Lady Charlotte Guest

Dedication to education

The first national working-class movement in the world, Chartism, helped Lady Charlotte understand that there was a need for "closer involvement in practical work for the people of Dowlais".^[3] Many of the wealthier people during the 19th century helped develop educational and leisure facilities for the people who worked for them: this is something that the Guests also did. With the backing of her cousin, Henry Layard, Lady Charlotte eventually focused her efforts on providing education in Dowlais. Despite her sex, a great disadvantage in that day in public affairs, Lady Charlotte managed to propagate her ideas and implement many of her educational developments.^[3]

Lady Charlotte was very dedicated in her work and routinely visited schools. In addition, she used to give out prizes and otherwise encourage students. She also supplied schools with materials for needlework and arranged for the purchase of requisite teaching supplies. She supported schools in Swansea and Llandaff, as well as Dowlais.^[5] The Dowlais school is described as "probably the most important and most progressive not only in the industrial history of South Wales, but of the whole of Britain during the nineteenth century."^[6]

Her dedication to trying to improve education can also be seen in the library that was constructed in the mid-1840s. Originally there was a subscription fee of 1s 6d, however this was later changed in 1853 and it became a public library.^[5]

Dowlais Ironworks

Dowlais Ironworks was a major 19th-century ironworks located near Merthyr Tydfil, one of the four main ironworks around Merthyr, the other three being Cyfarthfa, Plymouth and Penydarren Ironworks.^[7]

Charlotte Guest took assisted management of Dowlais Ironworks after the death of her husband in 1852.^[8] She along with G. T. Clark and Edward Divett would become executors and trustees of the Ironworks. As a result of this Guest would be sole trustee while a widow but she remarried in 1855 to Charles Schreiber and de facto control fell to Clark although there are reports that she gave up running the iron works, and instead travelled and assembled an impressive ceramics collection.^[9]

Publications

Guest arrived in Wales already expert in seven languages. She learnt Welsh, and associated with leading literary scholars of the Abergavenny Welsh Society Cymdeithas Cymreigyddion y Fenni, notably including Thomas Price, and John Jones (Tegid) who supported and encouraged her in her work. Villemarqué had an initially cordial relationship with her about Breton sources, but then plagiarised her work. She translated several mediaeval songs and poems, then in 1837 she began on the Mabinogion. John Jones (Tegid) borrowed a copy of the Llyfr Coch Hergest manuscript for her from Judge Bosanquet, who had originally commissioned him to transcribe a copy when Tegid was a young scholar at Oxford. The first tale Charlotte translated from Tegid's transcription was "The Lady of the Fountain" or "Owain," which was well received when published in 1838.

Some characters from the tales had been profiled in William Owen Pughe's Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales. Pughe published a translation of the first episode of Pwyll, from the First Branch, in 1795, and again in 1821. He made a complete translation of all the tales, but the work was unpublished at his death in 1835. Guest did not rely on Pughe's translations, though she did use a Welsh dictionary Pughe had completed in 1803.

The Charlotte Guest Mabinogion became the first translation of the material to be published in modern print format. It was published in seven volumes between 1838 and 1845, with the first volumes dedicated to Guest's favourite Arthurian material. In 1849 the work was republished in three volumes: Volume I contained the Welsh Romances Owain, Peredur, and Geraint and Enid; Volume II contained Culhwch ac Olwen and The Dream of Rhonabwy. Volume III contained the Four Branches of the Mabinogi and Taliesin. Geraint and Enid in Volume I was the basis for Alfred, Lord Tennyson's two poems about Geraint in the Idylls of the King.

The seven volume series 1838–45, and the three volume set 1849, were all bilingual, presenting Tegid's transcribed Welsh text, and Guest's English translation. They included copious scholarly footnotes, mainly in English, totalling 145 pages in all. They were lavishly produced, with full illustrations, and gold tooled, leather covers. All volumes were published simultaneously in Llandovery, Wales by the Tonn Press, and by Longmans of London.

The next edition in 1877 was the English translation only, and this became the standard edition which was to become so very well known.

The name 'Mabinogion'

The name Mabinogion for these stories is often incorrectly thought to begin with Guest but it was already in use in the late 18th century cf. Pughe 1795 and his circle in the London Welsh Societies. The name was derived from a mediaeval copyist mistake where a single instance of the word mabynnogyon looks like a plural for the term 'mabinogi;' but 'mabinogi' is already a Welsh plural.

The meaning Mabinogi is obscure, but it clearly roots in the word 'mab' for son, child, young person: this is to be seen in the naming convention 'son of' in genealogies. Beyond that scholars have no consensus. As a title the 'Mabinogi' properly applies to only the Four Branches of the Mabinogi. These are not just four stories, as each contains at least three tales, but they are formally referred to as four tales out of the eleven which comprise the standardised Mabinogion collection, post-Guest.

Guest's own collection included twelve stories, adding in the Hanes Taliesin which is subsequently omitted by other scholars, as it is not found in the Llyfr Coch Hergest, or the Llyfr Gwyn Rhydderch, like the rest.

In 2007 the leading modern scholar of the field, John Bollard, challenged the validity of the Mabinogion collection, saying that apart from the Four Branches of the Mabinogi which are coherent, the stories have little in common with each other except that they are prose fictions surviving in the same mediaeval manuscripts.

