Anthony Aufrère

Portrait of Anthony Aufrère

Anthony Aufrère (30 November 1757 at Hoveton, Norfolk – 29 November 1833 in Pisa, Italy) was an English antiquary, barrister and translator.

Early life

Anthony Aufrère Sr. (1730–1814) (Gervase Spencer, 1756). Aufrère's father.

Aufrère was the eldest son of Anthony Aufrère (1730–1814), of Hoveton Hall, Norfolk, a landowner and magistrate,[1] from a very large family of fifteen children- seven sons and eight daughters.[2] His mother was Anna Norris (1728–1816), only daughter of John Norris, of Witton, in the same county, and sister to John Norris, founder of the Norrisian professorship at Cambridge.[3] The Aufrère family were of noble French lineage, and proud Protestant Huguenots who had left France on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. As the eldest child, his parents had in mind a legal career for their son, and he was admitted to Gray’s Inn in 1773 as a fifteen-year-old.[4] Not much is known about his early life but he appears to have got into serious financial difficulties and his friend, the Reverend William Gunn (1750–1841), rector of Sloley, Norfolk, helped him out in 1781 with his debts. Aufrère was called to the Bar in February 1782.[5] Details pertaining to Inn practice and if Aufrère was allowed chambers remains unclear. Three years later a friend of Gunn's wrote to him in 1785 "Anthony has given up the law and is now at Boulogne".[6] In what appears to have been an attempt to flee his creditors, he went abroad. He met up with his friend Gunn in Pisa, Italy, who was on a Grand Tour, and they both continued to Florence. According to Riviere, Gunn's biographer, Aufrère later settled in Florence in 1785. The American royalist Thomas Hall (1750–1824), chaplain to the British factory at Leghorn(Livorno), also an antiquary, wrote to Gunn in October 1785 about "news of Aufrère who lives at Pisa".[7] Riviere writes of "Aufrere’s old lodgings by the centre bridge" presumably he lived in the Via Borgo Stretto by the Ponte di mezzo over the Arno river. This proximity would explain part of Aufrère’s "Queries sent me by Mr. Gunn; with my answers (1786)", first published by Riviere in 1965, consisting of some 25 questions and answers on different Italian topics, ranging from the origin of the sham battle the Gioco del Ponte in Pisa to the Linnean name of the fish (Argentina Sphyrana) used in making false pearls at Rome.[8] In January 1786 Aufrère travelled to Naples, and he said himself that he visited Rome for the first time in the winter of 1786, as he recalled seeing Charlotte Stuart, Duchess of Albany there.[9] In 1787 it was reported that he was back in Florence, and in the same year he was also in Geneva, where he studied with the celebrated language teacher Monsieur de Rodon.[10]

Aufrere in Germany

Soon after he visited Germany, he settled down in Stuttgart and befriended Karl Friedrich Emich Freiherr von Uxküll[11]=Gyllenband (1755–1832), gentleman of the chamber to the Duke of Wirtemberg. He was a renowned art connoisseur and a generous patron. We know that it was the Baron who originally showed Aufrère, Herder’s essay on the great German humanist, knight, poet and pamphleteer, Ulrich von Hutten(1488–1523) that had been published in 1776 in Christoph Martin Wieland’s journal Der Teutsche Merkur and that he suggested to him to translate it, as this is all mentioned in the translator's preface dated (Stuttgardt 10 June 1788).

title page of Aufrere's 1789 translation

We presume that it was also the Baron that had assured him that this anonymously printed essay was from the pen of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, although this false attribution was widely shared in Germany, and the error was still being made by German professors of literature in the 1840s.[12] Aufrère is thus one of the earliest English translators of one of Herder's Sturm und Drang writings, albeit as a supposititious work.[13] It is clear, however, from his preface, that he was proud to have translated this work:

"I trust that I am not deceived in my hopes and wishes, that this publication may prove grateful to the public, and may induce some to make farther enquiries into the particulars of the life of Hutten, and of his contemporaries, with which is interwoven a very interesting event in the history of mankind; nor can I help thinking that I am doing a pleasure to such as take delight in elegant and classic literature. Should I fail in my wishes in these respects, I still hope that my endeavours to make known in England the merits of a great and a virtuous man, will shelter me from censure, and that the defects in the execution will be pardoned in favour of the intention." [A Tribute to the Memory of Hutten(1789,)Preface of the Translator, p.xi]

Marriage in London, 1791

Aufrère returned to England early 1791 and set about preparations for his marriage. In London at St. George’s church, Hanover-Square, Bloomsbury, on 19 February he married Countess of the Empire, Marianne Matilda Lockhart (10 October 1774 – 14 September 1850), the only surviving daughter of General James Lockhart, of Lee and Carnwath in Lanarkshire,Scotland, who had been a General in the service of Empress Maria Theresa. The Empress had raised him to the dignity of a Baron of the Holy Roman Empire and had decorated him with military orders. In his later years he had been attached to the household of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, and Lockhart had died in Pisa on the 6th February 1790.[14] Aufrère and Marianne had almost certainly met in Pisa in 1785 as his friend William Gunn had already been introduced to father and daughter and, as he wrote somewhat begrudgingly, it was expected of him to spend the evenings at the houses of the three English families there.[15] After the marriage the Aufrère family chose to live abroad in Heidelberg, Germany, possibly for financial reasons, and in the following year their daughter Louisa Anna Matilda (17 November 1792 – 1868) was also born there. There is a letter of Aufrère's to Gunn from Heidelberg dated 1 May 1793 but it is claimed that they had later moved to Mannheim, as his friend William Gunn and his family – returning from his second Grand Tour – met up with him there on 26 September, where they hired a barge and went sailing down the Rhine. In 1794 a son George Anthony (18 June 1794 – 6 May 1881) was born.[16] There followed the publication of his Travels (1795) that has the translator’s preface signed "Newton, near Chester, February, 1795." It was pitched in the newspaper classified ads as "a proper Supplement to Mr. Henry Swinburne's Travels in the Two Sicilies" so a work firmly belonging to that genre of the travel book influencing and encouraging the Grand Tour. In 1798 appeared his popular anti-revolutionary pamphlet A Warning to Briton's (1798)[17] Aufrère also had in mind the translation of German work, and had written to his publishers Cadell & Davies in 1799: "As I hate to be idle I have some thoughts of employing my few leisure hours in a free translation & alteration of a German Novel, with additional portraits of some characters within the sphere of my own observations- & if I follow it up, as I now think I shall, I shall have it ready by next spring, & will send it you for perusal, & for publication if you think it will take."[18] It appears that the novel was never published or finished.

Imprisonment in France, 1802–1814

According to the Genealogical Notes, compiled by George Lockhart Rives (1849–1917), but based on Aufrère's own MS, it says "He and his family went to France in 1802 and were among the English prisoners seized by Napoleon at the rupture of the Treaty of Amiens in May, 1803. They were in consequence forced to spend eleven years in France chiefly at Verdun and Avignon."[19] John Henry Lawrence (1773–1840), a fellow dètenu who knew them both at Verdun and also moved to Orleans in July 1808 reported "Mr. and Mrs. Aufrère left Verdun in September, 1805, for Orleans, but generally resided in the neighbourhood, at the little town of Beaugency till July, 1808, when they received permission to remove at their option to Moulins, Lions, or Avignon."[20] Lawrence gave a charming description of Mrs Aufrère confronting the commandant's wife, Madame la Generale Wirion at Verdun.[21] While at Avignon Aufrère was involved with the distribution of 'charitable succours', as aid was then called, for two neighbouring depots of British prisoners of war.

Return to Norwich, 1814

In the year of his release from imprisonment, his father died (11 September 1814) and, as eldest son, he inherited Hoveton Hall and the considerable estates. His mother died less than two years later (11 April 1816). According to Riviere it was Aufrère who got Humphry Repton (1752–1818), the architect and landscape gardener "to make some drawings for a new house there."[22] "new" Hoveton Hall was built between 1809 and 1812. In 1817 he mortgaged 241 acres in Hoveton, St. John to Robert Baker, in 1828 Aufrère sold the Hoveton estate to Christabell Burroughes as well as land allotted under the Hoveton Inclosure Bill after Aufrère's own petition to Parliament, where he is named: "Anthony Aufrere, Esquire, Lord of the Manor of Smallburgh,",[23] When he was in England he resided at Old Foulsham Hall, Norfolk, which is now a grade II listed building,[24] that was previously the home of Major General Philip Skippon, Commander of Parliamentary Forces at the battle of Naseby.[25]

