Author: Noel, Thomas
Biography:
NOEL, Thomas (1799-1861: ODNB)
He was born on 11 May 1799 at Kirkby Mallory, Leicestershire, the son of Rev. Thomas Noel (1775-1853) and his first wife, Catherine Smith (1773-1832), who had married in 1796. His father was the illegitimate son of Thomas Noel, 2nd Viscount Wentworth, who presented him with the livings of Kirby Mallory and Ellsworth in 1798. His father was therefore a cousin of Anne Isabella (“Annabella”) Milbanke and married her and Lord Byron (q.v.) in 1814. Nothing is known of his early education but he proceeded to Merton College Oxford (BA 1824). He married Emily Anne Halliday (1813-82) of Ham Lodge, Twickenham, on 29 Jan. 1831 at All Saints, Kingston upon Thames, Surrey, with her mother’s consent. They had three children. A son, Byron Bruce Noel, was born in 1851. The Cottage Muse (1833) was deeply sympathetic to the condition of the poor and destitute but eschewed advocacy of political action. Published before the Poor Law Amendment Act (1834) which established the workhouse system and elicited a chorus of criticism from other poets such as Mary Hutton (q.v.), it instead gave poetical responses to lines of scripture and argued that the religious conquest of the “war within” ourselves was greater than the “havoc” and “fame” of the rich and powerful. In Rymes and Roundelayes (1841) his range broadened and included topographical verse (“A Thames Voyage,” “Cliefden Spring,” “Cader Idris,” “Mont Blanc”) but also revisited the theme of poverty (“The Cottager in his Cot,” “The Pauper’s Drive”). DNB, Boase, and ODNB all list another volume, Village Verse (1841), but no copy has been located and it is probably a mix-up with similar-sounding titles by Noel Thomas Carrington and Mary Mitford (qq.v.). He lived for many years at Boyne Cottage, Boyne Hill, Cookham, near Maidenhead, Berkshire, in quiet seclusion. He was also known for his wide knowledge of Elizabethan literature. In 1858 he moved to Brighton and died at 5 Lansdown Street on 22 May 1861, leaving an estate of under £5000. His wife, Emily Anne, remarried in 1862, was soon abandoned, struggled to keep her property, and divorced in 1874. She died in 1882. (ODNB 19 Sept. 2023; DNB; Boase 2:1160; ancestry.co.uk 19 Sept. 2023; MH 1 Feb. 1831, 28 May 1861) AA
Other Names:
- T. Noel