Letter from Charlotte Waring to Miss Claudine Virginie Duhamel

MLMSS 12214

fonds

20 August 1818

9680874

0.01 metres of textual material (1 folder) - manuscript on wove paper - 22.7 x 18.5 cm (folded)

Charlotte Barton, née Waring (1796-1867), was the daughter of the barrister Albert Waring and his wife Elizabeth. Reputedly a child prodigy, she attended school in Kent where she studied art under the tutelage of John Glover. Very little is known about the years after she graduated apart from the fact that she took a position for two years as a governess in Lancashire, resigning because of ill health. She was then associated with the school run by the English antiquarian Rev. Holt Okes of Woodford House in Woodford, Essex.

Following the death of her father, Waring travelled to Australia in 1826 to become governess to the children of Hannibal Macarthur. During the voyage, she became engaged to James Atkinson, the highly-respected agriculturalist and author, and they married in 1827 before settling at Atkinson’s property Oldbury in the Southern Highlands. They had four children including the author and naturalist Louisa Atkinson. James Atkinson's death in 1834 precipitated Charlotte's disastrous second marriage in 1836 to George Bruce Barton, former overseer at Oldbury and a violent alcoholic. Fearing for her life, she fled the property with her children, arriving in Sydney several months later. She became involved in a long-running legal battle, Atkinson v. Barton and Others, in which she fought to retain custody of her children and for financial support, a case she eventually and resoundingly won. Atkinson published anonymously 'A Mother's Offering to Her Children' (1841), the first children’s book to be published in Australia. She returned to Oldbury in 1846, dying in 1867.

Reference:
Clarke, Patricia. "Barton, Charlotte (1796–1867)." Australian Dictionary of Biography. Accessed 14 October 2024.
https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/barton-charlotte-12787/text23073.

Purchased by the vendor through a collector in France.

A two-and-a-half page manuscript letter on a single folded sheet, signed, with red wax seal and postal stamps on the final page.

The letter is written by the twenty-two-year-old Charlotte Waring from London to her French friend Miss Claudine Virginie Duhamel, presumably a teacher at the school run by the English antiquarian Rev. Holt Okes of Woodford House in Essex. Charlotte writes that she arrived safely in London last Monday but did not find a letter waiting for her from Madame Lochner. A long letter did arrive from Monsieur Swanson who is not enjoying France and will return home next Saturday.

Charlotte left behind at Woodford a dressing gown and a nightcap which she hopes that Duhamel will send to her on the Friday conveyance, addressed to her at the Three Nuns, Whitechapel, until called for. She concludes the letter with a wish that Duhamel will pass on her respects to Monsieur and Madame Okes and also to Mlle Crochet. Her sisters also send their best wishes.

Out of copyright:
Please acknowledge:: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales

Paper is watermarked 'Ivy Mill 1815'.