Jane Vigor – An Extended Article

© Alison Haymonds (published with thanks and permission).

‘Letters from a Lady’: the remarkable life of Jane Vigor

A year before Jane Vigor died in New Windsor in 1783, at the great age of 84, she gave detailed instructions for her funeral: “I desire I may be buried in a leaden coffin in the vault where my late dear husband lies in the church yard of Taplow, in as private a manner as possible, no pall bearers, only two horses to the hearse unless the coffin should be too heavy, another four only, with Smith and the Child to attend it.”(1) Her will, signed in her clear, elegant hand, sums up something of the character of Jane, her attachment to her husband, her dislike of show and ostentation, and her thoughtfulness – even the horses must be spared.

Today the vault in which she lies can still be seen in the old churchyard at Taplow, where the medieval church of St Nicolas once stood, behind the Saxon mound and overlooked by the elaborate towers of Taplow Court. Her inscription can just be read, although her husband’s has been obliterated, simply describing her as ‘relict of the late William Vigor’, which gives no clue to the extraordinary life she led.

Little is known of Jane Vigor’s long life, encompassing almost all the 18th century, first as the daughter of a wealthy clergyman and latterly as the wife of a Quaker merchant, except for twelve tumultuous years in between into which she packed a lifetime of incident. Between 1728 and 1740, Jane(2) travelled to Russia with the first of her three husbands, became acquainted with all the important figures at Empress Anne’s court, was married and widowed twice, and lost at least two children.

When she returned to England, Jane was content to live quietly in Taplow and Windsor, busying herself with charitable works, and it was not until she was 76 that she became known to a wider audience, when the letters she had written during those twelve years, were published anonymously as Letters from a Lady who Resided some Years in Russia, to her Friend in England. (3) Nearly 300 years later, these letters, and the eleven additional ones published after her death in 1785(4), still provide one of the most perceptive and entertaining accounts of life in Empress Anne’s Russia.

Despite the secrecy, it was generally known that Jane was the author and the book was greeted warmly. The Monthly Review of September 1775 and The Gentleman’s Magazine a month later compared her favourably to the prolific letter writer and traveller, Lady Mary Wortley Montague, and commented on the liveliness of her style. The artist Mrs Delany, a near neighbour of Jane’s during her frequent visits to Bulstrode Park, near Gerrards Cross, admired the book and wrote to her niece Mrs Port: “Did I send you the Russian Letters? They are natural and informing.”(5) Within a year the letters were translated into German, French and Dutch and a second edition was published in England in 1777.(6)

What marks out Letters from a Lady are the skill and charm of the writer. Gently humorous, deprecating, but with a shrewd eye, Jane had great powers of observation and a gift for summing up character. Her descriptions of the Empress, her family and courtiers give us an unrivalled picture of the Russian court. Those who dismiss her as gossipy, sentimental and uninterested in politics miss the point.(7) She had a gift for friendship and was able to write about historical figures as human beings. She inspired love and admiration in all she met.(8) Empress Anne herself, in a hand-written letter to George II, commended her. “Wee likewise having a particular benevolence to wards the said Widow for her good deserts, and consequently taking a share in her Well-fare, are desirous on Our side any way, to promote it.”(9)

There is little overt personal detail in the letters for Jane is discreet and uncomplaining, although clues can be picked up. We get a clearer picture from those who met her. Elizabeth Justice, a governess in the Russia from 1834-7 who wrote her own account of her travels, was much impressed by Jane: “She has so large a share of sense, that it is only to be equalled, not excelled: And this is known to those who have the Pleasure to converse with her; but seems to be a stranger to it herself. Civility, Affability, and good Nature, are her daily Practices; and, in all her Answers, even to her Inferiors, she shews the greatest condescension, and most obliging Temper. She is, in Person, a fine Woman; very tall, and perfectly genteel.”(10)

The German historian Gerhardt Friedrich Müller, who met her in St. Petersburg, described her as “a young, beautiful, lively, artistic and understanding woman”(11), and there was a lengthy tribute in The Gentleman’s Magazine after her death. “Together with great cheerfulness of mind and equality of temper, she retained an uncommon quickness of apprehension and vigour of understanding to the time of her death. Having lived much in the world, and being well acquainted with books, her conversation was the delight of all who had the pleasure of knowing her.”(12)

These qualities of equable temper, understanding and wit stood Jane in good stead when, in 1728, she was whisked from her quiet home to the deep snows and treacherous politics of Russia. She was born in 1699 and has been described as ‘probably the daughter of the Revd Edward Goodwin of Rawmarsh Hall, Yorkshire’(13). However this does not accord with a remarkable anecdote, dated 1740, and preserved by the redoubtable Mrs Delany. It seems to have been told by Jane herself, though recorded by someone else, recounting a strange meeting during her journey back to England in January 1740. She was 40 at that time, had been recently widowed from her second husband and was expecting a child.

