Lieutenant-Colonel Frederick English
Biography and letters of Lt Col Frederick English, Royal Engineers
Maroudie: Webster’s Dictionary defines ‘maroodi’ as guan, and locates the word in Guyana. Of the three guans native to Guyana, the one that best fits the description is the blue-throated piping guan, Pipile cumanensis.
You all express anxiety that I shall find the Wickham letters dull and uninteresting. It always makes me smile my dear Kate. On the contrary, I devour every line from home and ...
So sure my dear Kate as I lay out a morning to write to you, every description of interruption occurs. The Lucretia sails at four and I have been in an agony to get to this sheet of paper without success. Col Monins has just left me after nearly an hour’s chat. He must of thought me, as poor Mrs Rose use to say, rather abstracted, for my thought were at Wickham all the time. He called to offer ...
Crofton, home of the Naghten family, is at Stubbington, about six miles from Wickham and close to Catisfield.
Capoey is a seaport up the coast to the north-west and beyond the estuary of the Essequibo.
Mr Young’s mission to Cuba is explained in letter 52.
Still here my dear Kate much to my disgust for ere this I thought to have been settled in Barbados. Capt Victor I understand reach it from ...
Not dated at head, written from Demerara 26 August 1836
I had written the greater part of my letter to you my dear Kate at my own home when I was sent for by the Govr as usual for some trifling affair but it made me so late that under the supposition the return Mail boat would leave this at two oclock, on my return I was forced to write away as fast as possibly my official letters for Barbados ...
English suggests that a local bank might prove a profitable investment. At this time, the planters, most of whom were heavily in debt, were in need of capital to pay their newly emancipated slaves. In the event, banks which set out to meet this need usually failed.
No date at head, written at Demerara 29 August 1836
I was much disappointed at Mr Glen’s to find that my letter, after writing with ...
Leguan is one of a number of islands in the Essequibo estuary.
John Gabriel Stedman, half Scottish, half Dutch, took part in a Dutch expedition to put down a slave rebellion in Surinam. His book, Narrative of a Five Years’ Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam, 1796, was widely read and much cited by campaigners against slavery.
Does Fred shoot?
The Underwood Capt Underwood, Tom Naghten ...
This letter is addressed to ‘Mrs English, 24 New Millman St, London’
Frances Trollope was the mother of a large family including the novelist Anthony. Finding her husband, a lawyer, unable to support them, she embarked on a successful career of writing both fiction and non-fiction. The book English has been reading is Paris and the Parisians in 1835. See letter 107.
St. Petersburgh, Constantinople ...
Georgetown lighthouse, on the eastern shore of the estuary, was built in 1830.
Mr W, ‘that Horse Artillery youth’, is of course Mr Wilmot whom we have met before. See, for instance, letters 52 and 63. He was evidently influenced by the Oxford Movement and their Tracts for the Times, published from 1833.
Princess Victoria’s eighteenth birthday, 24 May 1837, had special significance apart ...
‘Fred’s departure’ seems to refer to the fact that his regiment, the 35th of Foot, was about to be sent to Mauritius. It is, however, clear from later letters that he did not accompany them.
You observe my dear Kate that I have been again on the move and am now seated at Mr Molesworth’s desk to dispatch only five lines that you may be assured I am well. On thursday last the Stormond ...