Robert Dyer a Bristol apothecary to his son Robert a doctor serving with the Russian Army in Northern France 1816

 

Children and young adults died so often that it is a question worth asking whether parents and siblings were normally less grieved by such events than we would be with our blithe expectation that nearly all will survive into adulthood.  This is one letter which provides some evidence: Robert Dyer’s unmarried daughter Maria has very recently died aged twenty-seven. He is a well-established Bristol apothecary writing to his son of the same name, a recently qualified surgeon who at the age of 26 has taken up a post with the Russian army of occupation headquartered at Maubeuge in post-Napoleonic France. The first half of the letter expresses the father’s grief and I suspect that the obsessive concern with a missing trunk, albeit an important trunk, which occupies much of the remainder is in some way a displaced expression of that grief and perhaps also the expression of anxiety for the future of his son, absent in a foreign country.

The Dyers were a well-known part of the extensive medical establishment in Bristol, a city whose accumulated wealth was in large measure derived from the slave trade until its abolition in 1807 and which in 1816 still owed some of its diminished prosperity to the importation of produce, principally sugar, from the West Indian slave plantations. Many inhabitants were, of course, opposed to slavery, local Quakers or ex-Quakers among them. The best remembered of the Bristol doctors, the immensely learned ex-Quaker James Cowles Prichard FRS, who appears at the end of this letter, wrote an 1808 proto-Darwinian doctoral thesis which sought to combine the orthodox Christian idea of a single origin for humanity with some kind of explanation for its subsequent visible differentiation. He was not the only writer to suppose that at the beginning human beings were dark-skinned and in 1813 in an expanded version of his doctorate, The Physical History of Man, wrote that “On the whole there are many reasons which lead us to adopt the conclusion that the primitive stock of men were probably Negroes”.

More prosaically, the letter ends with a report on the 1816 election of two physicians to sought-after vacant posts at the Bristol Infirmary. It is strange to us, but two hundred years ago those who subscribed the funds needed for the operation of the Infirmary thereby bought the privilege of sponsoring patients - quite often their own household servants - for free-at-point-of-use treatment. They also bought the privilege of electing the physicians in contests not dissimilar to political hustings. Cowles Prichard, presenting a trinity of credentials as an Edinburgh-trained M.D., a Tory, and an Anglican, secured a coveted post at third attempt.

Less prosaically, how did it come about that the younger Robert Dyer made his way to France to become a doctor to the Russian army and what became of him?

In 1826 the London publisher, Charles Knight, brought out a novel cast as an old man’s personal recollections entitled The Story of a Wanderer: Founded Upon His Recollections of Incidents in Russian and Cossack Scenes. No author appears on the title page but the book, which fits into then popular Gothic-cum-Romantic genres, is always attributed to “Robert Dyer M.D.” It could have been the father, who died in 1830 and used the title M.D., but much more likely the son who lived to 1878 and would have been 36 when the book was published. But his name online never has M.D. attached, though that may be because it is only his early years which are recorded.

The novel contains not a single date but is vaguely set in the period of the three partitions of Poland (1772-95) and is located geographically in what is currently western and southern Ukraine, south Russia and the Caucasus with many actual place names – not all of them major cities – appearing.  As far as I can establish the Robert Dyer born in 1759 did not travel to Russia; his son born 1790 served with the Russian army in France under the command of Count Mikhail Vorontsov, who had grown up in London as son of the Russian ambassador and spoke English fluently. From 1823 to 1828 Vorontsov was in military command of what was then called “New Russia” which roughly coincides with the territories in which Dyer (if indeed Dyer is the author) locates his novel. Vorontsov also served in the Caucasus much earlier in 1803-04 and would have had tales to tell. It is possible that the younger Robert Dyer, accepting the paternal advice given in this letter, was selected by Vorontsov for subsequent employment, travelled to South Russia with him, and rather rapidly turned his experiences and possibly Vorontsov’s reminiscences to literary account. But for the moment all that is entirely speculative.

