R. H. Dalton Barham

http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/no91012601

Rosemary Scott, ‘Barham, Richard Harris (1788–1845)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://proxy.bostonathenaeum.org:2055/view/article/1376, accessed 1 Sept 2017]

Barham, Richard Harris (1788–1845), writer and Church of England clergyman, was born on 6 December 1788 at 61 Burgate Street, Canterbury, the only (and illegitimate) son of Richard Harris Barham (bap. 1748, d. 1795), alderman, of Tappington Everard, Kent, and Elizabeth Fox (fl. 1788–1814), housekeeper. He was educated at St Paul's School (1800–07) and Brasenose College, Oxford (BA, 1811).

As a schoolboy Barham suffered a carriage accident which resulted in severe injury to his lower right arm and permanent disability. He first considered the law as a career, but withdrew after the briefest period of study. In 1813 he was ordained curate and in 1814 appointed to the parish of Westwell, Kent. Here he was married on 30 September 1814 to Caroline Smart (d. 1851), third daughter of Captain Smart of the Royal Engineers. Their marriage was happy, and they had seven children, four sons and three daughters, only three of whom outlived their father. In 1817 Barham moved to the living of Snargate and Warehorn, on Romney Marsh. In 1821 a chance encounter with an old schoolfriend prompted the offer of a minor canonry at St Paul's Cathedral. Barham moved his family to London, remaining vicar of Snargate until 1824, when he was appointed rector of St Mary Magdalen and St Gregory by Paul, and moved into Amen Corner in St Paul's Churchyard. Though he had already published some journalism and an unsuccessful novel, Baldwin (1820), moving into the capital's literary circles undoubtedly assisted his progress. He edited the London Chronicle in 1823, and contributed to several periodicals, including John Bull, the Globe and Traveller, the Literary Gazette, and Blackwood's. His friendship, from schooldays, with Richard Bentley led to a close association with Bentley's Miscellany. Bentley employed Barham at £10 a month as his adviser (in addition to paying £1 a page for his literary contributions), leading to Barham's role as peacemaker in disputes between Bentley and his successive editors, Dickens and Ainsworth.

Barham was a founder member in 1832 of the Garrick Club, where his sociable, tactful, and witty nature made him a popular figure. As Lord William Lennox recorded in his Recollections (1874), at the Garrick ‘the literary man would find all that was agreeable and delightful in the society of the Reverend Richard Barham (Ingoldsby), Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, Charles Reade’ (Lennox, 162).

Conscientious in his clerical duties, both for St Paul's (where he was responsible for major improvements to the library) and for his parishes, Barham nevertheless found time to write, gaining popular repute through his Ingoldsby Legends, which began to appear in 1837 in Bentley's Miscellany. Under the guise of Thomas Ingoldsby of Tappington Everard in Kent, Barham ‘discovered’ old documents which provided the basis for his tales. In effect, most of these are reworkings of other narrative sources, from medieval chronicles to Kentish legends and Sir Walter Scott. The mixture of crime and the supernatural, in both verse and prose, is given a comic and grotesque dimension, immediately appealing to Barham's readers. The Legends went through three series in volume publication between 1840 and 1847. Many reprints were illustrated by artists such as Tenniel, Cruikshank, and Rackham. The work remained in print throughout the nineteenth century, and well into the twentieth. The People's Edition of 1881 had a printing of 100,000, of which 60,513 sold on publication day. Barham's verse is notable chiefly for its Byronic metrical and rhyming resourcefulness, and high-spirited energy. His knowledge of such areas as heraldry and witchcraft also lends a degree of authenticity to the Legends.

Barham's novel My Cousin Nicholas (1841) was first serialized in Blackwood's. In 1842 he was appointed divinity lecturer at St Paul's and exchanged his parish for that of St Augustine with St Faith's. Barham's interest in antiquities is reflected in his membership in 1843 of the recently formed British Archaeological Association. In the same year, when Bentley wished to dispense with his services, Barham resigned from Bentley's Miscellany (typically remaining on good terms with Bentley), moving to the New Monthly Magazine (under the editorship of another friend, Thomas Hood) for an enhanced payment. Here the remaining few Ingoldsby legends were published. However, Barham's last piece, the lyric ‘As I laye a-thynkynge’, was published in the Miscellany.

A throat infection in 1844 laid the foundation for a serious condition, resulting in Barham's death from ulceration of the larynx, at his home, the canonry house, Amen Corner, St Paul's Churchyard, London, on 17 June 1845. His funeral on 21 June was at his former church of St Mary Magdalene and St Gregory. There he was buried in the vault where four of his children had preceded him. When this church was destroyed by fire in 1886, the family remains were moved to Kensal Green cemetery, and the memorial tablet to Barham was transferred to the crypt at St Paul's.

Adult portraits of Barham reflect a plump and amiable personality. He was renowned in his day for his equable and genial temperament. He was ‘scarcely esteemed second for his conversational powers to the Reverend Sydney Smith (his intimate friend)’ according to his obituarist in the Annual Register (Annual Register, 1845, 283). It was Smith's residentiary house in Amen Corner that Barham had occupied for the last six years of his life.

Rosemary Scott