Those Wild Wyndhams
Page 43
17. Mary Elcho to Frances Balfour, 21 January 1889, Whittingehame Papers, NRS GD433/2/301 f. 11r.
18. George Wyndham to Madeline Wyndham, 7 January 1889, Mackail and Wyndham, Life and Letters, 1.231.
19. Pamela Tennant to Mary Elcho, 15 March 1889 and 7 February 1905, Stanway Papers.
20. Quoted in Dakers, Clouds, p. 134.
21. Ibid.
22. Lady Betty Balfour to Lady Frances Balfour, 14 January 1899, Whittingehame Papers, NRS GD433/2/301 f. 10r.
23. Ibid.
24. Quoted in Dakers, Clouds, p. 131.
25. Mackail and Wyndham, Life and Letters, 1.231.
26. Mary Elcho to Arthur Balfour, 13 January 1889 (Letters, p. 55).
27. Dakers, Clouds, pp. 132–3.
28. Quoted in ibid., p. 135.
29. Ibid.
Chapter 11: The Season of 1889
1. Madeline Adeane to Madeline Wyndham, 17 July 1889, Adeane Papers.
2. Percy Wyndham to Mary Elcho, 14 September 1888, Stanway Papers.
3. Mary Elcho to Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, 27 March 1899, Blunt Papers, FM 492-1975.
4. Quoted in Philip Hoare, Serious Pleasures: The Life of Stephen Tennant (Hamish Hamilton, 1990), p. 8.
5. Pamela Tennant to Mary Elcho, 14 June 1928, Stanway Papers.
6. Pamela Tennant to Mary Elcho, 23 November 1891, Stanway Papers.
7. Mary Elcho to Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, 16 November 1893, Blunt Papers, FM 1592-1976.
8. Pamela Tennant to Mary Elcho, 10 February 1889, Stanway Papers.
9. Quoted in Hoare, Serious Pleasures, p. 22.
10. Percy Wyndham to Mary Elcho, 14 September 1888, Stanway Papers.
11. Lady Frances Balfour to Lady Betty Balfour, 13 July 1889, Whittingehame Papers, NRS GD433/2/301 f. 42r.
12. Arthur Balfour to Mary Elcho, 16 August 1893 (Letters, p. 95).
13. The World, 16 July 1890, quoted in Ellenberger, ‘The Souls: High Society and Politics’, p. 55; and in Lambert, Unquiet Souls, p. 10.
