Charlotte Guest

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Lady Charlotte Elizabeth Guest (born Bertie ; born May 19, 1812 in Uffington , Lincolnshire ; † January 15, 1895 ) was a British translator , educator and entrepreneur . Her translation of the Mabinogion into English brought the medieval Welsh tales to a wider public. With this alert, researchers soon saw the possibility of finding the origins of Welsh literature and language in the original narratives . The stories are also of scientific interest because they provide information on the development of the Arthurian legend . Thus, in the Three Romances , which Charlotte Guest translated and published together with the Four Branches of Mabinogi , the same events are described as in the works of Chrétien de Troyes , although they are older.

Lady Charlotte Elizabeth Guest

Life

Childhood and youth

Lady Charlotte Elizabeth Bertie was born in 1812 in Uffington, Lincolnshire , to Albemarle Bertie, 9th Earl of Lindsey , and his second wife, Charlotte Susanna Elizabeth Layard . Albemarle George Augustus Frederick, who later became the 10th Earl of Lindsey, was born in 1814, followed a year later by Montague Peregrin.

Her father died in 1818 and her mother married Reverend William Peter Pegus in 1821, from whom she had a daughter, Marie Antoinetta, a year later. Charlotte didn't like her stepfather, not least because of his belief that girls shouldn't be too educated. Charlotte was very intellectually gifted and taught herself French and Italian. With the help of her brothers' teachers, she learned Arabic, Hebrew and Persian and began to be interested in medieval history and legends in addition to oriental tales and archeology.

1833–1852: Married to John Josiah Guest

When Charlotte moved to London at the age of twenty-one , she met businessman John Josiah Guest , after a brief flirtation with the future Prime Minister of Great Britain, Benjamin Disraeli . He had made his fortune as a partner in the Dowlais Iron Company in Merthyr Tydfil , which became the largest steel and iron producer in the world. He had traveled to London as a Member of Parliament. Despite the age and class difference, the two married in July 1833 and moved to Wales .

Charlotte began to be very involved in her husband's company, but also outside of it. In addition to a general interest in iron and steel production, she translated technical documents into French and stood up for the employees. The education of factory workers was particularly important to her. She modernized schools and visited them regularly to see if new learning methods that she had suggested were being used. Teachers were sent to London for training so that they could teach better later. Charlotte Guest made sure famous scientists visit and give lectures in their schools. This gave the “Guest Schools” the reputation of being the most modern and progressive schools of their time, in which children up to the age of fourteen were taught. The guests also strongly advocated further training for adults.

To support her husband's political career, but also out of interest, she learned Welsh and began to occasionally translate old Welsh poems. Together with Lady Llanover , the guests founded the Society of Welsh Scholars of Abergavenny , which advocated the preservation of the Welsh language and traditions.

In 1834 Lady Guest gave birth to Charlotte Marie, the first of ten children. Ivor Bertie, born the second child in 1835, became the first Baron Wimborne. Through his marriage to Lady Cornelia Henrietta Maria Spencer-Churchill, he became the uncle of Winston Churchill .

In 1838 John J. Guest was awarded the title of baronet and Charlotte Guest published the first edition of Mabinogion , a collection of Welsh short stories.

In 1845 her future son-in-law Austen Henry Layard , who married Mary Enid Evelyn Guest, the eighth child of the family, in 1869, discovered the ruins of Nineveh . Charlotte Guest secured enough artifacts from the excavation site that she was able to add a Nineveh porch to Canford Manor , which the family purchased in 1846 . The pieces later went to the Metropolitan Museum in New York City .

Because her husband's health deteriorated, Charlotte took on more and more tasks in the administration of the Dowlais Iron Company . After the death of John Guest in 1852, she managed the company entirely and led it successfully through a period of stagnant sales, factory closures and strikes.

She stood up for her workers, e.g. For those who did not want to work on Sundays or the young women and girls who were hired to pile iron cheaply at night. Charlotte Guest also supported the local economy to prevent further emigration to Australia .

It was only during this busy time that she broke the habit of keeping a diary, which she had kept from the age of nine until she took over the management of the company to George Thomas Clark in 1855 when she married Charles Schreiber, the tutor of her son Ivor.

1855–1884: Marriage to Charles Schreiber

Schreiber was a scholar from Cambridge and a Member of Parliament for Cheltenham and later for Poole . Charlotte's life changed through the marriage, as she now moved more into literary and artistic circles and met personalities such as Julia Margaret Cameron or Lord Alfred Tennyson . Together with her husband, she traveled to Europe and the Middle East to collect ceramics , fans , board games and playing cards.

When Charles died on a trip to Portugal in 1884 , Charlotte returned to England, where she cataloged her ceramic collection and made it available to the public by donating it to the Victoria and Albert Museum . In the following years Charlotte completed her collection of subjects, which in 1887 became the subject of a treatise. In 1888 and 1892 she published books on English and European subjects when she bequeathed her collection to the British Museum .

Until her death in 1895, she worked for Turkish refugees and the London cab drivers .

The translation of the Mabinogion

In addition to learning Welsh, Charlotte Guest also made the acquaintance of Thomas Price, a Welsh bard, Théodore Claude Henri, a French philologist , and Gwallter Mechain, all of whom helped her translate. After translating some medieval songs and poems into English, she ventured into the translation of the Mabinogion , a collection of Welsh tales believed to date back to prehistoric times. In addition to the Four Branches of Mabinogi , Charlotte Guest also translated and published seven other stories, which on the one hand are "purely" Welsh ( Breuddwyd Macsen , Cyfranc Lludd a Llefelys , Culhwch and Olwen and Breuddwyd Rhonabwy ), on the other hand they refer to the Arthurian legend ( Iarlles y Ffynnawn , Peredur fab Efrawg and Gereint fab Erbin ). All of these stories can be found in the manuscripts Llyfr Gwyn Rhydderch and Llyfr Coch Hergest .

The name Mabinogion is a creation by Charlotte Guest who came across the word mabynogyon in the manuscripts and mistook it for the plural form of mabinogi ( something like son or boy).

The stories of the Mabinogion had William Owen Pughe in his work Myvyrian Archeology of Wales , a collection of verses and narratives, written 1801-1807, summarized, but its translation was not published until his death in 1835, so that Charlotte Guest's work was known as the first has been. Her translation remained the standard work for over 90 years, which speaks for the high quality of her work.

After the first publication in Llandovery in 1838, further editions followed until 1849, the focus of which were, for example, the stories in connection with the Arthurian saga or the "romances". Although interest in Celtic culture had increased since the Ossian's Chants were published , and the stories of the Mabinogion had always been widely used in oral tradition in Ireland , Scotland, and Wales, scholars paid little attention to what came through the publication of the translations changed. In the 1877 edition, Charlotte Guest noted that her translation of Geraint ac Enid was the cornerstone of Alfred Tennyson's poems about Gereint in Idylls of the King . This shows that she had achieved her goal of spreading medieval literature from Wales.

literature

  • Revel Guest and Angela V. John: Lady Charlotte: A Biography of the 19th Century . Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London 1989, ISBN 0-297-79398-5 or as a new edition Lady Charlotte Guest: An Extraordinary Life . Tempus, Stroud 2007, ISBN 0-7524-4252-X

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Guest, Charlotte
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Guest, Lady Charlotte Elizabeth (full name); Bertie, Lady Charlotte Elizabeth (maiden name); Clerk, Charlotte Elizabeth
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British translator and businesswoman
DATE OF BIRTH May 19, 1812
PLACE OF BIRTH Uffington, Lincolnshire
DATE OF DEATH January 15, 1895