Maria Graham

The Adventurous Maria Graham

By Margaret Brecknell

When Maria Graham passed away, aged 57, in November 1842, one obituary writer noted, “Few women have seen so much of mankind, or travelled so much”.

She wrote several groundbreaking travel journals, which she herself illustrated, and made a significant contribution to research into the cause of earthquakes. Yet, subsequently, she became known for little other than a popular children’s book and only in recent years have her considerable achievements been properly recognised.

This adventurous woman was born here in the North-West, in the Cumbrian village of Papcastle, near Cockermouth, on 19th July 1785. Her father, George Dundas, came from a long line of naval officers and saw plenty of action himself during the early years of the 19th century. Her mother’s family had backed the wrong side during the American War of Independence and had escaped the conflict by fleeing to Liverpool. In time, their daughter, Maria, would prove equally adventuresome in spirit.

Because of her father’s profession, the Dundas family was constantly on the move. During Maria’s early years, they are known to have spent time on the Isle of Man before moving to Wallasey on the Wirral Peninsula. At the age of 8, Maria was sent to an Oxfordshire boarding school, where she spent much of the next decade. From letters sent by Dundas family members, it seems that they believed George to have married beneath him and this may well have been the reason behind Maria’s move down south.

The following year her mother, Ann, was committed to Chew’s Asylum at Billington, near Whalley, apparently because of mental instability. Maria probably never saw her mother again and the unfortunate Ann died there in 1808.

Maria didn’t see much of her father, either, during her schooldays, but their relationship was rekindled when, in 1808, he was appointed head of the naval dockyard in Bombay (modernday Mumbai). The now 23-year-old Maria accompanied him to India, together with two of her siblings. During the five-month sea journey on board the HMS Cornelia, she met a young Scottish naval officer named Thomas Graham and the couple were married in India in December 1809. Maria toured extensively around India and Sri Lanka, writing an account of her experiences which was published upon her return to England in 1811. She claimed that her Journal of a Residence in India offered a “comprehensive view of its scenery and monuments, and of the manners and habits of its natives and resident colonists”. During her travels she visited the spectacular cave temples of Elephanta and Karli, as well as the cities of Madras and Calcutta (now Chennai and Kolkata respectively). She wrote extensively about the Hindu religion, together

Maria Graham on her travels in Chile (in carriage wearing hat)

with the culture and customs of the local people. She also sketched some of the places which she visited, thus providing an invaluable visual record in the days before photography.

Maria spent the next few years living in Blackheath with her brother, whilst her husband pursued his naval career. She did, however, resume her travel writing during an extended stay in Italy during 1819. Three Months Passed in the Mountains East of Rome recounts her experiences of touring around the Lazio region.

In 1821, Thomas Graham was given command of a Royal Navy frigate named HMS Doris. When the ship set sail for a tour of duty on the South American coastline, Maria was, for once, permitted to accompany her husband. However, disaster struck when Thomas fell ill with a fever and died during the journey. The ship carried on, as planned, to its destination of Valparaiso in Chile, where Thomas was laid to rest in the English cemetery.

As a widow far from home in a foreign land, Maria would have now been expected to return to England at the first available opportunity, or, at the very least, accept one of the offers of help she received from the sizeable British community in the Chilean seaport. Our intrepid heroine had other ideas, deciding instead to stay and live independently there.

The decision was not easy, even for such an adventurous woman as Maria. On leaving HMS Doris, she later recalled that, “I hardly know how I left it, or how I passed over the deck where one little year ago I had been welcomed with such different prospects and feelings”. Having made that first difficult step, however, she soon formulated a plan. She rented a small cottage at the heart of the Chilean community in Valparaiso where she felt “indescribable relief in being quiet and alone” and made plans to explore the rest of the country on horseback.

Maria’s subsequent adventures were recorded in Journal of a Residence in Chile During the Year 1822 and a Voyage from Chile to Brazil in 1823. Like her earlier account of her experiences in India, these books were far from being just a travelogue. She herself described her journal as “something like a picture gallery; www.lancmag.com where you have historical pieces, and portraits, and landscapes, and still life, and flowers, side by side”.

