Charles Augustus Howell
| Charles Augustus Howell | |
|---|---|
Photograph of Howell by Elliott & Fry, 1860s.
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| Born |
March 10, 1840 Oporto, Portugal |
| Died | April 21, 1890 (aged 50) Chelsea, London |
| Cause of death | Disputed (Officially tuberculosis) |
| Occupation | Art dealer, alleged blackmailer |
Charles Augustus Howell (10 March 1840 – 21 April 1890) was an art dealer and alleged blackmailer who is best known for persuading the poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti to dig up the poems he buried with his wife Elizabeth Siddal. His reputation as a blackmailer inspired Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes story, "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton".
Howell was born in Oporto, Portugal to an English father, Alfred William Hervey Howell, and a Portuguese mother. He claimed to have aristocratic Portuguese ancestry, and would wear a red ribbon of the Portuguese Order of Christ, which he proclaimed to be an inherited family order. He moved to Britain in his youth, allegedly after having been caught cheating at cards.
In 1858 Howell left Britain shortly before his friend Felice Orsini attempted to assassinate Napoleon III, leading to rumours that he was involved in the plot. He returned in 1864.
Howell was the friend and business agent of both Rossetti and John Ruskin. Ruskin employed him as a secretary between 1865 and 1868. Ruskin trusted Howell with "affairs needing delicate handling and a wise discretion." This was usually to manage Ruskin's discreet charitable donations. But Howell sought increasingly to obtain complete control of Ruskin's finances. Eventually Edward Burne-Jones persuaded Ruskin to sever his connection with Howell.
According to Rossetti's brother William Michael Rossetti, Howell was a skilful salesman "with his open manner, his winning address, with his exhaustless gift of amusing talk, not innocent of high colouring and actual blague – Howell was unsurpassable". His ability to exploit people's "hobbies and weaknesses" secured Rossetti several commissions. Howell organised the exhumation of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's wife Elizabeth Siddal and the retrieval of the poems he had left in her coffin in 1869. Rossetti insisted that the exhumation be kept absolutely secret.
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