Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 18.djvu/102

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

EWING, JULIANA HORATIA (1841–1885), writer for the young, was born in 1841 at Ecclesfield in Yorkshire, a few miles from Sheffield. Her father was Alfred Gatty, D.D., vicar of Ecclesfield. Her mother was Mrs. Margaret Gatty [q. v.] Juliana Gatty started in life as the story-teller of the nursery. She was so much given to mimicry that her mother was constrained to write a story to check the excessive development of that faculty; but to the last she loved play-acting, and acted well. From the first her character was strongly marked by the uprightness, gentleness, and generosity which she loved to dwell on in her stories. Her first story was ‘A Bit of Green,’ published in the ‘Monthly Packet’ in July 1861; and this story, with some others, constituted her first volume, published in 1862 under the title ‘Melchior's Dream, and other Tales.’ From her youth she was very delicate, but although her sufferings were severe in later life, she never lost her cheerfulness. From 1862 to 1868 the Ecclesfield family circle kept up a manuscript magazine, but few of the contributions made to this were printed. ‘Aunt Judy's Magazine,’ started in May 1866, owes its title to the nickname given to Juliana Gatty as the nursery story-teller. Her first contribution to the magazine in which most of her stories appeared was ‘Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances.’ In 1867 she married Major Alexander Ewing, Army Pay Department, and with her husband soon sailed for New Brunswick. In 1869 she sent to ‘Aunt Judy's Magazine’ the story which shows her powers at their best, ‘The Land of Lost Toys,’ followed by many others, some written in delightful irregular verse and afterwards published in small separate volumes. In 1872 she wrote her first soldier-story ‘The Peace Egg,’ to be followed by ‘Lob-lie-by-the-fire’ (1873), the popular ‘Jackanapes,’ and the touching ‘Story of a Short Life.’ On the death of Mrs. Gatty in 1873, Mrs. Ewing helped her sister to edit the magazine, but after two years she gave the work up and confined herself to her own tales. At Aldershot, Bowdon in Cheshire, and York, her occupations and interests were the same. In 1879 she started to join her husband in Malta, but at Paris she became so ill that she had to return to England. Until 1883 she was separated from her husband. In that year she removed to Taunton, which she left for Bath, where she died on 13 May 1885.

Most of Mrs. Ewing's stories appeared in ‘Aunt Judy's Magazine,’ from 1866 to 1885, but she contributed also to a few other periodicals. Her separate works were published in small volumes by Bell & Sons and the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.

[Juliana Horatia Ewing and her Books, by Horatia K. T. Gatty.]

P. A. H.


EXETER, Dukes of. [See Beaufort, Sir Thomas, d. 1427; Holland, John, d. 1400; Holland, John, d. 1446.]


EXETER, Earl of. [See Cecil, Thomas, 1542-1622.]


EXETER, Marquis of. [See Courtenay, Henry, 1496?-1538.]


EXETER, JOSEPH of (12th cent.) [See Joseph.]


EXETER, STEPHEN of (b. 1246). [See Stephen.]


EXETER, WALTER of (fl. 1301), Cluniac monk, is stated to have written, at the instance of one Baldwin, a citizen of Exeter, a life of Guy, earl of Warwick, in 1301, when living at St. Caroc in Cornwall. Bale, to whom we owe this notice, conjectures that he was a Dominican friar, and he has also been described as a Franciscan; but St. Caroc (St. Karroc or St. Syriac), near Lostwithiel, was a cell to the Cluniac house at Montacute in Somerset (Dugdale, Monasticon, v. 172, ed. 1825). As for the work with which Walter of Exeter is credited, if the date be correct, it cannot be a life of his contemporary Guy, earl of Warwick, who only became earl in 1298, but must be a form or version of the well-known romance, ‘Guy of Warwick’ (on which see H. L. D. Ward, Catalogue of Romances in the Department of Manuscripts, British Museum, 1883, i. 471–84); but of Walter's book no trace has passed down to us. Sir Harris Nicolas (Siege of Carlaverock, 1828, pref. iv–vi) suggested that he was the author of the famous poem on the siege of Carlaverock; but this hypothesis has been clearly disproved by T. Wright (Roll of Arms of the Siege of Carlaverock, 1864, p. vii).

[Bale MS. Selden, supra, 64, f. 43; Scriptt. Brit. Cat. x. 78 (pt. ii. 44); Prince's Worthies of Devon (Exeter, 1701), pp. 278 seq.]

R. L. P.

EXETER, WILLIAM of, a name belonging, as it seems, to more than one person commemorated by biographers: 1. The author of certain ‘Determinationes’ against Ockham, ‘De Mendicitate, contra fratres,’ ‘Pro Ecclesiæ Paupertate,’ and ‘De Generatione Christi,’ who is said to have been a doctor of divinity and canon of Exeter, and who may be presumed to have written between about 1320 and 1340. 2. The author of a course of