The Rice Portrait - Who were the Harding Newmans? Part Three - The Rev. Dr. Thomas Harding-Newman

Rev. Dr. Thomas Harding Newman

When Colonel Thomas Harding Newman died in 1856, the bulk of his wealth including the estates of Nelmes, Black Callerton and Great Clacton went to his eldest son, the Rev. Dr. Thomas Harding Newman. It is likely to be at this point that the Rice portrait passed into his ownership.

Rev. Dr Thomas Harding Newman was born in 1811 to Thomas Harding Newman and Harriet née Cartwright. His mother died when he was four, after which his father re-married twice, first Elizabeth Ann Hall and secondly Anna Maria Parry.

He went up to Wadham College, Oxford in 1829 and was elected a Demy at Magdalen College in 1832. Here he became close friends with Thomas William Allies.

He was ordained priest in 1837 and became a Fellow of Magdalen College in 1846. He appears on the 1851 census at 15 Buckingham Street, Westminster as a teacher of classical literature.

Thomas' daughter Mary Allies recounted in her biography of her father that he and Thomas Harding Newman became very close friends at Oxford and that in 1833 the two of them went abroad to France and Italy, only returning at the end of 1836. Not long after this Allies fell headlong in love with Thomas Harding Newman's sister, Eliza Hall Newman, whom he met at Cheltenham in 1837 when she was just fifteen. Mary Allies published Thomas' diary entries for 1839 which are full of references to the Harding Newmans and visits to Nelmes.

Thomas Allies finally married Eliza Hall Newman in October 1840 when Eliza was eighteen, having overcome the opposition of her grandfathers Thomas Hall and Richard Newman, neither of whom were terribly keen on the match.

Eliza Hall Allies by George Richmond
reproduced by kind permission of Francis Allies

During his years at Oxford, Thomas Harding Newman gained quite a reputation as a prankster and an eccentric. On one occasion he bedecked a flower box outside his window with coloured home-made imitation flowers which attracted some attention on a winter's day and on another occasion he pretended to catch an enormous pike while fishing from his window which overlooked the river. He hauled it up amidst great excitement from a crowd of friends, only for them to discover it was made of stuffed cardboard wrapped in tinfoil. Another time he caused quite a stir by pretending to  thrash an undergraduate (in fact a pillow) with a cane while imitating the cries of the imaginary victim. These are some of the recorded pranks; according to Rev. William Tuckwell in his Reminiscences of Oxford many of his jokes were too coarse to be repeated. Tuckwell remembered him with fondness however:  'Of the remaining Fellows I will say no more…Two among them, Whorwood and T.H Newman claim a kindly though certainly not a reverential interest,' he wrote. This reputation for buffoonery is an interesting contrast to the character portrayed in the diary of Thomas Allies who expressed great concern about his friend's low sprits and 'inconstancy of purpose'. On August 30, 1939 he recorded that Harding Newman 'altogether seems to have no belief in Christian doctrines.'

In his appearance, according to the same obituary, he was of middling height, 'sprightly and springy;the countenance oval, the nostrils large, the nose rectangular and serving at the tip to support his spectacles, the mouth rather broad and rippling with humour, the eye prominent and environed by a huge ring, and the forehead partially concealed under a chestnut wig cut straight; in a word a Pickwick without embonpoint, and with a sarcastic in lieu of a weak mouth.' He combined this idiosyncratic appearance vocally with 'a ridiculously raucous voice and an odd laugh.' He was, before all things, a raconteur.

In 1873 Thomas Harding Newman resigned his Fellowship at Magdalen College. W.D. Macray in his Register of the Members of  St Mary Magdalen College recorded the following assessment of Harding Newman: 'Possessing artistic taste and knowledge, he yet, by an unrestrained indulgence of humour which led to great eccentricity, practically often acted as the College jester, and it must be said that it was well for the College, and all for any parish in which he might have lived, that he never became the incumbent of any benefice in the gift of the College.' All the tom-foolery had clearly not endeared him to the Oxford establishment and a friend, L.B Page, later wrote to The Times that Harding Newman had given up his fellowship on account of his 'extraordinary eccentricities'. He described Thomas as a strange character and eccentric-looking who wore a wig and dyed his whiskers. He said that he also was a collector who liked collecting 'unconsidered trifles' - he took home a chamber organ which one of the colleges was chucking out and he also had the old gates of Balliol college when the buildings were being rebuilt and installed them at his home at Nelmes.

Nelmes, Hornchurch, Essex

In the same year, 1873, the Court of Queen's Bench heard the case of Newman v Griffith. It involved a case against the vicar at Harding Newman's local church in Hornchurch. The vicar, Thomas Henry Griffith, had written letters in which he accused Thomas Harding Newman of having committed an 'unnatural offence', in other words of being gay. These accusations had been circulating, according the the court report, for a considerable length of time with a large number of letters having passed between the parties and between various members of Magdalen College and eventually Thomas Harding Newman had decided to sue Griffith for damages for libel and slander. Griffith did not enter a justification defence (now called a truth defence), but instead relied on the claim that Harding Newman was out of time to bring the action. He lost the case on this technicality and Harding Newman was awarded £300 damages by the jury.

For the last ten years of his life Thomas Harding Newman spent much of his time at his house, Rill Cottage at Great Clacton, now a suburb of Clacton-on-Sea but then a settlement in its own right.
By 1880 Thomas Harding Newman was approaching seventy years of age. Perhaps he was putting his affairs in order, for in December of that year he wrote a letter to his friend John Rouse Bloxam:

I should like to give another painting of Jane Austen, the novelist by Zoffany to her relative your neighbour Morland Rice. It is of a girl about 15, and came into my family the gift of Col. Austen of Chippington [sic] to my mother-in-law, or rather stepmother, my father’s second wife; who was a great admirer of the novelist. I can remember Col. Austen visiting this place.
Latterly when at Bramber I have failed to fall in with my old friend. I don’t think he can have forgotten me. I was at Oxford when he knocked his head against a post, and ascertained that the post was the harder of the two.

John Morland Rice was the grandson of Jane's brother Edward Austen Knight and was rector of the neighbouring parish to Bloxham's in Sussex. Thomas Harding Newman had no direct heir and his property was to be passed to his nephew Benjamin, so its easy to see why he might want to give the portrait to his old friend. Why he thought the portrait was a Zoffany is not clear. Zoffany and Humphry were contemporaries, they had both spent some years in India and had known each other. Perhaps Harding Newman had mis-read the signature on the portrait as 'Zoffany' rather than 'Humphry'. In any event he never did get around to passing the portrait on to Morland Rice.

Great Clacton

Thomas Harding Newman died on 21 April 1882 at Nelmes at the age of 71. His remains were taken to Great Clacton by train from where the funeral cortege left Rill Cottage for the church at Great Clacton in according with his request. Present at the funeral were the vicars of Hornchurch (Griffith having long gone) and Little Clacton as well as close friends and relatives, including his nephew Benjamin, the son of his brother, Captain Benjamin Harding Newman. The local paper reported that large numbers of local people also turned out to witness the sad ceremony.

Thomas Harding Newman was evidently an interesting and complex character. Practical joker and undoubtedly eccentric, he was also, according to his obituary in Jackson's Oxford Journal and others,'a man of high attainments in arts, and a very popular member of the Athenaeum Club and was also well known in West-end society'. The Essex Standard recorded that he was 'a true-hearted gentleman, kind, courteous, liberal and sympathising.'

As Thomas Harding Newman had not in fact given the portrait to Morland Rice it passed with the rest of his estate to his nephew, Benjamin Harding Newman, who is the subject of my next post.

Jane Austen & the Rice Portrait - Who were the Harding Newmans? Part Two - The Lefroy Connection

This is part two in a series of posts about the Harding Newman family, owners of the Rice Portrait for some fifty years or so. I have written previously about Eliza Hall and her family connections to Jane Austen HERE where I explain how the portrait came into the ownership of the family. I have written about Eliza Hall's husband Colonel Thomas Harding Newman and his antecedents HERE.

But there are other interesting family connections too - and links to a family whose name is known to everyone with even a passing interest in Jane Austen's life - the Lefroy family of Carrigglas.

