Support our Nation today - please donate here
Culture

Review: Lady Charlotte Guest is an elegantly written portrait of a remarkable female Industrialist and patron of Welsh literature

01 Aug 2021 5 minute read
Lady Charlotte Guest

Jon Gower

Visiting the Dowlais Ironworks in 1852 a reporter for the Bristol Times and Mirror, whilst reeling from the stench and filth of the nearby village, managed to stay on his feet long enough in order to interview the works’ manager John Evans. He also deftly profiled Lady Charlotte who

Though a fine, handsome and fashionable woman, her ladyship takes interest even in the minutiae of the works, and has so keen an eye to the mainpoint, that though she might possibly startle at the question ‘what is the price of pigs? [bars of pig iron] she knows what the price should be?’

Dowlais pumped out iron for much of the world, from Imperial Russia to colonial India. As that firebrand historian Gwyn Alf Williams once put it in a fine joke, re-versioned in this book, when Anna Karenina lays down her head on the railway track at the end of Tolstoy’s novel she would have inevitably have done so on rails made in Dowlais.

Mabinogion

Lady Charlotte Guest, wife of Dowlais iron-master Sir John Guest is best known to us for her pioneering work in translating the Mabinogion but Victoria Owens presents us with another facet to her life, namely as an industrialist.  This was not through choice but rather of necessity, following her husband’s death in 1852 and even though she had taken a keen interest in the day-to-day tasks associated with the ironworks’ administration she was taking charge at a time when the market for iron was volatile to say the least.

A works that in its heyday had employed no fewer than 7,300 men was beset with problems such as motive power. So the young widow found herself bargaining for locomotives to replace Dowlais’ disintegrating fleet. There was even one called Ivor.

And on top of that coal was in short supply as was iron ore. So she faced a phalanx of problems at a time when there was industrial unrest as well, her anxieties about workers’ discontent compounded by the fact that she was dealing with the men who owned and ran the other iron manufactories of Merthyr and powerful coal owners who had multiple grudges to bear.

You could count the women helming manufactories at the time on one finger. But Charlotte had loved the Dowlais works ever since she had first sight of the immense furnaces blazing under a night sky, and so she resolved to help them survive despite the plethora of challenges. She knew her stuff and had already translated works about iron working such as On the Use of Hot Air from French, in so doing giving her a capacious knowledge of smelting, the vagaries of furnaces and the various hot and cold processed employed at the time, as well as studying steam engines.

Stylish

When she met John Guest Charlotte was a stylish and energetic woman, skilled at shooting and billiards as well as appreciative of the arts.  They got married seven weeks after their first meeting and the much younger woman, from a very different background was to bear him 10 children in what was to be a mainly happy relationship.  Despite her growing maternal responsibilities she also found time to engage energetically with Welsh culture, learning the language from the local vicar and eventually mastering the language to the extent that she could translate the tales of the Mabinogion.  As she once said of herself ‘Whatever I undertake, I must reach an eminence in.’

Her interest had been piqued in Welsh literature when she and her husband attended meetings of Cymdeithas Cymreigyddion y Fenni, the Abergavenny Welsh Society. Egged on by some of her friends in the clergy, such as the Rev John Jones, best known under his bardic name Carnhuanawc, Charlotte undertook to not only translate and annotate the Welsh texts herself but also to publish them at her own expense. These appeared in a series of seven parts between 1838 and 1849 and subsequently in a fine, three-volume set. This was very well received. A review in the Morning Chronicle thought it a real feast. ‘It is with no miser’s hand that the table is spread and the materials provided for the literary banquet at which we are here made guests’ while Charlotte found herself being described as a ‘patroness of Welsh literature.’ Other versions of the tales of Pwyll, Culhwch and Gwydion et al. were produced, including Knightly Legends of Wales or the Boys’ Mabinogion published in America as well as an English-only one for the general reader.

Blue Books

Charlotte Guest’s energies were undeniable.  She found time to establish new schools at a time when education in Wales was under attacks by a trio of Government Inspectors in their reports commonly referred to as the Blue Books and she organised night classes for adults. As a works’ owner she introduced individual pay instead of men being paid in groups, which served to encourage pay-day drinking and requested monthly reports from all the different managers to give her an overview of all that was going on. She beneficently took a number of workers and their families to London to see the 1851 Exhibition and set up Reading Rooms for their improvement. She was an enlightened boss.

After withdrawing from the task of running Dowlais she started to collect ceramics, accumulating a collection that served as the basis for that of the Victoria and Albert museum. The woman’s restless energy fair crackles through the pages of this painstakingly researched book by Victoria Owens which breathes life into its subject just as Charlotte herself did for medieval texts, establishing the Mabinogion as one of the finest folk tales in Europe. But as this elegantly written portrait amply proves, there was much, much more to her than that.

Lady Charlotte Guest: The Exceptional Life of a Female Industrialist is published by Pen & Sword Books.  You can buy a copy here…


Support our Nation today

For the price of a cup of coffee a month you can help us create an independent, not-for-profit, national news service for the people of Wales, by the people of Wales.

