On the Wandle

by Dewey Bates (1889)

On the Wandle is a reprint from the May 1889 edition of The English Illustrated Magazine of an illustrated article by the American artist Dewey Bates (1851–1898). It also includes extensively researched technical and biographical notes by David and Katharina Haunton.

In On the Wandle Dewey Bates takes the reader on a notional journey beside the Wandle, downstream from Beddington and Carshalton to Wandsworth. The jovial and loquacious antiquarian, as Bates labels him, whom we first meet in the coffee room, and take our leave of beside watercress beds at the end, may have been a real person, or may have been simply a neat literary device to frame the narrative. This works well, but, unfortunately, readers should be aware that the antiquarian cannot be trusted on matters of historical fact or on derivations of place- or river-names. For instance: the Wandle takes its name from that of Wandsworth, rather than the other way round; the first element of Carshalton derives from cress rather than cross; while no-one now believes that our Merton was the Merton where Cynewulf, king of Wessex, was killed. The reader is warned to treat this aspect of the article with caution.

‘ON THE WANDLE’

Dewey-Bates

reprinted from

The English Illustrated Magazine

May 1889

with introduction, biographical and technical notes

MERTON HISTORICAL SOCIETY 2016

INTRODUCTION

The English Illustrated Magazine was a monthly publication produced in London
and New York, from 1882 to 1913. Its contents consisted of articles, essays, tales,
and the occasional poem. There were profuse illustrations, and, while a few of
these were prints of works by distinguished artists of the past, most were by
contemporary artists.

The American Dewey Bates (1851–1898) wrote, and illustrated, three articles
for the magazine (see Appendix p.26), ‘On the Wandle’ appearing in May 1889.

In ‘On the Wandle’ Dewey Bates takes the reader on a notional journey beside
the Wandle, downstream from Beddington and Carshalton to Wandsworth.
The jovial and loquacious ‘antiquarian’, as Bates labels him, whom we first meet
in the coffee room, and take our leave of beside watercress beds at the end,
may have been a real person, or may have been simply a neat literary device
to frame the narrative. This works well, but, unfortunately, readers should be
aware that the ‘antiquarian’ cannot be trusted on matters of historical fact or on
derivations of place- or river-names. For instance: the Wandle takes its name
from that of Wandsworth, rather than the other way round; the first element of
‘Carshalton’ derives from ‘cress’ rather than ‘cross’; while no-one now believes
that our Merton was the Merton where Cynewulf, king of Wessex, was killed.
The reader is warned to treat this aspect of the article with caution.

In 1805 James Malcolm had written of the Wandle, that ‘for its length and size,
perhaps no river in the world does at this time furnish so many valuable and
various manufactories’. However, as the 19th century developed, and saw industry
tending to move to the north of the country, the economy of the Wandle valley
shrank. Hence much of the value of ‘On the Wandle’ is the portrait in words
and pictures of decline. Bates comments that, while some mills such as those
at Waddon and Wandsworth continued to flourish they were ‘interspersed
here and there with their dead and dying brothers’. He singles out the deserted
Mitcham snuff-mill ‘overgrown with moss and ivy, but beautiful in its decay’,
and one of his charming drawings shows the ramshackle buildings of what had
been Merton’s copper-mill.

All in all, this article is an attractive and interesting chapter in the Wandle story.

Judith Goodman

Note on Dewey-Bates

For our reprint, we have reproduced the name of the author of ‘On the Wandle’
exactly as originally printed in The English Illustrated Magazine. However, this
was an error, as his surname was Bates, and his sole Christian name Dewey.

SUNSET ON THE WANDLE

From a Drawing by DEWEY-BATES

ON THE WANDLE

“WHAT! Never heard of the Wandle!” He slowly parted the tails of his
frock-coat, placed his hands in his trousers’ pockets, threw himself back in
his chair, and, with his head moving mechanically backward and forward
like those toy-donkeys with disjointed necks, he glared at me with his grey,

piercing eyes, sunk deep in their sockets, filling me with an awful sense of

my abject and inexcusable ignorance. My guilt was, indeed, self-confessed,
and I withered under that gaze. In my embarrassment I resorted to my
pipe, and timidly asked my strange acquaintance for a light. But paying
no heed to my question he pointed out of the coffee-room window, where
we were sitting, in the direction of some trees, where appeared a square
church tower and the gables of a large red-brick house.

“As a smoker,” he said, “you must respect the memory of Sir Walter
Raleigh. There he wooed and wed the niece of Sir Francis Carew, and

can you not imagine him, surrounded by the solid magnificence of those

Elizabethan halls, narrating to an eager audience his adventures on strange

seas, or exhibiting, for the first time, those seeds and products of the New

World which have since become necessaries of our life? Picture that park,
now so quiet and deserted, on the occasion of Queen Elizabeth’s visit to

BeddingTon cHurcH And House

From a Drawing by deWey-BATes

Beddington House in 1599; great ladies and courtiers strolling over those
lawns, through the great orangery, or down by where the Wandle’s infant

stream reflects the mighty elms; or see them gathered in wonderment about

the cherry-tree, now brilliant with beautiful fruit, although a month later
than the season, and which, you know, to please her majesty, Sir Francis
had kept back by covering the tree with a sort of canvas tent. The scene
is not much changed; there is the church and house, the sun still glints

through the elms, the river still flows on—but the actors are gone.”

After a short silence, in which my antiquarian friend seemed lost in moody

reflections and I pulled away at my pipe, awaiting further revelations, he

continued:

“Yes, the Wandle is a small river; hardly more than ten miles from its first

appearance at Croydon to its mouth at Wandsworth; yet it can boast of many
historical associations, and in its wanderings (its name means ‘to wander’)
it presents everywhere lovely little bits of quiet English landscape, and not
only pleases the eye but gives employment to thousands in the different
industries which line its banks. Many of these industries, unfortunately,

have succumbed to those inexorable laws of trade which have made the

grass grow in the streets of once flourishing towns.

What more melancholy sight than these corpses of dead industries! When
I walked through the streets of Pompeii, with the sun shining brightly out
of the clear blue sky, and the smoke rolling lazily out of the blue cone

of Vesuvius—all seemed a pleasant picture, and I could form no idea

of the activity that once reigned in those silent thoroughfares; and the
great monuments in Rome impressed me more in themselves than in the
associations connected with them. But quite different was the effect produced
in the north of Holland, where large towns have shrunk, where scarce a
footfall raises the echoes in the deserted streets, where canals which once
bore great navies are now sluggish and covered with green from disuse.
The link between the past and the present here has not been quite severed.

