In 2010 I went
to Leamington Spa in search of my great great grandfather’s grave. The local Parks
and Cemeteries Department were very helpful and supplied me with a plot number
and a map – of the wrong cemetery. I stood there baffled, at the graveside not
of Reverend William Augustus Salter but of some other John Doe, until I figured
out what must have happened.
The Parks
Department came through however. With no time to post me the right map, they
guided me towards the correct cemetery and grave by phone, in the manner of
ground crew helping a passenger land a stricken airliner.
It was not a dignified
spectacle. As they zero’d me in on the memorial in question, I got more and
more worked up, leaping over other graves and shouting excitedly into the
handset – “Yes, I can see a chapel. Yes, I’m on the left hand of the two paths!
YES, a pair of yew trees ten yards back on the right!! OH! THERE IT IS!!!
HOORAY!!!!” – while scattered groups of bereaved parents and children knelt
quietly here and there placing flowers and communing with the dead.
The grave of Rev William Augustus Salter (1812-1879) in
Warwick Cemetery
And then I burst
into tears. For three years I’d been researching the life of this man who died
a hundred and thirty years ago, and here I was, face to face at last with him
and his wife and daughter. I hadn’t brought flowers, but I gave them all our
news, took lots of photographs and transcribed his inscriptions. I was sad to
leave.
On my way back
to the car, I happened to pass the gravestone of Mary Salter Browne. She was at
that time not a known relative; but Salter isn’t a common name, so I made a
note, took more photos and transcriptions, and looked her up when I got home.
The grave of Mary Salter Browne (1823-1906), her
mother Mary Browne née Salter (1790-1864) and her niece Emillie Annie Browne
(12853-1938)
IN AFFECTIONATE REMEMBRANCE OF
MARY
MARY
WIDOW OF THE LATE
REV T.B. BROWNE
REV T.B. BROWNE
WHO DIED 10TH DEC
1864
AGED 74
AGED 74
AND OF THEIR DAUGHTER
MARY SALTER BROWNE
MARY SALTER BROWNE
WHO DIED 14 DEC 1906
IN HER 84TH YEAR
IN HER 84TH YEAR
AND OF
EMILLIE ANNIE BROWNE
EMILLIE ANNIE BROWNE
WHO DIED 20TH DEC
1938
AGED 84 YEARS
REJOICING IN HOPE, PATIENT IN TRIBULATION,
AGED 84 YEARS
REJOICING IN HOPE, PATIENT IN TRIBULATION,
CONTINUING INSTANT IN
PRAYER ROM XII 12
Mary was a niece
of my great horticultural ancestor John Salter of the Versailles Nursery in
Hammersmith. Her mother, his sister Mary, married the Rev Thomas Bulman Browne,
who died aged only 43 in 1825. Mary Salter Browne, only three when her father
died, remained dutifully unmarried to be her mother’s companion, and the
household was increased in mid-century by the arrival of her young nieces Alice
and Emillie. (One report names a third niece, Charlotte.)
The nieces’ mother
had died young in 1854, and their father soon afterwards emigrated to
Australia, leaving his sister Mary in
loco parentis. This role she fulfilled with great success, inspiring much
love and affection from her “daughters”, who lived with her until her death,
just as she had with her own mother.
Mary and her
nieces made ends meet, like so many spinsters, as teachers at Beech Lawn
College in Leamington of which Mary was principal. Emillie was an art mistress
and Alice a gym teacher and “Professor of Dance”. (Charlotte, the only
reference to her says, taught English.)
The title page of That
Colony of God, the only novel which Alice published under her own name
Late in life
Alice blossomed in an entirely different direction, as a novelist. In 1891 she
published The Rector of Amesty under
the pseudonym John Ryce – the last two letters of her and her aunt’s first
names. She followed it with two more novels, An Oath in Heaven (1903) and That
Colony of God (1923). I’ve read the opening chapters of Oath – it begins very racily with an
accidental murder – and the dedication of Colony
(written after the death of her beloved aunt) is “to the dear memory of Mary
Salter Browne 1823-1906.” If further evidence of the affection in which Alice
held Mary were required, she published their correspondence in 1911 under the
title You and I Together Love.
Neither Mary,
Alice or Emillie ever married. Alice died in 1936 and Emillie two years later.
Some information here comes from Troy Bassett’s
excellent site about Victorian novelists, At The Circulating Library.
This is my 200th post on Tall Tales from the
Trees. Although I don’t have any of Alice’s novels at time of writing, I have
inherited many books which have been handed down from father and aunt to son
and daughter, nephew and niece through the generations. I am now writing my own
book, which pulls many of these articles together in what I hope is a cohesive narrative
of a bigger story of the books and the family. It arises from the books they wrote, read and
gave each other, and in the more illustrious cases the books of which they were
the subject. It also looks at the spiritual zeal for education which drove many
generations of my family.
I miss your blog posts Colin!! When are you starting again?
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