John Hall-Stevenson
Encyclopedia
John Hall-Stevenson in his youth known as John Hall, was an English
country gentleman
and writer.
He is memorialised as 'Eugenius' in Laurence Sterne
's novels Tristram Shandy and A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy
.
by his marriage to Catherine, sister and heiress of Lawson Trotter of Skelton Castle at Skelton
-in-Cleveland
, Yorkshire
.
On 16 June 1735, at the age of seventeen, he matriculated at Jesus College, Cambridge
as a fellow-commoner. He quickly struck up a close and lifelong friendship with Laurence Sterne
, who was five years older. They referred to each other as cousins, but no kinship is known. Hall was precociously ribald and loved Rabelaisian
literature. He left Cambridge without a degree in about 1738 and made the grand tour
.
On his return to England, Hall married Anne, the daughter of Ambrose Stevenson of the Manor House, Durham, and added his wife's surname to his own. After the Jacobite Rising
of 1745, his uncle Lawson Trotter, a supporter of Jacobitism
, fled overseas, and the fifteenth-century Skelton Castle came into the possession of Hall-Stevenson's mother. On her death, he inherited it, by then half-ruined
Hall-Stevenson had no love of field sports
and spent his time on literature and entertaining his friends. He wrote verse in imitation of La Fontaine
and collected kindred spirits which whom he formed a "club of demoniacks" which met at Skelton several times a year. The club indulged in heavy drinking and orgies which were pale reflections of those of Francis Dashwood
and his friends at Medmenham
. The "demoniacks" included the clergy
man Robert Lascelles, nicknamed Pantagruel, Zachary Moore, Colonel Hall, Colonel Lee, and Andrew Irvine of Kirkleatham. On his visits to London, Hall-Stevenson met John Wilkes
and Horace Walpole, and three familiar letters from him to Wilkes written in 1762 survive. He also claimed a friendship with Rousseau
.
Hall-Stevenson became notorious for licentious verse. He published a Lyric Epistle (1760) to his friend Sterne on the triumph of Tristram Shandy, which Gray
called "absolute nonsense". Better known were his Fables for Grown Gentlemen (1761), and his Crazy Tales (1762, new editions in 1764 and 1780), which describes the meetings of his friends at Skelton, or 'Crazy Castle'.
Horace Walpole credited Hall-Stevenson with "a vast deal of original humour and wit", but Smollett
and The Critical Review
were contemptuous, with the result that in 1760 Hall-Stevenson abused Smollett and his associates in A Nosegay and a Simile for the Reviewers and Two Lyrical Epistles, or Margery the Cook Maid, to the Critical Reviewers. Hall-Stevenson's A Sentimental Dialogue between two Souls in the palpable Bodies of an English Lady of Quality and an Irish Gentleman (1768) was seen as a parody of his friend Sterne's Tristram Shandy
Hall-Stevenson also wrote on politics. He denounced the Earl of Bute
and all politicians, whether Whig or Tory, with such works as A Pastoral Cordial; or an Anodyne Sermon, preached before their Graces Newcastle and Devonshire (1763), A Pastoral Puke; a second Sermon preached before the people called Whigs; by an Independent (1764), Makarony Fables, with the new Fable of the Bees (1767), Lyric Consolations, with the Speech of Alderman Wilkes delivered in a Dream (1768) and An Essay upon the King's Friends (1776)
Hall-Stevenson gave some financial support to his friend Sterne, who often visited him at Skelton, and they liked to race chariots over the sands at Saltburn
, and Hall-Stevenson appears under the name of 'Eugenius' in Sterne's novels Tristram Shandy and A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy
. This was unfinished at Sterne's death, and Hall-Stevenson wrote a continuation entitled Yorick's Sentimental Journey Continued: to Which Is Prefixed Some Account of the Life and Writings of Mr. Sterne.
Hall-Stevenson's heavy drinking led to chronic hypochondria and also had money troubles. In 1765 he reopened an alum
works at Selby Hagg which had been closed down for near fifty years, but they lost money. he failed to make them pay, and gave them up in 1776. On 17 February 1785 he wrote to his grandson that he had suffered from marrying too early and that shortage of funds had forced him to live in the country. He died at Skelton in March of 1785, and his widow survived him until 1790.
Of Hall-Stevenson's two sons, one, named John, died unmarried, and the other, Joseph William Hall-Stevenson (1741–1786) died a year after his father, leaving a son, John Hall-Stevenson (1766–1843), who inherited Skelton Castle and rebuilt it. In 1788 he changed his name to John Wharton and was Member of Parliament
for Beverley
between 1790 and 1820.
Hall-Stevenson's works were collected and published in three volumes in 1795.
English people
The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...
country gentleman
Landed gentry
Landed gentry is a traditional British social class, consisting of land owners who could live entirely off rental income. Often they worked only in an administrative capacity looking after the management of their own lands....
and writer.
