Sir Brooke Boothby, 6th Baronet
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| Sir Brooke Boothby, 6th Baronet | |
 by John Raphael Smith after Sir Joshua Reynolds
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| Born | 3 June 1744[1] Ashbourne, Derbyshire[2], England |
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| Died | 23 January 1824[1] Boulogne, Paris, France |
| Burial place | Ashbourne, Derbyshire, England |
| Residence | Ashbourne Hall[3] |
| Nationality | English |
| Education | unknown |
| Occupation | landowner and poet |
| Title | 6th Boothby Baronet of Broadlow Ash |
| Predecessor | Sir Brooke Boothby, 5th Baronet (1710-1789) |
| Successor | Sir William Boothby, 7th Baronet (1746-1824) |
| Spouse | Susanna Bristoe |
| Children | Penelope |
| Parents | Sir Brooke Boothby, 5th Bt. and Phoebe Hollins |
Sir Brooke Boothby, 6th Baronet was an English minor poet and landowner in Derbyshire. He was part of the many people in the intellectual circles of Lichfield including Anna Seward and Erasmus Darwin. He welcomed Jean-Jacques Rousseau to England in 1766-7. After his return from exile Boothby visited Rousseau in Paris where he obtained a copy of his autobiography. Boothby was instrumental in the book being published in Lichfield in 1780 after the authors death. Boothby's unusual portrait by Joseph Wright of Derby shows a copy of that book.[4] His daughter was painted by Henry Fuseli[5] and Joshua Reynolds[6] and sculpted by Thomas Banks[7], as well as being the subject of a book of poetry by her grieving father.[8]
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[edit] Biography
Boothby was born in 1744 and he inherited his unusual surname from the second wife of the first Boothby Baronet of Broadlow Ash, William Boothby. Brooke Boothby is sometimes referred to as the seventh baronet as there was some confusion over the appointment of the first baronet.[9]
Boothby was involved with intelligencia in Lichfield. He was active in local intellectual life as an associate of the literary group, the Lunar Society which was interested in the application of the sciences to modern life and its development, and the Lichfield Botanical Society. From those connections he met the free-thinking Jean-Jacques Rousseau who had been exiled from France in 1766-7 and was staying at Wootton.
Boothby later visited Rousseau in Paris and arranged that he would organise the publication of Rousseau's autobiography titled "Dialogues ou Rousseau, Juge de Jean-Jacques". The book was published by Boothby in Lichfield (in French). This achievement is immortalised in Joseph Wright of Derby's painting. The portrait shows Boothby reclining by a stream in a wooded glade once known as the Twenty Oaks where he and Rousseau met for discussion and where Rousseau also wrote. He is holding a leather bound book with the name Rousseau on the spine rather than a specific title, thus referencing Boothby's interest in the philosopher's entire oeuvre. The two men became acquainted in the 1760s when Rousseau lived at nearby Wootton Hall. The landscape setting can be interpretted as referring to the Rousseauian idea that all of man's troubles and unhappiness derive from his self-removal from the natural world. The plants in the setting refer to Boothby's interest in botany.
He married Susanna Bristoe, daughter of Robert Bristoe and Susanna Philipson, in 1784 when he rented Asbourne Hall from his father.[8] He began the restoration of the hall and in the following April, his only daughter, Penelope, was born.
[[Image:Fuseli Henry The Apotheosis Of Penelope Boothby-1-1.jpg|right|thumb|The Apotheosis Of Penelope Boothby by Henry Fuseli - 1792.]] On 19 March 1791, disaster struck when Boothby's young daughter, Penelope, died aged five. This sad event affected Boothby a great deal and his poetry dwelt on this event. Penelope had a remarkable tomb constructed for her which included a life size statue of her sleeping. This tomb is still in St Oswald's church in Ashbourne.
Boothby's life went into decline after his daughter's death. He commissioned the sculpture illustrated and the painting by Henry Fuseli. His wife Susanna returned after Penelope's funeral to her parent's home in Hampshire and settled in Dover. Her death was recorded under her own family name, Bristoe.
Boothby was involved with the substantial purchase of sixteenth century stained glass for Lichfield Cathedral in 1801, which he purchased from the Abbey of Herkenrode which had been dissolved in the Napoleonic wars. He sold this glass on without profit.[10]
As a result of his extravagance Boothby met with economic disaster which altered completely the course of his life. Ashbourne Hall was leased in 1814 (in 1817 Sir Richard Arkwright's grandson, also Richard, was living there) and he settled in diminished circumstances in Boulogne where he died in 1824. He was buried in St. Oswald's with his parents and his sister Maria Elizabeth amongst others.
[edit] "Sonnet XII" by Boothby
Well has thy classick chisel, Banks, express'd
The graceful lineaments of that fine form,
Which late with conscious, living beauty warm,
Now here beneath does in dread silence rest.
And, oh, while life shall agitate my breast,
Recorded there exists her every charm,
In vivid colours, safe from change or harm,
Till my last sigh unalter'd love attest.
That form, as fair as ever fancy drew,
The marble cold, inanimate, retains;
But of the radiant smile that round her threw
Joys, that beguiled my soul of mortal pains,
And each divine expression's varying hue,
A little senseless dust alone remains[11]
[edit] Major works
- Letter to the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, 1790
- Observations on the Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs, 1792,
- Sorrows. Sacred to the Memory of Penelope, 1796
- Venality, 1793 and 1802
- translation of Jean Racine’s Britannicus, 1803
- Fables and Satires, 1809, Edinburgh
- translation of Molière’s Le Misanthrope, 1819)
- The Fudger Fudged, 1819).
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ a b George Edward Cokayne, editor, The Complete Baronetage, 5 volumes (no date (c. 1900); reprint, Gloucester, U.K.: Alan Sutton Publishing, 1983), volume III, page 83.
- ^ baptised here
- ^ Gentlemans Magazine, 1824
- ^ Sir Brooke Boothby, Joseph Wright of Derby (1781), Jonathan Jones, 28 April 2001, The Guardian, accessed 25 May 2008
- ^ Visual Politics: The Representation of Ireland, 1750-1930, p 195, By Fintan Cullen, Published 1997, Cork University Press, accessed 30 May 2008
- ^ Sir Joshua Reynolds by Estelle M. Hurll
- ^ Ashbourne Church at Deryshireuk.net
- ^ a b Eighteenth Century Book Reviews: Jacques Zonneveld. Sir Brooke Boothby: Rousseau's Roving Baronet Friend. Review by JoLynn Edwards accessed 29 May 2008
- ^ 'General history: Baronets', Magna Britannia: volume 5: Derbyshire (1817), pp. LXIII-LXXV. url: Date accessed: 29 May 2008.
- ^ Lichfield Cathedral retrieved 29 May 2008
- ^ Sorrows. Sacred to the Memory of Penelope (1796)
[edit] External links
- Jacques Zonneveld. Sir Brooke Boothby: Rousseau's Roving Baronet Friend. De Nieuwe Haagsche: Uitgeverij, 2003. Pp. 542.
- Boothby at Sonnets.org accessed 25 May 2008
