Manuscript album of verse compiled by Mary Ann Gilbert and presented to Lord and...

This album is written in the hand of Mary Ann Gilbert (1776-1845) and her associated calling-card (AMS6515/2) suggests that it was surreptitiously left in Lady Ashburnham's carriage after a visit to Ashburnham Place in January 1823.

Mary Ann, daughter of Thomas Gilbert of Cliffe, grocer (d1782), married Davies Giddy (1767-1839), MP for Bodmin and a future president of the Royal Society, in 1808; he took her name when she succeeded to the Gilbert estate in Eastbourne on the death of her uncle Charles Gilbert in 1816. For the archive of the family, see GIL, and for examples of her handwriting see her memoirs, GIL 4/313.

The volume, written on paper watermarked 1819 and containing verses dated between 1806 and 1821, has the appearance of having been written at one sitting. The opening piece, 'Verses, written and designed for an album, at Ashburnham Place', was written by Mary Ann Gilbert when a guest at Ashburnham in 1812, the year in which the estate was inherited by George Ashburnham (1760-1830). It is at twenty pages the most substantial in the volume, and among the most interesting. The poem describes the house and improved grounds, 'where Brown rais'd up the massy round' and the bridge-building works by Lord Ashburnham, who invoked 'Vitruvious to his aid'. The neatness and prosperity of the surrounding estate is commented on at length, allowing the author to denigrate the French and the 'fierce philosophy of Paine' who would have it turned into the chaos witnessed across the channel. Reference is made to the iron industry, and local antiquities described: Pevensey, Herstmonceux, Bexhill and the guarding of the coast by the King's German Legion, Battle Abbey, the Gibraltar Monument at Heathfield and the beauties of Crowhurst Park.

The verse, much of it in rhyming couplets, is amusing if often facile, and the poet misses few chances to display her learning; several of the pieces are in French. Several of the poems can be related to Mary Ann Gilbert's own life or to contemporary events; not for the first time, the family's windows were broken in rioting by the supporters of Queen Caroline in 1819 (DNB sn Davies Gilbert; page 68 of the album).

The volume provides an interesting insight into the intellectual life of the woman who played a crucial role in the development of Eastbourne.

Document purchased 18 May 1999 (ACC 7903)