The Whytes are still living in London. They watch King George VI’s coronation, and John starts attending a boarding school in Switzerland.
Introduction
Previous: 1936
Next: 1938
The Whytes started 1937 in Cannes, southern France, where they had been staying over Christmas with Dorothy’s aunt Zora and her companion Dollie Sperling.
Aunt Zora, formally Lily Wickersham (1870-1956) gave Dorothy an allowance which was Dorothy’s main income. She is buried in the same grave as her mother, her sister, her brother-in-law and her niece Dorothy in Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey; I tracked it down in September 2022, on the day of Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral.
Dollie Sperling, born Blanche Lucy Rigg (1872-1946), widow of Frederick Harvey Erskine Sperling (1868-1921) had been Zora’s permanent companion since at least 1920.
Late in January 1937 we went back to London. Lyla Lamb was there at the Rembrandt, and we saw Winnie Guyon, and I started my Care Committee work again.
Letitia Mary Whyte (1872-1938), known as Lyla, was the second of Billy’s four full sisters, and his favourite. She married Stephen Eaton Lamb (1860-1928) in 1898, and they lived at Scotby in Cumbria. She had five children, Mildred (1899–1967), Helen (1901–1969), Chris (1909-1964) who became a Jesuit, Dick (1911-1999) and Jessica (1916–1969). Dick has plenty of descendants, but none of the others married or had children.
Winnie Guyon, born Winifred Mary Cora Ryan (1889-1955), was one of Billy’s first cousins on his mother’s side. Her husband George Sutherland Guyon (1876-1916) was killed at the Battle of the Somme. They had two sons, both of whom have living children.
The London County Council (LCC) had established the School Care Committee service in 1908 to provide a welfare service for London’s school children. The Care Committees were mainly staffed by unpaid upper-middle-class women volunteers, like Dorothy. The work included finding out which children were most at risk from poverty and getting support for them, such as food, clothes and boots. Dorothy worked for one or two days a week at St Alban’s School, attached to St Alban’s Catholic Church on Herring Street in Camberwell, part of Southwark. The whole area has now been demolished to create Burgess Park.
John had moved up again at Gibbs’s; I said at that rate he’d have finished that school in another year and it was supposed to take boys till 13. [John was not yet nine.] We were by this time thinking very seriously of sending him to a school in Switzerland. Bunnie knew of one where Babsie d’Ursel’s boys were – I forget her married name – at Gstaad. Bunnie had already given John a wonderful education policy which would cover his public school, and she now said she would pay for the Swiss one.
Bunnie is Dorothy’s other aunt, Lady Frances Hadfield (1862-1949), who was married to the metallurgist and engineer Sir Robert Hadfield (1858-1940). Bunnie and Zora’s sister, Dorothy’s mother Rebecca, had died thirty years before.
Babsie d’Ursel (formally Chantal Josephe Hedwige Marie Sabine d’Ursel, 1902-1987) is a particularly exotic name to drop. Back in 1921, her brother, the future film-maker Henri d’Ursel features in several of Dorothy’s photographs (though not in her written memoir), and in 1925 Dorothy and Bunnie had dined in Brussels with Henri and his parents, the Duke and Duchess d’Ursel.
Babsie married French aristocrat and naval officer Gaston de Maupeou d’Ableiges de Monbail, Marquis de Monbail (1896-1988), in 1929. They had four sons, all younger than John Whyte, at least one of whom is still living. I also find a note that during the Second World War, Babsie sheltered the Belgian princes Baudouin and Albert, both of them future kings of the country.
Belgian women in general do not change their names on marriage, and this possibly explains why Dorothy cannot remember Babsie’s married name – most likely she simply did not use it, and stuck to “d’Ursel”. She certainly published her three volumes of autobiography in the 1970s as “Hedwige d’Ursel”.
Babsie d’Ursel was the second woman in Belgium to get an aviator’s license, and famously sat for her portrait in the London studio of artist Philip de László before breakfast one day in 1929, so that she would have time to fly back to Brussels in time for lunch. De László gave her the portrait as a wedding present.
Chris Lamb was studying Law and eating his dinners – I hadn’t known till then that they really did eat them, I thought it was just an expression. He was leading a perfectly normal life, going to dances etc.
I mentioned Lyla Lamb’s older son Joseph Cuthbert Lamb (1909-1964), known as “Chris” in the family, above. He had intended to become a priest, but had had a setback (temporary as it turned out) and was now studying to become a barrister instead.
Trainee barristers in England need to not only pass the examinations, but until 2021 had to attend twelve formal dinners at the Inns of Court in London. (That has now been changed to ten “qualifying sessions”, which can include the traditional formal dinners.)
We had some of our Malayan friends in and went to them, for drinks.
One day Lyla went with us to see a convent at Hillingdon which we had been told about as being a wonderful place for Kathleen to spend a month and do a rest-cure, as she was rather run down.
Kathleen had been quite a problem. She had enough money, but had been dipping into capital and until Billy took over after Tim died she hadn’t really understood much about her affairs, but after that she was better. But she had had some flats at different times, that were too expensive. Then Winnie Guyon, who was running a guest house at Three Bridges, and who had alwags been fond of Kate, suggested that she she go there at a reduced rate and give a little help, polishing furniture etc. Kathleen liked the idea and it meant she was living well for about £2 a week, I think. For a time it was a huge success, but then Kathleen began doing her work later and later in the morning, and finally one day she went into the dining-room where the tables were already laid for luncheon and proceeded to clear them off so she could polish them. The parlourmaid complained to Winnie and said she would give notice if Kathleen didn’t stop interfering, so Winnie had to tell Kathleen. Then it was decided that Kate should stay on as an ordinary P.G. paying the full rate which was 3½ gns, as I remember.
That went all right for a time, but Kathleen thought she wasn’t getting as much attention as the other guests. On one occasion the first tomatoes had been produced at luncheon and were passed round; there was only one each and someone took two and Kathleen didn’t get even her one. She went and stood in front of Winnie’s table with the tears running do down her cheeks and complained loudly that she paid as much as anyone else but didn’t get the same treatment. Then she started going into one of the bathrooms – there were two, I think – and locking herself in quite early in the morning, when the men who had to work in London simply had to get in and shave etc. Winnie stopped that, but things weren’t pleasant, and finally Winnie told me that she couldn’t keep Kathleen and either one or two other old ladies who were very difficult. So she told them all that the place was closing down, and that they must make other arrangements. So we had thought that it might be a good thing for Kate to do this rest-cure at the Hillingdon Convent before embarking on something new. But when we saw it we found it a most depressing place. Anyway next morning Billy had a letter from Kate saying that she had taken a flat in Crawley, not far from Three Bridges.
Kathleen Mary Whyte (1885-1960) was Billy’s youngest sister. She never married, and family members who knew her told me that she possibly had a mild learning disability.
Tim was their older brother Thomas Aloysius Whyte (1876-1931).
The mansion of Hillingdon Court had been run as a nursing home for the elderly since 1920. It is now a school. Kathleen was only 52 in 1937, so not really one of the “old ladies”, and I can imagine that she (and Dorothy and Billy) found Hillingdon Court inappropriate, despite her problems.
By this time I was going on Wednesdays, not Fridays, to Southwark. My letters to Zora tell a lot about my work there, but I remember very little about it. I went to the medical inspections – many of the children called me “doctor” when they saw me, because of that. Then of course I had to follow it up when children didn’t appear to have the their eyes tested, or for the dentist, etc.
I wrote to Mlle. Racine at the Gstaad school, and we also went to an agency to find out about other schools. John’s friends at Gibbs’s, Carl Montgomery and Richard Bosworth-Smith, were both going away to boarding-school and he wanted to go too, and we thought in Switzerland he would learn French, and get skiing, and lead a very healthy life.
