Details
First Name: Robert (p.52) and or Samuel (pp. 93, 203)
Farm: Rilla Farm, Troy
Born: 1830
Died: 1895
Marital Status: Husband of Mrs Bosenna. Relatively late in life Bosenna married an attractive young woman of humble parentage from Holsworthy in north-west Devon. Possibly he met her while attending Holsworthy market. They had no children. Whether he was married before is unknown but no children again resulted.
He was a capable, even scientific, farmer and an astute investor, favouring Egyptian 3% stock. He also enjoyed watching prize-fighting, smuggled tobacco and employed child labour. A magistrate fined him 5s for employing children to pick his apples when legally they should have been in school. The discovery was made when one of them broke his arm falling from a tree.
Bosenna liked drinking in Troy on a Saturday night, regularly returning home drunk. On the final occasion he fell from his horse at the Four Turnings and died before being discovered by a farm hand sent to help him to Rilla.
The reader does not meet Bosenna, the information about him being provided for the purpose of throwing light on Mrs Bosenna. In a novel full of characters, the loss of Bosenna is to be regretted but is not fatal. He is one of Q’s 'might have beens'.
Q’s grandfather, Dr Jonathan Couch, married for a third time and to a woman much younger than himself. The theme of disparities of age in marriage is one running through many of Q’s novels.