The Past Businesses |
Jean Ingelow Jean was born in Boston on 17 March 1820, to William and Jean Ingelow. Her father had set up a bank in 1805, but this collapsed four years after Jean was born. At a later, unknown, date the family moved to Ipswich, where William Ingelow worked in a bank, that in turn collapsed. There was a further move of the family to London. The eldest of four daughters and four sons, she wrote verse for the Youths' Magazine and was later its editor. Although never married, her early poems contain many references to an unhappy love affair. She remembered her girlhood in a house that backed onto the River Witham in Boston with fondness: "One of my early pleasures was to watch the gangs of men, who, at high tide, towed vessels up the river..The back of my father's house was on a level with the wharves, and overlooked a long reach of the river. Our nursery was a low room in the roof, having a large bow window, in the old fashioned seat of which I spent many a happy hour with my mother, sometimes listening to the soft hissing sound of wheat on its descent, sometimes admiring the figureheads of the vessels or laboriously spelling out the letters of their names." During her time in London she knew many of the writers and painters of the day, but very little is known about her as a person, apart perhaps from the fact that she had a mind and will of her own. In 1850 her collection of poems 'A Rhyming Chronical of Incidents and Feelings' was published. She wrote many poems and short stories, while a second volume called 'Poems' was published, that eventually ran to thirty editions. This latter drew comment from Alfred Tennyson "Miss Ingelow, I do declare you do the trick better than I do". A third volume of verse, in which 'The High Tide' poem, occurred was published in 1863 and by 1879 had run into its 23rd edition. In America some 200,000 copies of her various works were sold. Jean Ingelow died on 20 July 1897, and a memorial window was placed in St. Botolph's, better known as Boston Stump because of the lantern at the top of the tower (verse 17 of High Tide). Godfrey Chatfeld |