The “Gstaad school”, the Chalet Marie-José, was a well known boarding school in Gstaad in Switzerland, founded in 1912 and named after the Belgian princess Marie-José (later briefly queen of Italy). Renée Racine ran it from 1928 to 1952, and it closed in 1971. Its particular market was the children of wealthy Belgian families, which explains the recommendation from Babsie d’Ursel, mentioned above. As we will shortly see, Dorothy and Billy did not in the end send John there.
Carl Montgomery, formally David Hugo Carl Montgomery (1927-1967), was mentioned in 1936.
Richard Nevil Bosworth-Smith (1926-2002) has not been mentioned previously. He married Anne Ree (1926-2015) in 1960. They had two children, at least one of whom is still living.
I said of my Care Committee work: “It is amusing as I get more into the work; all the other people complain about each other – the headmaster about the clergyman, the head-mistress about the chairman, the clergyman about the organiser etc. Each one considers that he or she is the only one who knows how the thing should be run, and wants to get me on his or her side from the beginning.”
The reference to “the clergyman” is interesting; Dorothy was working at a Catholic school, St Alban’s (now demolished), but one would not normally refer to a Catholic parish priest as a clergyman – while technically accurate, it’s more often used for Protestant clergy, so “the clergyman” would have been the vicar of the nearest Anglican Church, probably St George’s, Camberwell. But possibly she did mean the Catholic parish priest, and this is just a personal linguistic quirk.
John spent all his Christmas money on a bicycle – He must have outgrown the first one he had, indeed I seem to remember that we gave it to Mrs. Goodenough’s little boy.
Mrs Goodenough was the “char”, the cleaner of the Colehern Court flat where the Whytes lived.
I started writing the “Ivory Kris” early in February.
The “Ivory Kris” is one of Dorothy’s many unsold stories.
We went to a very nice dinner at Mrs. Harrow’s; she had a wonderful flat near the Albert Hall. Among the other guests were Col. Lee, the American Military attaché, and a Mr. and Mrs. Warre (or Warr). He was Mrs. Harrow’s lawyer, and would one day, she said, be Lord Mayor; he was then an alderman. She told us at intervals how poor she now was, but she gave us an excellent dinner.
No idea about Mrs Harrow (the fact that her husband is not mentioned suggests that she was widowed or divorced), but I have found out about her guests.
Raymond Lee (1886-1958) was appointed as the military attaché at the US Embassy in London in 1935, and became a very significant pro-British voice in the U.S. administration during the Second World War.
Sir George Godfrey Warr (1882-1943) never became Lord Mayor, but served as Sherriff of the City of London the following year, 1938.
His wife was the long-lived Hannah Mary Reynolds née Rathbone (1889-1995), known as Nancy. She was the daughter of Liberal MP Hugh Rathbone, and therefore related to the progressive MP Eleanor Rathbone and to the actor Basil Rathbone, best known for his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes.
I told Zora of something we thought rather good that John had done. Carl Montgomery was a great friend of his. He had been at a school where he was very much bullied, before coming to Gibbs. He was a year older than John, and much bigger, but timid and afraid of rough boys. One day his mother told me that the day before some boys had made a dead set at him and wouldn’t let him go home after school; he finally got away, but was awfully upset about it. I told John, who was most indignant against the other boys. A few days later the boys started it again, and called on John to join them. But John, who was by far the youngest in the class, told them they weren’t to do it, they were to let Carl go, and kept them all at bay till Carl got away. Then they all teased and pestered John till at last a master interfered and John came home. He had told me some of it, but most of it I knew through Carl’s mother – John apparently had said to them: “You can do what you like to me, but you must let Montgomery go!” She was awfully impressed and so were we, to tell the truth. Several of the boys were two years older and much bigger than John. John seemed to enjoy it and was in tremendous spirits when he got home.
Mrs. Popoffe, May Nugent that was, came to tea; I don’t think I ever saw her again till just a year or two ago.
May Frances Nugent (1879-1973) was a distant relative (third cousin) of Billy’s, six months older than him; she has not previously been mentioned but presumably she and Billy knew each other as family connections.
Her husband’s name is given variously as “Michel Sergeevitch Popoff” or “Michael Popoff” (1896-1984); he was originally Михаил Сергеевич Попов, a cavalry officer for the Tsarists in the Russian Civil War who married May Nugent in 1925 and moved to County Kildare. He was one of the first foreigners to be granted Irish citizenship by naturalisation. There is more about him here (in Russian).
After a good deal of correspondence with Mlle. Racine at Gstaad we decided to send John to the Reeves’ School at Chateau d’Oex. In any case Gstaad couldn’t have had him till later. Then Bunnie changed her mind and wanted us to send him to le Rosey. She wasn’t pleased at our sending him to Chateau d’Oex, but she said such different things – once she said that she certainly didn’t mean to make us send him anywhere that we didn’t want to, but then she said to Zora that since she was paying she thought we should send him where she advised. But she did keep changing her advice!
A Spectator article of 1927 mentions “Mr. Reeve’s English Preparatory School at Chateau d’Oex, 8,200 feet in the Alps, established in 1911 and the oldest English school in the high Alps”.
My father had good memories of this school, though as we will see he stayed there only a few months, from May to the end of 1937. I remember him saying that the pupils had to speak French to each other two days a week, English another two and German for one day. (You could speak what you wanted at the weekend.)
Another resident of the village of Chateau d’Oex in 1937 was the artist M.C. Escher, who had fled there from Fascist Italy. Much later, the actor David Niven lived there from 1960 and is buried there.
Le Rosey is also mentioned in the Spectator article, and still exists. It is now reputedly the most expensive boarding school in the world.
We were seeing lots of people, Lady O’Brien and her daughter Gunnie (great friend of Magda’s) – Major and Mrs.Swift; he was nearly blind – Jo O’Conor, Chris Lamb, Patricia MacDermot, &c. Malayan friends like the Gossips and Gwen Saunders; I was writing but I evidently didn’t go back to the Chelsea Polytechnic, I suppose I just hadn’t time.
Lady O’Brien, nee Beatrice Mary Hare (1870-1960), was married to Edward Donough O’Brien (1867-1943). Confusingly he also had a sister called Beatrice O’Brien, who had been married to the inventor Guglielmo Marconi (who we met briefly in 1924). The O’Briens’ home, Roslevan House in County Clare, was burnt down in 1922 during the Irish Civil War; after that they lived in England.
Their daughter “Gunnie” is presumably Enid Moira O’Brien (1903-1976). She married Rowland Frank Taaffe-Finn (1902–1981) in 1928 and then Walter William Wilkinson (1897–1968) in 1941, so in 1937 she was probably between husbands. Her son by her first marriage died in 2023.
Magda is Billy’s sister-in-law, born Magdalena Esther Mary Grehan (1885-1972), the widow of his older brother George (1868-1919). She lived at the Whyte family home in Loughbrickland.
One Wednesday in February I said had been very interesting at an After-Care Conference; nine boys who were leaving school at Easter came up to discuss what jobs they wanted etc. The man from the Labour Exchange, the Evening Institute man, the Headmaster, Miss Brice (the Care Committee Organiser) and I were there. Such young boys, I said, only 14, to be starting work. But they all seemed to know what they wanted; one was to be a butcher boy, and looked the part to the life already, several were to be office boys, and so on. The hardest to place was the school prodigy, an amazing child who drew and painted extremely well, played the piano, and was in addition, the Head said, “what you might call the perfect boy!” He had been monitor at his school for some time, and had done it to perfection, a slight, refined looking boy with a bulging forehead and lovely blue eyes. I said: “I wonder what will become of him. There’s a case where one wishes for money, to give a boy like that a start. His father refused to let him try for a scholarship – which he’d certainly have got -, but insists on his going to work at once. Same old story; he never had any ‘Higher Education’; why should his son have it? Yet he’s a decent man and proud of the boy. Strange, isn’t it?”
