Mary Cecil Hay
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Mary Cecil Hay | |
|---|---|
 an 1888 translation | |
| Born | 10 January 1839[1] Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England |
| Died | 24 July 1886 (aged 47) East Preston, Sussex |
| Genre | romantic mystery novels |
Mary Cecil Hay (10 January 1839 – 24 July 1886) was an English novelist, short story writer, and poet. Her work was often serialised and appeared in periodicals and weeklies in the UK, America and Australia.
Mary Hay was born in Shrewsbury to clockmaker Thomas William Hay (1791–1856) and Cecilia Carbin (1798–1888).[2] There were seven children in the family, four boys and three girls, all baptised in a non-conformist independent church.[3] The eldest boy, John (1821-1821) died in infancy. The next oldest son, Arthur Kenneth (1824–1839), committed suicide at the age of fifteen.[4] The middle son, Walter Cecil Hay FRAM (1828–1905),[5] became an organist and music teacher,[6] whilst the youngest son, Thomas William (1836–1873), followed his father into the clock-making business. Mary and her two sisters, Francis Ann (1830–1884) and Susan Elizabeth, an artist (1840–1908) remained unmarried and continued to live at home with their mother. Mary's father died in 1856 aged sixty-five and her mother took control of the business, despite financial difficulties,[7] passing it to her son Thomas in 1872. He became the third generation of clock-makers in the family. After this date Mary, her two sisters and her mother moved to Chiswick and later took a house in West Sussex.[8][9]
One of Hay's novels, For Her Dear Sake, is part set near the Lizard in Cornwall, a short distance from the Grade and Ruan parishes where she was staying with the family of Rev. Frederick Christian Jackson. Jackson was a competent amateur artist and sold pictures to fund his church, and in 1880 he managed to persuade Madame Modjeska to put on a staging of Romeo and Juliet in the vicarage gardens to raise funds for the church organ.
Although Hay lived at home with her mother and two sisters, she would have come into contact with people involved in the arts and music through her brother, Walter Cecil Hay, and his family. Walter was a concert master, a composer, the Diocesan Inspector of Choirs for the Rural Deanery of Shrewsbury, organist at St Chad's Church, Shrewsbury and a music tutor.[10][11] One of his best known pupils was composer Edward German. In 1855 Walter married Emily Henshaw (1828-1903), whose father, Thomas Northage Henshaw (1799-1871) was the teacher of Writing and Accidence at Shrewsbury School from 1847 to 1870.[12] Emily was a good amateur artist and painted several studies of the old buildings in Shrewsbury, many of which can be seen on the Darwin Country museum and library web site.[13] Emily and Walter's granddaughter was artist Margaret Dovaston RA. Mary Cecil Hay's knowledge of the arts was reflected in reviews that she wrote for the Royal Academy Exhibition and the Grosvenor Gallery in 1880.[14][15]
One memory of a particular event in Mary Hay's youth must have stayed with her for many years. In 1857 when she was 17 her brother, Walter, organised a summer fete in Shrewsbury that included music from Monsieur Jullien. The event was in a location referred to as the Isle of Poplars, and access to it was via a temporary pontoon bridge constructed across the River Seven for the event. In the evening, as the visitors started to return home across the bridge, it gave way and ten people, including women and children, were drowned. At the inquest the mayor of Shrewsbury told the jury that he had given Walter Hay permission for the pontoon, only on condition that the construction was placed in the hands of a suitably qualified person. Hay was exonerated by the jury because it was deemed that he had given the contract for the construction of the bridge to such a person. However, the weight of people using the thoroughfare had been underestimated by the contractor and crowd control had been inadequate.[16]
In addition to the suicide of her oldest brother in 1839, Mary's youngest brother, Thomas William, had setbacks in his life and died at the early age of 37 in Boston, America.[17] He had also been declared bankrupt in England in 1867, possibly due to the problems with his mother's clock/watch making business.[18] One of the trustees in these proceedings had the unusual middle name of Bickerton and Mary Hay named one of her villains, Bickerton Slimp, in her novel Old Myddelton's Money.[citation needed]
