A Final Look at Louise Melissa Corbin Walpole; Part 1

Last summer I made a decision that I almost came to regret. The end of the story seemed the most tragic of all I'd done here. And today finally seems the time to finish with it.

I had decided to tackle the courtroom drama between Robert Horace Walpole, 5th and Final Earl of Orford, and Miss Valerie Wiedemann (sometimes spelled "Weidemann") regarding his alleged rape of her in Istanbul, and his claim that she was merely an adventuress looking for blackmail money after satisfying his lust. In fact, at the outset, I had intended to transcribe it ain its entirety to make it all searchable here. I wearily soon gave up on that.

It was somewhat related to our study of George Mills because Walpole, a man of questionable character despite the courts predictably coming down along his side of the argument when all was said and done. Both sides admitted what amounted to sexual contact, but whether that was consensual (and whether Walpoole afterwards had given her a signet ring and a promise of marriage) was in question. The precipitating events occurred in September 1882. [The entire unwieldy thread can be accessed by clicking HERE.]

Walpole, then the bachelor heir to the Earldom of Orford, later married American heiress Louise Melissa Corbin on 17 May 1888 at the English Embassy Church in Paris, France. Miss Corbin, daughter of multi-millionaire capitalist and railroad magnate D. C. Corbin of the northwestern United States, was raised by her mother, Louisa Corbin, an eternally sickly (or perhaps hypochondriacal) 'hothouse orchid' of a woman who raised her children, including Louise, in and around the great spas of Europe. Young Louise, presumably in line for a large inheritance from her elderly father (a man she actually barely knew) and twelve years Walpole's junior, must have been quite a catch for Robert (whose landed family was in need of a great influx of cash), and the engagement was written up in a December 1887 supplement of LIFE magazine.

LIFE also published a picture of the young Louise [right; click to enlarge]—an action that would carry tragic consequences.

Wiedemann, then in England, serving as a governess and still trying unsuccessfully to contact Walpole about his alleged promise to her (and to his illegitimate child), saw the photograph of the heiress in the periodical and apparently snapped.

Walpole v. Wiedemann became a scandalous staple for readers in Great Britain and around the world during three sensational, lurid, and always surprising trials from 1888 through 1891. Of the sheltered Louise and that published image, I wrote last year: "[Louise had] gone from eligible society girl to the public target of her new husband's crazed ex-lover. She'd heard from the seemingly unstable German ex-governess, 'You know that I must curse you from the bottom of my heart, and that I do so, and shall do so in all eternity for the endless suffering you have brought over me, and also, you run away whenever I come. I shall meet you once, and you shall hear my curse.' That couldn't possibly have sat very well with young Louise, likely still dreaming of marital bliss at that point."


What couldn't have helped matters was the trial returned to popular discourse another Victorian sex scandal, one involving Walpole's uncle, Horatio Walpole, who had run off with a friend's mentally unstable wife and fathered an illegitimate child around 1850.

Three Walpole v. Wiedemann trials occurred, as well as numerous appeals. Weiedemann was left a beggar (who oddly appears of no UK census, during the 1891 trial or after), portrayed in the press as driven mad and still trying to raise money for a 4th day in court and justice.

Louise had not weathered the embarrassment of the scandals and the threats very well, to say the least.

During the sequence of trials, she gave birth to the couple's first child, a daughter, Dorothy Rachel Melissa Walpole (who would later become Lady Dorothy Mills) on 11 March 1889 in Kensington, London, England.

Soon after, the following item appeared in the The Pullman [Washington] Herald reported on 13 April, 1889, "From the time her child was born Mrs. Robert Horace Walpole, formerly Miss Louise Corbin of New York, has been very ill, and her friends fear that she can not recover. Since the scandal between her husband and Miss Wieldman [sic] was exposed in court a few months ago she has been very nervous and in depressed spirits. Mr. Walpole is heir to the Earldom of Oxford [sic]."

