Author: Portal, Abraham
Biography:
PORTAL, Abraham (1726-1809: ODNB)
Portal was the son of a Huguenot refugee who had anglicised his name as William Peter Portal and become a Church of England minister, and who was rector of Clowne, Derbyshire, where Abraham was baptised on 10 May 1726; in 1734 he became rector of South Fambridge, Essex. He had married a widow, Mary Magdalen (Meure) Finlater (or Findlater), in London in Dec. 1723. Abraham was apprenticed to a London goldsmith in 1740 and once he was out of his indentures he married Elizabeth Nethersole at St. George’s Chapel, Mayfair, on 21 Aug. 1748. They had one child who died in infancy, and Elizabeth died in 1758. No record has been found for Portal’s second marriage, to Elizabeth Bedwell of Derbyshire, but the birthdates of their nine children indicate a date before the end of 1758. Portal ran his own business on Ludgate Hill, London, successfully for twenty years but went bankrupt in 1778. He may have been distracted by his parallel literary career. Encouraged by John Langhorne (q.v.) for whom he later wrote an elegy, he published poetry and works for the theatre, starting with a tragedy, Olindo and Sophronia (1758), followed by a comedy, The Indiscreet Lover (1768), occasional poems--Innocence (1762), War: An Ode (1764)—and the works listed here. After his bankruptcy he established himself as a bookseller in the Strand and issued his own Poems (1781) dedicated to R. B. Sheridan (q.v.). Sheridan found him a position as box-keeper at Drury Lane, which he held for some years. While carrying on these roles he also re-established himself as a silversmith in 1786 and moved to permanent premises on Castle St., Holborn, in 1790. There he died and was buried at St. Andrew’s, Holborn, on 7 Jan. 1809. (ODNB 31 Oct. 2023; ancestry.com 31 Oct. 2023; findmypast.com 31 Oct. 2023; CCEd 31 Oct. 2023) HJ