Author: Mellish, Joseph Charles
Biography:
MELLISH, Joseph Charles (1769-1823: Ritt)
He was born in London on 2 Mar. 1769, eldest child of Judith (Stapleton) and Charles Mellish. His father was a prominent barrister of Lincoln’s Inn and an MP who inherited Blyth Hall, Nottinghamshire, in 1791. Some of the family fortune came from slave-owning plantations in Jamaica. From Chiswick and Eton, Joseph Charles went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1786 (matric. 1787), but did not take a degree. He was also admitted to Lincoln’s Inn in Jan. 1787 but was never called to the bar. Gifted in languages, he instead found his niche as a diplomat. He must have spent time on the Continent in the 1790s; there he married a German noblewoman (his will uses the title “Baroness”), Caroline Ernestine Frederica Sophia von Stein-Nordheim (1777-1824). They had at least three daughters and three sons born between 1799 and 1814. His father died in 1796 but had cut the elder son out of his will on account of his extravagance; the younger son, who inherited Blyth, lost it by gambling. Mellish’s first overseas posting was to the kingdom of Sicily (1807): “Lines addressed to my Brother and Sister” in his collection of poems reflects on the pain of separation at that time. There followed Louisiana, US (1809), and then an appointment as British Consul for the Circle of Lower Saxony and the independent cities of Hamburg, Bremen, and Lubeck, which lasted from 1814 until his death. The family maintained a home in Richmond, Surrey, but he died at his sister’s house on Chesterfield St., London, on 18 Sept. 1823, aged 54, and was buried at the Holly Road cemetery, Twickenham. His wife survived him by only five months; she died at Wentzenbach (Waitzenbach), Germany, on 17 Feb. 1824 and her heart was brought back to England to be buried with her husband. Their children erected a tablet to their memory in St. Mary's, Twickenham. Mellish’s translations and original poems are remarkably sophisticated, ranging from imitations of Latin and Greek classics to contemporary German poets such as Schiller, Goethe, Holty, and Bürger. (Elke M. Ritt, ed., Mary Stuart, a Tragedy [1801] von . . . Mellish [1993]; ancestry.com 19 May 2023; findmypast.com 19 May 2023; ACAD; Hampshire Chronicle 5 Oct. 1807, 6 Feb. 1809; The News [London] 29 Sept. 1823; Sun 17 Mar. 1824) HJ
Other Names:
- J. C. Mellish