The frightening words there, in the hometown newspaper of D.C. Corbin, are: "...her friends fear she cannot recover."


During the course of the many trials, Louise—who had survived that scare back in 1889, after attending and hearing much of the distressing testimony while she was pregnant—once again became pregnant with a child who would hopefully become Walpole's own subsequent heir to the Earldom of Orford. Louise gave birth to a son, Horatio Corbin Walpole, on 9 January 1891. Little Horatio likely would have been conceived in May of 1890, between the appeal of the first Wiedemann v. Walpole trial in April and the onset of the second trial in June 1890…

There is no public record of the details of Horatio's birth or christening, and whether or not he was a healthy infant. However... young Horatio died on 20 May 1893, suddenly leaving Robert Horace Walpole without a male heir—something that would become a real problem for him in the future [The statue of Horatio at his tomb is seen, left; click to enlarge].

From the 8 December 1894 edition of the Toronto Daily Mail, hower, came better 'family' news for Robert Walpole: "London, Dec. 7.—The sudden death of the Earl of Orford is announced. He will be succeeded by his nephew, Robert Horace Walpole, who in 1888 married Miss Louise Melissa Corbin, of New York. The succession to the Earldom of Orford recalls the suit for breach of promise brought against the new Earl by a German governess of Constantinople prior to his marriage to Miss Corbin."


While the 4th Earl's passing (and the sale of his estate, especiually his collection of rare books) brought the new Lord Orford an immediate influx of cash, it still reminded everyone of the costly and scandalous trials—something that must have eaten at Louise, still mourning the passing of her son, Horatio.

We'll soon see that, in 1894, Lousie did not seem to have been in the best of spirits.

But, come 1905, we find an article entitled "Ladies' Gossip" from the Otago [N. Z.] Witness on 15 February 1905, which contains this description: "The present peer [Walpole] met his bride in Paris when she was Miss Louise Melissa Corbin, daughter of a well-known railway king of New York [sic], and after their marriage the couple lived very quietly in a little house at Waybourne [also Weybourne and Waborne], when Mr Walpole's duties as a sub-lieutenant in the Navy did not call him elsewhere. When he succeeded to the title, he went globe trotting with his wife and visited Japan, Ceylon, the West Indies, and America. In Florida they took to tarpon fishing with notable success, to which a 183-pounder, stuffed and varnished, which adorns the staircase at Mannington Hall, bears mute testimony. It was on the strength of this and other achievements that the Earl and Countess were asked to write on tarpon fishing for the Badminton Library."


Things seem to have settled down for Robert and Louise in the intervening decade. A time in the couple's life during which Walpole was embroiled in an embarrassing sexual scandal and the papers blared his family's name constantly was, by 1905, summed up entirely as having lived "very quietly in a little house," and his departures in association with those frequent court appearances he made became carrying out his "duties as a sub-lieutenant in the Navy"—which Walpole indeed was when he encountered Wiedemann during his time of indiscretion.

In fact, the June 1905 edition of Ainslee's (Vol. XV, No. 5), describes that "little house" in greater detail: "Lady Orford—who was Miss Corbin—lives at Waborne Hall, her husband’s magnificent Georgian place in Norfolk. There she gives shooting parties, from there she goes with her husband and pretty young daughter to fish in Scotland and Norway, and the chief interest that brings her up to London is her taste for music and the opera, which, she declares, is the only pleasure that one cannot gratify out of town."

A quiet life in a little house, indeed!


Two weeks later, The Bruce [N.Z.] Herald ran a story on 28 February [Huitanguru] 1905 on Robert Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford [spelled "Oxford" in the article, entitled "The Earl of Oxford"]: "The Earl of Oxford [sic], who has had his Georgian mansion, Wolterton Hall [right], built by Ripley for Sir Horace Walpole, thoroughly modernised from cellar to attic, is a peer who has had many stirring adventures in his half-century of life…

In 1888 he married Miss Louise Corbin, the daughter of the famous American railroad magnate, who, sharing to the full his adventurous spirit, has accompanied him on all his world-wide travels and helped him shoot big game in all parts of the earth."

