chiefly on artistic subjects, including two of great merit, on ‘The House of Titian’ and the ‘Xanthian Marbles,’ for which latter two translations from the ‘Odyssey’ were especially made by Elizabeth Barrett. Her friendships at this time were very numerous, the most important in every respect being that with Lady Byron. In 1847 she left England for Italy, with the main object of collecting materials for the works on sacred and legendary art to which the remainder of her life was principally devoted, and taking with her her niece Gerardine Bate, afterwards Mrs. Macpherson, her future biographer. Her work ‘Sacred and Legendary Art,’ which, as the ‘Edinburgh’ reviewer observes, was nothing less than a pictorial history of the church from the catacombs to the seventeenth century, appeared in four successive sections: ‘Legends of the Saints’ (1848), ‘Legends of the Monastic Orders’ (1850), ‘Legends of the Madonna’ (1852), and ‘The History of our Lord,’ the last completed by Lady Eastlake after the authoress's death. About 1852 Mrs. Jameson began the ‘Handbook to the Court of Modern Sculpture in the Crystal Palace.’ Shortly afterwards occurred the greatest affliction of her life, her estrangement from her most intimate friend Lady Byron. Mrs. Macpherson professes herself ignorant of the exact date, but from the hint of its connection with circumstances arising after the death of Lady Byron's daughter, it may be referred to 1853. The facts are too imperfectly known to justify any expression of opinion beyond the observation that Lady Byron could be both unreasonable and vindictive. The quarrel embittered the remainder of Mrs. Jameson's life, and her unhappiness was augmented by the necessity under which she felt herself of renouncing Major Noel's friendship also, lest he should be exposed to the displeasure of his relative. She nevertheless produced in 1854 ‘A Commonplace Book of Thoughts, Memories, and Fancies, original and selected.’ Some of the selections are from favourite authors, others from the communications of Lady Byron and Ottilie von Goethe, but the best part is Mrs. Jameson's own, and forms a most charming miscellany of graceful and often penetrating remarks on literature, art, and morals. In the same year Mrs. Jameson's circumstances were altered for the worse by the loss of the chief part of her income at the death of her husband, who made no provision for her by his will. Her friends rallied to her support, and an annuity of 100l. was raised by subscription; a pension to an equal amount had been already conferred upon her. In her latter years, next to the prosecution of her great work on sacred art, Mrs. Jameson was chiefly interested in the institution of sisters of charity and other improved methods of attendance upon the sick. She spent much time in foreign capitals inquiring into methods of organisation as yet unknown in England, and her two lectures, ‘Sisters of Charity’ and ‘The Communion of Labour’ (1855 and 1856), did much to overcome prejudice at home. She died at Ealing, Middlesex, on 17 March 1860, from the effects of a severe cold caught in returning on a wintry day to her lodgings from the British Museum, where she had been long working upon her ‘History of our Lord.’ Her pension was continued to her two unmarried sisters, whose principal support she had long been.
A marble bust by John Gibson, R.A., is in the National Portrait Gallery.
Mrs. Jameson was a valuable as well as a charming writer. Her ‘Sacred and Legendary Art’ is a storehouse of delightful knowledge, as admirable for accurate research as for poetic and artistic feeling, and only marred to a slight extent by the authoress's limited acquaintance with the technicalities of painting. She appears to equal advantage when depicting her favourite Shakespearean heroines, or the brilliant yet unostentatious society she enjoyed so greatly in Germany—to greater advantage still, perhaps, in the graceful æsthetics and deeply felt moralities of her ‘Commonplace Book,’ or the eloquence of her ‘House of Titian,’ an essay saturated with Venetian feeling. Much of her early writing is feebly rhetorical, but constant intercourse with fine art and fine minds brought her deliverance. The charm of her character is evident from her extraordinary wealth in accomplished friends. This is the more remarkable if, as asserted by a writer in the ‘Athenæum,’ probably Henry Chorley, she was heavy and unready in conversation.
[Memoirs of the Life of Anna Jameson, by Gerardine Macpherson, 1878; Harriet Martineau's Biographical Sketches; Kemble's Records of a Girlhood; B. R. Parkes's Vignettes; Edinburgh Review, vol. cxlix.; Athenæum, March 1860.]
JAMESON, JAMES SLIGO (1856–1888), naturalist and African traveller, was born on 17 Aug. 1856 at the Walk House, Alloa, Clackmannanshire, his father, Andrew Jameson, a land-agent, being the son of John Jameson of Dublin. His mother was Margaret, daughter of James Cochrane of Glen Lodge, Sligo. After elementary education at Scottish schools, Jameson was in 1868 placed under Dr. Leonard Schmitz at the International College, Isleworth, and subsequently read for the army, but in 1877
