Colonel Peter Hawker was a celebrated diarist, author and sportsman accounted one of the "great shots" of the 19th century. His sporting exploits were widely followed, and on occasion, considered worth reporting in The Times.
Early life
Born in London to Colonel Peter Ryves Hawker and Mary Wilson Hawker, Peter Hawker was educated at Eton and entered military service in 1801 by purchasing a commission as a cornet in The Royal Dragoons, soon gaining promotion to captain. Hawker notes in his diary that: "I was a Captain of Dragoons soon after I was seventeen years old, but paid dearer for it than anyone in the service."
Military career
Hawker served with the 14th Light Dragoons under the Duke of Wellington during the Peninsular War. He led his squadron in the Battle of Douro, his regiment thereby earning the battle honour "Douro" for its colours. He received a serious thigh wound in the following Battle of Talavera, was declared unfit, and so resigned and sold his commission. In recognition of his service, Hawker was awarded a modest annual pension of £100. Despite his injuries and consequent ill health, he was later able in 1815 to accept an active commission as major of the North Hampshire Militia; he was recommended for the post by the then Duke of Clarence, heir to the throne and future King William IV. Hawker was made a lieutenant-colonel of the militia in 1821 and ultimately became deputy lieutenant for his county.
Sportsman and author
Hawker is best known today for his published works on the sports of shooting, wildfowling and fishing. Hawker published his "Advice to Young Sportsmen" in 1814, a popular work with nine impressions in his lifetime, the latest paper edition appearing in 1975. Forty years after Hawker's death, an Australian book reviewer states, "Probably no book on the subject of sport ever enjoyed so wide or so long sustained a popularity as the Instructions to Young Sportsmen". Hawker kept a regular diary, which contains observations of pre- and post-Napoleonic Europe and of wild-fowling, game-bird shooting and detailed hunting techniques and conditions prevalent in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. His diary, printed in two volumes, became a popular work, with the last paper edition appearing in 1988. Hawker also published an originally anonymous memoir of the Peninsula War.
Revisionist views
Hawker's attitudes to guns and shooting have been criticised and parodied from a modern viewpoint in The Economist, and in The Times in the introduction to the 1893 edition of Hawker's diary. Colin Laurie McKelvie, in his forward to the 1988 edition of the diary, found Hawker's personality "unattractive" and observed that he "...appears unacceptably self-absorbed, cock-sure and downright arrogant." McKelvie mitigates this criticism with praise for Hawker's knowledge, fairness, energy and enthusiasm.
The musician
Hawker was a keen amateur musician, studying the piano under Henri Bertini and regularly playing the organ at his local church. This interest in music was not limited to playing. He devised and patented a device to assist in piano teaching: his "hand moulds".
Development of firearms
Hawker's inventiveness extended to the development of "detonating" firearms and punt gunning. He also claims in his diary to have invented a "smokeless chimney". Hawker was a firm friend of the celebrated gunsmith Joe Manton. Hawker not only used Manton's guns, but took an active interest in their design and participated in the manufacture of some of his own commissions. Hawker designed a breech-loading swivel gun mounted on a four-wheeled carriage, a model of which is reportedly on display at the Rotunda, Woolwich. In later life Hawker designed a "military musket" and commissioned the manufacture of several prototypes at his own expense. Hawker's musket was favourably received by the Board of Ordnance, but was not adopted, being set aside in preference to the Enfield Rifle-Musket, although elements of Hawker's design were incorporated into the final version of the Enfield.
Family life
Hawker was married first in 1811 to Julia, only daughter of Major Hooker Barttelot, making the family home in Longparish with a cottage in Keyhaven. After Julia's death in 1844, Hawker married Helen Susan Symonds, herself a widow. Colonel Hawker had two sons and two daughters by his first wife. Hawker's granddaughter, Mary Elizabeth Hawker, was a noted late Victorian author under the pseudonym "Lanoe Falconer". Hawker's cottage in Keyhaven, Hampshire, still stands as "Hawker's Cottage", immediately north of the Gun Inn public house, which reportedly was named originally to mark Hawker's punt-gunning exploits. Hawker is Lanoe Hawker's great-grandfather through Lanoe's mother.