Colonel Thomas Harding Newman had three children by his first wife, Harriet Cartwright. They were Thomas Harding Newman, Harriet Newman and Benjamin Harding Newman. Neither Thomas Harding Newman nor his sister Harriet Newman ever married. Thomas Harding Newman later inherited from his father while Harriet Newman lived all her life with her aunt, Amelia Newman, at Royal Crescent in Cheltenham. Their mother Harriet Cartwright died in 1815 and Colonel Harding Newman married Eliza Hall two years later.

Royal Crescent, Cheltenham

Thomas Langlois Lefroy

Their brother, Benjamin, the second son of Colonel Thomas Harding Newman and Harriet Cartwright, married Anne Lefroy Sadleir in about 1840. She was the daughter of Richard Sadleir of Scalaheen, Tipperary and his wife Elizabeth Sadleir née Lefroy.

Elizabeth was the sister of Thomas Langlois Lefroy, the subject of the delightful, exuberant early letters written by Jane Austen in 1796, when she was 20. Whether it was a serious affair or just fun and games is impossible to know. It came to nothing however, and Tom, who met Jane when visiting his aunt, went back to London to continue his studies. Three years later he married Mary Paul. There is an interesting account of Tom Lefroy here and an excellent account of the relationship between Tom Lefroy and Jane Austen here. Tom was staying with his aunt, Madam Anne Lefroy, Jane Austen's neighbour, friend and mentor, who was the wife of (Isaac Peter) George Lefroy, the rector of Ashe, near to the Austens. She died as a result of a riding accident on 16 December 1804, Jane's 29th birthday.

Jane Austen referred to Tom's sisters as the 'Miss Irish Lefroys': 'the third Miss Irish Lefroy is going to be married to a Mr Courtenay,' she wrote in 1798 (in fact Sarah Lefroy to whom Jane was referring, was the fourth daughter.) Elizabeth was the fifth Miss Irish Lefroy, four years younger than Tom. She had married Richard Sadleir in 1817 and had two children, Anthony Lefroy Sadleir and Anne Lefroy Sadleir.

After Benjamin Harding Newman's marriage to Anne Lefroy Sadleir, they initially remained in Ireland where there first child, Benjamin, was born in 1842. (This child would later inherit the Rice Portrait portrait from his uncle Rev. Dr. Thomas Harding Newman.) Shortly afterwards, Benjamin Harding Newman and his young family travelled to Southampton. Anna remained in Southampton while her husband, a Captain in the Royal Navy, set sail for Bermuda. Anne was pregnant with her second child but her husband would never see his daughter.  Harriet Elizabeth Newman was baptised at Southampton in January 1844. Meanwhile Capt. Benjamin Harding Newman died in the yellow fever outbreak of October 1843 at the Royal Navy base at Ireland Island, leaving his young widow with two babies under three years old.

Memorial to Benjamin Harding Newman
at Ireland Island, Bermuda

Two years later Anne's father, Richard Sadleir, died in Ireland and by the time of the 1851 census Anne and her mother Elizabeth, both now widows, and the two children are all living together in Cheltenham. It seems likely that the fact that Anne's sister-in-law, Harriet Newman who was close to her in age, lived in Cheltenham was the reason the women moved here as there is no other obvious connection to the town. All four women - Elizabeth Sadleir, Anne Harding Newman, Harriet Newman and her aunt Amelia Newman remained living in Cheltenham for many years.

On 8 November 1814 Elizabeth Sadleir's cousin Benjamin Lefroy, the youngest son of Anne and George Lefroy married Jane Austen's niece Anna Austen, the daughter of Jane's brother, James. Benjamin Lefroy's sister, (Jemima) Lucy Lefroy married Henry Rice, who unfortunately turned out to be a hopeless spendthrift and the couple were dogged by financial problems for much of their life. Henry's younger brother, Edward Rice was married to Jane Austen's niece Elizabeth Knight. How closely these families are all entwined together! In yet another link between them, Anne Lefroy Sadleir's cousin Thomas Edward Preston Lefroy, the son of her mother's brother Anthony, married Anna Austen's daughter, Anna Jemima Lefroy.