And it is just the same with the Wandle; beginning with the flour-mill

at Waddon, and ending at the great paper-mills and match-factory at
Wandsworth, we have the oil-mills, the leather and parchment-mills,

WinTer neAr WAddon

From a Drawing by deWey-BATes

the tobacco and copper-mills—the living industries—generally horridly

unpicturesque, interspersed here and there with their dead and dying

brothers—such as the old snuff-mills at Beddington and Mitcham, and the

copper-mill and silk-factory at Merton. The very place, where, I suppose
you know, the introducer of tobacco into this country once lived, and whose
house has only recently been pulled down, is celebrated for its manufacture
of snuffs and a tobacco known as Mitcham shag; but whether the royal
nose no longer delights in the titillation produced by the pungent powder,
as it did in the time of Queen Charlotte, and so no longer countenances its
use, certain it is that snuff-taking with its jewelled boxes and etiquette is a
thing of the past, and like a silent monument to this fact stands the deserted
mill on the Wandle, near Mitcham, its wheel gone, the shaft overgrown

with moss and ivy, but beautiful in its decay: with the clear river reflecting

its grey walls, the old bridge and ford on the right, the great chestnuts in
front, and the rolling meadow-lands of the Hilly Fields behind. The disused

copper-mill in the High Street of Merton, now a flock-mill, and the silk-

factory near by at Merton abbey, are other instances of picturesque decay;
while by way of contrast, further down the river at Garratt, we have the
well known copper-mills in full activity, black and grimy, their chimneys
giving forth volumes of dense smoke, and steam-escapes hissing forth
clouds of vapour. Turning your back on this is a quiet, pastoral scene of

old copper-mill, merTon

From a Drawing by deWey-BATes

river, gliding between rows of stunted willows, with grassy banks, and

cattle feeding; such a picture as you might find along some Dutch canal.
Then when the river reaches Wandsworth (in Domesday Book called

Wandlesorde and Wandesorde, from the name of the river and worth, in
Saxon a village or shore) it is no longer the “blue, transparent Vandalis,”
of Pope, but discoloured by pollutions from the great mills there, it passes
out, a melancholy thing between its mud banks, to join the Thames.

Its beginning,however, is almost sadder than its end, for it first makes its

appearance in a culvert under the railway, near the old church at Croydon.
Formerly there were several ponds about the church and archiepiscopal
palace, fed by powerful springs, as well as by the well-known Bourn,

whose overflow was supposed to foretell plagues or great events, as it

happened just before the Restoration, also before the plague in 1665 and
again in 1688; and in 1852 its rise was followed by a serious epidemic of
fever in Croydon. But the explanation seems simply to lie in the fact of the
supersaturation of the chalk, whence the river rises, resting as it does upon
an impervious bed or sub-soil of blue clay. It is at the base of these chalk-
hills that issue forth those beautiful springs, as at Croydon, Carshalton,
and Beddington, which contribute to form the Wandle.

After leaving Croydon it is but a rivulet, winding through meadow-land,
its banks lined with willows, until at Waddon it suddenly develops into a
large pond, with sedgy banks and trees trailing in the water, with here and
there a swan moving gracefully over its glassy surface. Just here begins a
bridle-path, leading to Beddington church. It is a lovely walk, especially
of a spring morning, when the slanting sunbeams gild the trees which
shade the path, or glisten on the river by the side; when the birds are all
so happy, and the air is redolent with the fragrance of the pink and white
may. There are those who prefer the hours of mystery and silence and the
cold moonlight; these are the lovers, for the way leads in more senses than
one to the church.

At Beddington the river suddenly emerges from a now-ruined mill, almost
concealed by the profusion of trees, and taking possession of the road-way

its clear waters flow on between high banks, shaded by every variety of

foliage, with the footpath skirting one side, again to disappear near the quaint

old post-office, not far from the church. After flowing through the park,

the river is joined by the water from the beautiful springs at Carshalton,
which form that great pond in the centre of the town.

Carshalton is called in Domesday Book Aultone, old town, and cars is
supposed to be a corruption of cross. The Wandle is famous for its trout,
for Izaak Walton has sung its praises, and though grown wary as become
the denizens of a suburban stream, are still captured by the expert angler.

At this part of its career the river becomes the pet of the wealthy. No

longer does it flood water-cress beds, or turn vulgar mill-wheels; but now

it winds through lovely gardens, where money and ingenuity are devoted
to developing its beauties, where bowers and charming vistas, rustic

bridges, glens, glades, and varied vegetation form a fit setting for its crystal

loveliness. In most of our lives there are a few such bright spots, a few
such oases, before the shadow has come, when we glide gently along with
the current, wafted by soft winds; when all is a dream of beauty and sweet
forgetfulness; when the earnestness of life has not yet dawned upon us, ere
yet we have begun, as Goethe says, to eat our bread in tears.

THe river roAd, BeddingTon

From a Drawing by deWey-BATes

cArsHAlTon cHurcH
And pond

From a Drawing by deWey-BATes

The Wandle’s life of luxury is
but a brief one, for we soon

find it skirting the borders
of the great flat expanse of

Mitcham common, again
among the mills and water-cress beds, along by the Hilly Fields, and under
the high-road to Sutton, to emerge again in the grounds of the ancient abbey
of Merton; and this part of its course is, perhaps, one of its most interesting,
historically speaking. Merton, meaning a town by a lake, is said to have
been the seat of a royal villa in Anglo-Saxon times, and here it was that
Cynewulf, the Saxon king, while on a visit to a lady, was surrounded and
attacked by Aetheling Cyneherd and eighty followers. The king fought
bravely, but in vain, against such overpowering numbers. The thanes,

hearing the noise of the conflict, hurried to the scene, and refusing all

overtures from Cyneherd to assist him in his accession to the crown, they

fell nobly by their master’s side. His death, however, was soon avenged
by Osric and Weverth, his faithful adherents.

Here, too, in A.D. 871, a battle is said to have occurred between the Saxons
and Danes. The abbey of Merton, bits of the flint walls of which are still

standing, and are incorporated, here and there, into the little cottages which
line the moat, was founded for the Augustinian Canons by Gilbert le Norman,
vice-comes or sheriff of Surrey, in 1115. To them the manor of Merton was
given by Henry I. Thomas a Becket was educated here, and here, in 1232,
Hubert de Burgh sought safety from Henry III, until the enraged citizens
of London, to the number of 20,000, marched down to Merton, and fetched
him back to the Tower. Here the peace was concluded between Henry III

and the Dauphin of France, and here, in 1236, was held that celebrated

parliament when the ecclesiastics wished to introduce canon-law, and were
opposed by the barons, with the now well-known expression, “Nolumus
leges Angliæ mutari [sic].” The statutes then passed were known as the
Statutes of Merton. The abbey was suppressed in the reign of Henry VIII.

