Wolseley advises Bailey of his cigar preference (“Benson & Hedges”), and comments on the price (“those you smoked are twenty shillings, the box of one hundred - Horridly dear I think, but I cannot get really good ones cheaper”). Also mentioning his “present house in the Limes at Mortlake” (the Wolseleys’ home between 1874-5), when he and his wife will be coming into town (“early in May”), adding he “hope[s] we may have the pleasure of seeing you and Mrs Bailey”.
In fact, on 16 February Wolseley was appointed by the Secretary of State, Lord Carnarvon, to succeed Sir Benjamin Pine as Lieutenant-Governor of Natal, so his London plans were curtailed. Wolseley assumed his new position on 30 March, effecting the required administrative changes and returning to England in October to resume duty as inspector-general (Ian F. W. Beckett, Wolseley ODNB entry).
In a letter to his wife from 1873 (published in The Letters of Lord and Lady Wolseley, 1922) Wolseley mentions his smoking habit: “please send me out a box or two of really good Havanas, for many sailors dine with me here and make large hauls upon my tobacco. I smoke three or four cigars myself every day, and find they agree with me” (3 November 1873, The Letters of Lord and Lady Wolseley, p.13).
Garnet Wolseley, later Field Marshal Viscount Wolseley, was one of the most distinguished soldiers of the Victorian age. He devoted much energy to Army reform and organisation, to such effect that the phrase “All Sir Garnet” became popular slang for “all correct”. His long career had seen him take part in conflicts including the Crimea, where he first met Charles George Gordon, to leading the expedition to relieve the siege of Khartoum, arriving too late to save his friend.
Although we have not been able to definitively identify the recipient, we note that another letter from Wolseley to the same, “My dear Bailey” (mentioning Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman), was sold in Sotheby’s London sale on 12 December 2002.
Very good condition.
