Last updated: February 9, 2022
Person
Lady Victoria Welby
Quick Facts
Significance:
Youngest author to date to write an account of a trip through Mammoth Cave.
Place of Birth:
London, England
Date of Birth:
April 27, 1837
Place of Death:
Harrow, London Borough of Harrow, Greater London, England
Date of Death:
March 29, 1912
Place of Burial:
Denton, South Kesteven District, Lincolnshire, England
Cemetery Name:
St Andrew Churchyard
“And we must not be misled by the popular notion that only a few of us can or may take up the vocation of pioneer…every one of us is in one sense a born explorer: our only choice is what world we will explore, our only doubt whether our exploration will be worth the trouble.” ―Lady Victoria Welby
Lady Victoria Alexandrina Maria Louisa Stuart-Wortley Welby-Gregory was born on April 27, 1837, to the Honorable Charles James Stuart-Wortley-Mackenzie (1802-1844) and Lady Emmeline Charlotte Elizabeth Manners (1806-1855). She was given the name Victoria in honor of her godmother and cousin Queen Victoria. As a small child, she was often described as having a “weak constitution” and even contracted scarlet fever. For this reason, her mother kept her out of public school. When her father died, her mother saw an opportunity for travelling the globe, a past-time many wealthy Victorian women afforded themselves. The “weak constitution” that kept her home from school did not keep her home from the world. In 1844, mother and daughter set out on a world tour. She would later credit her independent thinking to these “world room lessons” that her mother provided.
Journey to Mammoth Cave
By 1850, the two ladies set sail for North America. Lady Victoria had, a week prior to departure, celebrated her twelfth birthday. They eventually journeyed to Kentucky where they rode from Elizabethtown, after stopping to purchase “thick, strong boots,” to Bell’s Tavern on a stagecoach and thence to Mammoth Cave. Both ladies wrote a book describing their adventures. With Lady Victoria being only twelve, however, she explicitly warned her readers that her book is “intended for children” and “not destined to become a candidate for the honours of books of travels in general.” It is titled A Young Traveler’s Journal of a Tour in North and South America During the Year 1850. One could argue though that her book written at age twelve is as nicely done as other “books of travels.” The ladies, in the company of a very talkative American gentleman and Englishman, took both the short and long tours through Mammoth Cave. Before departing on the long tour, she wrote that “we left our bonnets behind us.” Lady Victoria called Cleveland’s Avenue a “flower garden in stone” due to the extensive gypsum formations which can still be seen today.
Little did Lady Victoria know that her adventures with her mother would end tragically. In 1855 while near Beirut, her mother died after suffering from dysentery and complications from a broken leg. Victoria herself was fighting a fever and had to wait for help after their escorts left them. Lady Victoria returned to England where she lived with relatives and even became the maid of honor to the court of Queen Victoria in 1861.
An Impressive Career
The death of her mother and her marriage to Sir William Earle Welby-Gregory on July 4, 1863, may have ended her travels but it did not end her passion for writing. She became intensely interested in philosophy, especially semiotics — the interpretations of signs. She collaborated with Charles S. Pierce extensively. Together Pierce and Welby are considered the founders of modern semiotics. Welby introduced a new approach to the study of signs and meaning, which she termed “significs.” There is even a prize named for her which is awarded to the best essayist on significs. She published many papers discussing the “meaning” of words versus the “sense” or “interpretation” of words. She published Links and Clues in 1881; What is Meaning? Studies in the Development of Significance in 1903; Time as a Derivative in 1907; Significs and Language: The Articulate Form of Our Expressive and Interpretive Resources in 1911; and The Meaning of Meaning in 1923. She wrote many more manuscripts which were never published. She maintained correspondences between many philosophers, writers and scientists including J. M. Barrie, Lord Kelvin, Max Muller, Charles K. Ogden, Herbert Spencer, H. G. Wells and Nikola Tesla. She was also a member of the Aristotelian Society of London, the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, and Sociological Society of Great Britain. Following a more traditional Victorian role, she donated to the Royal School of Needlework Society and founded the Decorative Needlework Society.
Lady Victoria and her husband Sir Welby-Gregory had three children: Victor Albert William (1864-1876); Charles Glynne Earle (1865-1938); and Emmeline Mary Elizabeth (1867-1955) who is also known as Mrs. Henry Cust, a painter and sculptor. Lady Victoria died in 1912.