Author: DARBY, Thomas Elde
Biography:
DARBY, Thomas Elde (1779-1854: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born on 28 Oct. 1779 at East Street, Bloomsbury, London, and baptised on 7 Nov. at St. George the Martyr, Queen Square, Westminster, the second son of John Darby (1753-1823), attorney, and Eliza(beth) Eld(e) (1761-1809), who had married at St. Clement Danes, Westminster, on 17 Aug. 1778. He was educated at Charterhouse and Trinity College Cambridge (matric. and Pensioner 1799). While travelling in Europe he was detained and became a détenu or prisoner at Verdun, France. He wrote his Free Poetic Imitation there. He attempted to escape on 4 August 1805 but was recaptured and force-marched in chains to Bitche where he was held in harsh conditions although an Englishman who passed through Metz reported that Darby had read all the books in the circulating library, so the evidence about his treatment is unclear. On 4 Oct. 1806, after fourteen months imprisonment, he was marched back to Verdun where he remained for several years and was probably only released in 1814 on the abdication of Napoleon. After the war he served in the Embassy at Paris and translated Benjamin Constant’s On the Political Doctrine Calculated to Unite Parties in France (1817) under Constant’s inspection. He married first, at the British Embassy in Paris, 14 Mar. 1818, Mary Barry, originally from Dublin. It is not known when she died. He married Eleanor Snowden (1809-70) (q.v.) on 8 Apr. 1838 at St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Possible issue from the first marriage is not known; with Eleanor Snowden he had four daughters and a son. By 1840 they had taken up residence at 5 Queen Square, St. Margaret’s, Westminster, where he died on 1 Aug. 1854, aged 74, leaving his estate to his wife. She died on 9 Dec. 1870 at 11 Fawcett Street, Kensington. Both were buried at Brompton cemetery. (ancestry.co.uk 6 Jan. 2023; findmypast.co.uk 6 Jan. 2023; R. L. Arrowsmith, Charterhouse Register 1769-1872 [1974], 105; James Lawrence, A Picture of Verdun, Or the English Detained in France[1810], 1: 180, 2: 157-60; Dover Telegraph 14 Apr. 1838, 19 Aug. 1854; GM Oct. 1854, 409; Daily News 15 Dec. 1870) AA