Ruth's Blog

In 1868, the life of Charlotte Barnard, the successful songwriter Claribel, was turned upside down.  Her father, Louth solicitor Henry Pye, was revealed to have been embezzling the money of his clients, friends and family – including Charlotte – to fund his grandiose schemes of land reclamation on the Lincolnshire marshes.  Following Henry’s attempt to escape in an open boat in the Humber, he, his wife and young daughter, with Charlotte and her husband Charles, fled to Ostend, later moving to Brussels.

No one is quite sure why Charlotte and Charles returned to England in January 1869.  A holiday?  To visit her publisher Boosey?  For Charles to settle his late father’s affairs?  To take their servants from Kirmington back to Brussels?  It must have been quite a pressing reason; in a letter to her cousin Amy, dated 21 October 1868 Charlotte says that she will never return to Lincolnshire, but thinks she might come to England ‘in a year or so’ although she ‘shrink[s] from the idea even of doing so.’

Charlotte died, after a short illness, at 19 Waterloo Crescent, Dover, on 30 January 1869 and is buried in St James’ Churchyard in Dover.  Her death certificate records the cause as typhoid fever, but I am beginning to wonder if it was not more complex.

From Charlotte’s letters to her cousin Amy, it is clear that she had been experiencing poor health from May 1866.  In June 1867, she writes, ‘I have not been well since May last year.’  One letter, hitherto unpublished, as far as I am aware, is particularly telling.  In April 1868 she was visiting the Isle of Wight and writes to Amy, ‘I shall grieve to leave the Island which has brought back health and spirits again but alas not my voice.’  She puts much of her ill health down to ‘old age’ (at 38!) and worry.  She says that she had not expected to live to see the previous Easter and that ‘we may all be dead and gone before 1869’ – a chilling remark, given that she was to die in January 1869.  Her doctor is convinced that her pains are caused by liver trouble, but she thinks it’s her heart (‘remember I said this and cold affects it’).  She feels that ‘doctors put one off’ and says to Amy, ‘I wish you to keep this letter a year or two,’ presumably as evidence of her thoughts about her illness in the event of her death.  In July 1868, she writes from the German spa town of Baden and says that she is better from her headaches, sickness, weakness and depression.  However, ‘I shall never be sociable anymore – I haven’t spirit enough.’

Typhoid was very prevalent at this period, but some of the symptoms (abdominal pain, for example) are the same as those Charlotte was already suffering.  We will never know the true cause of her death, of course, only that she died so tragically young.