Times a proclamation in connection with an insurrection in Milan, which that journal stated purported to be from Kossuth, and to which his name was appended. Captain Mayne Reid, who was a personal friend and a staunch adherent of the Hungarian patriot, then residing in London, addressed a letter to The Times denouncing, in fiery and vigorous terms, the proclamation as a forgery. The Times did not insert Captain Reid's letter, but alluded to it as written in "absurdly bombastic language." A copy of the Captain's suppressed letter, which was very much to the point, was published in The Sun. Captain Reid subsequently sent Kossuth's own repudiation of the proclamation to The Times, but no notice was taken of it. Many journals commented in terms of indignation upon the conduct of The Times in refusing to admit in its columns either contradiction or correction.
Capt. Mayne Reid and his Child Wife.
Captain Reid married Miss Elizabeth Hyde ("Zoë") the only daughter of Mr. George William Hyde, a lineal descendant of the first Earl of Clarendon. The Captain's courtship seems to have had many of the elements of romance in it. The lady was very beautiful and very young—so young that she was often taken for the Captain's daughter, and he himself called her his "child wife," which is the title of one of his subsequent novels. The Captain fell in love with his "beautiful child wife" when she was but thirteen, and married her when she was fifteen. He saw in her the original of Zoë, in the "Scalp Hunters," which creation he regarded as a foreshadowing of fate. The marriage appears to have been a very happy one, and his widow, in the life of him she has published, seems to be animated by the same admiration and loving regard for the Captain as when she plighted her girlish troth.
Captain Reid had, like many of his literary brethren, reverses and pecuniary misfortunes. At Gerrard's Cross, near Slough, he embarked in rather extensive building operations, erecting a house for himself of Mexican design, some cottages, and a reading-room, which eventually involved him
