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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    came down, and he was gazetted as captain in the 35th Regiment, Royal Sussex (orange facings).13 At or before this time he had been living at Pond House, Aislaby. He now went out to the West Indies, where the regiment was quartered.14 Returning on leave of absence he met my mother, then living at Meadowfield, and married her in December, 1828. Her maiden name was Hannah Simpson15. He passed through France with her, and she was confined at Nantes, 3 September, 1829, of me her only son.16 My father was much liked in the regiment,1' but my mother, who was of a strongly religious turn of mind, could not endure the oaths with which all conversation was in those days in the army garnished, and when he had become major commanding the regiment she persuaded him to throw up the appointment and return to England.ls She argued that she had £5,000 of her own, that my father would obtain £2,000 or £3,000 by the sale of his Commission, that he had the use of £5,000 belonging to the son of his first wife, Francis, and that consequently they could live comfortably in England. An additional reason acting on my father was that a disagreeable colonel had just been sent out to take charge of the regiment, a Colonel Teulon v\ who reversed his judgments and perhaps wounded his amour propre in various other ways, as he had so long played first fiddle. The fatal step was taken, he sold his Commission and came home, only to be told that in the following year the officers signed a round robin for the removal of Colonel Teulon, which was done, and he would have unquestionably been promoted at about the age of thirty-five, with a fine future before him. He formed a band [in the regiment] by writing to Strauss20, the well-known composer, then at the height of his fame, asking him to come out. The salary offered was insufficient
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