Lady Charlotte Guest facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Lady Charlotte Guest
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Portrait of Lady Charlotte Guest
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Charlotte Elizabeth Bertie
19 May 1812 Uffington, Lincolnshire, England
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| Died | 15 January 1895 (age 82) Canford Manor, Dorset
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| Occupation | Translator, businesswoman |
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| Children | Charlotte Maria Guest Ivor Bertie Guest Katharine Gwladys Guest Thomas Merthyr Guest Montague Guest Augustus Frederick Guest Arthur Edward Guest Mary Enid Evelyn Guest Constance Rhiannon Guest Blanche Guest |
| Parent(s) | Albemarle Bertie, 9th Earl of Lindsey Charlotte Susannah Elizabeth Layard |
Lady Charlotte Elizabeth Guest (born Bertie; 19 May 1812 – 15 January 1895), later known as Lady Charlotte Schreiber, was an important English aristocrat. She is most famous for being the first person to publish the Mabinogion in a modern printed book. The Mabinogion is a collection of the oldest stories from Britain.
Lady Charlotte helped make the Mabinogion known as a key European literary work. This happened during a time when people were very interested in stories about King Arthur and the Gothic Revival style. The name Mabinogion came from a mistake made by a medieval copyist. This name was already used in the 1700s by William Owen Pughe and Welsh groups in London.
She was very good at languages. As the wife of John Josiah Guest, a major Welsh ironworks owner, she became a leader in studying Welsh-language literature. She was also a big part of the Welsh Renaissance in the 1800s. With her second husband, Charles Schreiber, she collected a lot of porcelain. Their collection is now at the Victoria and Albert Museum. She also collected fans, games, and playing cards, which she gave to the British Museum. She was known as a global businesswoman, a leader in education, a helper of others, and a popular host.
Contents
Early Life and Learning
Lady Charlotte was born on 19 May 1812 in Uffington, Lincolnshire. Her father was Albemarle Bertie, 9th Earl of Lindsey. When she was six, her father passed away. She also survived a house fire that same year. Her mother later married Reverend Peter William Pegus, whom Charlotte reportedly did not like.
Charlotte had two younger brothers and some half-sisters. As her mother became ill, Charlotte started helping to run the family home. She loved spending time in the garden and disliked being stuck indoors. She also had a strong interest in politics from a young age.
Charlotte was very talented with languages and books. She taught herself Arabic, Hebrew, and Persian. She also studied Latin, Greek, French, and Italian with her brothers' tutor. Lady Charlotte was a very organized person. She woke up early and disliked laziness.
Her upbringing was typical for someone of her high social class. She learned skills like singing and dancing. She didn't have many close friends, but she was closest to the O’Brien sisters.
Her Work and Contributions
Helping Education in Dowlais
Lady Charlotte saw the need for better education for working people. This was partly due to Chartism, a movement for workers' rights. Many wealthy people in the 1800s helped build schools and fun places for their workers. The Guest family did this too.
With support from her cousin, Henry Layard, Lady Charlotte focused on providing education in Dowlais. Even though it was hard for women to be involved in public matters back then, she managed to put many of her educational ideas into action.
Lady Charlotte was very dedicated to her work. She regularly visited schools and gave out prizes to encourage students. She also provided materials for sewing and made sure schools had the supplies they needed. She supported schools in Swansea and Llandaff, as well as Dowlais. The Dowlais school was considered one of the most important and advanced in Britain during the 1800s.
Her efforts to improve education also led to a library being built in the mid-1840s. At first, people had to pay a small fee to use it. But in 1853, it became a free public library.
Managing Dowlais Ironworks
Dowlais Ironworks was a very large iron factory near Merthyr Tydfil in the 1800s. It was one of four major ironworks in that area.
After her husband passed away in 1852, Charlotte Guest helped manage the Dowlais Ironworks. She worked with G. T. Clark and Edward Divett to oversee the business. As a widow, she was the main person in charge. When she remarried in 1855 to Charles Schreiber, G. T. Clark took over more of the daily control. However, some reports say she stopped running the ironworks to travel and build her amazing ceramics collection.
Publishing Ancient Welsh Tales
When Guest arrived in Wales, she already knew seven languages. She then learned Welsh and connected with important Welsh scholars. These scholars, like Thomas Price and John Jones (Tegid), encouraged her work. She translated several old Welsh songs and poems. In 1837, she started working on the Mabinogion.
John Jones (Tegid) got her a copy of the Llyfr Coch Hergest manuscript. This was a very old book of Welsh stories. The first story Charlotte translated was "The Lady of the Fountain" (also called "Owain"). It was published in 1838 and was very popular.
Before Charlotte, William Owen Pughe had also translated some of these tales. He published parts of "Pwyll" in 1795 and 1821. He had translated all the tales, but his work was not published before he died in 1835. Charlotte Guest did not use Pughe's translations. However, she did use a Welsh dictionary that Pughe had finished in 1803.
Charlotte Guest's Mabinogion was the first time these stories were published in a modern printed book. It came out in seven parts between 1838 and 1845. The first parts focused on the Arthurian stories, which were her favorites. In 1849, the work was republished in three volumes. These included famous tales like Owain, Peredur, Geraint and Enid, Culhwch ac Olwen, The Dream of Rhonabwy, and the Four Branches of the Mabinogi. The story of Geraint and Enid even inspired two poems by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
The seven-volume series (1838–45) and the three-volume set (1849) were bilingual. They had Tegid's Welsh text and Guest's English translation side-by-side. They also included many scholarly notes, beautiful illustrations, and fancy leather covers. All volumes were published in Wales and London at the same time.
