 Yn ymddych chi'n gweld am ymddangos yng ngyfroedd yma yn gyfroedd yma ar y pobl yn y centelau, yn ymddangos fy ysgol yng Nghymru, ac yn ymddych chi'n gweithio'r cyfroedd. Yn y 31r ym January 1784, y llyfr yn ymddych chi'n gweld yng Nghymru, Mary Hamilton, yn ymdill yn gyfroedd, yng nghymru, yng Nghymru, yng Nghymru, yng Nghymru, yng Nghymru, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10, 10, 11, 6, 7, 11, 11, 6, 7, 11, 6, 11, 6, 11, 6, 1, 9, 7, 10, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, a 12, 17, 22, 23, 25, 26 Wyth Moly Netz, y second wife Emma Hamilton being the more famous of the two. Writing afterwards in her diary, Mary Hamilton reported how, during the course of the evening, the Duchess went out of the room and sent for me in the most handsome manner, made me a beautiful and fine present, a dowj gametees she styled it. This was a watch and chains of the newest fashion, the chain of silk, decorated with tassels and other ornaments of steel, gold and pearl beads, with a seal and other trinkets suitable in elegance. This extraordinary gift from the Duchess was in fact meant as a commemorative token of Hamilton's services and negotiating the sale from Sir William Hamilton to her patron, the Duchess of this. A Roman-figured vase then known as the Barbarini, now known as the Portland vase. Despite its already well established fame in Britain, the transfer of the vase was executed in secret and the watch given to Hamilton was no doubt a reward for her discretion and skill and new for any negotiations between both parties. Days later on the 5th of February 1984, Hamilton wrote again in her diary, my uncle and the Duchess settled about the vase entirely. The Duchess made him give her an impression of his arms to have a seal cut for me for the watch that she has given me. This physical conjoining of the Duchess' gift with Sir William's arms provides compelling evidence of Hamilton's role in bringing both parties together. As the embodiment of their collaboration, the watch will be visible to all and yet remain the private expression of intimate and discreet thanks legible only to those in her closest circle. The Duchess of Portland's association with the vase has been routinely dismissed and discredited by chronic Elizabeth's history. Whilst her very Hamilton's role in leading these negotiations between her uncle and the Duchess in the winter of 1783 into 1784 has been almost entirely overlooked. Instead an oft rehearsed and factually incorrect narrative of the vase, sorry, that the vase was named after the Duke of Portland who owned it from 1786 to 1945 as taken hold. And even today the display text that accompanies the vase in the Roman Gallery at the British Museum does perpetuate this myth, although the online catalogue of the BM does give a much more thorough history of the subject. One possible reason for the early removal of the Duchess from the vase's story is his secrecy that surrounded its sale. As Josiah Wedgwood noted in his later 1788 account of the vase, I quote, By Sir William Hamilton it was disposed of into the late Duchess Portland's collection but with so much secrecy at her grace's request that she was never known even by her own family to be the possessor of it. In this paper I want to turn to an archive of previously unknown letters between uncle and niece as well as similarly neglected diary entries from Hamilton, all of which are kept now at the John Rylins Library of University of Manchester to reveal a crucial and otherwise overlooked moment in the vase's history, one shaped by contemporary ideas of antiquarian work and gender, private and public identities, familial, intellectual, artistic and sociable collaboration. 18th century interest in the vase was twofold. Firstly in the vase itself. Within this we might think about its Roman history. So the vase was buried in the tomb of the Emperor Alexander Severus and his mother Julia Mamea who were assassinated together very brutally in 2-5 AD. We might also think about its archaeological history. It was excavated from their tomb at Montec d'Obrano outside Rome in 1582. Beyond this was interest in the vase's history as a collected object and its movement through various European collections and also the elusive meanings of its decorative scheme. Within antiquarian circles this was the subject of heated debate and indeed continues to engage scholars today. In 1786 the Gentleman's Magazine reported on quote the inconsistent ideas of our modern antiquarians concerning the application of this monument. Its material qualities were equally mysterious to those in the 18th century and although now it's known that the vase is in fact made of glass materials including basalt and alabaster were suggested which now seems quite baffling. As well as this interest in the vase as an object was a focus on its potential for reproduction and dissemination via sketches, prints, written descriptions and to scale replicas such as those most famous and made later on by Josiah Wedwood. Prints such as this one produced in the 17th century and this later on which was commissioned by Sir William Hamilton actually were regularly made and used by collectors and artists alike. For Sir William and his circle the vase was an important and unique monument in the ancient world which had the potential to intervene favourably in British art and became co-opted into nationalist discourses. By 1782 Sir William had seen the vase in James Byer's showroom in Rome and could not resist buying it. Later he described his impetuous purchase to Wedwood and I think this is probably a behaviour we can all recognise. He says the person I brought it off in Rome will do me the justice to say that the superior excellence of this exquisite masterpiece struck me so much at