The Dukes

by Brian Masters

  As First Lord of the Admiralty, the 12th Duke was a man of dis­tinction, remembered for having abolished flogging in the Navy. "There cannot be a more estimable and agreeable man", wrote Lady Holland,65 and she was right. He inherited his father's quest for knowledge and evolved for himself the happy turn of phrase which marks a literary man. He published nothing of note, but some measure of the man may be inferred from a memorandum he wrote, from the Admiralty, recommending improvements in recreational facilities at Greenwich Hospital for Sailors. "This superb Palace", he said, "with its long Galleries and spacious Colonnades, must, from the Nature of the Institution, become intolerably wearisome to Men who are not totally incapable of taking part in any Occupation or Amuse­ment." Leaving aside the nineteenth-century verbosity, this dry report shows a man with sensibilities which, in his private life, were to prove his undoing. "The Pensioners", he continued, "are necessarily shut out from all the wholesome Interests and Enjoyments of Life; they have no Employment; their material Wants are satisfied, and they are relieved from every care of providing for their own Comfort and Sub­sistence; they pass their Day in a state of listless Idleness and Mental Vacuity, until recalled at fixed Intervals to their Meals or their Beds. It is not surprising that Old Sailors so circumstanced should resort to the Alehouse or to worse Places . . . Greenwich Hospital has a monastic character, wanting everything that tends to enliven or endear a Home."66

  Within a year of writing these sentences, the Duke's own home life was shattered by the most unforeseeable disaster.

  There were five children of the marriage - Hermione, Ulrica, Guendolen, and two boys, Edward Adolphus Ferdinand known as 'Ferdy', who was the heir, and Lord Edward. Somerset had success­fully petitioned for a new title, to commemorate the alleged St Maur origin of the family, and had been granted the title of Earl St Maur in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. Ferdy was henceforth known as Lord St Maur.

  Father and sons were especially close. The Duke educated them personally for two hours every morning in his study. The elder boy revealed himself impatient of bookwork fairly soon; his was an adven­turous spirit, eager for a life of action, which in time demanded to be set free, and though his wanderings caused his parents much anxious worry, no attempt was made to smother his desires. Young Edward, on the other hand, took to study with undisguised joy. "How cheer­fully eager he looked, with a pen stuck behind his ear and a heap of books in his'arms, piled up and balanced under his chin, as he turned into my father's study, dragging the door after him with his foot", wrote Lady Guendolen.67 This picture relates to his thirteenth year. The Duke lavished devotion upon him.

  The brothers kept in touch when St Maur began his obsessive travels about the world in search of military activity. "His love of soldering is almost a madness", wrote Mary Smith to the Duchess.68 Martial ardour drove him to all parts of the globe, while his mother sat at home wondering where on earth he was, and his father sat in the Admiralty trying to conceal his embarrassment. He was arrested in Naples for bodily harm against someone he had picked an argu­ment with, sued for damages, and settled out of court.09 He turned up in the Far East, chasing a war, quite unperturbed by the perils of a strange climate. "You will make yourself miserable about dangers which in reality do not exist", he wrote in a vain attempt to placate the Duchess.70 The Duke let it be known he was "vexed", and wanted his son to return home. It fell upon the sixteen-year-old Lord Edward to speak sense to his older brother. "Gadding about the world", wrote Edward, "is nothing but a kind of intellectual dissipation which must end in intellectual sea-sickness and head­ache."71

  St Maur, restless and headstrong, would not be restrained. He wanted to cultivate experience, expose himself to foreign ways and views, fight battles. Glory was not his aim; it was far more complex than that. "Fame is the result of good fortune, not of real merit", he told Edward, "and no man of sense or independence should make that the object of his ambition."72 In time, having spent so much time in the east, St Maur was seduced by the eastern ways of thought, and began to write urging the contemplative life. Young Edward was scornful. He told his brother he "wrapped himself in cerulean clouds of aspirations, and thinks that 'wishing' is the highest action of the mind".73 So the boys grew steadily apart, St Maur becoming a friendless searcher after "the truth", shunning society, mixing with difficulty, a trifle farouche, and frankly admitting that he avoided English people abroad; Edward more gregarious, congenial, friendly, showing great promise of a bright future on sensible lines. He had wit, tenderness, and a highly gifted mind. At the age of eighteen, he was attache at the British Embassy in Vienna, and at nineteen in Madrid. He was in America during the Civil War, on which he wrote an article for Blackwood's Magazine.

