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A Notable Beneficiary of the Norman Conquest: Hugh de Port, Ancestor of the St John Family

September 3rd, 2014

The St John arms in a window of Stanton St John church, Oxfordshire

Alone among noble families, the St Johns (Lords St John of Bletso and Viscounts Bolingbroke) descend from a Domesday tenant-in-chief – a landowner who, in 1086, held his estates directly from the King.

Their male-line ancestor, Hugh de Port, was an obscure Norman knight in the service of Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, the younger half-brother of William the Conqueror, from whom he held a modest three ‘knight’s fees’ – just enough land to support three knights. Hugh was a retainer of sufficient prominence to witness a pre-Conquest charter of Duke William, but it was as a participant in the Conquest of England that his fortunes were transformed.

A club-wielding Bishop Odo (second from left) 'cheers on the boys'

Hugh is likely to have held a command under Odo, who assisted at the invasion of England with his own squadron of knights. Not notably pious, Odo was conspicuous on the field of Hastings, ostensibly ‘preparing for the combat with prayers’, but quite probably berating the English with his club and, at a key moment in the battle, re-animating a demoralised contingent of Bretons, an incident that is depicted on the Bayeux Tapestry (‘Here Bishop Odo, holding his club, cheers on the boys’).

Described as ‘a man of eloquence and statesmanship, bountiful and most active in worldly business’, Odo was the outstanding beneficiary of the Norman Conquest, receiving by 1067 the earldom of Kent (comprised of about 200 manors in that county and a further 300 elsewhere, as well as the wardenship of Dover Castle), and sharing with William fitz Osbern the vice-regency of the kingdom during William’s periodic absences abroad.

It is thought that, while in Kent, Odo commissioned the Bayeux Tapestry (decidedly a work of English craftsmanship) as an adornment to his cathedral. There are three depictions of him on the Tapestry, and illustrations also of the knights Wadard and Vital, who appear to have been his retainers. Hugh, their companion-in-arms at Hastings, does not appear, but his accumulation of spoils, hardly less spectacular than that of Odo himself, is a measure of the considerable favour in which he was held.

Sherborne St John, Hants.

In the immediate aftermath of the Conquest, Hugh received from Odo the under-tenancy of thirteen manors in Kent and of a further thirteen in Hampshire, as well as one of the wards of Dover Castle. By the time of the ‘Domesday’ survey (1086), he had acquired an additional fifty-five manors in Hampshire, including Basing, Sherborne and Portsea, as tenant-in-chief – holding them directly of the King – and indeed was the most important lay tenant-in-chief in the county. A scattering of manors in four other counties spread his influence as far as Herefordshire.

In many of these manors Hugh installed his own retainers as sub-tenants, men like Roger of Escures, who has given his name to the village of Nately Scures, near Basing. Escures is three kilometres south of Port-en-Bassin in the Calvados, which was obviously Hugh’s native town.

Hugh had proved himself indispensable to William as much as to Odo. Conspicuously favouring ‘new men’ to give effect to his will, the King made him Sheriff of Hampshire; and in 1085, by which time Odo was in disgrace and languishing in prison, had Hugh beside him when holding court in Normandy.

Hugh was married to a lady called Orence but had become a monk by the time of his death in 1096 – a wise precaution in view of the orgy of killing and expropriation in which he was implicated. His former patron, Odo, also died in that year, having reinvented himself as one of the spiritual leaders of the First Crusade. Hugh’s son Henry and grandson, another Hugh, were the founders of Sherborne Priory on their Hampshire estate and still clung in 1133 to the three knight’s fees in Normandy – Fontenelles, Commes and Létanville, all close to Port-en-Bassin – which they continued to hold of the Bishop of Bayeux.

The younger Hugh’s son, Adam de Port, married Mabel, heiress of Orval and through her mother of the St Johns, another Norman line, originating at Saint-Jean-le-Thomas in the Manche. The family of Port was known thenceforth as ‘St John’. The name still attaching to some of their former holdings, such as Sherborne St John in Hampshire and Stanton St John in Oxfordshire, their memory is indelibly etched on the English landscape.

[Complete Peerage, article ‘St John of Basing’; Lewis C. Loyd, The Origins of Some Anglo-Norman Families (Leeds, 1951), pp.79, 97; David R. Bates, ‘The Character and Career of Odo, Bishop of Bayeux’, Speculum, L (1975), pp.1-20; David C. Douglas, William the Conqueror (London, 1964), p.297; The Gesta Guillelmi of William of Poitiers, ed. R.H.C. Davis and Marjorie Chibnall (Oxford, 1998), pp.124, 164; The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, IV, ed. Marjorie Chibnall (Oxford, 1973), pp.114-18.]

Stanton St John Church, Oxfordshire

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A Summer of Wild Swimming at the Parliament Hill Fields Lido, and the Anglo-Saxon Penchant for Tattoos

August 10th, 2014

At Parliament Hill Fields Lido: definitely not 'inked'

There has been excellent swimming at the Parliament Hill Fields Lido this summer, especially at the ‘adults only’ sessions in the evening. The 60 x 27 metre uncovered, unheated pool is lined with gleaming metal, so immersion in it is like being cleansed in some giant sink. Roger Deakin (Waterlog, p.306) called it ‘one of the few really great swimming pools left’.

Harold Godwinson: almost certainly 'inked'

This is a popular facility, where it is possible to observe a cross-section of London society in the raw. Users come in all shapes and sizes, with or without tattoos, which are now said to adorn one in every four British adults. The proportion at the Lido seems to be even higher, and it has been interesting to observe them on some quite elderly, and apparently respectable bodies, as well as very youthful ones. My companion and I regard any form of ‘inking’ is a desecration, but I have pointed out to her that they have been in fashion in other periods of our history. The chronicler William of Malmesbury says of the English at the time of the Norman Conquest that they ‘wore short garments, reaching to the mid-knee; they had their hair cropped, their beards shaven, their arms laden with golden bracelets, their skin adorned with punctured designs; they were accustomed to eat till they were sick …’ For William, tattoos were firmly to be associated with the decadence of the age.

I was disappointed when, many years ago, I swam at the original Lido, off Venice, as the beach was crowded and somewhat featureless, and the lagoon is everywhere very shallow. It would have been a wholly unromantic experience, but I had just been reading Mann’s Death in Venice, so felt it to be worth the effort.

