Fanny Duberly - the War Journals of A Victorian Soldier's Wife

"Fanny" Isabella Duberly  was a Victorian English soldier’s wife who published a journal of her experiences on campaign in the Crimean War and the Indian Rebellion of 1857.

Her husband, Captain Henry Duberly, was paymaster to the 8th Royal Irish Hussars, part of the British light cavalry that took part in the Charge of the Light Brigade. Duberley's journal of her time in the Crimea was published as Journal. It not only includes eye-witness accounts, but is also a record of gossip and rumours circulating in the British Army.

Fanny Duberly welded an extraordinarily bold pen. She lashed out at incompetent British generals when they allowed their men to die in droves in the Crimea. She revealed the secrets of Indian harems. She regaled her readers with a fascinating mixture of terrors, adventures, secrets, everyday events and ferocious characters. She was what many women dreamed of being and few men dared emulate.

In this modern age we would call her an embedded journalist, a news reporter who is attached to a military unit involved in an armed conflict. Yet English society in the 1850s encouraged women to act demurely and stay at home, not follow their husbands into combat. Even if Fanny Duberly noticed that her actions were raising disapproving Victorian eyebrows, that didn’t stop her from riding straight into one of the most brutal wars of the 19th century.

Born Frances Isabella Locke in 1829, she was the daughter of Wadham Locke, a Wiltshire banker. Duberly has been described as "a splendid rider, witty, ambitious, daring, lively, loquacious and gregarious." She seemed to possess the physical requirements and tough attitude required of her later surroundings, saying that she "was awoke by the reveille at half-past two; rose, packed our bedding and tent, got a stale egg and a mouthful of brandy, and was in my saddle by half-past five."

After the death of her mother in 1838, she moved to live with her eldest brother (also Wadham Locke) at Ashton Gifford House in Wiltshire. She left Ashton Gifford on her marriage in 1845, which took place shortly after her brother had married for a second time.

She was raised in a culture which frowned on women risking their lives in foreign places, Fanny managed to overcome this by marrying Captain Henry Duberly, an officer in the dashing 8th Hussars. Fanny was just twenty-five when her husband, and his unit, were ordered into battle. Rather than remain at home, the avid horsewoman announced that she was packing her side-saddle and going with Henry to Russia’s Crimean Peninsula. Thanks to the lax military restrictions of the day, in 1855 Fanny was able to accompany her husband and his regiment when they went into battle, in spite of the protests of commanders such as Lord Lucan.

The intrepid amateur war correspondent spent the next two years camped alongside her husband and his troops during the course of their brutal campaign. Despite the dangers from cholera which slew thousands around her, having ridden through cannon fire and having witnessed the “charge of the Light Brigade,” the indomitable young woman was the only officer’s wife who stayed with the army during the length of that brutal campaign.

It was while she was still camped in the Crimea that her first book became a runaway best-seller.

As the only officer's wife at the front, she was a centre of attention. She was told of planned attacks ahead of time, giving her the opportunity to be in a good position to witness them. Such was the case at the Battle of Balaclava, where her journey from camp to meet up with Henry and watch the battle took her quite close to the enemy. Though her husband survived the day (being away on staff duties), many of her friends did not: "Even my closed eyelids were filled with the ruddy glare of blood."

Being so close to the front line in one of the first "modern" wars, Mrs Duberly differed from many of her compatriots back home in comprehending the reality of war. When her husband asked if she wanted to view the aftermath of the Battle of Inkerman, she told him she could not as "the thought of it made me shutter [sic] and turn sick."

What she saw and recorded in letters home to her sister shocked the English world, for there was little glory but plenty of death. Cholera slew elite officers and lowly enlisted men alike. Horses starved. The wounded lay untended. The dead went unburied. Allies argued. Incompetence was rampant. The Crimea was hell for men and indescribable for a woman on her own. Yet against the odds, Fanny Duberly rode through it all. She witnessed the battle of Balaklava, explored the ruins of captured Sebastopol, dined with lords, drank with soldiers and watched the ill-fated charge of the noble Light Brigade.

Fanny's “Crimean Journal” tells how cities fell and nations argued, while half a million soldiers died in a bitter and largely forgotten conflict. Though no great military male figures emerged, two remarkable women are remembered. Florence Nightingale made her reputation improving the medical needs of soldiers and Fanny Duberly penned this vivid eye witness account of an unnecessary war. Fascinating, remarkable, courageous, mysterious, sympathetic -Fanny Duberly was the Victorian heroine deluxe.