14. Ellenberger, ‘The Souls and London “Society”’, pp. 146–7.
15. Ibid.
16. Lady Frances Balfour to Lady Betty Balfour, June 1889, Whittingehame Papers, NRS GD433/2/301 f. 32r.
17. Mary Elcho to Madeline Wyndham, 3 July 1889, Stanway Papers.
18. Mary Elcho to Evelyn de Vesci, 28 April 1891, De Vesci Papers, DD/DRU/87/3.
19. Madeline Adeane to Madeline Wyndham, 3 December 1899, Adeane Papers.
20. Mary Elcho to Evelyn de Vesci, 2 July 1889, De Vesci Papers, DD/DRU 87/3.
21. Mary Elcho to Evelyn de Vesci, 28 April 1891, De Vesci Papers, DD/DRU/87/3.
22. Mary Elcho to Hugo Elcho, 27 July 1900, Stanway Papers.
23. Pamela Tennant to Mary Elcho, 28 July 1889, Stanway Papers.
24. Pamela Tennant to Mary Elcho, 17 September 1890, Stanway Papers.
25. Pamela Tennant to Mary Elcho, 28 July 1889, Stanway Papers.
26. Ibid.
27. Mary Elcho to Madeline Wyndham, 3 August 1889, Stanway Papers.
28. Mary Elcho to Evelyn de Vesci, 7 August 1889, De Vesci Papers, DD/DRU/87/3.
29. Ibid.
30. Madeline Adeane to Madeline Wyndham, 3 April 1889, Adeane Papers.
31. Madeline Adeane to Madeline Wyndham, 25 September 1889, Adeane Papers.
32. Madeline Adeane to Madeline Wyndham, 4 October 1889, Adeane Papers.
33. Pamela Tennant to Mary Elcho, 17 September 1893, Stanway Papers.
34. Madeline Adeane to Pamela Tennant, 8 October 1889, Adeane Papers.
35. Marie Mallet to Lady Elizabeth Biddulph, 8 November 1889, quoted in Mallet, Life with Queen Victoria, p. 35.
Chapter 12: The Mad and their Keepers
1. Neil McKenna, The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde (Arrow Books, 2004), pp. 185–6.
2. Curzon’s reference is presumably to the quintessential false god of the Old Testament: see 2 Kings 5:18: ‘In this thing the LORD pardon thy servant, that when my master goeth into the house of Rimmon to worship there, and he leaneth on my hand, and I bow myself in the house of Rimmon: when I bow down myself in the house of Rimmon, the LORD pardon thy servant in this thing.’
3. Helen Kelsall Melland, Asquith’s first wife, was the daughter of a Manchester doctor. The Asquiths married in 1877 and had five children: Raymond, Herbert, Arthur, Violet and Cyril. Helen died a few months after this visit, in the autumn of 1891, from typhoid fever.
4. Quoted in Davenport-Hines, Ettie, pp. 57–8.
5. Mary Elcho to Evelyn de Vesci, 28 April 1891, De Vesci Papers, DD/DRU/ 87/3.
6. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, Secret Memoirs XVI, 1 July 1893 to 3 July 1893, Blunt Papers, FM 33-1975.
7. Quoted in David Gilmour, Curzon: Imperial Statesman (John Murray, 2003), pp. 103–4.
8. Quoted in Longford, Pilgrimage of Passion, p. 293.
9. Vansittart, The Mist Procession, p. 90.
10. Arthur Balfour to Mary Elcho, 16 August 1893 (Letters, p. 14).
11. Quoted in Ellenberger, ‘The Souls: High Society and Politics’, p. 187. If rumours are to be believed, Harry’s affair with a housemaid at Belton House, home of his uncle and aunt, the Earl and Countess Brownlow, resulted in the child named Beatrice Stephenson, whose own daughter was Margaret Roberts, later Thatcher. Certainly Lady Diana Cooper, Harry’s daughter by Violet Granby, maintained that Mrs Thatcher was her niece. See the Telegraph, 4 June 2008 and the Express, 21 April 2013.
12. Laura Tennant to Lady Frances Balfour, October (1885), Whittingehame Papers, NRS GD433/2/477/4 f. 10:13r. Laura’s reference is to a man armed ‘cap-à-pie’: meaning from head to foot.
13. Pamela Tennant to Mary Elcho, 16 August 1892, Stanway Papers.
14. Ibid.
15. Osbert Sitwell, Laughter in the Next Room (Macmillan, 1949), p. 100.
16. Pamela Tennant to Mary Elcho, 25 August 1893, Stanway Papers.
17. Pamela Tennant to Mary Elcho, 16 August 1892, Stanway Papers.
18. Paget is remembered now as the inventor of sign language for the deaf and dumb, but his ‘engaging personal qualities’ – his geniality, sympathy and ‘deep affection for the young and old alike’ – as well as his eccentricity receive almost as much attention as his achievements in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: see Harry Lowery, ‘Paget, Sir Richard Arthur Surtees, second baronet (1869–1955)’, rev. John Bosnell, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online edn, May 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/35358, accessed 23 October 2013].
19. Pamela Tennant to Mary Elcho, 31 August 1892, Stanway Papers.
20. Ibid.
21. Mary Elcho to Madeline Wyndham, 5 September 1892, Stanway Papers.
22. Percy Wyndham to Mary Elcho, 30 November 1892, Stanway Papers.
23. Ibid.
Chapter 13: Crisis
1. Nicola Beauman, Cynthia Asquith (Hamish Hamilton, 1987), p. 6.
2. Asquith, Haply May I Remember, p. 59.
3. Mary Elcho to Evelyn de Vesci, 16 January 1891, De Vesci Papers, DD/DRU/87.
4. Ellenberger, ‘The Souls: High Society and Politics’, p. 216.
5. Lambert, Unquiet Souls, p. 78.
6. Fingall, Seventy Years Young, pp. 179, 182.
7. Hugo Elcho to Evelyn de Vesci, 20 March 1895, De Vesci Papers, DD/DRU/102.
8. Ettie Grenfell to Constance, Lady Wenlock, 8 December 1892, quoted in Davenport-Hines, Ettie, p. 54.
9. Tynan Hinkson, Years of the Shadow, p. 15.
10. Mary Elcho to Arthur Balfour, 13 August 1890 (Letters, pp. 71–2).
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.