first sight that I eagerly asked whether he would sell it. He answered yes, but never under a thousand pounds. Soon after this purchase, Sir William's ambitions for the vase his use in furthering a British school were tempered with the need to recuperate what transpired to be a significant financial expense. Whilst in March 1784 he presented the vase for inspection at the Society of Antiquaries he had in fact already sold it in secret to the Duchess of Portland first recovering some of his money. Although he continued to cultivate his association with the artefact publicly in early 1784 he was already suffering from increasing anxiety about the vase's material fragility and the implications and responsibilities of possessing such a famous object turning increasingly as we shall see to his niece Mary for practical support and his endeavour to rid himself of it. Priority's return to London, Sir William's relationship with Mary Hamilton was rooted in epistolary and material culture, particularly in the exchange of antiquities. Writing from Naples in November 1782 after the death of his first wife Catherine he declared in a letter, I have set aside for you an antique ring which was constantly worn by a poor Lady H and which I will send to you by the first opportunity. Such items simultaneously antique and personal, ancient and immediate bodily and scholarly served to transcend and revision the boundaries between uncle and niece. Hamilton was invited to take up responsibilities that had previously been her arms in attending to Sir William's social niece. Before leaving Italy Sir William confided in her, I hope it is needless to assure you my dear niece you are in possession of my sincere affection and that you will ever find in me a true friend. By Sir William's arrival in Britain in 1783 and with him many of the items in his own collection including vase Mary Hamilton was uniquely positioned within an influential group of people that included Horace Walpole and Joshua Reynolds whose expertise and tastes her uncle fully intended to harvest in order to promote and ultimately sell of ours. Interest in Sir William's collection ignited immediately evidenced in this fascinating letter dating from November 1783 in which a servant of Horace Walpole's writes to the blue stocking Salon hostess and Hamilton's friend Elizabeth Feasie he writes Mr Walpole will certainly wait on Mrs Feasie tomorrow but with all his regard for her he hopes she will not interpret it as a visit solely for her sake. In a later edition by Feasie she has terrible handwriting at this point in life at the bottom which was recycled and sent on to Hamilton Feasie declares I will not be convenient to you madam if you do not invite Sir William Hamilton who all my friends are so fond of I expect you will make us acquainted The letter makes plain the systematic networks of social organisation that Hamilton operated within as well as his centrality in scheduling her uncle's social calendar. By the winter of 1783 knowledge of Feasie's presence in London had reached the Duchess of Portland he began to seek out Sir William for further discussion. In December he wrote to his niece who was staying as a guest at the Duchess's country house of Ulster Park as soon as the Duchess comes to town I will wait upon her and show her the vase which I dare say her grace is eager to see. By the end of the month the Duchess had taken it with winter residence in her Vastenden townhouse in Premier Gardens Whitehall accompanied by Mary Delaney and Mary Hamilton. This was a busy period in the life of the Portland collection. Hamilton's diaries from these weeks are filled with references to cleaning, sorting viewing and organising the cabinets of shells and other natural history curiosities that were held in the house. Certainly it was a time of intense collecting and curatorial activity for the Duchess and it's within this context that the vase entered her collection. On New Year's Eve 1783 Hamilton went with the Duchess and Delaney travelling across the cold wintery city by coach from Whitehall to Sir William's lodgings in a hotel in King Street St. James's which I think is a couple of streets in that direction. In order to view the vase for the first time in her diary she describes how the Duchess was already there, saw the fine vase, et cetera, stayed there until half past three o'clock and the Duchess and I went home with Mrs Delaney and she puts in parentheses Mrs D's eyesight so well again that she saw the vase. For the Duchess and her friends the vase was visually and bodily enlightening. In Delaney's case it literally enables her eyesight so well again that she sees the vase emphasising its effectiveness as a restorative object and its aesthetic power in provoking corporeal as well as intellectual response. 18th century visual culture of antiquarian and carceral activity regularly designates this sort of work as overtly masculine and sexualised after showing old men the stiviously peering of fleshy forms rendered in ancient marble. Practitioners are often shown as in the wrongs and on the right here aided in their supposedly discerning psyche of ocular devices that proved almost infinite opportunity for satire and there's a really great article on those. However in Hamilton's account Delaney's vision is not piercing or perverse but rather is itself restored by physical encounter with the vase. Instead of being the object of a culturally specific and obliquely performative voyeurism under the gaze of Delaney, Hamilton and the Duchess the vase becomes imbued with a power to in turn where it's onlookers and what I think is a really interesting I think that there is a fairly gendered reading of this encounter. Discussion of the experience as bodily and emotionally transformative