THe priory grounds, merTon ABBey

From a Drawing by deWey-BATes

BiT of ABBey WAll, merTon

From a Drawing by deWey-BATes

The architecture of the church at Merton is late Norman and Early English,
and the older part is the original structure of Gilbert le Norman, and was
built early in the twelfth century. In the church is a tablet to the memory
of Captain Cook, placed there by his wife, who lived here.

Merton was also the place of residence of another great seaman, no other
than the hero of Trafalgar. A number of small houses now occupy the place
where Lord Nelson and the accomplished Lady Hamilton lived from 1801
to 1803. But in Merton, as in Mitcham, little now remains to remind one
of the great events of which they were the scene, or of the great people
who once dwelt there.

Who, for example, would ever dream in walking through the straggling
High Street of Mitcham, with its all-pervading air of poverty and decay,
that here, with brilliant outriders, gilded coach, and grand cortege, had
once passed the Virgin Queen, to be entertained by her Master of the Rolls,
Sir Julius Caesar, to her “exceeding good contentment,” as the chronicle
says; and on her departure from the place, “once noted for its good air and
choice company,” no doubt, to add to her contentment, her majesty was
presented by Sir Julius with a gown of cloth of silver, and a white taffeta

hat, with several flowers.

On the upper green at Mitcham, in front of where once stood the house
of Sir Walter Raleigh, in August is still held the fair, which I believe was
instituted at this time. Not far from where one of the principal tributaries
of the Wandle, which passes by the picturesque old farm-house at Norbury,
crosses the London high-road, lived the author of Robinson Crusoe.
This branch joins the main river near Hayden’s Lane, and from here the
Wandle follows a truly downward course, offering little to interest one,

either picturesquely or historically, until, passing under the flour-mill at

Wandsworth, with the canal on one side, it loses itself in the greater river.
About half-way, however, it passes through Garratt, a place once noted for

its mock elections of notorious characters about town, to the so-called office

of mayor, held at the beginning of every new parliament. Foote celebrated
these in his Mayor of Garratt. Owing to the disorder which accompanied
these processions, they were suppressed in 1796. At Wandsworth all is a

busy flow of life and activity; mill hands hurrying to and fro, wagons—
heavy laden with produce—crowding the thoroughfares, trains rushing

along over the viaducts, and barges loading and discharging in the large
canal basin. Voltaire lived here when in England, a guest of Sir Everard

Fawkener; and from here started the first iron rail or tramway ever brought

into general use. It was projected in 1802, for the purpose of bringing to
London the products of the mills situated along the valley of the Wandle.
These numbered forty in 1829, and gave employment to 2,000 people. The
portion of the line as far as Croydon proved very successful, but the steam

railways have since, of course, diverted the traffic into other channels.

In addition to its pictorial beauties, its fame as a trout stream, its industrial
importance and historical associations, the Wandle has been the subject of

famous litigation and not only have bills in chancery been filed concerning

it, but its case has even been before the House of Lords.

The river depends almost entirely for its supply of water on the perennial
springs stored up in the porous chalk hills, and direct rainfall affects it

but little. The water from these springs finds its way to the river through

subterranean channels which are continually varying. Hence, it is very
evident, that if its sources of supply were cut off, the Wandle, which has

flowed through all historic times, would cease to exist. This was done to

such an extent by the Board of Health of Croydon, in sinking a well for

norBury fArm on A BrAncH of THe WAndle

From a Drawing by deWey-BATes

Editorial note: This ‘branch’ is the Graveney

the purpose of supplying the town with water, as seriously to affect the
working of the mills. In the action which ensued, the House of Lords
decided that the plaintiff’s case of “diversion and obstruction” could not
be maintained, and that no right could be acquired to subterranean waters

flowing in indefinite channels.

The other litigation, of which the Wandle was the subject, arose from the
pollution of the river by making it a channel for conveying the sewage of
Croydon. An injunction was obtained by several landowners, but it was not
until the members of the Board of Health were threatened with committal
to prison that the stream was restored to its former purity.”

It was in somewhat different words from these, and with, of course, frequent
interruptions, that my friend thus gave me a brief history of the Wandle. But

his researches had evidently not been confined to the river alone, for the

whole country round about seemed familiar to him, not only its ancient but
modern history. I happened to mention the name Tooting. “Ah, yes”, said
he, “the ‘mark’ or settlement of the Saxon Totingas. The bec, in Tooting
bec, probably comes from the east through the Norman.”

Streatham, he told me, came from the Saxon strete, meaning a highway,
and ham a dwelling, probably so named on account of the old Roman road,
the Stane street, which passed from the south coast to London. He also
seemed thoroughly familiar with the private histories of families living for
miles about, and quite bewildered me with his accounts of the unfortunate
marriage of this son with an actress; of the downfall of that family through
the father of it, driven to drink by the terrible temper of his shrew of a wife,
ending his miserable life at last by suicide.

On our homeward way he took me to see some of his favourite bits on the
river. He seemed evidently in a state of great anxiety for fear the elements
would conspire against showing off the beauties of his beloved stream, for
he kept regarding the sky, over which great threatening clouds were rolling,
and at certain places his face showed evident signs of disappointment, and
I heard him muttering to himself now and again, “No!—no good now,
wants the morning sun on it;” or, “Confound them! they’ve cut down that

old willow—it came in so well there on the left; whenever will they stop

tampering with that old bit of fencing?”

Suddenly we came on a broad stretch of the river; on the right a number of

inlets for flooding the water-cress beds, with picturesque old huts on their

banks, reminding one of Robinson Crusoe, and straggling trees and great
clumps of grasses by the river side, quivering gently in the evening wind;
in front the stream losing itself in a perspective of clipped elms, with a
quaint old foot-bridge and a great willow on the right, telling dark against
the now brilliant sunset sky, from which the lowering clouds had already
drifted; in the immediate foreground, near the bridge upon which we were

standing, a farmer’s boy had ridden his horses into the quiet flood, and

the ripples they created were sending long lines into the inverted picture.