Lady Dorothy Mills had accompanied her mother and father on these extensive, and likely expensive, trips.


1905 was a year in which the Countess, Louise, was for some reason in the public eye. It is unlikely, however, that she had wanted the attention. We can determine that from this item in the 15 December 1905 edition of the Otago [N. Z.] Witness: "The Countess of Orford, although her portrait is rarely seen in any illustrated paper, is one of the most interesting Anglo-American peeresses. Her sporting record is quite exceptional, and, together with her husband—now the head of the Walpole family—she has traveled in search of sport in many little-known countries, and she is one of the few women who have enjoyed the excitement of tarpon fishing, Lord Orford's favourite outdoor amusement."


While all seems quite rosy in this glamourous marriage of an American heiress to an adventurous peer, the phrase, "her portrait is rarely seen in any illustrated paper," jumps out as one that still is dripping with the pain of the trails, and Valerie Wiedemann's threats of a "curse" after Louise's portrait ran in LIFE magazine.

Despite Walpole's adventurous lifestyle, Corbin had not provided the influx of cash that the family felt it needed, except after the death of his uncle, the Earl, and that seems to have been quickly spent. In fact, Corbin seemed to distrust, or at least dislike, Walpole completely. From historylink.org we discover: "When D. C. Corbin died in 1918, he left to that branch of the family only a trust fund for his granddaughter [that would be Lady Dorothy] from which she could not draw income until the death of her father, the earl. In the meantime, Lord Orford’s diary makes it clear that, during his marriage, little money had been forthcoming from his rich American father-in-law."

The elder Corbin, in fact, would outlive his daughter, Louise, by nine years.


Louise Melissa Corbin Walpole passed away on 4 May 1909. From a special cable from London to the New York, the Times ran this headline: "COUNTESS OF ORFORD DROPS DEAD IN HOME; Niece of Austin Corbin Collapses While Preparing for a Motor Trip. WAS WELL KNOWN HERE Visited New York Nearly Every Year and Was Interested in Fishing, Shooting, and Other Sports."

Sickness, we see, still had been stalking Louise. The New York Times article goes on to state: "The Countess of Orford (nee Corbin) died to-day with tragic suddenness at her home in Wolterton Park, Norfolk. She had been ill for several days, but the indisposition was so slight that she had arranged to go motoring this afternoon."


The 5 May 1905 New York Sun reported [below, right]: "She had been indisposed for several days, but her condition did not seem in any way serious. She was dressing for an automobile ride when she collapsed. Her maid summoned her daughter Dorothy, who reached the room just before her mother died. The Earl of Orford, who was in London, hastened with all speed to Wolterton Park when he heard the sad news."

This is far more coverage than the scant 50 or so words run by the London Times for her obituary. The headline by itslef in the New York Times, by comparison, was 36 words long. It should be mentioned that the family was not from and did not live in New York City, although that was often written.


Louise Melissa Corbin Walpole seems to me to be an exceptionally tragic figure in our research regarding George Mills and his family. She never would have met George, having passed away in Norfolk while he was a child, likely at school in Parkfield at Haywards Heath. Her daughter, Dorothy, would become a popular and prolific author, but Dorothy's biography only mentions Louise once, in passing, unnamed. We have no idea what, if any, were Louise's last words.

Still, her impact on her daughter, Dorothy, who would be disowned by her father and family by choosing to marry George's brother, Arthur Frederick Hobart Mills, for love and not money, would carry over into her relations with the Mills family.

