JOHN DAVIES MEREWEATHER
 

John Davies Mereweather was born in Bristol in England in 1816. He was the son of John Mereweather (1771-1845), born in Bristol, and his second wife Anna Maria Davies (1778-1831), who was born near Newcastle Emlyn but was living in Abergavenny at the time of her marriage. Both came from lines of craftsmen, shopkeepers and traders.

In his first marriage, to Ann Grimes (c. 1775-1809), John Mereweather had three children, Samuel (1798-1839), Ann (1800-1875), who both died childless, and Matilda (1801-1875) who married Stephen Poyntz Denning, the artist. In the 1820s the family's combined house and shop stood on the corner of Small Street and Corn Street close to the church of St Werburgh, where John Sr and Samuel took their turns as wardens. John Davies Mereweather was the only child of his father's second marriage.

Nothing has been traced about John Davies Mereweather's schooling. His mother died already when he was fourteen; by then, his half-sister Ann had become his truest guide. The relations with his father may have been strained, for it was only through a last-minute codicil to John's will (a codicil dated in 1845) that John Davies Mereweather inherited anything at all; Ann was the main beneficiary.

In 1832, just before his sixteenth birthday, Mereweather made a tour of the Pyrenees, visiting Pau, Tarbes, Lourdes, Bagnères de Bigorre, Cauterets, the Vignemale, Gavarnie, Luz-St-Sauveur, the Tourmalet. Click on the Pyrenees link above.

During the years 1836-1860, Mereweather recorded in a book of Memoranda (now in the Arfwedson collection) quotations in poetry and prose from various authors, Shakespeare, Gibbon, Shelley, Wordsworth, Homer, Sophocles, Cicero, Juvenal, Dante, Petrarch, Rousseau, Voltaire, Madame de Staël, Guizot, Goethe, et al. The quotations are in English, Greek, Latin, Italian, and French.

Mereweather also wrote down his own thoughts, poems and narratives, e.g. a 198-line-poem about Charles XII of Sweden, inspired by Voltaire. In 1843 he sent in this poem for the Sir Roger Newdigate Prize for English Verse, but it was "rejected by the poetaster Committee of umpires".

In 1839 Mereweather had entered Oxford University where he was admitted to St Edmund Hall, known mainly as a centre of Evangelicalism in a time of religious controversy. He graduated BA in 1843.

During the summer months of 1844, Mereweather travelled to Normandy and Paris. He landed at Le Havre and visited Honfleur, Caen and Bayeux; then he ascended the Seine to Rouen. He continued by train to Paris where he stayed for almost four months. Among the people he met were Mr and Mrs Giles and the Rev. J. Lovett. He had plans to get a teaching position, but these came to nothing. Click on the Paris link above for more details.

On 8 December 1844, Mereweather was ordained deacon in St Faith's Church, London, and on 15 January 1845 he did his first service at Llanfair in the parish of Llantilio Crossenny not far from Abergavenny in the diocese of Llandaff. Then, in 1848, he is curate at Holy Trinity, Stretford Road, Hulme, Manchester (this church was founded in 1843 and closed in 1953).

Mereweather could not settle down and decided to emigrate to Australia. He described this in two books:

Mereweather had the intention to work in the Port Phillip district (in the south of New South Wales), about to be the separate colony of Victoria. But he presented himself badly with sketchy recommendations so Dr Charles Perry bluntly refused to license him. Instead, he found his first employment, in October 1850, in Tasmania, only to be transferred after some six months to the inhospitable Edward River district in New South Wales. His last year in Australia he spent in Sydney.

For more details about Mereweather in Australia and how he may have inspired Frederick Rolfe (Baron Corvo), click on the Australia/Rolfe link above.

In September 1851, in a letter to a friend in England, Mereweather had expressed his hopes to return home after a few years, "settling down quietly in England, or obtaining a responsible Chaplaincy in the South of Europe" (Life on Board, p. 78). And indeed, in 1855 he established himself in Venice (which was still under Austrian rule). He was English chaplain, under the bishop of Gibraltar, a post which he retained until he retired in 1887. He had his quarters in Palazzo Contarini degli Scrigni-Corfù on the Grand Canal. Click on the Venice Map link above. Life was not particularly easy. Italy was going through turbulent times trying to rid herself of foreign dominance and to create a united and prosperous state.

During all Mereweather’s time in Venice there was no English church building. According to Lady Layard (see below), writing in 1887, Mereweather had "for the last 30 years ... droned out a service in his rooms at the top of the Contarini degli Scrigni". His superiors do not seem to have been very much impressed by his performance. There were differences of opinion between Mereweather and his bishops, and on retirement he received no recognition for his thirty-three years as chaplain in Venice. On the other hand, just before he retired he was made Knight of the Order of the Crown of Italy, and this for philanthropic services in 1882 (during the reign of king Umberto I). By a decree in 1885, the number of knights to be nominated in any one year in this fifth and lowest class of the order was fixed at 1,200. Even so, this knighthood may well have meant more to Mereweather than any eulogy from the Church.

Today, St. George's Anglican Church in Venice has a web site: www.stgeorgesvenice.com

Mereweather wrote several books in Venice, first Semele; or the Spirit of Beauty : A Venetian Tale (London, 1867); click on the Semele link above.

Then there were three clerical tracts:

Finally, at the age of 75, Mereweather had some success with a short play: Bacchus and Ariadne / Bacco ed Arianna ( London, 1891 / Venice, 1895, translated by professor Daniele Riccoboni).

For details on how some of Mereweather’s books may have inspired Frederick Rolfe, click on the Australia/Rolfe link above.