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St John’s School, Ealing, in the First World War – Tales from the Home Front

June 30th, 2014

Admiral Lord Jellicoe lays one of the four corner stones of the St John's School War Memorial Cairn, 22 January 1918

The personal archive of Ernest Golledge reveals the effect of the First World War on the life of St John’s Boys’ Elementary School in Ealing, of which he was the inspirational headmaster.

Perhaps the first impact of the war was the departure, on 14 November 1914, of one of its masters, enrolled as an instructor in the ‘New Model Army’. The second was an increased number of visitors in uniform. Adept at attracting ‘celebrities’ into the school – he had even persuaded Shackleton to give a talk there – he soon arranged visits by Lieutenant-Commander Norman Holbrook, V.C. – ‘a real schoolboy’s hero, a man of the sea, sunburnt, jolly and breezy’ – and an old friend, an habitué of the nearby Hendon Aerodrome, Lieutenant Louis Noel of the French Flying Corps.

With mounting casualties among old boys, Ernest soon decided to erect a war memorial in the playground, one of the earliest to be raised, and to have some of its stones placed in position by visiting dignitaries. The first of these was the Hon. J.G. Jenkins, late Premier of Australia. Most of the heavy stones had been lifted into place by the boys themselves. A number of wounded soldiers, some with their arms in slings, were on hand to witness the ceremony.

In October 1916, Ernest invited no less a personage than Field Marshal Lord French, commander-in-chief of the British Home Forces, to ‘fix a corner stone on the “Cairn”’. Surprisingly, Lord French was ‘very much inclined to accede to your request’. His visit, postponed till 19 September 1917, despite much badgering from Ernest, lasted a mere ‘quarter of an hour’, during which he pinned the Distinguished Conduct Medal on the chest of a St John’s old boy. Private William Bristow of the Rifle Brigade, whom Ernest described as ‘an average type of boy’, had crawled under German wire entanglement at Armentières to lob a grenade into a crowded trench, and was to spend two and a half years in hospital for his pains.

Princess Louise stands by the unfinished War Memorial. This was probably her first visit to St John's, in 1916

The patriotic Ernest encouraged his boys to invest in the ‘War Loan’, an initiative in which children all over the country were involved. H.R.H. the Princess Louise lent her support and duly visited the school. She returned in the autumn of 1917 with her brother, the Duke of Connaught, who applied ‘a quantity of cement’ to the cairn before unveiling a portrait of Lord Kitchener. In January 1918, it was pointed out in the press that special significance was attached to the four corner stones of the cairn. Three of these had been laid by Lord French, the Duke of Connaught and Lord Jellicoe. Ernest was said to have in mind the Chief of Staff, General Sir William Robertson, to lay the fourth. In the event, it was Haig himself who performed the duty, probably late in 1920.

It is disillusioning to find a far from united home front. Every headmaster was obsessed with attendance figures. With much of the working population away at the front, able-bodied schoolboys were in high demand as workers. As a result, the self-interested tradesmen of Ealing had lured almost a quarter of Ernest’s boys from their classrooms – illegally – and, by December 1916, he was barely managing to hold the school together. A cynical, or pragmatic Mayor had instructed the attendance officer to turn a blind eye to the ‘wholesale employment of boys – as errand boys’, which had eventually reduced the school roll by nearly a quarter.

A lack of sufficient fuel that winter, an exceptionally harsh one, would hardly have helped. On 5 February 1917 the temperature in the unheated classrooms fell below freezing. The only option for the shivering boys was a lesson in ‘Drill’. Ernest caught a ‘severe chill’, as did ‘several of the teachers’ and ‘many of the children’. Such conditions were not just to be endured for a single day, but for weeks on end. ‘No fires in afternoon and no coal although plenty on order. Secretary informed.’ There is little sense of a community pulling together in adversity. Ernest seems almost to have been abandoned by the school managers, the local authority and by the townsfolk in general. Thefts at the school – of an umbrella, coats and Ernest’s own bicycle – were a further irritant.

In addition, there was the general disruption that came from being in a state of war. On 3 October 1917, pupils on their way back to school after dinner were sent home by police because of an air-raid warning, a Zeppelin looming overhead. In January, Ernest logs the endless queuing for provisions in the open air as a cause of increased illness among the children.

The unfolding national tragedy of course added to the sense of gloom. Ernest was intensely proud of the part played by his staff and old boys in the war effort. By the end of the war, no fewer than 475 former pupils had visited St John’s in khaki, an astonishing indication of their loyalty to him and the school. Ernest made active interventions on behalf of his pupils, for example recommending suitable candidates to the newly-formed Royal Flying Corps. He also kept a tally of the school’s ‘War Honours’. These would eventually amount to a Military Cross, three Distinguished Conduct Medals, eight Military Medals and two mentions in dispatches. Ernest preserved the stories of many of them in a scrapbook.

Of all the stories from the war, none is more poignant and striking than that of an old boy, Blake, who visited the school on 3 March 1916. Giving the boys ‘a very interesting account of his experiences in “Suvla Bay”,’ Blake ‘pathetically told how he and another old boy – Keeley – had just been talking about the “old school” when a shell burst over them and when he came to himself (unhurt) he saw poor Keeley lying “blown to pieces”. N.B. both lads were under 18 years of age.’

Blake, whose head must have been ringing from the blast, told the boys that his eye was caught by a piece of paper that was fluttering on the ground in front of him. He had picked it up and examined it. Then he remembered that Kealey (Ernest misspells the name) had had it in his hand when the shell had struck. It was a photograph of the school-yard at St John’s. Blake had brought it with him to show the boys.

Blake was again on parade at the school, as a police constable, on Empire Day 1924, when Princess Louise, by now a firm admirer of Ernest Golledge, presented him with the Police Medal. Bemused, if not reluctant heroes, the poor, undernourished, often lice-infested boys of St John’s School, many of whom had never seen the sea or even been to London, had learned much from their magnificent headmaster about ‘playing the game’.

On Golledge, see also http://www.rupertwilloughby.co.uk/gleanings/ernest-golledge-headmaster-of-st-john’s-school-ealing-and-the-visits-of-the-antarctic-explorers-ernest-shackleton-teddy-evans-and-frank-wild/. For a full account of St John’s School, Ealing, during the First World War, see Rupert Willoughby, A Head of his Time: The Life and Opinions of Ernest Golledge, Reforming Headmaster, 1872 – 1951.

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What Became of Madame Kolychko (née Princess Varvara Sergeevna Obolenskaya)?