The Coronation was looming up. We hoped to let the flat for it and have a nice time after leaving John in Switzerland; we thought we might go down the Rhine, or to Venice; hadn’t decided. A man came to inspect it and told us should rent for £36 a week. In the event no one took it.
In March Robin Gossip was to have come to tea one day, but Peggy rang to say that Alastair, the younger son, had developed diphtheria and had had to be taken to hospital in the middle of the night. And Jo O’Conor and Patricia MacDermot, who were PGs there, couldn’t come to us either, until the result of the swabs was known. Deirdre, who was also there, was away in Greece and Italy at the time and when she came back she came to stay with us because she couldn’t go there. Dr. Gossip had inoculated John the year before, and many other children, but had never done his own. However Alistair got over the diphtheria but then he developed pneumonia and died in hospital. It was a tragedy, they adored the child.
How awfully sad for the Gossips. The detail that the medical professional father had opted not to vaccinate Alastair is particularly tragic.
Dr James Gossip (1889-1977) was from Inverness, and moved to Penang in 1920; his wife, born Elsie Marguerite Grange (1897-1980) was from Lancashire. They married in Penang in 1923, but were obviously back in London now. Their older son Robin Grange Gossip lived from 1924 to 2008, and we see more of him later. Poor Alastair Murray Gossip lived from 1931 to 1937; he was a few months short of his sixth birthday.
Josephine O’Conor (1909-1980) was a distant relative through Billy’s Segrave grandmother, my father’s third cousin.
Deirdre Gara MacDermot, later Anderson (1916–1992), and Patricia Mary MacDermot (1917-2008) were daughters of Percy MacDermot, Billy’s sister Caroline’s brother-in-law, who had started the family tradition of rubber planting in Malaya.
I wrote that I was becoming a bone of contention in my Care Committee work. I said that the clergyman thought that children should suffer for the sins of their parents and we shouldn’t butt in, but of course the Care Committee’s job was to butt in for the children’s sake. The clergyman refused to come to the After-care Conference, of which he was chairman, and didn’t even write to say that he had resigned. The chairman of the Care Com. proper was a dwarf who seemed to me to have a grudge against the world. I was finding it all rather difficult though I said they were all nice to me personally – I remember the dwarf apologising profusely as someone had told him he’d been rude to me – I think he’d only contradicted me, but he was opposed to everyone. I wonder why he was chairman.
I have been unable to identify the Chair of the Care Committee.
We went down to Crawley to lunch with Kate in her new flat. It was very nice but she was having trouble keeping a maid. She told us that one ate too many onions (which cost then about 2d a lb) – and asked me if I’d let Augusta buy all the onions she wanted. Of course I said I would. Then another one ordered extra milk to make herself bread and milk, and Kate was furious at that. She had very feudal ideas. Kate herself had cooked the luncheon she gave us and it was almost inedible, some sort of stew with carrots in it, all nearly raw. She said something about having thought it would go on cooking after she turned off the cooker, which was electric, but she must have turned it off much too soon.
Dollie Neville came to see us, just back from the USA where she had seen Billy Manhard and his new wife, who was under 30, she thought. Said they seemed blissfully happy, yet they were to be divorced soon.
Dorothy Marion “Dolly” Ellington (1879-1957) was married to Hugh Lewis Nevill (1877-1915), who was killed at Gallipoli.
Billy Manhard’s story is difficult to nail down, but he possibly lived from 1883-1969, and I find evidence of his marriage in New York to Carlene DeCoppert (1908-1978) on 2 December 1936; she would indeed have been under 30 (and he would have been 53).
We went to a party at Aline Tyrrell’s, whose husband was a Malayan chief justice, and he brought the elder girl to tea one day.
I find an Aline Mary Tyrrell who lived from 1899 to 1983, married to a Walter Tyrrell and living in London from 1926. However I don’t find any Walter Tyrrell recorded as a judge in Malaya, and I don’t find evidence of their having two daughters.
The clergyman from the Care Committee came to tea and apologised profusely, and I said to Zora that everyone was being so nice that I felt I must go on with it – I had been thinking seriously of giving it up, with all the disagreeableness that was going on.
Fletcher, Bunnie’s maid, had married Lowe, the butler, and Bunnie had a new maid, Tanya. I forgot to say that dear Jessie, who was with Bunnie for years, got very ill – I think it was senile decay – and couldn’t work. Bunnie made her a good allowance so she could live with her sister, and for a time Bunnie used to go to see her, but then I think Jessie didn’t know her any more, so she stopped going.
The electoral roll shows Frederick Lowe as one of the residents of 22 Carlton House Terrace in the mid 1930s, but no Fletcher, Tanya or Jessie; I guess they lived out.
My letters to Zora are all so affectionate, I adored her, and a lot of them are just about her and Dollie, whose health was never good. They had people to stay a good deal; Owen Rigg and Trottie, Dollie’s brother and sister, were there that winter.
Owen Davys Rigg (1866-1952), Dollie’s older brother, was a career soldier in the British army. He had three children around Dorothy’s age (indeed the oldest was another Dorothy).
Mary Beatrice “Trottie” Rigg (1868-1955), was Dollie’s older sister. She does not appear to have married or had children.
Mrs. Reeve, from the school at Chateau d’Oex, was in London and I saw her. Mr.Gibbs had recommended this school, and we knew that Grace Gibson’s older boy had been there, though they weren’t mad about it. We liked Mrs. Reeve very much.
The founders of the school at Chateau d’Oex were Thomas Harold Reeve (1872-1950), who was originally from Canada, and his wife Beatrice Catherine [Kitty] née Seth-Smith (1889-1971).
I have not been able to identify Grace Gibson. From a reference later on, she must have been a classmate of Dorothy’s at St Mary’s in Peekskill, upstate New York, during the first half of the war. But her surname was probably different then.
We saw Pat Cox – former Dublin Fusilier, like Billy – several times.
Colonel P.G.A. Cox had been Billy’s commanding officer in the 6th battalion of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers; Billy succeeded him as OC.
The former Irish politician Pat Cox is a friend of mine, and I saw in a newspaper article that he too had a grandfather in the same battalion as mine. But when I checked, it turned out that it was his maternal grandfather, not the other Pat Cox.
On April first Dick Lamb won his first Point to Point; the first he had ever ridden, and Billy was very much pleased. He came in for tea a few days later. Lyla was watching the race, standing beside Coleman, the gardener. One horse refused a jump and his rider pulled out of the race. Lyla thought it was Dick and was delighted and said to Coleman: “Oh, good, Mr. Dick’s safe now, he isn’t going on,” but the gardener assured her that on the contrary Dick was leading! Lyla was much distressed.
John was top of his class his last term at Gibbs. He wasn’t yet nine, and the average age of the class was 10 – there were several boys of 11 and John was much the youngest.
Marion had come back to England and came to see us, also Con Hay, and Bob Clarke.
Marion Carruthers Buist née Smythe (1875-1953) was one of Aunt Bunnie’s old friends; the Buists make frequent appearances in the memoirs.
Constance Laetitia Hay, née Hughes (1886-1968) was a Sheffield friend of Aunt Bunnie and Uncle Bobby.
Robert Thomas Clarke (1871-1953) was married to Billy’s cousin Margaret Mary Gladys Clarke née Whyte (1880-1966). I’m glad to say that I know one of their grandchildren, who lives in Brussels.
I saw Kitty Merrick several times and took her out to tea; her doctor would ring up when he thought it would be a good idea for me to take her out.
Kitty Merrick (1900-1988), from 1946 Countess Wielopolska, was a schoolfriend of Dorothy’s who had become a leading exponent of the Alexander Technique.
