The “Pope” of Holland House
John Whishaw to Thomas Smith, 22 January 1818
Jan. 22, 1818.
I am afraid you will hardly see Warburton at present. He has been for the best part of a week with
Sir John Sebright in Hertfordshire, the
second visit he has paid within the last six weeks. If there were handsome
daughters one might have some conjectures, but I have not the least suspicion in
this case. Miss Sebright, though
mathematical and mechanical and geological, has no great personal attractions, and
some considerable singularities. Sitting next her one day, I asked whether she had
seen some new publications then much talked of. “Oh dear no!”
she replied; “it’s a poem I believe you mean, and I never read
poetry.”
I will just mention that I have become acquainted a little with
Madame Fodor, the prima donna of the opera. She sings with great taste, and is a pleasing
and amiable woman, married to a well-behaved, unaffected Frenchman.
Josephine Fodor-Mainvielle (1789-1870)
French soprano who performed in London from 1816; she published
Réflexions et conseils sur l’art du chant (1857).
Frederica Anne Sebright (1846 fl.)
The eldest child of Sir John Sebright, she was apparently living unmarried at the time of
her father's death in 1846.
Sir John Saunders Sebright, seventh baronet (1767-1846)
Son of the sixth baronet (d. 1794), he was educated at Westminster School and after
military service was an independent Whig MP for Hertfordshire (1807-34). Maria Edgeworth
described him as “quite a new character ... strong head, and warm heart, and oddity
enough for ten.”
Henry Warburton [Eliot Warburton] (1784-1858)
Educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, he was a Radical MP for Bridport in
Dorset (1826-41) who took an interest in bodysnatching.
