Brooke Biography

— The Corvey Poets Project at the University of Nebraska —

British Poetry of the later Eighteenth and Earlier Nineteenth Centuries

Bibliographical and Contextual Apparatus

Brooke, Charlotte

Reliques of Irish Poetry. Dublin: George Bonham, 1789.

Reliques of Irish Poetry, Consisting of Heroic Poems, Odes, Elegies, and Songs, Translated into English Verse, with Notes explanatory and historical; and the Originals in the Irish Character, to which is subjoined an Irish Tale. By Miss Brooke. To which is prefixed, A Memoir of Her Life and Writings. By Aaron Crossly Seymour, Esq. Dublin: J. Christie, 1816. Pp. cxxxvi + 46.

Biographical Information

Aaron Crossly Seymour opens his 1816 memoir of Charlotte Brooke with this statement: "To descend to posterity with honour, and have a name inscribed in the annals of fame, is the earnest desire of multitudes, but the lot comparatively of few." He then explains what it takes to earn a "place in the page of history, and secure a lasting remembrance" (iii). He lists deeds such as "extraordinary actions which affect the destinies of a kingdom [...] benefactors, not to their own country alone, but to mankind, by the alleviation of human misery, by putting a stop to a general and long continued course of injustice and oppression, and by the introduction of principles calculated to augment the sum of personal and social felicity [and] those who have attained the first rank in learning, or written books of superior excellence" (iii-iv). He goes on to explain why biography is important and quotes "Dr. Johnson [...] That there has scarcely passed a life of which a judicious and faithful narrative would have been useful" (v) Seymour continues:

If such a remark is generally applicable, much more is it appropriate to Persons of profound sagacity, brilliant imagination, amazing fortitude, quickness of perception and strength of intellect [...] But it has frequently been observed, that the lives of literary characters are enlivened by few incidents, and therefore seldom afford any great scope for biographical remark; for variety of action is not to be expected in the closet, or in the privacy of study: a simple narrative, therefore, of their writings and opinions is all that we can hope to find in their history. The life of the late celebrated Miss Brooke particularly exemplifies this observation; for in the retirement she loved and courted, and the tranquil labors of the closet, there is little room for the display of individual character, however great the abilities of the agent, and however important the effects of her literary exertions on the age in which she lived. (v)

Apparently Mr. Seymour was quite alone in his opinion that Charlotte Brooke's life story should be remembered; no other account of her life exists. He also wrote memoirs of her father, Henry's life and of the two founders of Calvinistic Methodism, George Whitefield and Lady Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon, facts which may seem insignificant. Brendan Clifford and Pat Muldowney argue, however, that the connections between the Brooke family and these dissenters gave Charlotte access to ideas and philosophies quite different than had she been exposed only those officially-sanctioned by the Protestant Ascendancy to which they belonged. (More on this can be found in the description and analysis of Reliques.)

Seymour doesn't move right into his memoir of Charlotte. First, in what seems to be an act to give legitimacy to writing about a woman, he gives an account of her family heritage, since she

descended from one of those families which heralds pronounce ancient and honorable. The pedigree is regularly deduced from William de la Brooke, who lived in the reign of Henry III, anno 1249, and whose descendants were ennobled as Knights, Baronets and Barons. (v)

We also learn in this section that "Sir Basil Brooke, of Madeley, in the County of Salop, Knight [...] was the forerunner of another Sir Basil Brooke, Knt., who "settled at Maghrabegg, and Brooke Manor, in the County of Donegal, and was an undertaker in the plantation of Ulster." One of his sons, Sir Henry, Knt., "personally served for many years in the wars of Ireland, as a Captain of foot, and in other stations; and during the troubles of 1641 preserved the town and county of Donegal" (vi). A few generations later, in 1706, another Henry Brooke arrived, who, in his turn, married his ward, Catherine Meares, who was also his cousin. They had twenty-two children, of whom Charlotte was the last and the only one to outlive her parents. In Seymour's words, "[she] was the wellbeloved and flattering child of his old age; and sent in the latter years of his life `to rock the cradle of declining age"' (xi). Other than this, the exact date of her birth remains unknown.

We learn that "at a very early age Miss Brooke gave indications of an uncommon capacity [and] Mr. Brooke observing in his amiable and ingenious daughter an excellent capacity for learning, gave her all the advantages of a liberal education" (xi). Because he chose to educate her at home, Charlotte benefited from a style of teaching that encouraged curiosity and experimentation. She studied literature, for which her love was the "result of disposition, and not of submission to controul," as well as the sciences, French, English, geography, and astronomy.(xiii xix)

That she should excel did not surprise Seymour in the least because, he says, Charlotte "inherited a large portion of her father's talents, and was one of the brightest literary ornaments of this country [Protestant Ireland]" (xi). Henry Brooke received most of his education in Ireland, including Trinity College, and then went to London at the age of seventeen to study law, where he also met Alexander Pope and Jonathon Swift. According to Seymour, "Swift prophesied wonders for him-Pope affectionately loved him" (x).

After his marriage, Brooke once again went to London "apparently with the intention of practicing law" (Clifford and Muldowney 146) and, under Pope's tutelage, wrote a poem entitled Universal Beauty: A Philosophical Poem In Six Books, published in 1735. After dealing with family business back in Ireland, he returned to London, where he took his place among the elite. His circle included not only Swift and Pope, but others including "Mr. Pitt (the late Lord Chatham) [...] and the Prince of Wales, who caressed him with uncommon familiarity" (Seymour xv). Under these conditions, Brooke wrote a play, Gustavus Vasa, the opening of which London society awaited. The government, guaranteed his fame and the play's popularity by making it the first play banned under the Licensing Act of 1737 (because some understood it to be an attack on Prime Minister Robert Walpole. (Davis 29) Brooke became the darling of the Opposition, among whom were counted "the brightest talent of the country" (Clifford and Muldowney 150). He continued to write well into the latter part of the century and thus Charlotte reaped the benefits of Henry's abilities and experiences.

As a young adult, Charlotte was drawn to the theater and had ample opportunities to indulge herself because of her father's position as a playwright. Seymour tells us that

"under such dangerous influences, Miss Brooke courted the acquaintance of those mock monarchs of the stage [...] Her rage for the amusements of the theatre soon carried all before it, and would have doubtless proved her ruin, had not Mr. Brooke hurried her from a scene so destructive to the happiness, and so pernicious to the morals of the youthful mind" (Seymour xxiii).

A friend of the Brooke family, James Cooper Walker, published a book in 1786 with the title Historical Memoirs of the Irish Bards, which, according to Robert Welch, was an "historical outline of the progress of Irish poetry and music from the earliest times to the eighteenth century" (28). The book includes several examples of poetry translated from the Irish into English and three of these, to which she "did not prefix her name," were Charlotte's first published work. (Seymour xxxiv).

Brooke's next project, Reliques of Irish Poetry, appeared three years later, in 1789. After that she completed a complete edition of her father Henry's work, to which she added his biography. Her last work, The School for Christians, came out in 1791.

Charlotte Brooke spent the last ten years of her life in economic hardship after a cousin lost most of the family's money in a business venture. She died in 1793, finally succumbing to the poor health with which she had been afflicted most of her life.