292 THE MEYNELL HOUNDS. [1899 



absolutely beyond recovery. This sad intimation was made known by the Colonel's 

 eldest son, Mr. Basil Levett, to the Mayor of Lichfield, in view of the cordial 

 relations which had existed between the deceased and the city he had so faith- 

 fully represented, not only in Parliament for five years until 1885, but on the 

 County Council for Staffordshire. A very unfortunate circumstance in connection 

 with the residence of the party in the hotel at Pau was the fact that an outbreak 

 of fire caused the sudden removal of the patient to another portion of the 

 building. 



Colonel Theophilus John Levett was the eldest son of ]\Ir. John Levett, of 

 Wichnor (who died in 1853), by a niece of the first Marquis of Ailsa. He was 

 born in 1829, and was consequently sixty-nine years of age. He married in 1856 

 Lady Jane, a daughter of the seventh Earl of Denbigh, who is about one year 

 older and survives her husband. The issue of the marriage is two sons and one 

 daughter — Theophilus Basil Percy Levett, who was born in 1856, and married 

 in 1884 Lady Margaret, eldest daughter of the eighth Earl of Shaftesbury ; a 

 daughter (unmarried), and a second son — Captain Berkeley Levett (Scots Guards), 

 who is at present in India as aide-de-camp to Lord Sandhurst. The deceased 

 held a captain's commission in the 1st Life Guards, and on his retirement from 

 the Army attached himself to the 2nd V.B. North Staffordshire Regiment, 

 becoming lieut.-colonel commanding, and from 1886 to 1891 was colonel 

 commanding the Queen's Own Royal Regiment, Staffordshire Yeomanry. His 

 association with the volunteers extended from 1861 to 1882, and it is only three 

 ■weeks since he was made lion, colonel of the yeomanry. He was a Justice of 

 the Peace for Staffordshire and Derbyshire, and in addition D.L. of the former 

 •county. He represented the city of Lichfield in Parliament, in the Conservative 

 interest, from 1880 to 1885. He took a keen interest in local government, and 

 while concerned with various parochial bodies, was an active member of the 

 Staflbrdshire County Council, on which he represented the city of Lichfield. 



As A County Man. 



"When, owing to indifferent health, Colonel Levett retired from again seeking 

 Parliamentary honours on the occasion of the redistribution of seats, he devoted 

 himself more ardently than ever to agricultural pursuits and county and poor-law 

 administration. With regard to the former, he never tired, whether by personal 

 attendance at public meetings and participating in the debates thereat, or through 

 the medium of his able pen in the Press, in endeavouring to solve the problems 

 which then and to-day beset the tiller of the soil. He threw in his lot, heart and 

 soul, with the agriculturist, with whom he was always in strong sympathy, and 

 he was no less earnest in his efforts in the direction of county government. In 

 this connection, alike on the administrative authority at Stafford, and at the 

 Burton Board of Guardians, he brought to bear on the deliberations of those 

 bodies a knowledge born of wide experience of men and things, and his arguments 

 were invariably characterized by sound reasoning and good common sense. He 

 ■was not one who had something to say upon everything ; his observations were 

 rather reserved for questions of substance and moment, with the result that they 

 always carried more or less weight. Colonel Levett was proud of his county, 

 and it caused him no little concern, when, in 1889, by reason of the new Local 

 Government Act and the consequent rearrangement of county boundaries, there 

 was a vague suspicion that Wichnor might be taken out of Staffordshire and 

 placed in Derbyshire. " It is not a pleasant thing for ino to reflect," the Colonel 

 was overheard to remark, " that my family, which has been so long associated 