13. Arthur Balfour to Mary Elcho, 16 July 1891 (Letters, pp. 73–4).
14. Mary Elcho to Arthur Balfour, 30 October 1912 (Letters, p. 291).
15. Asquith, Haply I May Remember, p. 134.
16. Beauman, Cynthia Asquith, pp. 6–7; Mary Elcho to George Wyndham, 3 January 1892, George Wyndham Papers.
17. Pamela Tennant to Sibell, Countess Grosvenor, 28 December
1892, George Wyndham Papers.
18. Madeline Adeane to Madeline Wyndham, 28 December 1892, Adeane Papers.
19. Jalland, Women, Marriage and Politics, p. 181.
20. Asquith, Haply I May Remember, p. 135.
21. Arthur Balfour to Mary Elcho, 9 January 1893 (Letters, pp. 89–90); see also Mary Elcho to George Wyndham, 3 January 1893, George Wyndham Papers.
22. Mary Elcho to Madeline Wyndham, 21 April 1893, Stanway Papers.
23. Wemyss, Family Record, pp. 50–2.
24. Lambert, Unquiet Souls, pp. 64–5, 78; Beauman, Cynthia Asquith, p. 15.
25. Adams, The Last Grandee, pp. 34, 126.
26. Arthur Balfour to Mary Elcho, 16 August 1893 (Letters, p. 14).
27. Madeline Wyndham to Mary Elcho, quoted in Dakers, Clouds, p. 160.
28. Percy Wyndham to Mary Elcho, 6 September 1893, Stanway Papers.
29. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, Secret Memoirs XVI, 9 November 1893.
30. Pamela Tennant to Mary Elcho, 25 August 1893, Stanway Papers.
31. Pamela Tennant to Mary Elcho, 16 August 1893, Stanway Papers.
32. Pamela Tennant to Mary Elcho, 25 August 1893, Stanway Papers.
33. Paget, In my Tower, 1.5–6.
34. Pamela Tennant to Mary Elcho, 25 August 1893, Stanway Papers.
35. Wilfrid Blunt, Secret Memoirs XVI, 16 October 1893.
36. See Mary Lovell, The Churchills: A Family at the Heart of History – from the Duke of Marlborough to Winston Churchill (Little, Brown, 2011), pp. 49–50.
37. Longford, Pilgrimage of Passion, p. 298.
38. Wilfrid Blunt, Secret Memoirs XVI, 9 November 1893.
39. George Wyndham to Ettie Grenfell, 30 September 1893, Desborough Papers, HALS DE/Rv/C2800/39. All others found in NRS GD433/2/482 ff. 1–19r.
40. Wilfrid Blunt heard the story from two different sources. Once the immediacy of the crisis had passed, George Wyndham gave him the fundamentals of the entanglement. Shortly afterwards, at what was doubtless a gossipy lunch with Lewis (‘Loulou’) Harcourt at 11 Downing Street (Loulou being the son of the Chancellor, Sir William Harcourt), Loulou, who had been present at the Derwent house party, told Blunt that George Curzon, upon receiving anonymous telegrams at the Derwent house party from a lady in distress, ‘very foolishly shewed [them] around’, thinking they signified a crisis in Violet Granby’s marriage. On then receiving a telegram from Harry Cust, at Sheffield, who had just seen the pregnancy certificate sent to him by Nina and Violet Granby, Curzon hastened to him, returning only briefly to enlist George Wyndham’s help, before the two hared off again to Harry (Secret Memoirs, 16 October 1893 and 9 November 1893). Ridley and Percy have Harry himself receiving letters from Nina Welby and showing them around as a joke (Letters of Arthur Balfour and Lady Elcho, p. 103), but it is likely that this is an example of the way in which the tale mutated as it filtered through society. Harry could be cruel, but he was surely not foolish enough to incriminate himself so completely as that. As subsequent events demonstrated, the Souls’ morality could not extend to seducing unmarried women.
