Penny's poetry pages Wiki
in: Articles incorporating Cite DNB template, Articles with authority control information, Imported, created, or updated in 2017,
and 10 more

James Carnegie, Earl of Southesk

Edit

James Carnegie, 9th earl of Southesk (16 November 1827 - 21 February 1905) was a Scottish poet, nobleman, and antiquary.

Southesk

James Carnegie, Earl of Southesk. Engraving by Richard Lane (1800-1872), after James Rannie Swinton (1816-1888). Courtesy National Portrait Gallery.

Life[]

Youth and education[]

Carnegie, 6th de facto and 9th de jure earl of Southesk, was born at Edinburgh, the eldest son in a family of 3 sons and 2 daughters of Sir James Carnegie, 5th baronet of Pittarow, by his wife Charlotte, daughter of Daniel Lysons of Hempstead Court, Gloucester. The father, who was 5th in descent from Alexander, 4th son of David Carnegie, the 21st earl of Southesk, laid claim without success to the family earldom which had been forfeited in 1715 on the attainder of James Carnegie, 5th earl, for his share in the Jacobite rebellion of that year.[1]

Young Carnegie was educated at Edinburgh Academy and Sandhurst.[1]

Adult life[]

Carnegie obtained a commission in the Gordon Highlanders in 1845, was transferred in 1846 to the grenadier guards, and retired on succeeding his father as 6th baronet in 1849.[1]

James.Carnegie.(1827-1905)

Carnegie, from The Bards of Angus and the Mearns, 1897. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Southesk married, on 19 June 1849, Lady Catharine Hamilton (died 1855), 3rd daughter of Charles Noel, 1st earl of Gainsborough; by whom he had a son, Charles Noel, who succeeded him as 10th earl of Southesk, and 3 daughters.[2]

A man of cultivated taste, he practically rebuilt the family residence, Kinnaird Castle, Brechin, in 1854, and collected there with much zest antique gems, mainly intaglios (from 1879), pictures by the old masters, books, and some 150 cylinders Assyrian, Hittite, Babylonian, Persian, and Accadian. But he disposed of much of the extensive family property elsewhere, selling his estate of Glendye to Sir Thomas Gladstone, baronet.[1]

Renewing his father's claim to the earldom of Southesk in 1855, he obtained on 2 July an Act of Parliament reversing the attainder of 1715, and was confirmed in the title by the House of Lords on 24 July. On 7 December 1869 he was made a peer of the United Kingdom, with the title Baron Balinhard of Farnell.[1]

In 1859 Southesk undertook in search of health a prolonged hunting expedition in Western Canada. He traversed some of the wildest and least known parts of the Rockies about the sources of the rivers Athabasca and Saskatchewan.[1] The Hudson’s Bay Company Governor Sir George Simpson, helped him hire guides, assemble supplies and buy horses, and instructed HBC personnel to show him “every attention.”[3]

He returned home in 1860, and was made a fellow of the Geographical Society.[1] Simpson shipped him several beavers to Scotland so that he could introduce the animals to his estate.[3] After a long interval he published Saskatchewan and the Rocky Mountains (1875), a spirited account of his experiences in diary form.[1]

On 29 November 1860 he married Lady Susan Catharine Mary Murray, daughter of Alexander Edward, 6th earl of Dunmore; by whom he had 3 sons and 4 daughters.[2]

Southesk devoted his later years to recondite antiquarian research, which he pursued with thoroughness and judgment. A prominent member of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, he read before the society papers on The Newton Stone (1884) and The Ogham Inscriptions of Scotland (1885), while in 1893 he discussed The Origin of Pictish Symbolism. The papers were published separately.[2]

He died at Kinnaird Castle on 21 February 1905.[2]

Writing[]

Herminius: A romance (1862), was followed by an essay on art criticism, Britain's Art Paradise; or, Notes on some of the pictures of the Royal Academy of 1871 (1871).[1]

In 1875 he published anonymously his earliest poetical work, Jonas Fisher: A poem in brown and white, a rather crude effort at satire on current extravagances in art, poetry of the Rossetti type, and emotional religion. On its publication the book was assigned in a hostile review in the Examiner to Robert Buchanan. Buchanan deemed this erroneous attribution one of the grounds for a successful action of libel against Peter A. Taylor, the proprietor of the Examiner.[1]

Other verse from Southesk's pen often presented scenes of adventure in vigorous and simple metre; it included Lurida Lumina (1876), Greenwood's Farewell, and other poems (1876), The Meda Maiden, and other poems (1877) (inspired by Longfellow's Hiawatha), and The Burial of Isis, and other poems (1884). Suomira: A fantasy, privately printed in 1893, was a curious experiment in meter printed as prose.[1]

Recognition[]

In 1869, on Gladstone's recommendation, he was made a knight of the Order of the Thistle.[1]

He was made an honorary LL.D. of St. Andrews in 1872, and of Aberdeen University in 1875.[2]

There are at Kinnaird Castle portraits in oils by Sir John Watson-Gordon (1861) and by Miss A. Dove Wilson (1899), and a chalk drawing (1861) by James Rannie Swinton.[2]

Publications[]

Poetry[]

  • Jonas Fisher: A poem in brown and white. London, Trübner, 1875; New York: Garland, 1986.
  • Lurida Lumina. Edinburgh, Edmonston, 1876.
  • Greenwood's Farewell, and other poems. London: Strahan, 1876.
  • The Meda Maiden, and other poems. London: Macmillan, 1877.
  • The Burial of Isis, and other poems. Edinburgh: D. Douglas, 1884.
  • Suomiria: A fantasy. Edinburgh: privately published, printed by D. Douglas, 1899; New York: Arno Press, 1976.

Novel[]

  • Herminius: A romance. Edinburgh: 1862.

Non-fiction[]


Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.[4]

See also[]

References[]

Notes[]

  1. ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 Fryer, 315.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 Fryer, 316.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 National Poetry Month - The Earl of Southesk, Fort Edmonton Park, April 28, 2012. Web, Mar. 3, 2017.
  4. ↑ Search results = au:James Carnegie Earl of Southesk, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, Mar. 3, 2017.

External links[]

Poems
Prose
Books
About

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Dictionary of National Biography, 2nd supplement​ (edited by Sidney Lee). London: Smith, Elder, 1912. Original article is at: Carnegie, James

Authority control
Community content is available under CC-BY-SA unless otherwise noted.