Author: Tuite, Eliza Dorothea
Biography:
TUITE, Eliza Dorothea, formerly Cobbe (1765-1850: ancestry.co.uk)
Eliza (or Elizabeth) Dorothea was born in Dublin, Ireland, on 4 Jan. 1765, youngest child of Col. Thomas Cobbe (1733-1815) of Newbridge, Ireland, and his wife Lady Eliza Beresford (1736-1806). In 1784 she married a baronet and former naval officer, Sir Henry Tuite (1741-1805), the childless couple eventually settling at Weybridge, Surrey, where Sir Henry died. His obituarist, while failing to elaborate on Sir Henry’s life, commented that “Her Ladyship is remarkable for being a most excellent horsewoman,” a memory shared by her great-niece, Frances Power Cobbe, who added, “She was a remarkable old woman, of rather masculine aspect; in fact someone described her as ‘a most gentlemanly old lady.’” In 1818 Lady Tuite sold the Weybridge estate, settling in Bath, Somerset, where, in Mar. 1796, she had written the Dedication to Poems. To the publishers she had stated that she wished urgently “to raise money for an unnamed beneficiary.” This was unlikely to have been the author herself, the Tuites living well, spending seasons in London and offering patronage to artists such as Francis Nicholson and George Chinnery, who painted a miniature of Lady Tuite. However, the high price of half a guinea was certainly construed by the Monthly Review as evidence “that its sale is an object of some consequence.” Poems received faint praise, MR allowing that “the expression of a variety of just and elegant sentiments, in easy and flowing verse, may afford pleasure and instruction to readers, especially of the fair sex.” However, one poem, “Memory,” certainly appealed to Lord Byron, who, having inscribed it in a volume presented to his first love, was later considered its author. Lady Tuite also published Miscellaneous Poetry (1824, reprinted 1841), a slight volume mixing verses dated 1823 with some from the 1796 edition. Issued to raise funds for the Church Missionary Society, its tone is more pious than Poems, for Lady Tuite, who also authored moral tales for children, had become an active charity worker. She died on 17 May 1850, sharing a grave in Weston Churchyard, Bath, with her friends Anne Lysaght and Mary James. (ancestry.co.uk 20 Oct. 2023; London Chronicle 10 Jan.1765; Monthly Magazine Oct. 1805, 288; J. Meehan, Famous Houses of Bath [1901], 163-4 ; MR, 1796, 110; Levy and Irwin, “The Female Authors of Cadell and Davies” in Winckles and Rehbein, Women’s Literary Networks [2018]) EC
Other Names:
- Elizabeth Dorothea
- Lady Tuite