Edward, Pamela and Henry FitzGerald family
Lord Edward FitzGerald, (1763-1798) Irish nationalist and army officer, visited his brother Henry at Boyle Farm during the early 1790s when he was part of the circle of radicals in England gathered around Thomas Paine. At this time he had an affair with the musician Elizabeth Linley (1754-1792), the wife of the playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan. She died in July 1792 of consumption shortly after giving birth to FitzGerald's daughter, Mary, who died in infancy in the care of Sheridan. In 1792 his radical views led him to follow Paine to France where he met and married 'Pamela' Ann Sims (1773?-1831). He was shot and arrested on 19th May 1798 as the figurehead behind the Irish rebellion that broke out on 24th May. He died of his untreated wounds in prison on 4th June.
Lady Edward 'Pamela' FitzGerald (1773?-1831); born Ann ('Nancy') Sims (spelled alternately Syms, Symes or Simms) in Fogo, Newfoundland to English parents from Dorset, she was noticed for her great charm and good looks as a small girl, and sent to London from Christchurch in 1780 to be apprenticed to an unknown noble family. A Dorset clergyman who had been pastor to the British Embassy in Paris was the connection that led to her 'adoption' as a playmate for the daughter of the Duke of Chartres (later Orleans) in 1780. She was raised by Mme de Genlis, a famous author of children's literature who was responsible for the education of the duke's children and renamed 'Pamela'.
After the French Revolution, Mme de Genlis and her charges, including Pamela, spent time in England between 1791-92, where she posed for the artist George Romney, and met Richard Brinsley Sheridan, theatre owner, playwright and MP. Sheridan's wife Elizabeth died in July of 1792, and he was said to be so struck by the resemblance of Pamela to his late wife that he proposed marriage to her in October of that year. Political complications required Mme de Genlis and Pamela to return to Paris in November, at which time they met Lord Edward Fitzgerald, brother of the 2nd Duke of Leinster and nephew of the 3rd Duke of Richmond. Lord Edward was in Paris attempting to bring revolution to Ireland with French support. The threatening political climate obliged Mme de Genlis and Pamela to flee to Belgium, Lord Edward followed and he married Pamela in Tournai in December 1792.
They settled in Ireland where they had three children: Edward Fox Fitzgerald, Pamela, later Lady Campbell and Lucy Louisa, who was less than 2 months old when her father died in 1798 at the outbreak of rebellion. Pamela was implicated in her husband's treason and compelled to leave the king's realms. To make matters worse, after Lord Edward died in prison of untreated wounds sustained during his arrest, all his assets were seized by an Act of Parliament. The disinherited young widow travelled through England, left her infant daughter Lucy to be raised by Fitzgerald relatives in Thames Ditton, her son with her mother-in-law in London, and took 2 year-old Pamela with her to the free city of Hamburg where she had friends. The Fitzgerald home in Thames Ditton was named Boyle Farm, and the building is now a retirement home just off Fitzgerald Road.
In 1800, Pamela married the Scottish-born American Consul in Hamburg, Joseph Pitcairn, with whom she had a son who died soon after birth, and a daughter named Helen. Her marriage was unhappy, and when she had the opportunity to travel to Thames Ditton to visit her relatives during a pause in the Napoleonic Wars, she chose not to return to Hamburg. Pitcairn told their daughter their mother had died, and refused to allow any further contact between them. Under Napoleon, Mme de Genlis had returned to Paris, and Pamela attempted to establish herself there too with 'little Pam' in 1806, but financial difficulties compelled her to send the girl back to her father's relatives in Thames-Ditton, where she grew up to become Lady Campbell. Later, Helen Pitcairn lived nearby in Twickenham, and was reunited with her half-sister.
Lucy Louisa married Captain George Francis Lyon RN and had a baby girl just over a year later. She sadly died of scarlet fever a few weeks after her baby was born. Captain Lyon died at sea off Argentina some years later. Lucy Louisa and Lady Sophia Sarah Mary are buried together in St Nicholas churchyard in Thames Ditton.
Reverting to the name of her late husband and posing as 'Pamela, Lady Edward Fitzgerald', the elder Pamela made a new life for herself in France. She died there in 1831 and her heartbroken companion Louis de Laforce provided a marble headstone with a Celtic cross, inscribed "Pamela Ladye Edward Fitzgerald par son ami le plus dévoué L.L." Her grave was damaged by the bursting of a shell during the siege of Paris in 1870, and in 1880 Pamela's grandchildren brought her remains back to Thames Ditton, to lie near the family beside St. Nicholas' Church where a fragment of that headstone that can clearly be seen today.
An interesting twist of fate links Elmbridge to the French family with whom Pamela was raised in Paris: they were members of the Bourbon family, and closely related to the executed French king Louis XVI. One of them grew up to become Louis-Philippe I, King of the French, from 1830 until he was overthrown in 1848. Louis-Philippe's son Louis married one of Queen Victoria's cousins, Victoria of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, who lived at Claremont House in Esher, near the Claremont Landscape Gardens now managed by the National Trust. In exile after 1848, the former king Louis-Philippe died at Claremont in 1850, and was first buried in Weybridge at St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church. In 1876, just a few years before the return of Pamela's remains to Thames Ditton, Louis-Philippe and his other deceased relations were transferred from Weybridge to a family tomb in France.
Lord Henry FitzGerald (1761-1829) amateur actor, fourth son of twenty-two children of James FitzGerald, twentieth Earl of Kildare, first Duke of Leinster. Older brother of Edward FitzGerald the Irish nationalist. Married Charlotte Boyle-Walsingham and became Baron de Ros. He was perhaps also lover to Caroline Amelia of Brunswick, Princess of Wales.
Sources
- The Madden Papers, Trinity College Dublin.
- The Lennox-Fitgerald Campbell Papers, National Library of Ireland.
- Christchurch Priory Archives (Christchurch Historical Society).
- The Lester Diaries, University of Bristol.
- "Forth" by Marion Ward, Chichester 1982.