William Gilbert, (20 May 1804 – 3 January 1890) was a British novelist and Royal Navy surgeon, and the author of novels, biographies, histories and several popular fantasy stories, mostly in the 1860s and 1870s. He is perhaps best remembered, however, as the father of dramatist W. S. Gilbert of Gilbert and Sullivan.
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Gilbert was born at Bishopstoke, Hampshire, the eldest son of William, a grocer in Commercial Row, Blackfriars, London, and Sarah.[1] His father died at the age of 32 when young William was seven years old, and thereafter, he and his younger siblings, Joseph and Jane, were raised in London by their mother's sister and her husband, Mary and John Samuel Schwenck.[2]
Gilbert served the East India Company as a midshipman from 1818 to 1821 but was unhappy with the conditions and so quit the service. He then spent several years in Italy, returning to England about 1825. There he studied at Guy's Hospital and then entered the Royal College of Surgeons in 1830. He was an assistant surgeon in the navy for several years but left when he received an annuity from his father's estate.[3] He first married Mary Ann Skelton in 1832, who died two years later, and then Anne Morris on 14 February 1836. The couple's famous son, W.S. Gilbert, was born on 18 November 1836. The Gilberts continued to travel in Europe, finally settling down in London in 1849. Even though Gilbert and his wife later had a troubled relationship, they produced, after W.S. Gilbert, three more children, Jane, Maude and Florence.[4]
Gilbert began his writing career around 1857. He was concerned, throughout his life, with the welfare of the poor and served as honorary secretary of the Society of the Relief of Distress. His interest in the poor is evident in his writing, and one of his recurring themes was that poverty, not genealogy, was the major cause of crime and the main factor in one's later fortunes. This theme would also be seen in his son's writing.[5] One of the elder Gilbert's first pieces was a pamphlet entitled, "On the Present System of Rating for the Relief of the Poor in the Metropolis" (1857). In 1858, anonymously, Gilbert published Dives and Lazarus, or the adventures of an obscure medical man in a low neighbourhood. The book was a fictional account focusing on what Gilbert saw as the increasing disparity in the lives of the rich and the poor. A similar theme pervades another early Gilbert novel, The Weaver's Family (1860). This theme continued to concern Gilbert throughout his career including in Contrasts; dedicated to the ratepayers of London (1873) and in one of his fiercest attacks on social abuses, The City; An Inquiry into the Corporation, its livery companies, and the administration of their charities and endowments (1877),[6] describing how 50,000 working-class people were evicted from their dwellings to make room for the Metropolitan Railway.[7] In an age of male chauvinism, Gilbert also wrote several articles about discrimination against women.[8]
In 1859, Gilbert published a novel, Margaret Meadows, A Tale for the Pharisees. This was made into a play called Mary Warner by Tom Taylor in 1869. Gilbert's most successful early novel was Shirley Hall Asylum: Or the Memoirs of a Monomaniac (1863), which told the stories of inmates of a lunatic asylum from the point of view of an escapee driven mad by trying to solve the problem of perpetual motion. Gilbert's first novel published under his own name was Christmas Tale: The Rosary, a Legend of Wilton Abbey (1863). The story purports to be the written confession of one Alicia Longspée, who had been Lady Abbess of the Benedictine Convent at Wilton in the 15th century. Gilbert's next novel, De Profundis, a tale of the social deposits (1864) is the story of a foundling rescued by a Scottish Fusilier Guardsman stationed in London. The foundling grows up to marry the guardsman's daughter. Another 1864 book was The Goldsworthy Family, or the country attorney, about an unethical lawyer.[9]
Gilbert's 1865 book, The Magic Mirror (about a mirror that grants wishes), containing stories with a moral was illustrated by his multi-talented son. Gilbert also wrote histories and articles and stories for numerous periodicals (often anonymously), including Cornhill, Temple Bar, St. Paul's, the Quiver, The Contemporary Review, The Sunday Magazine, Good Things, Good Words, Strahan's Boy's and Girl's (sic) Annual and The Fortnightly Review.[10]
Among Gilbert's best-known, and most popular, works were his Innominato tales of the supernatural, published in various magazines, including Argosy, and finally collected in The Wizard of the Mountain (1867). One of the best-known is "The Last Lords of Gardonal" (1867).[11] These stories concerned the adventures of an enigmatic wizard and astrologer called the Innominato (in English, "Nameless"), in 14th century Italy, who tried to use his powers to help people.[12]
In 1868, Gilbert wrote The Doctor of Beauweir, an autobiography, told from the point of view of a South Wales medic. King George's Middy (1869), also illustrated by W. S. Gilbert, relates the adventures of a Leicestershire squire's son who becomes a midshipman and is marooned of the coast of Africa. Another 1869 novel was Sir Thomas Branston. Later that year, Gilbert produced his most famous biography, Lucrezia Borgia, Duchess of Ferrara: a biography: Illustrated by rare and unpublished documents. In this work, Gilbert concluded, after extensive research, that there was no evidence of the acts of gross immorality of which Borgia was accused, including murder. This was followed in 1870 by The Inquisitor, or the Struggle in Ferrara, about the life of Renée of France, Duchess of Ferrara, set in 1554.[13]
In 1871, the novel Martha was followed by The Landlord of the "Sun", again describing a descent into degradation, this time involving a villainous seducer, an illegitimate child and drunkenness, and, in 1873, by Clara Levesque. Another theme that was seen in Gilbert's writings was his dislike of established religion and the Roman Catholic Church in particular. Two works on this theme included Facta non Verba: a comparison between the good works performed by the ladies in Roman Catholic communities in England and the unfettered efforts of their Protestant sisters (1874) and Disestablishment from a Church point of view (1875).[14]
Gilbert had a mercurial temper and was difficult to live with, imposing arbitrary restrictions on his wife and daughters. After many years of strained relations with his wife, Gilbert left home and separated from her in 1876 after forty years of marriage. He left his wife and daughters substantial incomes and the family home, assuming that he would be able to earn a good living from his writing.[15] However, he soon became seriously ill and appeared to be dying, and his doctors advised him not to write. His wife did not assist in his care and did not, ultimately, allow him to return home. Her son appealed to her on his father's behalf, but she would not change her mind. W. S. Gilbert apparently never contacted his mother again.[16] Instead, Gilbert went to live with Jane, his only married daughter, and her husband in The Close at Salisbury, where he resided for the rest of his life.[17]
In 1877, Gilbert published Them Boots, another description of characters from the lowest class of society, as well as The City. Pursuing another favourite theme, the dangers of drink, Gilbert also published in 1877 Nothing but the Truth, an unvarnished picture of the effects of intemperance. 1879 saw the publication of Mrs. Dubosq's Bible, about a French Huguenot group in Spitalfields in the 18th century, and the possession of a 1650 Geneva Bible by a poor person. In 1880, Memoirs of a Cynic was a protest against cruelty and hypocrisy. This was followed in 1881 by Modern Wonders of the World, or the new Sinbad, a series of 10 stories told to London children by Hassan, the son of an Egyptian slave dealer. His last book, published in 1882, Legion, or the modern demoniac, returns to Gilbert's campaign against drink, which, he illustrated, leads to "crime, profligacy, suicide, homicide, brutality, cruelty, pauperism, idiocy and insanity."[18]
Gilbert died at the age of 86 and was buried in The Close at Salisbury. Direct descendants of the Gilbert family still live in Cornwall, England.
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