  St Maur, meanwhile, found his way to India and volunteered to fight there in the relief of Lucknow. Headstrong as ever, he had to be restrained from throwing his life away. He was mentioned in des­patches for "a daring gallantry at a most critical moment", corro­borated by eyewitnesses who said he was as brave as a lion. This did little to comfort his parents, wondering where he would appear next. Under the name of Richard Sarsfield, he then joined Garibaldi's English volunteers in Italy, causing intense vexation to his father, still First Lord of the Admiralty. The Daily News was the first to spill the beans, with an eulogistic account of St Maur's courage and zeal. St Maur hastily wrote assuring his parents he did not wish to cause embarrassment. "My reason for not telling yourself or my mother of my intentions in coming here has been misunderstood. To leave you in complete ignorance of my movements was necessary in order to render you entirely irresponsible for my conduct."74

  Lord Edward's travels brought him to India (was he pursuing his brother?) and to the climax of this sad family rift. On 18th Decem­ber 1865 Edward was attacked by a bear in the Indian jungle. The bear had been wounded by an unexploded shell, and was crazed with pain. It seized Edward by the knee, the two rolled over and over together, until Edward managed to stab it. He was dragged to a jungle hospital, where he immediately wrote: "My dear Father, I write to you that you may tell my mother without startling her, that I have been bitten by a wounded bear. I hope the consequences may not be serious, but things do not look altogether well." An hour later he underwent an operation. The surgeons said that the only chance of saving his life was to amputate above the knee. Just before, weak­ening, he dictated a letter to his brother: "I have just decided to let them amputate this afternoon ... I shall return perforce to a purely literary life . . . Do marry, is the advice from your affectionate cripple."

  The following day, Lord Edward died from the effects of ampu­tation, in a state of delirium. He was twenty-four. The Duchess received a telegram at the Admiralty when the Duke had retired to bed. After waking and telling him, she wrote to St Maur. "Oh, Ferdy, don't quit the country or you'll kill me - I am keeping up for your sake . . . Your Father is terribly cast down and says he will never recover it, and I believe him poor man." The Duke's reaction to shock grew worse the next morning. The Duchess again wrote to her remaining son: "My only boy, my darling Ferdy, your Father is terribly depressed, all his plans, all his future utterly cast away . . . He seems doubtful of being able to keep with the Government, I should be sorry he had not some political duties to keep his mind occupied, as I think private life, when he is so depressed, will depress him still further... he walks up and down."

  In fact the Duke never did recover. The tragedy squashed his per­sonality, flattened his vigour. He retired from public life, never to return. The Seymour family might well have all joined him in despair had they known that this was only the beginning of their troubles.

  Lord St Maur, now the Duke's only son, escaped to Tangier, where he could indulge his brooding views on men and the world without giving offence. He set about learning Russian and Turkish, to add to the French, Spanish and German which he already spoke with fluency. He was more and more withdrawn from the society of men. "I think it is a pity", wrote Sir John Hay to the Duchess, "that a clever, vigorous mind
like his should be lost in this wilderness."76 His health was not good, however, due probably to the variety of odd diseases to which he had been exposed for years in the Far East, and he was obliged to return to England, where on 30th September 1869, he died suddenly of heart disease, with his mother beside him, at the age of thirty-four.

