George Whyte-Melville

George John Whyte-Melville (19 June 1821 – 5 December 1878) was a Scottish novelist much concerned with field sports, and also a poet. He took a break in the mid-1850s to serve as an officer of Turkish irregular cavalry in the Crimean War. Life and work George John Whyte-Melville was born in 1821, at Mount Melville near St Andrews, Scotland, as a son of Major John Whyte-Melville and Lady Catherine Anne Sarah Osborne and a grandson on his mother's side of the 5th Duke of Leeds. His father was a well-known sportsman and Captain of The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews. George was tutored privately at home by the young Robert Lee, then educated at Eton, before entering the army with a commission in the 93rd Highlanders in 1839. He exchanged into the Coldstream Guards in 1846, and retired with the rank of captain in 1849. Whyte-Melville married the Hon. Charlotte Hanbury-Bateman in 1847, and they had one daughter, Florence Elizabeth, who went on to marry Clotworthy Skeffington, 11th Viscount Massereene. His marriage was not a happy one, and this led to the "constantly recurring note of melancholy" that runs through all of his novels, "especially in reference to women". His wife also was not happy with the marriage.