The Mist of Time Ch. 18-19

"And what did you find?"

"What I found was quite interesting, but may we leave that until Tina has finished her work. She started this in many ways, so she should be present."

"You are right of course. I'll go and see how she is getting on."

Tina was not happy. She had done what I would say was a very good job. The photo now showed a man who had had a sloppy shave that morning. She was angry that she couldn't do better. "Every time I try to clean up the whiskers I am changing the shape of the face." She ranted.

"Calm down, my pit bull. You have done a bloody good job. I'll get Brian in and let's see what it comes up with now."

"Ok. But before we do that, I'm taking a photo of you. Perhaps Mr. Prescott will do the same comparison with your photo."

Andrew repeated the test with the photo-shopped image and this time it came up with a correlation percentage of seventy-eight percent. Then he loaded my photo and tested again. The correlation percentage was eighty percent. He was triumphant. "There you are Daniel. I have no qualms in asserting that Earl Grantisbury is your Great, great grandfather."

"That is interesting in a way. However I am intrigued that Lady Adelaide could cheat on her husband at least twice and he did little about it."

Brian nodded his head wisely. "Yes. You need to understand the sexual mores of the Victorian and Edwardian aristocracy." He took a sip of his tea to moisten his throat. "Much of the aristocracy married for many other reasons than love. Advancement, land, protecting their lineage, and the usual prosaic reason, wealth. That meant that many couples were locked in a relationship with someone they probably liked but who didn't engender passion. The country house weekend, which was very popular was the way they went about scratching their itch. Hostesses would understand who wanted to be with whom, and would arrange that their bedrooms were close. You have to understand that the fashion of the time had upper class married couples sleeping in separate rooms. Once they had done their duty and produced the heir and a spare, many couples had an unspoken acceptance that whatever happened at the country house weekend was not something to speak about.

"And it was supposed that it was the poor who were immoral." Tina intervened in a bitter tone.

"The upper classes, Tina, always had a different interpretation of morality." He took another drink of his tea. "There is evidence to connect Earl Grantisbury to Lady Adelaide before she married Sir Dashwood. He had a lodge which was not too far from Braintree, it was known as Upton Lodge."

"What?" I intervened. "Upton Lodge was where Lady Adelaide went to live with her father when she left Dashwood. I thought he owned the Lodge."

Brian smiled. "Yes, exactly. May I come back to that later?" I nodded. "Earl Grantisbury with his title and friendship with the Prince of Wales moved in the highest strata of the classes. He would be able to enjoy the benefits of the country house weekend, but Adelaide, as the daughter of a draper, would never get an invitation. I believe that the Earl managed the marriage of Adelaide to Sir Dashwood. She got a title and I presume that he got money. The Land Registry of the time showed that Earl Grantisbury bought some land from the Chetford estate. I would imagine that the Earl paid well over the usual value for that land. This arrangement meant that Sir Dashwood and Lady Adelaide were suitable to receive invitations. This device was quite usual. The Prince of Wales had many mistresses and they had to be married to a titled man, else his mistresses would not be accepted in society. It has been suggested that Edward was not as vigorous as his self-advertising would indicate. Rumour had it that some ladies were required to do little but sleep in his bed and act as if they were well satisfied with the encounter. The Prince could ease the husbands' supposed distress with honours and suitable Court appointments. I imagine that Grantisbury would make suitable gifts of money, of which Dashwood was always in need. Also Grantisbury would require Dashwood to accept any children born to be acknowledged as Dashwoods' progeny."

"He didn't accept Robert as his son." Bella remarked.

"No indeed. After a son and two daughters and then another son Dashwood reneged on the agreement." Brian nodded his head. "However he maintained Adelaide and Robert at Chetford so Grantisbury did not interfere." He turned his laptop so we could all see the screen and clicked on Documents. He then selected one particular document. "This is an extract from the Land Registry. It shows that in eighteen ninety-six the Earl transferred ownership of Upton Lodge to a Mr. Reginald Smith draper, of Braintree. He was Adelaide's father. Rose had married the previous year, Danbury was in the Army, and so the Earl obviously believed that it was time for Adelaide to have her own household. He must have been certain that Dashwood would not divorce Adelaide; again there may have been some inducement probably money, to have Dashwood stay his hand. I have to say that the Earl's and Adelaide's relationship had to be true love. He had done everything he could to keep her and looked after her at great cost to himself. Nor did the society journals mention any attachment to any other lady."

"But he did not marry her." I muttered.

Brian caught that. "He would have to divorce his wife. With his position at Court he would have needed Victoria's permission. Her view of marriage was that it was for life and so I doubt she would allow Grantisbury to divorce. Adelaide could not divorce, wives could not bring suit against their husbands at that time, and Dashwood would have made such demands to divorce Adelaide that would make it almost impossible."

Tina had a question. "Why didn't he make the Lodge over to Adelaide."

"Under the law of property at that time anything the wife brought to the marriage or any property she gained during the marriage automatically became her husband's property. I would imagine that Mr. Smith made a will leaving the property to Robert, thus keeping the Lodge out of Dashwood's hands."

Bella had been listening intently. "Poor Adelaide. Loving the one man she could not be with and married to a beast of a man. She must have been so sad for most of her life."

Brian agreed with her. "You are right, however after King Edward died in nineteen-ten, all of his friends were out of favour. George the Fifth was strong on marital fidelity and those courtiers who acquiesced and abetted Edward's adventures were side-lined, Earl Grantisbury being among them. From that time on there is little mention of him in the society pages. I suspect that he spent some time at his family seat, but probably more time at Upton Lodge with the one love of his life, Adelaide. He died in nineteen-nineteen and Adelaide in nineteen twenty-two. I hope that their last years together were everything they had wished for themselves."

I had been listening carefully to this exposition yet still thought it far-fetched. I voiced my misgivings. "Brian, I hear you and all you say to my mind is a little bit on the improbable side."

"I understand your doubt, Daniel. However I will point out that you, Sir Danbury and Earl Grantisbury have a likeness that cannot be explained away as co-incidence. There is only one explanation for your likeness and that is that in some way you are related. Everything else is based upon some evidence, not in itself conclusive, and the lifestyle of the upper classes of that time. I am a historian and I come across things that seem extraordinary. My factual mind rejects the evidence I see, yet many times it is true. Viewing history with a twenty-first century attitude can lead you astray. You have to get into the mindset of the nineteenth century and the attitudes of the Victorians."

Not totally convinced I smiled. "Yeah! I'll give you the benefit of the toss."

Brian gathered his paraphernalia together preparing to leave. Just as he was ready he asked again if he could write a book about this. "I have already made some notes and decided it cannot be a factual history, more of suggested history, which could have happened. I shall write it as a fiction based upon fact."

"I have no objection at all, nor do I have any problems of your using the real names."

"Thank you, Daniel. I will of course allow you to read the manuscript first. If there is anything that you wish to amend or edit it will not be a problem."

Three weeks later I received a draft, with a note asking if I would review and comment.

To be continued...