Augustus Asplet Le Gros (1840-1877) was the son of St Lawrence family Edouard Le Gros and Mary Elizabeth Asplet. He was born in St Helier and brought up at Beaumont by his grandmother, after the death of both his parents. Although he was baptised with his mother's surname Asplet as his middle name, he always spelt it Aspley.
One of the first pupils at Victoria College, founded in 1851, he entered a solicitor's office, but abandoned his study of the law to work on the farm of his grandfather in Saint Peter. In 1865 he was elected secretary of the Royal Jersey Agricultural and Horticultural Society. In 1873 the parishioners of Saint Peter elected him constable.
In the same year he was one of the founders of La Société Jersiaise, of which he became the first secretary. He began work on a dictionary, which remained unfinished, of Jèrriais, which served as the basis for the Glossaire du Patois Jersiais edited by La Société in 1924.
Poetry
His poems, in a rather lyrical style, signed A A L G , in Jèrriais, in French and in English, appeared in the papers and almanacs of Jersey and Guernsey. For eight years he published a small annual review of poetry in Jèrriais and Guernésiais. He also published two small volumes of poetry in English, Poems for Home and Fireside (London, 1863) and Poems (London, 1868), besides a history of Mont Orgueil in Jersey: Mont Orgueil Castle: Its History and Ruins.
In 1875 he was elected a Jurat, serving for only two years before his death at the age of 37 in 1877.
He married Eliza Jane Payn, daughter of Philip, and secondly Alice Marguerite Collas, with whom he had a daughter, Marie Louise.
Some of his texts have been set to music in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Bibliography
- La Grève de Lecq, Roger Jean Lebarbenchon, 1988 ISBN 2905385138 (French)
- Bulletîn d’Quart d’An, L'Assembliée d'Jèrriais, Jersey (in Jèrriais)
- Original Songs in the Jersey Language, Jersey, 1988
