He was the author of:
- ‘Suggestive Hints towards improved Secular Instruction, making it bear upon Practical Life,’ 1849.
- ‘Observations on the Working of the Government Scheme of Education and on School Inspection,’ 1849.
- ‘Remarks occasioned by the Present Crusade against the Educational Plans of the Committee of Council on Education,’ 1850.
- ‘Lessons and Tales, a Reading Book for Children,’ 1851.
- ‘Schools and other similar Institutions for the Industrial Classes: remarks on giving them a Self-supporting Character,’ 1853.
- ‘Teaching of Common Things: a Lecture,’ 1854.
- ‘Remarks on the Reorganisation of the Civil Service and its bearing on Educational Progress,’ 1854.
- ‘Lessons on the Phenomena of Industrial Life and the Conditions of Industrial Success, ed. by R. Dawes,’ 1854.
- ‘Mechanics' Institutes and Popular Education,’ 1856.
- ‘The Evils of Indiscriminate Charity,’ 1856.
- ‘Effective Primary Instruction the only sure Road to Success in the Reading Room, Library, and Institutes for secondary instruction,’ 1857.
[Henry's Biographical Notice of Very Rev. Richard Dawes (1867); Gent. Mag. May 1867, pp. 674–5.]
DAWES or DAW, SOPHIA, Baronne de Feuchères (1790–1840), was the daughter of Richard Daw, a fisherman at St. Helen's, Isle of Wight, her mother's maiden name being Jane Callaway. She was one of ten children, of whom but four grew up. Her father is said to have been addicted to drink, and in 1796 the whole family became inmates of Newport workhouse. After passing nine years there, Sophia was for two years servant to a farmer in the neighbourhood. She next seems to have gone up to London, was seduced, and fell into extreme poverty, but a military officer made her his mistress, and on severing the connection settled 50l. a year on her. This annuity she sold, and, either from love of study or ambition for a higher station, placed herself (1809) in a school at Chelsea. She is alleged to have been servant in a house in Piccadilly frequented by rich profligates, when the Duke of Bourbon's valet, accompanying his master thither, called his attention to her beauty. The duke took a house for her and her mother in Gloucester Street, Queen Square (1811). Here she diligently prosecuted her studies, not only attaining proficiency in modern languages, but as her exercise books, still preserved, show, thoroughly mastering Xenophon and Plutarch. After the fall of Napoleon the duke, until the death of his father, the Prince of Condé, in 1818, lived as much in London as in his own country. He took Sophia over to Paris, and, apparently in order to qualify her for admission to court, secured her marriage to Baron Adrien Victor de Feuchères, an officer in the royal guard. In 1818 they were married in London with both protestant and Roman catholic rites, the duke settling 72,000 francs on them. St. Helen's register containing no record of her baptism, Sophia had in the previous year received adult baptism, when she represented herself as three years younger than she really was, while in the marriage licence she described herself as a widow, and in the marriage contract declared herself daughter of a Richard Clark, and widow of a William Dawes, falsehoods destined to give her heirs great trouble. Feuchères became aide-de-camp to the duke, and for two years had no suspicion of the relations between his wife and his master. Even then her assurance that she was a natural daughter of the duke, which the latter corroborated, dispelled his uneasiness. In 1822, however, he discovered the real facts, parted from his wife (a judicial separation ensued five years later), and divulged the story to Louis XVIII (d. 1824), who forbade Sophia's further appearance at court. She thereupon made indirect overtures to the wife of the Duke of Berry, the king's nephew, offering in return for the removal of the interdict to make her daughter the Duke of Bourbon's heiress. Disdainfully repulsed she next sounded the Duke of Orleans (the future Louis Philippe), whose delicacy was not proof against the prospect of a rich inheritance for one of his sons. The Duke of Bourbon's wife, who died about this time, was Orleans's aunt, but there had been no intimacy between the two families. There is ample evidence that Bourbon had a great repugnance to any closer relations, but Sophia first wheedled him into being godfather to Louis-Philippe's fourth son, the Duke of Aumale, concerted with the Orleans family a scheme for making the godson an adoptive son, which, however, failed, and ultimately, on 30 Aug. 1829, morally coerced Bourbon into signing a will which, after leaving two million francs and estates worth about eight millions to herself, bequeathed the bulk of the remainder to Aumale. Charles X, who succeeded his brother Louis XVIII in 1824, had favoured this bequest, and in February 1830 readmitted Sophia to court, without requiring her proffered cessation of public cohabitation with Bourbon. The ‘queen of Chantilly,’ as she was ironically styled, was now at her zenith. Talleyrand frequently dined with her, and his nephew, the Marquis of Chabannes, married her niece, Matilda Dawes, while her nephew, James, held