Subscribe
Notify of
guest
15 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Shan Morgain
3 years ago

I’m afraid if this review reflects the book, it does not impress. (I have researched Charlotte Guest for almost 10 years.) Notably Guest did not only publish an English translation of the Mabinogion. Her first two editions were bilingual Welsh English text. ////////// It’s a plus that her position as a leading industrialist is promoted, in the leading industry of her times. Also she steered this massive Dowlais industry through one of its toughest periods. But she did not only take on the Dowlais ironworks as a widow. She was an active industrial partner with her husband John Josiah, for… Read more »

#1Chris
#1Chris
3 years ago
Reply to  Shan Morgain

Thanks Shan, I shall give your site a look. On first click it looks fascinating and indicates how much you have embraced the culture. You referred to yourself the other day as honorary Welsh. I think you are justified in dropping the honorary should you wish to. Whatever the anglicisation of later copies, Lady Charlotte contributed hugely to the recording of and knowledge of our heritage. without her collated Mabinogi(on) I doubt many of us English speaking Cymry would have heard of the stories. The Red Book of Hergest in the original Welsh being too challenging a read for us… Read more »

Shan Morgain
3 years ago
Reply to  #1Chris

Diolch Chris. The site has some good stuff but I have had to neglect it to get my PhD done (on the Mabinogi). Next year it will be my main concern. It’s a great shame William Owen Pughe died 1835 just when he finished his Mabinogion, which was already booked at the printer. His version was also Welsh and English. He had published parts in journals, the first in 1895. The project was backed by both Welsh and English scholars. Unfortunately his son and heir Aneirin did not follow through. He had his own magnum opus, but also lacked the… Read more »

Last edited 3 years ago by Shan Morgain
Mandi A
Mandi A
3 years ago
Reply to  Shan Morgain

Thanks Shan. I spent an interesting half hour in the bitchy-scratchy world of feminist Arthurian Celtic Studies. Good luck there ! We should mention not only the conditions of John Guest’s wills but the predatory actions of Lord Aberdare taking not just her husband’s parliamentary seat but his business empire with it, made it a good time to move on from Merthyr. The current Lord Aberdare was met with in the recent debacle over the National Library of Wales of which he was a Trustee (I think he was due to stand down.) Nothing much changes in Wales while we… Read more »

Last edited 3 years ago by Mandi A
Shan Morgain
3 years ago
Reply to  Mandi A

 feminist Arthurian Celtic Studies – nothing to do with me. My work is literary analysis of the Mabinogi, politics of Welsh-English development.

Richard
Richard
3 years ago
Reply to  Shan Morgain

The “eminence” quote appears in the Dictionary of National Biography entry for Lady Charlotte (she appears there under her second married name of Schreiber). It immediately precedes “I cannot endure anything in a second grade” which is the first sentence in the entry for 27 April 1839 on your website. I hope this clarifies the matter.

Shan Morgain
3 years ago
Reply to  Richard

The article above gives this:  As she once said of herself ‘Whatever I undertake, I must reach an eminence in.’ I doubt Guest said that as the grammar is wrong (hanging participle) and Guest was far too highly educated to make such a mistake.///// The full quote does not contain the word ’eminence’. Here it is. ‘I cannot endure anything in a second grade. I am happy to see we are at the head of the iron trade. Otherwise I could not take pride in my house in the City and my Works at Dowlais, and glory (playfully) in being… Read more »

Richard
Richard
3 years ago
Reply to  Shan Morgain

It is not a hanging participle. The sentence, minus the comma, can be found via Google books on p89 of Lady Charlotte Guest’s journals 1833-1852 as edited in 1950 by the Earl of Bessborough. It is immediately followed by the sentences you quote beginning “I cannot endure…”

Mandi A
Mandi A
3 years ago

This piece fails to mention the main point of the review at this juncture – that this biography has just been awarded the Wales Non-Fiction Book of the Year. Welsh publishing struggles enough without this sort of yawning gap. Lady Charlotte was one of several outstanding intellectual women of her day such as George Eliot, Harriet Martineau and the circle around JS Mill, Florence Nightingale, Josephine Butler, and many others. Taken together, they present an alternative view of Victorian society. Queen Victoria herself, once free of her husband, did much to promote intelligent women.

j humphrys
j humphrys
3 years ago
Reply to  Mandi A

Betsy Cadwallader?

Mandi A
Mandi A
3 years ago
Reply to  j humphrys

So many examples my brain is hopping. Scientists, doctors, college founders, headmistresses, academics, Mary Somerville, Emily Davis, Dorothea Beale (founded Cheltenham Ladies College in 1853).

Another perspective – will be interesting to see if this is covered in the book – the railways were opening up Wales to visitors, artists, writers, climbers, etc. Industrialists were building their holiday homes all over the place. As the main purveyor of railway lines, perhaps Mr Guest encouraged his wife to publish to promote his business. Celticalia and landscape painting were high fashion, George Borrow was writing Wild Wales, Matthew Arnold, Peacock, Wordsworth

Shan Morgain
3 years ago
Reply to  Mandi A

John Josiah (husband) and Charlotte (wife) were joint founder members of the influential Cymdeithas Cymreigyddion y Fenni  in 1833, a society to promote Welsh culture. Two years later she spoke of making a collection of Welsh legends after conversation with a visitor Elijah Waring. In 1837 she met with Carnhuanawc, Tegid, and Arthur Johnes, and they planned the book. I don’t get the impression that John Josiah was the initiator, and his encouragement was a matter of supporting her chosen project. She was passionately interested in legends and an accomplished linguist before she came to Wales.

j humphrys
j humphrys
3 years ago
Reply to  Shan Morgain

Informative posts, diolch!

Vaughan
Vaughan
3 years ago

Going off at a tangent somewhat but still on the subject of mid-nineteenth century Merthyr Tydfil I can strongly recommend the unpublished doctoral thesis of Keith Strange entitled “The Condition of the Working Class in Merthyr Tydfil c1840 – 1850”
I presume it is still available on request for perusal at Swansea University library where I viewed it many years ago.

Mandi A
Mandi A
3 years ago
Reply to  Vaughan

Available from eTHos British Library thesis service free download ETHOS ID 380893

Our Supporters

All information provided to Nation.Cymru will be handled sensitively and within the boundaries of the Data Protection Act 2018.