A prisoner writes from Alresford to a friend in France:
‘I go often to the good Mrs. Smith’s. Miss Anna is at present here. She sent me a valentine yesterday. I go there sometimes to take tea where Henrietta and Betsi Wynne are. We played at cards, and spent the pleasantest evening I have ever passed in England.’
A Captain Quinquet, also at Alresford, thus writes to his sister at Avranches:
‘We pass the days gaily with the Johnsons, daughters and brother, and I am sure you are glad to hear that we are so happy. Come next Friday! Ah! If that were possible, what a surprise! On that day we give a grand ball to celebrate the twenty-fifth wedding anniversary of papa and mamma. There will be quite twenty people, and I flatter myself we shall enjoy ourselves thoroughly, and if by chance on that day a packet of letters should arrive from you—Mon Dieu! What joy!’
He adds, quite in the style of a settled local gossip, scraps of news, such as that Mrs. Jarvis has a daughter born; that poor Mr. Jack Smith is dead; that Colonel Lewis’s wife, a most amiable woman, will be at the ball; that Miss Kimber is going to be married; that dear little Emma learns to speak French astonishingly well; that Henrietta Davis is quite cured from her illness, and so forth.
There is, in fact, plenty of evidence that the French officers found the daughters of Albion very much to their liking. Many of them married and remained in England after peace was declared, leaving descendants who may be found at this day, although in many cases the French names have become anglicized.
In Andover to-day the names of Jerome and Dugay tell of the paroled Frenchmen who were here between 1810 and 1815, whilst, also at Andover, ‘Shepherd’ Burton is the grandson of Aubertin, a French prisoner.
At Chesterfield (Mr. Hawkesly Edmunds informs me), the names of Jacques and Presky still remain.
Robins and Jacques and Etches are names which still existed in Ashbourne not many years ago, their bearers being known to be descended from French prisoners there.
At Odiham, Alfred Jauréguiberry, second captain of the Austerlitz privateer, married a Miss Chambers. His son, Admiral Jauréguiberry, described as a man admirable in private as in public life, was in command of the French Squadron which came over to Portsmouth on the occasion of Queen Victoria’s Jubilee Naval Review in 1887, and he found time to call upon an English relative.