Richard Whiteing

English journalist and novelist Richard Whiteing was my great-grandfather Andrew's 1st cousin. Richard's father, William, walked to London from Beverley, Yorkshire County to seek his future there, but we assume that when he returned to Beverley just before his death decades later that he did so by other means! I came across the following in a referance book called "British Authors of the 20th Century" and include it here as an example of the importance of not relying on any one source of data when doing genealogical research. This bit led me on quite a goose chase for several decades because I assumed it's contents HAD to be 100% correct... it WAS from a referance book after all!!

"Richard Whiteing, (Jul.27.1840-Jun.29.1928), English journalist and novelist, was the eldest son of William Whiteing, a clerk in the Stamps Office, and Mary Lander, who died when the boy was an infant. Richard lived with his father at Norfolk Street, the Strand, till nearly eight, when he attended school in an old palace at Bromley-by-Bow, then lived with foster parents at St. John's Wood, where he was taught by a French refugee. Apprenticed for seven years to Benjamin Wyon, a medalist and engraver of seals, Whiteing also attended evening art classes, where he met Ruskin and F.J. Furnivall. In 1866 he was secretary at two pounds a week in Paris for an Anglo-French working-class exhibition, and contributed several satirical articles on political and social subjects to the London "Evening Star". "Mr. Sprouts - His Opinions", concerning a costermonger who gets himself into prison, is a collection of articles. Whiteing acted as Paris correspondent for the London "World" and New York "World", and was correspondent to Geneva for the Alabama Arbitration Claims Commission. His first novel, "The Democracy" (1876), appeared under the pseudonym of "Whyte Thorn". Whiteing's travels took him to Spain, Vienna, Berlin, Russia, Rome and the United States (1878). He spent thirteen years on the London staff of the "Dailey News". "No.5 John Street" is Whiteing's chief claim to remembrance nowadays, a novel on the "Grand Hotel" formula which is ostensibly a report (sent to Pitcairn Islanders) on Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee of 1897......... Whiteing was granted a civil list pension in 1910 and died at Hampstead, when nearly ninety. In 1869 he had married Helen, daughter of Townsend Harris, first United States minister to Japan. PRINCIPAL WORKS: The Democracy, 1876; The Island, 1888; No.5 John Street, 1899; The Life of Paris, 1900; The Yellow Van, 1903; Ring in the New, 1906; All Moonshine, 1907; Little People (essays), 1908. ABOUT: Whiteing, R. "My Harvest" (autobiography); London Times June 30, 1928......"

First: Richard was not the eldest son, he had an older brother Robert who lived well into adulthood, married and had children. He also had an older sister, Elizabeth who died as a baby as well as a younger brother, George who out lived Richard, George died in 1939. Richard makes no mention of any of his siblings in his book however which may explain why he was thought to an only child. Second, Richard's mother did not die when he was an infant although you might think so from reading his autobiography. In Richard's autobiography, "My Harvest", written in 1915 at age 75, I found only one mention of his mother: "My mother - well, if I had the genius of Barrie, she should have a book all to herself. When I lost her fostering care, the lonely man was lucky enough to find rooms suited to his means in what was then the classic land of the London lodging-house, Norfolk Street, Strand...." [NOTE: By "Barrie" Richard was of course referring to Sir James Matthew (J.M.) Barrie. It is interesting to note that Richard's daughter-in-law Ellen "Nell" Marie Louise (DuMaurier) Whiteing is the 1st cousin of Sylvia Jocelyn (DuMaurier) Llewelyn Davies whose 5 sons (George, Jack, Peter, Michael & Nicholas) inspired Sir Barrie to write "Peter Pan". From this brief single statement many assumed his mother had died while he was still quite young and in need of her care. They also assumed that "the lonely man" was his widowed father who, having never remarried, placed his young son into the care of foster parents. Richard mentions his father a number of times in the book. Richard's mother did not die until 1886 when he was 46 years old. His father returned to Yorkshire Co. where he also died that same year. If Richard was separated from his wife by this point it may be that it was Richard who was "the lonely man". All I really know at this point is that letters written by Richard place him in journalist and children's author Alice Corkran's family's house at 45 Mecklenburgh Square between 1897 & 1916. After his separation from his wife, Richard is said to have lived for many years with Alice. He was also friendly with her sister Henriette, who wrote an intimate account of him in her work "Celebrities and I. 1901" Of course, Richard makes no mention of his own marriage to Helen Harris or of their son. Helen, by the way, was the ward/niece of Townsend Harris, not his daughter. Mr. Harris was never married; he and his mother raised his brother's orphaned children. Richard and Helen separated, so these "omissions" in his autobiography may be due to things he did not wish to "air in public". Richard's only known son, Richard Clifford Whiteing, preceded his father in death on Jan.07.1923. Of "Hall Farm", Chiddingstone, Kent Co., a late Capt. in the 13th Hampshire Regiment and Independent, he died of blood poisoning. He'd ruptured a ligament in his knee-cap after slipping and falling in a street that winter and the knee became infected following surgery to repair it. Married to Ellen "Nell" Marie Louise DuMaurier, there were no children born to the marriage. The senior Richard apparently lived out his adult years in fine company. His name is mentioned in numerous accounts of gatherings among the socially elite of his day. I recently came across his name in a 1912 " Mark Twain: A Biography", by Albert Bigelow Paine. In the chapter titled "Paris, England, and Homeward Bound", which quotes entries from the diary kept of the Samuel Clemens' travels abroad in the late 1870s, was this:

"........May 28th. This is one of the coldest days of this most damnable and interminable winter. It was not all gloom and discomfort. There was congenial company in Paris, and dinner-parties, and a world of callers. Aldrich the scintillating(1) was there, also Gedney Bunce, of Hartford, Frank Millet and his wife, Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen and his wife, and a Mr. and Mrs. Chamberlain, artist people whom the Clemenses had met pleasantly in Italy. Turgenieff, as in London, came to call; also Baron Tauchnitz, ...........Richard Whiteing was in Paris that winter, and there were always plenty of young American painters whom it was good to know........"

One reviewer of Richard's autobiography discribed him as being "...one of the most brilliant journalists of his day, and as having "...a fine old-fashioned manner...". That in his old age: "... he remained a sincere and noble idealist..", and "...was a greater man in himself than he seems in any of his books."

Over the years I've sought out copies of Richard's novels, but they are especially scarse here in the USA. Copies available through the public libraries are now so rare and fragile that often they must be special ordered and can only be read in the library. This past year, however, I found a wonderful book site on the Internet and was finally able to begin purchasing copies as they became available. I really am so grateful to the site owner; his service has been excellant! My orders were filled promptly and each book has arrived

carefully packaged and in the advertised condition. So if you are interested in purchasing "hard-to-find" books, I'd really recommend checking out:

"THADDEUS BOOKS" at: http://www.thaddeusbooks.com/index.html

Also check out these other Whiteing pages: * Whiteing...with an E * Charles Andrew Whiteing * Sarah Jane (North) and Andrew Whiteing * My Whiteing Family Tree * David J. Whiteing's Project * World Wide Whiteing Project Update * Lyle George Whiteing Sr. * Whiteing ~ Softball Hall of Fame

Front Porch (EXIT) Kaye's Corner Family (Tree) Room Attic Library