Edward Bellamy
| Edward Bellamy FRGS | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| File:Bellamy, Edward.jpg | |||||||||||||
| Born | 1837 | ||||||||||||
| Died | 1889 | ||||||||||||
| Residence |
10 Duke Street, St James's [1865, 1867, 1869] 57 Moorgate Street, EC [1881] 14 Buckingham Street, Victoria [1883] Embankment, W.C. [1885] 17 Wimpole Street, W. [1887] | ||||||||||||
| Occupation | literary | ||||||||||||
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Contents
[hide]Notes
Office Notes
House Notes
Nationalist Club; FRGS
ESL Apr 1844 A letter was read from Mr Bellamy in reference to Dr de Tschudi’s Paper On the Ancient Peruvians, which was referred to J.A. St John Esq. with the view of its being appended, in some form, to Dr de Tschudi’s Paper
A5 70 Rev. Dunbar I. Heath, Treasurer, ASL (DIH) (see abbreviations for details) to Edward Bellamy, 12 Apr. 1866 – requests payment of subscription for 1866
71 Edward Bellamy, 10 Duke Street, SW to DIH, [?1 Jan. 1867] – reports AS’s collector called for subscription; has already paid; July receipt held
1887.10.25 proposed for election at the next meeting
1888.06 list gives 1887 start date, and it has FRCS rather than FRGS - a typo, or another man? (assuming same man here)
Notes From Elsewhere
A businessman and murky figure in the underworld of Victorian sexual deviance, about whom little definite is known. He may have been born in Hereford,[30] and may have been the son of Edward Vaux Bellamy of Hereford, who had worked for the British Museum. He was made a Fellow of the Anthropological Society in 1865, and lived then at 10 Duke Street, St James’s, London. He may also have been a member of the Cannibal Club. No doubt he joined the Anthropological Society through Burton’s influence, and he is listed as attending Burton’s “Farewell Dinner” in 1865, which sent RFB off to Brazil.
At his death Bellamy was listed, in a notice to the creditors of “Henry Edward Vaux Bellamy,” as a “Secretary of Public Companies”[31] giving the addresses 1-Adam Street, Adelphi and 57 Moorgate street. He was listed previously in connection with a bewildering array of railway companies, for example as the “Secretary” of the “West London Extension Railway Company”[32] and as the “Chief Official” of the “Victoria Station and Pimlico Railway”,[33] and others, including the “Calais Tramway”, the “Vicksburg, Shrieveport (sic) & Pacific” etc. There was some continuity at least: in 1861 he was listed as Secretary to the “Victoria Station and Pimlico Railway”, at Great-George Street, Westminster.[34]
Bellamy was associated with the Studholme Hodgson / C. Duncan Cameron / Fred Hankey set referred to in Burton’s correspondence with Monckton Milnes. “I left Cameron drunk and Bellamy half sober” (1861/08/28). “Remember me with love to the amiable trio Hodgson, Bellamy and Hankey—when shall we all meet again?” (1862/04/26). “I suppose Bellamy is still fending off the angry fiend” (1863/03/29). “What of Hankey, and Bellamy?” (1863/05/07). “Monday will be a failure. We must set out at 9 P.M. not 11 and return before 12. Bellamy has promised to arrange the affair as soon as possible—probably next Monday week. Can you dine with me at 14 St James Square (7 P.M.) on that day—Monday 17th?? I will ask Cameron & Bellamy to meet you and if we don’t go to the Chinese lodgings we may drop in upon our old saintly friend …” (1875). Burton also mentioned Bellamy in his description of a séance by the Davenport Brothers in 1865, apparently conducted at Bellamy’s house: “On occasion I placed my foot on Mr. Fay's, while Mr. Bellamy, the master of the house, did the same to Mr. Davenport, and we measured their distance from the semicircle—10 feet.”
Bellamy was present in 1885 when F.F. Arbuthnot introduced H.S. Ashbee to Burton.[36] Ashbee recorded in his diary that Monckton Milnes had introduced Bellamy to him on 8th June 1878. Bellamy makes regular appearances in Ashbee’s diary from there on. It was Bellamy who had introduced Arbuthnot, out of the blue, to Ashbee on the 29th May 1883. Some correspondence between Arbuthnot and Bellamy from 1884 is said to survive—e.g. “very glad to hear that you saved some of Potter’s[37] things from destruction. I saw the man they were left to, who informed me that he ought to have destroyed them all”.[38] Bellamy was apparently also a subscriber to the Kamasutra, and Arbuthnot wrote to him to offer copies for circulation of the new work “by some learned Brahmans who are interested in the Humanities.”[39]
On July 4 1886, Bellamy dined at the Richmond Club with Ashbee and the Anglo-Irish Catholic Sir Roland Blennerhassett. Later in July he was accompanying Ashbee, Burton and Sir Charles Wingfield to Greenwich. On the 22nd January 1888 Bellamy makes a final appearance in Ashbee’s diary, at dinner in the company once again of F.F. Arbuthnot at the East India Club.
