Augustus John Cuthbert Hare (13 March 1834 – 22 January 1903) was an English writer and
raconteur.
Early life
He was the youngest son of Francis George Hare of
Herstmonceux,
East Sussex, and
Gresford,
Flintshire, Wales, and the nephew of
Augustus William Hare and
Julius Hare.[1]
Augustus Hare was born in
Rome; he was adopted by his aunt, the widow of Augustus Hare, and his parents renounced all further claims to him. His autobiography The Story of My Life (1896-1900) details both a devotion to his adopted mother, Maria, and an intense unhappiness with his home education at
Buckwell Place. He spent one year at
Harrow School in 1847 but left due to ill health. In 1853, he matriculated at
University College, Oxford, graduating in 1857 with a BA.
Career
Hare was the author of a large number of books, which fall into two classes: biographies of members and connections of his family, and descriptive and historical accounts of various countries and cities. To the first belong Memorials of a Quiet Life (about his adoptive mother), Story of Two Noble Lives (about Countess Canning and the Marchioness of Waterford, sisters and artists), The Gurneys of Earlham (about the
Gurney family of bankers and social reformers of
Earlham Hall near Norwich), and an autobiography in six volumes. This last included a number of accounts of encounters with
ghosts. A reviewer in the New York Times concluded that "Mr Hare's ghosts are rather more interesting than his lords or his middle-class people".[2]
He also compiled numerous travel books, including a couple for
John Murray, as well as many others under his own name, such as Walks in Rome, Walks in London, Wanderings in Spain, Cities of Northern, Southern, and Central Italy (separate works), Days near Rome and Sussex. A number of his travel books were revised in later editions by the historian
Welbore St Clair Baddeley (1856–1945).
Hare was a friend to the barrister Basil Levett and his wife Lady Mary Levett, the daughter of the
Earl of Shaftesbury, to whom Hare left a painting in his will.[3] ("Basil
Levett or his wife Lady Margaret Copy of the Last Communion of S Jerome by
Domenichino.")[4]
Hare died unmarried in 1903, and was buried in
Herstmonceux.[5]
Holmhurst
Hare spent his money on purchasing and refurbishing a house near in
Baldslow,
Sussex, near Hastings, which he named Holmhurst St Mary.[6]
In his biography of
Somerset Maugham, writer
Ted Morgan mentions that Hare, whom he refers to as "the last Victorian," befriended Maugham, who became a frequent guest at Holmhurst.[7]
After Hare's death, the house was taken by Admiral Sir
Lewis Beaumont and family, and then from 1908 Sir
John Gordon Kennedy and family.[8] At some point after this the estate was purchased by the
Community of the Holy Family, an Anglican order of teaching nuns, with a focus on art and scholarship. Their mother foundress,
Agnes Morton, who had formed the community in London in 1896 and later brought it to Sussex, recognised the house and gardens as a piece of Italy – specifically Florence – in England.[9] The girls' school that the nuns ran there, from the 1930s to the 1980s, was known as St Mary's Convent School, the Ridge.[10][11] Its best-known pupil was
Joanna Lumley, an "
army brat" who boarded in the 1960s: "I especially loved my second boarding school, an Anglo-Catholic convent in the hills behind Hastings. The nuns wore blue stockings and were brainy and lovely. There were 70 boarders and I was happy as a clam."[12]
List of works
Travel guides:
A Handbook for Travellers in Berks, Bucks and Oxfordshire, (John Murray, 1860)
A Winter at Mentone, (Wertheim, Macintosh & Hunt, 1862)
A Handbook for Travellers in Northumberland and Durham, (John Murray, 1863)
Walks in Rome, (Daldy, Isbister & Co., 1871) 2 vols.
Wanderings in Spain, (Strahan & Co., 1873)
Days Near Rome, (Daldy, Isbister & Co., 1875) 2 vols.
Life and Letters of
Maria Edgeworth, (Edward Arnold, 1894) - as editor
The
Gurneys of Earlham, (George Allen, 1895) 2 vols.
Biographical Sketches: being Memorials of
Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, Dean of Westminster,
Henry Alford, Dean of Canterbury, Mrs. Duncan Stewart etc., (George Allen, 1895)
Other:
Epitaphs for Country Churchyards. Collected and Arranged, (John Henry & James Parker, 1856)
Letters to Crown-Prince
Gustav V (unpublished) - he had conducted the future King on a tour of Rome
^Morgan, Ted, Maugham, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1980, p. 74
^"Baldslow, East Sussex". Baldslow, East Sussex. Retrieved 4 July 2020. The webpage quotes several newspaper articles from the early C20, with dates and titles.