Once again we can see how the Harding Newman family link to the Austens and their circle through their family connections.

And what of the two young children Benjamin and Harriet, who never knew their father? Harriet Elizabeth Newman married a solicitor, Arthur Croker, and moved to Ealing together with Harriet's mother. Benjamin Harding Newman married Charlotte North, the daughter of a doctor and JP from Brecon, in 1868. Later, he would inherit the Rice Portrait from his childless Uncle Thomas and so we'll hear more about him in a later post.

Jane Austen & the Rice Portrait - Who were the Harding Newmans? Part One - Thomas Harding Newman and his antecedents

Richard Newman Harding by George Romney

In my previous post about Eliza Hall, I recounted how the Rice Portrait, according to its later owner Rev. Dr. Thomas Harding-Newman, was given to his step-mother, Eliza Hall. It was to remain within the Harding-Newman family for over fifty years. So who was this family and what do we know about them?

Previous generations

Eliza Hall’s husband, Colonel Thomas Harding Newman was the son of Richard Newman Harding. He was born in 1757, to Sarah Newman, daughter of Richard Newman of West Ham Abbey in Essex and Benjamin Harding, of Hacton House, near Hornchurch.

Like the Hall family, the Hardings and the Newmans owned slave plantations in Jamaica. The UCL site Legacies of Slave Ownership records the relationships between the various members of the family with dealings in Jamaica which were principally at Blue Hole in Hanover.

In around 1770/71 the youthful Richard Newman Harding had his portrait painted by George Romney, not long before the latter set off on a tour of Italy with his close friend Ozias Humphry in March 1772 to study the great Italian artists. The portrait descended down the family line to Benjamin Harding Newman, who sold it in 1890. (I'll explain the likely reason he decided to sell it in a later post.)

The abstemious Schutz

In 1776 at the age of nineteen Harding married seventeen-year-old Harriet Schutz, the daughter of Francis Schutz who was third cousin to Frederick, Prince of Wales. His family had come over from Hanover with George I but his chief claim to fame now is the portrait of him by William Hogarth, which portrays Schutz vomiting into his chamberpot while lying in bed nursing a monumental hangover. The portrait was allegedly commissioned by his new wife Susan Bacon, to remind him he must leave his debauched ways behind. Later his descendants had the painting reworked to replace the chamberpot with a more respectable newspaper.

'Francis Matthew Schutz in his bed'
 by William Hogarth

The vomit has now been restored and the painting is in the ownership of Norwich Museum and Art Gallery.

It was from the Schutz family that Richard Newman Harding inherited the estates of Black Callerton in Northumberland and Great Clacton in Essex.

In 1783 Richard Newman Harding took the name Newman in order to inherit from his grandfather, who had owned an estate at Great Nelmes near Hornchurch in Essex and other properties and thus formally became Richard Newman Harding Newman. In 1806 after the death of Harriet Schutz, Richard married Rosamond Bradish with whom he had two children before his own death in 1808 whereupon his eldest son, Thomas Harding Newman (b.1779) inherited the bulk of the estates and a share of the Blue Hole Plantation in Jamaica.

Col. Thomas Harding Newman married three times. His first wife was Harriet Cartwright, the daughter of John Cartwright of Ixworth and with her he had two sons, Thomas and Benjamin and a daughter, Harriet. After Harriet Cartwright's death in 1815, Thomas married Eliza Hall on 29 December 1817, and it is at this time that Colonel Austen is believed to have presented the portrait of Jane Austen to Eliza as a wedding gift. Thomas and Eliza went on to have at least three children: John, Eliza and Julia. Eliza Hall Newman died in 1831 at Exmouth, presumably at the home of her brother Thomas, who lived at Littleham, Exmouth for many years.

Thomas Harding Newman married his third wife, 58 year old Anna Maria Parry in 1840. Anna Maria was the daughter of the late Charles Henry Parry, the vicar of Speen, Berkshire and his wife Mary Ann née Shephard. Charles Parry had been ordained deacon in 1778 and became vicar of Speen two years later, succeeding his father-in-law Thomas Shephard who resigned his position. He held the post for eight years until his early death at the age of 31.

