BODDY

The Shakespeare Memorial Theatre was founded through the efforts of local brewer Charles Edward Flower (1830-1892), after whose death its management was taken over by his brother Edgar Flower (1833-1903), also Chairman of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. On Edgar’s death these duties fell to his son Archibald Flower (1865-1950), several times mayor of Stratford-upon-Avon. The present correspondence concerns a gift to Shakespeare Memorial Association by the appropriately-named anatomist Evan Marlett Boddy.

Hodgson’s entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography omits to mention the fact that the territory named Eton Vale which he squatted with his brother Christopher Pemberton Hodgson (1821-1865), was taken by force from the Barunggam people, and that, as the brother recalled in 1848, ‘so many hundreds of these poor creatures’ were ‘sacrificed’ in the struggle over the territory. From the papers of Evan Marlett Boddy (c.1847-1934), who is presumably the recipient ‘Marcian’, author of the named ‘brochure’, published in Birmingham in 1901. 1p, 12mo. In good condition, folded once.

These five items are part of a collection of correspondence (the rest is offered separately) relating to a supposed portrait of a young Percy Bysshe Shelley by George Romney, which was in a group of paintings donated to the Shakespeare Memorial Association by the appropriately-named anatomist Evan Marlett Boddy. (The Shelley portrait is reproduced in ‘The Magazine of Art’, 1901, with the caption ‘Reputed portrait of Shelley as a boy, by Romney. In the Shakespeare memorial, Stratford-on-Avon.’, in an article on ‘Portraits of Shelley at the National Portrait Gallery’, p.

An interesting item from a medical point of view, with a well-informed patient describing and discussing his condition, symptoms and treatment options. Three years after the writing of this letter the appropriately-named Boddy, who is addressed here as ‘W. Barnard Boddy Esqr / 3. Saville Row. Walworth’, published ‘Diet and Cholera’ (London, 1848). 3pp, 12mo. Bifolium. Fifty-five lines of closely-written text. The signature is large and shaky, and the use of an amanuensis is understandable in the light of the content of the letter.