Lady Mary Hamilton facts for kids

Lady Mary Hamilton or Lady Mary Walker (née Leslie; 8 May 1736 – 29 February 1821) was a Scottish novelist of the 18th century. She was the youngest daughter of Alexander Leslie, 5th Earl of Leven and the mother of James Walker, a Rear admiral in the British Royal Navy.

Her works included discussions of philosophy, education and art. Advanced in thinking for the time period, she was a strong advocate of education for women. Her most successful novel, Munster Village (1778), centres on a utopian garden city populated with fallen women and females escaping disastrous marriages. Jane Austen may have been influenced by her writings, taking the same names as some of Lady Mary's characters.

Family and personal life

Melville House, Lady Mary's birthplace

Lady Mary Leslie was born at Melville House, Fife, Scotland on 8 May 1736, the youngest daughter of Alexander Leslie, fifth earl of Leven and Melville, by his second wife Elizabeth, daughter of David Monypenny.

On 3 January 1762, Lady Mary was married to Dr. James Walker of Innerdovat, Fife. He was a physician based at Edinburgh's prison infirmary and heavily in debt. Though the marriage was unhappy, it was said to have produced ten children. At least half must have died in infancy; the Scots Peerage, followed by McMillan, asserts three sons and one daughter though other sources point to two Walker daughters, Isabella (Bell) and Elizabeth (Betzy). (A grandson, Baron Adolphe Thiébault, raised questions about the paternity of Lady Mary's children, in an 1863 history.) Lady Mary was estranged from Walker, who moved alone to Jamaica in the 1770s to take up a position there as a prison physician.

Lady Mary turned to writing to provide for her family. She would later note to a friend that "with a family of young children… abandoned by their father," she was forced to "cloath, feed, and educate them". She thus needed to support herself, producing her first novel Letters from the Duchesse de Crui (1777).

..... Both children were brought up and married with the surname Walker. In 1816, by a private act Parliament, both were acknowledged by their father and adopted the surname Musgrave. Lady Mary's Grandson the Rev George Musgrave Musgrave of Borden had been baptised George Musgrave Walker in Marylebone on the 25 July 1798. Elizabeth had married General Paul Thiébaut in Paris on 21st Nov 1793 but was divorced by 21 July 1804 to allow Paul Thiebaut to marry Elizabeth Chenais in Tours. When George Musgrave MP wrote his will</http://bedsarchivescat.bedford.gov.uk/Details/archive/110423904> in 1822, his daughter was living with him in his house on Green Street, Marylebone, as Elizabeth Musgrave. In James Maclean's 1963 book "Reward is Secondary" about the "Political Adventurer" Lauchlin Macleane it is suggested that Lauchlin was living with Lady Mary and she was pregnant when he left on his last trip to India. Lauchlin drowned when his ship went down on his 1778 return trip in the bay of Biscay. Lady Mary's son Lt Col Leslie Walker was born 1778 and died in 1840.

Lady Mary was introduced by her husband to George Robinson Hamilton and – accounts vary – sometime after Walker's death, (alternatively, without divorcing Walker) she went away with or married Hamilton, a cousin of Alexander Hamilton, 10th Duke of Hamilton and owner of a sugar plantation in Jamaica. She took Hamilton's name, and she and George settled in Lille, France in 1782, where he is described as a cloth merchant and they as living in great style. Two of her daughters with Walker, Isabelle and Betzy, married respectively the dramatist Victor-Joseph Étienne de Jouy and General Paul Thiébaut. Again, accounts vary: Lady Mary had two daughters with Hamilton, or had at least one surviving daughter with Hamilton, Sophia Saint John Hamilton Alderson.

George Hamilton died on 29 October 1797, and an analysis of his will demonstrates both that he and Mary were not married, and that James Walker was still alive in 1786. Hamilton made over all of his estate to Lady Mary, with the stipulation that the Jamaica estates were to be run for Mary's benefit by James Hope-Johnstone, 3rd Earl of Hopetoun and Alexander Leslie-Melville, 7th Earl of Leven (Mary's nephew).

After Hamilton's death, Lady Mary lived near Amiens, where she was very close to the writer Sir Herbert Croft. Croft was an eccentric English scholar who had compiled dictionaries, and the two lived there together as friends. Her daughter Bell and son-in-law Jouy visited them often. Croft introduced her to his secretary, Charles Nodier. Nodier translated Munster Village and helped her write another book in French, La famille du duc de Popoli or The Duc de Popoli (1810).

Despite her extensive holdings in Jamaica, little or no income was earned from them and the Croft household was poor. In 1815, (in alternate sources, at age 75) she went to Jamaica, as she believed she was being cheated financially out of some of her husband's estates, which had produced £3000 per annum but were now yielding £400. After her return – Croft having died in April 1816 – she lived with her daughter Sophia Alderson, who was widowed. Lady Mary died in Brompton, Middlesex near London on 28 February 1821, although some sources such as McMillan specify an 1822 date of death. The discrepancy may arise out of a delay in proving Lady Mary's will, which took until 5 July 1822 to be settled in favour of Sophia and her son Lieutenant-Colonel Leslie Walker. Her son James Walker, a Royal Navy officer, achieved the rank of Rear-Admiral.

A final conjecture concerning Lady Mary and her daughter Sophia is made by Wicks, that Sophia may have had an illegitimate daughter in 1805, fathered by Ugo Foscolo, and that the child, Floriana, was adopted and raised by Lady Mary (leaving Sophia free to marry). On Mary's death, Floriana was entrusted to the care of her father, and some or all of Sophia's inheritance was directed to Foscolo to provide for Floriana. That Ugo and Sophia had a daughter is supported by Traversa; and analysed, doubted but not discounted by Vincent. If true, then a corollary is that Lady Mary and family lived for some time in Valenciennes, before moving to Amiens.

Works

Title Page from an 1818 publication of The Duc de Popoli

She published the following works:

1. Letters from the Duchesse de Crui, 1777
2. Memoirs of the Marchioness de Louvoi, 1777
3. Munster Village, 1778
4. The Life of Mrs. Justman, 1782
5. The Duc de Popoli, 1810