Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 50.djvu/190

This page has been validated.
Sala
178
Salaberry

and witnessed in Spain in 1875 the accession to the throne of Alphonso XII and the close of the Carlist war. At the end of 1876, when war between Russia and Turkey was imminent, he was ordered to St. Petersburg, whence he made his way to Constantinople and Athens, returning home in the summer of 1877. He spent much time in Paris during the exhibition of 1878, and he described his impressions in ‘Paris herself again’ (1880). Between December 1879 and the spring of 1880 he was again in the United States, and he collected his correspondence in a volume called ‘America Revisited’ (1882). He hurried to St. Petersburg in March 1881, after the murder of the emperor Alexander II, and was there in May 1883 at the coronation of the emperor Alexander III. On 26 Dec. 1884 he started on his final journalistic tour—an extended journey through America and Australia. He had undertaken to lecture on his own account, chiefly about his journalistic adventures, as well as to describe for the ‘Daily Telegraph’ the countries and peoples he visited. As a lecturer he met with many rebuffs, but the result showed a substantial profit. He came home by way of India. His letters from Australia appeared in the newspaper under the heading, ‘The Land of the Golden Fleece,’ and formed the subject-matter of two volumes—‘A Journey due South’ (1885) and ‘Right round the World’ (1888).

During Sala's last years his energies were dulled by frequent illness. While continuing his articles in the ‘Daily Telegraph’ and his ‘Echoes of the Week,’ he resided chiefly at Brighton. In May 1892, however, he started, with the co-operation of his second wife, a weekly newspaper called ‘Sala's Journal;’ but despite his voluminous contributions, it failed after two years' trial, and involved him pecuniarily. In 1894 he produced ‘Things I have seen and People I have known,’ and next year not only a candid narrative of his ‘Life and Adventures,’ but a collection of genial gossip called ‘London up to Date.’ He had always interested himself in culinary literature, and claimed a practical acquaintance with the culinary art. The last book on which he engaged was an elaborate cookery book, ‘The Thorough Good Cook’ (1895). Owing to his pecuniary embarrassments his large library was sold by auction in March 1895, and in May Lord Rosebery conferred on him a civil-list pension of 100l. a year. He had always vaguely ranged himself with the liberal party. He died from nervous exhaustion, after a long illness, at Brighton on 8 Dec. 1895. Before his death he was received into the Roman catholic church.

He was twice married. His first wife, Mrs. Harriet Sala, whom he married in September 1859, died at Melbourne in December 1885. In 1891 he married a second wife, Bessie, third daughter of Robert Stannard, C.E., who survived him.

Besides the works already enumerated, and a memoir of ‘Robson (the Actor): a Sketch’ (1864), he edited many works of the American humourists for English publication, and, without much success, all the works of Charles Lamb in 1868.

[The Life and Adventures of George Augustus Sala, written by himself, 2 vols. 1895 (with portraits of himself and his mother); Memoirs of Edmund Yates; Memoirs of Henry Vizetelly; Times, 9, 10, and 13 Dec. 1895; Athenæum, December 1895; Daily Telegraph, December 1895.]

S. L.

SALABERRY, CHARLES de (1778–1829), Canadian soldier, born on 19 Nov. 1778 at the manor-house of Beauport, near Quebec, was the son of Louis Ignace de Salaberry by his wife, Mlle. Hortel. Charles Michel's grandfather, Michel de Salaberry, who settled in Canada in 1735, was descended from the noble family of Irumberry de Salaberry in the Pays des Basques. At fourteen years of age Charles Michel joined the 60th regiment, and soon obtained the rank of lieutenant. He served for eleven years in the West Indies under General Robert Prescott [q. v.], and was present in 1794 at the conquest of Martinique. In 1809 he was stationed in Ireland, and in the following year took part in the unfortunate Walcheren expedition. In 1811 he returned to Canada with the rank of major as aide-de-camp of Major-general Rottenberg. In the following year, on the declaration of war against England by the United States, he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant-colonel, and entrusted with the organisation of the Canadian voltigeurs. In 1812, at the head of these troops, he encountered General Dearborn's vanguard, numbering fourteen hundred men, at La Colle, and drove them back. In the following year the Americans renewed the invasion with larger forces. Two armies, each numbering seven or eight thousand men, invaded Canada, intending to converge on Montreal. One, under Hampton, took the route by Lake Champlain; the other, under Dearborn and Wilkinson, advanced by Kingston. In October Salaberry, at the head of four hundred voltigeurs, encountered Hampton's outposts at Odeltown. He repulsed them, and succeeded in striking terror into the whole