==Life==
==Life==
The daughter of an army officer, Major-General John William Augustus “Handsome Jack” Romer (1750-1802), and his wife Marianne (1772-), née Cuthbert, she was baptised at [[Marylebone]], [[Middlesex]], now part of the [[City of Westminster]]. She had at least one brother, John, but little is known of her private life.
The daughter of an army officer, Major-General John William Augustus “Handsome Jack” Romer (1750-1802), and his wife Marianne (1772-), née Cuthbert, she was baptised at [[Marylebone]], [[Middlesex]], now part of the [[City of Westminster]]. She had at least one brother, John, but little is known of her private life.
She married Major, later Colonel William Medows Hamerton (1790-1860) of the [[Royal Fusiliers|7th Fusiliers]] in France in December 1818, but was separated from him in 1827, due to her adultery,<ref>Elder (2019), “Fancy Hall”.</ref><ref>See “Minutes of Evidence”.</ref> and reverted to her maiden name.<ref name=”ODNB” >ODNB entry by Catherine A. Jones. [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/24044. Retrieved 8 January 2013. Pay-walled.]</ref>
She married Major, later Colonel William Medows Hamerton (1790-1860) of the [[Royal Fusiliers|7th Fusiliers]] in France in December 1818, but was separated from him in 1827, due to her adultery,<ref>Elder (2019), “Fancy Hall”.</ref><ref>See “Minutes of Evidence”.</ref> and reverted to her maiden name.<ref name=”ODNB” >ODNB entry by Catherine A. Jones. [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/24044. Retrieved 8 January 2013. Pay-walled.]</ref>
English writer
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Isabella Frances Romer |
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|---|---|
.jpg) Isabella Frances Romer (1849) |
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| Pen name | Mrs. Romer |
| Years active | 1840—1852 |
| Children | 1 |
Isabella Frances Romer (1798–1852) was an English novelist, travel writer and biographer from London.
Life
The daughter of an army officer, Major-General John William Augustus “Handsome Jack” Romer (1750-1802), and his wife Marianne (1772-), née Cuthbert, she born in London on 13 May 1798, and was baptised at Marylebone, Middlesex, now part of the City of Westminster. She had at least one brother, John, but little is known of her private life.
She married Major, later Colonel William Medows Hamerton (1790-1860) of the 7th Fusiliers in France in December 1818, but was separated from him in 1827, due to her adultery,[1][2] and reverted to her maiden name.[3]
Author
Romer gained a reputation mainly as a travel writer, based mainly on the volumes The Rhone, the Darro, and the Guadalquivir. A Summer Ramble in 1842 (1843, reprinted in 1847), A Pilgrimage to the Temples and Tombs of Egypt, Nubia and Palestine in 1845–6 (1846), and The Bird of Passage, or, Flying Glimpses of Many Lands (1849), the last consisting of “a series of short stories set in Eastern Europe & the Middle East.”[4]
Although encouraging the physical (rather than “armchair”) travel of English women to the middle East, and desiring “to warn others from those contingencies against which none had warned me”, she stressed (1846, Vol.II, pp.337-338) that travel in these domains could be extremely demanding for excessively “delicate” females:
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- “I think that tourists in general have heretofore made too light of the perils of travelling in this country, and that many lives may be sacrificed to their accidental or intentional carelessness in disguising facts. Syria, in its actual state, is indeed no country for a delicate woman to travel in. All the wealth in the world, all the precautions possible, will not procure for her those auxiliaries to comfort which custom has rendered necessary for her well-being. She must forget that such things as carriages and carriage-roads exist; she must ride all day over execrable roads and under a burning sun; she must sleep at night in a tent, which is either the hottest or the coldest of all shelters; and if fever or accident overtake her on her way, she must trust in God and her own constitution to help her through, for neither physician nor apothecary, nor a roof to shelter her suffering head, will be forthcoming, even should thousands be offered for them.”
Romer’s first book was a fictionalized account of mesmerism, a controversial technique at the time: Sturmer: a Tale of Mesmerism (1841). “She had traveled extensively in France and Germany; and, from her own experiences and observations, she was totally convinced of the veracity of the phenomena of mesmerism. One of the main goals of writing her novel was to alert readers to the dangers of this most powerful tool in the wrong hands” (Yeates, 2013, p. 803).[5]
She began in 1840 to contribute sketches and short stories to Bentley’s Miscellany and other periodicals, including the great rival to Bentley’s, Henry Colburn‘s New Monthly Magazine.[6] Her biography of Marie Thérèse Charlotte, Duchess of Angoulême, was completed after her death by John Doran (1807–1878) and published in 1852 as Filia Dolorosa.[3]
Appraisal
Romer was described by a near-contemporary, the Irish writer Richard Robert Madden, as a “shrewd, lively, mystery-loving, and ‘a leetle conceited,’ occasional authoress, prone to expatiate rather extensively on themes merely personal, and regarding her own feelings, but always redeeming slight defects of that nature by vivid delineations, and smart, interesting, and entertaining descriptions.” Madden said that her descriptions of Palestine were “abounding more in sprightliness than spirituality.”[7]
Death
Romer died of cancer in Belgravia, London on 27 April 1852.[3]
See also
- ^ Elder (2019), “Fancy Hall”.
- ^ See “Minutes of Evidence”.
- ^ a b c ODNB entry by Catherine A. Jones. Retrieved 8 January 2013. Pay-walled.
- ^ Women Writers – Novelist, Essayists & Poets – R–Z Catalogue CXCVIII (London: Jarndyce Antiquarian Booksellers, 2012), p. 48.
