The Life of Mrs. Sherwood. Edited and Abridged by Isabella
Gilchrist. (R. Sutton. 3s. 6d. net.)—Mrs. Sherwood wrote more than seventy books, all of them now forgotten,—except, perhaps, "Henry and his Bearer" and "The Fairchild Family." Late in life she published an "Autobiography," and it is this which Miss Gilchrist has edited.. The most interesting part of it is that in which the writer's Indian experiences are related. On June 30th, 1803, she married her cousin, Henry Sherwood, who was a Captain in the 53rd Regiment. In May, 1805, he was ordered out to India. The voyage lasted more than four mouths (April 20th— August 23rd) and was diversified with an attack by a French squadron. The details of their Indian life are curious, sometimes ludicrous, sometimes not a little pathetic. Mrs. Sherwood lost her eldest son when he was about a year and a half old. The native woman who had nursed him had gone home and had never heard of his death. Six months afterwards she was seen waiting for the party on the riverside with a number of toys meant for him. To the end of her life Mrs. Sherwood could never think of the scene without a fit of weeping. She was accustomed to busy herself with looking after the children of the regiment. Many years afterwards she and her husband visited Weedon Barracks, where the 53rd was then stationed, and found many of her nurslings grown up. She died in 1851, being then in her seventy-sixth year. In the second paragraph of p. 1 "eighteenth century" should be nineteenth.
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