Eliza and the Colonel

In February 1875 a very old lady, Eliza Kelly, died in Hythe and was buried a couple of days later in St Leonard’s churchyard. There was nothing remarkable about her, except possibly her age – 92 years was unusual for the time. She had never married and had no known family. Who was she?

Eliza’s grave in St Leonard’s Churchyard, Hythe

She was born on 21 December 1782 and baptised two days later at the parish church in Deal, Kent. Her father was Francis John Kelly, a captain in the Royal Irish Regiment aged 50 and her mother Elizabeth nee Oakley, aged 17. They had been married for 10 months.

Eliza was joined by four siblings over the next 21 years. In the interim, her father had sold his commission and retired from active service. He then disappears from the public record until he surfaces again in Hythe in 1803, having been appointed barrack master to the Royal Staff Corps (RSC) stationed there. The family lived, it was written later, in ‘a small wooden tenement down a lane leading out of the main street of Hythe’.

An artist’s impression of the RSC, somwhere more picturesque than Hythe

Into this domestic bliss rode a young officer who would change their lives: Charles James Napier. He was the same age as Eliza. He fell in love, not with her, but with her mother.

Charles James Napier as a young man

Napier, once trained by the RSC in the mysteries of engineering which he learnt from involvement in building the Royal Military Canal, was transferred to the 50th Regiment and left Hythe. The Kellys stayed. One night in 1807, fire broke out in the RSC stables. Hythe’s fire engine was inadequate to deal with the conflagration and Eliza’s little brother, Henry, ran up the hill to the barracks in Saltwood to summon their fire engine. It drew water from the nearby canal and no human or  equine was hurt.

The next year, Napier was able to pay a visit to Hythe. We know this because he wrote to his mother from the town in March 1808:

‘I rode here, dear Mother, to see poor Sturgeon, who has lost his little wife, the betrothed of Emmett… They are going to take the body to Ireland’.

Napier was then sent to the Iberian Peninsula and fought at the battle of Corunna under General Sir John Moore, whom he greatly admired.  Moore was killed and at first Napier’s family believed he, too, was dead. Although seriously wounded, he made his way back to England and almost immediately went to visit Mrs Kelly who was staying with friends in Devon. ‘She, poor girl, betrayed the strength of their relationship by falling in a dead faint as he arrived’.

Next, Napier, now a major, was posted to Bermuda, where he was joined by a very young ensign, Eliza’s brother Henry.  His family had now left Hythe and Francis was working as a barrack master at Romford.  Mrs Kelly and Napier kept up a correspondence and met whenever he was in England until 1819, when he was sent to Greece. In 1822 he was appointed Military Resident in Cephalonia and while there, formed a relationship with a local woman, known only to history as Anastasia.

Francis Kelly died in 1826. Napier was free to marry Mrs Kelly, which he did in 1827. She was 61, he 45.  He had told her about his Greek liaison and the fact that Anastasia had given birth to a daughter, Susan Sarah and was expecting another (to be named Emily Cephalonia). The news of the wedding was not universally well-received. The former Mrs Kelly’s son-in-law called it ‘ridiculous’ and ‘unsuitable’ and said he would ensure that his children had nothing to do with her.  Napier retaliated by calling the man a liar and a scoundrel.

Charles James Napier in later life

After the wedding the newly-weds sailed back to Cephalonia together. Anastasia conveniently disappeared from the scene, leaving her daughters to be raised by the Napiers.

The marriage was not a long one. Elizabeth Napier became ill in 1830 and Napier brought her back to England.

Eliza’s mother died in 1833, but Eliza did not lose touch with her step-father and kept up a correspondence with him. This may have been out of affection, or duty, but maybe also because he made her an allowance. It was not a huge amount and Eliza makes frequent references to her lack of means. In 1836 she pointedly berates Napier for  sending letters to Sandwich rather than Hythe ‘whereby they cost me seven pence each, more than they would have done if directed here’ (postage was then paid for by the recipient, not the sender).

