Mrs Harvey of Ickwell-Bury
(1824-1898)
22 April 1862
Volume 6, page 229, sitting number 7787.
[The sitter is identified as ‘Mrs Harvey of Ickwell-Bury’ in the Silvy daybooks. The following two entries in the daybooks are the same sitter.]
Born in Bloomsbury in 1824, Anne Jane Tennant was the daughter of Henry Tennant, at the time of her marriage described as ‘of Southampton-row, Russell-square.’
On 9 February 1842 she married John Harvey of Ickwell Bury in Bedfordshire and Finningley Park in Yorkshire (Morning Herald, 16 February 1842).
Ickwell Bury was first built in 1683 by her husband’s ancestor, another John Harvey. A Kelly’s Directory of 1898 described it as ‘A mansion of red brick, in the Queen Anne style, standing in a park and woodlands of about five hundred acres, approached by an avenue of trees about a mile in length.’
Their marriage produced at least one son and one daughter.
Annie Jane Harvey was the author of several travelogues and several works of fiction, some of which were published under the pen-name Andrée Hope.
Her works include Our Cruise in the Claymore, with a Visit to Damascus and Lebanon, published in London in 1861 under the name ‘Mrs Harvey of Ickwell-Bury.’ Under the name Andrée Hope she published Turkish Harems and Circassian Homes, published in London in 1871, and Chronicles of an Old Inn: or, A Few Words About Gray's Inn, published in London in 1887.
Five of her later works were A Terrible Night (1887), Alive and Yet Dead (1890), described in one newspaper as ‘some passages in the life of a French convict,’ The Murder in the Rue Bellechasse (1893), The Secret of Wardale Court and Other Stories (1894) and Ivan Alexandrovitch: A Siberian Romance (1897). Shortly after her death A Visit to Château d’Eu was published.
Annie Jane Harvey died at Ickwell Bury on 17 April 1898, leaving an estate valued at £5030.
In 1933 she was mentioned in an article in a provincial newspaper, a report on a local ramble by one F.W. Fenton. ‘By the cool tree-shaded road we came to Ickwell. We lingered on the green for some time and inspected Ickwell Bury from the outside. For 300 years, Ickwell Bury, which is now a preparatory school, was the property of the Harvey family, about whom you may still hear many interesting stories. How many people, I wonder have read books by Andrée Hope. It was under this name that Mrs Harvey, of Ickwell Bury, who died in 1898 and was the wife of the late Mr John Harvey, for many years chairman of the Bede Quarter Sessions, wrote a number of books. She was an accomplished musician and travelled widely’ (Biggleswade Chronicle, 26 May 1933).
[There is some hand-colouring in the area of the sitter’s face and hair. A small paper label pasted to the reverse of the mount identifies the artist as Miss Bond of Southsea. This was in fact two women, both called Elizabeth Bond, widow (1820-1897) and daughter (1845-1878) respectively of wine merchant Henry Bond.]