Philip Thicknesse
Captain Philip Thicknesse (* 1719 in Staffordshire, † November 23, 1792 ) was a British travel writer, an officer in the British Army and eccentrics and an early promoter of the English painter Thomas Gainsborough. Infamous it is mainly because of its legal disputes. Contemporaries reported Philip Thicknesse that he possessed in a remarkable manner the ability to reduce the number of his friends and to increase the his enemies.
Life
Philip Thicknesse was born in Staffordshire. He was the seventh son of an Anglican priest and came to Westminster with the help of a scholarship. The father died when Philip Thicknesse was six years old, the family was in serious financial difficulties and his mother was unable to let the teachers get the little gifts that were regarded as an indispensable sign of parental involvement. He was eventually expelled from school, after which he began an apprenticeship with a London pharmacist. As in Georgia a colony was to be founded, the settlers should consist of righteous British, who had no fault of lost belongings or were in financial straits, Philip Thicknesse successfully applied for admission under the settlers. However, the 16 -year-old Philip Thicknesse took place in the colony little connector as it is repeated for the victims described unflattering events in compromising letters to England, which came in the press. He joined the increasingly Muskogee Indians, whose life he felt as moral than that of his countrymen. However, shortly before the marriage with a Muskogee, he returned to Britain. Immediately after his return to England in 1737 he applied for a commission in the new regiment, which was erected for the defense of the colony in Georgia. Instead of being sent as a lieutenant but to Georgia, he was a captain post on Jamaica. In Jamaica, he gave offense because he endorses the view advocated that the slaves in Jamaica possessed the same rights as the white plantation owners.
On his return to England he married advantageously with Lady Elizabeth Tuchet, daughter of James Tuchet, 6th Earl of Castlehaven and heiress to a considerable fortune. Widowed early, he married shortly after Anne Touchet, daughter of Baron Audley, who also died after a short time. His third wife was Anne Ford, a singer. On the basis of the acquired assets by the marriages he was briefly governor of Landguart fort near Harwich. However, he never found the social recognition he wanted because he overlaid the people around him with bitter feuds, defamation suits and mock duels. The occasions were frequently banal: In a dispute was about who was the better vintage of champagne. His opponents included fellow officers process, doctors and clergymen, including Thomas Coventry, 1st Earl of Coventry, the Lord Chancellor and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Finally he lay down to even with the House of Lords, which he criticized in numerous letters published in the press. Worried that his disputes could lead to an arrest, he fled in 1775 with his wife and two daughters on the European continent. With a buggy the family, accompanied by a parrot and a monkey who always wore a livery, the European continent traveled. In 1776 the family returned to England and Philip Thicknesse retired to a small, dilapidated Hermitage in the hills above Bath back while his wife preferred the more comfortable stay in a city apartment in Bath. The 1777 published travel memories were a sales success, until 1782 twice reprinted and translated into French and German. 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 of two of his mortal enemies. One of them, a doctor, had accused him of having acted cowardly during his time in Jamaica. A second, a captain, had demanded Thicknesse to a duel. Philip Thicknesse but has preferred to answer him as part of his memories. In November 1792, he died during a trip to Paris. In his will, he had determined, inter alia, that after his death his right hand cut off, and his son George Touchet, Lord Audley, a son should be from his second marriage, passed in order to remind him of his duties he owed to his father have, but so long neglected.
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