Author: Thomson, James
Biography:
THOMSON, James (fl 1809-20)
James Thomson, who from 1809 or earlier had been part of the royal household, described himself on the title-page of the historical romance De Courci in 1817 as Assistant Secretary to Edward, Duke of Kent. In an official letter to the Duke of Wellington in 1819 he identifies himself specifically as the Duke’s “Private Secretary for Charities.” He had a special interest in the cause of promoting education in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland through the London Highland Society and provided his services pro bono (Morning Post). De Courci also contains several “commemorative addresses” commissioned to celebrate important events in the lives of the royal family, besides “miscellaneous poems” in response to such events as the deaths of Sir John Moore and of the Princess Amelia. A courteous review in MR objected to the general air of “adulation” but also mentioned two lapses in usage that might be a coded hint that the author was not English but Scottish by birth. The Shroud of Royalty laments the deaths of both George III and his son the Duke of Kent and Strathearn in 1820. When a trust was formed to collect subscriptions for the Duke’s charities after his death, Thomson accepted the role of Honorary Secretary, receiving donations at 25 Fenchurch Street—the street from which he had also signed the dedication of his 1817 collection. It is puzzling that the same address appears as the residence of James Thomson, born c. 1791, in the Census of 1841 and again in 1851, where his status is unmarried and his occupation given as “seedsman” or nurseryman; he lived with his unmarried younger brother Richard, a librarian, and both had been born in Middlesex. The two Jameses cannot be the same person but must have been related to one another; the poet would have been at least a few years older than the seedsman. No matching public records of birth, marriage, or death have as yet been found for him. He appears in fictional form as the romantic lead in a recent Regency novel, Julie Klassen’s A Winter by the Sea (2023). (ancestry.com 28 Aug. 2024; findmypast.com 28 Aug. 2024; “Edward, Prince . . .[1767-1820],” ODNB 28 Aug. 2024; MR 89 [Jul. 1819], 324; Wellington Papers WP1/620/17; Morning Post 6 June 1815) HJ