Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 10.djvu/67

 her ‘Matrimonial Creed,’ in seven articles of belief, and addressed it to Richardson. Her wedding took place on 30 Dec. 1760 (Gent. Mag. xxxi. 433, her brother Thomas being married to ‘Pressy,’ daughter of General Prescott, at the same time. She went first to lodgings in Carey Street, and then to a house in Arundel Street (Works and Life, i. 123). Mrs. Barbauld has said that the Chapones’ married life, short as it was, was not happy; Mrs. Chapone’s relatives call this a complete error (ib. pp. 126-9), and they say Mrs. Chapone’s love for her husband remained so intense, that years after she was a widow she could never look upon a miniature she had of him without being convulsed with grief. In September 1761 Chapone was seized with fever, and died on the 19th, when Mrs. Chane was taken to Thomas Mu1so's house in Rathbone Place, and for twenty-three days her life was despaired of. She was then removed by her friends the Burrows family to their lodgings in Southampton Street; she paid other visits, and finding herself mistress of a small income, to which there was some addition when her father died in 1763 (ib.), she made no change in her circumstances and condition from that time to the end. For the daughter of her brother, John Mulso, a beneficed clergyman at Thornhill, near Wakefield, Yorkshire, Mrs. Chapone wrote in 1772 her best known essays, the ‘Letters on the Improvement of the Mind’ (ib. p. 4). The work was published anonymously, in an edition of 1,500 copies, in 1773 (2 vols.), and dedicated to Mrs. Montagu. It brought Mrs. Chapone many entreaties from persons of consideration to undertake the education of their daughters, and reached a third edition in 1774, though by the author’s friendliness to her bookseller her ‘pockets were none the heavier.’ In 1775 her ‘Miscellanies’ came out, comprising ‘Fidelia’ and other fugitive matter, with a few poems, the earliest written in 1749. In 1777 she published a pamphlet. a ‘Letter to a New Married Lady.’ In 1778 she was staying at Farnham Castle with her uncle, then bishop of Winchester, when the bishop was visited by the king and queen; the queen introduced the princess royal to her, saying she hoped her daughter had adequately profited by Miss Chapone’s ‘Letters on the Improvement of the Mind.’ The death of the bishop’s wife, Mrs. Thomas, took place the same year as this visit, 1778; in 1781 the bishop himself died; in 1782, Edward Mulso, Mrs. Chapone's youngest brother, died; and these and other deaths among her intimates touched Mrs. Chapone deeply. She hoped to have made a happy home at Winchester, where her brother John had become prebendary, and where his daughter was married to the Rev. Benjamin Jeffreys, belonging to Winchester College; but John died in 1791, a few months after the death of his wife in 1790. She lost Captain William Mulso, her nephew, by shipwreck, in 1797, and Thomas, her last and most intimate brother, in 1799; the final blow came to her by the untimely death of Mrs. Jeffreys, her niece, in childbirth in 1800. Wishing for a quiet retreat she hired a house at Hadley, to be near Miss Amy Burrows, and took her youngest niece as her companion; but here her health failed rapidly, and she died on Christmas day 1801, aged 74.

Mrs. Chapone could sing exquisitely, and was skilful enough at drawing to sketch Miss Carter for Richardson. She was a contributor to the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine’ (Index, vol. iii. Preface, lxxiv); and her works passed through many editions, retaining their high repute for a lengthened period. The ‘Improvement’ reappeared at Edinburgh about 1780, where the author’s name stands Champone. London editions of it were issued in 1810, 1815, 1829 (illustrated by Westall), and in 1844, exclusive of other issues in 1812 and 18221, when Dr. Gregory's ‘Advice to a Daughter’ was bound with it. A new edition of the ‘Misce1lanies’ was published in 1787; the ‘Works,’ with a ‘Life drawn up by her own Family,’ 4 vols., appeared in 1807; an edition of ‘Posthumous Works,’ 2 vols., the same year, of which there was a second edition in 1808, faced by Mrs. Chapone’s portrait, cut from Miss Highmore's ‘Grandison’ group already mentioned. Mrs. Chapone’s works were also included by Chalmers in his edition of the ‘British Essayists,’ vol. xxiii.



CHAPPELL, WILLIAM (1582–1649), bishop of Cork, was the son of Robert Chappell, and born at Laxton, Nottinghamshire, on 10 Dec. 1582. He was educated ‘in grammaticals’ at Mansfield grammar school, and when seventeen years old was sent. to Christ’s College, Cambridge, where he was elected a scholar. His career at the university was distinguished above that of most of his fellows. Want of means threatened at one time to sever his connection with