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The Birtwhistles of Craven and Galloway
“Poems and Translations” was reprinted in 1812 and 1816, and the 1816 edition included a frontispiece engraved from Anna’s own artwork (see figure 23). The composition mainly comprised allegorical references to items in the book, including the Anacreon’s Odes On his lyre, Cupid’s visit, The Rose and The Dove. The young girl holding the lyre would appear to be Anna herself, the mansion in the distance Balmae, with her uncle’s sloop, Jenny, just visible in the Dee estuary behind. The European Magazine and the Attic Chest 1812 was an important year for Anna, publishing her second book, “The Pleasures of Human Life: A poem”, and joining the artistic circle in London known as the Attic Chest. A review of “Pleasures of Human Life” in the European Magazine, to which she was to contribute some 200 pieces of poetry and prose over the next decade, described Anna as in the bloom of youth, encircled with friends, and adorned with talents. A number of these friends were members of the Attic Chest, and were to remain her closest friends for the rest of her life. The Attic Chest was an artistic circle established in 1808 by “society” architect William Porden, to provide an intellectually and socially challenging environment for his precociously talented 13 year old daughter, Eleanor. The circle took its name from a chest of Greek fir in which members deposited their anonymous literary contributions. Fortnightly meetings were held at the Pordens residence in Berners Street during the winter months, Eleanor reading the anonymous contributions deposited in the chest, and the evening being rounded off with a ball. Eleanor later pasted the contributions into workbooks, which are now to be found in the Derbyshire County Record Office at Matlock.
Figure 24 Self portraits of Anna’s friend, the “establishment” sculptor John Flaxman
Anna’s closest friends were members of the family of John Flaxman, the sculptor who lived close to the Vardills, and whose household comprised John and his wife Anne, Mary Flaxman ( John’s sister) and Maria Denman ( Anne’s sister). John Flaxman was a devotee of Shakespeare, whose works he would read to family and friends in the evenings, and this may explain why Anna and her friends adopted literary nicknames from Midsummer Night’s Dream. John Flaxman was King Oberon, Anne
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