Richard Henry Horne

[3] Horne was raised at the home of his rich paternal grandmother[2] and sent to a school at Edmonton and then to the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, as he was intended for the army.

Horne appears to have had as little sense of discipline as Adam Lindsay Gordon showed at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, and like him was asked to leave.

In the next year he set forth a volume of critical essays called A New Spirit of the Age, in which he was assisted by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, with whom, from 1839 to her marriage in 1846, he conducted a voluminous correspondence.

[2] In June 1852 Horne migrated to the Colony of Victoria in Australia, travelling as a passenger on the same ship as William Howitt[1] and arriving in Melbourne in September.

During his time there he also reached a peaceful settlement with over 4,000 gold miners who had rioted over the payment of their mining license fee and, in his memoirs, stated that he believed this action, in light of the events at the Eureka Stockade a few months later, was never adequately recognised.

[citation needed] During his time at Rushworth, as part of a "foolhardy business transaction", Horne had invested in blocks of land at nearby Murchison on the Goulburn River.

[16] But as "the village grew slowly" he was eager to "promote any venture which might bring prosperity to the district" and joined with his friend, Rushworth storekeeper Ludovic Marie in establishing a vineyard on the river near Nagambie.

[16] The venture didn't compensate Horne for the money he had lost in an early public float but he later claimed "he was the father of the Australian wine industry".

[18] He "wasted three years and upwards, in fruitless expectation", and, with his capital tied up in Goulburn River investments, he applied to the Royal Literary Fund, of London, where he "was at once recognised, and a handsome assistance transmitted to him by return mail".

[22] Horne was the founding President of Melbourne's Garrick Club in the 1850s[23] and at a charitable theatrical fundraiser in 1855 "kindly consented to sing a Spanish Romansa and Serence" between the two short plays.

A later memoria of Horne notes that after his return from Australia he settled in "poor quarters in Marylebone" and "ill at ease in London" his health suffered.

However, courtesy of his physician, Dr. Bird, of Welbeck Street, his health returned and one day two ladies entering the Doctor's practice "were startled to see an old gentleman sliding headfirst down the banisters.