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Mary Cowden Clarke (née Novello) (1809-1898), author and Shakespeare scholar, was the eldest daughter of musician Vincent Novello and Mary Hehl. Her parents were friends with the poets Charles and Mary Lamb, Leigh Hunt, Shelley and John Keats, and Mary recalls watching in awe as Keats listened attentively to her father playing the organ. The family, although living in London, sought “healthful changes” by visiting the seaside.¹ Mary visited Kent on at least three occasions which she describes in her autobiography My Long Life.

Mary’s first visit to Kent was during her childhood, when her parents decided to take their young family on the Margate Hoy:

‘As the steamer left the London Docks, I heard a man in a wherry bawl out jeeringly, - “I say! bile up yere kettle!” We had made some way down the river when a portion of the machinery broke, and there was much confusion and alarm on deck among the passengers. My dear mother bade me hide my head in her lap and remain still. I did so, and she praised me for my quiet and obedience. The vessel managed to reach the shore; we disembarked; and I remember my father carrying the then baby in his arms while we all walked across the fields towards Milton or Sittingbourne, at one of which places, on the Kentish High Road, we had to stay till next day, when we could proceed on our journey by the stage-coach.’²

Another trip to Kent (this time en route to Boulogne), was also mired with mishap:

‘We travelled by the stage coach to Dover (there were no railways then), but when we arrived there, it was found that the wind did not serve for the sailing-packet to cross the Channel, so we had to stay for three days at an inn, til we could embark.’³

However, not all Mary’s recollections of Kent are tinged by transport delays and disasters. A holiday at a farmhouse near Tonbridge was recalled fondly:

‘Delightful were those early mornings when I was despatched to another farm about half a mile off, that I might drink new milk from the cow, after a walk through green lanes before breakfast. In those matutinal walks I was invariably accompanied by a kitten, who had taken a fancy to me, or perhaps knew that she was to have a saucer of milk given to her when we arrived … Nutting and blackberrying for hours of an afternoon were delights to me. Glorious were those baking days, when feasts of new-made bread, a Kentish delicacy called ‘huffkins’ – a sort of muffin plentifully buttered and eaten hot, - and a superb pork pie, containing alternate layers of potato, sage and dairy-fed pork formed the delicious periodically-appointed cates.’⁴

Mary married childhood friend Charles Cowden Clarke, who was also a Shakespearian scholar. Charles, whose father had taught John Keats, spent some of his youth in Kent after his father’s retirement. Charles recalled bumping into Samuel Taylor Coleridge on the East Cliff at Ramsgate, who for an hour and a half ‘gave utterance to some of the grandest thoughts [Clarke] ever heard from the mouth of man’.⁵

As a result of her love of Shakespeare, Mary convinced Charles Dickens to allow her to play ‘Mistress Quickly’ in his amateur company performance of ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’ at the Haymarket, on 15 May 1848.

Bibiliography

Clarke, Mary Cowden My long life, an autobiographical sketch, New York : Dodd, Mead & Co. 1897. Hawes, D. ‘Mary Cowden Clarke’ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 2004. Clarke, C.C. and Clarke, M.C. -Recollections of writers._ Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1878.

References