Eve at the Fountain

Nelson on top of his column (Mirrorpix) born writer and philanthropist Hannah More (1745-1833) in All Saints Church, Wrington, is Baily’s work. Hannah More lived at Barley Wood, Wrington, from 1802 to 1828 and a copy of Baily’s bust of her was added to the Wrington memorial in 1926. The original is now in the garden of her former home, which is now a wedding and function venue.

The memorial plaque for Sir Philip John Miles (1773-1845) in Holy Trinity Church, Abbot’s Leigh, in 1845 is considered to be one of the finest examples of Baily’s monumental work. Sir Philip John Miles of Leigh Court was a banker, MP for

Bristol in 1835, and was Bristol’s first millionaire. He bought Leigh Court (now a wedding and function venue) and rebuilt it in 1814 to 1818 and it remained in the family until 1915. Baily’s marble neo-classical memorial depicts two female mourners either side of a draped vase on a pedestal bearing the Miles family coat of arms.

Baily retired in 1857 and died ten years later in Holloway, London, aged 79, and is buried in Highgate Cemetery. His obituary in the Western Daily Press on May 25, 1867, noted: “His chisel was always remarkable for the refinement and gracefulness with which it wrought the beauty of women and children.”

The Bristol Times and Mirror of May 29 contained a letter from someone signing themselves FHH, who was “one who feels it an honour to be allied to him by ties of blood as well as affection” saying he/she was with Baily during the previous summer when he had paid his last visit to his native city, and went on to note Baily was ‘“simple and unaffected in manner … full of fun and genial sociability”.

The Art Journal of July 1867 said: “His name must always be referred to as one of the most successful and accomplished British sculptors of the nineteenth century”.

Despite this praise Baily died out of fashion and bankrupt. One of his sons followed in the sculpting profession but without his success. Baily’s nephew, William Helier Baily (1819-1888), also born in Bristol, was a noted palaeontologist and assistant curator at Bristol Museum from 1837 to 1844.

Edward Hodges Baily will always be best remembered for his creation of Nelson’s statue but he also left over 130 portrait busts and bas reliefs of the great and the good, and several examples of his fine work in his home city of Bristol.

EVE at the Fountain was the making of Baily’s career. It was inspired by a passage from John Milton’s Paradise Lost in which Eve, after her creation, sees her own reflection in water and does not at first realise what it is until the voice of God explains it, and tells her she’s now going to meet Adam:

That day I oft remember, when from sleep I first awaked, and found myself reposed Under a shade on flowers, much wondering where And what I was, whence thither brought, and how.

Not distant far from thence a murmuring sound

Of waters issued from a cave, and spread

Into a liquid plain, then stood unmoved

Pure as the expanse of Heaven; I thither went

With unexperienced thought, and laid me down

On the green bank, to look into the clear

Smooth lake, that to me seemed another sky.

As I bent down to look, just opposite

A shape within the watery gleam appeared,

Bending to look on me: I started back,

It started back; but pleased I soon returned,

Pleased it returned as soon with answering looks

Of sympathy and love: There I had fixed

Mine eyes till now, and pined with vain desire,

Had not a voice thus warned me; “What thou seest,

“What there thou seest, fair Creature, is thyself;

“With thee it came and goes: but follow me,

“And I will bring thee where no shadow stays

“Thy coming, and thy soft embraces, he

“Whose image thou art; him thou shalt enjoy

“Inseparably thine, to him shalt bear

“Multitudes like thyself, and thence be called

“Mother of human race.” What could I do,

But follow straight, invisibly thus led?

(Picture above: © Ad Meskens/ Wikimedia Commons)