“She wore a wreath of roses the night that first we met”
Despite the strength of its Glasgow economy and the brilliance of
Edinburgh’s cultural and scientific life, eighteenth century Scotland – or
North Britain (N.B.) as it often appears on letters – was a troubled country.
As in Ireland, there was a continuous exodus of people. Employment with the
East India Company, either in London or much more often in India itself,
attracted many. Sons often followed
fathers, of which this letter provides an example. The first stage of the
journey usually involved going down south.
The east coast of Kent was the face Britain presented to France.
Unless at war, there were always half a dozen ports busy ferrying goods and
travellers back and forth across the Channel. Resort towns attracted affluent
tourists in the nineteenth century. But the coast was dominated by
fortifications, barracks to house soldiers waiting to be shipped abroad and
most often to India, and military headquarters of which the principal ones included
Dover and Walmer Castles. The latter was also the residence of the Lord Warden
of the Cinque Ports (Sandwich, Dover, Hythe, New Romney, and Hastings) and from
1829 to 1852 that Warden was the Duke of Wellington.
Walmer Castle 1842
Two young men have contributed to this 1838 Christmas Eve letter
from Walmer. Charles Forbes born in 1819 addresses his thirteen-year-old sister
Isabella back home and anticipates a coming out party there for his
twenty-first birthday. Isabella
has just moved with her family from Aberdeen to the nearby village of
Balbithan. The song Charles urges her to learn can be heard on YouTube using
the epigraph above to search.
Charles has already had a lot of private
schooling and is now spending a year in Walmer being prepared by a private
tutor for admission to the College of the East India Company at Haileybury. His
tutor, the Mr Backhouse who appears in the letter, is Perpetual Curate of
Walmer and comes from a family long connected to the East India Company.
Charles goes out in 1840 to make his career, rising to become a judge in Surat
on the coast a little north of what was then Bombay. He returned to England in the early 1860s.
Despite the teasing references to young ladies in the letter he waits until
1868 and then marries a woman sixteen years younger; they have no children. It's likely that he had unrecorded
relationships in India.
His younger less literate or less
conscientious brother George leaves his part of the letter unfinished; he is
sixteen and hoping to be sent out to India as an East India Company cavalryman.
This ambition is soon realised. In January 1839 he enters service as a Cadet in the Madras Cavalry, promoted to Cornet in
July of the same year, Lieutenant in 1842 and Captain of the 5th
Madras Cavalry 1852. In that capacity he is awarded the 1857 Indian Mutiny
Medal; there were many recipients of that medial; his fetched £900 when sold at
auction in 2022. He married, had three children, and in 1864 died in India.
Like most soldiers he took furloughs back
home and the Census of 1861 records him staying with his widowed mother in
Reading. There is a very good reason. He is a recent widower with three young
children all born, says the Census, in the “East Indies”: Annie aged six,
Charlotte aged three, Katie just one year old.
Their mother had died aged thirty-three in November 1860 either in
childbirth or soon after and was buried in India.
Charles and George were the sons of David
Forbes (1772-1849) who has a Wikipedia page which does no more than summarise a
remarkable military career. Just one sentence suggests he may well have been in
need of quiet retirement in rural Aberdeenshire, “In 1817 he returned to
Scotland, being the only officer who returned out of forty-two and bringing
with him only thirty-six of twelve hundred rank and file”. I wonder if his sons
were familiar with those numbers as they made their enthusiastic departures for
India.
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Transcription
Addressed to: Miss M I Forbes
Balbithan Keith-Hall Aberdeenshire N.B. [North Britain]
Datelined: Walmer December 24th 1838
My dear Isabella
I am going to fulfil my oft repeated promise by writing to you,
and begin by thanking you for all your kind letters to me, in which George also
begs to join. …..you have by this time I hope become quite reconciled to old
Balbithan, and no longer regret leaving Abeerdeen, and all its gaieties, and
which I hope will be remarkably gay next winter when I am to come out and figure before the Aberdeen belles and you
bespeak some nice partner for me and let them know what a nice … your brother is, and him very fond he is of Scotch
beauties in that every thing which can charm and allure such fascinating
creatures. Will you thank dearest Mamma and Papa for their very kind letters
and also for the parcel, the contents being good witnesses how much our comfort
and happiness are thought of in Scotland. I intend to write to dearest Mamma
very soon and I hope that this will not prevent her writing to me before she
receives mine.
As this will be too late to wish you many happy Christmasses, you
must console yourself with the idea that I intend to drink all your dear
healths tomorrow and wish all … many ... happy new years
How is Mr Bruce now, and all friends at Balbithan. Are you
learning to sing if you are I beseech pray, supplicate, entreat and if that
will not do command you on pain of my serious displeasure if you do not, to
learn the “She wore a wreath of roses the night that first we met” , if you
have not already heard it try and do so the first opportunity as it is one the
prettiest little English songs I have heard, & as the young ladies say,
such a dear little thing, quite a little love.
Mr Backhouse met me walking with 3 different young ladies and he
told me that I ought to add in a postscript that you may expect to see me
bringing home a wife; but as I do not intend to be guilty of such a folly at
present you need be under no serious apprehension at present, I promise to give
a months notice of the fair one’s arrival. George desires me to say that he
hopes Mamma will excuse his finishing her letter as he was interrupted by
dinner. [This is the unsigned second letter
cross-written in a different hand] Aunt Charlotte sends her kind love to
dear Mamma and wants to know how long the Scotch falnights [Scottish fallnights,
meaning dark nights] are as it is now 2 or 3 months since Mamma has written
to her. She is looking remarkably well at present. There is to be a large ball
here on the 2nd January 140 people are to be at it Lady John Harvey
and me are invited, and one of those 3 young ladies almost made me promise that
I would go.
In your next letter tell me all the news you can about home. The
weather here has been rather cold of late, something similar to what you have
had in Scotland I should suppose. Tell dear Mamma she should not complain of
the shortness of our letters as they are decidedly a great deal longer than
hers. Kiss dearest Papa, Mamma for me and you may expect to receive another
letter. In the mean time believe me to remain dear Bel
Your fond brother Charles Forbes
Second letter cross-written by George:
My Dearest Mamma
I suppose my determination was just as you expected, as I have always had a great partiality for the Cavalry, and as I am determined to make as much money as I can but in a gentlemanly way I hope after one and twenty years service to have made something respectable. Mr Backhouse’s brother has just got a Cavalry appointment to Madras. The Cavalry uniform is very handsome, being blue and silver. I should like to know very much when I shall be obliged to go … out. Give my love to dearest papa and my sisters, happy Christmasses and new years days and I onely whish I was at home just now, I am afraid that you will think me very extravagant, but I am obliged to ask for some more money, as when I pay my washerwomans bill I shall have onely a few shillings left.
*
References & Acknowledgment
Dr Richard Forty did archival research in Scotland for me.
Wikipedia: David Forbes (British Army Officer)
“She wore a wreath of roses…” words by Thomas Haynes Bayly (1797-1839); music by Joseph Philip Knight (1812-1887); sheet music first published 1837. Can be heard on YouTube.
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