Author: Clark, Emily
Biography:
CLARK, Emily (1774-1833: ancestry.co.uk)
She was baptised Emily Frederick Clark on 6 Sept. 1774 at the British Factory Chaplaincy, Oporto, Portugal, the eldest daughter of John Clark and his second wife, Elizabeth Frederick, the daughter of Col. Frederick who, under pressure of debt, shot himself in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey in 1797. John Clark probably worked in the family wine-merchants, Clark & Thornton, but does not appear to have been very successful and on their return to England he was found a minor post as a custom-house office at Dartmouth. In Mar. 1797 her mother was in a “distressed situation” in Northumberland Street, Marylebone, and was awarded £10 by the RLF. Emily and her sister Anna Louisa learned to draw and paint, and Emily would try several times to open a school, without success. She did, however, publish several novels which failed to sell and were largely ignored: Ianthe (1798), Ermina Montrose (1800), The Banks of the Douro (1805), Tales of the Fireside (1817), and The Esquimaux (1819). She proposed another novel, Rosamund (1815), by subscription but it does not appear to have been published. Poems (1810) was her only volume of verse and consisted mostly of ballads. From 1811 she applied to the RLF 42 times (24 applications were successful) and usually received small amounts of £5. Benjamin Hobhouse called her a “mendicant annuitant” (ODNB). In 1826, she drew up a Plan of a Drawing School at 2 Bolton Place, Queen’s Elm, Chelsea, but nothing seems to have come of it. By Mar. 1833 she was living above a Druggist's at 5 Hanover Place, Park Road, Regents Park, and told the RLF on March 7th that she intended to leave early in April because the smells and fumes of the mixtures were making her ill. However, she died shortly afterwards and was buried on 16 March at Marylebone. No age was given, possibly indicating that being alone and impoverished, she had been forgotten. (ancestry.co.uk 4 Sept. 2020; ODNB 4 Sept. 2020; Annual Necrology [1797-1798] 333, 340; Carlisle Journal 4 Apr. 1801; RLF 1/55, 1/266) AA
Other Names:
- Miss Emily Clark