Eliza Hayley | |
---|---|
Born | Chichester |
Died | London |
Nationality | English |
Occupation(s) | Translator, essayist |
Known for | Married to William Hayley |
Notable work | Essays on Friendship and Old Age by the Marchioness de Lambert; The Triumph of Acquaintance over Friendship: an Essay for the Times |
Eliza Ball Hayley (18 June 1750 – 8 November 1797) was an English translator and essayist, best known for having translated into English two essays by the French salonnière and intellectual Anna Thèrese de Lambert: Traité de l’Amitié (1732) and Traité de la Vieillesse (1732), published in 1780 as Essays on Friendship and Old Age by the Marchioness de Lambert. Sixteen years later she published an original work, The Triumph of Acquaintance over Friendship: an Essay for the Times (1796). [1] Some of the letters from Ball Hayley's that have survived, stored at The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge University, will be a part of the pilot digital edition of the correspondence of William Hayley: "A Museum of Relationships", a work in progress co-led by Dr Lisa Gee. [2] [3] [4]
Eliza Ball was the daughter of Thomas Ball (1698-1770), dean of Chichester, and Margaret Mill (1712-1783).
In 1768 she was married to William Hayley, her father's godson, whom she knew from infancy, and settled at Eartham, the Hayleys ancestral home, in June 1774 [5]
The couple separated in 1789, and Ball Hayley moved to Derby. Ball Hayley's mental health, quoted by Thomas as a reason for their estrangement, was a subject of interest for her contemporaries and her husband’s biographers, and it remains a matter of speculation. [6] Between 1794 and until her death, the author often visited London, residing near Hyde Park. [7]
If Seward’s letters to Ball Hayley are any indicator of the former’s social life, Ball Hayley was very active during those years. She was in her residence in London, [8] when she died the 8th of November 1797 of an "epidemic fever" [6]
She was buried in Eartham on the 17th of November 1797. Her husband William wrote an epitaph intended for her funeral monument:
“If lovely features and a lofty mind
Tender as charity as bounty kind
If these were blessings that to life could give
A lot which makes it happiness to live
Thou Eliza hadst been blest on earth
But Seraphs in compassion wept thy birth
For thy deep nervous woes of wondrous weight
Love could not heal nor sympathy relate
Yet pity trusts with hallowed truth serene
Thy God repays them in a purer scene
Peace to thy ashes to thy memory love
And to thy spirit in the realms above
All that from blameless sufferings below
Mortality can hope or angels know” [9]
Her obituary, published in the Gentleman's Magazine, described her as “Mrs Hayley, wife of Wm. H. esq. of Eartham, Sussex, the celebrated poet, and daughter of the late Rev. Thomas Ball, dean of Chichester.”, making no references to her publications. [10]
During the first half of 1781 Eliza resided in Bath, where she met, amongst others, William Melmoth Jr, to whom she had dedicated her Essays on Friendship and Old Age by the Marchioness de Lambert the year before. Between January and February, she attended Anna, Lady Miller’s Bath-Easton assembly. She was friends with the poet and literary critic Anna Seward. [11]
William Cowper was an English poet and Anglican hymnwriter.
Anna Seward was an English Romantic poet, often called the Swan of Lichfield. She benefited from her father's progressive views on female education.
William Hayley was an English writer, best known as the biographer of his friend William Cowper.
Henry Edward Yelverton, 19th Baron Grey de Ruthyn was a British peer. He was a tenant and sometime friend of Lord Byron.
Anne-Thérèse de Marguenat de Courcelles, who on her marriage became Madame de Lambert, Marquise de Saint-Bris, and is generally known as the Marquise de Lambert, was a French writer and salonnière.
Matthew Wren was an influential English clergyman, bishop and scholar.
Richard Polwhele was a Cornish clergyman, poet and historian of Cornwall and Devon.
Elizabeth Hamilton, also called Eliza or Betsey, was an American socialite and philanthropist. She was the wife of American Founding Father Alexander Hamilton and was a passionate champion and defender of Hamilton's work and efforts in the American Revolution and the founding of the United States.
Angelica Church was an American socialite. She was the eldest daughter of Continental Army General Philip Schuyler, and a sister of Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton and sister-in-law of Alexander Hamilton.
Louis Lambert is an 1832 novel by French novelist and playwright Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850), included in the Études philosophiques section of his novel sequence La Comédie humaine. Set mostly in a school at Vendôme, it examines the life and theories of a boy genius fascinated by the Swedish philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772).
William Seward was an English man of letters, known for his collections of anecdotes. he was closely acquainted in London with Samuel Johnson, the Thrales and the Burneys.
Thomas Park (1759–1834) was an English antiquary and bibliographer, also known as a literary editor.
Margaret Harries Wilson was an English poet, playwright, lyricist, writer and editor. She is considered one of the first female biographers.
The known works of Anna Seward include the following:
Honora Edgeworth was an eighteenth-century English writer, mainly known for her associations with literary figures of the day particularly Anna Seward and the Lunar Society, and for her work on children's education. Sneyd was born in Bath in 1751, and following the death of her mother in 1756 was raised by Canon Thomas Seward and his wife Elizabeth in Lichfield, Staffordshire until she returned to her father's house in 1771. There, she formed a close friendship with their daughter, Anna Seward. Having had a romantic engagement to John André and having declined the hand of Thomas Day, she married Richard Edgeworth as his second wife in 1773, living on the family estate in Ireland till 1776. There she helped raise his children from his first marriage, including Maria Edgeworth, and two children of her own. Returning to England she fell ill with tuberculosis, which was incurable, dying at Weston in Staffordshire in 1780. She is the subject of a number of Anna Seward's poems, and with her husband developed concepts of childhood education, resulting in a series of books, such as Practical Education, based on her observations of the Edgeworth children. She is known for her stand on women's rights through her vigorous rejection of the proposal by Day, in which she outlined her views on equality in marriage.
John Warner (1736–1800) was an English cleric and classical scholar.
Margarita "Peggy" Schuyler Van Rensselaer was the third daughter of Continental Army General Philip Schuyler. She was the wife of Stephen Van Rensselaer III, sister of Angelica Schuyler Church, Philip Jeremiah Schuyler, and Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton, and sister-in-law of John Barker Church and Alexander Hamilton.
Susan, Viscountess Pellew was the wife of Edward Pellew, 1st Viscount Exmouth.
John Johnson was a Church of England clergyman, poet, and editor, a cousin and friend of William Cowper, who lived with Johnson in his declining years.
Frances Maria Cecilia Cowper, sometimes known as Maria Frances, was a religious poet and part of the Madan-Maitland literary coterie.