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Case 5 2013/14: Letters and related documents of James Wolfe Expert adviser’s statement Reviewing Committee Secretary’s note: Please note that any illustrations referred to have not been reproduced on the Arts Council England Website Letters of James Wolfe to his parents 1740-59 together with transcripts, related correspondence and documents: bound-up volumes of manuscripts and transcripts that have previously been held privately at Squerryes Court, Westerham, Kent and entitled 'General Wolfe's Letters to his Parents, 1740-1759' and 'General Wolfe's Letters to his Mother, 1740-1760'. Accompanied by a further volume of related correspondence and a volume of commissions. Summary The archive includes 232 letters from Wolfe to his parents, spanning the entirety of his military service; a volume of commissions documenting the careers of both James Wolfe and his father Edward Wolfe, 1702-1758; and correspondence and papers of Wolfe’s mother, Henrietta, regarding the settling of his estate and her claim for War Office pension, prior to her death in 1764. I have looked at these letters physically (albeit briefly) at Christie’s and have undertaken quite extensive research into their significance, consulting with colleagues at the Bodleian Library, the National Army Museum and with Wolfe’s biographer, Stephen Brumwell. This report takes into account these views, which align with my own recommendations as Expert Adviser. In the time available I have concentrated on the letters to his parents as the most important element of the collection, but the related volumes of commissions and correspondence are almost certainly not without interest and form a coherent part of the small archive. Major General Wolfe, victor of the Battle of Quebec and hero of the Seven Years War, is one of the most important British military figures of the modern age and a key figure in the nation’s imperial history. Indeed, it has been argued that his conquest of the city heralded the birth of the British Empire and that he provided the role model for future generations of military leaders, including Napoleon. Although he is not today as famous as Napoleon or Wellington, his death at the point of victory ensured his immediate status as a national martyr, though he made many important military contributions before his Canadian campaign (ensuring, indeed, his qualification for that task). The letters and related material under consideration are unparalleled by any other surviving Wolfe letters in their extent and in their rich content. Indeed, it is exceptionally rare to find any series of letters like this from an important military figure of the eighteenth century. The letters are critical to an appreciation of Wolfe as a national figure, particularly as they provide an opportunity to test the mythology of the man against an accurate documentary source. The letters, whilst known from transcripts and other published sources, have been inadequately edited and patchily researched. Once they have been properly exposed to modern scholarship, they are likely to add significantly to our assessment of the life and times of Wolfe. It is worth noting that in 2008 a portrait of Wolfe was stayed from export by the RCEWA and later saved for the nation by the National Army Museum. I would argue that these letters, written in Wolfe’s own hand to his own flesh and blood over a considerable period of time, must have at least as great a cultural and academic importance. The letters meet Waverley 1 and 3 on the following grounds: Waverley 1: Are the letters so closely connected with our history and national life that their departure would be a misfortune? Yes. Major General James Wolfe was the most celebrated military hero of the mid- eighteenth century and is now only eclipsed, like all other martial heroes, by Nelson, Wellington and Churchill. His audacious victory against the French at Quebec on the 13 September 1759, after months of frustration and ill health, was a decisive moment in the Seven Years’ War and contributed importantly to the development of the British Empire. The significance of the victory at Quebec found a poignancy in the fatal wounding of its chief instrument. This was a sacrifice that inspired a massive wave of culturally significant paintings and artefacts and earned Wolfe the status of a martyr whose personal fate became inextricably linked with the destiny of his own country. The reputation, achievements and personalities of great national figures can be assessed in a number of ways – for example, through the analysis of contemporary records, secondary sources and iconography. But there is no way of getting closer to the figure themselves than through their own thoughts, hopes and fears set down with immediacy on paper. This is what Philip Larkin, hardly known for his sentimentality, described as the ‘magical’ quality of manuscripts. There are two key issues with these particular letters: quantity and quality. While a small quantity of Wolfe’s letters survive concerning specific periods of his career (eg. his