[Letter from Chough (Thomas Foster's sobriquet for Crowe) to Thomas Crofton Croker inviting him to visit]

Handwritten letter from 'Chough' (Thomas Foster's sobriquet for Crowe) to Thomas Crofton Croker inviting Croker to visit the following evening, and asking him to bring with him items Crowe may have forgotten. Author mentions tickets for lectures by Foscalo, an author called Black, a benefit for Anna Maria Tree, and Alfred Nicholson. Pasted to the back of the letter is a pen and ink sketch by Foster of figures sitting around a candle.

22nd May 1823

Ink on paper

 

National Gallery of Ireland

CSIA

 

Thursday


Mr Dear Croft
Come to me tomorrow
night- you shall have Nicholson,
Foster, Rum [?], + a slice of home
news from Paddy; [?]
Don't fail me. Send me my last
night-shirt + any thing else I may
have forgotten. Foscalo must have
sent me a ticket for his lectures.
I have seen Black, he seems quite
zealous for a Foreign Review. Nicholson
has lent £20 at the first word, need
I comment upon such a fellow.-
I saw [?] at Miss T's benefit,
I was contented with the pit
[?]
Chough

Eyre Evans Crowe was born 20 March 1799 at Redbridge, Southampton. His father David Crowe, captain in an East India regiment, and his mother Miss Hayman of Walmer. Eyre's grandfather, who shared the artist's name, was an ancestor of William Crowe, dean of Clonfert from the years 1745-1766. Eyre began his education in Carlow before attending Trinity College Dublin, where he was awarded an award for poetry. His time was cut short at university by his decision to embark upon a career in journalism in London. Crowe travelled to Italy in 1822, where he wrote descriptive letters published in 'Blackwood's Magazine' during 1822 and 1823. It was also in 1823 that Crowe married Margaret Archer, the daughter of Captain Archer of Co. Wicklow at St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin. During the 1820's Crowe produced a series of novels, including 'The English in Italy', 1825 and 'Yesterday in Ireland', 1829. In 1853 he wrote the novel "Charles Delmer" a work which illustrated the author's insight into political affairs. In the year 1830 Crowe contributed a 'History of France' to Dionysius Lardner's 'Cabinet Encyclopaedia' and one year later, wrote the additions to the series of lives of eminent statesmen included in the latter publication. He later published an extended revised addition to a 'History of France' in five volumes between the years 1858 and 1868. Crowe became an established historian and journalist. His travels to the Levant helped greatly in publishing the work 'The Greek and the Turk', 1853. Having been a resident in Paris, witnessing the French revolution of 1830, Crowe published the work 'History of Louis XVIIII and Charles X'. In 1832 he became the Paris correspondent of the "Morning Chronicle". Having to support his family financially, Crowe was forced to devote himself exclusively to journalism and returned to England in 1844, where he joined the staff at 'The Daily News', when it was established in the year 1846 and later would act as its editor from 1849 to 1851. He worked for the editors Albany Fonblanque and later John Forster, providing foreign articles for 'The Examiner'. Crowe fathered six children with his first wife Margaret Archer and later had a second family with another wife of whom nothing is known of. He died 25 February 1868 at 56 Beaumont Street, Marylebone, London following an operation. He was buried at Kensal Green cemetery.

In 1844, the Cork-born antiquarian Thomas Crofton Croker acquired at auction a sketchbook that had belonged to Henry Perronet Briggs, his artist friend who had died a short period earlier. At the time of purchase, the album contained just ten studies by Briggs of costume details after the Dutch artist Jacques de Gheyn (1565-1629). Crofton Croker began to fill the empty pages with details of Briggs' exhibition history. The list continues uninterrupted until 1826 at which point Crofton Croker records the death of Thomas Foster, a mutual friend of his and Briggs. Crofton Croker continues the list, with occasional annotations, up to 1844, but then turns his attention almost exclusively to Foster. The album contains from that point extended notes by Crofton Croker, many of which draw on or quote from the testimony of other friends, on Foster's suicide and its immediate consequences, along with a large quantity of artworks, letters and other other ephemera relating to Foster. The album was discovered in Oxford in 2002 and acquired by the Centre for the Study of Irish Art the following year.