Charles de Salis (1736-1781)

Charles de Salis, was born 25 July 1736 in the Parish of St. James, Westminster and died sine prole, Hieres, Provence, July 1781.

He was the eldest son of Jerome, Count de Salis-Soglio by his wife Mary, daughter of Charles, 1st Viscount Fane.

After some schooling with his younger brothers (Peter, Henry and William) in his father's ancestral homeland, the Grisons Republic, he was at Eton from 1747, where he was one of the c250 pupils there at the time. He travelled abroad 1757-1760, the tour included: Lausanne (university); Northern Italy; Rome; Naples; Coire; Paris; Turin; and Holland.

His maternal uncle, 2nd Lord Fane (an Opposition/Bedford Whig), had been one of the two Members of Parliament (MPs) for Reading 1754-1761. In 1761 de Salis stood in his place, but having been admitted a Freeman/Burgess of the Corporation of Reading on 4 March 1761 he was well beaten at the poll on 25 March 1761. De Salis had 258 votes, whereas the elected candidates polled 396 and 355.

Apart from returning to execute his uncle's will in 1766, he subsequently lived in Provence; at Arles, Salon, Nîmes and Hieres (also spelt: Hyères), where he died and was buried at the Convent des Cordeliers in 1781.

On 6 April 1764 Charles' contemporary Edward Gibbon wrote in his diary whilst in Laussanne: De Salis d'une indifférence qui vient plus d'un défaut de sensibilité que d'un excès de raison.

He seems to have shared with his mother, maternal-grandmother (Mary Stanhope), and to a greater degree his maternal-aunt a prediliction for the vapours. De Salis and his mother both received treatment in Provence to cure their own low-spirits from the vapeurs theorist M. Pierre Pomme, Medecin consultant du Roi and Docteur en Medecine de l'Universite de Montpellier. She paid for Dr. Pomme's Traite des Affections Vaporeuses des deux sexes, 1767, to be translated into English, and arranged for William Sharp to engrave his portrait (the eventual outcome of this project is not yet clear).

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