Lieutenant Colonel Hector Maclaine moves to northern France in 1828

 

Le Havre engraved after J M W Turner Click on image to enlarge

  

 Hector Maclaine was born on the Isle of Mull about 1785. He fought in France during the Napoleonic Wars; the medal awarded to him for bravery at the Battle of Nivelle was sold at auction in London in 2020 and realised £22 000. At the end of the Wars in 1815 he remained in France as part of the Duke of Wellington’s temporary army of occupation, the subject of Christine Haynes’s book Our Friends The Enemies (2018); his wife Martha Osborne who he married in 1816 joined him in France and their son William was born at Valenciennes in 1818. This letter shows him returning to France a decade later and setting up home there with his family. 

Two hundred years ago and despite the recent wars France was felt to be a desirable place to live; in Le Havre there is clearly an English-speaking community to which the Maclaine’s have attached themselves. The engraving of the port of Le Havre by J B Allen shown above dates from 1833 and is based on a watercolour of J M W Turner who toured northern France in 1832.

But when Lieutenant Colonel Maclaine’s wife’s widowed mother died he inherited the Osborne family’s substantial properties in Thornbury, Gloucestershire. By the time of the Census of 1841 the family was living there; the son William had already graduated from Oxford in 1840; his father died in 1847.

 

Transcription

Addressed to:  Mrs Craig    Cameron Bridge    Kennoway    Fife

Datelined:  Montevilliers    26 Aug^t 1828

 

My Dear Margaret

We came here about five days ago in search of a house & found a small lodging which we have taken for three months to be ready to step into the first vacant house that offers. The Situation of this town is very fine & healthy & six miles only from Havre de Grace & a good road to it, we can get the necessarys here but Havre is our chief resort for shopping.

William is at school at Havre or Ingoville near that place at a Mr Dukes’s an English Clergyman of very amiable Manners who preaches for us all on Sundays at our chapel in Havre. Wiliam is much pleased with him & quite reconciled to his new abode, & I have every reason to think that we shall all continue so to do for the time we propose to remain. We were at a Boarding house at Ingoville for two weeks after our arrival where we met with the old chaperone of arch^ds [Archibald’s?] Wife a Mrs Vanneck she said they have been acquainted since they were children she is married to the honble Mr Vanneck a brother of Lord Huntingfields, of this more hereafter - write me a long letter giving all the news of the Highlands etc & if you have heard from Archibald or Gillian McLaine. I write this in a hurry as I am going in to Havre to the post office. Whenever you write address to Lt. Col. Maclaine   Havre de Grace   France, Care of Captⁿ Meeks  Steam Packet Office Southampton

With United [?] love to you

I remain

Your ever aff [letter torn here but the word is affectionate] Brother H.Maclaine

N.B.  I shall write you once a month on [letter torn here]

References

I have made use of a fairly detailed biography of Hector Maclaine which can be found at thornburyroots.co.uk/families/maclaine/  

The illustration is taken from the 1833 engraving by James B Allen based on the fine watercolour by J M W Turner Le Havre: Sunset in the Port c. 1832 now in the Tate Gallery