Last years in Italy

In his last years he was often to be found at the Italian spa resort, Bagni di Lucca, Tuscany, he even wrote a small article for the Gentleman's Magazine there.[26] and there are letters full of antiquarian interest from Aufrère to Gunn at Milan (14 October 1830) and again at Pisa (5 November 1830)[27] He died at Pisa on 29 November 1833, a day before his seventy-sixth year.[3] He is buried at the Sepolture al vecchio Cimitero Inglese di Livorno (Via Verdi), the Old British cemetery of Leghorn, where the Scottish writer Tobias Smollet is also buried. In his last will & testament, in a last codicil written at Pisa 22 January 1833, Aufrère wrote "I desire to be interred in the English burial ground at Leghorn as near as possible to the Lockhart monuments..." He also stipulated his inscription on a plain monumental stone: "Anthony Aufrère Esquire of Foulsham Old Hall in the county of Norfolk upwards of 48 years in the Commission of the Peace for that county."[28] His wife survived him seventeen years and died at Edinburgh, on 14 September 1850.

Works

"Mr. Aufrère was an excellent modern scholar, and a master of the Italian and French as well as German languages."[29] As a translator, Aufrère published:[3]

He was also a contributor to the Gentleman's Magazine, under the pseudonym of "Viator A."[3]

Family

Aufrère's own MS. of tracing his family beginning with Etienne Aufrère, President of the Parliament of Toulouse, at the close of the 15th Century is extant (Genealogical Notes, Of the Aufrère Family. pp. 50–61.); of his younger brothers the Rev. George John Aufrère (1769–1853) and the Rev. Philip DuVal Aufrère (1776–1848) were both educated at Norwich Grammar School and the University of Cambridge and were always destined for the clergy; his other brother, Charles Gastine Aufrère (1770–1799) a first lieutenant, tragically died on board the frigate HMS Lutine, that was wrecked off the Dutch coast carrying a massive shipment of gold bullion. A further brother, Thomas Norris Aufrère (1773–1835) was a wealthy civil servant for the East India Company. Of his sisters, Sophia Aufrère (1763–1845) married William Dawson, Esq., of Holles-street, Cavendish-square. "Beautiful and ambitious, as well as something of a snob…. Sophia Dawson was often invited to play cards at Windsor Castle with King George III and Queen Charlotte,but she made it a rule never to play on a Sunday,even when invited by the King. Apparently he took no offence at this, but remarked to her: ‘You are a good little woman, Mrs. Dawson.’[32] Harriet Aufrère (1765–1846) married Robert Baker, Barrister at law, and afterwards Knighted; Lady Baker died at the age of 80 years. Aufrere provided a list of her 13 children (Ibid., p. 59)