Mereweather’s neighbours, in Palazzo Contarini Corfù, were George Frederick Greaves, late Captain of the 60th Rifles, rentier, his wife Ann née Richards and their large family. Their eldest son George pursued a career in the British Army; his autobiography, called Memoirs of General Sir George Richards Greaves, was published in 1924, two years after his death. Three younger sons entered Austrian military service. The most successful, Joseph Greaves, reached the rank of Fregattenkapitän (Commander); he died in Vienna in 1914.

In 1871, one of the Greaves daughters, Adela, married a Swedish lieutenant, Carl Edward Arfwedson; the young couple left Venice for Sweden.

After a few years Ann Greaves decided to visit her daughter and son-in-law in Stockholm. She had had doubts about the journey and had sought the advice of Mereweather, chaplain and friend of the family. In the beginning of August 1877 she arrived in Stockholm, and installed herself at Rålambshov, the summer house rented by her daughter. However, on 27 August 1877, Ann Greaves died of heart failure. She was buried three days later in grave No. 2760 in Stockholm's Northern Cemetery (in Solna); the arrangements were made by her son-in-law.

Now, already in 1878 Mereweather bought the grave next to Ann Greaves’s, and in 1880 he made a payment for its perpetual upkeep. When Mereweather died sixteen years later, his body was cremated and the ashes were sent to Sweden, all in accordance with his will. Grave No. 2761 was finally opened to be ready for the burial by 1 p.m., Tuesday 28 July 1896. For pictures, click on the Graves link above. (The practice of human cremation emanated mainly from Italy where experiments had started around 1870; professor Brunetti of Padua had showed his results at the exhibition in Vienna in 1873. See Modern Cremation, its History and Practice (London, 1889) by Henry Thompson.)

Because of having advised her to undertake the journey, Mereweather may have considered himself guilty of Ann Greaves’s death, and I am convinced he felt great affection for her. But the main reason for his burial in Sweden may be practical. Mereweather was appalled by the conditions for burying non-Catholics in Venice. Already in Semele, published in 1867, he lets the heroine, visiting the Lido, express her dismay at the desolate and unenclosed tombstones of British Protestants who had been denied the privilege of being buried in consecrated ground. He also criticizes the British Government for not being paternal enough to obviate such an indignity. (Mereweather adds that, at a comparatively recent date, the mortal remains of the entombed, but not the stones, had been removed to a Protestant cemetery.)

Over the years, Mereweather made many attempts to remedy the situation. The municipality had several times offered to provide a suitable ground but the promises were never kept. In 1879, in connexion with the appointment of a new British consul, Mereweather wrote to the Foreign Office asking for assistance. He said that the available (German) cemetery had "become so disgustingly full that the burial of fresh bodies frequently necessitates the exhumation of long interred remains". The only answer he received was that the new consul was free to use his influence in the matter.

By then, after having learnt about the efficient arrangements made in Stockholm for the unfortunate Ann Greaves, Mereweather had already secured a grave for himself in the same cemetery. The contract for its perpetual upkeep is still honoured by the cemetery administration. Mereweather could hardly have made a better choice for an eternal resting place.

One may ask why Mereweather, now that he had decided against Venice, chose to be laid to rest in Sweden rather than in his native city of Bristol, where his half-brother and father had both been buried in vault No. 70 in the church of St Werburgh. The answer is that the situation in Bristol would not have been to his liking either.

Lady Layard née Enid Guest, who lived in Venice 1884-1912, mentions Mereweather in her diaries (in the British Library). She is not kind to him, but it should be borne in mind that when she settled in Venice, Mereweather was already an old man, distressed, probably, by the constant lack of support from the Church of England and the British authorities. Moreover, the post as chaplain was not easy to fill; in the twenty-three years after Mereweather, until 1910, there would have been nine ordinary incumbents and almost as many temporary ones.

In September 1895, nine months before his death, Mereweather wrote an English translation of Ode 1. 11 by Horace. Click on the Envoi link above.

Mereweather died on 18 June 1896. For a summary of his will, made up in 1894, click on the Will link above. On 26 June 1896, The Times published the following note from a correspondent writing from Venice under the date of 19 June: "Yesterday evening there died at Venice in his house, Palazzo Contarini, San Trovaso, at the age of 81 [79], the Rev. Cavaliere J. D. Mereweather, B. A. Oxon., the oldest English chaplain in Italy. He entered upon his duties in 1855, and continued in them until 1887, when he retired from the Venice chaplaincy, although still residing in his adopted city. It is curious to think that he was the direct successor in Venice of Dr Henry Wotton ... , for between Bedell’s time and his there were no chaplains." (In 1607 William Bedell was appointed chaplain to Dr Wotton, then English ambassador to Venice.)

In the National Library of Australia (MS 9453), there is a 67-page typescript by the late Dr John Barrett entitled From Bristol Trades to a Gentleman of Venice: The Story of J. D. Mereweather. In 1986, with kind permission of Dr Barrett, then Reader in History at La Trobe University, Bundoora, Victoria, I published an article (followed up in 1996) in The Journal of the Bristol and Avon Family History Society making use of his material. Some general pieces of information are repeated here, but much new material has been added. All quotations come direct from original printed works and manuscripts as stated.

Mereweather is elusive. The material available is scanty, and a potential biographer may be frustrated at catching only glimpses of him. My impression is that Mereweather, in Venice, ordered his life as comfortably as possible according to his own idiosyncrasy not bothering about whether he annoyed others, then or in the future.

Mereweather’s Australian diaries have often been drawn on by historians, but Mereweather himself has received little recognition. The same goes for his forty years in Venice, where he wrote books of various kinds. Historians, if they notice Mereweather at all, tend to give him the cold shoulder. The latest example is Paradise of Cities (London, 2003) by John Julius Norwich where Mereweather appears anonymously and en passant as "the local English chaplain" (p. 203). This is sad.

Created on 3 December 2003
Updated on 1 May 2009