Nine years before he begged Henry Angelo for a few shillings to purchase fuel, Semple had written to his former host to protest against a slight. He could not, he declared, suffer such conduct to pass without an answer. Then arrived the February missive: the man who had formerly styled himself “Captain” swore he possessed neither fire nor shirt. Angelo sent him a crown. These two letters reveal two visages of an existence compounded of departures, arrests, returns, and fresh expedients. Major Semple had been a soldier, a felon, a transport banished to the Antipodes, and a wanderer brought back once more to the thresholds of London.
His final letter resembles a simple cry of distress. With Semple, it becomes the provisional conclusion of an endless sequence of removals: from regiments to the hulks, from tables where he invited himself to houses where he petitioned for alms.
From the Regiment to the Hulks
In his early years, Semple served under the colours. Griffiths describes him as having been wounded and taken prisoner during the American War of Independence; upon his release, he is said to have received a pension and allied himself by marriage to a gentlewoman of good family. The union soon fades from the record. Semple next entered the retinue of Miss Chudleigh, later Duchess of Kingston, accompanying her to Saint Petersburg, where she intended to erect a brandy distillery.
At Saint Petersburg, according to Griffiths, he procured a captain’s commission in an imperial Russian regiment and took part in several campaigns. Such rank might have anchored him. In 1784, after many years far from England, he resigned his commission and returned. The homecoming was swift; his funds, however, were soon exhausted. He hired a post-chaise and sold it. Semple maintained that the matter was a mere breach of covenant, but the law adjudged it larceny. He was sentenced to seven years’ transportation.
His connections obtained for him a commutation of the sentence. He waited aboard the Woolwich hulks, among the felons destined for Botany Bay, before receiving a pardon upon one condition: that he quit the realm forthwith. Revolutionary France afforded him a fresh asylum. Griffiths asserts that he consorted with Pétion, Roland, and other figures of that era, and that he attended the trial of the King. Denounced as a spy, he escaped the guillotine and presently resumed his military calling, this time among the allied armies arrayed against the Republic.
This second martial career proved no more durable. Arrested at Augsburg, Semple hastily abandoned the Austrian service. Griffiths was not privy to the precise cause of this arrest; he surmises some doubtful conduct. Semple reappeared in London. He had lost his uniform, yet retained the habit of presenting himself wherever a seat, a cover, or credit might be extended to him.
The Intrusive Guest
Around 1795, Semple made his appearance in the circle of Henry Angelo under the pretext of taking lessons in fencing. Angelo recalled a visitor who would attend them home, step across the threshold in their company, and remain until dinner was served. Semple would protest that he had a prior engagement; this he would forthwith postpone, accepting the hospitality proffered. In the evening, he would follow the family whenever they went abroad. Angelo was at last obliged to make him understand that he could not lodge beneath their roof: every bedchamber was occupied, save that of his father, which remained locked in his absence.
This acquaintance endured for some three months. Semple vanished without discharging the debt for his fencing tuition. The incident possesses the pettiness of a domestic debt, yet also the distinct relief of a confirmed habit: the former officer knew how to convert an acquaintance into a host, and that host’s hospitality into a livelihood. Three months of repeated intrusions had sufficed for the household to discern the design: a visit, an invitation to dine accepted despite an alleged engagement, and an evening stroll in which Semple attached himself to the party. Angelo does not depict an isolated favour conferred; he recalls a presence hardened into a routine. Shortly thereafter, Semple was sentenced anew to seven years’ transportation. Griffiths relates that he was convicted of having obtained a shirt and a few yards of calico by false representations. Every petition to avert the penalty failed; Semple was put aboard a transport bound for Botany Bay.
The vessel was the Lady Shore. In August 1797, a mutiny broke out among those on board. The journal of the ship’s carpenter, Thomas Millard, as preserved by the State Library of New South Wales, records that approximately a fortnight later the mutineers cast adrift nine-and-twenty souls in a longboat. Among their number were officers and soldiers of the New South Wales Corps, their wives and children, members of the crew, and four convicts. Semple was one of these four. His command of the French tongue enabled him to act as interpreter for the mutineers. Embarked as a felon, he thus found himself in the open boat alongside three fellow prisoners.
After two days at sea, the longboat made Rio Grande in Brazil, according to the summary of the State Library of New South Wales based upon Millard’s journal. These nine-and-twenty passengers must not be confounded with those who remained aboard the Lady Shore, which vessel pursued her course. As for Semple, Griffiths picks up the thread at Lisbon: arrested at the behest of the British minister, he was conveyed to Gibraltar, and thence to Tangier. The chronicler finally records his return to England, without detailing the stages of that journey.
A Final Appeal
Semple survived transportation and returned once more. The Major who re-emerges in Angelo’s reminiscences is no longer depicted as a campaigner in the field, but as a man eking out a livelihood by penning begging letters. Angelo preserved two of these epistles. The first reproached his former host for having shunned him and exposed him to public ridicule. Semple professed himself deeply injured, hinting that he could not brook such contumely.
Nine years elapsed. In the chill of February, another letter set forth a desperate plight: Semple represented himself as destitute, without a fire, without a shirt, and bereft of all sustenance. Angelo harboured doubts as to the complete veracity of the picture, yet sent him a crown notwithstanding. He did not, however, obliterate the memory of those importunate visits and unpaid fencing lessons. Pity, in his breast, did not extinguish suspicion; it assumed the modest form of a coin handed to a man whom one knew too well to believe upon his word.
There is no staged reconciliation in these recollections. There are merely two letters separated by nine years: first, the protestation of a man persuaded he had suffered an insult; next, the petition of one who claimed he could no longer keep himself warm. At the hour of this final plea, Semple had passed through armies, hulks, and across the ocean; yet his last resort was to knock at the door of a house where he had once sat down to dinner without paying for his tuition. The first letter demanded that he no longer be exposed to mockery; the second begged for the means to endure the winter. In both instances, he appealed to the same ancient acquaintance, yet Angelo no longer responded in the same spirit: he remained upon his guard, but gave all the same.
Semple had known how to assume titles, secure patrons, and begin life anew in distant parts, yet he ever drifted back to dependence upon the credit of others. When the Major petitioned for a few shillings, his former host restored neither trust nor friendship; he merely sent him sufficient means to outlast a bitter day. It was little enough, yet it formed the closing gesture in that long succession of half-opened doors.