Anne Home Hunter and her friends / [Jane M. Oppenheimer].

  • Oppenheimer, Jane M. (Jane Marion), 1911-1996.
Date:
[1946]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Anne Home Hunter and her friends / [Jane M. Oppenheimer]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    4/20 (page 434)
    JANE M. OPPENHEIMER* Jan. 7, 1821. Died in Holles-Street, Cavendish-square, in the 79th year other age, Mrs. Anne Hunter, widow of that distinguished physiologist John Hunter. . . . Mrs. Hunter was the eldest daughter of Mr. Robert Home, an eminent surgeon, first in the army and latterly at the Savoy. He had several other children; among whom another daughter was married to Mr. Mylne, the architect of Blackfriars Bridge; and a third, though no less amiable than her sisters, died unmarried. His sons were, Robert, bred as an artist, and now painter to the King of Lucknow, in India; Colonel Home, an officer in the Bombay establishment, now retired; and Sir Everard Home, Bart, the very eminent pupil of his brother-in-law. In 1771 Miss Home was married to Mr. John Hunter. . . . Mrs. J. Hunter became the mother of four children, of whom only two survive. . . . Since Mrs. H. became a widow, she has lived in quiet retirement, though in London. . . . Native genius was never more pleasingly united with female delicacy than in Mrs. John Hunter. . . . With every grace that could make her interesting in society, she had every per¬ sonal and social virtue that could command respect and attachment. As a daughter, a sister, a wife, a mother, and a friend, she was anxious always to exceed, rather than in the smallest degree to fail in any of her duties. The natural warmth and energy of her heart prevented, indeed, the possibility of such defect. . . . By those who best knew her, she will be lamented, in proportion to the admiration and attachment which she could not fail to inspire; and it may be said with con¬ fidence that she has not left a survivor in the world who can have either a right or a wish to detract the smallest particle from the commendations, here or else¬ where bestowed, upon her genius, her understanding, or her heart.1 So wrote, for her obituary, Anne Home Hunter’s friend of long stand¬ ing, the Venerable Robert Nares. Nares, once Chaplain to the Duke of York and assistant preacher at Lincoln’s Inn, later Archdeacon of Staf¬ ford and Canon of Lichfield, founder of the British Critic, and assistant librarian and keeper of manuscripts at the British Museum, had known the Homes for many years. He had been a schoolmate of Everard’s at West¬ minster, as Everard remembered in the dedication to the second volume of the second edition of the Practical Observations on the Treatment of Stric¬ tures in the Urethra. “Allow me to dedicate the second [edition of this vol¬ ume] to you,” Sir Everard addressed Nares, “with whom I have lived in habits of uninterrupted intimacy for half a century. * Department of Biology, Bryn Mawr in Nichols, Illustrations of Literary History 7 College. 638-40. 1 Nares [Letter to J. B. Nichols, Esq.], V [434]