Anna Maria's mother, Mrs Mary Parry, owned land in Speen and in nearby Shaw cum Donnington. She had lived at Donnington Priory, once owned by the Cowslades, which passed to her under the will of John Cowslade but in later years she lived in Clifton with her daughter, Harriet Allen. Presumably, Anna Maria was also living with Harriet and her husband until her own marriage to Thomas Harding Newman, as they married in Clifton. A third sister, Catherine, had died in 1832.

From 1833, Mrs Parry's property in Speen was rented out to  James Edward Austen, Jane Austen's nephew. Two of his children were born in Speen, Spencer and Arthur Henry, and the Austens remained here until James Edward inherited nearby Scarlets at Hare Hatch from Mrs Leigh-Perrot in 1837 and added Leigh to his family name. Mrs Mary Parry died the same year. Her will refers to her property in Speen 'now in the occupation of the Reverend Mr Austin and others' which she leaves to her two surviving daughters Anna Maria Parry and Harriet Allen. When James Edward moved into Scarlets at the beginning of 1837, his mother Mary and sister Caroline moved into the Parry's house in Speen.

Speen, of course, has other connections to Jane Austen, through the inter-connected families of Lloyd, Fowle and Craven. The Fowles were at Kintbury, five miles down the road, while the Lloyd's aunt, Mrs Craven, was living at Speen Hill.

After their marriage, Thomas and Anna Maria Harding Newman lived initially at Northam, near Bideford in North Devon. They are recorded as being here on the 1841 census and in 1845 Thomas' son-in-law Thomas Allies refers to a visit to his wife's father at Bideford so he must presumably be still living in Devon at this date. But by 1851 they have moved to Anna Marie's birthplace for the 1851 census shows them living at Church Speen Lodge, Speen.

(It appears that the Essex house Nelmes was let to Thomas Walmesley and his family, who in turn let the house to his brother-in-law Henry Petre who lived there for six months in 1859 while his own house was being renovated. Walmesley's niece Lucy described the house as a 'curious old place with a ghost room'. It was also, apparently, teeming with rats.)

Speen Church

Thomas Harding Newman died in 1856 and when his will is proved he is referred to as 'Thomas Harding Newman formerly of Nelmes in the Parish of Hornchurch in the County of Essex but late of Speenhill in the County of Berks.'

In his will Thomas Harding Newman left his plate linen and horse and carriage to his wife. His eldest daughter received five hundred pounds, his three youngest children were left Woodspeen Farm and £5000 divided between them. The remainder of his considerable estates and property went to his eldest son, Rev Dr Thomas Harding Newman. Anna Maria Newman continued living at Church Speen until her own death in 1872 at the age of 90. In 1861 members of the Majendie family appear on the census as visitors staying with Anna Newman, who lived very close to the vicarage. They were relatives of Henry Majendie, the vicar of Speen from 1819 until 1870, who was a friend of James Edward Austen Leigh.

It was clearly not only Thomas Harding-Newman's second wife, Eliza Hall, who had connections with Jane Austen. His third wife, Anna Maria Parry, had connections to the Austens too.

Given these connections, it is likely that James Edward Austen-Leigh knew about the portrait of his aunt in the ownership of Thomas Harding Newman. Yet he chose not to use it in his own biography of Austen published in 1869. Why? My guess is that the reason is due to bad feeling between the Hampshire and the Kent Austens. James Edward's father James was the eldest son. The generally accepted system of passing money through the family in the eighteenth century was via the system of primogeniture whereby the eldest son would inherit the family wealth, often leaving the remaining siblings with comparatively little. Yet James Austen had been passed over. It was younger brother Edward who was adopted by the wealthy Knights and Edward who was the wealthy member of the family. James Austen, who often fretted over his finances, would have had to have been a saint not to feel some resentment of his younger brother's good fortune. I have long been of the opinion that the Austens were far from the close-knit family portrayed in the Memoir. Furthermore, on the Kent side, after the death of old Francis Austen, his son, Francis Motley Austen does not seem to have been particularly well disposed towards his poorer relations. Relations between the Austens living in Kent and those in Hampshire grew increasingly distant. There was certainly no co-operation from Edward Austen Knight's descendants with the Memoir and requests to use Jane's letters which were mainly in the possession of Fanny Knatchbull, Jane's niece, were steadfastly refused.

