The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Purcell Papers, by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

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Title: The Purcell Papers
Volume I. (of III.)

Author: Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

Release Date: May 24, 2008 [EBook #509]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PURCELL PAPERS ***

Produced by Judith Boss and Charles Keller

THE PURCELL PAPERS.

BY THE LATE

JOSEPH SHERIDAN LE FANU,

AUTHOR OF 'UNCLE SILAS.'

With a Memoir by

ALFRED PERCEVAL GRAVES

IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. I.

CONTENTS OF VOL. I.

MEMOIR OF JOSEPH SHERIDAN LE FANU
THE GHOST AND THE BONE-SETTER
THE FORTUNES OF SIR ROBERT ARDAGH
THE LAST HEIR OF CASTLE CONNOR
THE DRUNKARD'S DREAM

MEMOIR OF JOSEPH SHERIDAN LE FANU.

A noble Huguenot family, owning considerable property in Normandy, the
Le Fanus of Caen, were, upon the revocation of the Edict of Nantes,
deprived of their ancestral estates of Mandeville, Sequeville, and
Cresseron; but, owing to their possessing influential relatives at the
court of Louis the Fourteenth, were allowed to quit their country for
England, unmolested, with their personal property. We meet with John Le
Fanu de Sequeville and Charles Le Fanu de Cresseron, as cavalry officers
in William the Third's army; Charles being so distinguished a member of
the King's staff that he was presented with William's portrait from his
master's own hand. He afterwards served as a major of dragoons under
Marlborough.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century, William Le Fanu was the sole
survivor of his family. He married Henrietta Raboteau de Puggibaut,
the last of another great and noble Huguenot family, whose escape
from France, as a child, by the aid of a Roman Catholic uncle in high
position at the French court, was effected after adventures of the most
romantic danger.

Joseph Le Fanu, the eldest of the sons of this marriage who left issue,
held the office of Clerk of the Coast in Ireland. He married for the
second time Alicia, daughter of Thomas Sheridan and sister of Richard
Brinsley Sheridan; his brother, Captain Henry Le Fanu, of Leamington,
being united to the only