Magdalen Lady De Lancey (1793–1822)
A week at Waterloo in 1815: Lady De Lancey’s narrative: being an account of how she nursed her husband, Colonel Sir William Howe De Lancey…
Edited by Bernard Rowland Ward (b. 1863)
London: John Murray, 1906
RC.108.51, plate opposite p. 24

Waterloo gave rise to a sizeable printed literature of first-hand memoirs. The majority were by military men, but this volume is a poignant exception. Sir William Howe De Lancey and Magdalen Hall were married on 4 April 1815, and she joined him in Brussels on his appointment as Wellington’s quartermaster-general. He was struck by a cannon-ball during the battle, left for dead, but afterwards found alive: Wellington’s Waterloo despatch of 19 June reported that De Lancey was ‘killed by a cannon shot in the middle of the action’, but contained a postscript saying ‘I am very happy to add, that Colonel De Lancey is not dead, and that strong hopes of his recovery are entertained’. The hopes, however, were not well founded: De Lancey was removed to a farmhouse near the battlefield, where Magdalen nursed him until his death on 26 June. Her narrative, not published until 1906, was seen in manuscript by Charles Dickens, who declared that ‘reading that most astonishing and tremendous account has constituted an epoch in my life’.