Author: LAMONT, Aeneas
Biography:
LAMONT, Aeneas (c. 1761-1803: Lunney)
Pseudonym Augustus Chatterton
He was born around 1761 but no baptism record has been discovered. His father may have been Angus Lamont, a captain of two small vessels trading between Scotland and Belfast. Nothing is known of his education. For reasons unknown, he went out to America as a young man in the 1780s and worked as a printer/compositor in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York. From Philadelphia he wrote to George Washington on 31 Dec. 1784, seeking patronage for a forthcoming volume of poetry. This volume, listed as anonymous in library catalogues, was The Buds of Beauty (Baltimore 1787) by “Augustus Chatterton”--a fairly obvious joke for a young man named Aeneas. It was printed by Francis Childs, from whom he learned that the aged Benjamin Franklin (about whom he later wrote a memorial poem) was planning to set up a letter-foundry; he therefore dedicated the work to Franklin, probably in the hope of employment. No patronage from Washington or Franklin was forthcoming and he returned to Ireland. In 1788 he set up an auction-room in Belfast, published poetry in the Hibernian Magazine, and was one of the founders of the Belfast Reading Society (later the Linen Library) alongside his future father-in-law, John Ireland. He worked as the compositor at the radical United Irishmen’s newspaper, Northern Star (1792-97), and in Poems on Different Subjects reprinted much of his earlier volume, omitting poems in praise of the American rebellion and “Elogiums on American Worthies who Fell in the Late Revolution,” probably because of the tense political climate in Ireland. Almost the entire leadership of the United Irishmen were among the 570 subscribers and the volume was published on Bastille Day. Poems in both volumes record his experiences as a printer in America and Ulster: “The Plagiarist and the Printer,” “The News-Printer’s Letter Box.” Despite his obvious revolutionary sympathies, he does not appear to have suffered as a result of the 1798 rebellion, possibly because in late 1797 he began to work for a merchant (Seeds in Weighhouse Lane) and planned to move to Beersbridge, just outside Belfast In 1795 he married Dorothea Ireland, with whom he had several children. He died on 16 Feb. 1803. (Linde Lunney, “Getting to know Aeneas Lamont,” unpublished paper, University of Ulster 1997; Northern Star14 Mar. 1795; Samuel Thomson Papers, Trinity College Dublin, MS 7257, fols. 81-5; Stoddard 372-3) AA
Other Names:
- Augustus Chatterton