The Brocks of Cambridge
Two brothers (Charles Edmund and Henry Matthew) gained a large reputation with their illustrations for the works of Jane Austen and other English classics.
The biographer of the family, Clifford Michael Kelly, started out with the intention of writing just about Charles and Henry, the most famous of them, but realised that all the siblings worked together and supported each other.
Edmund married Mary Ann Louise Pegram (1835 – third quarter 1912)[4] at Regent's Park Chapel on 23 February 1867.
The Pegams were an artistic family, and one of Mary Ann's nephews was the sculptor Henry Alfred Pegram RA (27 July 1862 – 25 March 1937).
[13] The Cambridge school had a good reputation and qualified for grants from the Science and Art Department[note 4] at South Kensington.
[1]: 134 The family members were regular contributors to amateur concerts for good causes, and especially for the social events for the St. Andrew's Street Chapel.
Bertha and Katharine manned stalls at the Puritan Bazaar in the Guildhall to raise money for the new chapel, while the brothers performed in the concert.
General Election of 1906 Edmund and three of his sons were recorded as attending the Guildhall meeting for the Liberal Party candidate in 1909.
[42] After their marriage, the Edmund and Mary Ann Brock moved first to Leighton Road, Kentish Town, North London where Alice was born in (1868).
All four brothers worked together in this studio,[note 14] with Charles and Henry returning to it by day even after they had married and moved out of the main house.
[53] The members of the school had all been fired by the literature, art, costume or atmosphere of England in the eighteenth century and became dealers in nostalgia on a very large scale.
[8]: 184 It was a style of illustration harking back to pre-industrial rural England,[54] which specialized in the nostalgic recreation of a by-gone golden era before the ravages of industrialization.
[55] In reality, it was only the introduction of photo-mechanical reproduction of drawings instead of wood engravings that enabled the fine pen lines distinctive of the school.
[56] Although Richard drew in the same style, he can hardly be called a member of the school as when he turned to illustration in 1920, he concentrated on contemporary topics rather than harking back to The Regency and Georgian eras.
She died from peritonitis exhaustion at East View,[note 16] Cliff Hill, Gorleston, Great Yarmouth.
C. J. Smith, the third headmaster of the Higher Grade School noted that the Brocks were the most famous of its pupils, and that early drawings and paintings by Charles were among his most prized possessions.
[60] Charles had at least some art training from the talented Cambridge sculptor Henry Wiles (1838 – 11 August 1930)[61] who was a near neighbour of the Brocks when they lived in North Terrace.
[26] Richard did some illustration for The Infant's Magazine and The Family Friend in 1897, but Kirkpatrick states that he then concentrated on painting for the next 20 years.
He only exhibited Kelly says that Richard undoubtedly preferred to paint cows and horses in meadows by the Cam to any other subject.
About this time also he began to contribute sporadically to various periodicals including:[12]: 74 Richard married Mary Cooke (27 November 1882 – ), a schoolmistress, at the Independent Chapel, Hanworth Road, Hounslow, London on 25 August 1917.
In 1918, Richard appears to have applied for an exemption from National Service, as he later withdrew this on the grounds that he was engaged in War Work as a volunteer.
[76] Thomas won a sizarship, i.e. at least a partial scholarship to study mathematics at St. John's College in Cambridge, being admitted there on 13 October 1892.
[93] Cambridge University Press recently reissued a classic text on Fossil Plants which features at least one illustration by Thomas.
[26] Katharine might have become an artist like her brothers, but as Kelly notes, in the manner of the time she stayed at home as the mainstay of the household as her mother grew old and infirm.
She was the president of the St. Andrew's Girls Guild,[18] supported fundraising efforts, and was a regular performer at social functions, manning a stall at the 1903 Puritan Bazaar with her sister Bertha and featuring in the concert afterwards with Charles and Thomas.
[38] Katharine not only did the sweets with her sister-in-law Annie Dudley, but also contributed to the evening concert at the sale of work for the Baptist Missionary Society in 1908.
Like the Brocks, the Smiths were a close family and, after the death of the third sibling Dudley James Smith (18 December 1883 – 18 August 1917) in Flanders during World War I, the electoral register shows Harold and Katharine lived next door to his widow Gertrude Alice (Struggles) (4 October 1888 – 14 August 1974).
[note 26] Barbara died in Burgess Hill, West Sussex on 31 July 2000, and was cremated in Cambridge on 16 August 2000, with her family taking away the ashes.
Countless they seem, yet, thinking to beguile Some of the tedious moments left of night, Idly I undertake the task, and while I know it hopeless, count those points of light.
it slowly dawns upon mind That this is sunlight creeping o'er the bed And I, no longer weary, wake to find Sleep was guest, all unknown till she fled.