Connie Aldworth was in London and Grace Gibson brought her to tea – she was Connie King, at St. Mary’s. I spent a whole day with her and we went to the British Museum, Wallace Collection, National Gallery, shopped, had lunch at In and Out and tea at Fuller’s; exhausting but fun.
Constance Pinchot King (1896-1991) married Edward Letellier Aldworth (1892–1985) in 1919, and divorced him in 1934. She then married Edwin Hoover in 1939.
The ‘In and Out’ is the Army and Navy Club, to which Billy belonged.
We took John to the film “Elephant Boy” and all loved It.
The 1937 film Elephant Boy starring Sabu was a huge hit.
Billy got a hearing-aid, called a Multitone, I told Zora. I was quite full of it; the idea was that he was to use it for 2-3 hours a day and gradually his hearing would become normal. But alas that never happened, and though we all thought he improved a lot at first, the improvement just didn’t last.
The Multitone VPM (Vest Pocket Model) hearing aid was a state of the art appliance in 1937. Unfortunately Billy’s deafness, the aftereffect of a brucellosis infection thirty years before, was neural rather than conductive, and therefore less easy to tackle by mechanical intervention.
Uncle Bobby took me to Parsifal with Michel, Bee and Ozzie Darell, at the end of April. Afterwards we dropped Uncle Bobby at home and all went on to the Savoy Grill. I said Bee was looking lovely.
Recordings of the 1937 Covent Garden Parsifal, made that same week, are available online.
Kathleen came for the night and tried Billy’s ear thing and then got one herself; we all thought she heard so well with it.
John had a birthday party [he turned nine on 30 April], just some of the children from the garden, eight in all.
Norah Nisbet was in a nursing home and one evening they rang up to know if she was with us – she had gone out and not come back. But she did go back herself, so all was well.
Billy and Dorothy had met the sisters Norah Mary Stewart Nisbet (1907-1957) and Ailsa Margaret Nisbet (1909-1988) in Majorca in 1933.
We went to a big cocktail party at the De Burgh Whytes and enjoyed it, and we went to one at the Ralph Scotts’. Molly Corbally and Biddy still came quite often, usually Molly just came for tea.
The de Burgh Whytes are William John de Burgh Whyte (1875-1940, Billy’s second cousin once removed), his wife Geraldine née Vaux (1890-1967) and their daughters Amicie (1913-2001) and Joan (1917-1955). Amicie had married Roderick Walter (1911-1966) in 1936, the previous year. By a quirk of genealogy, I am the same generation of descent as Joan and Amicie from our mutual Whyte ancestors, despite the fifty years age difference between us.
Ralph Scott (1874-1962) was a career civil servant whose last job before retirement in 1928 was as the Resident in Penang, at the point that Billy and Dorothy married. His wife was born Charlotte Elsa Cleaver (1879-1961).
Mary Corbally (1911-2008), known as “Molly”, and Dorothy Mary Corbally, known as “Biddy” (1910-1981), were daughters of Billy’s sister Nancy (born Anna Mary Whyte, 1874-1954). Molly was the longest lived and the last survivor of all my father’s first cousins.
We all saw the Coronation procession in May – I think May 12th [yes] – and all spent the night at 22 Carlton House Terrace. Bunnie also had little Baroness Passavent (?) the daughter of the Austrian Ambassador, for the night, as she was to watch from the German Embassy just across the street. We were rather crowded; she was in with Bee, John with Billy, Michel in Wilfrid’s room (don’t know where Wilfrid was!) and I slept with Bunnie herself. The little Baroness came out with Billy and me to see the crowds in the Mall -, just sleeping there on the ground – as Bunnie had taken a big party to the Opera, Bee and Michel included, but Bunnie herself came back early. Next morning we were called at five – I hadn’t slept much, as there were great crowds singing and shouting all night – and were dressed and ready by 5.30.
I have had some fun trying to identify Baroness Passavant. The Austrian ambassador was the gloriously named Georg Albert Maria, Baron von und zu Franckenstein (1878-1953). At this stage his country had less than a year of independence remaining, before the March 1938 Anschluß. After that he stayed in England and became known as Sir George Franckenstein.
However he did not marry until 1939 and his only child was born in 1944.
“Little Baroness Passavant” must be his niece, by his sister Leopoldine Irene Elma, Baroness von und zu Franckenstein (1874-1918), who married Gustav Herman von Passavant (1872-1958) and had died two decades before.
Leopoldine and Gustav had two daughters, Maria Rosarion Carola Sophia Antonia Passavant (1914-2007) and Sophie Huberta Carola Athenaide Emma Passavant (1918-2004). Gustav also had four sons by his second marriage, but no daughters. So “little Baroness Passavant” must be Maria or Sophie, more likely Sophie who was younger.
However I have a niggling doubt. Maria would have been 23 in 1937, and Sophie 19, neither of which is a particularly “little” age. Maybe whichever niece was staying was rather short, and/or looked notably younger than her years?
Nurse was taking John to the Athenaeum, and they didn’t need to leave till 11.00, but the rest of us had to be in our places very early. We were all in pairs, Uncle Bobby and Bee had seats in Cockspur Street so could go out the back way at the last moment, Bunnie and Michel were I think in St. James’s, over Hooper’s, and Billy and I had seats which Uncle Bobby had given us in the Reform Club. There we had a small breakfast and watched the crowds, listened to the broadcast etc, and had an excellent cold luncheon with champagne at 11 – we were quite ready for it. The procession began to pass at 7.30 but then halted for 15 minutes as the king wasn’t ready to leave the Abbey. Such a sight, I wrote to Zora. All the troops from all over the Empire, and then the Prime Ministers, and then the royalties – the little princesses [the future Queen Elizabeth II, and her sister Margaret, aged 11 and 6 respectively] with their coronets looking adorable but so tired, especially the poor baby one – they were with Queen Mary. And then the King and Queen, both exhausted and barely able to smile. Such roars of cheering! Really a marvellous, sight, I said, I did think there was nothing like those English shows. John and Little Nurse had seen it beautifully and John was in the seventh Heaven of delight. We left our things at 22, as no taxis were allowed in the Coronation area, and walked halfway home before we could take a taxi. Next day we went back to collect our luggage, and I saw Bunnie, not at all tired. Augusta had watched it in the street with some friends and had seen it very well.
The unfortunate king George VI, having come to the throne after his brother’s dramatic abdication the previous year, ruled for only fifteen years, dying suddenly of complications from lung cancer in 1952, aged 56. His daughter, as readers will remember, lasted quite a lot longer.
On Saturday May 15th we started for Switzerland, crossing by Dover – Calais and then on to Montreux. We had spoken of a plan to stop off in Paris and get Jack Whyte to join us, but that must have fallen through.
John Frederick “Jack” Whyte (1865-1947) was a second cousin of Billy’s on the Whyte side but, confusingly, a first cousin once removed on the Ryan side.
From Montreux another little Swiss train took us up to Château-D’Oex. We stayed at the Hotel du Parc [destroyed by fire in 1946], and John went straight to the school. We had baths and breakfast in an hotel in Montreux before going up as our train from France got in at 7.38 a.m. When we got to the hotel du Parc I rang up Mrs.Reeve, who suggested that as John must be tired we should keep him at the hotel till after tea, but John was clamouring to go to the school at once, so she said to bring him for lunch and that the children were going on a pic-nic that afternoon. We stayed on till June 7th at the hotel. We took John out on Sundays; one Sunday there was a pic-nic but John said he’d rather come to us – “I thought I’d rather go with you and Daddy, as I shan’t be seeing much more of you and there will be lots of pic-nics while I’m here.”