correspondence with Brigadier-General Robert Monckton during the Quebec campaign of 1759, now in the LAC, and his letters to Major-General Jeffery Amherst, relating to the same period, in the National Archives, Kew), those under consideration here are far more substantial, both in terms of the sheer quantity of letters, and the chronological scope. As such, it is certainly the most sustained collection of Wolfe correspondence. In terms of quality, these letters are unique in that they present not an official perspective but a highly intimate insight into the man himself – his doubts, urges, sufferings and hopes. They are letters, after all, not to fellow soldiers or administrators but to his own parents. In their unguarded way they allow us to understand and evaluate the personality of the man beneath the layers of mythology. Looking at the letters, even for a brief period at Christie’s, was a moving experience. This is particularly the case because these letters are not only so caught in the critical circumstance of great history happening – there he is, on the battlefield - but that they bear evidence of later attempts to obfuscate this immediate reality in favour of myth making. These letters get as close as we can get to almost twenty years in the life of one of our most remarkable military figures – a man responsible for the conquest of Canada, the development of Empire and the embodiment of national martial pride. Their departure from a country whose destiny their author helped so decisively to determine would indeed be a grave misfortune. Waverley 3: Are the letters of outstanding significance for the study of some particular branch of art, learning or history? Yes. While biographers have made some limited use of the original papers, researchers have more typically turned to the published versions instead (especially the 1909 'The Life and Letters of James Wolfe' by B. Willson). As the originals have been in private hands, and held in a fairly remote location, access to them has necessarily been difficult, so the published versions have proved an easier option. However, the published versions have serious limitations. There is a set of transcripts of the letters at the Library and Archives of Canada at Ottawa, but these were made in 1913 and I have been unable to verify their accuracy. The proper editing these letters require would in any case demand a return to the originals. Published versions of the letters are found in Robert Wright’s The Life of Major- General James Wolfe (1864) and Beckles Willson’s The Life and Letters of James Wolfe (1909). Both Wright and Willson had access to the original manuscripts. Checking through all of the first 400 images, out of the 931 on an unpublished CD of the letters to his parents (supplied by Christie’s), it appears all of them have been published in either the Wright or Willson editions. Randomly checking other letters indicated that everything else had been used by either Wright or Willson, at least in some form – not always the full letter and sometimes just a short quotation from it. I would expect to find that all of the correspondence has been published in these two editions, at least to some degree. However, that being said I would make the following points: Published collections of the letters have, in many instances, omitted material, particularly where this was considered to be 'indelicate', or somehow shedding a poor light on Wolfe. An example of this is Wolfe's letter to his father, from Inverness, dated 12 January 1752 (Willson, p. 167), where comparison with the original ('Letters to Parents', pp. 200-2, dated, Old Style to 12 January, 1752) shows heavy editing of comments regarding Wolfe's health, and also joking asides about the sexual exploits of a fellow officer. Here, the accompanying volume of later transcripts has the revealing verdict 'very disagreeable'. To elaborate, both Wright and Willson omit the following passage: ‘Loftus will every where be the same man, equally abandon’d to the Fury of his wild Passions to the great havock & peril of Scotch Chastity. He says - he has had Rheumatick [Scurey?], something like mine, & that mercury does wonders in his Disorder & advises me to the use of it, sure if I was to follow his, we should misapply that noble ???isick. I have begun to use soap to cleanse the passages in the kidneys & all the urinary channels, which are at present a little clogg’d’. This is not an isolated example. Both editions omit the following from a letter to Wolfe’s father, 17 Oct. 1741: ‘Poor Dick [Gresham?] is married here & upon half pay & a very well dispos’d creature he seems to be – even Dick, who is a good Husband, is by no means so violently [attach’d?] to the the Place of his Wife’s nativity as to forget his own, and has his Head perpetually turn’d to the South Pole, & knows no other Point of attraction.’ Comparison of the images of the original letters against published versions found examples of numerous small transcription errors which brings into question the accuracy of the published editions.

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