June 26th, 2014

View of the Villa Monney, Montreux, from Lindsay Hall's third-floor bedroom at the Hotel Suisse. His friends, the Faletans, would try to lure him down from their balcony

At 8 o’clock on 1 January 1897, a merry, cosmopolitan party of fourteen adults and children sat down to dinner. The gathering took place at the Villa Monney, Montreux, overlooking the Lake of Geneva.

Gorgeously set against a mountain backdrop, Montreux at that time was a favourite resort of Europe’s élite. Alexandre Dumas père had called it ‘an international playground snipped off from France, Germany and Italy’. It had a casino – the Kursaal – a public park, numerous grand hotels, a railway station and a quay from which steamers regularly plied to various points around the lake. The romantic Château de Chillon nearby had been celebrated by Byron in one of his most famous poems.

In the heart of the town, the Villa Monney was the temporary base of a noble French family, consisting of the Marquis Nicolas de Faletans, a splendid, blond, moustachioed giant from the Franche-Comté; his petite Russian wife, Olga; and their pretty, teenaged daughters, Nicole and Simone.

Madame Kolychko, Villa Monney, 1897

The family had forsaken their other homes, including the Château de Faletans, near Dole, for reasons of economy. The extravagant Marquis seemed to lurch from one financial crisis to another – and Switzerland was a remarkably cheap country in which to live in those days.

The hospitable Faletans had invited their close friend, Madame Kolychko, to spend that winter with them at the villa. Born Princess Varvara Sergeevna Obolenskaya in 1862 or 3, she was amicably separated, after twelve years of marriage, from Iosif Iosifovich Kolychko. Her father’s estate in Russia, Mindukino, had been sold, her mother (re-married to an Italian, Albert Rey) lived in Milan, and Madame Kolychko herself divided her time between various European cities, including St Petersburg, always accompanied by her nine-year-old son, Boris, and his governess.

An enchanting woman, with the sort of looks that caused people to stop and stare in the streets, Madame Kolychko dressed beautifully, was graceful in her every step and movement, had a splendid voice and liked to sing Russian folksongs, accompanying herself on the guitar. She also had a very sweet nature. In the privacy of the villa, she was wont to release her long, fair curls and, in such a state of undress, even consented to be photographed, grinning shyly into the camera.

It is fortunate that the Marquis was a keen amateur photographer. Such informal photographs are very rare from this period. I rescued this one from the damp attic of a country house in France. Despite the damage, it conveys a clear idea of Madame Kolychko’s exceptional looks and personality.

Lindsay Hall

A solitary Englishman was present at dinner that evening. With his distinctive white beard and black velvet coat, Lindsay Hall was a familiar and much-loved figure in Montreux. A retired cotton-broker from Liverpool, Hall resided permanently at the Hôtel Suisse, one of Montreux’s foremost hotels, which towered over the rear of the Villa Monney and had a garden stretching down to the lake.

The Faletans had befriended Hall on his first arriving at Montreux, in March 1896, they themselves having been in residence since the previous September. The Marquis had attempted to photograph his daily ritual which was to feed the birds, a frantic flurry of squawking seagulls and swans, from the garden wall of the lake. Hall would happily entertain young Nicole and Simone and Boris for hours in the garden. Luckily, the foreigners all spoke good English, as Hall himself was no linguist.

Hall had embarked at Montreux on a most delightful new life. He had discovered, apparently for the first time, that he had a remarkable gift for friendship. Owing to some indefinable quality, this slight, unassuming old man was simply adored by men and women of every age and nationality.

He seems to have been a joyous companion, endlessly fascinated by other people, concerned for their well-being and determined to bring happiness to their lives. They universally responded with affection and even utter devotion.

Detail from one of Hall's letters to his daughter-in-law Elsie

The Faletans, who were a kind and unstuffy family, had taken him under their wing and introduced him to all the élite of Montreux. He spent most of every day with them, escorting them to the daily concerts at the Kursaal and then to afternoon tea at the Tennis Club in Territet, and, on summer evenings, sitting up late with them in the hotel garden.

Hall was virtually a pauper, yet he lived in great comfort at the hotel, for the cost of living in Switzerland in those days was, indeed, remarkably low. Lindsay Hall, who survived on ‘less than £100 a year’, hardly exaggerated when he said it was about a tenth of what it was in England.

He had a bright little bedroom on the un-electrified third floor, looking directly onto the Villa Monney. Often he would see his friends the Faletans on the balcony, beckoning to him to come down, or pointing to the lake if an excursion was planned.

He was somewhat torn between his devotion to Olga and to Madame Kolychko, whom he called ‘the princess’. The ladies seem to have competed good-humouredly for his time and affection. At that memorable New Year’s dinner party, he was favourably seated between them. They courteously spoke only in English, whilst he ‘amused them at times to screaming laughter by my attempts at French humour, but they say I am much improving’. Among the other guests were Jeanne Daudet – the adored granddaughter of Victor Hugo, daughter-in-law of the novelist Alphonse Daudet and ex-wife of the journalist Léon (to whom Proust was to dedicate Le Côté de Guermantes) – and Jeannine d’Hauterive, daughter of Alexandre Dumas fils. Hall observed the ‘different ways & manners’ with fascination.

Through a fog of cigar smoke, the Marquis told the men of his work in Belgium, which accounted for his frequent absences. He was an inventor, specialising in armaments, He had already secured a significant contract to modify the rifles of the Russian army, and was now looking for similar contracts elsewhere. He travelled all over Europe and was often in Russia, where he had held a post at the Embassy.

Hall, who struggled to keep up with conversations of this sort, had a merry time instead with the women. Young Nicole, excitedly and in stuttering English, embarked on some elaborate story about a dog. Apparently it had belonged to Madame Daudet’s grandfather, Victor Hugo. It was a poodle – not a toy poodle, a proper one, bred for hunting – and had become a nuisance to its master, requiring constant attention. On a whim, he had given the dog to Nicole’s Papa, who had taken it with him to Russia, but one day the dog had vanished and then a month later had turned up in Paris in a terrible state, barking feebly at its master’s door. No one could explain how it had made such a journey in so short a time, or how it had found its way. Madame Daudet had smiled and nodded in verification of the tale. She had known the dog and had grown up with it in her grandfather’s house on Guernsey, for Hugo had been deeply moved by its devotion and had sworn never to be parted from it again.

Neither Madame de Faletans nor Madame Kolychko could have predicted how involved they would both become with Lindsay Hall. Was he in love with them, and why did they find him so appealing? I suspect that both women, neglected by their husbands, were flattered by his attention, his willingness to listen to them and notice them, without ever feeling challenged sexually (Hall was in his late sixties and a very proper Victorian). Hall may have wished it were otherwise, but a barrier of formality seems always to have been maintained, apart from some mild flirting.

