rd Baron Dufferin and Claneboye and Mehetabel Hester Temple, on 4 July 1825. She married, secondly, George Hay, Earl of Gifford, son of Field Marshal George Hay, 8th Marquess of Tweeddale and Lady Susan Montagu, on 13 October 1862. She died on 13 June 1867.
She wrote the book The Charming Woman, published 1835 and The Fine Young English Gentleman. As a result of her marriage, Helen Selina Sheridan was styled as Baroness Dufferin and Clandeboye on 18 November 1839. She wrote the book The Irish Emigrant, published 1845. She wrote the book Lispings from Low Latitudes or Extracts from the Journal of the Honour Impulsia Gushington, published 1863. She wrote the book Finesse; or a Busy Day in Messina, published 1863, a play.
Child of Helen Selina Sheridan and Price Blackwood, 4th Baron Dufferin and Clandeboye
· Frederick Temple Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 1st Marquess of Dufferin and Ava+ b. 21 Jun 1826, d. 12 Feb 1902
_________________
Helen Selina Blackwood, Baroness Dufferin and Claneboye, later Helen Selina Hay, Countess of Gifford, born Helen Selina Sheridan, (1807–1867), was a British song-writer, composer, poet, and author. As well as being admired for her wit and literary talents, she was a fashionable beauty and a well-known figure in London society of the mid-19th century.
Childhood and marriage
Helen Sheridan came from a literary and theatrical family with political connections. Her father, Thomas Sheridan (1775–1817), an actor, soldier and colonial administrator, was the younger son of famous Irish playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and her mother was Caroline Henrietta Sheridan (Callander) (1779–1851), a novelist. In 1813, Thomas took Helen and his wife with him to a post at the Cape of Good Hope, where he died four years later on 12 September 1817. Helen then returned to England where she lived in a Hampton Court Palace "grace and favour" apartment with her mother, four brothers and two younger sisters. The sisters' beauty and accomplishments led to them being called the "Three Graces". Caroline was known as the wittiest of the girls and later developed into a talented writer, and Georgiana, considered the prettiest of the sisters, later became the Duchess of Somerset.At seventeen, Helen was engaged to Commander Price Blackwood, youngest of three sons of Hans, Lord Dufferin, and Mehetabel Temple; owing to the deaths of his brothers he was to be the future Lord Dufferin, although his parents wanted him to marry more advantageously, mainly based on financial grounds. After their London wedding at St. George's, Hanover Square, London, on July 4, 1825, they went to live in Florence due to the opposition of the marriage by the Blackwood family, but returned two years later with their baby son Frederick, who was born on 21 June 1826. Helen Blackwood's sisters introduced her to fashionable circles where she mixed with prominent figures of the time, Misses Berry, Samuel Rogers, Henry Taylor, Brougham, Lockhart, Sydney Smith, and Benjamin Disraeli most notably Disraeli who in later life said she had been "his chief admiration". In 1839 she became Lady Dufferin when her husband inherited his title. He died in 1841 of an accidental morphine overdose; Helen continued to spend her summers at his family estate at Clandeboye in Ireland, which now belonged to Frederick.
Writing
From childhood Helen had written poems, songs and prologues for private theatrical productions. After she and Caroline jointly brought out a Set of ten Songs and two Duets, she started to publish her verse, sometimes set to her own music. Her name was not usually printed at first, but she did not stay entirely anonymous.
One of her most popular ballads was The Irish Emigrant, which was published in New York and Boston as well as in London. In this and in other work written around the time of the great Irish famine she shows some understanding of "the destructive impact of the famine on love and the family" despite her "social distance", though one critic believes the Irish people's suffering is merely "hinted at" in this "ballad for the English middle class". Alfred Perceval Graves, writing in the early 20th century, was more enthusiastic: "…her warm heart beats in such close sympathy with her peasant neighbours that… she writes as if she were one of themselves, while her sense of fun floats through her Irish poems with a delicate breeziness."
In 1863 a play of hers was staged, and in the same year she published an account of her travels up the Nile with her son. This poked fun at writing by lady travellers; the title Lispings from Low Latitudes, or, Extracts from the Journal of the Hon. Impulsia Gushington echoed Frederick's book Letters From High Latitudes. The purpose of the play was to satire travel literature, specifically that of women, during the time period. Her play, Finesse, or, A Busy Day in Messina, produced at the Haymarket Theatre with John Baldwin Buckstone as one of the actors, was a success, but the writer did not go to any of the performances, nor acknowledge her authorship.
Dufferin's poetry, often set to music by herself or others, reflects important concerns traceable throughout the early and middle periods of Victorian literature: a biting criticism of social class, a spotlight on Irish poverty and emigration, and a despair over loss and separation. While Dufferin infused her early and later writing with an arch wit (particularly in her social satires), the songs and poems written during the middle of her life are marked by sentimentality and often a profound sadness.
In relation to her writing, The Westminster Review gave a very good approximation of her literary skill and emotion laden works. "Of the songs and verses which have beeu collected in the volume it must be confessed that few of them rise above respectable mediocrity. "The Irish Emigrant" is her best song, and is full of true feeling. "Sweet Kilkenny Town" is intensely Irish, and might fittingly be sung by any of the obscure thousands from Erin who toil for bare existence in the great Republic of the West. In many of her other lyrics we find an echo of Moore, but she lacks his perfection of form and exquisite imagery. It is when she writes in the vernacular that she is in her happiest vein. She sympathised with the peasantry of the land in which she was born, and the great charm of her nature lay, not in the gift of genius—for that she did not possess—but in her sweet and loving Irish heart. That she was endowed with some dramatic power is shown by her comedy, entitled Finesse; or, a Busy Day in Messina. She cannot take rank in literature beside her gifted sister, Mrs. Norton, but her womanhood was richer and more perfect than that of many members of her sex to whom was given "the vision and the faculty divine." It is right that the world should know something of one of the womanliest women that ever breathed, and for this reason Lord Dufferin's biography and the verses which accompany it will be treasured in many homes."
Despite her nineteenth-century popularity, Dufferin's work is now largely obscured, in part by the current critical focus on her sister, Caroline Norton.
Later life
Lady Dufferin was for many years a close friend of George Hay, Earl of Gifford (1822–1862) but had always refused to marry him. After he had a serious accident in 1862, she agreed "at his earnest request". She explained to his father that this would allow her to devote herself to him, bring him comfort in the last few weeks of life, and then mourn him openly.
She died of breast cancer on 13 June 1867 at Dufferin Lodge in Highgate and was buried in Friern Barnet with her second husband. Her son Frederick, who had always had a close and affectionate relationship with his mother, published a volume of Songs, Poems, & Verses by Helen, Lady Dufferin with a memoir in 1894. Earlier he had named the village and railway station built on his land Helen's Bay, and he dedicated Helen's Tower on the Clandeboye estate to her. The tower inspired poems by both Tennyson and Browning who compared this Helen favourably with the beautiful Helen of Troy of legend:
Like hers, thy face once made all eyes elate,
Yet, unlike hers, was bless'd by every glance.
Inscription
Helen, Baroness Dufferin and Clandeboye,
Countess of Gifford,
Died 13 th of June, 1867.
This Stone is placed here by her Son,
Frederick Temple, Earl of Dufferin.
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