First marriage

After the brief flirtation with Disraeli, she escaped her unhappy home life through marriage in 1833, at the age of twenty-one. Her husband, John Josiah Guest, was a prominent industrialist and ironmaster (owner of the Dowlais Iron Company, the largest of its day) and the first member of parliament from the town of Merthyr Tydfil, Wales.^[10] He was much older than she was; 49 to her 21. The couple married on 29 July 1833 and moved to a newly built mansion in Dowlais in Merthyr Tydfil. Though Guest was member of parliament for Merthyr, extremely wealthy, and of good family, he was much lower in status than his aristocratic wife, which caused her significant social strain. Despite this they remained married until his death in 1852, and Charlotte was mainly very happy in her marriage. She bore ten children:^[11]

• Charlotte Maria Guest (1834–1902), who married Richard Du Cane (d. 1904), brother of Edmund Frederick Du Cane.
• Ivor Bertie Guest (1835–1914), who married Lady Cornelia Henrietta Maria Spencer-Churchill (1847–1927), daughter of John Spencer-Churchill, 7th Duke of Marlborough^[12]
• Katharine Gwladys Guest (1837–1926), who married the Reverend Frederick Cecil Alderson (d. 1907), son of Sir Edward Hall Alderson
• Thomas Merthyr Guest (1838–1904), who married the writer and philanthropist Lady Theodora Grosvenor (1840–1924), daughter of Richard Grosvenor, 2nd Marquess of Westminster
• Montague John Guest (1839–1909), a Liberal politician, who never married.^[13]
• Augustus Frederick Guest (1840–1862), who died aged 21.
• Arthur Edward Guest (1841–1898), a Conservative politician, who married Adeline Mary Chapman (d. 1931)
• Mary Enid Evelyn Guest (1843–1912), who married Sir Austen Henry Layard (1817–1894).^[14]
• Constance Rhiannon Guest (1844–1916), who married Hon. Charles George Cornwallis Eliot (1839–1901), youngest son of Edward Eliot, 3rd Earl of St Germans
• Blanche Vere Guest (1847–1919), who married Edward Ponsonby, 8th Earl of Bessborough (1851–1920).

She took an enthusiastic interest in her husband's philanthropic activities on behalf of the local community, and they built pioneering schools for their workers, as well as piping in clean water for their cottages when this was still a very new technology. She was increasingly trusted by her husband as his assistant at the ironworks, and she acted as his representative for the company. She translated technical documents from French. John Guest was created a baronet in 1838, due in no small part to his wife's social engineering. The decline of Josiah's health meant that Charlotte spent more time administering the business and took it over completely following his death in 1852. She negotiated strikes and a slump, and stood up to other foundry owners, stabilising the business until in 1855 she could hand on the business to her eldest son, Ivor, and the manager G. T. Clark.^[15]

Guest, with her contemporary and friend Lady Llanover, was a patron of the arts in Wales. Her Enid was a literary influence on Tennyson, and her theories and sources influenced European artists, poets and writers. She published, promoted and translated of the books of The Mabinogion, with her 1877 single volume edition of the English translation being adopted as part of the Everyman series in 1902. Further editions were published during the 20th century. In 2004 the work was published online by the Gutenberg project, and in 2008 Colin Jones published recordings with music. Modern translations of The Mabinogion include John Bollard's series (2007–2010) and that of Sioned Davies (2008).

Second marriage

In 1855, Charlotte married Charles Schreiber (10 May 1826 – 31 March 1884) a classical scholar who had recently been her sons' tutor,^[10] and who was 14 years her junior. The difference in status and age created a major social scandal and set her apart from many of her former close friends such as Augusta Hall. However, with her experienced political support, her new husband became a member of parliament for Cheltenham and later Poole. They spent many years travelling in Europe collecting ceramics which she bequeathed to the Victoria and Albert Museum. She also collected fans, board games and playing cards, which were later donated to the British Museum.^[10]

Despite the death of her first husband, Charlotte maintained an active role in implementing his philanthropic aims for the estate at Canford Manor. In 1867 the first pair of estate cottages for workers were built. They were to be the first 2 of 111 cottages known as Lady Wimborne Cottages after Lady Cornelia Guest, daughter-in-law to Charlotte and wife of Ivor Guest, 1st Baron Wimborne, who continued Charlotte's project for the construction of the estate cottages.^[16]

In 1884, Guest was again widowed, but lived on to an advanced age. In her last few years, she became blind, but used the last of her eyesight to knit scarves for cabbies.^[10] She was finally unable to continue the journal she had written almost without a break since she was 10 years old. On 15 January 1895, she died at the age of 82 at Canford Manor in Dorset.

Descendants

Among her many grandchildren were: Edward Ponsonby, the 8th Earl of Bessborough, Granville Eliot (1867–1942) and Montague Eliot (1870–1960), who became the 7th and 8th Earls of St Germans, respectively.^[17] There was also Frances Guest (1869–1957), known as Lady Chelmsford, who married Frederic Thesiger, 1st Viscount Chelmsford, who served as Viceroy of India, Ivor Churchill Guest (1873–1939), who became 1st Viscount Wimborne, Christian Henry Charles Guest (1874–1957), a Liberal member of parliament "MP", Frederick "Freddie" Edward Guest (1875–1937), another Liberal MP, and Oscar Montague Guest (1888–1958), who was both a Liberal, and later, a Conservative MP. Among her other descendants are the American Guests (the late socialite C. Z. Guest was the wife of one of these), the Earls of Bessborough, the Viscounts Chelmsford, and others.