Helen Pumphrey's sketchbook (28 x 44 cm) contains fourteen pages of calligraphy, illuminated writing, and drawings. Included are poems, hymns, and botanical lists in English, German, and French. Also two pencil sketches of outdoor scenes, and sketches of parts of plants. One drawing is of five styles of architectural columns. The sketchbook contains a bookbinder’s ticket on front paste-down.
Helen Pumphrey (1839-1877) was born in and spent much of her life in Worcester, England. She married landscape painter William Clark Eddington in 1864.
Helen Pumphrey’s parents were Stanley Pumphrey (1805-1871) and Mary Westcombe (ca.1806-1845). Census records list Stanley as a "Wax & Tallow Chandler & insurance agent employing 1 clerk, 3 men, and 2 boys" in 1851, and as a "Commission Agent" in 1861. In 1856, Helen began to draw and copy poems in a bound sketchbook that was purchased from Edward Freeman, a bookbinder and stationer with a shop at 12 Broad St. in Worcester. In 1864, Helen Pumphrey married William Clark Eddington (1838-?) at Tounton in Somerset. Census records refer to his occupation as "Artist - Water Color Painting" in 1871, and as "Landscape Painter" in 1881 and 1891. Helen and William had five children - a daughter who died in infancy, William C. Eddington (b.1868), Anna Clark Eddington (b.1870), Joseph C. Eddington (b.ca.1873), and Helen C. Eddington (b. ca.1875).
During their 13 years of marriage Helen and William lived in Worcester, Guildford in Surrey, and Harlech in North Wales. In 1877 Helen became ill with what her brother Stanley’s biographer described as a "hemorrhage" which caused "consumption [to] set in". Helen died between October and December of 1877. Her husband William remarried five years after her death and had several children by his second wife, Alice.
Helen (Pumphrey) Eddington’s sketchbook was given to her oldest surviving daughter Anna Clark Eddington in 1894 when Anna was about 23 years old. Anna was seven years old when her mother Helen died.
