Mary Augusta WakefieldMary Augusta Wakefield is the most famous resident of Sedgwick - a woman before her time. She was an enigmatic musician (a contralto and composer), author, suffragette and lecturer who is credited with being the founder of England's Competitive Music Festivals movement. She pioneered rural music education and founded the Mary Wakefield Festival in Kendal, which still takes place biennially.
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Mary was born into a wealthy Quaker family who had been established in Westmorland for at least at least six generations.
Roger Wakefield (born 1706) was the father of John Wakefield I (born 1738) who first made Sedgwick the family home when he built Old Sedgwick House close to where he had established the Sedgwick Gunpowder Company. His son, John II, and then grandson John III succeeded him and the family fortune grew with extensive banking, manufacturing and land-owning interests. John III’s only surviving son William Henry Wakefield was Mary’s father. William had been born at Broughton Lodge, near Cartmel, May 18th, 1828 but was brought up at Sedgwick House. In 1850, while still a young man, he became a partner in Wakefield Crewdson & Co., the family bank. In 1851, he married an Irish American - Miss Augusta Hagarty, daughter of Mr. James Hagarty, American Consul to Liverpool. Mary's father was a “typical Wakefield, a man of quick decision and prompt action ; straightforward in speech and in dealing- ; undismayed by responsibility and unfailingly hospitable.” Although a busy business man, he found time for active open-air pursuits, and was known as a fine swimmer and skater, a first-rate whip and a fearless rider across country. He was also sincerely religious. Mary's mother was a strong personality, with a sense of fun but a quiet sense of humour.
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Mary's Grandfather John Wakefield III
Mary's Father William Henry Wakefield
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The growing family consisted of her father and mother, Mary and her siblings; Ruth born in 1856, John born in 1858, but who died in 1896, Jacob born in 1860, Minnie born in 1862, Agnes born in 1866 and William Henry born in 1870.
The Wakefields were reknowned for their hospitality and Mary was the life and soul of them all. " Looking back on those years," says one of her sisters, " I see that all our fun emanated from Mary. On Sunday she would take us up to her ' tower-room ' and make us learn our hymns and collects. But her rule was light, and her buoyancy and good temper unfailing." |
She returned to Sedgwick before she was eighteen to enjoy the lifestyle of a privileged wealthy family - enjoying her "luxurious" country home and all the pleasures and sports it afforded her. The stables at Sedgwick, were crowded with horses and ponies of all kinds, and all the children followed their father in their keen love of riding and driving. But none of them surpassed Mary as a "whip". She was equally at home with a tandem or a single horse, and until her health began to fail in the last few years of her life, she was seen out in all weathers, especially when visiting local choirs or just enjoying the landscape. |
Later in the decade, a broken romance led Mary to be permitted by her father to seek solace in London where she was able to pursue her musical interests further. She began studying under Professor Randegger (left), a prominent Italian composer, conductor and singing teacher, best known for promoting opera and new works of British music in England and for his widely used textbook on singing technique. This led to her meeting the popular musicians and writers of the time.
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Mary had a Steinway upright piano hoisted into her favourite "Tower Room" and it was there that she spent many hours and days producing her best artistic works. She became well-known for her arrangements and compositions which became major "hits" of the time. The tower became known as the "The Tower of Music"
In 1881. Reverend Hardwicke Drummond - the eminent Priest, poet, local politician and co-founder of the National Trustwas a frequent vistor and was so inspired by what he called was "the little room, the centre of the musical life not only of Sedgwick, but of a large and ever-increasing district" that he wrote a poem about it: |
THE TOWER OF SONG. When I am weary of the fret and jar The tuneless rush of life's o'erwhelming tide, I say unto my soul come thou aside And climb the tower where rest and music are. Thence, while the Torrent murmurs from afar, My fancy borne on swallow wings may glide, And, bound for Heaven, my hopes can venture wide O'er seas of darkness lit from star to star. here on the morrow, when the lark awakes Upward he soars; his little shadow moves Across my room, a fluttering phantom song : A thousand memories of forgotten loves Sound from the pictured wall he floats along, Loud with a thousand tunes my morning breaks. |
In February 1878, she embarked on a long trip to Rome, travelling via Paris, Marseilles and Genoa, with her father, mother and brother Jacob. Whilst in Rome, she attended singing and piano lessons and began performing at charity concerts. At one of these concerts - at the Palazzo Odescalchi in Rome, one of the songs she sang was her own adaptation of Swinbourne's poem "Maytime in winter" - click on the music sheet to hear it played. |
Mary's fame grew and not just because of her seductive voice. Two years after the concert in Rome, one of her own compositions No Sir!, became an extraordinary ‘hit’ which within months had made her famous. She based the song on a tune sung to her by an American governess, completing the music and the words for herself. The song was published in 1879 by Messrs. Paterson of Edinburgh and by 1881, it had reached every strata of society and a version entitled " Yes Lord " became very popular with the Salvation Army. It was not surprising that she was tempted to follow up her success, for publishers were now ready and anxious to bring out her lyrics. Its follow up, Yes Sir!, appeared a year later, and was succeeded by dozens more songs, some of them collaborations with other popular composers of the day, including "Yes Sir," "A Bunch of Cowslips," " May time in Midwinter," " More and More," or " Beyond all, thine," " Love's Service," "Shaking Grass," " You may," " Moonspell," "Serenade," "For Love's sake only," "Life time and Love time," "Sweet Sally Gray," "Lass and Lad," "Leafy June," "Nancy," "Courting Days," "After Years," "Little Roundhead Maid," "Shearing-day," "When the Boys come home," and "The Children are Singing."