Notes

  1. ↑ The miniature here is of his father. A portrait of the son (watercolours on ivory) by the Italian painter Gustavo Lazzarini, was acquired in 1972 by the Preservation Society of Newport County in the United States of America (Ref. RI010048)
  2. ↑ Agnew’s Protestant Exiles from France, Chiefly in the Reign of Louis XIV: Or, The Huguenot Refugees and Their Descendants in Great Britain and Ireland(Turnbull & Spears, 1886), vol. 2, p.392.
  3. 1 2 3 4  Stephen, Leslie, ed. (1885). "Aufrere, Anthony". Dictionary of National Biography. 2. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
  4. ↑ "Jan 28. [1773] Anthony Aufrere, son of Anthony.A., of Hovetone St. Peter, Norfolk, Esq."The Register of Admissions to Gray's Inn, 1521–1889 (London, 1889), p.387.
  5. ↑ "Last week the Honourable Society of Gray’s Inn, called Jeremiah Church, John Matthews Grimwood, and Anthony Aufrere, Esquires, to the Degree of Barristers at Law." St. James's Chronicle or the British Evening Post (London, England), 14 February 1782 – 16 February 1782; Issue 3268.
  6. ↑ Norfolk Register Office: WGN 1/1/78 Jacob Preston to William Gunn, 26 Apr 1785
  7. ↑ NRO WGN 1/1/82 10 Oct 1785 T. Hall, Leghorn, to William Gunn, Neatishead
  8. ↑ Michael Riviere, MA., "The Rev. William Gunn B.D., A Norfolk Parson on the Grand Tour", in: Norfolk Archaeology, or miscellaneous tracts relating to the antiquities of the County of Norfolk, vol. XXXIII, 1965, Part III, pp.351-378, & Part IV, pp.379-398; Riviere is extremely prejudiced towards Aufrère in his account here.
  9. ↑ Viator A to Mr. Urban, 23 Aug., Gentleman’s Magazine, Bd. 67, 1797, Pt. 2, p.1000
  10. ↑ We presume that he may have studied German in Geneva. Aufrère also speaks highly of his cousin, Philip DuVal Aufrère (died London 14 March 1808), who died at the age of 76, as "my kind friend and benefactor"(Genealogical Notes, op cit. p.,56); the son of his father’s sister Marieanne Aufrère. "He was educated at Westminster, Cambridge and Göttingen, took orders, was Subpreceptor to some of the Royal family of England and at the time of his death was Dr of Divinity, Canon of Windsor, and Vicar of Twickenham." His father was Dr Philip DuVal Aufrère, a French refugee physician, who had studied under Herman Boerhaave, and was first Physician to the Dowager Princess of Wales, Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg (1719–1772) mother of King George the Third.
  11. ↑ Uexküll, is the old Livonian place-name Üxküll on the Duina; according to the ADB he wrote his name Ixküll; Aufrère writes Baron d'Uxküll
  12. ↑ See Wilhelm Kreutz, Die Deutschen und Ulrich von Hutten: Rezeption von Autor und Werk seit dem 16. Jahrhundert (1984), p.67.
  13. ↑ Wilhem Kreuz, "Ulrich von Hutten in der Französischen und Angloamerikanischen Literatur. Ein Beitrag zur Rezeptionsgeschichte des deutschen Humanismus und der lutherischen Reformation", in: Francia. Forschungen zur westeuropäischen Geschichte, Bd. 11 1983–1984(Sigmaringen 1983.-1984) S.633.
  14. ↑ His actual tomb is at Dryden, Scotland, and has the following inscription: 'James Lockhart Wishart, of Lee and Carnwath, Lord of the Bedchamber to his Imperial Majesty Joseph the Second, Emperor of Germany, Knight of the Order of Maria Teresa, Count of the Holy Roman Empire, and General of the Imperial, Royal, and Apostolical Armies, died at Pisa, in Italy, VIth February, MDCCXC, in the LXIVth year of his age.' Marianne is also buried there.
  15. ↑ Riviere (1965), op.cit.
  16. ↑ The daughter Louisa Anna Matilda later married in 1818 George Barclay (1790–1869), Esq., a merchant of New York, by whom she had a daughter Matilda Antonia Barclay (born in New York 7 December 1824 – 1888) she married Francis Robert Rives (1822–1891) their son George Lockhart Rives later published the Genealogical Notes. ; and George Anthony married at Hamburg in 1828 Caroline Wehrtmann (died 1885), the second daughter of a Hamburg merchant, John Michael Wehrtmann, of Hamburg and of Osterrade in the Duchy of Holstein.
  17. ↑ This work has recently been described as "One of the most widely circulated pieces of atrocity literature from this period" Catriona Kennedy, Narratives of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars: Military and Civilian Experience in Britain and Ireland (Palgrave Macmillian, 2013), p.162.
  18. ↑ Letter from Aufrère, Ipswich 5 August 1799, to Messrs. Cadell & Davies, Strand, London, [NRO: MC 486/1, 747X7 ]