So, if he had known of this portrait, would James Edward have used a painting for his Memoir that had been commissioned by the wealthy Austens of Sevenoak and that had been given to someone outside the family rather than passed to Jane's closest relatives? Perhaps there was resentment about this too. It seems possible that if James Edward did know the whereabouts of the portrait he would be quite likely to ignore it in favour of an alternative image, to make the point that they were the custodians of Jane Austen's memory, not the relatives in Kent. 

In my next post I will look at Thomas Harding Newman's brother Benjamin who married into a family whose name will be familiar...

Jane Austen and the Rice Portrait - Who was Eliza Hall?

The Rice Portrait

This article concerns the identity of Eliza Hall. *

The Rice Portrait is believed by its supporters to have been commissioned by Francis Austen of Sevenoaks, Jane's very wealthy great uncle. It is then thought to have been passed to his son, Francis Motley Austen and thereafter to the latter's second son, Colonel Thomas Austen, the first having predeceased his father. Thomas Austen inherited in 1815, but did not take possession of his father's house and contents until the death of his mother in the spring of 1817. Jane died in the July of that year.

The first documentary evidence of the portrait is a letter written by Rev. Dr Thomas Harding Newman in 1880. By this time he had become the owner of the portrait and according to him it had come into his family as a gift from Colonel Thomas Austen. The evidence is contained in a letter written by him and dated Dec 30 1880, addressed to Harding-Newman's friend Dr John Rouse Bloxam:

I should like to give another painting of Jane Austen, the novelist by Zoffany to her relative your neighbour Morland Rice. It is of a girl about 15 and came into my family the gift of Col Austen of Chippington [sic] to my mother-in-law, or rather stepmother, my father’s second wife; who was a great admirer of the novelist. I can remember Col. Austen visiting this place. Latterly when at Bramber I have failed to fall in with my old friend. I don’t think he can have forgotten me. I was at Oxford when he knocked his head against a post and ascertained that the post was the harder of the two.

Rev. Dr. Thomas Harding-Newman's step-mother, his father's second wife was Eliza Hall. She married Colonel Thomas Harding-Newman in December 1817 and there is speculation therefore that the portrait was a wedding gift from Colonel Thomas Austen. However there is no documentary evidence of this and we do not know with any certainty exactly when the portrait was given to Eliza Hall. Rev. Dr Harding-Newman was six years old when his father re-married and if he could recall Colonel Austen visiting 'this place' ie. the family home of Nelmes in Essex, these visits may well have taken place some time after their marriage. The portrait may have been given to Eliza Hall at any time before her death in 1831. 

But who was Eliza Hall and why might Colonel Austen have felt it appropriate to give her a portrait of Jane Austen? As far as I know, there has been no research published into her identity and yet her family connections are significant.

Baptism entry for Elizabeth Ann Hall

Eliza, or more properly, Elizabeth Ann Hall, was born at Egham, Surrey on March 4, 1789 to Thomas Hall (b.1757) and his wife Elizabeth née Humffreys (b.1760).

Thomas Hall's father, Thomas Kirkpatrick Hall (b.1725) owned and operated several major sugar plantations in Jamaica and 'owned' large numbers of slaves to work those plantations; Thomas Hall's elder brother Hugh Kirkpatrick Hall of Holly Bush, Derbyshire was the main beneficiary of these plantations when their father died in 1772. The Hall family records are now held at the University of California, San Diego, and there is a lot more information about the history of the Hall family's extensive dealings in Jamaica HERE which the university has helpfully made available to download.

Thomas Hall married Miss Elizabeth Humffreys at Ludlow on 3 December 1787. Elizabeth was the daughter of the late William Humffreys of Llwyn, Llanfyllin, Montgomeryshire, who had died in 1772, and his wife Ann Lloyd. A copy of William Humffrey's will is in the Hawley archive in Lincolnshire. (We'll see later why it ended up in the Hawley archives.)