The picture reproduced here is marked in pencil on the back: ‘Madame Kolychko, Villa Monney, 1897’. I am unable to identify her positively in any other photograph. According to the Obolensky family genealogy, she survived Lindsay Hall by 46 years, dying on 18 March 1956, aged 93. I have no further information about her long life, nor do I know what became of her son, Boris Iosifovich Kolychko. One hopes that he survived the twin calamities of the Great War and the Russian Revolution. It would be sad to think that nothing of Madame Kolychko, who made such an impression on contemporaries, had outlived her, not even a memory. I hope that I, in telling her story, have provided a fitting memorial.

[See Nicolas Ikonnikov, La Noblesse de Russie, Tome K.2 (Paris, 1960), ‘Les princes Obolensky’, no.261. Comments and further information will be gratefully received at RupertWilloughby@btinternet.com.]

A Montreux group. Madame de Faletans is second from right at the back. Her daughter Nicole is next to her, whilst Simone is seated at the front, third from left. Madame Kolychko may be the woman seated next to her, fourth from left

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Men in Spats – or Johnny Depp and his Gay Diablerie

June 21st, 2014

Tommy Agar-Robartes's dressing table at Lanhydrock, complete with spats

Leafing through a recent edition of Hello Magazine (19 May 2014), I was struck by a picture of Johnny Depp, the distinguished tragedian, attending the ‘Met Ball’ in New York in white tie and tails, with white gloves, watch-chain, a silver-topped cane and spats. It was the spats that most intrigued me, as they are so seldom worn these days.

The other day, I went into a shop in Bloomsbury that specialised in vintage-style clothing. It was crammed with three-piece Harris Tweed suits, boaters and panamas, woollen ties and braces. There was a Penny Farthing parked outside. Yet the nattily-dressed assistant had never heard of spats.

Allow me to put him straight. Spats, short for ‘spatterdashes’, originated as military garments, and are still worn by pipers in the British army. In the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, however, they were much in vogue, both in America and Europe, as stylish civilian wear for gentlemen:

Have you seen the well-to-do

Up and down Park Avenue

On that famous thoroughfare

With their noses in the air

High hats and arrowed collars

Wide spats and lots of dollars

Spending every dime

For a wonderful time

[Irving Berlin, Puttin’ on the Ritz, 1930]

Spats were made of white cloth or brown felt that buttoned round the ankle, their ostensible purpose being to keep the mud off one’s shoes and socks. A notable spat-wearer was Tommy Agar-Robartes, reputedly the ‘best-dressed man in the House of Commons’, whose pre-Great War spats are laid out in his former bedroom at Lanhydrock, Cornwall. The prevalance of spats in that period is apparent from Sir Leslie Ward’s ‘Spy’ cartoons for Vanity Fair, such as his portrait of the magazine’s proprietor, ‘Tommy’ Bowles. I also find them mentioned in Ezra Pound’s bitter masterpiece, Hugh Selwyn Mauberly: Ode pour l’élection de son sépulchre (1920):

The sky-like limpid eyes,

The circular infant’s face,

The stiffness from spats to collar

Never relaxing into grace …

The description, apparently, is of Sir Max Beerbohm, whom Pound mistook for a Jew.

Portrait of Tommy Agar-Robartes at Lanhydrock

In the preface to Joy in the Morning, P.G. Wodehouse laments the passing of the spat. ‘In the brave old days spats were the hallmark of the young-feller-me-lad-about-town, the foundation stone on which his whole policy was based, and it is sad to reflect that a generation has arisen which does not know what spats were. I once wrote a book called Young Men in Spats. I could not use that title today.’

Their principal purpose, he continues, was not to ‘protect the socks from getting dashed with spatter’, but to lend ‘a sort of gay diablerie to the wearer’s appearance. The monocle might or might not be worn according to taste, but spats, like the tightly-rolled umbrella, were obligatory.’ Despite an inhibiting ‘anaemia of the exchequer’, Wodehouse had his own pair, ‘white and gleaming, fascinating the passers-by and causing seedy strangers who hoped for largesse to address me as “Captain” and sometimes even as “M’lord”. Many a butler at the turn of the century, opening the door to me and wincing visibly at the sight of my topper, would lower his eyes, see the spats and give a little sigh of relief, as much as to say, “Not quite what we are accustomed to at the northern end, perhaps, but unexceptionable to the south”.’

My grandparents at their wedding at All Souls', Langham Place, in 1930, spats to the fore

In Right Ho, Jeeves (Chapter 4), it is not necessary to be ‘some terrific nib’ to give away the prizes at Market Snodsbury Grammar School; ’anybody in spats’ will do, as Bertie Wooster discovers to his cost.

My own grandfather wore spats at his London wedding in 1930. (As he was about to set off on the train to his honeymoon in Eastbourne, his thoughtful batman brought the evening paper to his carriage.) The same morning suit was still in service when he gave away his daughter in 1964, and now is occasionally worn by my brother. Regrettably, the spats have been discarded and have fallen into general desuetude since the Second World War. I myself have been to a single wedding at which they were worn – that of A.A. Gill in 1989, who sported a fine pair, the best-man commenting on his ‘lifelong addiction to the “dressing-up box’.

Giving away his daughter in 1964 - the same suit, but no spats

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Alexandre Dumas fils Introduces his Mistress, Nadezhda Naryshkina, to George Sand at Nohant

June 16th, 2014

Since their meeting in 1852, Alexandre Dumas fils had formed a close friendship with George Sand, whom he addressed as his ‘Mama’. In the summer of 1861, he spent a restorative month with her, alone, at the Château de Nohant, her home in the Berry. There was much discussion of his mistress, the beautiful Nadezhda Naryshkina. She had long since abandoned her aristocratic husband in Russia, but his inability to marry her had driven Dumas mad with frustration. Sand, an advocate of free love, scarred by her own unhappy marriage, had heard bad reports of Nadezhda and would have thought him unwise, but had done her best to encourage him and cheer him up.

Dumas fils by Edouard Dubufe

A few weeks later, Nadezhda had been persuaded to accompany Dumas on a return visit to Nohant, invited by Sand to view one of the famous performances in her private theatre. Dumas wrote on 20 September, asking if Nadezhda’s teenage daughter, Olga, might join them. ‘She can sleep in her mother’s room on a sofa. She, as a young Muscovite traveller, will love that!’ He had also begged to be allowed to bring his burly painter friend, Charles Marchal, known as ‘the Mastodon’, who ‘can sleep anywhere, under a tree, under the well’.

