When about to sail on the expedition against Louisbourg, he was anxious for his parents, and wrote to his uncle, Major Wolfe, at Dublin:  “I trust you will give the best advice to my mother, and such assistance, if it should be wanted, as the distance between you will permit.  I mention this because the General seems to decline apace, and narrowly escaped being carried off in the spring.  She, poor woman, is in a bad state of health, and needs the care of some friendly hand.  She has long and painful fits of illness, which by succession and inheritance are likely to devolve on me, since I feel the early symptoms of them.”  Of his friends Guy Carleton, afterwards Lord Dorchester, and George Warde, the companion of his boyhood, he also asks help for his mother in his absence.

His part in the taking of Louisbourg greatly increased his reputation.  After his return he went to Bath to recruit his health; and it seems to have been here that he wooed and won Miss Katherine Lowther, daughter of an ex-Governor of Barbadoes, and sister of the future Lord Lonsdale.  A betrothal took place, and Wolfe wore her portrait till the night before his death.  It was a little before this engagement that he wrote to his friend Lieutenant-Colonel Rickson:  “I have this day signified to Mr. Pitt that he may dispose of my slight carcass as he pleases, and that I am ready for any undertaking within the compass of my skill and cunning.  I am in a very bad condition both with the gravel and rheumatism; but I had much rather die than decline any kind of service that offers.  If I followed my own taste it would lead me into Germany.  However, it is not our part to choose, but to obey.  My opinion is that I shall join the army in America.”

Pitt chose him to command the expedition then fitting out against Quebec; made him a major-general, though, to avoid giving offence to older officers, he was to hold that rank in America alone; and permitted him to choose his own staff.  Appointments made for merit, and not through routine and patronage, shocked the Duke of Newcastle, to whom a man like Wolfe was a hopeless enigma; and he told George II. that Pitt’s new general was mad.  “Mad is he?” returned the old King; “then I hope he will bite some others of my generals.”

At the end of January the fleet was almost ready, and Wolfe wrote to his uncle Walter:  “I am to act a greater part in this business than I wished.  The backwardness of some of the older officers has in some measure forced the Government to come down so low.  I shall do my best, and leave the rest to fortune, as perforce we must when there are not the most commanding abilities.  We expect to sail in about three weeks.  A London life and little exercise disagrees entirely with me, but the sea still more.  If I have health and constitution enough for the campaign, I shall think myself a lucky man; what happens afterwards is of no great consequence.”  He sent to his mother an affectionate letter of farewell,