Happy Birthday Henry Robinson Hartley

Today we mark the birthday of Henry Robinson Hartley (1777-1850) whose bequest to the town of Southampton led (eventually) to the creation of its University.

Henry Robinson Hartley’s birth recorded in his father’s Prayer Book (1750) [Rare Books Hartley Coll. BX 5145]

Born to Henry and Susannah Hartley, a prosperous wine merchant and his wife, Henry might well have been expected to join the family business and to take an active part in local affairs – as had his father and his great-uncle, George Robinson. This would have been a fitting life for a man who bequeathed the bulk of his fortune to his home town to “promote the study and advancement of the sciences of Natural History, Astronomy, Antiquities, Classical and Oriental Literature” and for the “formation of a public library, garden, observatory and collection of objects connected with the sciences mentioned”. But in Henry Robinson Hartley, the University has a founder whose life followed a very different pattern.

Photograph of the portrait of Henry Robinson Hartley, aged nine [MS1/Phot/39/ph 3000]

After an unremarkable childhood, during which he attended Southampton’s Grammar School – where his friend, John Bullar recalled him as “studious, pleasant and gentlemanly”, Henry Robinson Hartley’s life went somewhat off the rails.

Grammar School at Southampton, late 18th century in: Views in Hampshire, v.4 no.182 [Rare Books Cope ff 91.5]

At the age of twenty-one he made an unfortunate marriage, causing him to become estranged from his father and therefore not to inherit the fortune he had anticipated on Henry senior’s death in 1800. Within four years his marriage was annulled – his wife Celia, giving birth to a daughter who was almost certainly not his child, and there followed a period of “systematic licentiousness” before Henry returned to Southampton to live with his mother. Best described as an eccentric recluse, Henry appears to have passed his time in pursuing his studies of natural history and languages, making travel plans which never came to fruition and using his diary and other writings to record his thoughts on the rigid and complacent nature of English society.

On his mother’s death in 1821, Henry finally inherited his fortune and a few years later, disapproving of the increasingly commercial character of the High Street which disturbed his peaceful, tree-lined garden, he left Southampton for good. For the last twenty-six years of his life he lived in Calais and London, making only brief visits to Southampton.

The High Street houses and tree-lined gardens belonging to Henry Robinson Hartley can be seen in the copy of the 1846 map of Southampton [Rare Books Cope cf SOU 90.5 1846]

The ‘Hartley Bequest’ revealed on Henry’s death in 1850 was something of a shock to all concerned, given his long absence from the town. After minor bequests to family and servants, the Corporation was to receive the residue of the estate, valued at just over £100,000. Unsurprisingly, Henry’s relatives contested the will and the costs of the subsequent legal proceedings and the settlement agreed by Henry’s supposed daughter swallowed up a large proportion of the estate. The Corporation was left with £42,525 and a dilemma as to how best to carry out Henry’s wishes.

Henry’s Letter of Instruction was quite clear on the point that he wished the “select scientific public” to benefit from his generosity rather than the whole population of the town. Of the different proposals aired in the local press, the establishment of a college along the lines of Owens College, Manchester seemed the most appropriate, but the reduced size of the bequest made the scheme for an institution providing popular adult education more achievable and the Hartley Institution opened on 15 October 1862.

The opening of the Hartley Institution 15 October 1862, photograph of an engraving of Lord Palmerston arriving. [MS1/Phot/39/ph 3026]

Would Henry Robinson Hartley have approved of the outcome of his bequest? According to his biographer, Alexander Anderson, the traditional concept of a University as a place where knowledge is pursued for its own sake would have been more likely to meet with his approval than the Hartley Institution, but in his primary aim of preserving his High Street houses and possessions, he would have been disappointed. The houses and gardens were demolished to make way for the Hartley Institution, his papers were destroyed by his trustees who judged them obscene and blasphemous and his other belongings dispersed. All that remained were his books – the first of the Library’s printed Special Collections.

Henry Robinson Hartley’s copy of The First Book of the Fables of Phaedrus (1775) Rare Books Hartley Coll. PA 6563

Henry Robinson Hartley’s copy of John Latham’s A General Synopsis of Birds v.1 (1781) Rare Books Hartley Coll. QL 673

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Henry’s diary and writings were quoted extensively by both sides in the legal proceedings relating to his bequest and these form the basis of Hartleyana: being some account of the life and opinions of Henry Robinson Hartley, scholar, naturalist, eccentric and founder of the University of Southampton by Alexander Anderson (1987).