A well, and aptly, travelled copy of Trollope’s first travelogue and “best book that has come from my pen,” with an intriguing Yorkshire provenance: belonging, it seems, to a relative of the Gascoigne family of Parlington and Lotherton Halls, near Aberford.
Trollope travelled through the Caribbean – visiting Jamaica, Cuba, Barbados and Trinidad – then to Central American, beginning in the Republic of New Granada (1831-1858), which primarily comprised present day Colombia and Panama, plus smaller areas of Costa Rica, Ecuador, Venezuela, Peru and Brazil. Though travelling and writing in 1859, he still referred to New Granada, whose capital was Bogotá. By 1884, and Edward Walker’s visit, Bogotá was the capital of the United States of Colombia (1863-1886), a federal state itself composed of nine “sovereign states,” comprising present-day Colombia and Panama and parts of northwestern Brazil; both men travelled at periods of national upheaval.
Parlington Hall, Aberford was the seat of the Gascoigne family, with Sir Thomas Gascoigne (1745–1810), the 8th, and final, Baronet; Lotherton Hall was purchased in 1825 by his heirs, Mary and Richard Oliver Gascoigne (1763–1843). By 1884, Parlington Hall belonged to their eldest daughter Mary Isabella Oliver Gascoigne (1810–1891), while Lotherton had been inherited by her younger sister, Elizabeth Oliver Gascoigne. On Elizabeth’s death in 1893, Lotherton was inherited by her nephew (and Mary Isabella’s only child), Fredrick Richard Thomas Trench-Gascoigne (1851– 1937), a soldier and traveller. In 1883, Trench-Gascoigne was living in Parlington Hall, and, from 1884 to 1885, served in Egypt.
Sadly, R W Gascoigne and Edward Walker remain unidentified.
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