Author: Lemaistre, J. G.
Biography:
LEMAISTRE, J. G. (1769-1840: ancestry.com)
John Gustavus Lemaistre was born in London and baptised at St. Pancras Old Church on 4 Mar. 1769, the son of Stephen Caesar Lemaistre (1738-77) and his wife Mary Roche (b 1744), who had married at St. Margaret’s, Westminster, in 1760. She was a notable beauty, born to a distinguished Irish family, and after her husband died in India—where he had gone as a supreme-court judge—she married Gustav Adam von Nolcken (1733-1813) at St. Pancras on 30 June 1779. Baron von Nolcken was the Swedish ambassador to the court of Great Britain from 1764 to 1793. J. G. Lemaistre was educated at Oxford (matric 1786 Christ Church, BA Queen’s 1790, MA 1794). He studied law at Lincoln’s Inn and was called to the bar in 1791; it is not clear whether he ever practised. On 6 Mar. 1794 he married Elizabeth Vassall (1772-1857) at Walcot, Somerset. They do not appear to have had children. His first known publication was a novel, Frederic Latimer; or, The History of a Young Man of Fashion (1799), which he himself may have translated into French while he was in Paris in 1801. From an extended visit to the continent, he produced A Rough Sketch of Modern Paris (1804) and Travels after the Peace of Amiens (1806), the latter covering parts of France, Italy, Switzerland, and Germany. He and his wife settled at the spa town of Cheltenham, where they evidently enjoyed a busy social life and contributed generously to charity. The Cheltenham Poetical Alphabet (1832) is a jeu d’esprit suggested by and dedicated to Mrs. Ball of Weymouth and her daughters; it was printed for private circulation. Most of the entries are by Lemaistre but he enlisted the help of friends to finish it. In the same year, he published a pamphlet, How Will It Look?, on the recently-passed Reform Bill. Lemaistre died at Cheltenham on 4 Nov. 1840 and was buried on 11 Nov. at Holy Trinity there. With the exception of a few bequests to a widowed niece and to two of his wife’s Vassall relatives, he left his estate to his wife Elizabeth, who lived on until 11 July 1857. (ancestry.com 3 Jan. 2023; findmypast.com 3 Jan. 2023; EN1; Alumni Oxonienses; WorldCat; Cheltenham Chronicle 21 July 1857) HJ