Transcription

Addressed to : à Mons^r Monsieur Robert Dyer

Medecin de l’Armée Russe, Poste restante à Avernes, Department du Nord, France

Datelined: 3 Unity Street Bristol    4th March 1816 Despatch postmark of the 5th

My Dear my beloved son

Great has been the consolation we have derived from your Letters, They are most beautiful deleniations of a Mind formed for Virtue, & of a Heart fraught with Love under the guidance of true Religion. May the God of all Mercy preserve you & enable you to perform the private & public Duties of Life in the noble, honorable & generous way your affection for your departed Sister would dictate as most congenial to her blest Spirit and May no earthly temptations or sceptical reasonings ever delude you from that reliance on your God, & that  confidence in your Redeemer which your truly good & amiable Mother early impressed on your Mind, & which will sustain you as it did our adored Maria under the heaviest afflictions of Mortality. Your letter to me me dated ye 2d Febry I received on ye 13^th, The one to your Mother of ye 7^th on ye 17^th, and that to our dear Harriet [his daughter] of ye 23d from Maubeuge [Russian headquarters under the command of Count Vorontsov] was delivered yesterday. Learning from this last your present address, I expressed a wish both to your Mother & Sister that they would in succession take up the Pen with me & in this Letter convey to you, as far as words are capable of expressing their feelings , Their sense of your affectionate attentions, & their anxious prayers for your happiness, as yet neither of them have the power or command of self sufficient for the melancholy though grateful office, Melancholy in that with Hearts overwhelmed with sorrow & with spirits broken & dejected with grief, they could not refrain from dwelling on a subject ever uppermost in their thoughts & influencing every word & action, the dreadful loss they have experience by the departure of our sweet Child, of your all good, all wise & all accomplished Sister. I know my Son you will say dear father do not grieve dry up your own & my poor Mothers tears, & Believe that Maria is become an administireng angel to us. I will I will endeavour to compose myself and bend with humble resignation to the Divine Will.

It gives me pain to have cause for supposing that either of our Letters has not come to hand my last was dated the 7^th of Febry & perhaps might not have arrived at Worms until after you left that station, I trust you have left every requisite instruction & direction both there & at Strasburg with Monsr. J.D. Ehrlen for the securing & forwarding your letters & property of every kind. I will not at present recapitulate the subject of my last trusting that you may yet receive it. But as you are now so near the spot to which I know your Trunk has been conveyed I will merely state that instantly upon receiving yours of ye 7^th ult I wrote to Mr T. Major Bankers of Ostend to whom Mr Gorely entrusted it – to request he would write to Messrs Tothell  & Co at Tournay, stating that you would soon arrive at the Russian  Head Quarters at Maubeuge, & for them to write to you there every particular they know concerning it & if it was recoverable by them or had not passed out of their keeping for them to retain it until they should receive further instructions  from you & if lost to proceed to ye recovery of the Insurance to  Paris of 1000 Frs. in your [letter torn here, probably name]. I consider it of too much intrinsic value for [ letter torn, probably it] to be lost if through any exertion or expence it could be recovered. Perhaps you might now personally call on Messrs Fothell & Co at Tournay. I presume they are Bankers, Merchants or Conveyancers of Goods, or you might under an order from the Russian Commander or by an accredited agent, follow up my enquiries by a direct application to them. You should also again write to Monsr. Jacques Recamier Banqr. [Banquier] Rue Cape des Ramparts No 48 Paris mentioning your arrival at Avernes & solliciting his kind exertions for its recovery & security. Monsr Alex-Louis de Gaminde   my friend who will soon be in Paris will reimburse him every expence.

We sincerely congratulate you on the pleasing event which has brought you so near to the Head Quarters, & has identified you with ye Main Army. Cultivate by every possible means the friendship of this Gentleman [presumably Count Vorontsov, who spoke fluent English] & at once communicate to him your sense of obligation for this service. To your knowledge of Gill Blass I refer for explanation of a Secretary’s influence. Speedily fulfil your promise of writing to the little Maids [his younger sisters] they all most fondly love you & anxiously anticipate ye pleasure of reading your Letter

Remember to seek every fair oppy [opportunity] of communicating with the Physician en Chief at Maubeuge & of paying your personal respects to him. Tell Mr Prouth that Mr Jones will pay every attention to his Property as his tenant Hall is dead. Swayne is elected Apoth^y [Apothecary] to the Infirmary [Bristol Royal Infirmary]. Dr Moncrieff is dead after a few days Illness. Dr E Fox then sent in of his Resignation by wh. he secured the Election of his Son H. H. Fox  & to the discomfiture Dr T.W.D [Thomas Webb Dyer]. Dr Pritchard was also elected I gave my vote to P^d [Prichard].

Yor affect^e Father Robert Dyer.

References

Professor Jonathan Barry provided biographical information for the Dyers.

Margaret M Crump James Cowles Prichard of the Red Lodge: A Life of Science during the Age of Improvement (2025).

Wikipedia: Count Mikhail Semyonovich Vorontsov