Author: Pearson, Thomas
Biography:
PEARSON, Thomas (1739-81: ancestry.com)
The Epistle to D. B. by T. P., privately printed in London by J. Nichols and Son of Red Lion Passage, Fleet Street, with no date on the title-page and existing in an apparently unique copy at the BL, is tentatively dated 1795 in the library catalogue. A handwritten note identifies the persons involved as Daniel Braithwaite and Thomas Pearson. It is a charming “familiar epistle” composed in 1761, dated from Calcutta 26 Dec. 1761 and beginning, “To thee, dear Dan, my better part . . . .” It records the author’s long journey from England to India via South America and his first impressions of Calcutta. Internal evidence indicates that the two men had been boyhood friends. Both were born in the Lake District and may have gone to school together, although Braithwaite was several years the elder. Braithwaite (1731-1817) moved to London in 1762 and embarked on a successful career in the Post Office; by 1768 he was Postmaster General. In 1761 Pearson, who had been born at Burton-in-Kendal, Westmorland, c. 1739, joined the Indian Army as a cadet and sailed for Calcutta on the Norfolk on 26 May. He rose through the ranks (Lt. 1763, Capt. 1764, Major 1769) but resigned from the service in 1770. On 2 Dec. 1767 he married Sarah Gambier Irwin, who had been born and baptised in Calcutta in 1749, but she died on 9 Sept. 1768 after the birth of their only child, Sarah. After retiring Pearson became the agent in England for Mir Jafar Khan’s gift to the Army; he returned to Bengal in 1776 and died in Calcutta on 5 Aug. 1781, aged 42. He was buried in the South Park St. cemetery. The survival and publication of Pearson’s only known poem is something of a mystery but 1795 may be an early date for its first printing, since “J. Nichols and Son” as an imprint seems to belong to 1801 and later. John Nichols (q.v.) was an assiduous collector of literary manuscripts and could have been personally responsible for bringing this one to light, but more probably Braithwaite himself commissioned the printing. (ancestry.com 8 Sept. 2023; Bengal Obituary [1851]; Edward Dodwell, Alphabetical List of the Officers of the Indian Army [1837], 204-5; V. C. P. Hodson, List of the Officers of the Bengal Army, 1758-1834 [2004] 3:2, 497-8; “Braithwaite, Daniel,” armorial.library.utoronto.ca) HJ
Other Names:
- T. P.