“Look !” cried my companion, taking me by the arm. “Ah! isn’t it grand?”
It certainly was a beautiful view, and the twilight darkening into night,

we soon after
parted company—I thoroughly convinced of the beauties

of the Wandle.

deWey-BATes

neAr miTcHAm

From a Drawing by deWey-BATes

THE WANDERING ‘WANDLE’ ARTIST DEWEY BATES

‘Very little is known of this artist.’ (Internet, many sites)
Dewey Bates was born on 22 November 1851, in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, USA, the youngest son of David Bates (1809–1870) and
Leona Arabella Cavender (b.1818). David Bates, originally from Indian
Hill, Hamilton, Ohio, was a prominent (and presumably rich) banker and
stockbroker, living with his family in a house in North Seventh Street;
the couple produced seven children (four girls, three boys) between 1840
and 1862.1 Evidently they had trouble keeping track of them all, for in
the 1860 US Census Dewey is noted as ‘born 1853’, while in 1870 he is
‘born 1852’. Curiously, only David, Leona, Stockton (the eldest boy) and
Dewey are reported in 1860; presumably the other children were away
from Philadelphia at the time.
In 1866, just after the end of the American Civil War, Dewey entered the
Central High School of Philadelphia, as one of fewer than 20 students in
class no.55. His brother Stockton had previously attended the same school,
as a student in class no.43. Dewey studied there until February 1870, being
accorded the ‘First Honor’ (ie. top of the class) at graduation. Many of
his classmates later became successful in Philadelphian social, political
and legal circles.2 He was himself noted for his drawing ability. He was
one of the founders of the School’s ‘Scientific Microcosm’ (Society), and
provided the woodcut illustrations for the society’s pamphlet on hailstones.
He was prominent in students’ entertainments; his class promulgated The
Portfolio, a monthly magazine for which Dewey was editor, publisher and
occasionally compositor, and which was noted for ‘roasting the faculty
unmercifully’.3 He was already an accomplished artist, as witness the well-
known painting of a rugged forest cabin labelled ‘Downington, PA’, which
is copied from a sketch of a scene in Switzerland by a Miss Moninke, as
noted on the back of the picture, together with ‘Finished June 31st 1869’.

Dewey’s father, David Bates, died in 1870. Dewey’s elder brother, Stockton
Bates, went into industry and eventually became the president of the
flourishing Bridesburg Manufacturing Company,4 while Dewey had clearly
determined upon a career as an artist. His application for a US passport
(29 April 1873) states his reason for travel abroad to be ‘in pursuit of my
professional studies as an artist’. As the head of the family, Stockton stood

as his ‘sworn Acquaintance’, to guarantee the truth of Dewey’s statements.
The passport application includes a description of the young man, helpful,
as apparently no self-portrait has been recorded: ‘Height: 5 feet 9 inches,
Eng,5 Hair: brown, Forehead: broad and medium height, Eyes: bluish-
grey, Nose: prominent, Mouth: small and full, Chin: round, Face: oval’.

Family money enabled Dewey to study in Europe between 1873 and 1875.
I have been unable to trace his passage to Europe, which was probably
to Britain, but may have been direct to Belgium. At first he studied in
Antwerp6 under Joseph Van Lerius (1823–1876) for perhaps a year or
so (1873–1874?). Here he met and was briefly a fellow student of the
subsequently famous artist George Clausen. In the summer of 18747 the
two toured the Dutch art galleries and part of the Zuider Zee, visiting
the towns of Monnickendam and Edam, and staying for some time in the
fishing village of Volendam on the small island of Marken. Some of their
sketches were later worked up into oil paintings (in Clausen’s case the
Dutch sketches were a useful source for ten or twelve years). Dewey wrote
a light-hearted essay on their stay in Volendam, featuring his amusing
attempt to translate a Dutch pub sign (published posthumously in 1903).

Dewey then moved to study in Paris under Jean-Léon Gérôme, for a year
or so (1874?–1875), at the same time as Clausen, joining the English
painter and sculptor John Macallan Swan and the influential French
painter Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret. Clausen mentioned later that at this time
they ‘remained close’. Dewey may have lodged with family friends, as the
auction in Philadelphia in 1875 of the collection of art dealer Charles F
Haseltine, containing nearly 500 paintings and water-colours, included
ten attributed simply to ‘Dewey Bates, Paris’. The titles are typical of
students’ work, such as View of Antwerp and An Artist’s Effects, though
Journal of Fun sounds more original.8 Dewey then moved to London, still
in close touch with Clausen, for, when he offered his painting Interior
of a fisherman’s cottage, Zuyder Zee, Holland (for £12.12s) at the winter
1875 exhibition of the Society of British Artists (SBA),9 he gave ‘c/o G
Clausen, 19 Moore Park Road, Fulham, SW’ as his address.

Dewey sailed back home to Philadelphia, arriving on SS Scythia at New
York from Liverpool on 7 June 1876, having called at Queenstown, Ireland,
on the way – evidently a relatively cheap Atlantic crossing. He did not

stay in Philadelphia for very long. Later in 1876 he moved to Indianapolis,
Indiana, where he had relatives, and joined the painting studio of his friend
John Washington Love.10 In January 1878 he contributed to the second
annual exhibition of the newly-founded School of Art. His full-length
portrait of Love, still held by the Indianapolis Museum of Art, depicts his
friend in casual pose, in a studio, but wearing outdoor clothing.

A little later that year, with two Philadelphian friends, the artists John
McClure Hamilton11 and Robert Arthur12 (fellow students in both
Antwerp and Paris), he published L’Académie pour Rire, a lithographic
brochure.13 This lampoons the paintings in the 1878 Annual Exhibition
of the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts, which included works by the
established artist Thomas Eakins and the young Mary Cassat,14 as well as
entries by the authors. The cartoons are mere sketches, with handwritten
captions in French. The publication is something of a landmark in
American art, being among the very first to establish the odd tradition, that
flourished in the United States for about 40 years, of making caricatures
of specific works of art.

Dewey and his friends sent pictures to the Annual Exhibition of the
National Academy of Design, held in New York. This, like the Royal
Academy (RA) Summer Exhibition in London, was open to submissions
by any artist and in 1878 attracted some 700 entries, mostly from New
Yorkers, but also from artists in Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, Pittsburg
and Louisville. In its 21 April review, the New York Times noted that ‘no
less than fifteen Philadelphians are entered as exhibitors’ but was less than
fully complimentary about the nine it named: ‘Among these are Dewey
Bates, who has a place in the corridor – No.163, “A Boy’s Head” study –
and an important position in the South Room for his full-length portrait
of a child. This latter has decided merit, without being in any way a bold
piece of work. … [As for] J McClure Hamilton, (No.519, South Room,
“Gloom”), [his] conception … goes beyond his present ability to execute
… [but] shows cleverness.’ At least they were mentioned.