After her mother’s death, Eliza lived in lodgings in Sandwich during the summer, but spent winters in Hythe with her ‘good friend’ Martha Tournay, another spinster but twenty five years older – she was by then in her late 70s and well off.  It is possible that Eliza actually fulfilled the role of a paid ‘companion’.  Martha’s house, which tithe maps identify as being ‘The Dene’,  was certainly big enough to accommodate staff. Situated near St Leonard’s church, it had 9 bedrooms and its own brewhouse, cellars and dairy.

The Dene, Hythe, now demolished

Napier meanwhile married Frances (‘Fanny’) Alcock, the widow of a naval officer, in 1835 and lived with her for a while in Portsmouth. While Eliza also corresponded with Fanny from time to time, she liked to remind Napier of her mother ‘who is still cherished in your heart’. 

Eliza could be waspish. She had met Napier’s daughters and always asked to be remembered to them, but managed to sneak in little derogatory comments. On one occasion she said of Susan who  had suffered from ‘the loss of hair from that disagreeable complaint ring-worm’ and ‘had lost some of her front teeth’ (as children do) that ‘her mouth was rather large’. But, she concludes ‘beauty is so entirely a matter of taste that it is of little real consequence’. After praising Susan’s present docility, she then remarks that she used to be ‘inclined to violence’.

Eliza disliked change and innovation. The1834 Municipal Corporations Act, which changed the way in which Freemen were appointed and how elections were held, resulted, she wrote in  ‘the rag and bobtails being for the present of course uppermost;’ of the 1835 Poor Laws, ’tis said of the new poor laws, they will all work well after a time’; of proposals to build a railway near Hythe,  ‘in my humble opinion Kent, not being or likely to become a manufacturing county, does not require this kind of thing, large sums have been won and lost and the railway share market is the only one in which business is transacted to any amount. I suspect in a few years the share holders will look very blank’.

In fact, she became very anti-railway.  In 1845 she suggested that the Directors of railway companies should be hanged and the next year blamed railway travel on a perceived increase in suicides. A couple of years later she had changed her mind, having discovered that the railway enabled her to travel easily to Canterbury to visit friends for a few hours, rather than endure a road journey which took half a day.

In 1835 she was writing from Elmstone Court, a grand house at Preston, near Canterbury and the 1841 census shows her living there as a Governess. Elmstone Court was then owned by Charles Delmar who had 7 children – all, apparently good-natured and well-behaved.

After Elmstone, Eliza lived permanently in Hythe. She writes in 1842 of a very hot summer in the town – though her suggestion that the temperatures reached 130 degrees Fahrenheit is clearly inaccurate. The Royal Military Canal was nearly dry and the Romney Marsh sheep and cattle suffering terribly.

By the mid-1840s, Eliza was resident with Martha Tournay who now approaching 90 had come to rely on her completely. Eliza could not leave the house unless there was someone else to care for Martha, who did not now leave her room. She did, however,  manage to get away to see her sister and niece in summer 1846 for 3 days.

Martha Tournay died in January 1848 and left Eliza £10, which, given her wealth, does not suggest any great degree of friendship.  Her goods and her house were sold by auction in 1849 & comprised everything that a respectable mid-Victorian household should: rosewood and mahogany furniture, a lot of chintz and damask, Brussels carpets and a dumb waiter.

Deprived of her home, Eliza donned mourning and went to stay in lodgings in Deal. From there it was to Sydenham and a visit to London to see the Napiers. Then it was to Devon to see her sister at Fowey, where her nephew persuaded her that railway stock was ‘as safe as any other of gov^nt . and not liable to income tax’. Her conversion to the railways was complete.

Napier after a very successful tour in India, where he captured Sindh Province and was knighted,  returned home permanently and died in Portsmouth in 1853.

Eliza spent the rest of her life living in lodgings, for the last few years back in Hythe. Her will reveals that she was far from impoverished and she made substantial  bequests to nephews and nieces. Her estate was valued at £2000, about £190,000 today.

This post is based almost entirely on the research of LucyAnn Curling. Her two books, ‘Curling Wisps and Whispers of History’, Vols. 1 & 2,  (both available from Amazon) and the letters of Eliza to Col. Napier (held at the British Library & which she has transcribed) have been invaluable. 

With thanks also to Mike de la Mare for identifying The Dene