41. George Wyndham to Ettie Grenfell, 27 September 1893, Desborough Papers, HALS DE/Rv/C2800/38.
42. Pamela Tennant to Sibell, Countess Grosvenor, n.d. (September 1893), George Wyndham Papers.
43. Mary Elcho to Madeline Wyndham, 20, 21 November 1893, Stanway Papers.
44. Harry Cust to Arthur Balfour, 15 October 1893, Whittingehame Papers, NRS GD433/2/482 f. 4r.
45. Pamela Tennant to Mary Elcho, 13 March 1928, Stanway Papers.
46. Harry Cust to Arthur Balfour, 15 October 1893, Whittingehame Papers, NRS GD433/2/482 f. 4r.
47. Madeline Adeane to Madeline Wyndham, 19 November 1893, Adeane Papers; see also Madeline Adeane to George Wyndham, 4 October 1893, George Wyndham Papers.
48. Sitwell, Laughter in the Next Room, p. 99.
49. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, Secret Memoirs XVI, 7 October 1893.
50. Ibid.
51. Ibid., 16 October 1893.
52. The Times, 16 October 1893.
53. George Curzon to Arthur Balfour, 16 October 1893, Whittingehame Papers, NRS GD433/2/482 f. 6r.
54. Charles Welby to Arthur Balfour, 16 October 1893, Whittingehame Papers, NRS GD433/2/482 f. 8r.
55. Quoted in Ellenberger, ‘The Souls: High Society and Politics’, p. 214.
56. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, Secret Memoirs XVI, 27 June 1894.
57. Harry Cust to Arthur Balfour, n.d., f. 5r; Charles Welby to Arthur Balfour, 31 October 1893, f. 14r, and 3 November 1893, f. 15r, all Whittingehame Papers, NRS GD433/2/482.
58. Quoted in Ellenberger, ‘The Souls: High Society and Politics’, p. 214.
Chapter 14: India
1. Pamela Tennant to Mary Drew, 13 January 1894, BL Mary Gladstone Papers, vol. XXXIII, Add. MSS. 46251.
2. Percy Wyndham to Mary Elcho, 20 October 1893, Stanway Papers.
3. Ibid.
4. Harry Cust to Sibell, Countess Grosvenor, quoted in Egremont, The Cousins, p. 164.
5. Pamela Tennant to Madeline Adeane, n.d. [October 1893], Stanway Papers.
6. Pamela Tennant to Sibell, Countess Grosvenor, 12 November 1893, George Wyndham Papers.
7. Ibid.
8. Madeline Adeane to Madeline Wyndham, 19 November 1893, Adeane Papers.
9. Pamela Tennant to Mary Drew, 13 January 1894, BL Mary Gladstone Papers, vol. XXXIII, Add. MSS. 46251.
10. Madeline Adeane to Mary Elcho, 19 December 1893, Stanway Papers.
11. James, Rise and Fall, pp. 233–4.
12. Pamela Tennant to Mary Drew, 13 January 1894, BL Mary Gladstone Papers, vol. XXXIII, Add. MSS. 46251.
13. Madeline Adeane to Madeline Wyndham, 7 December 1893, Adeane Papers.
14. Ibid.
15. Madeline Adeane to Madeline Wyndham, 14 March 1894, Adeane Papers.
16. Quoted in Hoare, Serious Pleasures, p. 4.
17. Ibid., p. 17.
18. Madeline Adeane to Madeline Wyndham, 14 March 1894, Adeane Papers.
19. Arthur Balfour to Mary Elcho, January 1894 (Letters, p. 94).
20. Pamela Tennant to Sibell Grosvenor, 1 February 1894, George Wyndham Papers.
21. Pamela Tennant to Sibell Grosvenor, October 1894, George Wyndham Papers.
22. Pamela Tennant to Mary Elcho, 28 August 1916, Stanway Papers.
23. Pamela Tennant to Sibell, Countess Grosvenor, 1 February 1894, George Wyndham Papers.
24. Ibid.
25. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, Secret Memoirs XVI, 4 May 1894.