In early July 1878,15 Dewey Bates travelled back to England, arriving in
Liverpool from Philadelphia (his third Atlantic crossing) in company
with John McClure Hamilton, who then stayed in England for the rest of
his long life. They moved to London, and in 1879 Dewey submitted the

first of what became a long series of water-colours to the RA Summer
Exhibition. Thereafter his name appears regularly among the half-dozen
water-colourists mentioned in The Times annual review, without further
comment, but with implicit approval. He also entered portraits in oils, but
for his first Summer Exhibition entry in 1879 The Times critic was scathing:
‘We cannot but think there is an art [of giving the individualism of the
sitter …] but more of the cleverest portraits of this year unfortunately show
the absence of that [art]. It … shines by its absence from … a singularly
individual sitting half-length of a Mr Blake by a painter whose name is
new to us, Dewey Bates.’ The sneer is expanded in The Graphic for 31 May
1879 by Tom Taylor (who was art critic for both newspapers), writing
‘[A portrait of] “L.Blake, Esq” with a painter’s name which is new to me,
but which once heard is not likely to slip the memory, Dewey Bates, is
another of the conspicuously characteristic portraits of the year, full of
individuality, however little they can boast of attractiveness. One cannot
too much applaud the courage as well as the skill of the painters.’

Dewey obtained some commissions for portraits, such as the appealing
child, gazing through a window, of What News? (1880). Interior with the
Artist (also 1880) depicts a lady reclining in a summery room replete
with many fashionable objects – Japanese screen and parasol, framed
prints, leopard-skin and Turkish rugs, blue and white china, silver vases
and candle-sticks – the whole done with a light palette perhaps suggested
by his time in Paris. It is possible that Dewey had met Whistler, whose
Yellow Room dates from 1882/3. (The artist of the title is unidentified.)
An undated picture on WikiGallery, The Portrait – a rear view of a lady
slumped in a chair contemplating a portrait of a man in profile, in a
similarly full but here untidy upper-class room – may well date from
the same period.

Evidently Dewey lodged with friends at Ackworth, 1 Holmfield Villas,
Streatham, for some time, possibly as much as two years. His friends
were Leonard Blake, a photographer, and his wife Annie, with their four
children. Leonard must be the subject of the 1879 half-length portrait.16
Dewey gave 1 Homefield [sic] Villas, Lower Streatham, as his address when
he showed The First Snow (£21) at the winter 1880/81 SBA exhibition,
and he was still there in April 1881 for the Census, described as an ‘artist
painter’.

For a while he also used a (presumably rented) studio at 10 Fitzroy Street
in Fitzrovia (Camden Town), as The Era for 26 March 1881 mentions
him there as ‘a rising and talented artist’, showing portraits of popular
entertainers. One was of M Marius17 half-length in morning costume.
There were two of Miss Florence St John,18 one full-length, life-size, in
18th-century costume as Mme Favart, and one three-quarter length, seated,
‘off the stage’. Both were adjudged ‘decidedly successful in execution, and
faithful also as to likeness’. The last-mentioned one, at least, did not sell,
as it was on offer at the winter 1881/82 SBA exhibition for £50, when
Dewey was living at 7 Red Lion Square, Bloomsbury. However, The Era 3
December 1881 again praised the portrait of ‘this clever lady in cheerful
mood’. In November the same paper had disparaged the 341 pictures in
the Autumn Exhibition of the Hanover Gallery as ‘of a very commonplace
kind’, but did mention that ‘Two or three sketches by Dewey Bates are
artistic studies on a small scale’.

Much later, Dewey confessed that sales of his oil paintings had become
few and far between. The later commissions he obtained seem to have
resulted mostly in paintings of children and pet dogs, rather than adults.
Necessarily, such commissions were from well-off persons. The rather
characterless Two Sisters (1884), where two youngsters, Grace Emily
(aged 8) and Winifred Mary (5), stare out at the viewer, posed in their
Sunday-best white dresses and necklaces of pink coral beads, depicts
the two eldest daughters of John Blundell Maple.19 However, I have been
unable to trace the proud parents of Fred Rowling, aged 1 year and 11
months (1889), a water-colour of a boy with pet greyhound and toy whip.
The Egg Collector, presumably of about this date, is a winsome portrait
of a naughty white terrier.

Some further welcome publicity for Dewey arrived with the issue of The
English Illustrated Magazine (TEIM) for February 1885, which included
a frontispiece by him, In the Nut Tree, featuring a pretty girl. This was
widely remarked upon in the provincial press – ‘a pleasing engraving’
(Western Daily Press) and ‘a very pretty picture’ (The Star, Guernsey)
being typical comments – with the artist’s name always present. Perhaps
this reception led him to try his hand at writing, his main successes
being with articles for TEIM (such as ‘About the Market Gardens’ in May
1885, and our ‘On The Wandle’ in May 1889), fully illustrated with his
drawings. Further mentions of his name as author or artist appeared in

reviews and advertisements for the magazine. Later articles and pictures
were published in The Leisure Hour (TLH) ‘an illustrated magazine for
home reading’. Dewey also obtained occasional work illustrating articles
by other writers, such as ‘Walks in Wheatfields’ by the renowned Richard
Jefferies20 in the August 1887 issue of TEIM.

In 1885 he was apparently a guest of Arcangelo Corelli Collard Beer
(1812–1891) and his wife Charlotte (1822–1898), a well-off elderly couple
residing at The Willows, 48 Pembroke Road, Kensington, as he gave their
address when submitting Dreamy Summer Time (for £21) to the SBA
summer exhibition. He painted a portrait of Mrs Beer ‘and servant’ which
remained in the dining room of the house until after Mrs Beer died. Several
other paintings by him were auctioned after her death;21 presumably these
had been executed while he was at the house, indicating a lengthy stay.

Dewey submitted A Corner of the 9:15 (no price) to the 1886/87 SBA
exhibition from Cookham Dean, Berks. At the time, he may have been
staying with his friend George Clausen, who lived with his family at Grove
House, Flag Lane, Cookham Dean, from 1885 until 1891.