Sand had written separately to Dumas and to Nadezhda at Villeroy, assuring them that all would be welcome. Surprisingly in awe of Sand, and expecting to feel inadequate, Nadezhda had been putting off a meeting and had hoped to leave after a day. The socialist Sand, who at fifty-seven was fixed in her ways, had been somewhat apprehensive, too. The ‘princess’ might be shocked by the ‘democratic’ spirit of Nohant, by having to sit side by side with the hairdresser, the cloth merchant, the vet and other lesser beings, for all were received there on equal terms. Even at the last minute she had fussed over the arrangements, concerned that the presence at the table of a young actress, Marie Lambert, might offend.

George Sand by Nadar

The Dumas party had arrived at the gracious, comfortable little château, set in its paradise of a park, late in the evening of 25 September. It had been a gruelling journey from Paris: eight hours in the train to Châteauroux, then three hours along a bumpy road in a diligence. Théophile Gautier, visiting for the first time in 1862, felt that he had been dumped in the middle of nowhere. ‘They pushed my trunk through a bush. I entered by way of the farm. There were dogs on all sides that frightened the life out of me.’

The guests had been led up the grand staircase to their rooms on the first floor, or, in Marchal’s case, the attic, where he was to sleep on a camp bed. Under the light of her Venetian chandelier, the mannish, cigar-smoking Sand and her son Maurice had awaited them in the opulent salon, with its Louis XVI armchairs and harp and the piano that Chopin (a former lover) used to play, Sand’s own famous portrait by Charpentier and those of her illustrious ancestors, including Maurice de Saxe, natural son of the King of Poland. Marie Lambert had been there, along with Léon Brothier, who had arrived by the morning train. Sand had noted of Marchal, as big and boisterous as her Newfoundland dogs, that he had ‘a nice face’. Dumas had brought depressing news, a mutual friend having suddenly died, and the party had gradually dispersed, sad and exhausted, to bed.

George Sand imposed strict rules on her guests. Breakfast was at ten, followed by bowls in the garden and chat. Certain fixed hours of the day and night were set aside for working, a sacred ritual. At other times she could be found in the salon. For Dumas’s visit, she had dedicated three evenings for performances in her little theatre, with Marie Lambert in a leading role. The one-time library, off the entrance hall, was permanently fitted with a stage, backdrops and curtains. There was an alcove on one side where Maurice gave his spirited puppet shows. Sand had wanted to try out her latest work, a ‘fantastical piece in three acts, a bewildering fantasy’ called Le Drac, and was eager for her friends’ expert opinion. As for her bucolic neighbours who would make up the bulk of the audience, ‘they may not understand a single word, but we won’t care. We don’t want them thinking that this is just for their amusement.’

She had promised a series of demanding performances lasting well into the night and guaranteed to make her audience sweat. Whether Nadezhda and Olga had been able to make sense of Le Drac is unclear, but Sand later reported that it had ‘greatly pleased Dumas fils and other competent observers’. It was perhaps with some relief that the Russian ladies had left on 30 September, to be followed by Dumas on 9 October. The rascally Marchal, an unabashed, unsubtle womaniser who never failed to amuse, had stayed on till 22 November, having charmed his way into his ageing hostess’s bed.

Marchal had soon proved unreliable, but at least Sand seems to have taken a favourable view of ‘the two Russias’ (as Dumas called them), and to have been impressed by their exotic pedigree. Always remembering them to Dumas in her letters, she referred to them as ‘the châtelaines of Villeroy’ or ‘our princesses’, whilst Olga is variously ‘the young autocratess Gachetscowa I’ or ‘the fair young Czarine’. Olga was destined to make an impression, having grown into the image of her mother, with the same delicate features, Roman nose and auburn hair. George Sand was thenceforth to be notably solicitous for her welfare.

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Did Katherine of Aragon Sleep Here? New Book Reveals Hidden Basingstoke

June 12th, 2014

A local historian believes he has discovered the Basingstoke house in which Katherine of Aragon spent a night in 1501, on her way to marry the elder son of Henry VII.

Katherine is known to have passed through the town on her journey from Plymouth. She was the guest of Richard Kingsmill, a prominent Basingstoke citizen.

Kingsmill’s house was on the south side of Winchester Street, most of which he owned. It would have to have been very large, as well as grand, to accommodate Katherine’s entourage. The buildings in Winchester Street today are mostly modern, with none appearing to match the description of a grand Tudor building.

However, Rupert Willoughby believes he has identified the house as the one immediately west of Barclays Bank, which was long ago converted into shops. He discovered it by chance while researching a new history of the town.

He describes his book, Basingstoke and its Contribution to World Culture, as a quest for the lost Basingstoke, which he believes has been ruined by post-war developers. To his delight and surprise, he discovered that much of the old ‘Top of Town’ had been preserved, including all but one of its historic coaching inns.

He considers the Maidenhead Inn in Winchester Street, first mentioned in 1671, to have been the former Kingsmill house. Large town houses were particularly suitable for conversion into inns and this is known to have happened to Sir James Deane’s house next door – on the site now occupied by Barclays Bank – which became the Angel.

The Maidenhead has added historical interest as the landlady, Mrs Martin, was an acquaintance of Jane Austen. Jane’s father is thought to have been a member of the Hants Club which regularly met there. Mrs Martin organised the Town Hall assemblies that are re-created in her novels.

Mr Willoughby points to evidence of an archway for coaches that has since been filled in. He calls for an urgent investigation by architectural historians, so that the date of the building can be established, and steps taken to ensure that it is properly preserved.

Katherine of Aragon’s marriage to Arthur, Prince of Wales, which took place shortly after her visit to Basingstoke, was an event that changed the course of history, as it gave her second husband, Henry VIII, the pretext for his divorce.

The people of Basingstoke are likely to have turned out in large numbers to greet her, though they may not have been impressed by her Spanish entourage. Sir Thomas More was to describe them as ‘undersized, barefoot pygmies’ and ‘refugees from hell’.

Rupert Willoughby’s book, Basingstoke and its Contribution to World Culture, is available now from all good stockists, priced at £10.99. For more information, see http://www.rupertwilloughby.co.uk/books.

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Brocas of Wokefield and Beaurepaire – and Sir John Soane’s Gates

June 9th, 2014

The Brocas monument in Bramley Church. The couple were patrons of Sir John Soane

(The following is a press release dated January 2008)

HISTORIAN FINDS LOST ARCHITECTURAL TREASURE AT SHERBORNE ST JOHN

Lost work by Sir John Soane, one of England’s most influential architects, may have been rediscovered at Sherborne St John – five miles from its original location.

