Author: Waller, Henry
Biography:
WALLER, Henry (1743?-94: findmypast.com)
Henry Waller was a career soldier who joined the 3rd Regiment of Dragoons as a cornet on 19 Feb. 1760 and transferred to the 1st Regiment, King’s Dragoons, on 7 May 1762, which regiment he stayed with thereafter, being promoted to Lieutenant in 1766, Captain in 1773, Major-brevet in 1783, and Major in 1785. He was buried as Major Henry Waller on 17 June 1794, in his 52nd year, at St. Botolph’s, Graveley, Cambridgeshire, with a commemorative plaque installed at his own request. His name was common enough that it is not possible to be certain about his origins but before he went into the army he had a classical education good enough that he could include a three-page Latin poem as a “Proemium” to The Dog’s Monitor. He might have been the son of Henry and Sarah (Waller) Waller baptised at Horsham, Sussex, on 22 Feb. 1744; they had been married at Bramber, Sussex, in 1736. His literary career was brief but showy—a serio-comical poem about a faithful dog and his ungrateful miser of a master, in two versions (1784, 1785), and two parts of a satirical epistle to the Mayor of Rye in Kent (1784). In two letters to the editor of the Kentish Gazette, “Henry Hearty” praised the “poetical genius” of Major Waller and quoted long extracts from the poems. The main periodicals were less generous, the English Review complaining that Waller “does not know when to stop,” accusing him of “1800 bad rhymes,” and naming him as “the most expeditious writer of doggrel in Britain.” It is not certain that Waller ever married, but his regiment must have been stationed in Kent for some time and there were six children of Henry and Elizabeth Waller baptised there in the 1780s. No reliable marriage record has so far been found. (findmypast.com 13 Apr. 2024; ancestry.com 13 Apr. 2024; Kentish Gazette 14 May 1784, 30 June 1784; IJ 21 May 1785; English Review 4 [1784], 462) HJ