The Bates name must have been reasonably well-known by 1887, as an
advertisement in the Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer for 26 March
of a large art auction in Bradford mentioned ‘valuable … Pictures … from
the easles [sic] of the following well-known and talented artists … Dewey
Bates …’. Slight fame may have encouraged the next step in Dewey’s life,
for on 5 April he married Kate Mary Fleetum in the Register Office in
St Pancras, describing himself as a ‘Figure Painter, father David Bates,
deceased, banker’. Kate was a dressmaker, the daughter of Thomas and
Amelia Fleetum, of 89 Camden Street, Camden Town, the address where
Dewey was also living (about a mile from his old studio in Fitzroy Street).
Thomas was a ‘pianoforte fitter-up’ from Darlington, Durham, where
their surname is not unusual. Kate had been baptised on 5 July 1860,
and so was eight or nine years younger than Dewey; they produced no
children. It is possible that Kate was the model for both In the Nut Tree
and Daydreaming, an 1886 oil of a girl sitting in the grass of an orchard.

In 1888 Dewey painted what is probably his best surviving painting,
variously known as Spring or In the Summertime, sold recently in New
York for $10,800. It depicts a rural landscape with a carthorse being

ridden side-saddle slowly along a dusty path between flowering trees
under a pale blue sky; this may well be somewhere in Berkshire, perhaps
not far from Cookham. Certainly the area attracted him, as he sent Near
Quarry Wood, Berks (for £10.10s) to the 1889 SBA exhibition, from 63
Wimpole Street, W.

However, his star had begun to fade. No further pictures were sent to the
SBA, and Dewey submitted more articles and illustrations to magazines.
Further single pictures appeared in TLH in 1888, including The Fisher
Lass (another pretty girl) and Expectancy (a dog hoping for share of a
farmworker’s lunch, with a certain sly parallel intimation of a lad in the
background regarding the female bringer of lunch). His May 1890 article
‘The Footpath’ in TLH was warmly received, as in the comment of the Hull
Daily Mail ‘charmingly treated, the numerous and beautiful illustrations
tracing the human progress from youth to age’, while a picture of Rustic
Barbering in the June issue drew, ‘Dewey Bates has infused some crisp
humour into the subject’, from the Leamington Spa Courier.

The 1891 Census records the couple living in a cottage with only three
occupied rooms on The Common, Cookham Dean, in Berkshire. Clausen
was still in residence nearby, though soon to move to Essex. Presumably
the local countryside inspired two articles, published simultaneously in
August 1891. ‘Commons and Commoners’ in TLH was an interesting article
‘illustrated by some charming blocks’ said the Wrexham Advertiser. ‘Old
Landmarks’ in TEIM drew ‘A roam among rural cottages and hedgerows is
brightened by the pictures of Dewey Bates’ from the Glasgow Herald, but
on the other hand the Leicester Chronicle opined sourly that ‘Dewey Bates
has an idealistic paper on country life and village dwellings … But there
is no getting over the fact that few who leave their native villages desire
to go back to them permanently. The illustrations … are unexceptional.’

These efforts may well have earned him the commission to illustrate the
grandly-entitled Caravanning through England; Leaves from the Log of a
Gentleman Gypsy: in wayside camp and caravan by Gordon Stables, MD,
CM, RN (Jarrold & Sons, 1892) ‘with 56 illustrations by Dewey Bates
and Alfred Hardy’. This 460-page tome was favourably reviewed in The
Times, St James’s Gazette, the Daily Chronicle and The Star, among others,
though no review mentions the pictures.

It seems that Dewey was now selling water-colours, such as a View of
Rye (1892), which could be swiftly sketched and sold to tourists. But his
fortunes were declining: I can trace no further publications or oil paintings
in the 1890s, until, in 1895, he wrote an article on ‘George Clausen, ARA’
published in The Studio of that year. This contains a fluent and generous
assessment of Clausen’s skill as a ‘painter of the English peasant under
out-of-doors effects of light … with the reality of truth, with the simplicity
of nature’. Presumably this was commissioned as a result of the editor’s
enquiry to George Clausen, asking if Dewey was the right man for the job.
Clausen commented in passing that Dewey was his ‘old student friend
and very hard up’ and that he had ‘met with little success in England’.22

In view of that and other evidence, it is surprising that ‘Dewey Bates, 44,
artist, and Mrs Bates, 35, wife’ could afford to travel to America. They
sailed on the SS New York (second class, with three pieces of baggage)
from Southampton directly to New York, arriving on 30 November 1895.
(Perhaps the family had sent the tickets.) Though Dewey had maintained
his links with Philadelphia – he was still a subscribing member of the
Art Club of Philadelphia, where he exhibited some paintings in January
1896 – this was his first visit to his home town in twenty years. Clausen’s
comment rather contradicts Dewey’s own tale of his success in Europe,
related to a friend in Philadelphia during his visit. According to this
very tall tale, he was in his early days in London and down to his last
few coins. He resolved to auction off his juvenile drawings and prints.
Nobody came to the auction until he spent his ‘last few pennies’ to provide
a free lunch. He despaired as the first item went for three shillings, but
then the fifth sold for £50 and a buyers’ frenzy ensued; all pictures were
sold, leaving him ‘temporarily comfortably off ‘. A likely story – £50 for a
drawing by an unknown artist in the 1880s would have been many times
what people actually paid. And I have not been able to trace a single press
advertisement. However, the tale was respectfully printed as fact by The
Times of Philadelphia when news of his death arrived, and reprinted in
the Kansas Times and Gazette.

Dewey and Kate returned to England, again on the SS New York, arriving
in Southampton on 20 February 1896. On 28 October they moved into
a cottage in the tiny hamlet of East Guldeford, just outside Rye, Sussex,
paying six months rent in advance.23 (According to Dewey, he ‘paid his

rent in advance each time, and reckoned from quarter day to quarter day;
he had never taken a house in England otherwise.’) His Sheep grazing by
a Mill (1897), probably on Romney Marsh, may well be a view from East
Guldeford.

Unfortunately, owing to a misunderstanding about tenancy dates, Dewey
and Kate Mary had to leave East Guldeford, and on 1 January 1898 moved
into 7 Lucknow Place, a rather grim terrace of old Coastguard cottages on
the Salts area in Rye. More happily, in the spring Dewey received a legacy of
£150 (say £12,000 to £15,000 today) under the will of his old admirer Mrs
Charlotte Beer, late of Kensington, with whom he had stayed in 1885. It is
perhaps ironic that on 9 April 1898 an advertisement appearing in several
national newspapers for the auction of her household furniture should have
included ‘valuable paintings and water-colour drawings by Dewey Bates’.24

Dewey Bates, water-colourist, draughtsman, painter, and teller of tall
tales, died in East Sussex Hospital on 24 August 1898, at the age of 46.
His early death is explained by the laconic official cause – ‘Cirrhosis of
Liver 1 year, Choloemia Asthenia 2 days’. So he died from drink, slipping
into a coma for his last two days. The news was published in Philadelphia
within five days, so it must have been cabled, rather than written. He
was indeed very poor, leaving so few material goods that no will or legal
administration was required of his estate. On 29 August he was buried in
Hastings Borough Cemetery in plot DD.P23, without a memorial stone.
Kate Mary Bates lived on without Dewey, never remarrying. Presumably
she arranged (and was paid for) those articles published posthumously
under the authorship of ‘Dewey Bates’ in 1900 and 1903. She died in a
retirement home in Hastings on 2 January 1948, at the reported age of 88.
She is buried in plot ET.A17 in the same cemetery, some distance from
her husband. Her fortunes must have improved a little, as her grave has
a granite Celtic cross as a memorial.