Billy had had a cold but it soon cleared up. we went for lots of walks, taking our lunches in rucksacks lent by the hotel, and I sketched. We made friends with a Major and Mrs. Hawthornthwaite who were also at the hotel, and sometimes went with them. Billy found an old friend, Billy Kelly, the Morning Post correspondent there, with a charming Swiss wife, and we had tea and dinner with them on different days and had them to lunch at the hotel – they knew Jack Whyte well and also the Reeves. Incidentally I said to Zora that we had seen Jack in Paris but only between trains, I imagine; I said he hadn’t decided on his plans yet. John settled down at once and developed an enormous appetite, Mrs. Reeve would hardly believe that he had the reputation of eating very little.
Dorothy has mis-spelled the “Hawthornthwaites”; they were James Carnegy Hathornthwaite (1880-1949) and Margaret Remmington Cookson (1892-1973), both born in India. They had one daughter, who we’ll meet later.
I have not been able to trace Billy Kelly.
The Ameer Ali children, nephews of Waris, were at the school, which took girls as well as boys. The Ameer Ali boy’s name was Ralph; he was six and his sister four, I forget her name.
Waris Ameer Ali (1886-1975) was a retired Indian judge who was a prominent campaigner against Indian independence. His brother Torick Ameer Ali (1891-1975) was also an Indian judge. Their mother, Isabella Kohnstam, was English and they both married Englishwomen.
Torick Ameer Ali was married to Mary Louisa Carter (1894-1980) and their children were Anara (1932-2020) and Raouf (1930-2019).
I kept saying how wonderful the mountain air was and that we were all sunburned: but when we’d decided to stay on another week we did get some rain. We were always seeing the children from the school about the place; once we watched them having a pic-nic and building a bridge of stones, without their seeing us. We also lunched at the school and heard John asking for more – and as I said to Zora, unlike Oliver Twist, he got it!
We stopped to see the Castle of Chillon on our way back, then went to Paris, saw Jack [Whyte, presumably] there, still uncertain of his plans.
John started studying the piano at Château d’Oex; the teacher there was excellent and he quickly made great progress. I told Zora that we’d had John out to tea the Sunday before leaving; he didn’t at all mind our going away as he said now he would get letters from us. His own first letter was rather disappointing, I said, all about stamps and not a word about himself. But later letters were much more satisfactory, telling of all the school activities and especially what he himself had done.
Poor Uncle Bobby was again in a very depressed state thinking he was poor. The Excess Profits Tax in the Budget had nearly finished him, I wrote to Zora. He stayed a good deal at the Nook, but then Bunnie wanted to take Sonia and Michel to Ascot, so he went to Brighton and left the Nook for them. After Ascot he went back again. I offered to go if he wanted me, and Nurse said she’d ring me up, but she didn’t, so I didn’t have to go.
The Excess Profits Tax was a rather modest corporation tax of 5% on corporate profits greater than £2000, with the revenue dedicated to national security (in theory), brought in by the Liberal Chancellor Sir John Simon, though it had been drawn up but he Conservative Neville Chamberlain shortly before he became prime minister in May.
“Poor Uncle Bobby” seems to have happily retained the Nook near Ascot, 22 Carlton House Gardens in London, and Parkhead House in Sheffield (never mentioned by Dorothy, though there is an early photograph of her there) as well as his holidays in France; so the pips were not exactly squeaking. Though in fairness his mental health problems were perfectly genuine.
“Sonia” is Sonia Syers, later Sonia Cole; more on her below.
“Michel” is Michel Conrad Marie Joseph Eugène de Buisseret (1901-1967), the son of Bunnie’s friend Caroline Story (1870-1914) and Count Conrad de Buisseret (1865-1927). Bunnie informally adopted him after his mother’s death.
Kitty Merrick came to luncheon, very well indeed, and later went to stay at a boarding-house (I think they were Quakers, the people who ran it) in Golder’s Green, and was going to take up some sort of work, Probably massage, I said. I also said she was adorable.
As always in June Billy had his regimental dinners, 4th and 1st Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers, and there were teas before each of them for all the wives, which I enjoyed, and Billy loved the dinners.
Billy and I went to the “dogs” one night; the only time in my life; I don’t think either of us cared much about it.
We lunched one day with a rich woman, whom we’d met in Cannes, at her club. I said: “We had cocktails, and she paid the man, who went off. Later as we were going into the dining-room she clutched my arm and hissed: ‘the dirty dog!’ I mildly asked: ‘Who?’ and she said: ‘That waiter kept sixpence change – but I’ll have it out of him!’ At lunch Billy was saying how much he liked strawberries, and such glorious ones were being carried to all the other tables, but I saw on the menu that they were 1/- extra, so we didn’t get them. We had our choice of stewed loganberries or gooseberry tart. Mrs. R. was distressed at having had to pay a guinea for a private cabin on the boat from Dieppe-Newhaven, and in addition had to give the steward a shilling tip. I could hardly keep my face straight. But all the some she was sweet and raved over you. She criticised the way everyone round us was dressed, of course.”
I lunched with Esther Rickettson at her club, with two other women. Kitty Merrick came to tea. My book went to three publishers without success and then I gave up – that was the “Ivory Kris”.
This may be Esther Edith Ricketson (1886-19576), who was born in Australia and died in Monte Carlo but lived in England in the 1930s.
We took Gwen Saunders to the Polo at Roehampton, to which we belonged – or rather Billy did. Another day when we were there we ran into the Scotts – he had been Resident in Penang – and had tea with them. We saw Jo O’Conor, and Chris Lamb, who had been to Lourdes as a brancardier. I saw Mrs.Mansfield several times, and her daughter Rosalind – they lived at Morristown Latton in Co.Kildare, or rather they really lived in the Red House, which was the dower house.
Gwen Saunders was mentioned in 1935, but I have been unable to identify her.
The French word “brancardier” is usually translated as “stretcher bearer”, though of course at Lourdes not everyone is on a stretcher.
We met the Mansfield brothers of Morristown Lattin in 1931. Dorothy said then that she became friendly with Mabel née Page (1881-1949), who was married to the older brother Eustace Lattin Mansfield (1879-1945).
Rosalind Joan Clare Lattin Mansfield, the third of their four children, was born in 1915 and lived to 1985; she married the future Irish Minister of Finance Gerard Sweetman (1908-1970) in 1941.
Vera James and family had all gone to Cambo in the Pyrenees as Rowley had T.B. She came back once to let the Hampstead flat – or house.
I saw something of Pamela Lee, the daughter of those Hawthornthwaites in Chateau d’Oex – she came once with me to my Care Committee work, but in the end she didn’t take it up herself though she’d been thinking of it.
Pamela Augusta Caton Hathornthwaite (1910-1975) married Antony Arthur Lee (1910-1943) in 1936, less than a year before Dorothy got to know her. He was killed in the second world war, and she remarried to George Henry Ballinger (1920-1974). I do not find a record that she had any children.
On July 5th we went up to stay with Gladys and Hugh Wakeman-Colville at Coton Hall, Bridgenorth. Hugh was retired from the navy; he and Gladys and Billy had all known each other in Malta when they were all young and Gladys was already engaged to Hugh, but liked Billy very much, and always kept up with him.
Zora was in England and spent two nights with us before we went to Coton. Coton was a fine old house, with a ruined chapel in the grounds; I did some sketching there. Billy and Hugh shot a bit, and in the evenings we played bridge. The two unmarried daughters, Doreen and Josie, were at home, and one of them and their father played, as Gladys didn’t. Daphne Howard, one of the married daughters, was staying quite near with her in-laws, and we went over there for tennis one day; I was very much pleased as Hugh and Billy beat two much younger men. The Wakeman-Colvilles had given a home to an old army horse relieved from Belgium, dear old friendly thing.
Gladys Louisa Wakeman (1883-1959) married Hugh Davenport Colville (1882-1962) in 1906. He was a naval captain who retired in 1922. Her family lived at Coton Hall in Shropshire, the ancestral home of American Civil War-era general Robert E. Lee; Gladys and Hugh changed their surname to Wakeman-Colville in 1927 in order to inherit the property.