Louise clearly had known what it was like to have married without love having been the major factor—and she must have been disappointed almost immediately with the life she and Robert Walpole led, despite all of the "globe trotting" and estates. Walpole hungered not only for revenue streams, but also for an heir that Louise was unable to provide. This must have been a source of some friction, or at least resentment, in the marriage, and none of this would have been lost on a girl with so keen a mind as young Dorothy.


We'll end here, but next time we'll consider the impact that Louise had on her daughter, and how that legacy played out in her relations with the Mills family... and her own.

A Quick Summary of Events, re: Walpole...

I leave it to you to discern how much of an impact that the lengthy travails of the Hon. Robert Horace Walpole must have had on his wife and family.

Walpole had dealt with Valerie Wiedemann, the German governess he had seduced in Istanbul and "shacked up with" for a short time in a local hotel, for some time discreetly. He'd had a private investigator lead Wiedemann, who had from all accounts borne a child of their brief relationship, on a merry chase around Europe in hopes of losing her, while she thought she was being brought to him. All the while, she kept a signet ring of his, a token she claimed was a gift and promise from him of his commitment to their future happiness in wedlock.

When Walpole was finally engaged to Louise Melissa Corbin, a daughter of multi-millionaire industrial magnate D. C. Corbin of Sokane, Washington, in the United States, her photograph [above, right] was published in Life magazine. Seeing this, Wiedemann started stalking and harassing Miss Corbin—behavior justifiable in her own mind.

Her sad case was taken up by local newspapers, notably the Pall Mall Gazette, and Walpole was dragged through three scandalous trials. He married Corbin on 17 May 1888, and the lengthy proceedings began by November of that same year—a short honeymoon for the couple, indeed.

You may recall the text an article from the Pullman [Washington] Herald dated 13 April 1889: From the time her child was born Mrs. Robert Horace Walpole, formerly Miss Louise Corbin of New York, has been very ill and her friends fear she cannot recover. Since the scandal between her husband and Miss Wieldman [sic] was exposed in court a few months ago she has been very nervous and in depressed spirits. Mr. Walpole is heir to the Earldom of Oxford.

No, Louise was not taking the scandal very well at all. What the above text doesn't relate is that Louise was post partum, having given birth to a daughter, Dorothy Rachel Melissa Walpole on 11 March 1889 in Kensington, London. Assuming the pregnancy to have been full term, the legal wrangling with Valerie Wiedemann would have begun when Louise had been with child for three months.

During the course of the trial, Louise—who had survived that scare back in 1889—once again became pregnant with a child who would hopefully become Walpole's own heir to the Earldom of Orford. Louise gave birth to Horatio Corbin Walpole on 9 January 1891. Little Horatio likely would have been conceived in May of 1890, between the appeal of the first Wiedemann v. Walpole trial in April and the onset of the second trial in June 1890.

Louise endured the anxiety and stress of that second trial during the first trimester of her pregnancy. She may not have, in fact, known during the June 1891 trial that she was, indeed, enceinte.

There is no public record of the details of Horatio's birth, and whether or not he was a healthy infant. However, Walpole's heir, young Horatio, died on 20 May 1893, suddenly leaving Robert Horace Walpole without a male heir—something that would become a real problem for him in the future. [Horatio's tomb is depicted at left.]

Instead, he had only a daughter remaining—the future Lady Dorothy Mills—and a wife, Louise, whom one can easily assume was still eroded and ailing afterthree years of scandal, trials, and embarrassment, estrangement from her father (a man who quite obviously disliked and disapproved of Walpole) and the death of her younger child.

Once the third and final trial was completed, what became to Valerie Wiedemann and her case against Walpole?

What did the future have in store for Louise Corbin Walpole and a her young daughter, Lady Dororthy Walpole?

We'll examine the answers to those questions in due time. Meanwhile, keep checking back at Who Is George Mills?, where we'll soon welcome our 6000th international visitor!

"I never knew what real happiness was until I got married. And by then it was too late" -- Max Kauffman

With so many entries of late revolving around subjects of war and the military, let's divert ourselves and attend a wedding!

