Jones's Diamond Cabinet Editions of Select British Poets. 4 vols (1836)Photograph: Bronwyn Lloyd (2026)
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Katherine Anne Emily Cecilia Somerset (1824-1915)Lord Raglan's Family (1837)
Katherine Anne Emily CeciliaSomerset
From her affectionate Brother Richard
Janu[uar]y 1st, 1837
Katherine & Richard
Thanks to the genealogical researches of poet-scholar Michele Leggott, I can now report that we've now identified - with a high degree of probability - the original owner of these four poetry volumes.
Katherine Somerset was the fifth daughter of Lord and Lady Raglan, who you can see depicted below:
William Haines: FitzRoy James Henry Somerset (1788-1855)
Thomas Lawrence: Emily Harriet Wellesley-Pole (1792-1881)Lord Raglan is famous - or perhaps notorious - for his command of the British forces in the first year of the Crimean War. Christopher Hibbert's celebrated book The Destruction of Lord Raglan charts the rather unfair way in which he was held to account for all the multiple failings of the campaign.
The British army hadn't fought in earnest since the Battle of Waterloo, some forty years earlier, and Raglan - one of the Duke of Wellington's dashing young officers during the Spanish Peninsula Campaign and the Hundred Days (where he lost an arm) - had grown old and absent-minded in the meantime. His critics pointed out that he was in the habit of referring to their Russian adversaries as "the French" - even though France was Britain's ally in this particular conflict.
He was also (indirectly) responsible for the infamous Charge of the Light Brigade, during the Battle of Balaclava. It was really the failure of the British expeditionary force to provide proper shelter and food for their soldiers during the terrible winter of 1854-55 which was his downfall, however. Blamed by the Press and the Government for his mismanagement, he died of "dysentery and depression" on 28 June 1855, at the height of the siege of Sevastopol.
To return to happier days, however, FitzRoy Somerset's marriage in 1814 to Lady Emily Wellesley-Pole (niece of the Duke of Wellington) connected him firmly to the powerful Wellesley family. They had five children in all:
- Charlotte Caroline Elizabeth Somerset (16 May 1815 – 1906)
- Arthur William FitzRoy Somerset (6 May 1816 – 21 December 1845)
- Richard Henry Fitzroy Somerset, 2nd Baron Raglan (24 May 1817 – 3 May 1884)
- Frederick John Fitzroy Somerset (8 Mar 1821 – 26 Nov 1824)
- Katherine Anne Emily Cecilia Somerset (31 Aug 1824 – 15 Oct 1915)
Of these, only the third and the fifth are of interest to us. They are, in fact, the Katherine and "her affectionate brother Richard" in the inscription above, repeated verbatim on all four volumes of my copy of Jones's Diamond Cabinet Editions of Select British Poets:
National Portrait Gallery: Hon. Katherine Anne Emily Cecilia Somerset (1824-1915)[Camille Silvy: albumen print (8 May 1862)]
Richard Somerset Esq., later 2nd Baron Raglan (1817-1884)How can we be so sure? For one thing, the dates fit just as well as the names. Richard would have been 19 at the time he presented this handsome cabinet set of the British poets to his 12-year-old sister. Hopefully they were meant as much for enjoyment as for educational purposes ...
Richard himself was educated at Christ Church, Oxford. The usual age for going up to the university was between 16 and 19, so he was presumably still studying there when he purchased these books for his sister. After graduation, he:
went to Ceylon with Lt.-Gen. Sir Colin Campbell as his Private Secretary and was subsequently taken into the Ceylon civil service in 1841. In 1844 he was the assistant government agent of Colombo.So when exactly did Sir Colin Campbell leave his previous post as lieutenant-governor of Nova Scotia?
In November 1840 he was promoted to the governorship of Ceylon, where he remained from September 1839 to June 1847.Possible dates for Richard, then, might be either:
- Oxford c.1833-36 / Grand Tour (or more study) c.1837-39 / Ceylon 1839-49;
- or, alternatively: Oxford c.1836-39 / Ceylon 1839-49.
The Coat of Arms of the Barons Raglan (1852- )motto: Mutare vel timere sperno [I scorn to change or fear]
In any case, Richard didn't get married until 1856, after inheriting the title of "Baron Raglan" from his father (his elder brother Arthur had died in 1845). He had six children from his two wives.
And what of his sister Katherine? "She died unmarried, in 1915," at the age of 91, in London, according to the Wikitree genealogical site.
Did she (or any of her heirs) visit New Zealand at some point, I wonder? There are no other inscriptions on my four-volume set than the original one by her brother, so there are no other possible owners to track down. At some point, however, it must have crossed the ocean and half the globe to end up here, in Auckland - it would be fascinating to know just how and when.
There must be a lot more out there to be discovered about Katherine and her long life, as well as this book that once belonged to her. Watch this space!
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