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Note: The need to identify as one, or differentiate as two, these William Barnard Clarkes arises from a confusion which has arisen between William Barnard Clarke the Architect (born 1806) and William Barnard Clarke (physician) (1807-1894), Curator of Ipswich Museum (UK) 1847-1850, which is now appearing in various published sources. The two Wikipedia articles as they stand now (27/05/2019) differentiate clearly between the Architect and the Physician/Curator, and it is clear that the physician-curator is not the same person as the translator. It remains important to decide whether the Architect, who is notable in his own right, is or is not the same person as the Translator (1806-1865).

William Barnard Clarke (Architect, born 1806) and William Barnard Clarke (Translator, 1806-1865)

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William Barnard Clarke (Architect, born 1806) appears in Trade Directories at 9 Chapel Street, Bedford Row, in 1856 and 1860. He remains a possible candidate to be the same William Barnard Clarke (born 1806) who wrote a Translation of Goethe's Faust Parts I and II (into English), published in London and Freiburg-im-Breisgau in 1865.[1] Clarke's 'Introduction' to this work (the fruit of 20 years' labour) is valuable for a comment noting the attribution of an anonymous 1821 translation of Faust to Samuel Taylor Coleridge.[2] In other respects, his own translation is considered "worthless labour" by a German authority, as being full of misunderstandings of the original,[3] and "atrocious" by an English one, with respect to both style and prosody.[4]

William Barnard Clarke, Architect, was first married to Charlotte Brooks (daughter of Major-General William Brooks of the East India Company, Military Auditor General and Chief Engineer to the Presidency[5]) at St Andrew Holborn, London on 1 July 1830 (Registers). Charlotte's death was reported on 30 March 1839,[6] and she was buried at Camden St Pancras on 9 April 1839 (Parish Register). Major-General Brooks died in 1838.

William Barnard Clarke, Translator, was married before 1846 to Mary Anne Julia Beevor, daughter of Dr Beevor, a noted physician of Norwich. This is shown as follows:

Mary Anne first married George Harvey of Thorpe next Norwich, by licence and with consent of parents, at St Giles, Norwich on 25 April 1816 (Parish register). George Harvey (born 1793) was one of the 15 children of John Harvey (1755-1842) and Frances Kerrison (1765-1809). He was born 4 June 1793 and christened at Norwich on 26 July 1793. He and Mary Anne had two daughters, Matilda Harvey (1818) and Mary Anne Beevor Harvey (1820). George was a ship's captain who suffered a mutiny and was marooned on a desert island, but was rescued and returned to England, where he lived in Tavistock Square. While holidaying in Norfolk he drowned 'aged 39 in October 1841'.[7] (If born 1793 he must have been 39 in 1831, or nearer 49 in 1841.) [correct is 1831, according to his monumental inscription in Norwich.] [N.B. He is not the same person as the Plymouth mathematician George Harvey who committed suicide in 1834/35 - they have two separate PCC wills, and the mathematician was still alive when GH of Thorpe's will was already proved.]

The marriage of Mary Anne to William Barnard Clarke is signalled by their appearance in a Chancery suit, Harvey v Beevor 1846, in which Clarke and his wife are among the defendants in a case brought by George Frederick Harvey.[8] The difference rumbled on, for it resurfaced in a Chancery suit of 1857, when Clarke now heads a long list of defendants including Sir Robert John Harvey and Revd. Edmund Bellman, brother and brother-in-law of the late George.[9] The meaning of this suit is shown in the following year 1858, when G.F. Harvey presented a petition under the terms of the 'Act to Facilitate Leases and Sales of Inherited Estates' (20 Victoria) seeking the sale of the mansion, grounds and appurtenances at the hamlet of Thorpe in the parish of Thorpe Episcopi (Thorpe St Andrew). The suit is referred to and William Barnard Clarke is named among the defendants, but is "now dismissed".[10]

Clarke had presumably been dismissed out of the suit because his wife, Mrs Mary Anne Julia Clarke, daughter of the late Dr Beevor, had died at Littenweiler near Freiburg-im-Breisgau in 1856:[11] and so (it may be inferred) his hereditary interest in the estate deriving from her as George Harvey's widow had thereby elapsed. As resident in or near Freiburg, he is therefore to be identified with the translator who published his version of Goethe's Faust at Freiburg in 1865, and died there in the same year. A glass plate photograph in the Freiburg Archives records Clarke's carved gravestone at the Alter Friedhof (Old Cemetery) with the life-dates 1806-1865.[12] (The stone remains, but is very weathered.[13])

The British Library's copy of the Faust translation was presented in 1870 by Frederick Clarke, when the author's widow was living in Germany.[14] The translator had therefore made a further marriage since 1856. Frederick Clarke is the name of the brother of the architect William Barnard Clarke, in whose offices William is mentioned in the Directory of 1856 and Royal Blue Book of 1860. It is possible that this address may be found on the letter by which Frederick donates a copy of Faust to the British Library: if so, it would decisively identify the translator as the same person as the architect.

References and notes
  1. ^ W.B. Clarke, A Translation of Goethe's Faust, Parts I & II (Schmidt, Freiburg and London 1865).
  2. ^ F. Burwick and J. McKusick, Faustus from the German of Goethe Translated by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Oxford University Press, 2007), p. liv.
  3. ^ L. Baumann, Die Englischen Übersetzungen von Goethes Faust (Max Niemeyer Verlag, Halle a.S. 1907), p. 16, no. 21 (Internet Archive).
  4. ^ W.C. Coupland, The Spirit of Goethe's Faust (George Bell and Sons, London 1885), pp. 359-60 (Internet Archive).
  5. ^ 'Editor's Preface', in Transactions of the Literary Society of Bombay, Vol. I (Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, London 1819, reprinted with Preface 1877), p. x (Google).
  6. ^ 'Deaths. Clarke, Mrs. Charlotte', in The Court and Ladies' Magazine, Monthly Critic and Museum, Volume 14 (United Series, Vol. III) (Dobbs & Co., London 1839), p. 554 (Google).
  7. ^ This information is from 'George Harvey 1793-1841', in JJ Heath-Caldwell, "Biographies of Interesting People" website here, citing 'Original Genealogical Collections by the late Lieut-Col. Robert John Harvey of Thorpe (Manuscript, Norfolk Archives).
  8. ^ The National Archives (UK), C 14/539/H88, Cause number 1846 H88.
  9. ^ The National Archives (UK), C 15/382/H92, Cause number 1857 H92.
  10. ^ The London Gazette, 14 May 1858, p. 2429 (data.pdf).
  11. ^ Norfolk Chronicle, 13 September 1856.
  12. ^ Dargleff Jahnke and Hans-Peter Widmann, "Stadtarchiv Freiburg, Collection Catalogue for "M 75/13: Bestand "Hase": Collections of Gottlieb Theodor Hase, 1818-1888 (Freiburg, 2013/2016), p. 226 (Freiburg Archives pdf, p. 236). Location: Quadrat VIII, Umgang No. 6. Ref. M75/13/211 Reliefgrabstein mit Wappen. See B. Stoehr, "Die Toten des Alten Friedhofs zu Freiburg im Breisgau", p. 194.
  13. ^ H.O. Pelser, 'Ein Englisches Grab in Freiburg: Versuch einer historischen Rekonstruktion', Schau-ins-Land: Jahresheft des Breisgau-Geschichtsvereins Schauinsland, 110.1991, pp. 127-36, at p. 135, note 2 (Freiburger historische Bestände - digital).
  14. ^ Mays, '"Faustus" on the table in Highgate', p. 125 note 2, citing British Library 11745.bbb.19.
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