  The Duke of Somerset retreated into dumb grief. He had always been a gentle, pliant man, but now he was quite unable to resist the overwhelming distortion of character that wretchedness brings. For the rest of his life he was sullen and embittered. The dukedom would pass in turn to his two brothers and then to his nephew; this he could not prevent. But he made sure that precious little else went to them. His will was regarded as so infamous a document by the rest of the family that the memory of it is still fresh. To his daughter Hermoine (who married Sir Frederick Graham) he left the London house at 40 Park Lane with all contents; to his daughter Guendolen (who married Sir John Ramsden) he left Bulstrode Park, Bucks, with all contents; to his daughter Ulrica (who wed a Thynne) he left estates in Lincolnshire, Cambridge, and Norfolk, together with all books and linen to be found at the Duke of Somerset's ancestral home, Maiden Bradley. Estates in Wiltshire and Somerset he left to his sons-in-law. The clause of the will which caused most uproar was the bequest of all household linen, furniture, china, glass, household objects, prints, ornaments, books and manuscripts from Stover, the family home, on trust for two infants who were not even Symours. The names were Harold St Maur and Ruth St Maur, and they were to receive Stover and its contents, including the Hamilton treasures, when they grew up. Meanwhile, they were held in trust by the sons-in-law Lord Henry Thynne and Sir John Ramsden. The next Duke of Somerset received the title, the shell of property at Berry Pomeroy, the estate entailed with the title at Maiden Bradley, and its fixtures and fittings, and that was all. No wonder he appended his signature to that petulant document which hung on the wall while he was Duke. It reads:

  "The will of the 12th Duke of Somerset is misleading, in some cases untruthful, in others it appears to be an attempt to conceal the truth. He did not leave the Berry Pomeroy and Maiden Bradley estates to the 13th Duke, he has scraped and plundered both estates for many years. He sold part of the Maiden Bradley property, and he left various charges amounting to £50,000 on the remainder. The house has since been rebuilt. He left it a filthy ruin. The law enabled him to put aside his father's will; he barred the entail and when his sons died he claimed everything. But the pictures given to his mother for the Seymour family by his grand­father the 9th Duke of Hamilton, if legally, could not morally, could not honourably, belong to him.

  "The estates mentioned above have belonged to the Seymours some four hundred years. Besides the Hamilton there are other family pictures, presents from Kings and Princes, to the first wife of the 11th Duke [i.e. Charlotte Hamilton], Where are these pictures now? Who retains them? Or who has made away with them? The Duchess his mother said they would remain for ever treasures in the Seymour family. To gratify the low-born greedy beggar woman he would marry in opposition to his father, the 12th Duke has seized and made away with the land, the pictures, the miniatures, the plate, the prints, the linen, and the books. He was unable to make away with the title and he has left his succes­sors his Will; his Will remains, and must remain, a lasting monu­ment of infamy."

  Archibald Seymour, 13th Duke of Somerset

  The Sheridan Duchess, however "greedy" a beggar woman, was likewise thwarted by her husband's will, which left everything at Stover to these mysterious unknowns, Harold and Ruth. She caused a fraudulent photograph to be taken, showing her and her three daughters supposedly looking at the Hamilton pictures (the four figures have quite clearly been superimposed on the original photo­graph), and saying:

  I have worked hard for you, my dears, and I have succeeded. The Duke will seize, will claim everything, not a picture, not a print, not a book, not even a teaspoon will he leave to the Seymour family.

  Who were Harold and Ruth St Maur, who together with the sons- in-law, received the greater part of the Somerset inheritance? There is no mention of them in any of the peerage reference books. Yet the entire family knew very well who they were. The proverbial skeleton rattled so loudly in the cupboard that his bones can be heard tinkling today.

