Biography of Edward Rowland Pickering 1778-1859

On 25th December 1768 [his father] Edward Lake Pickering (age 23) and [his mother] Mary Umfreville (age 25) were married at St Andrew's Church, Holborn [Map].

On 25th December 1778 Edward Rowland Pickering was born to Edward Lake Pickering (age 33) and Mary Umfreville (age 35).

In 1788 [his father] Edward Lake Pickering (age 43) died.

William de Morgan and his Wife Chapter 5. Glancing on, therefore, swiftly down the generations, we come to [his father] Edward Lake Pickering (age 43), of the Exchequer, the greatgrandfather of Evelyn De Morgan, who died in 1788. His wife [his mother] Mary Umfreville (age 45), lived till 1836, when she expired in her 93rd year, a wonderful old lady who boasted, approved by Burke, that she was the last of the direct branch of the Umfrevilles, exhibiting a pedigree which begins with the Saxon Kings of England, and in which William the Conqueror figmcs as a less important unit over a century and a half later. This couple had two sons, who survived them, of whom the second was Edward Rowland Pickering (age 9), of Lincoln's Inn. He married [his future wife] Mary Vere (age 5), one of the most beautiful women of her day; and to them were born eight sons and three daughters.

On 15th October 1805 Edward Rowland Pickering (age 26) and Mary Vere (age 22) were married. They had eleven children, three daughters and eight sons.

On 8th February 1810 [his son] Percival Andrée Pickering was born to Edward Rowland Pickering (age 31) and [his wife] Mary Vere (age 27).

In 1836 [his mother] Mary Umfreville (age 93) died.

On 29th March 1853 [his son] Percival Andrée Pickering (age 43) and [his daughter-in-law] Anna Spencer-Stanhope (age 28) were married at All Saints Church, Cawthorne [Map].

On 29th November 1859 Edward Rowland Pickering (age 80) died.

In 1863 [his former wife] Mary Vere (age 80) died.

William de Morgan and his Wife Chapter 5. The portraits of Edward Rowland which are extant exhibit him as a man of middle age, shrewd and kindly of countenance, and stately of pose; though of necessity they fail to convey the quaint courtliness and old-world dignity with which he impressed all who came in contact with his attractive personality.

'I delight in him,' [wrote Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope enthusiastically, after meeting him for the first time at the date of her daughter's engagement to his son].... 'He is exactly like the description of an old novel of Miss Burney's... an unmistakable high-born and high-bred gentleman, in a brown scratch-wig, all on end on his head, with an indescribable mixture of kind-heartedness, slirewdness and humour in his countenance, standing on his own foundation, and feeling that his son and his family are at least on a par with any nobleman in the land.... He is of the same class of original as Lord Stanhope and Lord Suffolk — a sort of quaint, clever creature.... His pert little daughter-elect cannot think of him without laughing, and he seemed inclined to laugh at himself!'

William de Morgan and his Wife Chapter 5. And later she writes yet more enthusiastically:—

'I cannot tell you how delightful Mr. Pickering père is, quite like what one reads about in books, but never meets in real life... how you would delight in him, with his great good-breeding and extreme quaintness. He is very clever and unusual in his integrity; I long for you to meet him, with his charming old-world manners and that brown scratch-wig standing straight upright from his head!'