Major and Mrs du Plat
(1822-1900 and 1827-1867)
12 October 1860 and 11 November 1861
Volume 2, page 37, sitting number 1446 (his portrait) and Volume 5, page 232, sitting number 6424 (her portrait).
[Although his sitting was entered in the Silvy daybooks, no print was pasted in to illustrate the entry. However, the following entry, a portrait of F.C. Buller of the Coldstream Guards, shows exactly the same arrangement of props, even down to the angle at which the chair and the bust on the table are positioned.]
Major-General Charles Taylor du Plat served in the Royal Engineers and was for many years an Equerry to Queen Victoria. He died on 2 November 1900 at the age of 78. According to his obituary in The Times (Monday 5 November 1900): ‘The death is announced of Major-General Sir Charles Taylor Du Plat, K.C.B. It occurred on Friday last at his residence, Ashley, Winchfield, Hants. Sir Charles Du Plat was the son of Brigadier-General G.C.G. Du Plat, R.E., a Knight of Hanover, and Pauline, Countess Hardenberg. He was born in 1822, and was, therefore, 78 years of age. Educated at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, he entered the Royal Artillery as long ago as 1841 and served in that corps for just on 40 years, retiring on full pay in 1880 with the rank of Major-General. Since 1854 – that is to say, for a period of about 46 years – Sir Charles Du Plat had been closely associated with the court. In that year he was appointed Equerry to the Prince Consort, and he acted in that capacity until the death of his Royal Highness in 1861. From that time onwards he attended the Queen as Equerry-in-Ordinary until 1893, when he became an Extra-Equerry, an office which he still held at the time of his death. He held the first-class of the Prussian Order of the Red Eagle and the Grand Cross of the Ducal Saxon Order of Albrecht. Sir Charles Du Plat married twice – first, in 1855, to Maria, daughter of Sir William C. C. Dalyell, seventh baronet, who died in 1867, and, secondly, in 1897, to Ann Bennett, elder daughter of Mr. J. S. Forbes. The Court Circular of last night contains an expression of the Queen’s regret at the General’s death.’
Mrs du Plat was born Maria Christina Dalyell. Her father was Sir William Cunningham Dalyell, who succeeded as 7th Baronet of Dalyell in 1851. Her mother was Maria Sampayo, daughter of Antonio Texeira Sampayo, the Portuguese consul for Cork, Waterford and Limerick.
She died on 7 April 1867, aged 40. According to a brief announcement that appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette (9 April 1867), the death took place 'at Belgrave-road' in Victoria, which is not far from Buckingham Palace.