The Dukes (17 page)
Lord Edward's travels brought him to India (was he pursuing his
brother?) and to the climax of this sad family rift. On 18th December 1865 Edward was attacked by a bear in the Indian jungle. The
bear had been wounded by an unexploded shell, and was crazed with
pain. It seized Edward by the knee, the two rolled over and over
together, until Edward managed to stab it. He was dragged to a
jungle hospital, where he immediately wrote: "My dear Father, I
write to you that you may tell my mother without startling her, that
I have been bitten by a wounded bear. I hope the consequences may
not be serious, but things do not look altogether well." An hour later
he underwent an operation. The surgeons said that the only chance
of saving his life was to amputate above the knee. Just before, weakening, he dictated a letter to his brother: "I have just decided to let
them amputate this afternoon ... I shall return perforce to a purely
literary life . . . Do marry, is the advice from your affectionate
cripple."
The following day, Lord Edward died from the effects of amputation, in a state of delirium. He was twenty-four. The Duchess
received a telegram at the Admiralty when the Duke had retired to
bed. After waking and telling him, she wrote to St Maur. "Oh,
Ferdy, don't
quit the country
or you'll kill me - I am keeping up for
your sake . . . Your Father is terribly cast down and says he will
never recover it, and I believe him poor man." The Duke's reaction
to shock grew worse the next morning. The Duchess again wrote to
her remaining son: "My only boy, my darling Ferdy, your Father
is terribly depressed, all his plans, all his future utterly cast away . . .
He seems doubtful of being able to keep with the Government, I
should be sorry he had not some political duties to keep his mind
occupied, as I think private life, when he is so depressed, will depress
him still further... he walks up and down."
In fact the Duke never did recover. The tragedy squashed his personality, flattened his vigour. He retired from public life, never to
return. The Seymour family might well have all joined him in despair
had they known that this was only the beginning of their troubles.
Lord St Maur, now the Duke's only son, escaped to Tangier, where
he could indulge his brooding views on men and the world without
giving offence. He set about learning Russian and Turkish, to add to
the French, Spanish and German which he already spoke with
fluency. He was more and more withdrawn from the society of men.
"I think it is a pity", wrote Sir John Hay to the Duchess, "that a
clever, vigorous mind like his should be lost in this wilderness."
76
His
health was not good, however, due probably to the variety of odd
diseases to which he had been exposed for years in the Far East,
and he was obliged to return to England, where on 30th September
1869, he died suddenly of heart disease, with his mother beside him,
at the age of thirty-four.
The Duke of Somerset retreated into dumb grief. He had always
been a gentle, pliant man, but now he was quite unable to resist the
overwhelming distortion of character that wretchedness brings. For
the rest of his life he was sullen and embittered. The dukedom would
pass in turn to his two brothers and then to his nephew; this he
could not prevent. But he made sure that precious little else went to
them. His will was regarded as so infamous a document by the rest
of the family that the memory of it is still fresh. To his daughter
Hermoine (who married Sir Frederick Graham) he left the London
house at 40 Park Lane with all contents; to his daughter Guendolen
(who married Sir John Ramsden) he left Bulstrode Park, Bucks,
with all contents; to his daughter Ulrica (who wed a Thynne) he left
estates in Lincolnshire, Cambridge, and Norfolk, together with all
books and linen to be found at the Duke of Somerset's ancestral
home, Maiden Bradley. Estates in Wiltshire and Somerset he left to
his sons-in-law. The clause of the will which caused most uproar
was the bequest of all household linen, furniture, china, glass,
household objects, prints, ornaments, books and manuscripts
from Stover, the family home, on trust for two infants who were
not even Symours. The names were Harold St Maur and Ruth St
Maur, and they were to receive Stover and its contents, including
the Hamilton treasures, when they grew up. Meanwhile, they were
held in trust by the sons-in-law Lord Henry Thynne and Sir John
Ramsden. The next Duke of Somerset received the title, the shell
of property at Berry Pomeroy, the estate entailed with the title at
Maiden Bradley, and its fixtures and fittings, and that was all. No
wonder he appended his signature to that petulant document
which hung on the wall while he was Duke. It reads:
"The will of the 12th Duke of Somerset is misleading, in some
cases untruthful, in others it appears to be an attempt to conceal
the truth. He did not leave the Berry Pomeroy and Maiden
Bradley estates to the 13th Duke, he has scraped and plundered
both estates for many years. He sold part of the Maiden Bradley
property, and he left various charges amounting to £50,000 on the
remainder. The house has since been rebuilt. He left it a filthy
ruin. The law enabled him to put aside his father's will; he barred
the entail and when his sons died he claimed everything. But the
pictures given to his mother for the Seymour family by his grandfather the 9th Duke of Hamilton, if legally, could not morally, could
not honourably, belong to him.
