Author: DARWALL, Mary
Biography:
DARWALL, Mary, formerly WHATELEY (1738-1825: ODNB)
She was the youngest of nine children of William Whateley, farmer, and his wife Mary Beach, and was baptised on 9 Feb. 1738 at St. Leonard’s, Beoly, Worcestershire. She married the Rev. John Darwall (1731-89), a widower with five small children, 4 Nov. 1766; he became Vicar of Walsall in 1769. She went on to have six children of her own. She first published as "Harriet Airy" in the GM in 1759. William Shenstone thought highly of her and helped to organise a subscription (with over 800 names) for her first volume, Original Poems (1764), with John Langhorne (q.v.) writing a prefatory poem. She also wrote hymns for her husband’s congregation in Walsall. Attending to a large family, she published nothing for the next thirty years. After the death of her husband in 1789, she moved to Birmingham and then to Newtown, Montgomeryshire, in 1793. She then published Poems on Several Occasions (1794)--with a still respectable 300 subscribers)--which included poems by her daughters Harriet and Elizabeth (q.v.). Her odes, elegies, pastorals and occasional verse are largely unremarkable but "The Power of Destiny" and "Vanity of External Accomplishments" in the 1764 volume were original and the topographical poem "Written on Walking in the Woods in Gregynog in Montgomeryshire" in the 1794 one is still fresh. "An Epistle to a Friend," first published as "Female Friendship" (Westminster Magazine Apr. 1776, 212) and reprinted in 1794, highlights an important dimension to her life surrounded by her children and step-children. She died at Walsall on 5 Dec. 1825, aged 87. (ODNB 2 Mar. 2021; Orlando; GM Dec. 1761, 635-6, Feb. 1762, 84; PGM 2 Mar. 2021; ECWP 256-262, 528; Birmingham Chronicle 8 Dec. 1825; Staffordshire Advertiser 10 Dec. 1825; Ann Messenger, Woman and Poet: The Life of Mary Whateley Darwall (1738-1825) [1999]) AA
Other Names:
- Miss Whateley