Colonial Government official; son of Captain Edward Gore, R.N. Served as private secretary to chief justice, then to second puisne judge, Ceylon, 1850-1851; during next fifteen years served in various Government capacities in British Honduras and in British Guiana; then colonial secretary, Barbados, 1867-1874; lieut.-governor of Tobago, 1877-1880; of St. Vincent, 1880-1886. F.R.G.S. C.M.G. (Colonial Office List, 1868 and later dates).
Gore's H.W. article recounts a shooting excursion in Ceylon stated to have been "in the month of June, 1840". The date 1840 is obviously a typographical error: Gore began his work in Ceylon in 1850; in 1840 he was a boy of fourteen, not (as is the writer of the article) a cheroot-smoking sportsman. The article itself also proves the date wrong: Gore states that in one village "our appearance was not ... hailed by the natives with cordiality perhaps a ripple of the severities of August, 1848, had reached their quiet spot ...".
Concerning the very ordinary article, Dickens wrote to Gore, July 4 1851: "I am happy to retain your sporting adventure for insertion in Household Words. It is very graphic and agreeable and I have read it with pleasure" (Dawson's Book Shop Catalogue 323, where, however, Gore's first name is transcribed as "Augustis" and the date of the letter as "Fourth July, 1857â€).
Harper's reprinted Gore's article, without acknowledgment to H.W.
Author: Anne Lohrli; © University of Toronto Press, 1971.
