Isabella Frances Romer

Isabella Frances Romer (13 May 1798 – 27 April 1852) was an English novelist, travel writer, and biographer.

Family The eldest child of army officer Brigadier-General John William Augustus "Handsome Jack" Romer (1750-1802), and Mary Ann Romer (1772-), née Cuthbert, Isabella Frances Romer was born in London on 13 May 1798, and was baptised at Marylebone, Middlesex, now part of the City of Westminster. Apart from the House Of Commons' descriptions of her mother's situation in 1814, when Romer was just 15, little is known of her family and its circumstances before and after the death of her father.

Marriage Isabella Frances Romer married Major (later Colonel) William Medows Hamerton (1790-1860) of the 7th Fusiliers, in France, at the house of the British Ambassador, on 24 December 1818. They had one child; a daughter, Frances Augusta Caroline Hamerton (1820-1898), later, Mrs. Frederick William Charles Buxton Whalley.Frederick William Charles Buxton Whalley (1811-1881) was a barrister at Lincoln's Inn.

Separation and divorce Romer separated from Hamerton on 27 March 1827, due to her adultery.See: Elder (2019), "Fancy Hall", and also "Minutes of Evidence". Her co-respondent, John Thomas Bushe (1794—1870), was also married.Bushe had married Lady Louisa Hare (d.1855), the daughter of William Hare (1751-1837), 1st Earl of Listowel, and his first wife, Mary Wrixon (1751-1810), at Westminster, on 15 March 1817. Immediately upon her separation from Hamerton, she reverted to her maiden name, and went to Paris to live with Bushe, who had also left England for France in March 1827 to avoid being served legal papers by Hamerton's solicitor ("Minutes of Evidence", pp. 6–7).Bushe was the "Mr. B." of Romer's 14 October 1839 letter from Paris to Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington (Madden, 1855, p. 333).In his account of a visit to the Paris residence of Mrs. Romer and Bushe in November 1847, Charles Hervey (1887, pp.353-354) recalled that "Johnnie Bushe [was] the son of a distinguished Irish judge [viz., Charles Kendal Bushe], and a thorough cosmopolite, member of the French Jockey Club, and one of the best whist-players in Europe".Jones (2004).

Hamerton was eventually granted a divorce from Romer, by Parliament, in 1830;See T.E.1, T.E.2, "Minutes of Evidence", and T.A.1. he remarried, marrying Sarah Ann Strangways (1798-1873) at Cheltenham, Gloucestershire on 7 July 1830. Romer never married again.Bushe was not divorced from his wife and, therefore, was not free to marry.

Author

"Mrs. Hamerton" In 1827, Mrs. Leslie and her Grandchildren, written by "Mrs. Hamerton" was published by Charles Tilt.

Jerrold's (1907, p. 213) claim, made 80 years after the event, that the "Mrs. Hamerton, care of Mrs. Reynolds", to whom Thomas Hood, had sent a letter and £15 (on behalf of Tilt's), was either "Charlotte Cox Reynolds", the mother of John Hamilton Reynolds, or "Eliza Reynolds", Hood's sister-in-law, and Reynolds' wife who had assumed the pen-name of "Mrs. Hamerton" and had written the work in question was entirely mistaken; it was, indeed, the real "Mrs. Hamerton".Also, as some mistakenly attribute, it could not have been Eugénie Hamerton, the wife of Philip Gilbert Hamerton, as she was not born until 1839, twelve years later.

Although no mention of the non-Romer work, Mrs. Leslie and her Grandchildren, is made in any of the posthumous accounts of Romer's life and works, with Romer having separated from her husband on 27 March 1827 ("Minutes of Evidence", p. 13), Isabella Frances Romer who would have submitted the final draft of her manuscript to the publisher before her separation (and, therefore, still "Mrs. Hamerton"), and was now overseas in France was temporarily using her friend's London address for her commercial correspondence.The work, still un-published in May 1827 (see: L.G.1, L.M.1, T.I.1, etc.), was released in July 1827 (see: T.I.2, etc), long after Romer had removed herself to France.

Travel "Mrs. Romer", as she was known, gained a reputation mainly as a travel writer, based on the volumes The Rhone, the Darro, and the Guadalquivir. A Summer Ramble in 1842 (1843b, reprinted in 1847), A Pilgrimage to the Temples and Tombs of Egypt, Nubia and Palestine in 1845–6 (1846b), and The Bird of Passage, or, Flying Glimpses of Many Lands (1849a), the last consisting of "a series of short stories set in Eastern Europe & the Middle East".Women Writers – Novelist, Essayists & Poets – R–Z Catalogue CXCVIII (London: Jarndyce Antiquarian Booksellers, 2012), p. 48.

Although encouraging the physical (rather than "armchair") travel of English women to the middle East, desiring "to warn others from those contingencies against which none had warned me", she stressed (1846, Vol.II, pp. 337–338) that travel in these domains could be extremely demanding for excessively "delicate" females: "I think that tourists in general have heretofore made too light of the perils of travelling in this country, and that many lives may be sacrificed to their accidental or intentional carelessness in disguising facts. Syria, in its actual state, is indeed no country for a delicate woman to travel in. All the wealth in the world, all the precautions possible, will not procure for her those auxiliaries to comfort which custom has rendered necessary for her well-being. She must forget that such things as carriages and carriage-roads exist; she must ride all day over execrable roads and under a burning sun; she must sleep at night in a tent, which is either the hottest or the coldest of all shelters; and if fever or accident overtake her on her way, she must trust in God and her own constitution to help her through, for neither physician nor apothecary, nor a roof to shelter her suffering head, will be forthcoming, even should thousands be offered for them."

Fiction "Mrs. Romer's" first book was a fictionalised account of mesmerism (a.k.a. animal magnetism), a controversial technique at the time: Sturmer: a Tale of Mesmerism (1841a). "She had traveled extensively in France and Germany; and, from her own experiences and observations, she was totally convinced of the veracity of the phenomena of mesmerism. One of the main goals of writing her novel was to alert readers to the dangers of this most powerful tool in the wrong hands" (Yeates, 2013, p. 803).

In 1840 she began to contribute sketches and short stories to Bentley's Miscellany and other periodicals, including The Albion, and Henry Colburn's New Monthly Magazine, the great rival to Bentley's.Notes on Isabella Romer on the University of Missouri Victorian Short Fiction site. Retrieved 8 January 2013.

Her biography of Marie Thérèse Charlotte, Duchess of Angoulême, was completed after her death by John Doran (1807–1878) and published as Filia Dolorosa (1852).

Appraisal "Mrs. Romer" was described by a near-contemporary, the Irish writer Richard Robert Madden, as a "shrewd, lively, mystery-loving, and 'a leetle conceited', occasional authoress, prone to expatiate rather extensively on themes merely personal, and regarding her own feelings, but always redeeming slight defects of that nature by vivid delineations, and smart, interesting, and entertaining descriptions." Madden said that her descriptions of Palestine were "abounding more in sprightliness than spirituality".Madden (1855), pp. 329–330.

Death Romer died of cancer in Belgravia, London on 27 April 1852.

Works "Mrs. Hamerton" 1827: Mrs. Leslie and her Grandchildren: A Tale, London: Charles Tilt.

Isabella Frances Romer

1840: "Some Account of the Turkish Pretender: An Extract from the Pilgrim's Scrap Book", Spirit of the Times, Vol.10, No. 14, (6 June 1840), pp.160-161. 1841a: Sturmer, a Tale of Mesmerism: To Which are Added Other Sketches from Life, in Three Volumes: Vol.I, Vol.II, Vol.III, London: Richard Bentley. 1841b: "A Mystery", Bentley's Miscellany, Vol.10, (July 1841), pp. 412-421. 1842a: "The Sultan Mahmoud and the Georgian Slave", Bentley's Miscellany, Vol.11, (January 1842), pp. 122-143. 1842b: "The Necromancer; or, Ghost versus Gramarye", Bentley's Miscellany, Vol.11, (January 1842), pp. 368-377. 1842c: "The Two Interviews: with an Illustration by George Cruikshank", Bentley's Miscellany, Vol.11, (January 1842), pp. 453-460. 1842d: "A Night in the Adriatic", Bentley's Miscellany, Vol.12, (July 1842), pp. 582-460. 1843a: "The Rock of Barabaké", Bentley's Miscellany, Vol.13, (January 1843), pp. 345-353. 1843b: The Rhone, the Darro, and the Guadalquivir: A Summer Ramble in 1842, in Two Volumes: Vol.I, Vol.II, London: Richard Bentley. 1844a: "The Blue Fiacre; or, The Parisian Othello", The Albion, Vol.3, No. 15, (13 April 1844), pp.177-179. 1844b: "The Lover's Rock: A Legend of Andalusia", The New Monthly Magazine, Vol.72, No. 286, (October 1844), pp. 196-211, No. 287, (November 1844), pp.363-376. 1845a: "The Fête of Peterhoff", Bentley's Miscellany, Vol.17, (January 1845), pp. 22-33. 1845b: "St. Sylvester's Night", Bentley's Miscellany, Vol.17, (January 1845), pp. 577-585. 1845c: "Story of a Picture: A Tale of Revenge and Murder", The Albion, Vol.4, No. 34, (23 August 1845), pp. 401-402. 1846a: "The Last Days of Riego", Bentley's Miscellany, Vol.19, (January 1846), pp. 261-267. 1846b: A Pilgrimage to the Temples and Tombs of Egypt, Nubia, and Palestine, in 1845-6, in Two Volumes: Vol.I, Vol.II, London: Richard Bentley. 1847a: "A Legend of Florence: Taken from and Italian Chronicle", The Keepsake for 1847, pp. 106-123. 1847b: "The Broken Vow", Bentley's Miscellany, Vol.21, (January 1847), pp. 51-61. 1848a: "A Romance of Ronda", The Keepsake for 1848, pp. 172-186. 1848b: "King Mob (The Last Days of the French Monarchy): with a Portrait of M. de Lamartine", Bentley's Miscellany, Vol.23, (January 1848), pp. 325-336. 1849a: The Bird of Passage, or, Flying Glimpses of Many Lands, in Three Volumes: Vol.I, Vol.II, Vol.III, London: Richard Bentley. 1849b: "Story of a Haunted House", Bentley's Miscellany, Vol.26, (July 1849), pp. 436-445. 1850: "The Tomb of Lady Blessington", The Albion, or British, Colonial and Foreign Weekly Gazette, Vol.9, No. 21, (25 May 1850), pp. 244-245. 1851a: "The Quarrel; or Lady Eleanor's Story", Gems of Beauty: or, Literary Gift for MDCCCLI, Boston, MA: Phillips, Sampson, and Company. 1851b: "The Capucin", The Ladies' Gift; or, Souvenir of Friendship, pp.12-24, Boston, MA: David P. King. 1852: Filia Dolorosa: Memoirs of Marie Thérèse Charlotte, Duchess of Angoulême, The Last of the Dauphines, in Two Volumes: Vol.I, Vol.II, London: Richard Bentley.

Isabella Frances Romer

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