Accompanied by an unnamed man, who was in fact the Russia merchant William Vigor, her future husband, Jane was travelling by sledge and had arrived exhausted at Memel, in Polish Prussia. The inn was full of soldiers so Vigor made enquiries about a private lodging and a kindly stranger, named Meyer, directed them to a spacious house, which, to their surprise, turned out to be his own home. When Jane thanked him for his benevolence he explained that the previous year his son had been travelling in England when he fell ill with smallpox in a northern town. As he was lying near death in a dirty alehouse, a gentleman heard of his plight, and took him to his own home. Mr Meyer said that his son owed his life to this gentleman’s goodness.

Jane asked his son where this had occurred and he replied that it was in Methley, near Leeds, in Yorkshire, and the gentleman’s name was Goodwin. “ ‘Sir,’ said Mrs Vigor, ‘it was my own father!’ ”(14)

This ‘curious example of the romance of reality’(15) seems to confirm that Jane’s father was in fact the Rev George Goodwin, MA, rector of Methley, in West Yorkshire, from 1709-1751. Mr Goodwin, born in 1666, is described as ‘a clergyman of large fortune in Yorkshire, which, after her brother’s death, devolved to her [Jane];’(16) and there is an intriguing snippet of gossip from Yorkshire diarist John Hobson, who writes on August 31, 1728, that he dined with “Mr Goodwin, minister of Medley [sic], who had lost £40,000 in the South Sea, and married his daughter to a Russia merchant, and had given her £14,000 to her portion, as his cosen, Mr Goodwin of Tanckersley, told us.”(17) Jane was greatly attached to her father. His portrait hung in the drawing room of her home, Taplow House,(18) and she wrote of her sadness in leaving “a fond father, from whose presence I had never been a fortnight in my whole life till I left him to come into a strange country.”(19)

Jane, beautiful and witty with a large fortune, was a good catch but she was 29 before she married Thomas Ward, one of four sons of the former chief baron of the exchequer, Sir Edward Ward. One of his five sisters was the intimate friend to whom she wrote her letters.

In 1928, Ward had been appointed new consul-general to Russia. Historian Anthony Cross comments dryly that Thomas’s ‘background and qualifications for the post remain obscure’,(20) although we know from the letters that he spoke Russian. The couple sailed for Russia, arriving in St Petersburg in July 1728 after one month’s travelling only to find the young Tsar Peter II had removed his court to Moscow.(21) To make matters worse, Ward’s commission was not acceptable to the Russians because he had no letter of introduction from King George II and it was a year before he was officially recognised.

His wife’s state of mind on starting this strange, new life can be imagined although she was determined to put on a brave face. She wrote to her sister-in-law: “Oh, I hear your brother’s step; I must hide my emotion; for if I cannot assist him, which, I know, I should, were he to suspect that I was not perfectly pleased with my present situation.”(22)

Ward had a formidable task for he was also the first person to be appointed agent for the Russia Company, which until 1698 had had a monopoly on trade between England and Russia. This soon took up all his time and when he was approached to be minister resident as well, he recommended his capable young secretary, Claudius Rondeau, should take up the post.

The Wards moved between St Petersburg and Moscow, following the court, and saw first hand the great changes that overtook the country. Jane describes the death of the 15-year-old Tsar Peter II of smallpox on his wedding day on January 30, 1730, and the accession of Anna Ivanovna, daughter of Peter the Great’s imbecile brother Ivan V, after a coup d’état. Of the Empress she writes: ”She has an awfulness in her countenance that strikes you at the first sight, but when she speaks, she has a smile about her mouth that is inexpressibly sweet. She talks a good deal to everybody, and has such an affability in her address, that you seem talking to an equal; and yet she does not, for one moment, drop the dignity of a sovereign.”(23)