26. ‘Testament of Millicent Fawcett’, 19 March 1894, Whittingehame Papers, NRS GD433/2/482 f. 23r.
27. Millicent Fawcett to Arthur Balfour, 26 March 1894, Whittingehame Papers, NRS GD433/2/482 f. 27–8r.
28. Arthur Balfour to Millicent Fawcett, copy, n.d., Whittingehame Papers, NRS GD433/2/482 f. 25–6r.
29. ‘Testament of Millicent Fawcett’, 19 March 1894, Whittingehame Papers, NRS GD433/2/482 f. 23r.
30. Arthur Balfour to Harry Cust, 1 June 1894, Whittingehame Papers, NRS GD433/2/482 f. 41r.
31. Madeline Adeane to Madeline Wyndham, n.d. [spring 1894], Adeane Papers.
32. Madeline Adeane to Madeline Wyndham, 14 March 1894, Adeane Papers.
33. Madeline Adeane to Madeline Wyndham, 5 May 1894, Adeane Papers.
Chapter 15: Rumour
1. Roy Hattersley, David Lloyd George: The Great Outsider (Little, Brown, 2010), p. 72.
2. Cannadine, Decline and Fall, p. 45.
3. The letter that the Queen wrote to Gladstone after their meeting was scarcely warmer. Victoria told her erstwhile Prime Minister that she would confer a peerage on him, except that she knew he would not accept it: Hibbert, Queen Victoria, pp. 368, 376.
4. Ibid., p. 376.
5. Patrick Jackson, ‘Harcourt, Lewis Vernon, First Viscount Harcourt (1863–1922)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, January 2008, www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/33692, accessed 14 November 2013.
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br /> 6. McKenna, Secret Life of Oscar Wilde, pp. 332–3.
7. Ibid., pp. 342–3.
8. Pamela Tennant to Mary Elcho, 30 October 1894, Stanway Papers.
9. Ibid.
10. Pamela Tennant to Sibell, Countess Grosvenor, 29 September 1894, George Wyndham Papers.
11. Pamela Tennant to Sibell, Countess Grosvenor, n.d. [October 1894]. ‘Percy’s policy for dealing with misfortunes had not changed since he outlined it to Madeline Wyndham thirty years before, and would not change thereafter. Some five years later, he briskly, albeit sympathetically, reproved his eldest daughter when she made reference to domestic troubles: ‘I know well all your trials and difficulties but don’t allude to them as it only makes things worse putting them down in black and white and underlining them’ (Percy Wyndham to Mary Elcho, 22 November 1900, Stanway Papers).
12. Pamela Tennant to Mary Elcho, 30 October 1894, Stanway Papers.
13. McKenna, Secret Life of Oscar Wilde, p. 422.
14. Ibid., p. 421.
15. Pamela Tennant to Mary Elcho, 30 October 1894, Stanway Papers.
16. Ibid.
17. Madeline Adeane to Madeline Wyndham, 14 December 1894, Adeane Papers.
18. Madeline Adeane to Madeline Wyndham, 10 December 1894, Adeane Papers.
19. Pamela Tennant to Mary Elcho, 30 October 1894, Stanway Papers.
Chapter 16: Egypt
1. For discussion of the play, see Hynes, Edwardian Turn of Mind, pp. 174–8.
2. Ibid., pp. 177–8.
3. Longford, Pilgrimage of Passion, p. 295.
4. Fingall, 70 Years Young, p. 184.
5. Mary Elcho to Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, 16 November 1893, Blunt Papers, FM 1529-1976.
6. Longford, Pilgrimage of Passion, p. 308.
7. Ibid., p. 307.
8. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, Secret Memoirs XVI, 10 to 13 August and 5 October 1894.
9. Mary Elcho to Madeline Wyndham, 22 November 1894, Stanway Papers.
10. Annie, Countess of Wemyss and March to Mary Elcho, 30 September 1894, Stanway Papers.
11. Ibid.
12. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, diary entry, 5 January 1895, Blunt Papers, FM 343-1975.
13. Mary Elcho to Evelyn de Vesci, 17 January 1895, De Vesci Papers, DD/DRU/87.