Meeting The Bamfords: The Accounts of Victor Aimé Huber and of Fanny Lewald

Abstract

The distinguished German scholar and political commentator Victor Aimé Huber travelled to Blackley in 1844 to see Samuel Bamford on the recommendation of Thomas Carlyle, in order to pursue his study of the Social Question in England. In 1850 his compatriot, the celebrated novelist and travel writer Fanny Lewald, on a tour of England and Scotland, paid a social visit to the Bamfords instigated by the writer Geraldine Jewsbury, who subsequently arranged for her to see Samuel Bamford again, in Manchester. The reports provide a wealth of information about the Bamfords’ circumstances, opinions and reflections on their past. They also point up differences between English and German culture, class and social conventions. For both Huber and Lewald, meeting the Bamfords was one of the most revealing experiences of their stay in Britain. Whilst reviews of Passages in the Life of a Radical in the German press, like the critique in the Quarterly Review, contain both partisan and measured appraisal, by the late 1840s Bamford’s account of Peterloo had become the standard reference text in German-speaking lands.