  Harold and Ruth were the illegitimate offspring of Lord St Maur, the 12th Duke's elder son and heir. St Maur was not one to toe the line where women and suitable marriages were concerned. He scorned such matters. But it was well known he had a roving eye. "You may rest assured I shall not marry and settle here", he had written to his sister from India. The truth was, he had already met and "married" in his own lights an illiterate girl from Gazely, Suffolk, called Rosa Elizabeth Swann. His Mohammedan beliefs would have scant regard for the Christian idea of marriage, so that there was probably no legal Christian ceremony. Rosa's father was a bricklayer, her mother the daughter of another bricklayer, and both had marked a cross for a signature on their marriage certificate. They were gypsies only so far as they moved wherever work was available. As for Rosa, sometimes called Rosina, very little is known, except that the Duke of Somerset's family kept her existence very dark. She was a pretty girl, even beautiful, with a continental sultriness quite unlike an English rose. St Maur dressed her up as a boy and took her to Italy with him when he fought for Garibaldi. Otherwise he kept her in Brighton. She bore him two children, Harold and Ruth, and after his death was set up secretly by the Somersets at a house at 74 Camberwell New Road, in South London. In the same house lived a French tutor, the son of a wine merchant, called Francois Tournier, who was in all probability provided by the Somersets as well. In due course Rosa and Tournier were married, on 14th September 1872.

  What happened to the infant love children, Harold and Ruth? They stood ultimately to gain more by their grandfather's will than anyone, which made them suddenly objects of interest. One of their father's sisters, Ulrica, at first took them in. She, however, was now married to a Svengali of a man, Lord Henry Thynne, son of the Marquess of Bath, a powerful man with a strong will and a hypnotic ability to impose it. Little inoffensive Ulrica went in some fear of him. Thynne saw the advantages of keeping control over the heirs. He was thwarted for a while. The Duke and Duchess took the infants out of his care and insisted on looking after them themselves. The Duke had completely retired into a sombre country existence, brooding in his library, with thought only for the children of his beloved son. Thynne bided his time.

  When the Duke died, the children were still minors, and by the terms of the will, still under the care of official guardians, one of whom was Henry Thynne. He promptly began to sell off the children's heritage.

  In 1890 there was a sale of paintings and other objects from the Stover collection, including Rubens, Lawrences, and Reynolds. These were what the Duke regarded as his "private" collection, in so far as they were not for the most part Seymour possessions, but Hamilton possessions inherited from his mother. It was his desire to consider them personal property to do with as he liked which caused all the rumpus with successive dukes and occasioned that bitter accusation from his brother that he had "made away" with the heirlooms. Any­way, Thynne now decided to sell the greater part of them, and to sell part of the Stover estate at the same time. Nobody has ever been able to discover why. Or where the proceeds of the sale went.*

  Harold St Maur came of age and began to wonder about his parents. Could they have been married? He spent much of his fortune and a good deal of time trying to track down a marriage certificate. Years passed without success, until one day a man turned up who said, yes, the Earl St Maur and Rosa Swann had been mar­ried, and he had moreover been a witness. Henry Thynne was alarmed. It would not serve his interest that Harold St Maur should be proved the rightful Duke of Somerset. The mysterious gentleman was hustled away, and later that year opened a shop in Torquay with money he did not have; it was all very suspect. Word got about that Thynne had seen to it the marriage certificate should be destroyed.

&nbs
p; Many years later there was another tantalising clue. As he lay dying in Algeria, Francois Tournier sent word to Harold that he had something of huge importance to tell him before it was too late. Harold did not go. Tournier, as Rosa's husband, no doubt knew everything there was to know about her. She herself had died at the age of twenty-three of tuberculosis in a French sanatorium (paid for by the Somersets). She had been allowed to wave goodbye to her children, but not to touch them. She would surely have confided in him, and may even have explained the mystery of her first "marriage".

  Harold St Maur lived handsomely at Stover while the then Duke and Duchess of Somerset scrambled around at Maiden Bradley for a knife and fork to eat with, sitting in a house stripped bare but for straw on the floor. Augustus Hare visited them there in 1897. "You know it is almost the only remnant the title possesses from the once vast Somerset estates. The 12th Duke left everything he possibly could away, and when the present Ehike and Duchess succeeded, they

  *Relations now think it more likely that Thynne was protecting Harold's in­terests. Harold squandered most of his money.