John Wordsworth (1772-1805)
| John Wordsworth | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1772 England |
| Died | 1805-02-05 English Channel |
| Occupation | sailor |
| Known for | Captain of an East India Company vessel, shipwrecked with great loss of life[1] |
John Wordsworth was a British sailor, best known for speculation that he was author Jane Austen's previously unknown suitor.[2]
Wordsworth was a younger brother of the poet William Wordsworth.[1][3] He served as an officer of ships of the East India Company.[4] His final command was the Earl of Abergavenny, in which he made two successful voyages, 1797-1798, 1799-1800, before she was lost, with the loss of close to three-quarters of her complement, shortly after she left for her final voyage in 1805.
Constance Pilgrim's 1971 book Dear Jane was centred on the speculation that a real life romance between Austen and Wordsworth was the inspiration for her novel Persuasion, about the tortured love between an heiress and a penniless naval officer.[2] Pilgrim suggested that Wordsworth was the lost lover, whose tragic death, at a young age, explained why Austen never married.
Pilgrim speculated the pair met multiple times, with their first meeting occurring in Devon, in 1797, when Wordsworth was still just a mate.[5]
Officers with the East India Company were provided with some cargo space of their own, for shipping home cargo they had bought with their personal funds.[6] Wordsworth's efforts to make money, by buying and shipping home cargo himself, failed and left him in debt.[7] For his final voyage he had borrowed 3,000 pounds from family members, including his brother William, to be used to buy further cargo in India.
William Wordsworth was reported to have been an admirer of a nautical painting created by his patron, Sir George Beaumon, entitled Peel Castle in a Storm. It was inspired by the wreck in which his brother died.[7]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Richard Matlak. Wordsworth, Beaumont, and the Publicity over Captain John Wordsworth's Death at Sea, Summer 2000. Retrieved on 2022-01-28. “In order to understand the far-ranging implications of John's demise for the lives and works of William Wordsworth and Sir George Beaumont, it is important to observe that Wordsworth's younger brother was more than a generic mariner.”
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Deirdre Lynch. See Jane Elope: Why are we so obsessed with Jane Austen’s love life?, Slate magazine, 2007-08-03. Retrieved on 2022-01-27. “Pilgrim proposed that the mysterious admirer on whom those legends centered was a sea captain—and not just any sea captain, but rather the poet William Wordsworth’s brother John—who subsequently went down with his ship before he could return to England and whisk a waiting Jane to the altar. (It is true that John Wordsworth died at sea in 1805, but that is the only hard fact in Pilgrim’s wholly speculative story.)”
- ↑ J. Mark Smith. Elegizing John Wordsworth, MacEwan University. Retrieved on 2022-01-28.
- ↑ Rebecca Wynne-Walsh. More Pride, Less Prejudice, at Jane Austen Talk: The talk at the Georgian Society discussed Austen's much-discussed romance with Tom Lefroy., University Times, 2018-03-08. Retrieved on 2022-01-27. “This evening’s lecture presented exciting evidence that Austen may have had another affair later in her all-short lifetime, this time with a sea captain, John Wordsworth, the brother of William Wordsworth himself.”
- ↑ Carl H. Ketcham. The Still Unknown Lover, Persuasions, pp. 7-12. Retrieved on 2022-01-27. “Constance Pilgrim is thus left to provide negative proofs – to establish that it was not impossible that Jane and John might have met at various times and places, beginning in Devon in 1797, and that John might have been the lover described by Cassandra as having shown a great interest in Jane and expressed a desire to see her again, a fulfillment thwarted by his early death.”
- ↑ Richard Matlak. Captain John Wordsworth's Death At Sea, The Wordsworth Circle, Summer 2000, pp. 127-133. Retrieved on 2022-01-27.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Richard Matlak. Wordsworth, Beaumont, and the Publicity over Captain John Wordsworth's Death at Sea, The Wordsworth Circle, Summer 2000, pp. 119-127. Retrieved on 2022-01-28. “After two unsuccessful voyages, the ill-fated voyage of his death held high promise not only to clear John of debt, but to make his brothers and sister rich, for they had invested--it must be said, with more than modest coercion from John3--some L3000 pounds of their long-awaited settlement from Lord Lowther in their brother's personal cargo.”