Sampler

The verse worked in cross-stitch on this sampler was published in 1810. It commemorates the youngest daughter of George III, Princess Amelia, who died in November that year. Princess Amelia suffered ill health from the age of 15, caused by tuberculosis in her knee, and also endured erysipelas (St Anthony’s Fire), a skin disease.

The princess is said to have penned the verse, although authorship has been questioned. It was published in The Gentleman’s Magazine in 1810, in The Sacred Harp, a book of devotional verse in 1828. It also appears in The Secret Garland, The Christian’s Daily Delight, published in 1837 by Nicholson and Wilson, where the lines are said to express ‘the vanity of life’. The moving verse was still well known enough to have been stitched into Anna Maria Bond’s sampler 30 years after Amelia’s death.

Anna Maria grew up in Exeter, where her father was a Spirit Merchant. In 1850 she married musician Michael George Rice, and moved to Torquay where her husband was the organist at Upton church. Rice was well known for the orchestra concerts given in the Hall at Beacon Quay, then called Baths Saloon, and assisted Isaac Merritt Singer (the inventor of the domestic sewing machine) with musical arrangements for balls and dances at Oldway Manor.