Dolben, Digby Augustus Stewart Mackworth

(1848-1867)

   Born in Guernsey, he was brought up at Finedon Hall in Northamptonshire, and educated at Eton College, where Robert Bridges was his mentor. His staunch, almost violently anti-Catholic, Protestant parents were shocked by his outward confession to the Roman Catholic faith. He was sent down from Eton in 1863 for a few months for having made a forbidden visit to a Jesuit house. Before he was sixteen, he became a lay member of an irregular order of English Benedictines under the leadership of "Father Ignatius" and loved to wear a monk's habit and cowl and walk barefoot. He formed a romantic attachment to another pupil and wrote love letters to several male friends. Before he could go up to Oxford, he drowned in the River Welland near Luffenham, Leicestershire, trying to save the life of Walter Prichard, his tutor's young son. Robert Bridges edited a partial edition Poems of his verse in 1911. Some of his poems: "A Letter," "A Poem Without a Name I & II," "A Sea Song," "A Song of Eighteen," "The Pilgrim and the Knight."

   Sources: Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. English Poetry: Author Search. Chadwyck-Healey Ltd., 1995 (http://www.lib.utexas.edu:8080/search/epoetry/author.html). List of famous Old Etonians born in the 19th century (http://www.1-electric.com/articles/List_of_famous_Old_Etonians_born_in_the_19th_century). Oldpoetry (www.oldpoetry.com). Stanford University libraries and Academic Information Resources (http://library.stanford.edu).