The Life Of The Author Of The Letters Of Junius, The Rev. James Wilmot
(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)
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Olivia Serres, known as Olive, was a British painter and writer, born at Warwick. She is also known as an English impostor, who claimed the title of Princess Olive of Cumberland.
Background
Olive was born Olivia Wilmot on the 3rd of April 1772. She was the daughter of Robert Wilmot, a house painter, in Warwick. At the age of ten she was sent to board with her uncle, James Wilmot, rector of Barton-on-the-Heath. In 1789 she rejoined her father in London.
Education
She had a talent for painting and studied art with John Thomas Serres, (1759–1825), marine painter to George III.
Career
She devoted herself to painting and literature, producing a novel, some poems and a memoir of her uncle, the Rev. Dr Wilmot, in which she endeavoured to prove that he was the author of the Letters of Junius. In 1817, in a petition to George III, she put forward a claim to be the natural daughter of Henry Frederick, duke of Cumberland, the king's brother, and in 1820, after the death of George III, claimed to be the duke's legitimate daughter. In a memorial to George IV she assumed the title of Princess Olive of Cumberland, placed the royal arms on her carriage and dressed her servants in the royal liveries. Her story represented that her mother was the issue of a secret marriage between Dr Wilmot and the princess Poniatowski, sister of Stanislaus, king of Poland, and that she had married the duke of Cumberland in 1767 at the London house of a nobleman. She herself, ten days after her birth, was, she alleged, taken from her mother, and substituted for the still-born child of Robert Wilmot. Mrs Serres's claim was supported by documents, and she bore sufficient resemblance to her alleged father to be able to impose on the numerous class of persons to whom any item of so-called secret history is attractive. In 1823 Sir Robert Peel, then Home Secretary, speaking in parliament, declared her claims unfounded, and her husband, who had never given her pretensions any support, expressly denied his belief in them in his will. Mrs Serres died on the 21st of November 1834.
In 1832 Lady Anne wrote a history called "The Authentic Records of the Court of England for the Last Seventy Years", which contained many accusations of scandals. The publisher, J. Phillips, was prosecuted and convicted but fled into exile. Serres has been identified as the author of an expanded version of the text which included more scandals, from financial malpractice up to murder; the resulting book was published in two volumes under the title "The Secret History of the Court of England", but still claiming that Lady Anne Hamilton was the author. For her part, Lady Anne disclaimed any connection with the two volume publication. "The Secret History of the Court of England" was suppressed in the United Kingdom, a fact noted when it was much reprinted in the United States.
(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)
Connections
She married John Thomas Serres in 1791.
The Serres came to a parting of the ways, with acrimony on both sides: from Serres because Olive had had several affairs when he was away, and from Olive because she was given an allowance of only £200 per annum. George Fields, an artist friend, moved in with Olive and she gave birth to his son prior to her divorce in 1804.
They had two daughters. The eldest, who married Antony Ryves, a portrait painter, upheld her mother's claims and styled herself Princess Lavinia of Cumberland. In 1866 she took her case into court, producing all the documents on which her mother had relied, but the jury, without waiting to hear the conclusion of the reply for the crown, unanimously declared the signatures to be forgeries. Mrs Serres's pretensions were probably the result of an absurd vanity. Between 1807 and 1815 she had managed to make the acquaintance of some members of the Royal family, and from this time onwards seems to have been obsessed with the idea of raising herelf, at all costs, to their social level. The tale once invented, she brooded so continuously over it that she probably ended by believing it herself.