"The estates mentioned above have belonged to the Seymours
some four hundred years. Besides the Hamilton there are other
family pictures, presents from Kings and Princes, to the first wife
of the 11th Duke [i.e. Charlotte Hamilton], Where are these
pictures now? Who retains them? Or who has made away with
them? The Duchess his mother said they would remain for ever
treasures in the Seymour family. To gratify the low-born greedy
beggar woman he would marry in opposition to his father, the
12th Duke has seized and made away with the land, the pictures,
the miniatures, the plate, the prints, the linen, and the books. He
was unable to make away with the title and he has left his successors his Will; his Will remains, and must remain, a lasting monument of infamy."
Archibald Seymour, 13th Duke of Somerset
The Sheridan Duchess, however "greedy" a beggar woman, was
likewise thwarted by her husband's will, which left everything at
Stover to these mysterious unknowns, Harold and Ruth. She caused
a fraudulent photograph to be taken, showing her and her three
daughters supposedly looking at the Hamilton pictures (the four
figures have quite clearly been superimposed on the original photograph), and saying:
I have worked hard for you, my dears, and I have succeeded.
The Duke will seize, will claim everything, not a picture, not a
print, not a book, not even a teaspoon will he leave to the
Seymour family.
Who were Harold and Ruth St Maur, who together with the sons-
in-law, received the greater part of the Somerset inheritance? There
is no mention of them in any of the peerage reference books. Yet the
entire family knew very well who they were. The proverbial skeleton
rattled so loudly in the cupboard that his bones can be heard
tinkling
today.
Harold and Ruth were the illegitimate offspring of Lord St Maur,
the 12th Duke's elder son and heir. St Maur was not one to toe the
line where women and suitable marriages were concerned. He scorned
such matters. But it was well known he had a roving eye. "You may
rest assured I shall not marry and settle here", he had written to his
sister from India. The truth was, he had already met and "married"
in his own lights an illiterate girl from Gazely, Suffolk, called Rosa
Elizabeth Swann. His Mohammedan beliefs would have scant regard
for the Christian idea of marriage, so that there was probably no
legal Christian ceremony. Rosa's father was a bricklayer, her mother
the daughter of another bricklayer, and both had marked a cross for
a signature on
their
marriage certificate. They were gypsies only so far
as they moved wherever work was available. As for Rosa, sometimes
called Rosina, very little is known, except that the Duke of Somerset's
family kept her existence very dark. She was a pretty girl, even
beautiful, with a continental sultriness quite unlike an English rose.
St Maur dressed her up as a boy and took her to Italy with him
when he fought for Garibaldi. Otherwise he kept her in Brighton.
She bore him two children, Harold and Ruth, and after his death
was set up secretly by the Somersets at a house at 74 Camberwell
New Road, in South London. In the same house lived a French tutor,
the son of a wine merchant, called Francois Tournier, who was in all
probability provided by the Somersets as well. In due course Rosa
and Tournier were married, on 14th September 1872.
What happened to the infant love children, Harold and Ruth?
They stood ultimately to gain more by their grandfather's will than
anyone, which made them suddenly objects of interest. One of their
father's sisters, Ulrica, at first took them in. She, however, was now
married to a Svengali of a man, Lord Henry Thynne, son of the
Marquess of Bath, a powerful man with a strong will and a hypnotic
ability to impose it. Little inoffensive Ulrica went in some fear of
him. Thynne saw the advantages of keeping control over the heirs.
He was thwarted for a while. The Duke and Duchess took the
infants out of his care and insisted on looking after them themselves.
The Duke had completely retired into a sombre country existence,
brooding in his library, with thought only for the children of his
beloved son. Thynne bided his time.
When the Duke died, the children were still minors, and by the
terms of the will, still under the care of official guardians, one of
whom was Henry Thynne. He promptly began to sell off the
children's heritage.
In 1890 there was a sale of paintings and other objects from the
Stover collection, including Rubens, Lawrences, and Reynolds. These
were what the Duke regarded as his "private" collection, in so far as
they were not for the most part Seymour possessions, but Hamilton
possessions inherited from his mother. It was his desire to consider
them personal property to do with as he liked which caused all the
rumpus with successive dukes and occasioned that bitter accusation
from his brother that he had "made away" with the heirlooms. Anyway, Thynne now decided to sell the greater part of them, and to sell
part of the Stover estate at the same time. Nobody has ever been
able to discover why. Or where the proceeds of the sale went.*