A brief sketch of my life : a fragment.

  • Henry Power
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: A brief sketch of my life : a fragment. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Eliza Power married Henry Bennett, and had three children, Frederick, Henry, and Josephine. Josephine married YEneas Macdonnell. I knew her well. She called on us in London and very kindly sent me an invitation to Inverie, the pleasant residence of Macdonnell, on the West coast of Scotland, just opposite the Isle of Skye, and ^15 to pay expenses. YEneas drank hard, and she was very lonely, but busied herself with the poor folk on the estate. She had six children, YEneas, Marsailie, Charles, [j/Y] , [sic] , and Ellen Rebecca. YEneas0 was drowned with three others about 1856 ; he lies buried in Gillingham Churchyard above Chatham, a very intelligent but very reserved lad. I saw nothing of Marsailie for forty years, when one evening she called in at 37a, Great Cumberland Place, stayed dinner and drank an inordinate quantity of sherry. We saw her occasion- ally after that and heard that she died from drink. Charles Macdonnell went to Australia, Ellen Rebecca married a Scotch laird. To return to my father, John Francis Power '. He became in 1811 or thereabouts what was called a cadet, and first shouldered arms in the Island of Riigen, and after being drilled was sent at once into Spain as an ensign in the K.G.L.2, under the command of Sir John Moore, 1809. The regiment formed the rearguard, and affairs were conducted in a very orderly fashion. He told me that the distance between the pursuers and the pursued was only a few hundred yards. The rearguard halted, fired, and then galloped through the next company, who in their turn fired and galloped back or on, the enemy doing the same thing. Not much damage was done. Women accompanied them, and on one occasion he saw a woman delivered of a child at the roadside, who (such was the dread the French soldiers inspired), when freed from the encumbrance, picked up her baby and was placed on a trooper’s horse and sent on. The confusion of the retreat
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