A collection of very rare printed material and an ALS related to John Dinely’s eccentric search for a wife.
Sir John Dinely (c.1729-1809), who styled himself “the Courteous Baronet”, was the son of Edward Goodere who died young and insane. Dinely inherited the baronetcy of his great-uncle but quickly ran through the money and was forced, through the assistance of his friends, to obtain the pension of “a Poor Knight of Windsor” which also entitled him to a grace-and-favour apartment in Windsor Castle. Sir John lived a peculiar life abstaining from “luxurious” foods such as meat, tea, sugar and butter, spending his days as a Royal hanger-on dressed in ancient clothes and holding a “formidable umbrella.” Dinely was also obsessed with genealogy and spent his days attempting to trace his lineage with the hope of recovering a vast fortune.
In an attempt to raise cash, Dinely also decided to find himself a wife and began a highly unusual courtship in the press by placing advertisements in newspapers and producing his own printed broadsides and handbills appealing for willing female suitors to come forward and offer themselves as a potential wife. Dinely operated a financial sliding scale of investment with ladies under twenty-one years of age having to possess £300 p.a. from twenty-one to thirty years £500, and from thirty to forty £600. Of spinsters in the last category Dinely admits, “few will be eligible with less than a Thousand,” but “widows under forty-five will have such Abatement as personal Charms and accomplishments entitle them to expect.”
The printed documents here are largely circulars produced by Dinely to be distributed amongst female suitors. The most famous is Dinely’s large broadside which features a full-length engraving of himself titled To the Fair Ladies of Great Britain, old or Young (1799). Dinely writes:
“Sir John is aware that some few, prejudiced by etiquette may smile at his mode of address:- he has once experienced its comfortable effects, and will not be dissuaded from giving it a decided preference to the tedious forms of fashionable routine”
It has generally been assumed that no woman ever took Dinely up on his offer, but our letter–the only ALS by ‘the Courteous Baronet’ we have ever seen or heard of–shows that one almost did, unless she was teasing/exploiting him. Mrs. Cummings (addressed “at Mr. Bonner’s, Agent to the General Post Office, n° 87 Lombard Street, London”) had answered a newspaper advertisement, and Dinely threw himself at her: “Your Cordial Judicious Generous and Elegant Manner of Writing makes me Determined to Prefer you to any Other of your Sex, and be assured my Constant Gratitude shall join with my ever Loving Endeavour continually to repay you for the Joyfull News of your Fixed Resolution to Unite with me in the Marriage State”. After more hyperbole, Dinely gave details of his expectations (“my Extensive Estates will be all your own in Fee if I sh[ould] Die before you”), references to his legal representatives in London, and some personal data (“I am 49 Years of Age and upwards, in Good Health, of a very Loving Disposition and never was the least affected with Drinking in my Life, and Truely Benevolent.”) The catch, however, was that he was temporarily a fugitive from creditors: “all my ready money was Expended by Unforeseen Expenses, and [I] was obliged to go to Stirling to support myself with a bare income”), and he could not even afford to come to London to marry. He had, he said, three well-off sisters in Gloucester, but he could hardly approach them, as “they are averse to my marrying as my then wife will be Heir to what would otherwise fall to the female line”.
A remarkable collection of material connected to Dinely which casts new light not only on Dinely’s eccentric character but on the status and nature of marriage and the position of women in society at the end of the 18th-century. The ALS by Dinely would be essential for anyone undertaking a new study of Dinely.
