present at the battle of Tel-el-Kebir, and was mentioned in despatches, being created a C.B., and receiving the Egyptian medal with clasp, the Khedive's bronze star, and the third class of the Mejidie. Webber, who was promoted to a brevet colonelcy on 24 Jan. 1884, went again to Egypt in September, and served throughout the Nile expedition under Lord Wolseley as assistant adjutant and quartermaster-general for telegraphs. He received another clasp to his Egyptian medal. Coming home in 1885, he retired with the honorary rank of major-general. Thenceforth Webber engaged in electrical pursuits in London. He was at first managing director, and later consulting electric adviser of the Anglo-American Brush Electric Light Corporation, and was thus associated with the early application of electric lighting in London and elsewhere. He was also consulting electric engineer of the City of London Pioneer Company and of the Chelsea Electric Supply Company. He died suddenly at Margate of angina pectoris on 23 Sept. 1904, and was buried at St. Margaret's, Lee, Kent.
Webber was a member of the Royal United Service Institution, of the Institution of Civil Engineers, an original member of the Société Internationale des Electriciens, and a fellow of the Society of Arts. Among many papers, chiefly on military and electrical subjects, were those on ‘The Organisation of the Nation for Defence’ (United Service Institution, 1903); ‘Telegraph Tariffs’ (Society of Arts, May 1884); and ‘Telegraphs in the Nile Expedition’ (Society of Telegraph Engineers).
Webber married: (1) at Brighton, on 28 May 1861, Alice Augusta Gertrude Hanbury Tracy (d 25 Feb. 1877), daughter of Thomas Charles, second Lord Sudeley; (2) at Neuchâtel, Switzerland, on 23 Aug. 1877, Mrs. Sarah Elizabeth Stainbank, born Gunn (d. 1907). By his first wife he had three sons, and a daughter who died young. The eldest son, Major Raymond Sudeley Webber, was in the royal Welsh fusiliers.
[War Office Records; Royal Engineers' Records; Electrician, Engineering, and the Royal Engineers' Journal, 1904; The Times, 24 Sept. 1904; Porter's History of the Royal Engineers, 1891.]
WEBSTER, WENTWORTH (1829–1907), Basque scholar and folklorist, born at Uxbridge, Middlesex, in 1829, was eldest son of Charles Webster. Owing to delicate health he had no regular schooling, but he was a diligent boy with a retentive memory, and was a well-informed student when he was admitted commoner of Lincoln College on 15 March 1849. He graduated B.A. in 1852, proceeding M.A. in 1855, and was ordained deacon in 1854 and priest in 1861. After serving as curate at Cloford, Somerset, 1854–8, he was ordered by his medical advisers to settle in the south of France. He lived for some time at Bagnères-de-Bigorre, Hautes-Pyrénées, and at Biarritz, Basses-Pyrénées, taking pupils, among them Henry Butler Clarke [q. v. Suppl. II]. An indefatigable walker, he became familiar with the Basque provinces on both sides of the Pyrénées, and with the Basques themselves, their language, traditions, and poetry. At the same time he grew well versed in French and Spanish, and in all the Pyrenean dialects.
From 1869 to 1881 he was Anglican chaplain at St. Jean-de-Luz, Basses-Pyrénées. In 1881 he settled at Sare, in a house which overlooked the valley of La Rhune. There he mainly devoted himself to study, writing on the Basques and also on church history. He contributed much on Basque and Spanish philology and antiquities to ‘Bulletin de la Société des Sciences et des Arts de Bayonne,’ ‘Bulletin de la Société Ramond de Bagnères-de-Bigorre,’ ‘Revue de Linguistique,’ and ‘Bulletin de la Real Academia de la Historia de Madrid.’ He was a corresponding member of the Royal Historical Society of Madrid. With all serious students of Basque, whether French, Spanish, English, or German, he corresponded and was generous in the distribution of his stores of information. He wrote many papers on church history and theology in the ‘Anglican Church Magazine.’ Gladstone awarded him a pension of 150l. from the civil list on 16 Jan. 1894. He died at Sare on 2 April 1907, in his seventy-ninth year, and was buried at St. Jean-de-Luz. He married on 17 Oct. 1866, at Camberwell, Surrey, Laura Thekla Knipping, a native of Cleve in Germany. There were four daughters and one son, Erwin Wentworth, fellow of Wadham College, Oxford.
Webster published:
- ‘Basque Legends, collected chiefly in the Labourd,’ 1878; reprinted 1879; probably his best and most characteristic work; many of the legends were taken down in Basque from the recitation of people who knew no other language.
- ‘Spain,’ London, 1882, a survey of the geography, ethnology, literature, and commerce of the country, founded mainly on information supplied by
