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On 12th February 1828 George Meredith was born.
In January 1844 Edward Nicolls and [his future wife] Mary Ellen Peacock (age 22) were married.
On 9th August 1849 George Meredith (age 21) and Mary Ellen Peacock (age 28) were married at St George's Church, Hanover Square. Their honeymoon was to the Rhine Valley where George had been to school.
1856. Henry Wallis (age 25). "The Death of Chatterton" depicting the death of the 17-year-old English early Romantic poet Thomas Chatterton, 1752–1770, who had poisoned himself with arsenic. Wallis sold the painting to Augustus Egg in 1856. The model used for the painting was the young George Meredith (age 27), a 19th-century English novelist and poet.
In 1857 [his wife] Mary Ellen Peacock (age 35), wife of George Meredith (age 28), eloped with Henry Wallis (age 26).
All About History Books
The Chronicle of Geoffrey le Baker of Swinbroke. Baker was a secular clerk from Swinbroke, now Swinbrook, an Oxfordshire village two miles east of Burford. His Chronicle describes the events of the period 1303-1356: Gaveston, Bannockburn, Boroughbridge, the murder of King Edward II, the Scottish Wars, Sluys, Crécy, the Black Death, Winchelsea and Poitiers. To quote Herbert Bruce 'it possesses a vigorous and characteristic style, and its value for particular events between 1303 and 1356 has been recognised by its editor and by subsequent writers'. The book provides remarkable detail about the events it describes. Baker's text has been augmented with hundreds of notes, including extracts from other contemporary chronicles, such as the Annales Londonienses, Annales Paulini, Murimuth, Lanercost, Avesbury, Guisborough and Froissart to enrich the reader's understanding. The translation takes as its source the 'Chronicon Galfridi le Baker de Swynebroke' published in 1889, edited by Edward Maunde Thompson. Available at Amazon in eBook and Paperback.
On 29th September 1857 [his wife] Mary Ellen Peacock (age 36) wrote to Henry Wallis (age 27):
"If we have to stay in England let us be at Clifton. I have no answer from George (age 29). I imagine he wants to see Darvall [Henry Darvall] before writing. If he gives no reply in a week I shall take his silence for freedom and go abroad without another word, if you will like it, and where you will… I am always dreading to lose you because I feel I have no right to you, and I love you so really, so far beyond anything I have known of love, that there are ways in which I believe I could bear to lose you. God knows how hard it would be; but I believe I could bear it. Not by Death or weariness or anger. By Death I could not lose you
The love where Death has set his seal
Nor age can chill, nor rival steal
Nor falsehood disavow, (Lord Byron, Elegy on Thyrza)
But I do not fear your Death, because I feel how much you owe to Life, how much Life has for you, and surely I shall in no shape lead you Delilah-like to Death, since it is my one aim to add to your strength, my one prayer 'God grant that I may do this man no harm'. And for weariness or anger, if we begin to thread either of those paths we will part before they possess us."
1858. Henry Wallis (age 27). Portrait of [his wife] Mary Ellen Peacock (age 36), wife of George Meredith (age 29), with whom Henry Wallis had eloped the previous year.
In October 1861 [his wife] Mary Ellen Peacock (age 40) died.
In 1871 [his daughter] Marie Eveleen Meredith was born to George Meredith (age 42).
1893. Frederick Sandys (age 63). Portrait of [his daughter] Marie Meredith (age 22), daughter of his friend the novelist George Meredith (age 64), (who sat for Henry Wallis's Death of Chatterton). This drawing was done in 1893, when Marie was 23, and just married. Sandys was fond of her and called her by the affectionate names of 'Marietta' or 'Riette', while her father called her 'Dearie'. In December 1894 Meredith wrote to Sandys 'I have bidden the Dearie march to the finish of her portrait, and she has vowed over again that she wished to and would. Your call will compel her. She has had visitings and receivings to do since her marriage'.
Marie Eveleen Meredith: In 1871 she was born to George Meredith. In 1933 she died.
1893. George Frederick Watts (age 75). Portrait of George Meredith (age 64).
On 18th May 1909 George Meredith (age 81) died.