Their third child and second daughter was Daphne Gladys Colville (1911-1949), who had married Eliot Charles Stewart Howard (1903–1990) only a month earlier, on 16 June 1937. They seem to have had one son.
Josephine Sylvia Colville (1912-1997), the third child and second daughter, married Eliot Howard in 1950, the year after the death of her sister, his first wife. I don’t find that they had any children.
Constance Doreen Colville (1914-1979), the fourth child and third daughter, married Franz Joachim Albrecht Hans Dietrich Kraft in 1950. They had a son and a daughter.
There was a younger brother as well.
Zora had arrived on June 30th, I see by a letter I’d overlooked, and then evidently came to us, then went to 22. My god-father, Billy Cornelius, whom I hadn’t seen since I was a child, was coming to London with his wife, and were to be there only a short time, so I went back earlier than Billy and spent a night or two with Zora at 22. We all went to a play, but I forget what; all I remember is that Billy sent us both orchids. I tired to keep in touch with them afterwards, but my last letter was never answered and I don’t know what happened to them. By this time I’d grown rather far away from my American past and though they seemed very nice and friendly they may not have taken to me much.
Billy Cornelius has not been mentioned before. He is likely to be William Albert Cornelius (1867-1947), married to Eleanor Roberts Wagner (1875–1956), who had various roles in management of different steel works in Pennsylvania, finishing with the National Tube Works in McKeesport near Pittsburgh. I never felt – and I don’t feel now, after processing 37 years of memoirs – that Dorothy strongly identified with her American origins, though I did not know her well and only at the end of her life.
Then Zora went to the Villa Tino, at le Touquet, with Uncle Bobby, and we took a house for August called Clydesdale, at Stoke Fleming, Dartmouth. We took Augusta with us. We had the use of the garden and lovely fresh vegetables and flowers all for 7/- a week extra. There was a beach quite near, and most days we spent a lot of time there, but on Sundays it was crowded. Robin Gossip, who was 13, came for two weeks and John loved having him; they swam and bicycled and played games. Robin had come by bicycle; his parents thought it would be a good thing for him to be independent like that, but it worried him a bit – he said a car nearly ran into him, and at a place where he spent the night they were most suspicious and thought he had run away from home. As he was so much older than John he didn’t go to bed so early, and I used to play chess with him in the evenings, but as I said to Zora even when I gave him three pieces I usually won.
I haven’t been able to locate Clydesdale on the map, but the only accessible beach near Stoke Fleming is called Blackpool Sands, off to the southwest, so Clydesdale was probably on that side of the village.
Stoke Fleming is about 400 km from London, which is a heck of a long way to send a 13-year-old by bicycle! (Especially one whose little brother had just died.) Google thinks it would take you 22 hours of cycling today; the cycle.travel website reckons more like 430 km and 29 hours. Chapeau to Robin for doing it in only two days.
All went well till Augusta somehow hurt her back, and in order to cure it went for a long walk and came back absolutely exhausted so that she had to go to bed. I got the local doctor, who said first that it was a stone in the kidney, then that it wasn’t, but we were worried till we got back to London and she saw a good French doctor there.
We got someone to come in to do the housework, and I cooked. I told Zora that I’d been to Dartmouth to have my hair done and the bill for washing, cutting and setting was 3/6! [The Bank of England calculator says that is £10.50 in 2026 prices, which is indeed very inexpensive!] I kept saying how peaceful it was, and that we just went to the beach and ate and rested and read and played games and slept, and that the time flew, “as it does when the days are all much alike.”
We went back to London after four weeks, and Augusta saw a doctor – a French one – who said it was nothing to do with kidneys, only rheumatism, and gave her a course of heat treatments. She rapidly got quite all right. I was longing to go to join Zora and Uncle Bobby for a week, but couldn’t decide till I knew that Augusta was all right.
However I did go; I’d hoped to fly but there was no plane on the day I wanted to leave, so I had to go by train. I can’t remember much about my visit; I know we went to the casino, and I imagine I played bridge in the evenings with Uncle Bobby and Mr. Taylor and perhaps little Nurse. I got back to London on Sept.13th, and Billy and John met me at the station.
This is the first time that Dorothy has mentioned flying for herself – she earlier reported her father’s skepticism that commercial flight would ever be successful.
Le Touquet still has its own small airport, and in the 1930s there was a regular air service there from Croydon aerodrome, one of the shortest scheduled air routes globally at only 160 km. I see differing reports of the cost, but it was certainly under £5 for a single and under £10 for a return flight, £300/£600 by today’s prices, more than we would expect to pay for a similar distance today, but not excessive considering the global circumstances. In Agatha Christie’s novel Death in the Clouds, published two years earlier in 1935, the murder takes place on a flight from Paris to London.
We were trying to let the flat, as Zora had asked us to go to Cannes for Christmas, and till then we thought we’d pay some visits in Ireland. It was taken by some nice people named Adey who had been in Persia for some years, and who had two little girls aged two and four. They wanted it on October 1st which suited us.
Stanworth Wills Adey (1902-1980) married Joan Mary Margaret Charlesworth (1906-1967) in 1930. He worked in the oil industry in Iran (then called Persia), specifically in Abadan where the Anglo-Persian Oil Company had built one of the largest oil refineries in the world. It was the nationalization of the Abadan refinery fourteen years later, in 1951, that prompted the CIA-led coup against Iranian prime minister Mossadegh. It is still going, though it was badly damaged in the Iran-Iraq war in 1980, and damaged again by Israel in 2026.
The Adeys’ older daughter Susan Elizabeth Adey (1933-2020) was born at Abadan; their younger daughter Evelyn Mary Adey (1935-2022) was born in England. They also had a son, born in 1939.
We saw Deirdre and her cousin Eileen O’Conor – Jo’s first cousin – and I took John to the Science Museum, and Kathleen came for a night – I said that John was very sweet with her – and John [my aunt Ursula has added a note, “Jack?” and I think she must be right] Whyte was in London. I said that he had been travelling everywhere, Germany etc., and was full of dark predictions for the future. But as he was always a pessimist we didn’t pay a great deal of attention. We also saw Kitty Merrick who came to luncheon one day and I think I went to lunch with her another day.
Eileen Francis Mary O’Conor (1916-1976) was indeed Josephine O’Conor’s first cousin. Deirdre MacDermot’s mother was Evleen “Sissie” O’Connor (1892-1925), but I am having difficulty tying her into Eileen and Jo’s lineage (especially with the slight difference in spelling of the surnames).
John went back to school on Sept.21st; I’d had a lot to do with getting his clothes, marking them and so on. That term didn’t go so well at school. He had a cough which he couldn’t throw off, and the school doctor thought his tonsils were bad. Dr. Gossip had advised his gargling daily with Glycothymoline, and I had sent a supply with him and asked Mrs. Reeve to see that he kept it up – Dr. Gossip said he had known infected tonsils get quite normal after a time with doing this, and John’s had already got better. But he dropped it at school, as Mrs. Reeve told me later that they considered he shouldn’t gargle unless he actually had a sore throat. Anyway we gave a term’s provisional notice at the school in case we decided to take him away; also we weren’t too certain of the future; other people as well as Jack were getting very gloomy about what was going to happen.
I mean, a world war actually broke out two years later…
After he had gone back we had all our own packing to see to. The Adeys were perfect tenants and we left them everything they wanted, but there were still many things to be packed and put away. We were going to Cannes for Christmas, but didn’t expect to see Zora before then, but she came back to England for a few days so that she could go out with her.
I forgot to say that in an earlier letter I had said that John had been to tea with Carl Montgomery whose mother raved to me over John’s charming manners; as I said to Zora, no wonder I liked her!
I also forgot to say that Angela Ross-of-Bladenberg came to see us; we were to see much more of her in Ireland. Also Maurice and Ethel came over once or twice from Dublin; they didn’t stay with us, not enough room, but they always came to a meal and we went to them etc. And we saw more of Bob Clarke, who was such a delightful man and a very good scholar.
Angela Ross-of-Bladensburg (1879-1946) was the great-granddaughter of Robert Ross, the British general who burned the White House and the Capitol in August 1814 (during the inaccurately named War of 1812). His family were permitted to commemorate the campaign in their surname (though in fact Angela and her sister were the last of the line). Dorothy does not seem to have borne a grudge despite her own American origins.
Maurice Ignatius Whyte (1888-1956) was the youngest of Billy’s eight brothers, and at this point the only other one still alive. He married Ethel Mary Fitzgerald (1893-1974) in 1921. They did not have any children. I do not remember ever meeting her.
I also forgot to say that Van Wyck had been given the Pulitzer prize, but I’m not sure of the date.
Van Wyck Brooks (1886-1963) was Dorothy’s step-brother. He won the 1937 Pulitzer Prize for History for The Flowering of New England, 1815–1865. This had actually been announced back in May. It was a remarkable year – the Pulitzer Prize for Novel went to Gone With the Wind and for Drama to You Can’t Take It With You, both adapted into Oscar-winning films (see here for my take on GWTW). Robert Frost won the prize for Poetry, for the third time. John T. McCutcheon won in the relevant category for this cartoon in the Chicago Tribune:
John said the day he was leaving; “I do like sleeping in the train!” They travelled 3rd class and slept stretched out on the seats.
My father enjoyed sleeping on trains, or at least the memory of doing so, and told us that he had slept in the luggage rack on a train journey to Rome in 1950.
I said to Zora that it reminded me of Sonia Syers, Mary’s daughter. She used quite often to go down to the South of France and travelled with the servants from 22, sitting up all night in a 2nd class carriage. But when she was getting a bit older Mary took a couchette for her, telling her she’d be more comfortable. But Sonia said: “Oh, Mummy, it isn’t any fun travelling if you’re comfortable!”
‘Mary’ is Mary Cicely Nevill (1879-1963), who lost her first husband, Thomas Scott Syers (1883-1918) in the war, and married John Cole, 5th Earl Enniskillen (1876-1963) in 1932.
Her daughter Sonia Syers (1918-1982), mentioned in passing earlier, grew up to become the well-known archaeologist and anthropologist Sonia Cole, associated closely with Mary Leakey.
We had to move out of the flat by Oct. 1st as the tenants were coming in. We spent one night at the Park Lane – or perhaps two – and then moved to the St. Ermine’s in Caxton Street to a service flat.
We stayed till Oct. 11th and then crossed to Dublin to stay with Sir Robert and Lady Woods at Marino, Ballybrack. I got a few clothes before leaving – including a sapphire-blue evening frock which I still have – and one day I went with Ailsa Nisbet to see Norah in a home at Epsom. She seemed very well but had put on too much weight.
Billy and Dorothy had met the sisters Norah Mary Stewart Nisbet (1907-1957) and Ailsa Margaret Nisbet (1909-1988) in Majorca in 1933.
We went to several films, and I dined one night with Uncle Bobby, and said he was much better, but that Little Nurse was exhausted and should have a holiday. But she refused to go; however they got another Nurse Fry for night duty so little Nurse could at least sleep.
Sir Robert Woods (1865-1938) was a leading Dublin surgeon who also served briefly as Member of Parliament for Trinity College Dublin. He was the major investor in Billy’s Hibernia rubber plantation in Malaya, for all the good it did them.
His wife was born Margaret Gamble Maxwell Shaw (1872-1949).
Marino in Ballybrack is now called Abbey Lea, and is the residence of the Australian ambassador to Ireland.
We crossed by the mail by day, the first time I’d done that. [This is a bit puzzling – does she mean that she had always previously taken the night boat, in ten years of travel to and from Ireland?] I wrote Zora from the ship and said I’d enjoyed seeing the lovely country on the way to Holyhead. We had a nice time with the Woodses, who had Maurice and Ethel to dine one night with their own son Robert and their married daughter Patricia with her clergyman husband. We went to tea with Molly Ryan and to lunch with May and Cyril Irwin, and went to Dublin Castle where we met Sir Nevile Wilkinson (who was Ulster King of Arms, and who looked exactly like Mr. Hansell; he said they’d often been taken for each other) who gave us tea at the Kildare Street Club. Then I had Margaret Beglin, my old nurse, up for Luncheon with her daughter Sheila Frances (Frances was for my grandmother, but they always called her Sheila at home). I gave them luncheon at Mitchell’s and I remember it seemed very expensive to me – I think it was nearly 10/- each.
We met Billy’s only living brother Maurice, and his wife Ethel, earlier.
Robert and Patricia were the two youngest of the Woods’ five children. We met John Woods in Malaya and another brother was killed on the Somme.
Robert Rowan Woods (1902-1971) had married Margaret Rosita Roper (1911-1963) in 1934 and had a baby daughter at this point; perhaps his wife stayed home.
Patricia Marjory Woods (1903-1997) married William Cecil Gibbon Proctor (1903-1991), also in 1934, and he had just been appointed Church of Ireland rector of Harold’s Cross, Dublin.
Molly Ryan is Mary Elizabeth Josephine Ryan (1875-1960), one of Billy’s Ryan first cousins, who never married.
Mary Cecilia ‘May’ Irwin nee Grehan (1884-1959) was the sister of Billy’s sister-in-law Magda Whyte and Aileen Ryan. Her husband was Cyril James Irwin (1881-1963).
Sir Nevile Wilkinson was the last Ulster King of Arms, in charge of Irish heraldry. He also designed dollhouses.
Henry Peter Hansell (1863-1935) was the tutor to the future Kings Edward VIII and George VI, and to the Romanian royal family, who Dorothy got to know in 1921. He had died by 1937, so presumably there was less scope for confusion with Sir Nevile.
Frustratingly I have been unable to track down Margaret Beglin or her daughter Sheila.
Ten shillings each in 1937 is equivalent to about £30 or €35 in today’s prices, which is indeed expensive for a lunch, but sadly par for the course in central Dublin these days – though maybe not so much in the building of the former Mitchell’s in Grafton Street, which is now a branch of MacDonald’s.
We went on to Coolavin on Oct. 15th. I said we had a lovely time but it wasn’t exactly comfortable; no hot water, no electric light, and the food wasn’t good, but I said that I loved Charlie and Caroline and Ruth, who was at home, and the flat bog country was beautiful, all purple with blue mountains in the distance. I did some sketching.
Caroline Mary Whyte (1871-1969) was Billy’s oldest full sister, married to The MacDermot, Charles Edward MacDermot (1862-1947). They lived at Coolavin on the border between County Sligo and County Roscommon.
Ruth Mary MacDermot (1915-1987) was Caroline and Charlie’s seventh and youngest child. Two of her older brothers had died as babies, and another at Gallipoli.
About a week later we went on to Loughbrickland, changing trains in Dublin and lunching there. We went to a meeting of the British Legion in the village soon after we arrived, and everyone made speeches to welcome Billy and me; he answered very nicely but then they insisted on my speaking too; I felt I just couldn’t and managed only a few words. We went to Armagh one day to see Moira and Christie, who was in the Ulster Rifles.
Dorothy did not mention it in her 1935 notes, but the Loughbrickland branch of the Royal British Legion records that “The branch standard was presented to the branch by Lt Col W H Whyte DSO [i.e. Billy] and was dedicated in Aghaderg Parish Church [the Protestant church in Loughbrickland] by Rev E Burns MA on 10 November 1935.” Though I wonder if that could be a mistake for 1937. With his DSO, and his Serbian White Eagle, Billy was probably the most decorated veteran with links to Loughbrickland.