First-hand accounts of South American life during this period, seen through the eyes of a European traveller, are extremely rare and for one to be written by a woman is probably unique. Maria gained an invaluable perspective on the political and economic issues faced by Chile in its early years of independence through meeting many of the country’s leading figures such as Bernardo O’Higgins, its “Supreme Director”. She clearly developed a great affection for Chile and its people, writing, “There is so much of good in that country, so much in the character of the people and the excellence of the soil and climate, that there can be no doubt of the ultimate success of their endeavours after a free and flourishing state”.

Maria was also on hand to witness the effects of a devastating earthquake that struck Valparaiso in November 1822. Soon afterwards, Maria recorded in her journal a walk to the beach “for the purpose of tracing the effects of the earthquake along the rocks”.

She discovered that the landscape appeared to have shifted dramatically. “The alteration of level at Valparaiso was about 3 feet, and some rocks were thus newly exposed, on which the fishermen collected the scallop shell-fish, which was not known to exist there before the earthquake”, she later wrote in an account for the Geological Society. She became the first female writer to appear in the Society’s Journal, when her report was published in the 1824 edition.

Maria’s description of the aftermath of the Chilean earthquake provided one of the first eyewitness accounts of the shift in tectonic plates which scientists now know to be a primary cause of seismological activity. This flew in the face of the then scientific thinking on the subject. When geologist, Charles Lyell, subsequently used her findings in his 1830 groundbreaking work, The Principles of Geology, Maria’s reliability as a witness was questioned by the Geological Society’s President, George Bellas Greenough.

Her findings, he claimed, had been coloured “by ignorance and terror” and had not been confirmed by any of the male witnesses present at the

George Bellas Greenough Engraving from original picture by Maxim Gauci

time. Maria penned a spirited riposte, declaring that she “did not lose her presence of mind for a single moment” and she “would have been happy to have furnished any explanation of what Mr Greenough thinks doubtful parts of her statements, had he thought it worthwhile to have made any application to her”.

Contrary to Greenough’s protestations, Maria appears from her journal to have embraced the unpredictable nature of life in an earthquake zone. “I like this wild life we are living, half in the open air”, she wrote in early 1823. “Everything is an incident; and as we never know who is to come, or what is to happen next, we have the constant stimulus of curiosity to bear us to the end of every day”.

In addition, she may not have been trained formally in geology, but was far from being a novice in the subject. Maria lived in an era when enthusiastic amateurs took a keen interest in science and frequently made significant breakthroughs. On leaving school, she had lived for a while in Edinburgh and it was there, she later recalled, that “a love of science was awakened”. Such was her aptitude for the subject that she was mentored by some of Edinburgh University’s top science professors (women were not allowed to enrol on courses in her day) and she acquired the nickname “metaphysics in muslin”. Her scientific interests, particularly in the fields of botany and geology, continued throughout the rest of her life.

Maria’s findings were later confirmed by Charles Darwin, who,

Above: Palace of Santa Cruz Rio de Janeiro Sketch by Maria Graham during his famous voyage on HMS Beagle, witnessed a similar change in the landscape following another major earthquake in Chile.

Following her time in Chile, Maria’s next adventure took her to Rio de Janeiro. She became governess to the young daughter of Dom Pedro, the first ruler of the newly independent Brazil, but only stayed in the position for a few months. Some members of the predominantly Portuguese-centred court were not happy with a British tutor for the young Princess and Maria was encouraged to leave her role. She stayed in Rio for nearly another year, collecting many botanical specimens, before returning to her homeland in 1825. Two years later she married Augustus Wall Callcott, a leading English landscape painter of the day and a member of the Royal Academy. The couple embarked on a protracted year-long honeymoon, taking in some of Europe’s finest art and architecture.

This proved to be Maria’s last big overseas adventure, as, in 1831, she was permanently disabled by a burst blood vessel. Although now an invalid, she continued to write and published half a dozen or so further books. These included a popular children’s work called Little Arthur’s History of England, which stayed in publication for well over a century after her death.

Maria died of tuberculosis 180 years ago this month at home in London and was laid to rest in Kensington’s Kensal Green Cemetery. Inevitably, the inscription on her gravestone faded with the passage of time, as did the memory of her achievements. It is pleasing to note the recent revival of interest in the work of this remarkable woman, not least from the nation of which she wrote so affectionately during the 1820s. In 2008, the Chilean Government paid for her final resting place to be restored as a final tribute to the woman who, through her writing, helped to put the country on the map during the early years of its existence.

Valparaiso Sketch by Maria Graham

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