The discovery has been made by historian Rupert Willoughby at Beaurepaire Park, one of Hampshire’s least-known treasures.

Beaurepaire was the seat, from 1353 to 1873, of the Brocas family, whose land stretched continuously from Burghfield Hill to Basingstoke.

Set in glorious parkland and surrounded by a medieval moat, the remains of the eighteenth-century mansion, wrecked by fire during the Second World War, were beautifully restored in the 1960s.

A prominent feature of the property is its moat-bridge entrance – a pair of elaborate wrought-iron gates supported by tall, brick pillars, each surmounted by the Moor’s-head crest of the Brocas family.

The Soane gates at Beaurepaire - formerly at Wokefield

The romantic, often dramatic story of Beaurepaire and the Brocases – including royal visits and a lengthy Civil-War siege when it was defended by the lady of the house – is told by Rupert Willoughby in his book Sherborne St John and the Vyne in the Time of Jane Austen.

It was while researching the book that Mr Willoughby discovered a reference to the construction of the bridge. ‘An old Bramley farmer called William Clift, who was born in 1828, recalls the event in his memoirs. According to Clift, the “large iron gates at the entrance over the moat” were brought from Wokefield Park, on the Brocas estate at Stratfield Mortimer, which had been the family’s favoured residence in the eighteenth century. Clift’s father provided the timber for the bridge. This occurred during his childhood and presumably coincided with the sale of Wokefield in 1839.

‘Soane, the foremost architect of the day and a local boy, brought up in Reading, had worked for Mrs Brocas at Bramley Church. He built the so-called Brocas aisle, completed in 1802, which houses the monument to her late husband.

‘It appeared that the couple had earlier employed him at Wokefield, where he made alterations to the house and designed a new gateway in 1788.’

Mr Willoughby found a drawing for the Wokefield gates in the archives at Sir John Soane’s Museum, in Lincoln’s Inn Fields – the architect’s former home which he left to the nation, along with all its contents – and compared them with those at Beaurepaire.

‘The entrance at Wokefield was much wider, so the iron gates are not the same. The brick posts now at Beaurepaire are, however, identical to those in Soane’s drawing, complete with the Moor’s-head crests. Plaques bearing the Brocas arms of a lion rampant are missing, but they may have been damaged in transit or never even executed. Not all the relevant drawings survive. The likelihood that Soane erected these posts at Wokefield in 1788 and that they were transported to Beaurepaire in 1839 is, however, very strong.’

The records show that Soane made nine journeys to Wokefield in 1788 and charged £650 for his services, a substantial sum. Soane was at the height of his profession. In the same year he was appointed architect to the Bank of England. The building was his masterpiece and its demolition in the 1920s has been described as the twentieth century’s ‘greatest architectural crime in the City of London’.

Rupert Willoughby’s book, Sherborne St John and the Vyne in the Time of Jane Austen, is available at all good stockists, priced at £10.99. Sir John Soane’s Museum in London is open throughout the year and admission is free.

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The Origins of the Naryshkin or Narischkine family of Muscovy

May 29th, 2014

At a recent family gathering, it was noticed that five of us were wearing the same signet ring, inherited from our Russian great-great-grandmother or, in one case, great-grandmother. Olga Aleksandrovna Naryshkina (or Narischkine, as it was usually spelt in the West) was born at Paris in 1847, and died at Southsea, Hampshire, in 1927. There was some discussion about what the arms represented. Alternative explanations were offered, but here is mine.

Olga Aleksandrovna Naryshkina, Marquise de Faletans (1847-1927)

The Naryshkins had been a relatively obscure gentry family until the late seventeenth century, when a certain Natalya Kirilovna Naryshkina had caught the eye of the ‘Most Gentle’ Tsar, Aleksey Mikhailovich. As a child Natalya had been sent to Moscow from the remote province of Torussa, to be brought up there by her godmother, a Scotswoman called Madam Matveeva. This lady, whose maiden name was Hamilton, was married to the Boyar Artemon Matveev, the Tsar’s close friend and adviser. At a time when foreign influences were generally abhorred and when women were shut away from the world in separate quarters, the Matveevs were open to the progressive ideas, habits and customs of the West, which were imbibed by Natalya herself as she grew up. The widowed Aleksey, an occasional visitor to the Matveev house, was charmed by their young ward and, on 22 January 1671, they were married. The following year, Natalya gave birth to a son who was the future Tsar and Emperor Peter the Great.

Natalya Kirilovna Naryshkina, mother of Peter the Great

Natalya’s father and a throng of brothers, uncles and cousins had immediately descended on the court to receive patronage from the uxurious Aleksey. The status of the family was transformed, almost overnight. They were received into the Duma of Boyars and were loaded with lesser titles, as well as gifts of land and serfs. Quick to conceal their undistinguished origins behind a mythical version of their genealogy, they cultivated social pretensions to match. In 1686, when the then joint Tsars, Ivan and Peter, created the famous Velvet Book in which the pedigrees of the nobility were to be inscribed, the Naryshkins entered one that took them back to ancient times. It was claimed that they descended from the Naristi, a Germanic tribe mentioned by Tacitus. As the Naristi were thought to have inhabited the north-west corner of Bohemia, the Naryshkins took as their arms those of the capital of that region, the imperial city of Eger (modern Cheb in the Czech Republic). The arms adopted by the family thus consisted of an imperial eagle with the lower part of its body covered by a grille, alluding to the fact that the incomes of the city had once been placed in pawn by the Emperor. It was further claimed that, as their ancestors had reigned over Eger, the Naryshkins had inherited princely rank, a privilege that in Russia was traditionally reserved for the male-line offspring of former ruling houses (those of Kiev, Lithuania, Tatary and a few others). However, among the Naryshkins, it was a point of honour that the title of prince should never be used. They maintained that their surname was dignity enough.

Ivan Aleksandrovich Naryshkin, Olgas's great-great-grandfather

Tsar Aleksey had died in 1676, to be succeeded by Fedor, the son of his first marriage. After Fedor’s death in 1682, the Naryshkins had hoped to promote Peter to the throne, but had been thwarted by his half-sister Sofya, who, on seizing power, had purged the court of Naryshkin influence, brutally putting leading members of the family to death. Seven years later, they had had their revenge, deposing Sofya in a coup (she was shut away in a convent) and inaugurating the sole reign of Peter, although his mother became the de facto ruler of Russia until her death in 1694. Since that date, the Naryshkin family had never ceased to occupy a position of prominence in the Romanov court.

