Richard Ford (writer, 1796)
Richard Ford (born April 21, 1796 in London , † August 31, 1858 in Heavitree (since 1913 part of Exeter ), County Devon ) was an English traveler, writer and draftsman.
Life
Richard Ford was the eldest son of Sir Richard Ford, who was Member of Parliament for East Grinstead in 1789 and who later became the London Police Chief for many years. Since 1794 he was with Marianne Ford, b. Booth, married, the daughter and heiress of Benjamin Booth, a well-known art collector.
Ford studied at Winchester and Trinity College , Oxford, and initially worked as a lawyer and as a journalist and cartoonist for various newspapers in London, including the Quarterly Review . In 1824 he married Harriet Capel (1806-1837), the only child of George Capell-Coningsby, 5th Earl of Essex (1757-1839). With her he had a son, Clare Ford (1828-1899), who later became an English diplomat.
In 1830, Richard Ford moved to Spain because of the precarious health of his wife who needed a change in the climate . He took up residence in Seville and Granada . From there he traveled the entire peninsula. In the fall of 1833 he returned to England and had a Mudejar house built in Exeter , in which he bought an extensive library of books in Spanish. From now on he devoted himself to the history of Spain and the customs of the country. He published numerous scientific articles about it.
In the spring of 1834 he separated from his wife and moved to Southernhay , a modern part of Exeter, near his brother, the pastor James A. Ford (1797-1877). He later bought a house in Heavitree , which he furnished with the valuable paintings and books he had acquired in Spain. There he befriended the artist John Gendall. On February 24, 1838 he married Eliza Linnington Cranstoun (1808–1849), the eldest daughter of James Edmund Cranstoun, 9th Lord Cranstoun (1780–1818), and shortly afterwards began work on his main work, a handbook for travelers to Spain, which was finally published in 1845 by publisher John Murray . As historian Sir William Stirling-Maxwell noted in his obituary for Ford, it deserves a permanent place among the best books on travel and history in the English language. Another book on Spain was published in 1846 with a series of informative and entertaining essays. In 1851 he married Mary Molesworth (1816–1910), the sister of the politician Sir William Molesworth of Pencarrow (1810–1855).
Ford spent the last few years between Exeter - where he was Vice President of the Devonshire and Exeter Institution and later its President - and London.
Encounter with Beethoven
After leaving Trinity College in the summer of 1817, Ford went on an educational trip to Germany and Austria , on which he arrived in Vienna on October 12, 1817 . The highlight of his stay in the city was an encounter with Ludwig van Beethoven , whom he visited on November 28, 1817. Beethoven received Ford in an extremely friendly manner, gave him a portrait of himself and composed a short Allegretto for a string quartet in B minor especially for Ford . The piece was completely unknown for a long time. It was not until December 8, 1999 that the autograph was surprisingly auctioned at Sotheby’s in London and is now in the Bibliotheca Bodmeriana in Cologny .
Works
- A hand-book for travelers in Spain and readers at home , 2 volumes, London 1845 Digitized 2. A. (1847)
- Gathering of Spain , London 1846
- The Spaniards and their country , 2 volumes, New York 1847
literature
- The Letters of Richard Ford , ed. by Rowland Edmund Prothero, London 1905
- Ludwig van Beethoven, Allegretto in B minor, first edition , ed. by Martin Bircher and Stephen Roe, Munich: Saur 2001, ISBN 3-598-24270-0
- Ian Robertson: Richard Ford, 1796-1858: Hispanophile, Connoisseur and Critic , Norwich: Russell 2004, ISBN 0-85955-285-3
- La Sevilla de Richard Ford: 1830–1833 , exhibition catalog, Sevilla 2007, ISBN 84-8455-229-2
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ See The Ford Collection (= The Volume of the Walpole Society , Volume 60), London 1998
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Ford, Richard |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | English traveler and writer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 21, 1796 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | London , England , UK |
| DATE OF DEATH | August 31, 1858 |
| Place of death | Heavitree (now part of Exeter ), Devon , England , United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland |