Lady Charlotte Mary Bacon (''née'' Harley; 12 December 1801 – 9 May 1880) was an English aristocrat.
Biography
Bacon was born in
Marylebone
Marylebone (usually , also ) is an area in London, England, and is located in the City of Westminster. It is in Central London and part of the West End. Oxford Street forms its southern boundary.
An ancient parish and latterly a metropo ...
in 1801 and was the second daughter of
Edward Harley, 5th Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer
Edward Harley, 5th Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer (20 February 1773 – 28 December 1848) was an English peer.
Harley was the son of John Harley (dean of Windsor) and Roach Vaughan. Edward succeeded to the titles and estates (including the H ...
and
Jane Elizabeth Scott.
[Debrett, John; Collen, George William (1840). ]
Debrett's Peerage of England, Scotland, and Ireland. revised, corrected and continued by G.W. Collen.
' London: William Pickering
Bacon's beauty as a child prompted
Lord Byron
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824) was an English poet. He is one of the major figures of the Romantic movement, and is regarded as being among the greatest poets of the United Kingdom. Among his best-kno ...
to dedicate the first two
canto
The canto () is a principal form of division in medieval and modern long poetry.
Etymology and equivalent terms
The word ''canto'' is derived from the Italian word for "song" or "singing", which comes from the Latin ''cantus'', "song", from th ...
s of ''
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
''Childe Harold's Pilgrimage: A Romaunt'' is a long narrative poem in four parts written by Lord Byron. The poem was published between 1812 and 1818. Dedicated to " Ianthe", it describes the travels and reflections of a young man disillusioned ...
'' to her, under the name "Ianthe".
[Gunn, John Alexander Wilson; Wiebe, Melvin George. eds. (2008). ''Benjamin Disraeli letters, Volume 7.'' University of Toronto Press, ] Lord Byron had been one of the many lovers of her mother. Lady Charlotte was also the subject of the painting ''Lady Charlotte Harley as Hebe'' by
Richard Westall.
Byron biographer
Benita Eisler has claimed that Byron sexually molested Lady Charlotte when she was eleven years old, stating that "In the period leading up to his marriage to
Annabella Milbanke, early in 1815
yron
The Yron () is a long river in the Lorraine (region) of northeastern France. It rises in Vigneulles-lès-Hattonchâtel and runs generally northeast to join the Orne river at Conflans-en-Jarnisy
Conflans-en-Jarnisy () is a commune in the ...
..was enjoying an affair with the coolly promiscuous, forty-year-old militant
Whig Lady Oxford
harlotte’s motherin the course of which he sexually molested her eleven-year-old daughter, Lady Charlotte Harley, to whom, under the name of Ianthe, he dedicated the seventh printing of ''Childe Harold'', with attendant high-flown verses.”
She married Captain (later Major General)
Anthony Bacon in 1823. They had three children. He died in 1864 and the three children all moved to South Australia. She stayed with relatives in
South Australia
South Australia (commonly abbreviated as SA) is a States and territories of Australia, state in the southern central part of Australia. With a total land area of , it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories by area, which in ...
between 1865 and 1877, and
Charlotte Waters, Northern Territory (now abandoned ruins) was named in her honour by
R. R. Knuckey and
G. R. McMinn in 1871. Her son Harley Bacon had contributed food supplies to
Charles Todd's survey team.
Bacon died in 1880, aged 78, at her home 13 Stanhope Place near
Hyde Park,
London
London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...
.
References
External links
''Lady Charlotte Harley as Hebe''via
* Adam McCune
Naming 'Ianthe': Charlotte Harley and Byron's Classical Sources
1801 births
1880 deaths
19th-century English women
Daughters of British earls
Harley family
Lord Byron
Settlers of South Australia
People from Marylebone
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