Jane gossips wittily about christenings, weddings, funerals, and the lives of the people she met, but has a way of slipping in a sharp-eyed judgement. Describing the protracted marriage celebrations of the Empress’s niece, she adds: “And thus ended this grand wedding, from which I am not yet rested, and what is worse, all this rout has been made to tie two people together who, I believe, heartily hate one another.”(24)

Jane is more circumspect about her own private life. We learn only obliquely of Ward’s sudden death in February 1731 and her subsequent speedy courtship by and marriage to Claudius Rondeau on November 23. Rondeau, born on March 28, 1695, was the son of a French Protestant refugee who settled in Canterbury. He was a constant support to the Wards, living with them ‘as a brother’(25), and features frequently in Jane’s letters.

Anthony Cross sums up the marriage succinctly: “Rondeau acquired the post [of resident] and within a matter of months, Ward’s widow, for widows were a commodity much sought after in the British community.”(26)

Jane is coy about the courtship: “I am yet wavering and cannot tell what will be the consequence. I think the person has merit, good sense, (as far as I am a judge) with great good nature and evenness of temper, if living in the house with him can inform me of his disposition.”(27)

Rondeau is diplomatic. “I thought I could do no better than to marry [Ward’s] widow, who is a person of great worth, which ceremony was performed in the presence of Count Osterman on 23rd inst.” He explained that “this apparent haste was occasioned because of having to be in St. Petersburg by January 19”.(28)

The presence of Count Osterman, the influential foreign minister, shows the esteem in which the couple were held, and the hasty marriage turned out to be a success. Rondeau proved a resourceful and diplomatic British minister and agent to the Russia company.(29) Jane’s affection for her husband is obvious and she was glad to advance his career with her influential friendships.(30) He in turn was proud of her position in court and when Jane had to return to London to consult doctors about her health in June 1737, he writes: “As she has been nine years in this country and knows everybody at court, perhaps the queen may be desirous to see her.”(31)

The ill health may have been connected with unsuccessful pregnancies. In 1733 Jane lost a child. Writing three months after she was ‘brought to bed’, she is still very weak and has not yet left her room. “Between you and me, as this is the first, I should be horribly frightened if I was to find myself in the same condition again,” she confides.(32) She is ill again the following year, and in 1735 she was delighted to be excused from the new craze for sledging down a frozen wooden run because her majesty said “my present condition made it improper”.(33)

When Rondeau died in October 5, 1739, Jane was pregnant again and anxious to return home. Because of her condition, it was thought too hazardous for her to travel by sea so Rondeau’s secretary John Bell(34) arranged for William Vigor to accompany her.(35) Her daughter, Claudia, was born in England on May 8, 1740, but, sadly, died twenty-two days later, and was buried with Claudius at St Dunstan’s Church, Canterbury.(36)

Jane married once again, to William Vigor, her protector on the long journey home, and for a time they lived in London. Vigor’s friend, John Byrom, seemed delighted with the romance of their meeting: “I have wished [you] much joy in my mind ever since I was told that the two fellow travellers had agreed to live at home together.”(37)

Vigor, born in 1694, was rather a nominal Quaker according to his contemporary, the theologian William Law(38), who describes him as “an occasional traveller on the Continent and an interesting talker”. He led a sociable life in London with his friends, including Byrom, a poet and inventor of a system of shorthand, even learning shorthand himself. Many Quakers went into manufacturing or commerce at that time, because they were not allowed to earn academic degrees, and Vigor seems to have been a successful merchant. He continued with his Russian interests after his marriage, investing in ships, and using his influence to get his nephew placed in the Russian court.(39)

In 1749, Byrom wrote to his wife: “I passed an evening with Mr Vigor, who has left London, and taken or bought a house near Maidenhead.”(40) This was Taplow House, in Berry Hill, built in the 1740s after the original manor was burned down in 1660. It was a substantial property with stables, garden, orchards, and several acres of arable land and meadow. Many well-known Quakers had settled in that area of Buckinghamshire, near Jordans, one of the oldest established Quaker Meeting Houses, where William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania, and other early Quakers are buried. Vigor was a great friend of the Penns and is named as an executor in the will of Penn’s grandson, Richard.(41) The Vigors lived in Taplow for the rest of their married life and, after William died in 1767, Jane stayed on until 1774 when she let the house to William Mowbray, and moved to Windsor.

