Читать книгу The Fatal Cup: Thomas Griffiths Wainewright and the strange deaths of his relations - John Price Williams - Страница 29

satisfy the refined artistic temperament of one who was made for other things”.

But return he did eventually, for by the end of April he was back on the strength. In the British army in the 19th century, absence without leave automatically became desertion after 21 days, for which the penalties were very severe. No record of Wainewright being disciplined has been discovered. Perhaps the rules were elastic in the languid world of the officer class.

For example, Lord Cardigan, he of the disastrous charge of the Light Brigade, had bought himself a colonelcy for £40,000 and in the first two years of his service in the 11th Hussars was with his regiment for only four weeks.3

During Wainewright’s long absence, Napoleon had escaped from Elba and marched on Paris; another European conflict was imminent. Orders went out to the 16th in Canada to return home at once.

The regiment landed at Portsmouth in August, two months too late for Waterloo, though it eventually went on to join the army of occupation. But Wainewright took no part in all this; in May he resigned his commission. He may have been asked to do so after his long absence; more probably the thought of further service was unbearable. He had lasted barely a year, and that with a long absence in between.

His last few days in the Army he spent at Fort Cumberland, the bastioned stronghold at

3. Woodham-Smith, C. The Reason Why. Penguin, 1953

JOHN PRICE WILLIAMS

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