a modest man, and will not presume upon it.” Joanna Baillie to (Sir) Walter Scott, date uncertain, The Collected Letters of Joanna Baillie, Vol. 1.
17. “[Mrs Carr’s] youngest son William is appointed Attorney General for the Isle of Ceylon; an advantageous & honourable appointment for a young man, but it will take him far away and he was a great comfort to his Mother & Sisters at home.” Joanna Baillie to Anne Elliott, 13 November 1832. The Collected Letters of Joanna Baillie, Vol. 1. In 1841, Baillie wrote to the wife of Sir Humphrey Davy that she had seen Anna Carr who had “become a very agreeable, intelligent companion, tho’ changes of time and the variety of scenes she has seen in Italy & in Ceylon have not been lost on her observing mind, and her ready talent for drawing whatever she see, country, plants, beast or body, provides here with good illustrations for her story.”
18. Christine Colvin (ed.) Maria Edgeworth’s Letters from England 1813–14 (Oxford University Press, 1971).
19. Joanna Baillie to Sir Walter Scott, 6th April 1812. The Collected Letters of Joanna Baillie, Vol. 1.
20. Christina Colvin (ed.) Maria Edgeworth’ Letters from England 1813–14, (Oxford University Press 1971), p. xxii.
21. Lucy Aikin recalled dining with the Carrs in May 1815 to meet Scott. See Lady Seymour (ed.) The “Pope” of Holland House: Selections from the Correspondence of John Wishaw and his Friends, 1813–40 (T.F. Unwin, 1906), p. 30.
22. T.W. Carr was the executor of Rochemont Barbauld’s will.
23. For more on Anna Barbauld and Joanna Baillie see In Her Hand. Letters of Romantic-Era British Women Writers in New Zealand Collections, Otago Students of Letters (Department of English, University of Otago, New Zealand, 2013).
24. Anna Letitia Barbauld to John Aikin, October 1786. Quoted in William McCarthy, Anna Letitia Barbauld. Voice of the Enlightenment (The John Hopkins University Press, 2008).
25. Anna Letitia Barbauld, Prologue to a Drama, Performed by a Family Party on the Anniversary of Mr. and Mrs. C[arr]’s Marriage.
26. Another close friend of the Carrs (and ultimately the Lushingtons) living in Hampstead at this time was the Scottish lawyer Sir John Richardson (1780–1864). Richardson moved in literary society in London and Scotland and was a friend of Walter Scott. In 1821, he introduced the poet George Crabbe to Thomas Campbell at Joanna Baillie’s Hampstead home. Richardson was also an old friend of Thomas Carlyle. In 1830, on the recommendation of Scott, Richardson purchased the estate of Kirklands in Roxburghshire where he eventually retired and died. Richardson’s daughters became close friends and correspondents of Stephen’s son Vernon during his university years.
27. Thomas Sadler (ed.) Diary, Reminiscences, and Correspondence of Henry Crabb Robinson, Barrister-at-law, F.S.A. (Macmillan and Co, London, 1869), Vol. I, p. 390.
28. Maria Edgeworth to her Mother, 4 April, 1819. Maria Edgeworth, Letters From England.
29. Several of Sarah Carr’s drawings, together with others by her sister Anna Margaret, are now in the Carr family collection of travel sketches, scrapbooks, and genealogical material, 1699–1981, Yale Centre for British Art.
30. Maria Edgeworth to Sarah Carr, October 26, 1818. Scott, Letters of Maria Edgeworth and Anna Letitia Barbauld selected from the Lushington Papers, p. 18.
31. Ibid., No date.
32. Stephen Lushington first met with Lady Byron on 22 February, 1816.
33. Quoted in Malcolm Elwin, Lord Byron’s Family. Annabella, Ada and Augusta, 1816–1824 (John Murray, 1975), p. 106.
34. Ibid., p. 138.
35. Lovelace Byron papers. Bodleian Library.
36. Lady Byron had originally planned to take Mary Eden, a sister of Lord Auckland, who, as George Eden, had been her first rejected suitor before she met Byron. Annabella wrote to her mother of her plans for this tour, “I have pretty nearly formed my plans, I hope in the most eligible manner. At the end of the month I shall spend a few days with Lady Ormonde & Mrs Carr. Then I shall make a short visit to the G[eorge] Byron’s in Essex, where they have taken a house, and thence to Kirkby with a companion de voyage whom I hope you will think very desirable—not Miss Eden, but this is a long story, and I had rather talk about than write.” Quoted in Lord Byron’s Family, p. 152.
37. Journal of Sarah Grace Carr. June 20, 1817. Lovelace Byron 446 Item 1. Bodleian Library.
38. Ibid.
39. Joanna Baillie to Anne Millar, June 30, 1817. The Collected Letters of Joanna Baillie.
40. Lovelace Byron 62 ff. 53–54. Bodleian Library.
41. Ibid., ff. 55–56.
42. Maria Edgeworth to her mother, October 15, 1818. Maria Edgeworth. Letters from England, 1813–1844.
On Sunday, May 6, 1821, Stephen Lushington’s niece Louisa, just back from Malta with her father Sir Henry, called upon the Carr family at their London home to meet her future aunt.
We went today to call upon Miss Carr, (& her family) Uncle Stephen is going to be married to, a most horrible visit for her poor thing!, to come in and be stared at and criticised by all her future relations, however, she bore it very well, her countenance is very sweet, her features pretty, & her manners particularly pleasing, her complexion is bad; I see nothing particularly delightful in the rest of her family . . . One of Miss Carr’s sister squints very much, & I most unluckily am very apt to squint myself, when I am talking to anybody possessed of that accomplishment, which looks as if I was mocking them.1
Sarah and her mother returned the call the following day and Louisa wrote:
We congratulated Miss Carr upon her having borne our visit so well yesterday, but she says she was miserable, she thought she would never have taken courage to come in. She certainly is a very sensible girl, for she said was very glad I was Dr Lushington’s niece.2
Anna Barbauld received the news of Sarah’s engagement with a tinge of sadness at the prospect of her change of name. She wrote, “My dear Sarah Carr, so let me call you, once more, by that name which, both Christian and Sirname [sic], has long been so dear to me.”3 Sarah and Stephen accepted an invitation to visit the Edgeworth family in Ireland. Maria later wrote to Sarah expressing her thanks for the visit:
We all thank your dear father and mother for bringing Dr Lushington here, and making us acquainted with him who is to make your happiness. We could not rejoice with our whole hearts in your marriage as we do, if we only knew by hearsay that the happy man is fully deserving of the prize, and every way suited to you and beloved by your dear parents.4
Queen Caroline
Lushington’s growing reputation in areas of matrimonial law following the Byron affair led to his involvement in another cause celebre when he was appointed as one of the team of lawyers to represent Queen Caroline in the matter of her divorce from George IV.5 In 1821, a Bill of Pains and Penalties
