The Old News
Years ago, I wrote about my quest to find a portrait of popular novelist and ghostologist Catherine Crowe (1790-1872). She was an important, popular author — a big deal! — and it’s heartbreaking that the best image of her that’s floating around is a sketchy one. I say that in the sense that it’s a fairly general sketch and, given the difficulty of finding a reliable portrait of Crowe, it’s a dubious one. I was informed that there’s no original source documentation provided in the 1935 anthology that seems to have introduced it. Is it a comparable situation to the reprint of one of Crowe’s books that — instead of having a picture of Crowe herself on the cover — shows Grace Aguilar instead?
The Good News
I recently re-linked my request for help on social media, and I was rewarded with a lead on a possible portrait! A kind person and a dedicated bookworm informed me of a literary historian named Geoffrey Larken. He had collected material for a biography of Crowe, but sadly, he passed away before finding a publisher. Larken’s material was then donated to the Special Collections & Archives at the University of Kent’s Templeman Library.
According to their website, one can see a “portrait probably by Rolinda Sharples” among a variety of Crowe-related postcards and photographs. On the one hand, the artist Sharples recorded painting Crowe and her husband in 1829, a point I’ll return to below. On the other, the archive description is vague. Assuming it’s not an oil painting, is it a photograph of a painting? A photocopy of a magazine engraving of a painting? Most importantly, a portrait of whom?
Despite the mystery — and maybe because of it — it’s worth investigating. Unfortunately, I’m in the American Great Plains while Kent is a healthy hike and swim away. If anyone closer to that beguiling artifact is inspired to do some detective work and report back, I’d be very thankful.
The Very Bad News
My new online friend also led me to Larken’s 1972 letter to a journal titled Country Life. There, he explains that Sharples’ diary mentions her painting a portrait Crowe and her husband. Larken requests help in locating it, adding that he came up empty-handed at London’s “National Portrait Gallery and its Edinburgh equivalent.”
This letter is available at the British Newspaper Archive, where the search results for “‘Catherine Crowe’ portrait” include a 1978 letter from Larken, also printed in Country Life. Frustratingly, even with a subscription, I wasn’t able to open or download the actual page linked from the search results. Maybe it doesn’t matter because an article snippet provided in those search results reveals that Larken was still “hampered by my inability to find portrait of her,” meaning Crowe, six years after his earlier letter.
In other words, a scholar in a much handier part of the globe than me, devoted many years to hunting for a good, reliable image of Crowe — and presumably failed to find this Holy Grail. Alas, this does not bode well for my own efforts.
On a more positive note, that page at Templeman Library mentions where Crowe is buried: Cheriton Road Cemetery in Folkstone. That’s something I didn’t know before!
–Tim
BROM BONES BOOKS 
Hey Tim! This is fascinating info! You can make a digital appointment with the University of Kent and they may be able to assist. They were really helpful to me for my book as well as providing an image of Catherine’s grave.
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