In 1877, a new edition came out with only the English translation. This became the most well-known version of her work.
The Name 'Mabinogion'
Many people think Charlotte Guest invented the name Mabinogion for these stories. However, the name was already used in the late 1700s by people like Pughe. The name came from a mistake made by a medieval copyist. The word mabynnogyon looked like a plural form of 'mabinogi,' but 'mabinogi' is already a Welsh plural word.
The exact meaning of Mabinogi is not clear. But it definitely comes from the word 'mab,' which means son, child, or young person. This can be seen in how people were named "son of" in old family trees. Scholars still don't fully agree on its meaning. The title 'Mabinogi' truly only applies to the Four Branches of the Mabinogi. These are not just four simple stories; each one contains at least three tales. They are formally known as four tales out of the eleven that make up the standard Mabinogion collection after Guest's work.
Guest's own collection included twelve stories. She added the Hanes Taliesin, which other scholars later left out. This is because it is not found in the same old manuscripts as the other stories.
In 2007, a leading scholar named John Bollard questioned the idea of the Mabinogion as a single collection. He said that besides the Four Branches, which are connected, the other stories don't have much in common. They just happen to be old prose stories found in the same medieval books.
Her Personal Life
Lady Charlotte had many people interested in marrying her. She became friends with many smart men of her time. She almost married Benjamin Disraeli, who later became Prime Minister, because he admired her intelligence. Her first love was likely Augustus O’Brien, whom she met at age fourteen. She said it was the best day of her life. But her mother strongly opposed this relationship. She even said she would rather see her daughter dead than married to Augustus.
First Marriage and Family
To escape her unhappy home, Charlotte married in 1833 when she was twenty-one. Her husband, John Josiah Guest, was a very important industrialist and ironmaster. He owned the Dowlais Iron Company, which was the largest of its kind. He was also the first Member of Parliament for Merthyr Tydfil, Wales. He was much older than her, 49 to her 21.
They married on 29 July 1833 and moved to a new mansion in Dowlais. Even though John Guest was wealthy and important, his social status was lower than Charlotte's aristocratic family. This caused her some social stress. Despite this, they were married until his death in 1852, and Charlotte was mostly very happy. They had ten children:
- Charlotte Maria Guest (1834–1902)
- Ivor Bertie Guest (1835–1914)
- Katharine Gwladys Guest (1837–1926)
- Thomas Merthyr Guest (1838–1904)
- Montague John Guest (1839–1909)
- Augustus Frederick Guest (1840–1862)
- Arthur Edward Guest (1841–1898)
- Mary Enid Evelyn Guest (1843–1912)
- Constance Rhiannon Guest (1844–1916)
- Blanche Vere Guest (1847–1919)
Charlotte was very involved in her husband's efforts to help the local community. They built new schools for their workers. They also brought clean water to their homes, which was a very new idea at the time. Her husband trusted her more and more as his assistant at the ironworks. She even translated technical papers from French for him. John Guest became a baronet in 1838, partly because of his wife's social skills.
As John's health declined, Charlotte spent more time managing the business. After he died in 1852, she took over completely. She handled workers' strikes and difficult economic times. She kept the business stable until 1855, when she could hand it over to her oldest son, Ivor, and the manager G. T. Clark.
Lady Charlotte, along with her friend Lady Llanover, supported arts in Wales. Her story Enid influenced the poet Tennyson. Her ideas also influenced European artists, poets, and writers. She published and promoted her Mabinogion translations. Her 1877 English-only edition became very famous. It was even included in the Everyman series of classic books in 1902. Many more editions were published throughout the 1900s. In 2004, her work was put online. Modern translations of The Mabinogion include those by John Bollard (2007–2010) and Sioned Davies (2008).
Second Marriage and Collections
Charlotte then married Charles Schreiber (1826–1884). He was a scholar who had recently tutored her sons. He was 14 years younger than her. This difference in age and social status caused a big social scandal. It also separated her from many of her old friends. However, with her political support, her new husband became a Member of Parliament.
They spent many years traveling in Europe. During this time, they collected many ceramics. She later gave these to the Victoria and Albert Museum. She also collected fans, board games, and playing cards. These were later donated to the British Museum.
In 1884, Charlotte became a widow again. She lived to an old age. In her last few years, she became blind. She used her remaining eyesight to knit scarves for taxi drivers. She could no longer continue the journal she had written almost every day since she was 10 years old. Lady Charlotte died on 15 January 1895, at the age of 82, at Canford Manor in Dorset.
Her Many Descendants
Lady Charlotte had many grandchildren. Some of them became important figures, like Edward Ponsonby, the 8th Earl of Bessborough. Her grandchildren also included Granville Eliot and Montague Eliot, who became the 7th and 8th Earl of St Germans, respectively.
Her granddaughter Frances Guest married Frederic Thesiger, 1st Viscount Chelmsford, who served as Viceroy of India. Other notable descendants include Ivor Churchill Guest, who became the 1st Viscount Wimborne. Several of her grandchildren, like Christian Henry Charles Guest, Frederick "Freddie" Edward Guest, and Oscar Montague Guest, became Members of Parliament. Her family tree also includes the American Guests, the Earls of Bessborough, and the Viscounts Chelmsford.
