Elizabeth Inchbald: Education Information
Jenkins, Annibel. I’ll Tell You What: The Life of Elizabeth Inchbald. Lexington, Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky, 2003.
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At Home in Suffolk:
Elizabeth Simpson was the daughter of John and Mary Simpson, who also had five other daughters and two sons. She was born October 15, 1753, at Standingfield, a small hamlet near Bury St. Edmunds in Suffolk. Her father was a farmer, from all the evidence quite a successful one. The Simpson farm spread out at the bottom of a slight hill. There was a substantial red brick barn as well as the house. There were fruit trees, fields of grain, vegetable gardens, and the usual domestic animals. Standingfield lies just on the border of Suffolk, some five miles from Bury St. Edmunds, its market town. Although the settlement itself is not so ancient as Bury St. Edmunds, it has a church, St. Nicholas, that dates to the 1300s.
The family was devoted to one another and very supportive of family enterprises. Mary Simpson, who before her marriage was Mary Rushbrook, daughter of William Rushbrook of Flimpton, must have been a remarkable person for her time and circumstances. She conducted a household that not only fostered the activities of a busy farm but was also the gathering place of the local society, a society typical of the prosperous rural areas that supported the city of London. One writer, reviewing Inchbald’s early life, remarked that her “family had a very large circle of visitors, and her own pocket-book exhibits the names of at least a
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hundred persons who called upon them.” Mrs. Simpson read to her daughters, encouraged their reading of plays and romances, and went with them to Bury to see the plays put on at the tiny theatre there, which was a part of the Norwich circuit….
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The Simpson farm, at the bottom of a hill, was viewed below from the medieval church. The church has a “doom painting” behind the altar and a monument to Thomas Rokewode. The Simpsons did not attend this nearby church but instead went across the fields to worship in the Roman Catholic chapel, a chapel built into Coldham Hall, the seat of the Gage family. The Simpsons must have been regular attenders at Mass, for in the years after she left home, Inchbald went to Mass whenever she returned home even though at times in her life she was not devout. And in later years she continued to see members of the Gage family both in Standingfield and in London.
As the scenes and routines of the farm remained a part of Elizabeth Inchbald’s life, so did her close family ties and her love of books and the theatre. She learned to read very early, having been taught at home, as she herself pointed out: “it is astonishing how much all girls are inclined to literature, to what boys are. My brother went to school seven years, and never could spell. I and two of my sisters, though we were never taught, could spell from our infancy.” And throughout the pocket-books, Mrs. Inchbald records her reading and her digests of information that served to provide her with a reference library. One account of the family says that all the girls wrote memorandums that were “well written and well spelt” and that Mrs. Simpson read Samuel Richardson’s popular novel Clarissa to her daughters at leisure times and played cards, loo and whist, with them. Although there are no direct comments about Elizabeth’s speech, it was quite obvious to everyone who knew her that she had a severe speech impediment; no one seemed to mind. …
From an early age Elizabeth was attracted to the outside world. The trip to Bury, only five miles away, was merely the daily routine of the post or errands for
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the farm. She longed to see the world, as she declared at thirteen: “she would rather die, than live any longer without seeing the world.” Her brother George had joined the Norwich Company of players in 1770, and Elizabeth, already enamoured with the stage, went to visit him alone, taking the stagecoach by herself, an early example of her independence.
From all accounts, one of the favorite things for the Simpsons to do was to go to Bury to the fair in the fall and while there attend the season of plays put on by the Norwich Company. During this festival time, spectators could go to rehearsals in the morning and the plays at night. The Simpsons must have spent the days of the fair in the theatre. They were very early familiar with the players and the manager, Richard Griffith; and long before Elizabeth went to London on that day in April, she had determined that she would become an actress, certainly a bold decision for a teenage girl who stuttered….
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Everyone agreed that she was the leading authority on drama in the last years of the eighteenth century and the first decade of the nineteenth.
She knew everyone in the theatre from 1780, when she came to London, until 1810. Moreover, she knew most of the figures in the political world. She was a close friend of William Godwin; and she, Godwin, and the actor and writer Thomas Holcroft were central figures in the liberal press in the 1790s. Her plays and novels were published by G.G. and J. Robinson and Company, and she had a
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hand in several periodicals, supplying and writing material, sometimes without using her name. In the twentieth century, she has been viewed as a friend of Sarah Siddons and John Kemble, the two most celebrated players in the late eighteenth century, but in her own time she was as well known and celebrated as the two of them. She was an extremely independent person, and the ideas she uses in her plays and novel sand the views she expresses in the Remarks are clearly those of an independent thinker and writer.
The record in her pocket-books and letters and the evidence from her friends and associates all support this view. She was determined to write. She was also determined to live by her own standards, and she guarded her private life fiercely. It is from her letters, her pocket-books, and commentary from friends and acquaintances that a portrait of her may be constructed. Boaden, for all his care in using the material in his hands, could not view her or her world without his own perspectives and prejudices. The other material is not simply useful; it is necessary for a true picture of her character and accomplishments.
Being independent did not always bring Inchbald comfort or happiness, and her determination to do things her own way frequently caused her anxiety. It is in the pocket-books that her fears are evident; there also, with the account of her work, is revealed an amazing picture of her determination. With Boaden and the extant pocket-books and letters, it becomes possible to assemble a description of her and her world to delight and instruct.