  19. ↑ "Of the Aufrère Family" in Genealogical Notes. Collected by George Lockhart Rives. (New York, 1914) pp.50-61. As GLR writes "This account of the Aufrère Family, and the account of the Lockhart Family below, were written by my great-grandfather, Anthony Aufrère, in 1830; and they are here reproduced from his MS, in my possession, without verification and without material alteration…." It appears that the manuscript is based originally on a work by Anthony Norris, of Barton, Norfolk, his maternal uncle, that came into his possession after his death in 1785. Aufrère made some corrections and additions to it, adding the Aufrère and Lockhart families.(Ibid., preface, p.iii.) After the death of George Anthony Aufrère in 1881, they came into Rives' possession. This is now deposited in the Rives - Barclay Family Papers, 1698–1941 collection, held at The Library of Virginia, Richmond,Virginia.
  20. ↑ A picture of Verdun, or the English detained in France; their arrestation, detention at Fontainbleau and Valenciennes, confinement at Verdun, incarceration at Bitsche, amusements, sufferings, indulgences granted to some, acts of extortion and cruelty practised on others, characters of General and Madame Wirion, list of those who have been permitted to leave or who have escaped out of France, occasional poetry, and anecdotes of the principal detenus. From the Portfolio of a Detenu. In two volumes. (London) Vol. 2, 1810, p.125.
  21. ↑ "Mrs. Aufrere (daughter to Count Lockhart, a general in Maria Theresa's service) appeared one evening at a party with a handkerchief twisted round her head like a turban. Madame Wirion invited her to come and take coffee with her the next morning. Mrs. Aufrere made some excuse.—" Well then, if you breakfast upon tea, I will give you tea." Mrs. Aufrere made a second excuse. "Well then," said Madame Wirion, losing all patience, " if you like neither coffee nor tea, I will tell you the plain truth. The manner in which your handkerchief is put on pleases me, and I am invited out to dinner to-morrow, 'so I wish you would come and put on my handkerchief in the same manner." Most of our fair countrywomen were by this time so humbled, that they would have complied; but the Caledonian blood of the Countess of the holy Roman empire boiled at the idea of becoming the tire-woman to the Citoienne Generale. She knew what she owed to the dignity of a gentlewoman, and had the spirit to refuse."vol. I, 1810, p.160-161. Lawrence later sent Goethe his MS. of the play The Englishman at Verdun; or the Prisoner of Peace. A drama in 5 acts (1813). He asked Goethe to consider it for a performance at the theatre in Weimar, and in a long letter from 13 April 1816 suggested to him numerous deletions and possible alterations to the adapted play.(See Letter from Lawrence to Goethe, 13 April 1816, in D.F.S. Scott, Some English correspondents of Goethe(London, 1949)pp.25-28.) Goethe wrote to Lawrence on the same day as he returned the MS., regretting that he did not feel able to produce the play in Weimar, because the happenings were still too fresh in the public mind."(Scott, Ibid.,p.30).
  22. ↑ Riviere, op. cit. p.353.
  23. ↑ See the Journals of the House of Commons, vol. 70, 6 March 1815, p.140,
  24. ↑ Old Hall Farm House, Foulsham, http://www.britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/en-227807-old-hall-farm-house-foulsham-norfolk
  25. ↑ Bernard Burke (1858). A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland. Harrison. p. 34.
  26. ↑ "Notices of a Portrait of Mr. Norris." See Anth. Aufrere, Lucca Baths, Italy to Mr. Urban, Gentleman’s Magazine, 1826, vol. 96, Pt. 2, Nov. pp.399-400.
  27. ↑ Cited in Riviere (1965) op.cit.,
  28. ↑ The National Archives, Kew, PROB 11/1850/139 (Will of Anthony Aufrère of Pisa , Italy)
  29. ↑ The Annual Biography and Obituary,of 1834. Bd. 19, Pt. 1, p.386.
  30. ↑ Lockhart Papers, To the Reader (Orchard Street, London, 31 March 1817), vol. 1, p.vii.
  31. ↑ See Daniel Szechi, ‘Lockhart, George, of Carnwath (1681?–1731)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2011 accessed 26 June 2014
  32. ↑ Christina Scott, A Historian and his World: A Life of Christopher Dawson, 1889–1970 (1991) p.25.
Attribution

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Stephen, Leslie, ed. (1885). "Aufrere, Anthony". Dictionary of National Biography. 2. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 

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