There are a few tantalizing glimpses of Jane’s life during this time. She also subscribed to a book, The Principles of Beauty Relative to the Human Head (1778), by the innovative artist Alexander Cozens, a drawing master at Eton College from 1763. Fifty years earlier in St Petersburg, Jane had enjoyed tea and a gossip with Alexander’s father, Richard, who was Peter the Great’s British ship builder.(42)

She was indefatigable in her charitable works and the tribute in The Gentleman’s Magazine says: “Her loss will be severely felt by the neighbouring poor, amongst whom she was constantly searching after proper objects for the exertion of her charity and benevolence.”(43) Her generosity continued after her death, for in her will, Jane left her money to her servant Anne Smith and for the education and care of Eleanor Allen, the young daughter of a labourer. Taplow House was inherited by Vigor’s three nieces, and in 1794 was sold to Pascoe Grenfell, MP for Great Marlow and Penryn. Today, much changed and extended, it is the Taplow House Hotel.

When Jane died on September 6, 1783(44), Mrs Delany, who was staying at Bulstrode, heard the news from her friend, the mythographer, Jacob Bryant, who lived in Cippenham and whose ‘pleasing, instructive, and slyly humorous’ conversation amused many influential people, including George III. Mrs Delany writes: “Mr Bryant talk’d a good deal of Mrs Viger, who died a few months ago at Windsor, aged 83, with all her faculties unimpaired, gave us her character, and told us a good anecdote.”(45)

From the tributes paid to the remarkable Mrs Vigor, it is clear that her charm and wit were by no means diminished with age, as an anonymous friend attests in a poem written at the time:

The young and gay may sometimes hate

The old, both peevish and sedate,

And even shun their sight:

But sense and age, combin’d with mirth,

Which smil’d on Vigor’s happy birth,

And nature here write.

These charm alike both old and young,

Attentive to the matron’s tongue,

They catch her air and voice;

Age, with accomplishments like these,

The most inanimate must please,

And be their taste and choice.

Then think not us so dull a pair,

Who wish not age and sense to share,

And hear their converse sweet:

Impatient for the hour we wait,

Which calls us to that honour’d gate,

Where wit and wisdom meet.

Preface, Eleven Additional Letters. (46)

For those who can track down a copy of her letters, it is still a pleasure to know Jane Vigor and to delight in the wit and wisdom of her account of those twelve remarkable years in Russia.

