Island Life Magazine Ltd February/March 2018 | Page 54

Local history
Writing the Wight
Three talented women
By Julia Courtney
The Island is rightly proud of its association with poets Alfred Tennyson
and Algernon Swinburne, but a host of lesser-known Victorian writers
also loved the Island and celebrated its unique scenery and culture.
Amongst them are three talented women: Elizabeth Missing Sewell, Anne
Thackeray Ritchie, and Mary Gleed Tuttiett (who wrote as Maxwell Grey).
Born in Newport in 1815,
Elizabeth Sewell spent all her 91
years on the Island. She never
married, but supported members
of her extended family and helped
local schools by writing a series of
popular and influential novels, as
well as educational non-fiction.
Her autobiography vividly
describes the Island of her
girlhood, when ‘Newport was in all
respects the capital of the Island.
Ryde was scarcely in existence
then. I can remember when it had
only one straggling street. Ventnor
consisted of two or three thatched
cottages, a small hotel ‘The Crab
and Lobster’ and a boarding
house, but there was no church.’
She added that the great
social event of the year was the
costumed Archery Ball, held at
Carisbrooke Castle after a ladies’
archery competition on the
green. For many years Elizabeth’s
home was at Ashcliff, a house
in Bonchurch. She was hugely
influential in the village, providing
a school for the inhabitants and
playing the organ at the new
church, built in 1847. At a time
when secondary school education
54
www.visitilife.com
Ashcliff, Bonchurch, home of Elizabeth Sewell
for girls was still controversial,
Elizabeth was a pioneer, founding
St Boniface Diocesan School in
Ventnor.
A more cosmopolitan figure than
Elizabeth Sewell, Anne Thackeray
Ritchie was a daughter of novelist
William Makepeace Thackeray. The
sparklng wit of work such as Vanity
Fair hid the tragedy of Thackeray’s
personal life, for his wife Isabella
suffered permanent mental illness,
making him all the more devoted
to his two daughters. When Anny,
as she was always called, became
unwell in 1861, Thackeray sent
her to stay with his friend Julia
Margaret Cameron at Freshwater:
photographer Mrs Cameron
evidently knew everyone who
mattered in Victorian England!
This was the beginning of Anny’s
love affair with the Island. On her
very first visit she made friends
with Tennyson, who was there
to console the Thackeray girls