Author: Dalrymple, Hugh
Biography:
DALRYMPLE, Hugh (c. 1727-74: ancestry.co.uk)
Hugh is sometimes given as Hew or Heugh. Hugh Dalrymple is the spelling used in the inscription on the title page of the BL copy of Rodondo. Although Hugh Dalrymple is not an uncommon name in Scotland it is likely that the poet was the son of Robert Dalrymple and his wife Anne Kennedy and was born, probably in Dumfriesshire, in 1727. He became an advocate in Scotland prior to entering the Middle Temple in London on 17 May 1759; he was called to the bar on 8 Feb. 1771. He married Grissel Craw in Strathclyde in Jan. 1748 and they had two daughters and two sons. The marriage was unhappy and they separated some years before Grissel’s death on 30 Sept. 1767. Dalrymple published Woodstock: An Elegy in 1761 but the poem was written in 1759. Political letters published in newspapers in the 1770s and signed “Modestus” have been attributed to him. Dalrymple was appointed Attorney General of Grenada in 1771 but he died there on 9 Mar. 1774. He features in the ODNB entry for his daughter, Grace, who married Dr John Elliott in 1771; Elliott divorced her in 1776 after her affair with the Irish Viscount Valentia. She became a celebrated courtesan in both Britain and France; her fictionalised account of her life, Journal of My Life During the French Revolution, was published in 1859. (ancestry.co.uk 14 June 2024; ODNB [for Grace Elliott] 14 June 2024; Bath Chronicle 1 Mar. 1770; Joanne Major and Sarah Murden, An Infamous Mistress [2016])