He is memorialised as 'Eugenius' in Laurence Sterne
Laurence Sterne
Laurence Sterne was an Irish novelist and an Anglican clergyman. He is best known for his novels The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, and A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy; but he also published many sermons, wrote memoirs, and was involved in local politics...
's novels Tristram Shandy and A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy
A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy
A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy is a novel by the Irish-born English author Laurence Sterne, written and first published in 1768, as Sterne was facing death. In 1765, Sterne travelled through France and Italy as far south as Naples, and after returning determined to describe his...
.
Life
Hall-Stevenson was the son of Joseph Hall of DurhamDurham
Durham is a city in north east England. It is within the County Durham local government district, and is the county town of the larger ceremonial county...
by his marriage to Catherine, sister and heiress of Lawson Trotter of Skelton Castle at Skelton
Skelton-in-Cleveland
Skelton-in-Cleveland is a small town in the civil parish of Skelton and Brotton in the unitary authority of Redcar and Cleveland and the ceremonial county of North Yorkshire in the North East of England. It is situated at the foot of the Cleveland Hills and about east of Middlesbrough. Skelton is...
-in-Cleveland
Cleveland, England
Cleveland is an area in the north east of England. Its name means literally "cliff-land", referring to its hilly southern areas, which rise to nearly...
, Yorkshire
Yorkshire
Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...
.
On 16 June 1735, at the age of seventeen, he matriculated at Jesus College, Cambridge
Jesus College, Cambridge
Jesus College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England.The College was founded in 1496 on the site of a Benedictine nunnery by John Alcock, then Bishop of Ely...
as a fellow-commoner. He quickly struck up a close and lifelong friendship with Laurence Sterne
Laurence Sterne
Laurence Sterne was an Irish novelist and an Anglican clergyman. He is best known for his novels The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, and A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy; but he also published many sermons, wrote memoirs, and was involved in local politics...
, who was five years older. They referred to each other as cousins, but no kinship is known. Hall was precociously ribald and loved Rabelaisian
François Rabelais
François Rabelais was a major French Renaissance writer, doctor, Renaissance humanist, monk and Greek scholar. He has historically been regarded as a writer of fantasy, satire, the grotesque, bawdy jokes and songs...
literature. He left Cambridge without a degree in about 1738 and made the grand tour
Grand Tour
The Grand Tour was the traditional trip of Europe undertaken by mainly upper-class European young men of means. The custom flourished from about 1660 until the advent of large-scale rail transit in the 1840s, and was associated with a standard itinerary. It served as an educational rite of passage...
.
On his return to England, Hall married Anne, the daughter of Ambrose Stevenson of the Manor House, Durham, and added his wife's surname to his own. After the Jacobite Rising
Jacobite rising
The Jacobite Risings were a series of uprisings, rebellions, and wars in Great Britain and Ireland occurring between 1688 and 1746. The uprisings were aimed at returning James VII of Scotland and II of England, and later his descendants of the House of Stuart, to the throne after he was deposed by...
of 1745, his uncle Lawson Trotter, a supporter of Jacobitism
Jacobitism
Jacobitism was the political movement in Britain dedicated to the restoration of the Stuart kings to the thrones of England, Scotland, later the Kingdom of Great Britain, and the Kingdom of Ireland...
, fled overseas, and the fifteenth-century Skelton Castle came into the possession of Hall-Stevenson's mother. On her death, he inherited it, by then half-ruined
Hall-Stevenson had no love of field sports
Hunting and shooting in the United Kingdom
Hunting and shooting have been practised for many centuries in the United Kingdom and, in some areas, are a major part of British rural culture...
and spent his time on literature and entertaining his friends. He wrote verse in imitation of La Fontaine
Jean de La Fontaine
Jean de La Fontaine was the most famous French fabulist and one of the most widely read French poets of the 17th century. He is known above all for his Fables, which provided a model for subsequent fabulists across Europe and numerous alternative versions in France, and in French regional...
and collected kindred spirits which whom he formed a "club of demoniacks" which met at Skelton several times a year. The club indulged in heavy drinking and orgies which were pale reflections of those of Francis Dashwood
Francis Dashwood, 15th Baron le Despencer
Francis Dashwood, 15th Baron le Despencer was an English rake and politician, Chancellor of the Exchequer and founder of the Hellfire Club.-Early life:...
and his friends at Medmenham
Medmenham
Medmenham is a village and civil parish in the Wycombe district of Buckinghamshire, England. It is on the River Thames, about three and a half miles southwest of Marlow and three miles east of Henley-on-Thames....
. The "demoniacks" included the clergy
Clergy
Clergy is the generic term used to describe the formal religious leadership within a given religion. A clergyman, churchman or cleric is a member of the clergy, especially one who is a priest, preacher, pastor, or other religious professional....
man Robert Lascelles, nicknamed Pantagruel, Zachary Moore, Colonel Hall, Colonel Lee, and Andrew Irvine of Kirkleatham. On his visits to London, Hall-Stevenson met John Wilkes
John Wilkes
John Wilkes was an English radical, journalist and politician.He was first elected Member of Parliament in 1757. In the Middlesex election dispute, he fought for the right of voters—rather than the House of Commons—to determine their representatives...
and Horace Walpole, and three familiar letters from him to Wilkes written in 1762 survive. He also claimed a friendship with Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer of 18th-century Romanticism. His political philosophy influenced the French Revolution as well as the overall development of modern political, sociological and educational thought.His novel Émile: or, On Education is a treatise...
