Letter of the week
A man of style and substance
FEEL confident that John Jervis would have been pleased to be praised 250 years later in COUNTRY LIFE for his uniform (GENTLEMAN’S LIFE). When he joined the Royal Navy in 1748, aged 13, he was given £20 by his father to cover the cost of his uniform and other expenses. When this ran out, his father would provide no more and Jervis had to sleep on the bare deck for three years. It probably explains why he became such a strict disciplinarian. Shortly after the Cotes portrait of 1769 featured in your issue was painted, Jervis stayed up all night with Capt Luttrell and a pistol to confront the ghost at Hinton
