Writer. Student at Oxford; did not take degree. Went to the Continent in 1846 for purpose of studying languages; lived there for some years. In 1855 appointed assistant commissary, with rank of captain, in Turkish contingent; served in the Crimea to end of the War. Contributed to Once a Week, St. James's Magazine, Boy's Own Magazine, and other periodicals. Edited Welcome Guest, 1860-1861. Translated various works from the German and the French. Author of The Armies of the Great Powers, 1859, and other books on military matters; Life and Times of Her Majesty Caroline Matilda, Queen of Denmark and Norway, 1864; also novels, boys' adventure books. Brought out in book form various collections of his periodical contributions.

The author of the "The Queen's Guest" states that he is writing his article in a county gaol where he is "a guest of her Majesty" as prisoner for debt. He states that he served in "one of the foreign legions" in the Crimea; that on his return to England he had "sixty pounds of debt" hanging over him—money due to the tailor and the bootmaker who had furnished his outfit for the Crimea, and that he was arrested on the writ of the bootmaker. In the account of his Crimean service, Camp Life: or Passages from the Story of a Contingent, 1860, Wraxall does not mention imprisonment for debt. He merely states that on his discharge " ... I still owed a ponderous balance to my outfitter—who would be sure to have a heavy bill to make up directly I landed in England".

Whether or not the imprisonment was a fact, the correspondence of various passages in the H.W. article and in Camp Life suffices to establish Lascelles Wraxall as the H.W. contributor. Among the correspondences are the following: the H.W. article states that the writer, to receive his military discharge pay, "had to await the Paymaster's good pleasure for three weeks at the Hotel de I'Europe" in Pera; Wraxall, in Camp Life, states that he stayed three weeks in Pera, at the Hotel de I'Europe, "awaiting the good pleasure of the Chief Paymaster". The H.W. article states that the writer on his arrival in England applied to the War Office for money but that his appeals met with no success; Wraxall in Camp Life, says the same. The H.W. article states: "I know that government, to exist, must be unjust, and that individual hardships weigh but little against the common weal"; Wraxall, in Camp Life, writes: "I see daily more clearly, that no government can prosper which is not individually unjust: private considerations must be thrown aside on behalf of the salus publica".

One detail in the H.W. article that does not accord with the facts of Wraxall's life is the statement there that the writer had "a wife and child to support." Wraxall and his wife had no children.

The Office Book records payment of £3.3.0, instead of the standard £2.2.0, for the 4-column article. Wraxall later had some correspondence with Dickens.

Author: Anne Lohrli; © University of Toronto Press, 1971.

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography