Introduction
Previous: 1927 – meeting and marrying Billy Whyte
Next: 1928 and 1929
Dorothy and Billy Whyte go around the world on their honeymoon, visiting Hong Kong, Shanghai, Japan, Hawaii, San Francisco, her family in New York, his family in the UK and Ireland, and finish the year in France. She discovers that she is expecting a baby.
We begin in early August 1927. Dorothy has just married Billy Whyte, less than two months after first meeting him in Penang. They have decided to travel around the world together on their honeymoon, after a quiet week by the beach.
That week was perfect, I wrote in my diary, except that we were always having to dash into Penang for tickets, passports etc. The American consul was a bit upset at my having a British passport as he thought I shouldn’t have one unless I renounced my American citizenship, and that I refused to do. And I had still to be confirmed; the Bishop – I wish I could remember his name – was to be in Penang and I was to be confirmed the day we were leaving. The British passport, incidentally was quite simple; they just gave it to me at once.
The American consul appears to have been Samuel Gale Ebling (1893-1981), originally from Ohio. He had already been posted to Paris and Stockholm, and went on to serve in Colombo, Germany, Nicaragua, Mozambique, Turkey and Angola.
I don’t understand how Dorothy could have got a British passport so quickly – did she acquire British citizenship automatically on her marriage?
On August 11th we were to leave. In the morning we shopped, and had tiffin at the E & O. Then to the Buckwells for tea, where we heard that Wat Taylor had a bad heart and was going home, and we didn’t see him again, alas, though we called, but he was asleep. Towards five we went to the convent where we said good-bye to the Reverend Mother and Madame Ste. Eugénie took us to the church where the Bishop was waiting. On our way up the aisle she asked what name I wanted to have and Billy chose Eugénie to her great delight. The ceremony was short, then the Bishop spoke to us and we kissed his ring.
The Buckwells are Robert Leighton Buckwell (1873-1952) and Dorothy Marie née Wills (1889-1964). They had five children, the youngest named Dorothy.
I have not been able to further identify either William A. Taylor or Madame Ste. Eugénie.
Dorothy does not say so, but it sounds like the ceremony with the bishop was her confirmation – they had already had the religious wedding.
It seems very out of character for Dorothy to let Billy choose her confirmation name, especially given his own disengagement with religion; it must simply be a mistake in the typescript.
Then to the Morea – P & O, I’m almost sure [yep, see here] – where crowds of people came to see us off. We had drinks in the lounge and talked to the Buckwells, Davises, Peels, Arthurs, De Buriatte, Peter Powell, Bishop, Lovell and others. I don’t think I’ve mentioned Captain Lovell who had been Billy’s adjutant, I think, and who was very nice. The Sikh jaggar and one of the Malay policemen gave Billy a fragrant and a bouquet, but I had to wear one and hold the other as Billy wouldn’t.
I have been unable to identify the Davises, which is frustrating as Dorothy was clearly close to them..
The Peels have not previously been mentioned, and I have not identified them either.
I have also been unable to identify the Arthurs.
Ernest Arthur De Buriatte (1887-1953) was one of Billy’s housemates before the wedding. He later succeeded my grandfather as commander of the 3rd Battalion, Straits Settlements Volunteer Force, the former Penang & Province Wellesley Volunteer Corps; he was also a lawyer and served on the Straits Legislative Council.
Peter Powell and his wife were among the group with whom Dorothy had spent Easter 1927 in Sumatra. I have not otherwise been able to identify them.
Bishop had been Billy Whyte’s other housemate before the wedding. I have not been able to identify him otherwise.
I have not been able to trace more about Captain Lovell except that his first name began with an A.
Most amusing that Billy refused to do something as unmanly as carrying flowers!
We were at the captain’s table and I caused much amusement by wanting to be in a typhoon; the captain wasn’t as much amused as the other passengers, though. We reached Singapore very early on the 15th and Colonel Postlethwaite met us at the Europe, gave us tiffin there – excellent food – and then took us to his bungalow where we rested and had tea and then went to see Billy’s friends the Hamiltons. Their daughter, Joan, was engaged to a young man whom I had met at Port Dickson. Mr. Hamilton had a fine collection of Malay silver.
Colonel Francis John Marshall Postlethwaite (1880-1962), the Commandant of the Straits Settlements militia, has an interesting connection: he was the stepson of Charles Dawson (1864-1916), who is now generally belied to have been behind the Piltdown Man hoax, and wrote to the Times in 1953 in defense of his stepfather.
Joan Eleanor Stewart Hamilton (1901-1995) married Kenneth Godfrey Exham (1901-1974) on 26 August 1927, so only a few days after Dorothy and Billy’s visit.
Her parents (“Billy’s friends”) were Alan Woodforde Ball Hamilton (1870–1964), was (of course) ex-Army but in 1927 was one of the judges in the Singapore courts with an interest in Malay ethnography, and Laura Rogers (1880–1926), who had died the previous summer.
Then back to the bungalow where our host joined us. We dined and danced at the Adelphi but didn’t stay very late. When we got to bed we found there were a lot of holes in our mosquito net and the brutes kept getting in, and it was terribly hot. About two I woke and found Billy out on the verandah, so I joined him for a bit. Then we slew all the mosquitoes we could find inside the net and after that we slept better. Next morning we sailed at nine.
We had a peaceful few days to Hongkong; we hardly spoke to any one else but the captain at meals; we played deck tennis and quoits a bit, and chess in the evenings, and read, and wrote letters, and talked. After leaving Singapore we were Lat. 1° 25″ and Billy solemnly pointed to the horizon and said that was the “Line” (the Equator). It was the nearest I’d been to the equator. [I think that she later crossed it while visiting my father in Africa in the 1950s. Billy of course had started his military career in the Boer War.]
My diary is quite rapturous; I was terribly happy, bubbling over in fact – my diary reminds me of my mother’s letter to her mother when she want to Europe on her wedding trip. We both felt that we had married the most wonderful men in the world. I hope Ursula will feel the same way when she marries.
Ursula, Dorothy’s daughter and my aunt, did not marry until she was 46, in 1985, six years after her mother’s death, and she herself sadly died shortly before her own 13th wedding anniversary; her husband Alastair Downie, who was more than twenty years older, survived her by six and a half years. But I think that they were indeed happy. It is an interesting coincidence that Ursula and her father were married at almost the same age – he was 47 – to spouses with a two-decade age difference.
We had a peaceful time on the ship to Hongkong; we hardly spoke to anyone except the captain at meals as we were at his table. We played deck tennis and quoits a bit, and read and wrote letters, and played chess in the evenings, and talked. I wanted to know all about Billy’s life. He was the 7th of his father’s nine sons, and by the time he came along I think neither parent was much interested in another boy. Still he seemed to have had a happy enough childhood, his mother wasn’t able to nurse him herself as she had the other children and he had a wet-nurse whom he adored, and that rather annoyed his mother, his elder sisters told me. He certainly never felt that his mother loved him; he said once that the only happy memory he had of her was when once as a very small child he was stung by a wasp and his mother heard him crying and picked him up in her arms and carried him into the house. She was very fond of her older children, but the younger ones of the thirteen meant very little to her. She couldn’t always remember their names and would call to one of them; “Eddie, Willy, Markie – child, whatever is your name, come here!”
By the time he had left school three of his older brothers had died and there was only John, the eldest, in the army, George, a doctor, and Thomas, usually called Tim, in the army like John.
The older brothers were:
John Nicholas Whyte (1864–1906) who was in the Lancashire Fusiliers;
Charles Edward Whyte (1866–1883) who died young;
George Thomas Whyte (1868–1919) who was in the Royal Army Medical Corps, and was the only one of the six older brothers to marry;
Henry Marcus Whyte (1869–1880) who died young;
Thomas Aloysius Whyte (1876–1931) who was in the Royal Artillery and in 1927 was the oldest surviving brother;
Edward Joseph Whyte (1878–1894) who died young.
We’ll get to the younger brothers and the sisters in due course.
Billy himself wanted above all things to go into the army too, but his father decided that he should go into the Indian Police. He would have to learn Hindustani for that, and various other things not taught in most Catholic schools of the time, so he was sent to a crammer. He could hardly bear it when the Boer War broke out and he wasn’t allowed to join up. But then a friend of the family (whose name I’ve forgotten if I ever knew it) who was interested in Billy found out how unhappy he was and talked his father into giving his permission for Billy to join up with the 4th Dublin Fusiliers, the Militia Battalion and in due course he was sent to South Africa. He was the youngest subaltern and the Major usually called him “Master Whyte”.
The first time he was under fire he never knew it till his company sergeant pulled him off his horse and threw him on the ground, rather to Billy’s indignation until he knew the reason. He didn’t see a great deal of action in that war.
Unlike the First World War, where his adventures are well chronicled, I have not been able to track down much of the detail about my grandfather’s service in the Boer War. His older brother John (known as Jack) was at Spion Kop, but in a different regiment and in a different year.
After it was over he transferred to the 1st Battalion of the Dublins and had a very happy time with them. They were stationed in Malta in 1906 and he played football, cricket and tennis for the battalion; he was good at all games. From Malta they went to Egypt, and there a great many of the Dublins fell sick, and he was among them and was very ill indeed. The doctors thought it was malaria that they all had, and gave them lots of quinine, but it was in fact Maltese fever [brucellosis], and the quinine didn’t help at all. At one point Billy was supposed to be dying and was anointed. The Colonel when he heard sent a subaltern to see how he was; one of the nurses told the young man that though Billy was still alive, he couldn’t last for more than a few hours. However he did recover, but only to find himself stone deaf – whether from the illness or from the quinine no one knows.
The official record differs a bit on the details here. The Dublins were in Malta in 1905, not 1906, and it was in Malta, not Egypt, that 41 of them fell ill with “Mediterranean fever”. My father told me that his father’s deafness had been caused by unnecessary and excessive treatment with quinine, but hearing loss – especially the ‘nerve deafness’ which my grandfather had – is reported as an unusual but certainly not unknown effect of brucellosis, a bacterial infection which usually hits the joints and muscles but can also (as in Billy’s case) hit the nervous system.
He was given furlough and went to London where an ear doctor treated him, and his hearing gradually got better till it reached a certain point and then there was no progress and the specialist said he could do nothing more. The Dublins gave him more years on furlough, in case there was more improvement, but there never was; the nerves of the ear had been damaged and though later he used hearing-aids they weren’t of much use – they made sounds louder but no clearer.
So there he was, not able to go on in the army, the one thing he had always wanted to do. His brother George, by now the eldest of the surviving brothers, was living at Loughbrickland and Billy went to stay with him. He was looking forward to a good season hunting but he got flu and that was all spoiled. I think he was very miserable indeed at that time and had no idea what to do; his parents seem to have been most unsympathetic. One of his sisters told me that their father used to talk about “That useless fellow at Loughbrickland” at that time the Whyte parents and Kathleen, their only unmarried daughter, were living in Dublin though I think they went to Loughbrickland in the summer.
Then one day Percy MacDermot, whose brother the MacDermot had married Billy’s eldest sister, Caroline (it was their son Bay whom I had met in Malaya) same on leave from Malaya where he was rubber-planting, and suggested that Billy should go out there and plant rubber too, and that is what he did. Until the war broke out in 1914 he was a planter, at first on Percy’s estate, and later when he got a number of his friends to invest in it he opened up an estate of his own, Hibernia. That estate is still going strong.
Since two of the sisters have been mentioned, this is probably the point to list all five of them. They will all appear in person farther down this page.
The oldest sister, Mary Jane Elizabeth Whyte (1857-1934), was the daughter of my great-grandfather’s first wife and so a half-sister to the rest; after her mother died (probably as a result of childbirth) she was brought up by her maternal grandparents. She married Robert Martin Blount in 1892. They had no children.
Caroline Mary Whyte (1871-1969) was the fifth of her parents’ thirteen children, after the first four boys. She married Charles Edward MacDermot, later The MacDermot, Prince of Coolavin, in 1894, and had seven children, of whom the oldest was killed at Gallipoli (where his uncle, my grandfather, was wounded) and two more died as babies. She had four grandchildren, one of whom is still living as of 2025, the oldest survivor of my generation.
Caroline’s husband was the oldest of thirteen children, of whom Percy the rubber planter (1875-1955) was the eighth, and the politician and writer Frank MacDermot (1886-1975) was the youngest.
Letitia Mary Whyte (1872-1938), known as Lyla, was the next after Caroline. She married Stephen Eaton Lamb in 1898. They had five children, only one of whom had children of his own; but all four of her grandchildren are still living as of mid-2025.
Anna Mary Whyte (1874-1954), known as Nancy, was the next after Lyla. She married Louis William Corbally in 1906; he was killed in the First World War. They had four children and (as far as I know) four grandchildren, only one of whom is still living as of mid-2025.
The youngest sister was Kathleen Mary Whyte (1885-1960), born between Billy’s two younger brothers (who we’ll get to). She did not marry and had no children.
And the Hiberina estate still exists, though it produces palm oil these days.
He was on the reserve and when the war started he went home and was rapidly promoted from lieutenant to captain to major and later to lieutenant colonel when he commanded the 6th Dublins.
But to go back to our trip; after leaving Singapore we were in Latitude 1° 25″ which was the nearest I had ever been to the equator. Billy solemnly pointed to the horizon to the south
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At Hongkong we stayed at the King Edward Hotel for $18 all included. The Hongkong dollar was then worth 1/11 ½. [The Bank of England inflation calculator, for what it’s worth, makes that roughly UK£100 in 2025 prices.] One day we went up to the Peak by electric tram, had tiffin at the Peak Hotel, took Chairs and walked to the top of Victoria Peak and saw all Hongkong at our feet. There was very little level ground, mostly steep hill. The next day, which was a Saturday, August 21st a typhoon passed within 45 miles of us. We were in the bank that morning when we heard sirens or was it bells, and I asked someone what it meant. He said it was a typhoon warning and advised us to go back to our hotel, which we did. Our rooms were towards the back so that we didn’t get the full force against our windows, but even so it was terrific. I remember looking through the window – which was closed, of course – and seeing cars, which had been left in the street by their owners, blown along the street as though they’d been made of cardboard. It was really frightening. In the afternoon when the wind had gone down to 50 mph we went out and walked along the sea-front, it was quite hard work to keep our footing. All the houses along the front had been stripped of anything that projected – sign-boards, shutters, and so on. There was a big P&O in the harbour, I think it was the Rawalpindi, which was steaming up to her anchor and just keeping in one place. The next day we drove round the island and saw many of the fishermen’s houses smashed to pieces by the typhoon; I have no idea if there was any loss of life, we didn’t hear.
Wikipedia says that 15 people were killed and 22 injured in Hong Kong in the August 1927 typhoon. Presumably there were also more victims elsewhere.
On Monday the 22nd we went on board the Japanese ship Tenjo Maru and sailed for Shanghai. We reached there on the 24th, in the morning, but had to anchor so far out that it took us an hour and a half to reach the city by launch. Once there we went to the Palace Hotel where I waited while Billy went to find his friend Col. Tredennick, who joined us for tiffin. Afterwards Col. Tredennick took us to see the barbed wire fortifications, machine-gun emplacements and so on, all of which interested Billy more than they did me. But we couldn’t spend long as we had to take a launch back at 3:00 p.m.
I have been unable to identify Colonel Tredennick. The barbed wire fortifications and machine gun emplacements were presumably part of the defenses of the International Settlement in Shanghai.
Japan
We reached Nagasaki on the 27th and went ashore for a few hours. We took rickshaws and did some shopping – we had been shopping every where as I wanted to get presents for everyone in Billy’s family and mine, but Billy was getting very bored with shopping, poor dear. Next day we reached Kobe about 3:00 p.m. having come through the Inland Sea, which was very beautiful, and calm as a lake. Being Sunday the banks of course were closed and we had to get 100 yen from the purser – the yen was 1/11½, like the Hongkong dollar. He also gave us free railway tickets to Yokohama. On landing we went straight to the station to get our sleeping reservations and leave our luggage. It would have been easier to do it through Cook’s, but we thought it was rather fun wrestling with it on our own. But the people knew very little English, though they bowed and smiled and said “Yes” and “So” most politely. Having done all that we took a car, supplied by the hotel, to the Orient Hotel and had an excellent tea. Then we shopped, poor Billy; and bought stacks of things. We left our parcels at the hotel and. went for a rickshaw ride to a temple, then back to the hotel for a drink, and then by rickshaw to the station. There we had a very fair dinner as soon as the train left, and came back to our compartment, which was like a French Couchette, to find we had it to ourselves. Billy gave the boy by mistake 6 yen as a tip instead of 1 yen so of course he couldn’t do enough for us.
We left Kobe at 7:58 p.m. and reached Kozu about 7:30 a.m. next morning.
Today the trains from Kobe to Tokyo take less than three hours, and do not even stop at Kōzu, which is on the southern outskirts of the capital.
I woke early and was fascinated by the country; everything on such a small scale, houses and people and cattle, and all so clean and tidy-looking. The boy came to help pack, and brought us tea, and at Kozu a man from the Fugiya Hotel met us and drove us by car to Miyanoshita. We had a very nice room and bath for 30 yen tout compris, so we could bathe and change before breakfast. After an excellent meal we walked through the little town of Miyanoshita stopping first at a delightful toyshop, which was run by a dear little Japanese woman and her husband. We were charmed by the toys and puzzler and the little wife was so pleased and slapped me on the back and laughed with delight at everything I said and did. She and I sat on the floor together to play a game, Billy beaming at us. Then we went on a short way through the village – for really it was no more – and so back to the hotel. After tiffin we rested and slept and had an excellent tea. The hotel was quite one of the best I had ever known, and the people were all so polite. I said in my diary that they were the most polite people I had ever met, though some of the French in the unspoilt parts were nearly as good. After tea we strolled round the garden but after a bit I felt faintish and was glad to come in. I was beginning to wonder if a baby was starting. After dinner we played chess.
Dorothy and Billy had married on 4 August 1927, and it was now the 29th, if I have counted correctly; they had not wasted any time. My father was born on 30 April 1928.
The next day we had to go to Yokohama to cash some money on our letter of credit, which needed both our signatures. I don’t know why we had that instead of Travellers’ cheques – unless the latter didn’t exist then? [No, they’d been around for decades.] I said of that: “Yokohama is the most desolate city I have ever seen.” Since the earthquake of 1923 it has been scarcely at all rebuilt; the banks, hotels etc, are temporary buildings of wood, corrugated iron, etc. It is very depressing. We took a taxi and had a hard time finding the Chartered Bank, but at length reached it by asking the way at another bank. Of course the department we wanted was closed till 2:00, so we had to go and lunch at the Club Hotel. Fair luncheon but it was a miserable shack and yet we had been told “it was the best hotel there.”
As soon as we had finished at the bank we went straight back to Miyanoshita by train, had tea, rested, dined and played chess. From the train we saw Fujiyama, but there was only a little streak of snow down one side, not at all like the pictures, and I couldn’t believe it was Fujiyama at first.
Next morning we took a bus to Nagao Toge, “Long-Tailed Pass”, in the hope of seeing Fuji, but we saw only the lower slopes rising into cloud. We sat on a bench in the tiny garden of a little refreshment house, and a charming little Japanese brought us, with many bows, green tea and peppermints. After half an hour or so we left and began the downward path to Lake Hakone, which was hard for me in high-heeled shoes – I hadn’t brought any others, can’t think why not. When we got to the landing on the lakeside we waited for the next launch for Hakone-Machi. We bought postcards, drank green tea and ate chocolate biscuits, and talked to two English soldiers who were also going to the Hakone Hotel. When the launch arrived it was rapidly filled to over flowing; I was helped to a chair in the middle, under cover, while the men, Billy among them, were outside on the deck. Then they decided the load was too heavy so another boat appeared and I was transferred to it and Billy too, of course. At Hakone-Machi we had quite a good luncheon for which our own hotel had given us tickets, as they were under the same management. We then went home by bus, had tea in our room and rested.
Next morning we left for Yokohama, where the Tenyo – or Tenjo, I can’t quite make it out from my writing was waiting. Once our luggage was on board we lunched at a café opposite and I even did a little shopping, and then we sailed at three p.m.
Of all ships I have ever been on I think that was the worst. But before I go into that I must copy out another bit from my diary:
“At the cafe where we lunched there was a little party of Japanese at a nearby table. Apparently one young girl was leaving and it was pretty to see her saying good-bye, bowing repeatedly and no doubt making appropriate speeches to each of the others in turn. One was an older woman with marvellously dressed hair, which one doesn’t often see now; most of the women have their hair parted on one side, drawn over the ears and turned in at the back so that it looks bobbed.
“As we left Yokohama all the Japanese on the ship and their friends on the shore threw each other long streamers of coloured paper and it was a pretty sight just before we left, but then as the steamer moved away the ribbons snapped one after the other until there were only a few dingy bits left clinging to the ship’s rails and sides.”
Hawaii
On September 10th we reached Honolulu. Before landing we had a note from Mrs. Goodale asking us to lunch. (I think the Goodales were friends of my father’s.)
If I have counted correctly, the Whytes left Yokohama on 1 September, so took about ten days to reach Honolulu, allowing for the International Date Line. Five years later, the newly built and faster Tatsuta Maru left Yokohama on 23 June 1932 and reached Honolulu on 30 June, so eight days. That is also about the time that a reasonably fast cargo ship would need for the journey today. Peter Birks tells me that Seabourn offer a commercial cruise for New Year 2025/26 which will take eleven days from Honolulu to Tokyo.
The Goodales are probably William Whitmore Goodale (1857-1929), who was the same age as Dorothy’s father and had Massachusetts connections, and his wife Emma March Whitney (1863-1943).
Mr. Goodale and the Campbells came to meet us; Gertrude Campbell was the daughter of my first cousin, Walter Seaver, the son of Papa’s sister Sue.
Gertrude Campbell nee Seaver (1902-1945) had married James White Campbell (1898-1966) in April 1926.
Gertrude took us for a drive beyond Diamond Head and to the two clubs; we sat for a bit on the verandah of one of them. I said in my diary that it was a lovely place and so clear and fresh even at that season, with palm trees tossing against a brilliant blue sky with white clouds, and a deep blue sea, green in the shallows. Even in summer, they told us, it was never very hot – they had had three days of what they called great heat – 81°! Gertrude’s house was charming and all so fresh and clean-looking, quite different from Malaya. And of course they had modern sanitation. We picked up Gertrude’s husband – I suppose at his office – and went to lunch with the Goodales, their son and daughter-in-law were there too. They were all charming and the food was delicious, with pineapples and bananas served as vegetables.
The Goodales’ son, Holbrook March Goodale (1898-1927) was almost the same age as Dorothy, and was tragically killed in a plane crash in October 1927, just a few weeks after Dorothy and Billy’s visit. He appears to have only recently married Constance Eliot-Birks (1891-1980), his second wife.
After luncheon they drove us up to Pali – the Campbells did – and to Pearl Harbour (little did we think what that name was to mean 14 years later) it was a lovely drive but the sun was behind a cloud so the colours were subdued. Then they drove us to the ship and saw us off. We had enjoyed our day very much.
In 2022, 95 years after our grandparents met, I met up with Gertrude’s grandson, Whit Campbell, who lives near Seattle, and in 2024 I met her great-granddaughter Gena Gammie in Washington DC; this was probably the first direct contacts between our two sides of the family since my grandparents visited Hawaii in 1927. Most of Gertrude’s numerous descendants are still in Hawaii, which frankly looks lovely.
But then there came the long crossing to San Francisco, which we reached on the 16th. As I started to say before, the ship was the worst I’d ever known. It was dirty, there were cockroaches everywhere, and the whole ship smelt of filthy dish-water and bad food. I found I just couldn’t force myself into the dining saloon so had my meals served on deck, which was a bit better. But there was very little I could eat and I had such a feeling that things were dirty that I ate chiefly fruit and nuts, dates and raisins, that sort of thing. I had bought some biscuits in Honolulu, too. Billy found the meat bad as a rule but he could eat the chicken. Of course I wasn’t feeling my best anyway, which didn’t help, but it really was a horrid ship.
Five or six days seems to be standard for passenger ships travelling from Honolulu to San Francisco in the 1920s, and for cargo ships today.
United States
However we got to San Francisco eventually. We would have had an easy time at the customs had I not faithfully filled in the form they gave us, putting down all the things we had bought. I thought we were allowed to bring in $100 worth of stuff, but apparently that only applied to residents. The customs men were very nice and very much regretted that I’d filled in the form. Finally they suggested that the things should be sent to New York in bond, so that they could be put straight on our ship and we wouldn’t have to pay duty, and that was done.
We stayed at the Hotel Whitcomb where we had a fair room and bath. We explored a bit but neither of us fell in love with the city. Walter Seaver was living at Berkeley (he was Gertrude Campbell’s father) and came in to see us and asked us to lunch, on the 18th. On the 17th we went to the St.Francis for luncheon, as one always hears so much about it. We thought it a very fine hotel and we had an excellent meal there. That evening we went to see the film of Ben Hur. The next day we went to lunch with the Seavers, Walter and Grace.
Walter Seaver (1870-1930), Dorothy’s oldest first cousin on her father’s side, had married Grace Whittemore (1873-1961) after the death of his first wife Gertrude Nelson (1872-1898). He presumably named his oldest daughter after his first wife.
The film of Ben Hur was of course not the Charlton Heston spectacular of 22 years in the future, but the 1925 silent film starring Ramon Navarro. I think this is the first time that Dorothy mentions going to the cinema.
Their younger daughter Barbara was at home and their son, whose name was, I think, Townsend [Talcott!], but I’m not sure, and who was married, came in too. We liked the young ones better than the parents. Billy couldn’t understand much of what they said and it wasn’t easy.
The Seavers’ son was Talcott Whittmore Seaver (1903-1959). Dorothy doesn’t mention if his wife Genevieve Weber (1903-1986) also came by; she too was newly pregnant and their second daughter, the future actress Sally Seaver, was born in the same month as my father. His great-grandson Jerry Elliott visited me in Belgium in 2024 – again, probably the first direct contact between our two branches of the family in almost a century.
The Seavers’ younger daughter was Barbara Seaver (1910-1997), who married Howard Baldwin Crittenden Jr (1908–1986) in 1931. Two of their three children are still living as of mid-2025.
But the great event was seeing the Legarés. They must have heard we were there and Mr. Legaré came in to see us at the Seavers’, and later, after a drive with the cousins, we went to see the Legarés. I said in my diary that Liefje was just the same – I think she was about my age, and that her mother had died. They were the friends that I was sent to the day my own mother died, when I was six, but I think they left Plainfield soon after that as I don’t remember them in my later childhood. I think Mr. Legaré was an engineer. The Seavers didn’t think a great deal of him because he wasn’t at all well off, but Billy liked him enormously and I’d always been very fond of that family.
Liefje Legaré was born in June 1903 (in later life she claimed to have been born in 1905, but the evidence is clear), and so would have been only two when my great-grandmother died in childbirth in August 1905, rather younger than my grandmother who was six. Liefje’s mother, the daughter of Dutch immigrants, born Liefje de Ruigh van Herwerden, was alive and well in 1927, and lived to 1959, dying a week after her 79th birthday. It’s really rather odd that Dorothy gets these details wrong.
Liefje’s father, Bailey Peyton Legaré (1864-1949), was indeed a railway engineer, and had moved to San Francison in 1906, three days before the Great Fire which gave him a lot of business. His great-uncle, Hugh Legaré, was Attorney-General of the United States under President Tyler and was acting Secretary of State when he died suddenly in 1843.
The next day we went through the Golden Gate Park and rode on a switchback railway, but I felt perhaps it wasn’t wise. However all was well except that I had a bad headache and stayed in bed all the next day, but that probably had nothing to do with the switchback. The following day I saw a doctor who confirmed that I was having a baby.
On the 22nd we left for the east. We had to change trains at Barstow [California] and wait there, having luncheon there, and then went on to the Grand Canyon.
Trains from San Francisco to Barstow took about fourteen or fifteen hours, so Dorothy and Billy must have arrived in Barstow for an early lunch on September 23rd, having left in the evening of the 22nd. From Barstow to Williams, Arizona, was another nine or ten hours by train, and then another two hours to the Grand Canyon, arriving in the morning of the 24th. A bit grim, if you are newly pregnant!
Unlike the journey from Kobe to Tokyo, this trip would take as long if not longer by train today – at least a day and a half, possibly two days, changing at San José, Los Angeles and Flagstaff.
Unfortunately I had one of my bad headaches, a migraine, and was also feeling sick. Still I did appreciate that it was a wonderful sight – quite incredible, that yawning gulf a mile deep and such a profusion of colours! We walked a little way along the rim but what with the altitude and the headache I couldn’t do much; I certainly felt quite unlike myself. That same evening we went on to Williams where another train picked up our coach next morning. We succeeded in getting a compartment which was a help. We reached Chicago on the 27th and there we changed to the Pennsylvania R.R. and got a drawing-room to New York, arriving Wednesday 28th and changing to the Jersey Central and so to Plainfield. Lyman met us, and it was such a comfort to see him.
I make it almost exactly 48 hours by train from Williams to Chicago, so if my timing is right, they visited the Grand Canyon on the 24th and then stayed that night in Williams, leaving for Chicago on the morning of the 25th and arriving on the 27th. This was all on the Atcheson, Topeka and Santa Fe line, of course.
Trains from Chicago to New York took about 20 hours in 1927 and take about 20 hours today. An early afternoon departure from Chicago would have meant a morning arrival in New York.
Lyman Charlton Hibbard (1893-1956) was Dorothy’s elder brother and only sibling.
We stayed about five weeks in Plainfield, but I have no records of that at all. I didn’t keep a dairy, and of course as I was at home Papa had no letters. So I have to rely on my memory and I know from experience how hard it is to remember correctly. When we got to Plainfield we found Van Wyck and Eleanor, his wife, were staying. No one had told me that Van Wyck had had a bad breakdown, at least if anything had been said it wasn’t said clearly enough for me to take it in. Eleanor told me years later that she thought they should not be there when I came, but Sally insisted on their staying. Van Wyck looked just the same, and I kissed him, as I always did, and noticed nothing until I was beside him at luncheon. I said something to him and he turned and looked at me. It was a perfectly blank look, as though he had no idea who I was or what I had said. It gave me a sense of physical cold; I can still see his expression. He told me himself years later – for he made a perfect recovery and did all his best work afterwards – that he saw everything about him as though through fog at that time, and couldn’t make contact.
Much more on “Papa”, Henry Deming Hibbard (1856-1942) here.
Sally is his second wife, Sarah “Sally” Ames (1858-1946), who had two sons by her first marriage. Her younger son Van Wyck Brooks (1886-1963) was a Pulitzer prize-winning critic. He had married Eleanor Kenyon Stimson (1884-1946) in 1911. It is true that what is generally considered his best work was written in the 1930s.
My step-mother wanted to give a big party at the Country Club, ostensibly to introduce Billy to everyone but also for Eleanor; I don’t think she’d ever given a party for her. [Sally had married Dorothy’s father – a second marriage for both of them – only a few months after Van Wyck had married Eleanor in 1911.] As I wasn’t feeling too well I really dreaded all that standing about, but Sally said it wasn’t very nice to be having a baby so soon – she didn’t actually say that, but she did use the words not very nice. She was determined and we went through it. I just don’t remember anything except Eleanor asking me to say the names very clearly, as she was next after me in the reception line, but I’d been away so long I’d got out of the American habit of repeating names when introduced, and I know I forgot most of the time.
We also saw a good many of my friends. We dined one night with the Bentons and afterwards old Mr. Benton walked home with us, and then Billy walked back with him as he was worried about him – his sight was bad by then, and he was getting very deaf. Elsbeth and her husband, Winthrop Swain, and Carol and hers, Gordon Gregg, were there. At dinner we had what looked like port to drink; Billy thought it was port and was a little surprised at its being served during dinner, but the first sip disillusioned him. It was wine they had made themselves.
“Old Mr Benton” is Linn Boyd Benton (1844-1932) who would have been 83 at this point in time. Elsbeth and Carol were his granddaughters; their father, Morris F. Benton, is not mentioned here, but was a major figure in the history of typography, and many of his fonts continue to be used.
The two granddaughters both lived to advanced ages. Elsbeth, formally Elizabeth Boyd Benton (1898-2000), married Winthrop Chester Swain (1891-1987), had two daughters and died in Plymouth MA aged 101. Carol, formally Caroline Everett Benton (1902-1997), married Gordon Collingbourne Gregg (1900–1983), had a daughter and a son, and died at 95.
Prohibition was still on and almost everyone we knew was drinking as though their lives depended on it. People who never had thought of having wine as a rule – it had been something for special occasions when I was a child – now always had it. When I had lived at home we seldom had anything in the way of alcoholic drink, except cocktails before a party, and at Christmas, and wine at dinner parties. Of course some people drank a lot, but it was considered rather disgraceful. Prohibition changed all that. Billy had come prepared to obey the law, whether he approved of it or not, and I think he was rather horrified at the way that nearly all Americans were breaking it right and left.
He went into New York one day to lunch with Uncle George, who gave him a wonderful luncheon at some club and offered him drink; Billy said something which showed he was surprised and Uncle George explained that he wouldn’t drink himself normally but thought he should offer something to a guest. Uncle George had been Attorney General of the United States in Taft’s administration.
Dorothy’s uncle George Woodward Wickersham (1868-1936) was the only child of her grandfather’s second marriage, and had indeed been Attorney General of the United States from 1909 to 1913. The law firm Cadwalader, Wickersham and Taft still bears his name (and also the name of President Taft’s younger brother). A couple of years after the newlywed Whytes visited him, George Wickersham was appointed to review the criminal justice system by President Hoover, and the 14 reports published by the Wickersham Commission in 1931 exposed widespread police brutality in the USA, and also (somewhat unintentionally) provided the US political class with a ladder with which to climb down from Prohibition. George Wickersham himself died in a New York taxi in 1936, on his way to a lunch with members of the Council on Foreign Relations, of which he was President at the time.
I can’t remember much of what we did. Anna, the Swedish maid whom Sally had had for years had left to be married and there was a little Irish maid – I think her name was Katherine – who brought us early tea; Billy loved his early tea though I never really cared for it much except in Malaya. I remember Sally telling me that the maid told her it was not at all usual for people in Ireland to have early tea! Of course she’d never been in service in Ireland. Patsy was still the cook, and Oscar the gardener and furnace-man. They both called me Mrs. Whyte at once; before I’d always been just Dorothy to them – at least I think so, certainly when I was a schoolgirl.
Anna Nelson, aged 31 and born in Sweden, is recorded as part of the Hibbard household in the 1920 census.
A cook called Patsy is recorded as a member of the Hibbard household in the 1920, 1930 and 1940 censuses. Her surname is unclear but looks like “Lander” or “Sander”; her race is given as “Mulatto” in 1920 and 1930 and “Negro” in 1940; her birthplace as South Carolina in 1920 and 1940, and North Carolina in 1930; and her age as 35 in 1920, 42 in 1930 and 52 in 1940, indicating a birthdate of 1885 or 1888.
I have nothing on Katherine or Oscar.
I don’t really suppose that Billy enjoyed his time in the States very much, though he would never have dreamed of saying so to me, or I think, to anyone else.
We crossed to England on a ship of the American Line, I’m almost sure. We were seen off in New York by the family – at least Papa, Sally and Lyman, I think. The suitcase with the presents in it that had been sent on in bond from San Francisco was waiting in our stateroom and we were able to give the family the things we’d brought for them.
I remember the ship’s doctor gave me something which completely stopped that sickness I had, and he also gave me the prescription, but when I showed it to a doctor in London he was very much opposed to my taking it and said it was very dangerous, so of course I didn’t.
England
We docked at the Surrey Docks on November 14th – I seem to remember that the crossing had taken ten days. As soon as our passports had been done we took two taxis; we went in the first with some of the luggage and the rest of the luggage followed in the second. I said in my diary that the moment we landed and saw the nice porters and customs men and the dear old cabby who asked after our trip we both felt that we had come home. We drove to 22; it must have been a Monday, as Uncle Bobby hadn’t yet arrived from the Nook. We sat in the library in front of the fire and Miss Jones, the housekeeper, came in to see us, and soon after she had gone Uncle Bobby and Wilfrid Taylor and Evelyn Reynolds all arrived. Edith, the head housemaid, seemed pleased to see me and said she would have written to me but she feared it would have been a liberty.
Uncle Bobby is Dorothy’s aunt Bunnie’s husband, Sir Robert Hadfield (1858-1940). “22” is 22 Carlton House Terrace, his London home within spitting distance of Trafalgar Square. The Nook was his place in Bisham in Berkshire.
Wilfrid Doneraile Stanhope Taylor (1868-1954) seems to have been one of Sir Robert’s staff. Dorothy reports him as editor of Dod’s Parliamentary Companion in 1925.
I have not been able to track down Evelyn Reynolds, but Dorothy mentions that she was staying with people called Reynolds in Bournemouth when was was declared in 1914.
I don’t have anything on Miss Jones or Edith.
Soon after luncheon the first of Billy’s family arrived, his sister Nancy Corbally and his niece Helen Lamb. I said in my diary that Nancy was very friendly and used to Americans and that Helen was very sweet and shy. Later Lyla Lamb came, Helen’s mother, and Billy’s favourite sister; I said in my diary that she was quieter but nicer to me each time she saw me and that I really liked her the best of them all.
I have covered Nancy and Lyla above, though I wonder how Nancy had got used to Americans. Helen Lamb (1901-1969) was the second of Lyla’s five children; she was almost the same age as her new aunt Dorothy. She never married.
Mary Syers came to dinner, radiant as ever, and as they were four for bridge I went early to bed.
Mary Cicely Nevill (1879-1963) was a friend of Dorothy’s aunt Lily. She had lost her first husband, Thomas Scott Syers (1883-1918) in the war, and in 1932 married John Cole, 5th Earl Enniskillen (1876-1963).
The next day we had tea at Lyla’s, and Mildred and Jessica, her other daughters were there, also Kathleen, the only unmarried one, very deaf and pathetic. Nancy was there too.
Mildred (1899-1967) and Jessica (1916-1969) were Lyla’s oldest and youngest children. There were also two sons, Joseph Cuthbert (1909-1964) and Richard Anthony (1911-1996). I remember meeting Dick, as he was known, in the 1970s; he was the only one of the five who had children of his own.
I covered Kathleen, Billy’s youngest sister, above.
We had only just over a week in London but we did a great deal. One night we dined at Lyla’s and Tim was there, Billy’s elder brother – the oldest surviving of the nine brothers. I liked him. That was the only time I saw Stephen, Lyla’s husband. He had had cancer of the throat but was thought to be quite cured, and they went on a pilgrimage of thanksgiving to Lourdes. But alas it came back again and he died when we were back in Malaya. He was a shy man, but very nice, I thought. Others I met were Violet Whyte, a cousin, and the de Burgh Whytes – more distant cousins – Colin Buist, then equerry to the Duke of York, and away a lot – Colonel Buist, Lady French, Nancy’s sister-in-law, Kitty West, Jack Morgan and his new wife (Jack was a cousin of Mr. Hansell’s whom I had seen a good deal in London when I was seeing a lot of Midder) Mary Syers – who took me to see a doctor, Dr. Burroughs, who was quite satisfied with me – Colonel and Mrs. Graham (he was commanding the Ulster Rifles which Pat, Nancy’s elder boy, had just joined) and Ethel Walters, an old flame of Billy’s, American, very amusing. Years later Lyla told me that Ethel Walters would have married Billy if he hadn’t been so deaf. She couldn’t have loved him.
I covered Tim (Thomas Aloyius Whyte) above.
Stephen Eaton Lamb (1890-1928), Lyla’s husband, died the month after my father was born, in May 1928.
Violet Whyte was Billy’s second cousin twice over, her parents being niece and nephew of Billy’s grandparents. In early 2025 I made contact with her great-nephew Edmund Lee; we are fourth cousins.
The de Burgh Whytes are a step further away again, being descendants of Billy’s great-uncle who were disinherited due to becoming Protestant, but clearly maintained cordial relations. The specific people here are probably William John de Burgh Whyte (1875-1940), his wife Geraldine nee Vaux (1890-1967) and their young daughters Amicie (1913-2001) and Joan (1917-1955).
Colin Buist (1896-1981) was an old friend but also the naval equerry to the Duke of York, the future king George VI.
Colonel Buist seems likely to be a mistake for Colin; he himself was in the navy and I don’t find a colonel in his family.
I am puzzled by the reference to “Lady French, Nancy’s sister-in-law”. Nancy’s husband Louis Corbally (1876-1915) was well equipped with sisters, having five of them, but none married a titled man called French. However there was a real Lady French, born Lena Victoria Arnott (1887-1974), who was married to Lyla Lamb’s nephew, Lord de Freyne (1884-1935); his mother, Marie Georgiana Lamb (1853-1923) was the sister of Lyla’s husband Stephen Eaton Lamb (1860-1928). But it’s an odd mistake for Dorothy to make, confusing Lyla’s nephew’s wife for Nancy’s sister-in-law, and I think she probably meant someone else.
Kitty West, born Katrine Mary Mather (1878-1960), had hosted Dorothy in 1923, and indeed organised her date with the prince of Wales.
I have nothing on Jack Morgan and his wife.
Philip Hansell, known as “Midder”, was the royal tutor who Dorothy had befriended in Romania in 1921.
I covered Mary Syers above.
Fergus Reginald Winsford Graham (1884-1961) was indeed the OC of the Ulster Rifles. His wife was the gloriously named Egeria Marion Spottiswood Baker (1886-1975).
Nancy Corbally’s son Pat, Marcus Joseph Patrick Matthew Corbally (1903-1983) also rose to command the Ulster Rifles. I met him in the late 1970s; fascinatingly for me as a child, he had an artificial leg due to a war injury. He had one son, who died in 2015, and three grandchildren who are all living.
Frustratingly, I have been unable to identify my grandfather’s ex-girlfriend, Ethel Walters, though you would have thought that Americans living in London were still fairly rare at that time.
On Sunday the 22nd we went to Westminster Cathedral for High Mass but I came nearer fainting than ever before or since and had to come out. However we went home and I rested and was quite fit to go down to Sunningdale for luncheon, together with Mary Syers. I said in my diary that Uncle Bobby had lent us a Bean car for our time in London, but I simply can’t remember if we drove it ourselves or if there was a chauffeur; I didn’t say in my diary. But as I don’t remember our driving ourselves I think there must have been a chauffeur. At the Nook there was only Uncle Bobby, Wilfrid Taylor, Doctor Cotton, Sonia and her nurse. I said that Sonia was a dream of a child as to beauty, charm and intelligence. I think she was 11 then, so she could hardly have had a nurse, it must have been a governess.
Bean Cars had briefly been the most popular cars in the UK in the 1920s, but fell on hard times mid-decade and Dorothy’s uncle Sir Robert Hadfield, who was already a big shareholder, took them over completely in 1926 – the cars were branded “Hadfield-Beans” from 1927. The takeover was not a success; production of cars stopped in 1929 and of all vehicles in 1931. He was certainly rich enough to afford a chauffeur for his niece.
Sonia Syers (1918-1982), later Sonia Cole, was actually only nine in 1927; she grew up to be one of the UK’s best known anthropologists. Her husband, the sixth Earl of Enniskillen, was the nephew of her mother’s second husband, the fifth Earl of Enniskillen.
Other people I saw, but I don’t think that Billy did, were Dollie Nevil, Lady Robinson, and Mrs. Bott and Doris. Then together we saw Pat Cox, who had served with Billy in Gallipoli, and Colonel and Mrs. Spencer, old friends of Billy’s. Oh yes, and Moira Macdermot, then 17, Caroline’s elder daughter whom I thought very pretty. And of course we saw Major Clarke, one of the directors of Hadfields, who was always coming to London to see Uncle Bobby.
Dollie Nevill is Dorothy Marion Ellington (1879-1957), the widow of Mary Syers’s brother Hugh Lewis Nevill (1877-1915) who was also killed in the war.
There is no clue as to which of several possible knighted Robinsons this particular Lady Robinson was married to. Possibilities include Lady Jane Robinson nee Thistle (1851-1947), wife of Sir Richard Robinson (1849-1928), and Lady Mary Louisa Robinson nee Collyns (1873-1954), wife of Sir Sydney Robinson (1865-1948).
Mrs Bott and Doris are the mother and sister of Dorothy’s ex-boyfriend Alan Bott (1893-1952, who does not himself seem to have put in an appearance. Alan Bott’s mother was born Ellen Clara Mountford (1865-1952). She married Thomas Dugmore Bott (1860-1898) in 1888; he died after ten years of marriage, leaving her with three small children. Alan’s sister Doris Bott (1890-1963) never married as far as I can tell. Another sister, Nancy (1894-1983) had married in 1915.
Colonel P.G.A. Cox had been my grandfather’s commanding office as OC of the 6th battalion of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers; my grandfather succeeded him in that role.
I don’t have anything on Colonel or Mrs Spencer.
Moira MacDermot (1910-1969), daughter of Billy’s sister Caroline, was later to scandalise her very Catholic family by divorcing her first husband and remarrying. She had one daughter, who died in 2022.
Major Augustus Clerke.
We left on Tuesday 22nd November by Liverpool for Belfast. Again I have no records for the few days we were at Loughbrickland. I remember Magda coming to the boat to meet us, looking rather drab, and evidently rather nervous. I don’t think she liked me at all at first; in fact it really took a good many years before she became really friendly, but we get on very well now.
Loughbrickland was, and is, the Whytes’ family home in County Down. It has been owned by the family since the 18th century.
Madga, nee Magdalena Esther Mary Grehan (1885-1972), was the widow of Billy’s elder brother George. She lived in Loughbrickland as a widow for over fifty years, knowing that on her death it would go to Billy, and after him to my father. I know that she attended my christening, but I do not remember her at all.
Her daughter Bunty was at home with her governess; she was eleven, and Billy’s god-daughter of whom he was very fond. She was very pretty, with fair hair and wonderful deep blue eyes and long lashes, but she was terribly spoilt then. Yet she has grown into one of the most completely unselfish people I know – something like Eleanor Brooks.
Bunty, formally Esther Theresa Mary Whyte (1917-2000) was a favourite elder relative of mine from my childhood through to my 30s. Her husband Denis Napier “Toby” Simonds (1919-1970) was my godfather. Their four children are all still living as of 2025.
I don’t remember anything we did at Loughbrickland but I expect we met various family friends, probably the Closes, Halls, and Rosses of Bladensberg – I simply don’t remember. Anyway we didn’t stay long, as on Sunday 27th we were at the Shelbourne in Dublin and went to Mass at the University Church.
I don’t know who the Closes were.
The Halls of Narrow Water Castle have remained family friends for decades.
The “Rosses of Bladensberg” are probably Angela Ross-of-Bladensburg (1879-1946) and her sister Kathleen (1884-1953), neither of whom ever married. Their great-grandfather was Robert Ross, the British general who captured Washington DC in August 1814 and ordered the burning of the White House and the Capitol – this historical connection does not seem to have bothered Dorothy, despite her American origin and her family relationship to the author of The Star-Spangled Banner. Robert Ross was killed in action later in 1814, and his descendants were allowed to use the surname Ross-of-Bladensburg. The male line, however, had died out in 1926 with Angela and Kathleen’s uncle Sir John Ross-of-Bladensburg.
In Dublin I met lots more relations; I remember what a warm welcome dear Caroline gave me. She and Charlie, The MacDermots, were in Dublin with their younger son Dermot and we lunched with them one day and saw them several times. I got on very well with Charlie, and found Dermot – then about 19 – an amusing boy with a very low opinion of women in general. Actually they were at Monkstown, not Dublin itself but very near.
Dermot Francis MacDermot (1906-1989), later Sir Dermot MacDermot (after his elder brother Bay died in 1979 he inherited the family title too and became The MacDermot) became a British diplomat and served as ambassador in Indonesia and Thailand. I remember meeting him only once, when he was already quite old. His son Niall (1935-2003) was the first born of all my second cousins; his second son Hugh (born 1938) is my oldest living second cousin as of 2025, but is in poor health.
We went over Trinity College and saw the Book of Kells. Dermot was an undergraduate and had very nice rooms in the first main courtyard.
I had my first ride on an outside car one day when we went to lunch with Mary Blount, Billy’s eldest sister – but only a half-sister. Margery Roche was in the same house and supposed to be very ill; we took her some flowers. Mary Blount was an absolute darling, quite of another time and age. Her husband Robert had died years before, I think, and she had no children. Had she had a son he would eventually have inherited Maple Durham, a lovely house in England – I only saw it from the train. I think Robert Blount was the last of the male Blount’s of Maple Durham.
I covered Mary Blount earlier. She was 70 in 1927, which we would not consider so very old today; but perhaps the world changed more between 1857 and 1927 than it did between, say, 1955 and 2025.
Her husband Robert (1837-1902) would indeed have inherited the Mapledurham estate if he had outlived his older brother, and it would have gone to their son if they had had one. But in fact none of the five brothers had children, and it went to the son of the sixth of the seven sisters, who changed his name in order to inherit it.
I have not been able to identify Margery Roche. There are a lot of Roche relatives in the family tree, but I have not found any at this period either named Margery or married to a Margery.
After luncheon we drove by car to Leixlip. Admiral and Mrs. Johnson had it then; as I remember the Decies had had it before and Lady Decies, being American, had put in lots of bathrooms, and central heating – it was a huge old place, first built I believe in the 12th century, but with various additions; the Whytes had it for some hundreds of years. Billy had always dreamed of buying it back one day and I was thrilled with the idea but I must say I’m glad we didn’t, it would have been a terrible burden. The Guinness family have it now. We went to the little church where Lady Ursula Whyte had a tablet; Ursula is named for her. The Johnsons were very kind and showed us everything and even invited us to stay on our next leave; they also gave us tea.
Leixlip Castle had been owned by the Whytes for about 150 years, rather than “some hundreds of years”, from the time of my ancestral namesake Sir Nicholas White in the late sixteenth century until it was sold to the Conolly family in 1728. Family lore is that it had to be sold because of gambling debts.
The 5th Baron Decies (1866-1944) had bought Leixlip Castle in 1914 from the Conolly family. His wife, Helen Vivienne Gould (1892-1931) was indeed American. Desmond Guinness, of the brewing family, bought the castle from the 6th Baron Decies in 1958. He died in 2020, but his family still owns it.
Admiral Johnson is probably Charles Duncan Johnson (1869-1930), who was born in Ireland. His wife was Lucy Leonie Clark (1876-1947). They were presumably renting the castle from Lord Decies.
The tablet in the little Protestant church in Leixlip commemorates Sir Nicholas White (1587-1654), grandson of the Elizabethan lawyer, and his oldest son, another Nicholas (though I am descended from a younger son); it states that it was erected by his wife Ursula Moore (1590-1669), the daughter of Garret Moore, 1st Viscount Moore of Drogheda.
The next day I had my dear Margaret, who had been my nurse and then Nama’s and then Zora’s maid, for luncheon; she had married a farmer named Beglan in Co. Meath, and they had one child named Sheila Frances – the Frances was for my grandmother, but in the family they called her Sheila, though for years when she wrote to me Margaret spoke of her as Frances. She was then nine, a nice child. Margaret almost wept with joy when we met.
“Oh Miss Dorothy but you’re beautiful, just beautiful:” she exclaimed, and I am certain it is the only time in my life that anyone has ever said that to me.
I have not been able to find the Beglans. Nobody of that name is recorded in County Meath neither the 1901 or 1911 census.
Poor Dorothy! She was not traditionally beautiful, but she had a striking face, even as the elderly lady of my memories.
Billy had Captain English and Captain Drury to luncheon with him and we all joined forces over coffee. Then Billy and I went to see Sir Robert Woods – he was John Woods’ father – who was ill in a nursing-home; I don’t know what it was but he recovered completely. Lady Woods was there and one of their daughters, Patricia.
I don’t know about Captain English, but Noel Drury (1883-1975) left a detailed war diary which has recently been published and contains a lot about my grandfather’s war record.
Sir Robert Woods (1865-1938) was a leading Dublin surgeon who also served briefly as Member of Parliament for Trinity College Dublin. None of the Irish sources that I have consulted mentions his commercial interest in Malaya. He obviously did get better, as he lived another decade.
John Lowe Woods (1899-1956) was the third of Sir Robert’s five children, and had introduced Dorothy and Billy to each other in June 1927, less than six months before.
Lady Woods was born Margaret Gamble Maxwell Shaw (1872-1949).
Patricia Marjory Woods (1904-1997) was the youngest of their five children. She married the Rev William Cecil Gibbon Proctor (1904-1991) in 1930.
England
That same evening, November 29th, we left for England after saying good-bye to Caroline and Mary Blount. We crossed to Liverpool, where we saw a ship-wrecked crew that had been rescued and brought in. It was a bitterly cold day, but I was thankful to see that they had saved a good many of their belongings.
At Shrewsbury we were to meet the Buists for luncheon at the Raven, so as the train reached there at 9:30 we went straight to the Raven and just read and rested till lunch-time. Only Fred and Diana came; Marion wasn’t well enough. Fred was full of a scheme for starting Greyhound racing in Malaya, and got us quite interested, but it never came to anything.
Frederick Braid Buist (1861-1946), né Sparks, and his wife Marion Carruthers Smythe (1875-1953) had looked after Dorothy in London when her grandmother died in 1912. Their daughter was Diana Hermione Frances Buist (1906-2000). Their son Colin has already been mentioned.
We caught a train at 3:30 for Wolverhampton, where a car met us and took us to the Wakeman-Colvilles’ at Coton Hall, Bridgenorth. Gladys was an old friend of Billy’s; they had known each other since the days in Malta, before he was deaf, when she was engaged to Hugh Colville, a young naval officer. Gladys was the last of the Wakemans and Coton Hall was hers. Hugh had retired from the Navy by this time. The children at home were Agnes, 18, Josie, 14, Doreen, 12, and Victor, 9. There was another older son, Teddy, and a daughter Daphne, between Agnes and Josie. I said they were all very healthy and English. I was to get very fond of Gladys later, and also of Agnes and her husband Geoffrey Thompson, but at the first visit I did find Gladys rather tactless. But she didn’t mean it at all and as I say I became very fond of her later. We had only that one night with them, and then went on to stay with Nancy Corbally at Avon Dassett. I was delighted with her little cottage and said she had excellent taste and it was all most attractive. Maurice and Ethel Whyte – he was Billy’s youngest brother – were also in Avon Dassett, staying with the Welds. They came to dinner, and I liked Ethel very much, but he and I never hit it off very well, though sometimes we got on not too badly.
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, but appear to have sold it not long after.
Their daughter Agnes (1909-1974) married the future Sir Geoffrey Stuart Thompson (1905-1983) in 1934.
Finally we get to the end of Billy’s siblings. The next after Billy was another son, Marcus Francis Whyte (1883-1905) who joined the army, was sent to India and almost immediately died of fever in Faizabad. The youngest sister, Kathleen (1885-1960), has already been noted.
Maurice Ignatius Whyte (1888-1956) was the last of the children of that generation, born when his father was 62 and his mother was 45, his mother’s thirteenth child and his father’s fourteenth. He was gassed during the war and never fully recovered.
He married Ethel Mary Fitzgerald (1893-1974) in 1921. They did not have any children. I do not remember ever meeting her.
The Welds are probably Jessie nee Macdonald (1866-1947), widow of Wilfrid Joseph Weld (1849-1924), and her surviving children Joan (1890-1982), Mary (1895-1973) and the future Sir Joseph William Weld (1909-1992).
We stayed with Nancy till at least December 4th, but after that there is a huge gap in my diary till late February, when we were back in Malaya. I think we had a day or two in London and then went to Paris. We stayed in my studio, so Moriţ must have left. I arranged with the Langstaffs to let them live there and pay expenses, but they didn’t pay me rent although they used my furniture. I think I was a mug. I don’t remember what we did in Paris, or who we saw.
Moriț (born Marie-Louise Blanc) was a Romanian friend of Dorothy’s from Paris in 1921. Dorothy had introduced her to her husband, Philip Bateman; their wedding was the reason for Dorothy’s trip to Romania that year.
No idea about the Langstaffs.
Then we went down to Cannes for Christmas, to Zora and Dollie at the Bastide St. Priest. Again I have no records, and don’t remember anything about it. The next record I have is a brief diary from February 18th.
Zora was Lily Wickersham (1870-1956), Dorothy’s aunt who had informally adopted her. They are buried in the same grave.
Dollie Sperling, born Blanche Lucy Rigg (1872-1946), had married Frederick Harvey Erskine Sperling (1868-1921) in 1906 and was a close friend of Zora’s.
Next: 1928 and 1929.