Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 34.djvu/111

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Long
105
Long

most elegant beautie and witt.' By her (d. 1710) he had one son, James, who died in his father's lifetime, leaving, by his first wife Susan, daughter of Colonel Giles Strangways of Melbury, Dorset, three sons—Robert, Giles, and James—who were successively baronets. James, the youngest, matriculated from Balliol College, Oxford, on 1 Feb. 1698-9; succeeded to the baronetcy in 1699; was M.P. for Chippenham, 1705-13; Wotton Bassett, 1715-22; and Wiltshire, from 1727 until his death on 16 March 1729 (Hist. Regist. Chron. Diary, pp. 19, 20; Foster, Alumni Oxon. 1500-1714). He married, on 6 June 1702, at St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, the Hon. Henrietta Greville (d. 1765), daughter of Lord Brooke, by whom he left two sons (Chester, London Marriage Licences, p. 858).

Ann Long (1681?-1711), Sir James the younger's elder sister, was a celebrated beauty, concerning whom the Earl of Wharton in 1703 wrote on one of the Kit-Cat toasting glasses:—

Fill the glass; let Hautboys sound
Whilst bright Longy's health goes round,
With eternal beauty blest.
Ever blooming, still the best;
Drink your glass, and think the rest.

Swift described her as 'the most beautiful person of the age she lived in, of great honour and virtue, infinite sweetness and generosity of temper, and true good sense' (Forster, Swift, pp. 228-30). He frequently met her at the Vanhomrighs', and played ombre with her and Mrs. Barton, the niece of Sir Isaac Newton. In 'Letters, Poems, and Tales, Amorous, Satyrical, and Gallant, which passed between several persons of distinction, published from their respective Originals found in the cabinet of that celebrated Toast Mrs. Anne Long, since her decease' (ed. 1718, Forster Libr.),is a whimsical decree for concluding a treaty between 'Dr. Swift of Leicester Fields and Mrs. Long of Albemarle Street,' which is followed by a 'Letter addressed to Mrs. Anne Long of Draycot from the orifice of my inkpot.' When Swift came to London in September 1710 he was disappointed to find that she had retired to that 'vile country town,' Lynn in Norfolk, under the assumed name of Smythe, in order to 'live cheap and pay her debts.' She died at Lynn on 22 Dec. 1711, and was buried in the chapel of St. Nicholas in that town. Swift inserted a paragraph on her death in the 'Post Boy,' in order to vex her brother, Sir James, who had meanly refused to advance her money on a legacy, and who 'would fain have kept her death a secret, to save the charge of bringing her up to bury her or going into mourning' (see Journal to Stella, 25 Dec. 1711, and Swift, Works, passim; Craik and Forster, Lives, passim).

[Aubrey's Lives, 1813, ii. 432-3; Aubrey's Wiltshire Topographical Collections, ed. for Wiltshire Archæological Soc. by J. E. Jackson, Devizes, 1862, p. 315; Journal of Brit. Archæol. Assoc. xxi. 193; Addit. MS. 19140; Chitty's Long Family, p. 25; A Great Victory obtained by Sir William Waller and Lieutenant-general Cromwell, 1644; Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1645-7, pp. 235-6; Collins's, Wotton's, and Burke's Baronetages.]

T. S.

LONG, JAMES (1814–1887), missionary, born in 1814, spent some part of his early life in Russia. He was ordained deacon in the church of England in 1839, and priest in the following year. About 1846 he went to India as a missionary in the service of the Church Missionary Society, and was stationed at Thakurpukur, a little village in the district of the Twenty-four Parganas, a few miles south of Calcutta. He devoted himself to improving the social condition of the natives quite as much as to ministering to their spiritual wants, and came to be familiarly known as Padre Long. In 1861, when the dispute between the European and native indigo planters had culminated in an indigo war throughout Nadiga and other districts in Lower Bengal, a Bengali poet, Dinabandhu Mitra, wrote a drama, 'Niladarpana Nataka,' exposing the tyranny of the indigo planters, a drama which has been designated as a sort of oriental 'Uncle Tom's Cabin.' To an English version of this work Long wrote a preface adversely criticising the English press at Calcutta. He was indicted for libel, and sentenced to a fine of one thousand rupees and a month's imprisonment (The History of the Nil Darpan, with the State Trial of J. Long for its Publication, with Mr. Long's Statement, Statement of W. S. S. Karr, &c, Calcutta, 1861; Statement of the Rev. J. Long of his Connection with the Nil Durpan, Calcutta, 1861; Trial of J. Long for the Publication of the Nil Darpan, with Documents connected with its Official Circulation, London, 1861; Strike, but hear! Evidence explanatory of the Indigo System in Lower Bengal, Calcutta, 1861). With Russia he always kept up his connection, and was well known at the Russian court. In his writings he dwelt on the similarity between the social system and folklore of that country and India. He was a member of the Bengal Asiatic Society and a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. A short time before his death he assigned to the Church Missionary Society 2,000l., to provide popular lectures on the religions of the east. He returned to Eng-