Guest, Charlotte

Guest was born in Uffington, Lincolnshire . Her parents were Albemarl Bertie, 9th Earl of Lindsay, and his second wife, Charlotte Susanne Elizabeth Layard. At age six, Charlotte lost her father, and her mother married a second time to the Rev. Peter Pegus, whom Charlotte did not like. She was very talented in learning, and, despite her stepfather's negative attitude to female education, she independently studied French and Italian and studied with her brothers' teachers in Greek , Latin , Persian and Hebrew . She was also interested in history and archeology . ^[6]

At age 21, Charlotte moved to London, where she met with her future husband, John Josiah Guest, the owner of the metallurgical company Dowlais Iron Company and a member of Parliament from the Merthyr Tydfil constituency. The couple had a big age difference: while Charlotte, in 1833, when they were married, was 21, her husband was 49. They moved to Dowlays, Merthyr Tydfil, Wales . The marriage was very happy, the Gest had ten children. Charlotte took part in the work of her husband’s company, translating technical documentation into French, helped his political career, studying Welsh and communicating with local voters, and also actively supported his philanthropic activities - in particular, Guest was widely known as the Welsh art patron. ^{[6] [7]} In 1838, John Guest was granted the title of baronet . ^[8]

After the deterioration of her husband’s health, Charlotte became more engaged in business, and after his death in 1852, she completely took over the management of the company. In 1855, Charlotte remarried Charles Schreiber and transferred the management of the enterprise to J.T. Clark. ^[9] Schreiber was a classic philologist and Member of Parliament from Cheltenham (1865–1868) and Poole (from 1880). The couple left Wales and traveled to Europe for many years, collecting a collection of ceramics, subsequently transferred to the Victoria and Albert Museum . Charlotte also collected fans , board games and playing cards . Her collection of fans was the first known in history, she wrote several books on English and European fans. ^[6]

Lady Charlotte Schreiber died on January 15, 1895 after a short illness, having survived her second husband for 11 years. Her eldest son, Ivor, became the first Baron Wimborne and married Lady Cornelia Spencer Churchill, the eldest daughter of the 7th Duke of Marlborough and Aunt Winston Churchill . They became the parents of Wimborne's first Viscount. Among the descendants of Charlotte Guest are also the American Guest, Counts of Bessborough, Viscounts of Chelmsford and others.

In Wales, Guest studied the Welsh language and talked with writers and scholars, including Thomas Price, Wilmark , Gualler Mehine. She translated several medieval songs and poems, and finally "Mabinogion", which was a huge success. The name "Mabinogion" for these stories was introduced precisely by Guest; the word "Mabinogi" technically refers only to the first four stories, known as the "Four Branches of Mabinogi." The word “mabynnogyon” Gest used in one of the texts was applied to the meeting as a whole.

Stories from The Mabinogion were included in William Owen Pugh 's Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales; he translated them, but never published them until his death in 1835. Guest did not rely on Pew translations, although she used the Welsh dictionary, which he completed in 1803. Thus, her Mabinogion was the first published translation of these stories. It was published in several volumes between 1838 and 1849, the first volumes were devoted to materials related to Arthuriana . Volume I included the chivalrous novels “Owain, or the mistress of the source”, “Peredir, son of Evraug” and “Gerent and Enid”, volume II - the novels “Kilhuh and Olven” and “Dream of Ronabui”. Tennyson used The Gerent and Enid as the basis for two poems about Gerent in The Royal Idylls .

• Schreiber, Lady Charlotte Guest . Biography from British Authors of the 19th Century; HW Wilson Company. 1936.