Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 03.djvu/154

   BARBER, JOSEPH (1757–1811), landscape painter, was born at Newcastle in 1757. He settled at Birmingham, where after several years of difficulty he succeeded in establishing a drawing school. He conducted this with unremitting industry, and gained in addition a considerable local reputation as a landscape painter. But his work was unknown in London, and he never exhibited in the Royal Academy. He attained to easy circumstances in his later years, and died in Birmingham in 1811, leaving a son, John Vincent Barber, who followed his father's profession. John Vincent Barber exhibited landscapes at the Royal Academy in 1812, 1821, 1829, and 1830, and prepared some of the drawings for the ‘Graphic Illustrations of Warwickshire’ published in 1829. He died at Rome.

 BARBER, MARY (1690?–1757), poetess and friend of Swift, was born about 1690, probably in Ireland, where she became the wife of one Barber, a wool clothier or tailor, living in Capel Street, Dublin. Several children were born to Mrs. Barber (among them a son, Constantine, born in 1714), and she, being ‘poetically given, and, for a woman, having a sort of genius that way’ (Swift to Pope, Swift, xvii. 388), began writing poetry for the purpose of enlivening her children's lessons. She taught them at first herself, as they sat round her tiled fireplace (her own Poems on Several Occasions, p. 8); and at the same time ‘no woman was ever more useful to her husband in the way of his business’ (Swift to Lord Orrery, Swift, xviii. 162). About 1724, while Tickell, the poet, was secretary to the lords justices of Ireland, Mrs. Barber wrote a poem to excite charity on behalf of an officer's widow left penniless and with a blind child (Poems, &c. supra, p. 2, ‘The Widow Gordon's Petition’), and she sent the composition to Tickell anonymously, with a request that he would call the attention of Lord Carteret, then viceroy, to it. Tickell succeeded; Lady Carteret succoured the widow and sought out her benefactress, Mrs. Barber. The poetess was thus brought under Swift's notice, and a friendship sprang up between them. Swift visited her at her shop (Swift to Pope, supra); presented her to Lady Suffolk at Marble Hill ( Swift, xvii. 430); received her at the deanery, and for a while took charge of one of her sons, eccentrically sent him as a birthday present, together with some of his mother's verses echoing the current enthusiasm roused by ‘Wood's Halfpence’ and others of Swift's Irish patriotic pamphlets. Sapphira was the poetic name given to Mrs. Barber at the deanery; and there her poems were read, and canvassed, and corrected. ‘Mighty Thomas, a solemn Senatus I call, To consult for Sapphira; so come, one and all,’ are the opening lines of ‘An Invitation by Dr. Delany, in the Name of Dr. Swift,’ and they indicate the friendly and sympathetic treatment she enjoyed at the hands of Swift and his friends. In 1730 Swift provided Mrs. Barber with introductions to his most influential friends on her first visit to England in an endeavour to publish her poems by subscription. Her husband took indiscreet advantage of his wife's position, and when Lady Betty Germaine had coaxed the Duke of Dorset to order liveries from him, he asked ‘a greater price than anybody else’ (ibid. xvii. 410); at the same time the gout attacked her incessantly, and she was one of Dr. Mead's patients; but, in response, mainly, to Swift's recommendations, Arbuthnot, Gay, Mrs. Cæsar, Barber the printer (then lord mayor), the Boyles, the Temples, Pope, Ambrose Philips, Walpole, Tonson, Banks, and a host of the nobility, either visited her or became subscribers for her book; and after passing to and fro between Tunbridge Wells, Bath, and Dublin, for a long period, she finally abandoned her Irish home, and settled in England. In June 1731, when Mrs. Barber was busily seeking subscribers, the ‘Three Letters to the Queen on the Distresses of Ireland’ were published, with Swift's forged signature; they called express attention to Mrs. Barber as ‘the best female poet of this or perhaps of any age,’ and it was rumoured that they had been concocted by her to injure her patron and to serve her personal advantage. All evidence goes against this supposition, and Swift himself never entertained it. His opinion of Mrs. Barber, on the contrary, was as high as ever, and Lady Suffolk bantered him on the ‘violent passion’ he had for her (ibid. xvii. 415); in 1733 he wrote to Alderman Barber that he had ‘not known a more bashful, modest person than she, nor one less likely to ply her friends, patrons, and protectors’ (ibid. xviii. 154). In 1736 he invited her back to Ireland, promising to contribute to her support (ibid.