Philip Thicknesse
Captain Philip Thicknesse (* 1719 in Staffordshire ; † November 23, 1792 ) was a British travel writer , officer in the British Army and eccentric and early supporter of the English painter Thomas Gainsborough . He is especially notorious for his legal disputes. Contemporaries reported of Philip Thicknesse that he had a remarkable ability to reduce the number of his friends and to increase those of his enemies.
Life
Philip Thicknesse was born in Staffordshire . He was the seventh son of an Anglican minister and came to Westminster on a scholarship . Since the father died when Philip Thicknesse was six years old, the family was in considerable financial difficulties and his mother was unable to give the teachers the small gifts that were considered an indispensable token of parental concern. He was eventually expelled from school , whereupon he began an apprenticeship with a London pharmacist . When a colony was to be founded in Georgia , the settlers of which were to consist of righteous British people who had lost their belongings through no fault of their own or were in financial difficulties, Philip Thicknesse successfully applied for acceptance among the settlers. However, the 16-year-old Philip Thicknesse found little connection in the colony, as he repeatedly described unflattering events for those affected in compromising letters to England, which also got into the press . He increasingly joined the Muskogee Indians , whose lives he found more moral than that of his compatriots. However, shortly before marrying a Muskogee, he returned to Great Britain. Immediately after his return to England in 1737, he applied for an officer license in the new regiment set up to defend the colony in Georgia. But instead of being sent to Georgia as a lieutenant, he was given a captaincy in Jamaica . In Jamaica he was offended because he firmly believed that the slaves of Jamaica had the same rights as the white plantation owners .
When he returned to England, he was favorably married to Lady Elizabeth Tuchet, daughter of James Tuchet, 6th Earl of Castlehaven and heiress of a considerable fortune. Widowed at an early age, shortly afterwards he married Anne Touchet, daughter of Baron Audley, who also died after a short time. His third wife was Anne Ford, a singer. Due to the fortune acquired through the marriages, he was briefly governor of Landguart Fort near Harwich . However, he never found the social recognition he wished for, as he covered the people around him with bitter feuds , libel suits and sham duels. The occasions were often banal: There was a dispute about which vintage of a champagne was the better. His opponents included fellow officers, doctors and clergymen , including Thomas Coventry, 1st Earl of Coventry , the Lord Chancellor and the Archbishop of Canterbury . Eventually he even messed with the House of Lords , which he criticized in numerous letters published in the press. Concerned that his quarrels could lead to an arrest , he fled to the European continent with his wife and two daughters in 1775. The family traveled in a single horse-drawn carriage , accompanied by a parrot and a monkey , who always wore livery, the European continent . In 1776 the family returned to England and Philip Thicknesse retired to a small, dilapidated hermitage in the hills above Bath , while his wife preferred the more comfortable stay in a town apartment in Bath. The travel memories published in 1777 were a sales success, reprinted twice by 1782 and translated into French and German. In 1782 and 1783 he made a second trip to Belgium , which he described in another successful book. In 1788 he published his three-volume work Memoirs and Anecdotes , which he allegedly planned to refute some slanderous accusations by two of his mortal enemies. One of them, a doctor, had accused him of acting like a coward during his time in Jamaica . Another, a captain, had challenged Thicknesse to a duel. Philipp Thicknesse, however, preferred to answer him as part of his memories. He died in November 1792 while on a trip to Paris . In his will he had stipulated, among other things, that after his death his right hand should be cut off and given to his son George Touchet, Lord Audley, a son from his second marriage, in order to remind him of his duties which he owed his father but neglected for so long.
Works
- A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain , Volume I.
- A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain , Volume II.
- Memoirs and Anecdotes
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literature
- John Keay: Eccentric Traveling Around the World , Verlag Klaus Bittermann, Berlin 2007, ISBN 3-89320-109-2
Single receipts
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Thicknesse, Philip |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British travel writer, British Army officer and eccentric |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1719 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Staffordshire |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 23, 1792 |