India

Duberly again accompanied her husband when the 8th Hussars were sent to India in 1856.

It was a barbarous war and is known today by various names including the Indian Mutiny or the First War for Independence. Regardless of what it’s called, the struggle which swept across India in 1857 remains a blood-soaked memory, one wherein hordes of innocent civilians were wantonly slaughtered by merciless men on both sides. Having established an economic and political stranglehold over much of India by the mid-19th century, the merchant princes who ran the British East India Company were content to enjoy their profits in faraway London. Meanwhile, they left the actual running of the various seized principalities to a mercenary army, whose officers were primarily British and whose rank and file had been recruited from a variety of Indian races and religions.

In this climate of political complacency English expansionists treated their Indian subjects with contempt. Equally damaging was the unfounded rumour stating Indian princes would be forced to marry English widows so as to ensure a Christian succession. Worst of all were the reports that Indian soldiers would be forced to bite cartridges covered in pig or cow grease, a sacrilege supposedly designed by the British to break the religious laws of Moslem and Hindu recruits. When this political powder-keg exploded, the Indian soldiers revolted and murdered European officers and civilians. Thereafter a savage war raged across India pitting vengeful Europeans against outraged Indians. The carnage was indescribable.

Though she was a hardened campaigner, the resultant 1,800 mile equestrian journey which Fanny undertook is a feat of endurance for any human being. Ordered to cross the Rajastani desert, Fanny rode alongside Henry and his hussars through a sun-baked wilderness where the midday temperatures often reached 119 degrees in the author’s tiny tent. The indomitable Fanny witnessed battles, dodged cannon balls, dined with captured maharajahs and survived a battlefield surgical procedure that left a three inch hole in her body.

She stayed with her husband throughout the final months of the Sepoy Mutiny. She was adamant about accompanying the troops on campaign and told her sister that she would "stain my face and hands and adopt the Hindoo caftan and turban," refusing to stay behind. At Gwalior in 1858, while watching the start of a cavalry charge, her horse ran after the rest and, instead of holding back, she told her husband "I must go!" and galloped away.

The couple had no children. She was a great friend and supporter of her husband, who never seemed to be jealous of his wife as the centre of attention in the all-male environment of the British Army in the field. She described her husband as "a friend I am obliged to support." He was ill when the time came to go ashore in the Crimea and she told her sister that "Lord Cardigan intends him to land with the troops, but I don’t intend him to do so." The couple had their differences of opinion on the nature of military service. When orders came from Lucan that she must be put ashore at Constantinople, she wrote that "Henry looks upon the order as a soldier; I as a woman, laugh at it."

The Duberlys returned to England in 1864. She retained her campaign memories but, when asked to reminisce about what she had witnessed, she replied that "those days are best forgotten." 

Nevertheless, she retained her adventurous spirit and complained to a nephew in 1896 that "I cannot stand dullness for long, and life gets duller and duller as one gets older."

She died at Cheltenham in 1903, aged 73.

Portrayals in Fiction

• Fanny Duberly was played by Jill Bennett in the 1968 film The Charge of the Light Brigade. In this, she was wrongly depicted as having a sexual relationship with Cardigan, played by Trevor Howard.
• She featured in two books about Harry Flashman by George MacDonald Fraser: Flash for Freedom! and Flashman at the Charge. In both of these, particularly the former, she is a target for Flashman's lust but he fails in his attempted seduction of her. Fraser introduces her, still Fanny Locke, as "a damned handsome eighteen with the shape of a well-developed matron." He remarks on her prettiness, fair hair and blue eyes as well as complimenting her on her riding skills: "she could ride, that girl." Flashman desires to have sex with her, opportunity allowing, and laments not being able to do so or at least to "give her tits a squeeze." Fraser has Flashman jealous of Duberly's husband, describing him in Flashman's words as a "muff" who, when on guard duty, sits outside the room "like a blasted water bailiff."
• Mrs Duberly is mentioned in Queen Victoria's Bomb by Ronald Clark (1967). The story consists of the memoirs of Professor Franklin Huxtable whose invention of an ultimate weapon in the 1850s was supposed to make warfare impossible. The bomb is trialled in a remote part of India and resulted in the vaporising some unfortunate horses whose shadows were left as a permanent record burnt on the landscape.