After Eliza Hall's birth in 1789, Thomas and Elizabeth Hall went on to have five more children - twins Sophia and Thomas in 1790, William in 1791, Charles in 1793 and the last, George, was born in 1794. There were no more children and, while I have so far been unable to establish the date of Elizabeth Hall née Humffreys' death, it is possible that she died  either in childbirth or soon after George was born. The Rice family tradition is that Eliza Hall lost her mother when she was relatively young and I have found nothing to contradict this.

When Eliza Hall married Colonel Thomas Harding Newman on 29 December 1817, both Eliza and her father Thomas Hall's address on the marriage settlement is given as Cumberland Street, Portman Square, London. You can view a copy of the Epitome of the Settlement HERE.

Marriage entry for Eliza Hall and Thomas Harding Newman

Eliza and Thomas Harding Newman lived at the Newman family home of Nelmes, near Hornchurch in Essex. (The house was demolished in 1967.) They had three children, John Henry Newman, Eliza Hall Newman and Julia Harding Newman. Thomas Harding Newman also had three children from his first marriage to Harriet Cartwright, who had died in 1815, they were Thomas Harding Newman, Benjamin Harding Newman and Harriet Newman.

So how might Eliza Hall have known Jane Austen? Well, it transpires that she was closely related to the Hawleys of Leybourne Grange, near Maidstone in Kent. The Hawleys were friends of Jane and are mentioned in her letters and they in turn were very closely connected through marriage with another family very close to Jane Austen - the Bridges of Goodnestone Park.

Eliza Hall's aunt, her mother's eldest sister Ann Humffreys, had married barrister and High Sheriff of Kent, Sir Henry Hawley of Leybourne Grange, Kent and 4 Harley Street, London, at Ludlow in 1785. Henry Hawley was a widower. His first wife, Dorothy née Ashwood, had died in 1783, leaving him with four young children: Henry 7, Dorothy Elizabeth 5, Harriott 3 and baby Charlotte, who was just nineteen months old when their mother died. Ann Humffrey must have therefore acted as a surrogate mother to her four young step-children as well as bearing four of her own - Frances, James, Eliza and Louisa Hawley.

The older Hawley children were contemporaries of Jane Austen and her siblings and were very well known to Jane. The eldest child, Henry, born in 1776, was an acquaintance of Jane's brother Edward Austen (who later changed his name to Edward Knight). Deirdre Le Faye, in her incredibly detailed A Chronology of Jane Austen and her Family, has noted some of Henry Hawley's movements. In June 1802, for example, she notes that Mr Hawley, Mr Austen [Edward Austen Knight presumably] and a Mr Douce paid for a joint passport to travel to Paris, they were recommended by Sir Henry Hawley.

All three daughters of Henry Hawley from his first marriage are mentioned by Jane Austen in her letters: 'We are to meet a party from Goodnestone, Lady B [Lady Bridges née Dorothy Hawley], Miss Hawley [Harriott Hawley] and Lucy Foote' Jane reported to Cassandra in her letter of 3 November 1813. Meanwhile, Mrs J Bridges [Charlotte Hawley] is mentioned in the list of opinions of Emma which Jane  recorded. She preferred it to all the others according to Jane.

The Bridges family, baronets of Goodnestone Park, Kent, were intimately connected with the Austens and are also mentioned frequently in Jane's letters. Dorothy Hawley married William Brook Bridges in 1809  and later became Lady Bridges and Charlotte Hawley married John Brooke Bridges in 1810. John Bridges died just two year's later, and must have been unwell for some time, for in May 1811 Jane wrote to Cassandra: 'Poor John Bridges! we are very sorry for his situation and for the distress of the family. Lady B. is severely tried. And our own dear brother suffers a great deal, I dare say, on the occasion.' William and John Bridges' sister, Elizabeth, married Jane's brother Edward Austen in 1791 and had eleven children, before dying in 1808, shortly after the birth of the last.