An extensive and rather affectionate obituary in the local paper25 called
him ‘a great painter’ and mentioned that ‘there were few men known
better in the Ancient Town than Mr Dewey Bates … He always attracted
the greatest sympathy, by reason of his undoubted skill with the brush,
and the impoverished circumstances in which he spent the last years of
his life … [where] poverty forced him to resort to “pot boiling” [ie. swiftly

producing works of little artistic merit] for the means of subsistence for
himself and his wife … the end found him very poor.’ It then instanced a
few of his achievements, presumably retailed by Dewey:

•
‘Mr Bates’ first picture exhibited at the Royal Academy was in 1879′
[true] … ‘a marked success and won high praise from the Times, Punch
and Graphic as one of the best portraits of the year’ [not exactly true].
•
‘In 1883 he produced the portrait of the Governor of Pennsylvania for
the State Gallery.’ [A fiction – in 1883 Dewey was in England, and the
State Gallery has no picture by him.26 However, the new Governor in
1883 was his old Philadelphia classmate Robert E Pattison, so maybe
this is journalistic misinterpretation.]
•
‘sad indeed is the history of how he disposed of his greatest work
“Spring” … raffled it away for £5, with the condition that it should be
allowed to hang for a time in the Royal Academy.’ [No artist may make
such a condition.] ‘It was afterwards sent to the Liverpool Exhibition,
where it was seen by Lord Derby, who offered the owner £500 for it,
but the possessor refused to part with it even at that price.’ [And if
you believe that …]
Retrospect

Dewey Bates really wanted to be a portraitist, but the trajectory of his
recorded work (from friends to popular entertainers to respectable
people, tailing off to children) argues that while he had some talent, it was
insufficient to succeed in the field. His admiration for Clausen’s technique
is not tainted by envy. His own real skill lay in drawing and water-colour,
media which demand swift response to atmosphere and detail. ‘On the
Wandle’ is perhaps the clearest example of his talent, helped by the high
quality of reproduction of his drawings. He was less well served when
copy-engravers tried to reproduce his paintings.

He was obviously likeable, a great teller of tales, with a wry sense of
humour and a good-natured writing style. He lodged with friends and
clients for lengthy periods, and kept in touch with them. Though poor,
he stayed respectable. The people of Victorian Rye liked him: his local
obituary is not that of a tramp.

David Haunton

APPENDIX – KNOWN PUBLICATIONS OF DEWEY BATES

The English Illustrated Magazine (Monthly, 359 issues, October 1883–August 1913)
February 1885 In the Nut Tree
May 1885 ‘About the Market Gardens’
October 1886 By the Riverside
August 1887 Three illustrations in ‘Walks in Wheatfields’ Part II by Richard

Jefferies:

Poppies, Hedge Comforts, Birds nesting

May 1889 ‘On the Wandle’
August 1891 ‘Old Landmarks’

The Leisure Hour (Weekly 1852–1881, Monthly 1881–1905, pub. Religious Tract

Society)
May 1890 ‘The Footpath’
July 1890 Rustic barbering
August 1891 ‘Commons and Commoners’
(Early) 1898 Almshouses
March 1900 The Broken Plough (posthumous)
March 1903 ‘Notes Made in a Dutch Village’ (posthumous)

The Studio (Monthly, 853 issues, April 1893–May 1964)
Vol V, 1895, p.4 ‘George Clausen, ARA’

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I should like to thank the appropriately-named Celia Heritage for
professional researches in the Rye area.

A CURIOUS NOTICE

Dewey Bates’s wife died in 1948. She bore the Christian names Kate Mary.
It is thus remarkable that a notice appeared in the Portsmouth Evening
News of 4 September 1935 baldly announcing the death on 1 September of
‘Kate Mary Dewey-Bates, widow of F Dewey-Bates, BA, MA,’ at 84 Priory
Road, Hardway, and requesting ‘London and American [my emphasis]
papers please copy’.
We have found no other trace of either this lady or this gentleman in
published or public records.

A TECHNICAL NOTE ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS

The illustrations based on Dewey Bates’s drawings for the original article
were reproduced by two different techniques. Seven were wood engravings,
mostly executed in a grey-tint technique, while four were lithographs. They
are unlikely to have been printed by hand and for the purposes of mechanical
printing they would have been transferred to another matrix, usually
involving photography. In the 1860s and 70s many book illustrations had
been original wood-engravings, cut onto the block by hand and printed by
hand, but the advances in printing technology and the rotary press required
new methods of printing images. Octave Lacour is known to have adopted
the grey flat style of the process block in order to imitate painted washes
and a similar style has been used for most of the other wood engravings.

•
J G or G J Cocking,* fl. 1883–89, 181 Queen Victoria Street, EC. Wood engraver:
Sunset on the Wandle Wood engraving
•
Waterlow & Sons Ltd., fl.1883–99, London Wall, EC. Wood engraving firm,
process block supplier, collotype printer:
Winter near Waddon Lithograph
The River Road, Beddington Lithograph

•
Octave L Lacour, fl. 1880s, working from Teddington. Wood engraver,
watercolourist, lithographer and etcher:
Old Copper Mill, Merton Lithograph
Beddington Church and House Lithograph
Bit of Abbey Wall, Merton Wood engraving (?)

