The Indomitable Duberly Part 2

Lord Lucan, who commanded the British Cavalry Division, was universally disliked for his pompous manner and officious obsession with insignificant detail. (see 'The Warring Earls). Therefore the immediate reaction of Major De Salis, temporarily in command of the 8th Hussars, was to see if he could get round Lucan's order. Although Fanny had been ashore she was still sleeping on board Shooting Star and had not been officially landed. On this account he managed to maufacture the following stonewalling reply: 'Mrs Duberly has not disembarked from the "Shooting Star". I have not sufficient authority to order her to do so.'

The hope was that they would be under way before any reaction from Lucan could be received. His order had arrived on Thursday 25th May. Two days of suspense followed until de Salis was able to report on Saturday that Lucan had referred the matter to Lord Raglan who had responded that he had 'no intention of interfering with Mrs Duberly.' This might well have been the first time that Raglan had heard of her, but he would have been irritated at Lucan bothering him with such a minor matter, and he disliked the man anyway; he would have taken pleasure in refusing him what he wanted. As for the Duberlys, although the news came as a great relief to them both, Fanny revealed to her diary that she had had no intention of staying at Scutari. If Lucan's order had stood, she would first have sought the help of a couple of crew members to smuggle her back on board before they sailed and to hide her either in the hold or in the troopers' quarters during the crossing. If this hadn't worked, Plan B was to hire a pony and ride overland 120 miles to Varna. When after a series of mishaps the Shooting Star finally sailed the following Wednesday, they soon passed in front of the Hotel d'Angleterre at Therapia, to be the campaign home of many British officers wives, which in the eyes of some, should have included her. Inverted commas in the diary indicate that if this was their idea of 'accompanying their husbands to the seat of the war', it certainly wasn't hers.

When their ship anchored off Varna the next morning, the little port, stark white surrounded by bright green rolling hills, must have presented a very colourful scene - boats plying to and fro from the ships, discharging men, equipment and horses; the crowded quays a mass of humanity - military in vividly coloured uniforms, civilians in strange and exotic garb - a constant hubbub in a babel of different languages, vying with martial music in clashing European and Oriental styles. At this early stage of the campaign Varna was considered anything but the site for a remote base camp. It was expected to be the jumping off point for an immediate advance, to contact and attack the Russian forces engaging the Turks along the Danube. The initial administrative arrangements were therefore fairly makeshift and basic - they would after all only have to be put up with for a short period.

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