L30/11/323/138

Letter from Agneta Yorke to Lady Lucas, sent from Down Ampney. [Typed transcript available].

11 July [No year - 1815?]

From: 1815 To: 1815

Thanks for offer of venison. Is happy for Lord Grantham to cross the water after all warlike movements are over, he having nothing to do with the sword and shield. Assumes he is now in Paris. Reference to Napoleon Bonaparte and political situation. Reference to a melancholy end to the political career of Mr [Samuel] Whitbread. Wonders whether the fatal act was caused by mental derangement or by conscious guilt.....'his conduct latterly certainly was like insanity, and I believe that symptoms of it have appeared at times in some of the family, but there are circumstances that give rise to different suspicions...' [Whitbread admired Napoleon and his reforms in France and Europe. When Napoleon abdicated in 1814 he was devastated. Whitbread began to suffer from depression, and on the morning of 6 July 1815, he committed suicide by cutting his throat with a razor.] Saw Mr Keane [Edmund Kean?] play Shylock at the Bath theatre last week; he did not disappoint.

item

Yorke, Agneta,
Hume-Campbell, Amabell, 1st Countess de Grey, 5th Baroness Lucas,
Polwarth, Amabel Grey, Viscountess,
Lucas, Amabel, Baroness,
de Grey, Amabel, 1st Countess,
Bonaparte, Napoleon,
Robinson, Thomas Philip (3rd Baron Grantham),
Whitbread, Samuel,
Kean, Edmund

family correspondence, Napoleonic Wars, suicide, theatre