- ^ “The Manchester Times’ report on Lafontaine’s first and second Manchester Conversaziones (of 13 November 1841) includes a long passage from her introduction [to Sturmer] (pp.7-8), in which Romer speaks as herself (rather than in the voice of either the story’s narrator or one of the book’s characters) of the dangers of mesmerism in the wrong hands” (Yeates, 2013, p. 507).
- ^ Notes on Isabella Romer on the University of Missouri Victorian Short Fiction site. Retrieved 8 January 2013.
- ^ Madden (1855), pp. 329–330.
References
Isabella Frances Romer
- 1840: “Some Account of the Turkish Pretender: An Extract from the Pilgrim’s Scrap Book”, Spirit of the Times, Vol.10, No.14, (6 June 1840), pp.160-161.
- 1841a: Sturmer, a Tale of Mesmerism: To Which are Added Other Sketches from Life, in Three Volumes: Vol.I, Vol.II, Vol.III, London: Richard Bentley.
- 1841b: “A Mystery”, Bentley’s Miscellany, Vol.10, (July 1841), pp. 412-421.
- 1842a: “The Sultan Mahmoud and the Georgian Slave”, Bentley’s Miscellany, Vol.11, (January 1842), pp. 122-143.
- 1842b: “The Necromancer; or, Ghost versus Gramarye”, Bentley’s Miscellany, Vol.11, (January 1842), pp. 368-377.
- 1842c: “The Two Interviews”, Bentley’s Miscellany, Vol.11, (January 1842), pp. 453-460.
- 1842d: “A Night in the Adriatic”, Bentley’s Miscellany, Vol.12, (July 1842), pp. 582-460.
- 1843a: “The Rock of Barabaké”, Bentley’s Miscellany, Vol.13, (January 1843), pp. 345-353.
- 1843b: The Rhone, the Darro, and the Guadalquivir: A Summer Ramble in 1842, in Two Volumes: Vol.I, Vol.II, London: Richard Bentley.
- 1844: “The Lover’s Rock: A Legend of Andalusia”, The New Monthly Magazine, Vol.72, No.286, (October 1844), pp. 196-211, No.287, (November 1844), pp.363-376.
- 1845a: “The Fête of Peterhoff”, Bentley’s Miscellany, Vol.17, (January 1845), pp. 22-33.
- 1845b: “St. Sylvester’s Night”, Bentley’s Miscellany, Vol.17, (January 1845), pp. 577-585.
- 1845c: “Story of a Picture: A Tale of Revenge and Murder”, The Albion, Vol.4, No.34, (23 August 1845), pp. 401-402.
- 1846a: “The Last Days of Riego”, Bentley’s Miscellany, Vol.19, (January 1846), pp. 261-267.
- 1846b: A Pilgrimage to the Temples and Tombs of Egypt, Nubia, and Palestine, in 1845-6, in Two Volumes: Vol.I, Vol.II, London: Richard Bentley.
- 1847: “A Legend of Florence: Taken from and Italian Chronicle”, The Keepsake for 1847, pp. 106-123.
- 1848: “A Romance of Ronda”, The Keepsake for 1848, pp. 172-186.
- 1849a: The Bird of Passage, or, Flying Glimpses of Many Lands, in Three Volumes: Vol.I, Vol.II, Vol.III, London: Richard Bentley.
- 1849b: “Story of a Haunted House”, Bentley’s Miscellany, Vol.26, (July 1849), pp. 436-445.
- 1851a: “The Quarrel; or Lady Eleanor’s Story”, Gems of Beauty: or, Literary Gift for MDCCCLI, Boston, MA: Phillips, Sampson, and Company.
- 1851b: “The Capucin”, The Ladies’ Gift; or, Souvenir of Friendship, pp.12-24, Boston, MA: David P. King.
- 1852: Filia Dolorosa: Memoirs of Marie Thérèse Charlotte, Duchess of Angoulême, The Last of the Dauphines, in Two Volumes: Vol.I, Vol.II, London: Richard Bentley.
Others
- Anon, “Mesmerism, or Animal Magnetism”, The Manchester Times and Lancashire and Cheshire Examiner, (Saturday, 13 November 1841), p.3, col.D.
- Elder, David (2019), “Fancy Hall”, in David Elder, A-Z of Cheltenham: Places-People-History, Stroud: Amberley Publishing Limited.
- Jones, Catherine A. (2004) “Romer, Isabella Frances (bap. 1798, d. 1852)”, in Matthew, H.C.G. & Harrison, B.H. (eds.), Dictionary of National Biography: In Association with the British Academy: from the Earliest Times to the Year 2000, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Lee, Elizabeth, (1897), “Romer, Isabella Frances (d.1852)”, p. 184 in Lee, Sidney (ed.), Dictionary Of National Biography: Volume XLIX: Robinson—Russell, London: Smith, Elder, & Co.
- Madden, Richard Robert (1855), “Mrs. Isabella Romer”, pp. 329-335 in R.R. Madden, The Literary Life and Correspondence of the Countess of Blessington, in Three Volumes: Vol.II, London: T. C. Newby.
- “Minutes of evidence taken upon the second reading of the bill, intituled (sic) “An act to dissolve the marriage of William Medows Hamerton Esquire with Isabella Frances his now wife and to enable him to marry again and for other purposes”, Accounts and Papers, Vol.279, House of Lords, 1830.
- Obituary: April 27: “In Chester-sq. Isabella-Frances, youngest dau. of the late Major-Gen. Romer”, The Gentleman’s Magazine, Vol.37, No.6, (June 1852), p. 636.
- Yeates, Lindsay B. (2013), James Braid: Surgeon, Gentleman Scientist, and Hypnotist, Ph.D. Dissertation, School of History and Philosophy of Science, Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences, University of New South Wales, January 2013.