Given the uncertainties of his early life, it is not surprising that Peter grew up to be remarkably ignorant and uncouth, but it seems he owed all his most remarkable qualities to his mother’s side. The first Romanovs had all been feeble, either in body or mind. Peter was a giant of just under seven feet. When he walked, his officials had to run along beside him in order to keep up. He was naturally athletic, and so dexterous that he could twist a silver platter into a scroll, and cut a piece of cloth with his knife in mid-air. His manners were appalling. On one occasion, when a guest was boring him at dinner, he spat full in his face. The Russian upper classes were not noted in that period for their refinement. Yet it was from Natalya that Peter had inherited the nervous energy which enabled him to modernise and transform his country. His mental agility, his enquiring mind and his admiration for the West were further legacies from his mother. Physically, he is said to have resembled one of her brothers, Fedor Naryshkin.

Ekaterina Aleksandrovna Naryshkina (born Stroganova), wife of Ivan, by Jean Voile

Olga Naryshkin was descended from one of Natalya’s great-uncles, Ivan Ivanovich. All her ancestors since Ivan had held office at the imperial court. Her great-great-grandfather, Aleksandr Ivanovich (1735 – 82), Chamberlain and Privy Councillor in the reign of Catherine the Great, had married the Princess Anna Nikitishna Trubetskaya, daughter of Prince Nikita Trubetskoy, Procurator-General of the Senate, from the old Lithuanian royal line. Their son, the Senator and Ober-Tseremoniymeister Ivan Aleksandrovich Naryshkin, had in turn married in Catherine’s presence into the fabulously rich Stroganov family, though he had been sentimentally attached to a certain Mademoiselle Vertel, a Frenchwoman who kept a shop in St Petersburg. The Baroness Ekaterina Aleksandrovna Stroganova had nevertheless borne him three sons, Aleksandr, Grigory and Aleksey, and two daughters, Elisaveta and Varvara. Aleksandr was an officer in the Life Guards who had died pointlessly in a duel, having been rash enough to challenge Count Fedor Ivanovich Tolstoy, the most famous duellist of the day. Grigory, the elder surviving son, became a Colonel in the Semenovsky Guards’ Regiment, died in Sorrento in 1835, and was the father of Aleksandr Naryshkin, Olga’s father.

A gathering of Naryshkin descendants, May 2014 (photo by Paul Spillane)

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A Corfiot Romance: The Marriage Between Admiral Charles Bayley Calmady Dent and Corinna Kourkoumelles of Afra – and the Adventures of H.M.S. Edgar

May 26th, 2014

H.M.S Edgar (in which Charles Dent was the First Lieutenant) with the R.Y.S. Eva in Corfu Roads, the Island of Vido and the mountains of San Salvador in the background, by Forster

‘If I wrote a book about Corcyra it would not be a history but a poem.’ That is the promise that Lawrence Durrell fulfils in his beautiful Prospero’s Cell: A Guide to the Landscape and Manners of the Island of Corfu. First published in 1945, the book is one of the fruits of his Alexandrian exile during World War II.

Among the curiosities of the island, Durrell mentions ‘the remains of a Venetian aristocracy living in overgrown baronial mansions, buried deep in the country and surrounded by cypresses’. More curious still is Corfu’s relationship with the British, who ruled the Ionian Islands, of which it is part, for fifty years from 1814 to 1864, when they were ceded to Greece. Britain’s legacy to ‘Corcyra’ today includes, apart from some ‘nostalgic love and admiration’ (notwithstanding their resentment of them at the time), an addiction to cricket – ‘a mysterious and satisfying ritual which the islanders have refused to relinquish’ – and to ginger beer.

A blending between the decaying aristocracy of the island and its ‘bluff rulers’ – Durrell quotes Viscount Kirkwall’s description of them as exasperatingly self-satisfied with their paper-chases and tea-parties – occurred in my own family. Admiral Charles Bayley Calmady Dent, born at Plymouth in 1832, was my grandfather’s great-uncle. My grandfather was brought up by Charles’s sister. Steeped him in naval lore (the Dents had been serving continuously since the late 1600s), my grandfather himself embarked on a naval career at the age of only thirteen.

H.M.S. Valorous in 1851. Charles Dent served in her in the Baltic campaign during the war with Russia

Charles Dent’s period of service had been full of incident. The youthful First Lieutenant of H.M.S. Valorous during the war with Russia (the so-called ‘Crimean War’), he had been posted not to the Black Sea but to the Baltic, and had led a raid on the port of Uleaborg on the Gulf of Bothnia, destroying its stores and installations. The citizens of Uleaborg had already abandoned the town, leaving a ‘large number of spirit-stores open’, but Charles’s marines had maintained their discipline, despite the ‘great trials and temptations’ to which they were exposed, not to mention ‘the almost uninterrupted sleet’.

Transferring to H.M.S. Gorgon, which, like Valorous, was a paddle-steamer, Charles saw further action in the Baltic, in September 1855. In command of a detachment consisting of the pinnace, the cutter and a gig from Gorgon, together with forty of her crew, he was sent ‘to examine the Siela Sound, entrance [to the] Gulf of Riga, with directions to take possession of a small islet in that quarter; a position for stopping the trade passing in or out, as also forming a good shelter for the boats’.

In a period of five days, Charles succeeded in capturing ‘nine small vessels’ with their cargoes, and was able to report that ‘no vessel had escaped the line referred to, although the weather was rather unfavourable for boating operations’. These were actions almost worthy of Charles’s father, Rear-Admiral Charles Calmady Dent, a naval officer of the heroic age, who had assisted in assaults on Possitano and other Italian ports in the Napoleonic War, at the capture of Port d’Anzo (where there was heavy loss of life) and, later, in the boarding of a pirate vessel in the Persian Gulf, in which a misplaced thrust in the head from a boarding-pike is said to have ‘half-killed’ him.

The ‘heroic age’ was further recalled when Charles, by now a Commander, was appointed, on 11 July 1862, to the two-decker battleship H.M.S. Edgar, again as First Lieutenant. This was a time when ‘the transition from sails to steam was being gradually accomplished’. The Channel Squadron, of which she was part, consisted of ‘a mixture of wooden ships and ironclads: most of the former could not steam, none of the latter could sail. Nevertheless the Admiralty, who always have an eye to economy, decreed that, as the ships had masts and yards, they must sail.’ In the midst of all the advances in technology for which that era is famous, H.M.S. Edgar was a steamship, yet wooden-hulled and fully masted, looking exactly like something from Nelson’s fleet at Trafalgar, nearly sixty years before.