.
Hall-Stevenson became notorious for licentious verse. He published a Lyric Epistle (1760) to his friend Sterne on the triumph of Tristram Shandy, which Gray
Thomas Gray
Thomas Gray was a poet, letter-writer, classical scholar and professor at Cambridge University.-Early life and education:...
called "absolute nonsense". Better known were his Fables for Grown Gentlemen (1761), and his Crazy Tales (1762, new editions in 1764 and 1780), which describes the meetings of his friends at Skelton, or 'Crazy Castle'.
Horace Walpole credited Hall-Stevenson with "a vast deal of original humour and wit", but Smollett
Tobias Smollett
Tobias George Smollett was a Scottish poet and author. He was best known for his picaresque novels, such as The Adventures of Roderick Random and The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle , which influenced later novelists such as Charles Dickens.-Life:Smollett was born at Dalquhurn, now part of Renton,...
and The Critical Review
The Critical Review
The Critical Review was first edited by Tobias Smollett from 1756 to 1763, and was contributed to by Samuel Johnson, David Hume, John Hunter, and Oliver Goldsmith, until 1817....
were contemptuous, with the result that in 1760 Hall-Stevenson abused Smollett and his associates in A Nosegay and a Simile for the Reviewers and Two Lyrical Epistles, or Margery the Cook Maid, to the Critical Reviewers. Hall-Stevenson's A Sentimental Dialogue between two Souls in the palpable Bodies of an English Lady of Quality and an Irish Gentleman (1768) was seen as a parody of his friend Sterne's Tristram Shandy
Hall-Stevenson also wrote on politics. He denounced the Earl of Bute
John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute
John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute KG, PC , styled Lord Mount Stuart before 1723, was a Scottish nobleman who served as Prime Minister of Great Britain under George III, and was arguably the last important favourite in British politics...
and all politicians, whether Whig or Tory, with such works as A Pastoral Cordial; or an Anodyne Sermon, preached before their Graces Newcastle and Devonshire (1763), A Pastoral Puke; a second Sermon preached before the people called Whigs; by an Independent (1764), Makarony Fables, with the new Fable of the Bees (1767), Lyric Consolations, with the Speech of Alderman Wilkes delivered in a Dream (1768) and An Essay upon the King's Friends (1776)
Hall-Stevenson gave some financial support to his friend Sterne, who often visited him at Skelton, and they liked to race chariots over the sands at Saltburn
Saltburn-by-the-Sea
Saltburn-by-the-Sea is a seaside resort in the unitary authority of Redcar and Cleveland and the ceremonial county of North Yorkshire, England. The town is around east of Middlesbrough, and had a population of 5,912 at the 2001 Census.-Old Saltburn:...
, and Hall-Stevenson appears under the name of 'Eugenius' in Sterne's novels Tristram Shandy and A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy
A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy
A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy is a novel by the Irish-born English author Laurence Sterne, written and first published in 1768, as Sterne was facing death. In 1765, Sterne travelled through France and Italy as far south as Naples, and after returning determined to describe his...
. This was unfinished at Sterne's death, and Hall-Stevenson wrote a continuation entitled Yorick's Sentimental Journey Continued: to Which Is Prefixed Some Account of the Life and Writings of Mr. Sterne.
Hall-Stevenson's heavy drinking led to chronic hypochondria and also had money troubles. In 1765 he reopened an alum
Alum
Alum is both a specific chemical compound and a class of chemical compounds. The specific compound is the hydrated potassium aluminium sulfate with the formula KAl2.12H2O. The wider class of compounds known as alums have the related empirical formula, AB2.12H2O.-Chemical properties:Alums are...
works at Selby Hagg which had been closed down for near fifty years, but they lost money. he failed to make them pay, and gave them up in 1776. On 17 February 1785 he wrote to his grandson that he had suffered from marrying too early and that shortage of funds had forced him to live in the country. He died at Skelton in March of 1785, and his widow survived him until 1790.
Of Hall-Stevenson's two sons, one, named John, died unmarried, and the other, Joseph William Hall-Stevenson (1741–1786) died a year after his father, leaving a son, John Hall-Stevenson (1766–1843), who inherited Skelton Castle and rebuilt it. In 1788 he changed his name to John Wharton and was Member of Parliament
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
for Beverley
Beverley (UK Parliament constituency)
Beverley has been the name of a parliamentary constituency in the East Riding of Yorkshire for three separate periods. From medieval times until 1869, it was a parliamentary borough, consisting solely of the market town of Beverley, which returned two Members of Parliament to the House of Commons...
between 1790 and 1820.
Hall-Stevenson's works were collected and published in three volumes in 1795.