Charles Augustus Howell (10 March 1840 – 21 April 1890) was an art dealer and alleged blackmailer who is best known for persuading the poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti to dig up the poems he buried with his wife Elizabeth Siddal. His reputation as a blackmailer inspired Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes story, Charles Augustus Milverton.[1]
Contents |
Howell was born in Oporto, Portugal to an English father, Alfred William Howell, and a Portuguese mother. He claimed to have aristocratic Portuguese ancestry, and would wear a red ribbon of the "Order of Christ" which he proclaimed to be an inherited family order.[2] He moved to Britain in his youth.
In 1858 Howell left Britain shortly before his friend Felice Orsini attempted to assassinate Napoleon III, leading to rumours that he was involved in the plot. He returned in 1864.
Howell was the friend and business agent of both Rossetti and John Ruskin. Ruskin employed him as a secretary between 1865 and 1868. Ruskin trusted Howell with "affairs needing delicate handling and a wise discretion." This was usually to manage Ruskin's discreet charitable donations. But Howell sought increasingly to obtain complete control of Ruskin's finances.[2] Eventually Edward Burne-Jones persuaded Ruskin to sever his connection with Howell.
According to Rossetti's brother William Michael Rossetti, Howell was a skillful salesman "with his open manner, his winning address, with his exhaustless gift of amusing talk, not innocent of high colouring and actual blague - Howell was unsurpassable". His ability to exploit people's "hobbies and weaknesses" secured Rossetti several commissions.[3] Howell organised the exhumation of Siddal and the retrieval of the poems in 1869, an event that Rossetti insisted that he keep absolutely secret.
Howell's connection with the Rossetti family is said to have ended when he was alleged to have persuaded his lover Rosa Corder to create fake Rossetti drawings.[4] In 1883 Corder gave birth to Howell's daughter, who was christened Beatrice Ellen Howell.[5]
Howell died in 1890 under strange circumstances. He was found close to a Chelsea public house with his throat slit, with a ten-shilling coin in his mouth. The presence of the coin was known to be a criticism of those guilty of slander.[1] Reports are inconsistent about whether or not he was found already dead or died in the hospital to which he was taken. The embarrassment of an inquest and police investigation was avoided when his death was ruled to have resulted from "pneumonic phthisis", the slit throat having been inflicted perimortem or posthumously. Numerous, carefully filed, letters from high-placed people were found at his home, leading to much speculation.
The circumstances of Howell's death and the many rumours about his dishonesty and double dealings led to the accusation that he had used letters in his possession to blackmail prominent persons. His associates in the art world were divided. Edward Burne-Jones described Howell as "a base, treacherous, unscrupulous and malignant fellow".[6] Hall Caine called him a "soldier of fortune" and Algernon Charles Swinburne said he was "the vilest wretch I ever came across".[6] Other artists were more generous. Ford Madox Brown said he was "one of the biggest liars in existence" and "half mad", but also "good natured". Whistler said he was a "wonderful man... genius... splendidly flamboyant."[6] His biographer, Helen Rossetti Angeli, could find nothing to support the accusations of blackmail.[7]