Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/98

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Bailey
78
Bailey

From 1884 to 1906 Baddeley, who was an untiring walker through most parts of England and a close observer of nature, mainly occupied himself with preparing the ‘Thorough Guide’ series of guide-books for Great Britain and Ireland. The series opened with the ‘English Lake District’ (1880; 11th ed. 1909). In ‘South Wales’ (1886; 4th ed. 1908), ‘North Wales,’ 2 parts (1895; 8th ed. 1909), and ‘South Devon and South Cornwall’ (1902; 3rd ed. 1908) he collaborated with the Rev. C. S. Ward. Remaining volumes include: ‘Glasgow’ (1888; 3rd ed. 1900); ‘Yorkshire,’ 2 parts (1893; 5th ed. 1909); ‘Scotland,’ 3 parts (1894): part i. ‘The Highlands’ (11th ed. 1908); part ii. ‘The Northern Highlands’ (7th ed. 1906); part iii. ‘The Lowlands’ (5th ed. 1908); ‘The Isle of Man’ (1896; 2nd ed. 1898); ‘Ireland,’ part i. (1897; 6th ed. 1909); ‘The Peak District’ (1899; 9th ed. 1908); ‘Orkney and Shetland’ (1900; 6th ed. 1908); ‘Liverpool’ (1900); ‘Bath, Bristol and forty miles around’ (1902; 2nd ed. 1908). Baddeley's guides were accurate, concise and practical. He had the gift not only of describing natural scenery but of forming a comparative estimate of its beauty. He paid special attention to the needs of the pedestrian. Though an enthusiastic mountaineer he deprecated hazardous adventure.

Baddeley died on 19 Nov. 1906, at his house at Bowness, of pneumonia, which he contracted on a visit to Selby while revising one of his Yorkshire volumes; he was buried at Bowness. In 1891 he married Millicent Satterthwaite, daughter of Robert Henry Machell Michaelson-Yeates of Olive Mount, Windermere, who survived him without issue. In 1907 a clock tower was erected at Bowness in his memory by public subscription from friends and admirers in all parts of the British Isles.

[The Lakes Chronicle, 28 Nov. 1906; Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 24 Nov. 1906; Brit. Mus. Cat.; Concerning Guide Books, by Claude E. Benson, art. in Cornhill Mag., September 1910; private information.]

G. S. W.

BAILEY, PHILIP JAMES (1816–1902), author of 'Festus,' only son of Thomas Bailey of Nottingham [q. v.], by his first wife, Mary Taylor, was born on 22 April 1816, at Nottingham, in a house, now demolished, on the Middle Pavement facing the town hall. He showed an early interest in his father's poetical tastes, which his father stimulated by taking him to see Byron's lying-in-state at the Old Blackamoor's Head in Nottingham High Street, and by encouraging him to learn by heart the whole of 'Childe Harold.' Educated in Nottingham, he was tutored in classics by Benjamin Carpenter, a Unitarian minister. In his sixteenth year he matriculated at Glasgow University with a view to the presbyterian ministry; but quickly renouncing this ambition, he began in 1833 to study law in a solicitor's office in London. On 26 April 1834 he was entered a member of Lincoln's Inn, and was called to the bar on 7 May 1840, but never practised. Meanwhile his interest in legal studies had been interrupted by the reading of Goethe's 'Faust.' The German poem took possession of his whole mind and energy, but it failed to satisfy his moral ideals, especially in its treatment of the problem of evil. He felt under compulsion to produce his own version of the legend, and retired for that purpose in 1836 to the seclusion of his father's house at Old Basford, near Nottingham, where in three years' time the original version of his poem 'Festus' was written. It was printed in Manchester by W. H. Jones, and published without the author's name in London by William Pickering in 1839.

On the whole the reception of 'Festus' was enthusiastic. If the 'Athenæum' (21 Dec. 1839) pronounced the idea of the poem to be 'a mere plagiarism from the "Faust" of Goethe, with all its impiety and scarcely any of its poetry,' Bulwer Lytton, James Montgomery, Ebenezer Elliott, J. W. Marston, R. H. Home, and Mary Howitt joined with other leading reviews in a chorus of praise (see press notices in 2nd edit.). Tennyson wrote to FitzGerald in 1846 that he had just bought the poem, and advised his friend: 'order it and read: you will most likely find it a great bore, but there are really very grand things in "Festus."' The Pre-Raphaelites discussed the work with' much admiration, although Patmore complained that Bailey was 'painting on clouds' (Pre-Raphaelite Diaries, ed. W. M. Rossetti, 229, 262, 265).

In the second edition of 1845 Bailey made large additions, and processes of addition and recasting went on in later editions until, in the eleventh or jubilee edition of 1889, the work reached more than 40,000 lines. In that volume was incorporated the greater part of three volumes of poetry, which Bailey had meanwhile published separately. These were 'The Angel World, and other Poems' (1850), which attracted the attention of the Pre-Raphaelites, and was eagerly