There is also speculation that another son of the Bridges family, Reverend Edward Brook Bridges may have proposed to Jane, speculation used in the excellent screenplay Miss Austen Regrets. She certainly remarked upon the attention he was giving her. 'It is impossible to do justice to the hospitality of his attentions towards me; he made a point of ordering toasted cheese for supper entirely on my account,' Jane wrote to Cassandra in 1805. It is a remark Jane makes in a letter to Cassandra in 1808 which has led to speculation that Edward's keenness to make toasted cheese may have led to a more serious proposal. 'I wish you may be able to accept Lady Bridges's invitation, tho' I could not her son Edward's,' she says, although for all we know, this could have been nothing more than an invitation to supper. But Edward does get mentioned frequently in Jane's letters. When she hears of his engagement, which was 'quite news', she says, 'I wish him happy with all my heart.'

Jane Austen knew Sir Henry Hawley and his wife Ann who were married for over forty years and living in London and in Leybourne, Kent, just 30 miles or so from Jane's brother Edward Austen Knight's estate at Godmersham Park. It is very possible that Jane Austen also met their niece Eliza Hall, although there is no evidence that she did in the letters that we have. (Only about 160 of Jane's letters survive however, and there are gaps of years where we have no letters at all.)

Sir Henry Hawley died in 1826, his wife Ann Hawley née Humffreys died three years later. Henry Hawley's daughter Dorothy Hawley (Lady Bridges) died in 1816 but his second daughter, Charlotte, lived until 1847. She re-married in 1823. Her second husband was Thomas Gardiner Bramston of Skreens, which was an estate not far from her cousin Eliza's home of Nelmes. He died suddenly in 1831, just a few months after becoming MP for Essex. The 1841 census shows Charlotte Bramston née Hawley at Springfield Lyons, Chelmsford, together with her sister Harriott Hawley and step-sister Eliza Hawley.

1841 census

Henry and Ann Hawley were alive long enough to see the portrait Colonel Austen had given to their niece, as were Eliza Hall's cousins Charlotte, Harriott and Eliza Hawley.

Eliza Hall's family connections mean that the theory suggested by Deirdre Le Faye now seems  unlikely. She believes the portrait to be of Mary Anne Campion, the daughter of Colonel Thomas Austen's sister Jane. The Colonel was hardly likely to confuse his niece with his cousin, but the suggestion is that he gave the portrait to Eliza Hall, knowing it was not a portrait of the novelist, but passed it off as such to please Eliza, taking the 'proverbial view that a nod's as good as a wink to a blind horse.' Leaving aside the vexed question of why Colonel Austen would do such a thing (and presumably include his wife in the deception), one of Eliza Hall's relatives would surely have pointed out that it was not Jane Austen!

Eliza and her father lived at Cumberland Street (now known as Great Cumberland Place) north of Marble Arch, while her aunt Ann Hawley lived  at Harley Street, just the other side of Portman Square. Hardly a great distance apart! To imagine that no-one in Eliza Hall's circle knew Jane Austen, we now know, is impossible. Her aunt, uncle and her cousins knew her well, and there is a good chance that Eliza Hall had met Jane Austen too.

Eliza was reported by The Gentleman's Magazine to have died at Exmouth in  August 1831, she was presumably at the home of her brother Thomas who lived at nearby Littleham. She was aged 42. In 1840 her husband married his third wife, Anna Maria Parry, at Clifton, Bristol. She was the daughter of the late Charles Parry, Vicar of Speen. Thomas Harding Newman lived until 1856 after which his eldest son, Rev. Dr. Thomas Harding Newman inherited Nelmes and its surrounding lands which at that time constituted some 265 acres, along with the portrait of Jane Austen which had belonged to his step-mother.

Eliza Harding Newman née Hall was not just an admirer of Jane Austen, she may well have known her personally, and if she had not, she was extremely well connected - and related - to people who knew Jane well. When we see how closely she was connected to Jane Austen's circle the decision of Colonel Austen to give Eliza Hall the portrait of Jane Austen now makes perfect sense.



*In the light of helpful feedback since this article was first published I have since updated the text of the opening paragraphs of this article to explain more clearly the known facts about how the portrait came into the ownership of the Harding-Newman family