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Her relationship with Maude Valerie White, (left) had become extremely close. Maude was a constant visitor at Sedgwick, where she had her own room in the lower story of the tower. Several of her best songs, including- " Absent yet present,'' were written at Sedgwick. Mary and Maude Valerie White took part in many concerts together all over the country. Another musical friend who visited Sedgwick was Mr. J. A. Fuller Maitland, who became musical critic of the Times. The gifted family of Robertsons were also among her musical friends. She also formed a life-long friendship with Rhoda Broughton (right), the controversial homoerotic Welsh writer.
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In 1884 and back in Rome, she met the Norwegian composer Grieg - she spent a great deal of time with him and his wife, singing many of his songs and recieved an album from him in which he wrote " Mary Wakefield with my best thanks for her beautiful songs. Edward Grieg. Roma. 1887." Later that year, mary first met the actress Marion Terry (right) and her sister Ellen, the most famous shakespearian actress of her time. Her very close friendship with Marion would be one that lasted for the rest of her life. Marion was another frequent visitor to Sedgwick, often accompanying Mary on long drives across country. |
Her circle of fashionable friends grew... By 1881, she was a favourite of the Duke of Westminster who placed Grosvenor House at her service for holding concerts. In 1882 Mary was introduced to Violet Paget (who is most remembered for her supernatural fiction and her work on aesthetics under her pseudonym Vernon Lee) by the novelist Mrs Humphry Ward. While Lee initially appears to have been reticent, even caustic about Wakefield, describing her in a letter to her mother as ‘fat’ and ‘grotesque’, she did warm to her greatly. In a later letter, she states that Wakefield was ‘a strange puzzle to me, but attractive with the attractiveness of extreme individuality’ and sang ‘like four & twenty seraphs’.
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When her mother died in 1894, and after a period of travelling to Bayreuth,where she saw Richard Wagner's opera Parsifal and the Bavarian Highlands, Mary resumed her lecture-recital tours, living in her flat in London. However, by April 1895 she returned to the area when she made Nutwood, a house in Grange-over-Sands with a fine garden and views of Morecambe Bay and the Cumberland and Westmorland hills her home. (see picture, right)
She lived there very happily with her companion, the writer Valentine Munro Ferguson. Both women shared a love of music and both were early supporters of the female suffrage movement. Sadly, this period of happiness did not last very long, because after an acute illness, Valentine died at Nutwood in 1897. |
After a visit to Italy, Mary settled back to a solitary life at Nutwood in 1898, but soon after, she met Stella Hamilton, of Windermere, who became her close companion for the rest of her life. Stella became Mary's assistant and in addition to continuing to organise the Wakefield Festival, together they landscaped the garden at Nutwood. They both supported the Women's Suffrage movement and Stella became a keen photographer, many of her pictures from this time, feature in Mary's biography. In 1909, Mary published her book - Cartmel Priory and Stetches of North Lonsdale which features many of Stella's photographs. |
In 1911, Stella Hamilton proposed that the Association of Musical Competition Festivals create medals bearing a portrait of Mary, to commemorate her contribution to the movement with which she was so strongly associated. Funds were raised for a Mary Wakefield medal to be awarded as a prize at the festival. The medal bore the image of Wakefield, a picture of a lyre set into a frieze of roses, and the words of Martin Luther: ‘Music is a fair and glorious gift from God’.
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Sedgwick Village
Cumbria LA8 0JW |
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