Lieutenant-Colonel Frederick English
Biography and letters of Lt Col Frederick English, Royal Engineers
Written from Barbados
‘Cul’ is Culduthel, a suburb of Inverness and home of the Fraser family.
English again urges his wife to use influence to get him an order; it is clear from letter 109 that he has his eye on the Companionship of the Bath. ‘The old boat story’ refers to his rescue of fishermen in the Moray Firth in 1823, for which he was awarded the silver medal of the Royal Humane ...
Captain Basil Hall RN was a popular travel writer. His Schloss Hainfeld, in which the Countess of Purgstall appears, was published in 1836.
Have this moment laid aside Schloss Hainfeld or A Winter in Lower Styria by Capt Basil Hall. You will exclaim my dear Kate, ‘Of what interest is that to me?’ However, the interest on my part is far greater because I estimate the writing to Kate much above ...
Not dated at head but dated on cover: ‘Barbados May thirty 1838’
No more time can be spared my dear Kate for the direction of newspapers, for taking into account the usual interuptions the chances are much against your obtaining a long account of the Col, as Gusto terms me in his very entertaining letters. He collects more Corps news than the Wickhamites, Capt Tait or all my esteemed brother ...
To commence my dear Kate I will remark that the Express Packet has arrived about half past seven this morning, but no letters have reached me yet. If yours are even half as charming as the last I shall verily be in most enviable spirits. Capt Rutherfurd came in soon after reading your Wickham dispatch with budget of officials, and what is a rare occurrence with me, but I could not resist giving ...
Major-General Sir George Arthur, Governor General of Upper Canada and an opponent of devolved government, suppressed several rebellions around this time, some of them supported by elements from the USA.
John Gibson Lockhart, for many years associated with the publishing house of John Murray, published his Life of Scott in seven volumes in 1837-38. It immediately took its place among ...
Not dated at head, but begun on 22 July 1838
‘The heart burning caused by the division of worldly goods’ refers to a lawsuit of 1832, when a niece of Mrs English’s father contested the interpretation of her grandfather’s will, and was awarded £1000 against her aunts.
The Emancipation Act decreed that apprentices, as the former slaves were called, were to be freed after six years in ...
‘Junior Club’: the reference is probably to the Junior United Service Club, later merged with the Senior Club, but now defunct.
John Alleyne Beckles, a member of a prominent family of planters, was President of the Legislative Council of Barbados.
Frances Trollope’s Vienna and the Austrians had just been published. English had enjoyed her book on Paris – see letter 64.
Lady Knighton ...
We can only speculate as to the nature of Georgiana’s ‘last vicious measure’ which has so alienated her from her brothers.
It is interesting that English felt certain that war with the United States over Canada and slavery was imminent. He also predicts here that the successful revolt in Haiti under the freed slave Toussaint L’Ouverture – he uses the old French name St Domingue – ...
Not dated at head, but presumably begun on 8 September 1838
The heat my dear dear Kate is so oppressive that it requires much exertion to take pen in hand on private matters, even the great pleasure I at all times experience when writing to you is at the present moment scarcely a sufficient stimulant, but in truth I start my letter in a sorry humour and out of spirits, and on reference to your ...
Ah! my good dear Kate, you are little aware of the feelings an unfortunate fellow has to encounter in hot climate, and I trust you never will be brought to such punishment, but the commencement of your last letter caused the reflection and the closing did not tend to cool the temperament one has to endure from morning until night and night until morning. However, today it is more to be tolerated ...