Eternally Yours: Roxton Letters Volume 1
Read Eternally Yours: Roxton Letters Volume 1 Online
Authors: Lucinda Brant
Tags: #Georgian, #romance, #Roxton, #Series, #Eighteenth, #Century, #England, #18th
C
ONTENTS
A Companion to the Roxton Family Saga Books 1–3
L
UCINDA
B
RANT
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By Her Grace, Alice-Victoria Edwina Hesham, 10
th
Duchess of Roxton, upon the sesquicentennial of the marriage of Antonia Moran to Renard Julian Hesham, 5
th
Duke of Roxton.
I
T
IS
WITH
immense pride and satisfaction that I offer this, the first of a two-volume companion set of letters—a selection of correspondence authored by my esteemed forebears, and persons important in their daily lives.
This first volume is published to coincide with the commemoration of the sesquicentennial of the marriage of my French ancestress Antonia Diane Moran, granddaughter of the Jacobite General James Fitzstuart, 1
st
Earl of Strathsay, to Renard Hesham, the 5
th
Duke of Roxton, my husband the present Duke’s great-great-great-grandfather, and whose Christian name he proudly bears.
The compilation came about in the most surprising of circumstances, and it would be remiss of me not to mention what was reported in the newspapers, not only here in England, but across the Atlantic in New York City. No doubt the New York reports are because of the American branch of the Roxton family that has resided there since the founding of that great nation. The family’s continued political influence in that democratic landscape today is represented most particularly by Senator Hubert Charles Fitzstuart, himself a direct descendant of the 1
st
Earl of Strathsay, of which we are immensely proud.
A few years ago at my family’s seat in Hampshire—Treat—the vast collection of books and monographs housed in the Treat library were being re-cataloged and the library itself renovated, when workmen came across a secret door within the framework of the oak paneling. The existence of this door had been lost to family memory, and it is the opinion of experts that it had been sealed since the turn of this century, and well before Her Majesty ascended the throne. Subsequent research by Professor West-Hamilton of Trinity Hall, Oxford, the renowned expert on the Roxton genealogy, and author of the acclaimed biography of the family’s great medical philanthropist Lord Henri-Antoine Hesham, younger son of Antonia Roxton, has revealed that this door was sealed on the orders of Frederick, the 7
th
Duke of Roxton. This is not the place for speculation, but Professor West-Hamilton is of the belief that the answer may lie in what was discovered locked behind this door.
Opened for the first time in a hundred years, the door revealed a staircase lined with bookshelves. The stairs lead to the apartment above the library, which had been used as the private apartments of the Dukes of Roxton for four generations, until the time of the seventh duke. It was Frederick who had these private apartments converted into bedchambers and a schoolroom for his six daughters. It is thought that during this conversion the stairwell was blocked at either entrance, and the stairwell’s existence forgotten by future generations.
The discovery of a secret stairwell is in and of itself most satisfying, for it is known that the Dukes of Roxton were great bibliophiles, and perhaps none more so than my ancestress, the fifth duchess. Antonia, Duchess of Roxton and Kinross, not only had the distinction of being a celebrated beauty of her day, but was also a bluestocking. She was a great linguist, too, for she could read, write and converse not only in her native French but was just as fluent in English, Italian, Greek and Latin. Thus it was not surprising to the family that the 5
th
Duke and Duchess would seek a convenient and private method of accessing the contents of their library via a stair between their most intimate of rooms and the library.
But what is surprising, and most revelatory, is what was discovered housed on the shelves that lined this secret stairwell. It had always been assumed by the family—indeed my husband was told the story as a small boy by his grandfather Anthony, the eighth duke—that the private correspondence of the 5
th
Duke and Duchess was deemed too intimate in nature, and thus the decision was made to destroy most of it on the orders of his father Frederick. This destruction was considered necessary not only to preserve the illustrious family and ducal name of Roxton, but the privacy of the various correspondents.
I can now reveal for the first time that this correspondence was not destroyed at all, but merely locked away from prying eyes. For upon the bookshelves in the secret stairwell are hundreds, if not thousands, of pages of private correspondence, not only in letter form, but in diary entries. There are red leather boxes full of letters, notes, small tokens, and bound diaries in the 5
th
Duchess’s hand. All the diary entries are in French, of course, while the letters by various correspondents are in French, Italian and English. A proportion of this correspondence has indeed been deemed far too intimate in nature for publication, and it is the Duke’s and my express wish that it remain locked away, never to be accessed by family or scholar alike. Yet, this does not detract from the excitement of the family at this discovery, for the bulk of the correspondence provides a unique opportunity to add to the family history, and opens up a window to a bygone era, when ladies wore gowns which were wider than they were tall, men dressed in embroidered satins and silks which rivaled those worn by any female of the day, and sedan chairs were more numerous than hansom cabs. It was a world before the American and French Revolutions, before industrialization and big cities, when persons great and small went about their daily life at a much gentler pace; this was the world inhabited by my ancestress, and the ancestress of my husband Renard, the 10
th
Duke of Roxton’s great-great-great-grandmother, Antonia Moran.
It is fitting then that this selection of correspondence be published in the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary year of Renard, the 5
th
Duke of Roxton’s marriage to his young bride, Antonia Moran, a direct descendant of His Majesty King Charles the Second, and who in her lifetime married not one duke, but two—one English, the other Scottish, and as a consequence is the ancestress of two premier dukedoms in the Kingdom which have unbroken male lines down to the present day.
It must be stated that this publication and its companion volume are published in a private capacity, and are not for public consumption. They are meant for the shelves of select persons with an academic interest in the Roxton lineage who wish to gain a deeper insight into the lives and motivations of my ancestors.
I wish to acknowledge the tireless efforts of the Treat Librarian, Sir Elliott Fortescue Bt. and his assistant, Mr. Percival Mandrake, Professor Sir Marcus West-Hamilton, and the eminent French linguist M’sieur Auguste Martin, all of whom worked upon this volume for three years, and continue to work on the next, and without whom this correspondence would not have seen the light of day. This volume is dedicated to my loving husband, Renard.
Alice-Victoria Hesham
Her Grace the Most Noble Duchess of Roxton
March, 1896
From the Editors on the order and compilation of the Roxton Letters by Sir Elliot Fortescue Bt., C.B.E., and Professor Sir Marcus West-Hamilton, G.C.M.G., O.B.E.
T
HE
LETTERS
and diary entries in this first of two planned volumes follows a chronological order. The first chapter begins with correspondence from the early 1700s, before Antonia Moran’s marriage, up until she becomes the 5
th
Duchess of Roxton. The second chapter begins with a birth and ends with a birth, and deals with correspondence between family members and favored family retainers during the marriage of the 5
th
Duke and Duchess. The third chapter was the most difficult, not only in the selection of letters to be included, but the distressing nature of the contents of the correspondence and diary entries, as it deals with Antonia Roxton’s great sorrow suffered at the death of her first husband, the 5
th
Duke, and the subsequent distress of family members. It was not the intention of Her Grace or us as the compilers to distress the modern reader with such heart-breaking correspondence, indeed with any of the letters included here, but to shine a light on the strength and depth of feeling which made the marriage of the 5
th
Duke and Duchess legend, not only to members of their own family, but far beyond their wider circle of friends, and down through the ages to our present time.