continued when the next day Delaney wrote to Hamilton of the viewing the calm delightful society of yesterday not forgetting the vase itself did be more good than freezing fingers can express. Beyond this small group present at the first intimate viewing the Duchess's interest in the vase remained a secret maintained by Hamilton's complex practical social maneuvering. In a fascinating passage in her diary she describes a particularly memorable gathering in which she is the only possessor of all this information is drawn to I think quite a farcical series of miscommunications that written later in her diary take on a sort of literary character reflective of Hamilton's perception of herself as a central node in these negotiations. So whilst visiting Delaney at a home on the 3rd of January 1784 with Hester Shafone who was a writer of Condor Books and a fellow member of the Blue Stockings Hamilton receives what she describes as a secret message to me from the Duchess. Unable to speak openly or respond to the note Hamilton describes biding her time dining with friends and afterwards looking over some prints. It soon transpires however that Delaney is involved in this entry. Hamilton writes that under the colour of getting me to look at a book she took me to her bedroom and told me what the Duchess wanted me to do to purchase the bars for my uncle Sir William. Next Hamilton reports in her diary I wrote a note to Sir William to come to me but he was out. No sooner had Hamilton done this than the Duchess, the Bishop of Exeter and Sir William Musgrave came to Delaney's for tea. In a calamitous twist Hamilton writes my uncle Sir William also came without having received my message. Hamilton with her characteristic tact and intelligence waited until Sir Poem, the Bishop of Musgrave had left before taking her uncle down to the parlour under the pretense of showing him the pictures and then told him what the Duchess wished about the bars. The next morning Sir William wrote to his niece I had been thinking much my dear Miss Hamilton upon what passed last night and now I will open my mind freely to you on the subject and you may see the use of what I write as far as you think proper indicating not only Hamilton's discreet abilities as a broker of the deal but also the potency of their material correspondence in opening channels of cognitive communication between uncle and niece. Hamilton's responsibilities in the sale continued until the end of January 1784 when increasing the anxious to give up the bars to his new owner Sir William wrote her sorry Sir William wrote her I think the enclosed receipt would secure the Duchess in any accident if any accident should happen to me before the bars is delivered to her grace. I had assumed wish the Duchess would keep the bars I have daily plagues on the subject. The extent of Sir William's social and practical reliance on Hamilton is evident in her diary from the same day in which she notes his servant was to deliver the bars into my hands and her literal underscoring of my hands carved into the page of her diary testifying to her keen perception of her role as purveyor of the bars. In a final letter to Hamilton Sir William declared I am convinced that if the Duchess does make the purchase her grace nor any of her family members will ever be losers for such very capital and well-known pieces will always bear their full value. The truth of Sir William's words would be felt with acute and painful irony when only after a year of owning bars secretly the Duchess of Portland died. It's pleading her museum to be put up for auction in the spring of 1786. Displayed at her white hall home the Duchess's collection shifted from a private assemblage to the realms of public commercialism as excited crowds of tourists and collectors alike flopped a bit on items. So they accompanied sale catalogue which was titled The Catalogue of Portland Museum. This is the frontage piece from it by Hamilton Bars taking centre stage there. It was published ahead of the auction and announced to widespread excitement the inclusion of the bars as its penultimate lot. So here I've got as well the final page from a surviving copy of the catalogue. I've done an arrow to it and that's the description of the bars. And to remember in this catalogue who has inserted one of Cipriani's Prince of the Bars and a sort of extra illustrative practice. Of the sale Horace Walpole wrote I have heard that Sir William's renowned bars which had disappeared with so much mystery is again discovered not in the tomb but in the treasury of the Duchess of Portland. Walpole's allusion to both the tomb and treasury of the Duchess captured a key element of the auction and its fiction of celebrity cultivated for the benefit of a paying public relationship between the Duchess in death and her material possessions. A connection further underscored by the bars' historical connection to the Roman matriarch Mimea and its previous internment as a funerary urn inside her tomb outside Rome. One attendee of the auction Lady Annabelle Grey reported seeing the bars in situ at the sale where it was, and a quote oddly hung up like a lantern above the stairs. You can hear the faint screaming of Curio Tazora. This dramatic display was enhanced in the final moments of the sale which had lasted 38 days in total. When the Duchess's son, the Third Duke of Portland won back the bars in a bidding war with several other people including I think Horace Walpole himself. He previously known nothing about the bars and he had to buy it back for the fairly extortionate son of 980 guineys as noted in his family's surviving collections and cementing the narrative of his ownership and its association with the male members of the family that continues to endure to this day. Thank you.