•
Edward Stanley Gascoine, fl. 1865–94, 168 Fleet Street, EC (1884–94).
Draughtsman and wood engraver:
Carshalton Church and Pond Wood engraving

•
E J Ohme, fl. 1883–89. German (?) wood engraver:
The Priory Grounds, Merton Abbey Wood engraving
•
Andrew Craig Coats, fl. 1883–90, 3 Bouverie Street, EC. Wood engraver:
Old Snuff Mill, Mitcham Wood engraving
•
Octave Edouard Jean Jahyer, 1826–(?). French wood engraver who contributed
to English magazines:
Near Mitcham Wood engraving
Norbury Farm on a Branch of the Wandle Wood engraving

Katharina Mayer Haunton

* In The English Illustrated Magazine the initials differ between the List of Engravers and
the Contents list, while Rodney K Engen Dictionary of Victorian Wood Engravers (1985)
gives his Christian names as John James.
27

NOTES AND REFERENCES

1 Mary (b.1840), Stockton (1843–1916), Leona (b.1845), Lelan (b.1849), Dewey (1851–
1898), Ella (1854–1901), Florence (b.1862). Family information from the Stepp family
tree on ancestry.com.

2 Those noted in Dewey’s obituary in The Times of Philadelphia included Samuel E
Cavin (City Solicitor), William Dayton Roberts (senior Presbyterian divine), Abraham
M Beitler (judge and Mason), Craig N Liggett (Presbyterian philanthropist), Elihu
Thomson (British-born electrical engineer and inventor) and Robert E Pattison (City
Controller, Pacific Railroad Commissioner, twice Governor of Pennsylvania).

3 History of the Central High School of Philadelphia by Franklin Spencer Edmonds
(Lippincott, 1902).

4 This was a major factory producing complex machinery, principally for the textile
industry – looms, carding machines, spinning frames, etc., and was a valued
manufacturer of muskets during the American Civil War.

5 English measure. The statement was apparently necessary as there were many Dutch,
German and Swedish settlers in the Philadelphia area, whose various traditional feet
and inches could differ considerably from the English.

6 The name of the school (Koninklijke Academie voor Schone Kunsten, or Royal
Academy for Fine Arts) is perhaps responsible for Internet statements that Dewey
studied at the London Royal Academy, of which he was neither student nor member.
He did, however, offer works at several RA Summer Exhibitions.

7 Sir George Clausen, Autobiographical Notes in Artwork, no.25 (1931), mentions this as
his first visit to the Low Countries and recalls the year as 1875. However, he showed
a painting On Scheldt, Antwerp at the Society of British Artists winter exhibition of
1874–75, so the visit must have been earlier.

8 The others are: Sunset at Osterwell [a village close to Antwerp], Near Antwerp, Still
Life, another View of Antwerp, After Vandyke – Christ on the Cross, After Rubens – The
Communion of St Francis, Head of an Old Man, and Head of a Girl, in ‘Catalogue of
Mr Charles F Haseltine’s collection of oil paintings and aquarelles [ie. water-colours]
for sale at the Haseltine Galleries, Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, February 1875. (After
Rubens … was sold at auction in Michigan, USA, in 1992.)

9 The Society of British Artists (‘Royal’ from 1887) had a very small elected membership,
but mounted summer and occasionally winter exhibitions open to all aspiring artists,
in competition with the Royal Academy.
Jane Johnson (compiler) Works exhibited at the Royal Society of British Artists 1824–1893
and the New English Art Club 1888–1917w.[ie. winter], Antique Collectors Club (1975,
reprinted 1984), is invaluable for its listing of artist, address, date of exhibition, title
and price of work.

10 John Washington Love (1850–1880) with Dewey Bates and James Gookins helped to
establish the short-lived first School of Art in Indiana in 1877 (ref. Indianapolis Art
Gallery website). He had been studying art in Paris at the same time as Dewey Bates.

11 John McClure Hamilton (1853–1936) specialised in figure painting and portraits, and
became known for English society portraits: his work includes an official portrait of
W E Gladstone, as Prime Minister.

12 Robert Arthur (1850–1914) was principally a landscape artist who became a much-
admired painter of the Maine coast.

13 Often misquoted on the Internet as L’Académie pour Hire. The lithography was not
original work, but merely the means of reproducing the brochure. (Hamilton’s entry in
the exhibition was a portrait entitled Le Rire, later exhibited in Europe.) The brochure
is sometimes reported to have been published in London. This seems unlikely, given
the Philadelphia locale of the artists satirised therein.

14 Mary Cassat (1844–1926) lived mainly in France, working in pastels, oils and print. She
is particularly associated with the theme of Mother and Child, and is acknowledged
the foremost female American artist of her generation.

15 Liverpool Mercury 9 July 1878: ‘Cabin passengers by the steamship Pennsylvania, from
Philadelphia … John McClure Hamilton, Dewey Bates …’

16 The house was later numbered as 592 Streatham High Road and was demolished in
the early 1920s. Blake was working as a photographer from at least 1871, when he
lived in Pimlico. His studio was at 147 Strand 1876–1884 (with a partner), and at 4
Coburg Place, Bayswater, 1884–1887 (as a sole trader). He died in Paddington in 1887.
Information from John W Brown, pers.comm. January 2015.

17 Monsieur Marius was the stage name of Claude Marius Duplany (1850–1896), a
popular French actor, comedian, singer and stage manager.

18 Florence St John (1854–1912) was a famous soprano in light opera, notably at the
Strand Theatre with the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company in Offenbach’s Madame Favart
in 1879 (with Marius), and Audran’s Olivette in 1880.

19 Their father, John Blundell Maple, was already very well-off as an ‘upholsterer’ in the
1881 Census, with five female servants (four named Mary!) and a male ironmongery
salesman in his household. He turned the Maples furniture company into an extremely
profitable business. His estate was valued at over two million pounds in 1903.

20 Richard Jefferies (1848–1887) was a sensitive and prolific writer on nature and rural
matters.

21 Will of Charlotte Sophia Beer. Probate granted 23 March 1898, with effects valued at
£21,324.

22 Clausen to Spielmann 31 January 1895, Royal Academy of Arts Archive, Spielmann
papers SP/1/95. The addressee is M H A Spielmann (1858–1948), a prolific art critic
and scholar, and editor of the Magazine of Art, published 1887–1904.

23 Sussex Agricultural Express 27 November 1897 Court Report: ‘Disputed Date of
Tenancy’.

24 The Times 9 April 1898, London Standard 15 April 1898 and Morning Post 16 April
1898 ‘The Willows, 48 Pembroke Road, Kensington: Messrs Moss and Jameson … will
sell by auction … the Household furniture … including valuable paintings and water-
colours by Dewey Bates and Sidney Grant Rowe.’

25 South Eastern Advertiser 27 August 1898 ‘Death of Mr Dewey Bates / Sad end to a
great painter’.

26 Ms Amy Hammond, Curator, State Museum of Pennsylvania, pers. comm. by email
11 February 2015.