Regency Personalities Series-Grantley Berkeley

Regency Personalities Series
In my attempts to provide us with the details of the Regency, today I continue with one of the many period notables.

Grantley Berkeley
10 February 1800 – 20 February 1881

Grantley Berkeley

Grantley Berkeley was the sixth son of Frederick Berkeley, 5th Earl of Berkeley, by Mary Cole, daughter of William Cole. He was the brother of William Berkeley, 1st Earl FitzHardinge,Maurice Berkeley, 1st Baron FitzHardinge, Henry FitzHardinge Berkeley, Thomas Berkeley, 6th Earl of Berkeley and Craven Berkeley and the nephew of Sir George Cranfield-Berkeley. He was educated at Corpus Christi College and the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. He joined the Coldstream Guards and afterwards the 82nd Regiment of Foot.

Berkeley sat as Member of Parliament for Gloucestershire West from 1832 to 1852 as a Whig. In 1836 he proposed the admission of ladies to the gallery of the House of Commons; this was granted in 1841. After 1852 he devoted himself largely to field sports and writing.

He established a summer seaside residence in the Mudeford-Highcliffe area, occupying Beacon Lodge, on the clifftop just east of Highcliffe Castle (then still being built). He did not own it – it was rented by other VIPs such as the Bishop of London in 1837, but he seems to have spent most summers here for at least two decades (presumably when the Commons was in recess).

Berkeley was the author of a number of books, including Berkeley Castle, Sandron Hall, or the Days of Queen Anne (1840), and My Life and Recollections, 4 volumes, (1865–66).

An aristocratic snob, and (as a younger brother) an earl manqué whose godfather was the Prince Regent, he was ‘known for his vanity and arrogance’.

In 1836, Berkeley assaulted magazine publisher James Fraser over a review he published in Fraser’s Magazine of Berkeley Castle. He subsequently fought a duel with the review’s author William Maginn. Three rounds of shots were fired, but no one was struck.

Berkeley married Caroline Martha Benfield (1804–1873), daughter of Paul Benfield (1741–1810) and wife Mary Frances, née Swinburne (1771–1828), on 16 August 1824. Their two sons Swinburne and Edward died in 1865 and 1878 respectively. Berkeley died on 20 February 1881, aged 81.

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Regency Personalities Series-William Maginn

Regency Personalities Series
In my attempts to provide us with the details of the Regency, today I continue with one of the many period notables.

William Maginn
10 July 1794 – 21 August 1842

William Maginn

William Maginn was a journalist and miscellaneous writer, born at Cork, became a contributor to Blackwood’s Magazine, and after moving to London in 1824 became for a few months in 1826 the Paris correspondent to The Representative, a paper started by John Murray, the publisher. When its short career was run, he helped to found in 1827 the ultra Tory Standard, a newspaper that he edited along with a fellow graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, Stanley Lees Giffard; he also wrote for the more scandalous Sunday paper, The Age. In 1830 he instigated and became one of the leading supporters of Fraser’s Magazine. His Homeric Ballads, much praised by contemporary critics, were published in Fraser’s between 1839 and 1842. In 1837, Bentley’s Miscellany was launched, with Charles Dickens as editor, and Maginn wrote the prologue and contributed over the next several years a series of “Shakespeare Papers” that examined characters in counter-intuitive fashion (e.g., the key to Falstaff is his melancholy). From “The Man in the Bell” (Blackwood’s, 1821) through “Welch Rabbits” (Bentley’s, 1842) he was an occasional though skillful writer of short fiction and tales. His only novel, “Whitehall” (1827) pretends to be an historical novel set in 1820s England written in the year 2227; it is a droll spoof of the vogue for historical novels as well as the contemporary political scene.

In 1836, he fought a duel with Grantley Berkeley, a member of Parliament. Three rounds of shots were fired, but no one was struck. Berkeley had brutally assaulted magazine publisher James Fraser over a review Maginn wrote of Berkeley’s novel Berkeley Castle, and Maginn had called him out.

One of the most brilliant periodical writers of his time, Maginn left little permanent work behind him. In his later years, 1842, his intemperate habits landed him in debtor’s prison, and when he emerged through the grace of the Insolvent Debtor’s Act he was in an advanced stage of tuberculosis. He wrote until the end, including in the first volume of Punch, but he died in extreme poverty in Walton-on-Thames in August 1842, survived by his wife Ellen, and daughters Annie and Ellen, and son John.

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