Moira MacDermot (1910-1969), Charlie and Caroline’s other daughter, had married Wakefield Christie-Miller (1909-1988) in 1935. At this point she would have been newly pregnant with her daughter Maralyn, who was born the following April.
Late in October Aunt Nellie, the wife of Stephen Lamb’s uncle, died at Hayton House so that it came to Chris. She was a dear old lady who had been bed-ridden for years; when we were staying at Scotby we used often to go to see her after Mass. Her husband had left her the place for her lifetime, but after that it come back to the Lamb family. We had been planning to go there – or rather to Scotby – next, but Aunt Nellie’s death necessitated several family conferences and so we didn’t go.
‘Aunt Nellie’ was Helen Lamb (1844-1937), the wife of Robert Ormston Lamb (1836-1912); they were second cousins (her maiden name was also Lamb). Her husband was the younger brother of Stephen Lamb’s father Richard Westbrook Lamb (1826-1895). Nellie and Robert had had two sons, but one died as a child and the other was killed in France in 1914.
I said we were very comfortable at L’b’Land, house warn and plenty of hot water. Magda quite liked me by then; she hadn’t liked me at all before, and she was to go through another period of disliking me, but for the moment all was well. I did a sketch of the house which we still have – I had it framed and gave it to Billy; it was one of my more successful efforts.
We still have that picture on display in Loughbrickland – it is indeed one of Dorothy’s more successful efforts.
We went out with the Newry Harriers a couple of times on foot, but they didn’t kill, which pleased me.
Northern Ireland, believe it or not, is the only part of the United Kingdom where hunting wild animals with dogs is still legal.
The Newry Harriers were founded in 1820 and continue to chase wild animals to the death.
We went to a party at the Armagh Depot, and lunched with the Van Renans – old Malayan friends of Billy’s – and to lunch with old Mr. Armstrong, then 93 – he was to live to be nearly a hundred. He said to Billy: “Some time ago – I suppose it must be sixty years or so – I was lunching with some friends and a Major Edward Whyte was there; now what relation was he to you?” (He was Billy’s uncle.)
Major Van Renan (sic) is recorded in the Penang newspapers as a guardian of the Sikh gurdwara in the city in the 1920s. I think he is the same person as Walter Campbell Vanrenen (sic) (1872-1952), married to Mabel Charlotte Booth (1870-1957) – their sons were born in Malaya in 1900 and 1903, and they both died in Northern Ireland so had presumably retired there. They have not previously been mentioned.
Henry Bruce Wright Armstrong (1844-1943), of Dean’s Hill, Armagh, had briefly been MP for Mid Armagh in 1921-22, one of the oldest ever first time MPs at 76. The Armstrong family still live in Dean’s Hill, and in fact I lodged with them in the winter of 1985-86 while working at the Armagh Observatory during my ‘gap year’. I am still in touch with Henry Armstrong’s great-granddaughter, who is about the same age as me, and lives in Scotland.
Edward Whyte (1839-1904), brother of Billy’s father John Joseph Whyte (1826-1916), would have been only a few years older than Henry Armstrong. One of his daughters was Gladys, who was mentioned earlier along with her husband Bob Clarke.
There was another British Legion Meeting at which, I said, Billy spoke very nicely.
We also went out with the Iveagh Harriers on foot – the pack Billy’s father had started. We went to the Armistice Day celebrations in Newry and Billy laid the wreath for the L’b’land branch of the British Legion. Then Billy and I went over the new school. That evening there was a “social” at the British Legion Hall in the village. Another day we went to tea at Narrow-water; I little thought then that Marie would be almost my dearest friend later on, though I said to Zora that Mrs. Hall was charming. We went to see Angela Ross of Bladensberg in Rostrevor. One evening there was a play in aid of the Catholic Parochial Fund, and we all went to that, though I said the acting was rather wooden. Another day we all went over the marvellous new hospital in Banbridge, where later I was to do my 50 hours’ nursing.
The Iveagh Harriers, now the Iveagh Fox Hounds, are still chasing and killing animals.
I am trying to resolve the reference to the ‘new school’. There were two schools in Loughbrickland, both primary level, one for Catholics and one for Protestants; but I don’t find a record that either was refurbished in 1937. However from Dorothy’s account, it could be a school in Newry, or elsewhere in the neighbourhood.
“Mrs Hall” of Narrow Water Castle was born Marie de Lourdes Patron (1898-1967) in Gibraltar. Her husband was Roger Toby Hall (1894-1939). They had five children, of whom the oldest, Moira (1920-2012), became a close friend of my aunt Ursula and shared a house with her in London for many years; the older of their two sons, Roger (1929-2007), was also close to my father who was about the same age.
Banbridge Hospital had actually been built as the local workhouse in 1841, but was revamped to become the hospital in 1932. It was demolished after closing in 1995.
Bunty had six Dalmatians, the only one I remember was Nugget, a dear thing; four of the others were puppies. She also had Mickey Mouse, an old black and white cocker.
Bunty was Magda’s daughter Esther Mary Theresa (Bunty) Whyte (1916-2000), a favourite elderly relative of mine growing up. I remember her Dalmatians (though presumably not the same Dalmatians) vividly from my childhood, forty years later. One of them ate my Play-Doh.
About the middle of November Stevie Grehan, Magda’s brother, had an emergency operation for appendicitis but peritonitis set in and he was dangerously ill. Magda and all the sisters were terribly upset. However he recovered. Their father had died a few months before and Stevie and Cecily had come home from India to take over the place.
They had two boys, Peter and Denis. Bunty was going away for the week end but when Magda was so upset she offered to stay at home, but Magda insisted on her going, saying she’d have plenty of troubles of her own later on, and she hardly knew her uncle who had been in India so long.
Magda and Stephen’s father, also Stephen Grehan (1855-1937) had died on 4 June. Their mother, Mary Esther Chichester, had died in 1900. Three of the four sisters – Magda, Aileen and Kate – had married first cousins within the extended Whyte/Ryan family, to whom they were in any case related.
Magda’s brother, Stephen Arthur John Grehan (1895-1972) lived another 35 years and stayed in the ancestral home, Clonmeen House, until his death. The estate was then sold and the papers are in the archives of University College Cork. He had married Cecily Mary Gaisford-St Lawrence (1901-1973) in 1925, and their two long-lived sons were Peter Arthur Grehan (1926–2016) and Denis Stephen Grehan (1927–2018).
Lyla had to have various members of the family to stay as there was to be a sale of the furniture at Hayton, so we stayed in Ireland till the 18th December, when we went back to London for two nights, then to Château d’Oex to pick up John. Of course I have no letters over this period. I had been writing a lot about John and his possible tonsillectomy to Zora; I was wrong when I said the school doctor said they were bad; he didn’t think they were too bad. John was enjoying school and there was plenty of snow. I kept hoping he’d be able to go back again, but when we saw the specialist in Cannes he said the tonsils must come out. He had it done at Sunnybank and I was allowed to stay there with him – of course we waited till after Christmas. He was there for two nights; I read to him and amused him with one of those cut-out toy shadow theatres. He was very good and said it didn’t hurt much.
I didn’t like the matron there much; I forget her name. She seemed to me harsh and unsympathetic, but on looking back I think it was really that we weren’t “on the same wave length” as the young say now; she was really efficient, I think.
Sunny Bank Hospital in Cannes had been founded in 1892. It closed in 1997.
The typescript doesn’t have a clear break between 1937 and 1938, but I’m assuming that John’s hospital stay was immediately after Christmas and before New Year, and the next paragraphs are about Dorothy’s own treatment at Sunny Bank over a period of several weeks, so I am ending this year’s section here.
Next: 1938