It was during a cruise of the Mediterranean in the summer of 1862 that Charles sailed in the Edgar into Corfu Harbour, to a fateful meeting with his future wife, Corinna Kourkoumelles. Born on Corfu on 21 November 1840, she was the eldest of the three daughters of Sir Demetrios Kourkoumelles, K.C.M.G., an Advocate, who served as Regent of the British Military Protectorate of Corfu from 1862 until the end of British rule in 1864, after which he became a Member of the Hellenic Parliament.

Sir Demetrios’s picturesque family seat at Afra (‘Breeze’), in the centre of the island, had been built in the 18th century in the Venetian style, above the cloisters of a deserted monastery – the family having migrated to the island from Kephalonia in the about 1750. The house at Afra is, or was until recently, still in the possession of the family (and occasionally visited by Corinnas’s descendants), but may be the old mansion there that is currently being offered for sale – http://rrcorfurealestate.com/pages/en/sales.php?prod=291&cat=5. It is just the sort of ‘overgrown baronial mansion, buried deep in the countryside and surrounded by cypresses’, to which Durrell refers.

Ioannes Kapodistrias, the Corfiot who was Greece's first President - the great-uncle of Corinna Kourkoumelles

The family had impeccable Corfiot connections. Corinna’s mother was Elisa, daughter of Nicolo Rodostamo, member of the Ionian Parliament, by his wife Maria, daughter of Count Antonio-Maria Kapodistrias, Doctor of Laws at Pavia, Member of the Grand Council of Corfu, Senator, and sometime Ambassador to the Sultan and the Tsar. Antonio-Maria was the brother of Ioannes Kapodistrias, undoubtedly Corfu’s most famous son – Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Tsar’s service (1816-22), and first President of Greece between 1827 and 1831 (when he was assassinated).

Charles and Corinna’s wedding took place in London, at Kensington Parish Church, on 6 August 1863 – the Edgar’s First Lieutenant was able to absent himself from a summer cruise around the British Isles. His address was given as 1 Norwood Place, and that of his bride as 40 St James’s Place. The then master of the Edgar was no doubt present – the future Admiral-of-the-Fleet Sir Geoffrey Phipps Hornby, a grand Victorian figure (and a connection by marriage), who was to be celebrated, at the end of a long naval career, for never having fired a shot in anger.

Corinna’s family clearly did not share the general distrust of Corfiots for the British. Her father is said to have preferred to be called ‘Sir Demetrios’ rather than ‘Count’ – the Order of St Michael and St George, to which he belonged, is nowadays doled out to diplomats and others serving overseas, but had been instituted in 1818 specifically to reward natives of the Ionian Islands and of Malta. While in England, Sir Demetrios matriculated an elaborate coat of arms at the Herald’s College which included a variant on the Dent family motto – to their Ne Cede Malis he had added Sed Contra. Corinna’s younger sister Euphrosyne was also to marry an English officer, a Major Jettars.

The newly-wed Corinna had quickly to inure herself to the prolonged absences of her husband, the Channel Squadron spending the winter of 1863-4 between Madeira, Teneriffe, Gibraltar and Lisbon. At Portland on 25 April 1864, it was to receive a visit from Garibaldi and his entourage. They were entertained to a substantial late lunch – it began at 6 p.m. – aboard the Edgar, as flagship of the commander-in-chief, Admiral Dacres.

From the middle of the following August, the headquarters of the fleet was at Portsmouth, where the ships remained until 27 March 1865, ‘when the Edgar came out of harbour under sail – the last line-of-battle ship that ever sailed out of Portsmouth Harbour’. The crew of the Edgar were no doubt unconscious at the time of their moment in history. The squadron had cruised down to Lisbon by 22 April, bearing a mission (under Lord Sefton) to invest the King of Portugal with the Order of the Garter. The ensuing festivities included a visit by the King himself to the Edgar, and a match against the Lisbon Cricket Club, in which the naval team was victorious. Perhaps Charles and others of his crew had already played a part in inculcating the Corfiots with a love of the game.

Charles never achieved a command of his own, and the Edgar was his last ship. He retired from the service on 16 December 1865, and took up a post with the London North Western Railway, as their Marine Superintendent at Holyhead on the Isle of Anglesey. He was nevertheless to enjoy promotion on the superannuated list (having commuted the pay), eventually attaining the rank of Admiral in 1893. He died at Chester on 20 March 1894. Corinna died at a cottage called ‘Decoy’, near Beaulieu, on 27 January 1918.

The product of a hard school, Charles was no doubt a tough, stoical seaman and stern disciplinarian. The log-book of one of his officers in the Edgar, G.S. Rolph, was recently sold by a dealer and offers insights into the routine of life aboard in 1864: ‘Sailmakers repairing mainsail… Carpenters variously employed’; ‘Mustered by divisions. Performed Divine Service’; ‘Punished Wm. Shipper with 36 lashes as per warrant.’ ‘Fired Royal Salute.’ (http://www.baumanrarebooks.com/rare-books/ship-s-log-ralph-george-s-/illustrated-manuscript-log-of-the-h-m-s-edgar/83728.aspx) Charles’s son Douglas Lionel Dent, who served in a successor to H.M.S. Edgar and also became an Admiral, was a notorious martinet, known in the service as ‘The Rogue Elephant’; a daughter, Cora, was the formidable Matron of the Royal Infirmary, Bristol, known as ‘The Acid Drop’. The men of the family were conspicuous for their height and build: one piece of family lore that has passed down to me is that Charles could contain Corinna’s tiny waist within the span of his hands.

(National Archives, ADM 196/13/Vol.I, p.257; Navy Lists; The Russian War, 1854: Baltic and Black Sea. Official Correspondence, ed. D. Bonner-Smith and A.C. Dewar (Navy Records Society, 1943), pp.64-5, 74-5, 79; The Russian War, 1855: Baltic. Official Correspondence, ed. D. Bonner-Smith (Navy Records Society, 1944), pp.320-3; Mihail Dimitri Sturdza, Grandes familles de Grèce, d’Albanie et de Constantinople: Dictionnaire généalogique (Paris, 1983), pp.251-2, 286; Rupert Willoughby, ‘The Naval Dents and their Marriages’, Genealogists’ Magazine, Vol.25, No.12 (Dec. 1997).)

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