John Towneley (translator)

John Towneley (1697–1782) was an

With an allowance of only £60 a year under his father's will,[8] in 1715 Towneley entered Gray's Inn,^[9] and studied law under William Salkeld.^[3] His eldest brother, also called Richard, was captured at Preston during the 1715 Rising but a jury acquitted him of treason in May 1716,^[10] although the trial involved the family in heavy expenses.^[11] Around 1728, Towneley and his younger brother Francis, who would also become involved with the Jacobite cause, moved to France.^[12]

The English Catholic gentry formed a small, tight-knit group, including the Stricklands, a family based in Westmoreland and Catterick, North Yorkshire. It is suggested John spent time at the exile court in Rome, and served as head of household for Henry Stuart in 1743. There he would have met Francis Strickland (1691-1746), a long-time resident in Rome and one of the Seven Men of Moidart who accompanied Prince Charles to Scotland in 1745.^[13]

Career

Military

In 1731 Towneley entered Roth's regiment of the Irish Brigade as a lieutenant. He fought in the War of the Polish Succession and was present at the Siege of Philippsburg (1734), being promoted to captain in 1735.^{[dubious – discuss]}

During the

Towneley was a member of Marie Anne Doublet's salon in Paris, which met in an annexe of the Filles-Saint-Thomas convent. He may have been admitted after being sent, during his military service with messages for Doublet, by Éguilles who was also a member.^[1] At these regular gatherings of the intellectual and those eager to learn of news and scandal, the prevailing topic of conversation was literature.^[3] It is also thought each guest sat for a portrait, the hostess herself having painted some of them.^[1]

Towneley was a great admirer of the 17th-century English

Towneley felt he did not have the ability to give the spirit and humour of the original. The translation has been praised by Horace Walpole, and Henry Hart Milman, but others such as Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Suard, in the Biographie Universelle, though acknowledging its fidelity, called the diction poor and the verses unpoetical, "the work of a foreigner familiar with French but unable to write it with elegance".^[15] John Goldworth Alger, the author of Towneley's entry in the Dictionary of National Biography wrote that "it certainly lacks the swing and the burlesque rhymes of the original".^[1]

Charles Townley presented the British Museum with a copy of it containing William Skelton's portrait of the translator, dated in 1797. This may have been engraved from the portrait which must have been possessed by Madame Doublet.^[1]

A second edition of his translation, with the English text revised by Sir John Byerley and the French spelling modernised, was printed by Firmin Didot at Paris in 1819.^[1]

Death

Towneley lived in Paris for around 30 years, but never married.^[3] He died at Chiswick, London, at the residence of his nephew and namesake,^[b] early in 1782, and was buried in Chiswick churchyard. Some fragmentary manuscripts in his handwriting were included in the sale of the Towneley library in 1883.^[1]

References

Notes