Alison Haymonds

References

  1. Mrs Vigor’s last will and testament, Prob 11/1108, signed and sealed on May 21, 1782, proved on September 23, 1783.
  2. I have called her Jane throughout for simplicity since she had four surnames.
  3. Letters from a Lady who resided some years in Russia to her friend in England with historical notes, printed for J Dodsley, London, 1775, republished by Elibron Classics, 2005.
  4. Eleven additional Letters from Russia in the reign of Peter II. By the late Mrs Vigor (with Letters from a lady, second edition), London: J Dodsley.
  5. Mrs Delaney to Mrs Port, St James’s Place, 14 May 1776. The Autobiography and Correspondence of Mary Granville, Mrs Delany, edited by the Right Honourable Lady Llanover, Vol II, London: 1862, p 217.
  6. Letters from Henrietta to Morvina, Interspersed with Anecdotes, historical and amusing, of the different Courts and Countries through which she passed, Founded on Facts, a book which lifts and embellishes one of Jane Vigor’s stories, was published in 1777. It is neither historical nor amusing.
  7. Peter Putnam describes the letters as ‘relatively unimportant’, ‘ sentimental epistles’, and says ‘she appears entirely unconcerned with either diplomatic or commercial affairs’, Seven Britons in Imperial Russia, 1698-1812, Princeton University Press, 1952, p xxiii; Anthony Cross is less damning: ‘A series of endlessly gossipy and anecdotal but nevertheless valuable letters’. By the Banks of the Neva: chapters from the lives and careers of the British in eighteenth century Russia, Cambridge University Press 1997, p 340.
  8. Not least her husbands. In their wills, Claudius Rondeau refers to her as ‘my beloved wife’ and William Vigor as ‘my dear and loving wife’.
  9. The Empress wrote this when Jane left Russia. Royal Letters in Public Record Office (SP 102/50), quoted by Leo Loewenson, ‘Lady Rondeau’s letters from Russia’, Slavonic and East European Review, 35 (1956–7), p 408.
  10. A Voyage to Russia: describing the laws, manners, and customs, of the Great Empire, as govern’d at this present, by that excellent Princess, the Czarina. Written and collected by Elizabeth Justice York: 1739, p 40.
  11. ‘Die Verfasserin, deren ichich sehr wohl erinnere, war von Geburt eine Engländerin: eine junge, schöne, lebhafte, artige und verständig Frau.’ Another German scholar living in Russia, Jacob von Stählins, described her as ‘sehr witzig’ – very witty. Quoted by Loewenson, p 407
  12. Quoted in the preface to Eleven Additional Letters.
  13. Katherine Turner in her article on Jane Vigor in the online Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
  14. The Autobiography and Correspondence of Mary Granville, vol II, pp 143-146.
  15. Lady Llanover’s words.
  16. Preface, Eleven Additional Letters.
  17. Yorkshire Diaries and Autobiographies in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, Elibron Classics, p 257. If this is true, Mr Goodwin must indeed have been well endowed, despite his losses, for £14,000 in today’s money is about £1.5m.
  18. In her will she left it to Mrs Clayton of Wigan, Lancashire.
  19. October 1729, Letters, p52-3 She must have visited Windsor Castle at some time because she comments when attending a Russian birthday party that the hall where it was celebrated was ‘considerably larger than St George’s Hall at Windsor’, Letters, p 93
  20. By the Banks of the Neva, p 53.
  21. Secretaries of State: State Papers Foreign, Russia SP 91/10, National Archive
  22. Additional Letters, p 17.
  23. Letters, p 71.
  24. Letters, p 205.
  25. Rondeau wrote to G Tilson after Ward’s death on November 29, 1731: ‘I have received many favours from the late consul Ward, with whom I have lived during his lifetime in this country like a brother.‘ Quoted in Loewenson, p 406.
  26. By the Banks of the Neva, p 54
  27. Letters, p 63.
  28. Lowenson p 405.
  29. Anthony Cross believes “Rondeau’s very real qualities are eloquently exhibited in the three volumes of despatches that he has left, spanning virtually the whole of Anne’s reign.”, By the Banks of the Neva, p55.
  30. Letters, p 88.
  31. SP 91/21, National Archives.
  32. Letters, p 80.
  33. Letters, p 146.
  34. John Bell of Antermony (1691-1780, a Scottish physician and traveller, who spent some time in St Petersburg and wrote about his travels.
  35. SP 91/23, National Archives.
  36. The oval wall memorial reads: “Near this Place, lies interr’d the Body of Claudius Rondeau Esq., His Majesty’s Resident at the Court of Russia from the Year 1730 to the year 1739. He was born 28 March 1695 and died at Petersburg Oct. 5 1739. This Monument was erected to his Memory, by his Widow Jane, Daughter of the Revd. Mr Goodwin, & Relict of Thomas Ward Esq., Son to the late Ld. chief Baron Ward. Here also lies interr’d His Posthumous Daughter, Claudia Rondeau, born May 8 1740 and died the 31st of the same Month.”
  37. March 1, 1745/6, The Private Journal and Literary Remains of John Byrom, edited by Richard Parkinson Vol II, Part II, The Chetham Society 1857, p 411.
  38. William Law, William Law and Eighteenth-Century Quakerism, Ayer Publishing, 1994, p 116
  39. He had just had a letter from his nephew North, ‘who is like to flourish in Muscovy where he is in the Empress’s service, has as good as a hundred a year already, preferred as soon as possible, and like to rise on.’ Byrom, p 505.
  40. August 3, 1749, Byrom, p 505.
  41. Through Vigor’s introduction, William Penn’s grandson, William, also learned shorthand with Byrom. William Law, p 116.
  42. Kim Sloan, ‘A New Chronology for Alexander Cozens’ Part I: 1717-59, The Burlington Magazine, vol.127, No.983 (Feb., 1985) pp 70-75.
  43. Preface, Eleven Additional Letters.
  44. There is some dispute over the actual day as September 12, 1784 [sic) is mentioned in the tribute in The Gentleman’s Magazine. However, the original obituary notice in the magazine says September 6, 1783.
  45. December 9, 1783, The Autobiography and Correspondence of Mary Granville, vol II, pp 169. The anecdote might well have been the one quoted above. The spelling of her name and her age are incorrect.
  46. Preface, Eleven Additional Letters.