The London Times of 9 June 1916 proclaimed, in a column called 'Forthcoming Marriages' that "A marriage has been arranged, and will take place on Thursday, the 22nd inst., at St. Paul's, Knightsbridge, at 12:45, between Capt. Arthur Hobart Mills, D.C.L.I, elder son of Rev. Barton R. V. Mills, 38, Onslow-gardens, and the late Lady Catherine Mills, and nephew of the Earl of Buckinghamshire, and Lady Dorothy Walpole, only daughter of the Earl of Orford. No invitations will be issued, but friends are very welcome at the church. Lady Dorothy is staying at 13, Grosvenor-place."

The Earl of Orford, Robert Walpole, was a widower at this time and had no heir to the Earldom. He and his daughter, Dorothy Rachel Melissa Walpole, have traveled the world fishing and adventuring in exotic locales.

In her autobiography, A Different Drummer: Chapters in Autobiography [Duckworth: 1930], Lady Dorothy Mills writes of the years before her engagement:

Halfway through my teens, the inevitability of me had become apparent, life changed. "Tom-boyish-ness" was discouraged, and it was subtly instilled in me that I had a part to play in the world. Slowly the beauty of my heritage began to dawn on me, the pride of prospective possession, and with grew also the realization that I was but a cog in a great machine, the juggernaut of Family Tradition. My looks and my accomplishments were dealt with, I was in general tidied up, and at eighteen I "came out." For awhile the world seemed to be mine to play with. I adored it all, the frocks, the parties, the dancing, the flirtations, the young men who sweated under the collar when they proposed and whom I had no intention of marrying, though I knew that some day I would have to make a "good match," a prospect that I classed alongside a visit to the dentist.

Lady Dorothy's father thought he had made a "good match" in 1888, marrying Louise Melissa Corbin, daughter of multi-millionaire American magnate D. C. Corbin [right] of Spokane, Washington, in Paris. Louise, 21, was 12 years younger than Walpole and would soon become mistress of the Mannington and Wollerton estates, both of which were desperately in need of repair. Her father was 56, and the Earl would have expected Louise to easily outlive the elder Corbin, anticipating a tidy inheritance.

Louise, however, died in 1900, leaving Walpole with only a daughter, Lady Dorothy, after a son, Horatio Corbin Walpole, born in 1891, died on 20 May 1893. According to historylink.org, during Louise's life, D. C. Corbin "visited Lord and Lady Orford at their country estates and townhouse in London, where he gave his daughter a box at the opera, among other things." However, they also reveal that "Lord Orford’s diary makes it clear that, during his marriage, little money had been forthcoming from his rich American father-in-law."

Supporting multiple estates [Mannington Hall is pictured, left], a townhouse in London, a hunting lodge in Devon, and frequently traveling around the world in search of fishing thrills, the Earl of Orford was naturally cash-starved. As it turned out, the only beneficiary of D. C. Corbin's 1918 death in his family was Lady Dorothy, and Corbin had an iron-clad stipulation that she could not claim her inheritance until after the death of her father, the Earl. It seems that Corbin was making certain that the spendthrift Earl was not going to get any of his money, ever!

So, when one reads of a "good match" in Lady Dorothy's autobiography, one can be sure that it means a match that came with money that could be channeled the Earl's way.

Her bitterness over that very real situation becomes far more clear in the next section, almost ten years after her "coming out" into society. Lady Dorothy continues:

Then in due course I fell in love, with a young man possessing most of the world's assets except money. But that "Except" had a capital "E." It was the one unforgivable sin, and was visited with everything old-fashioned and unpleasant that nothing but the Inquisition or an old-fashioned family could have devised. Marriage or disinheritance, that was the choice that lay before me, complicated by the advent of the Great War.

Wouldn't the choice have been 'marriage or inheritance'? Anyway, it's easy to see that the Walpoles were apparently less than thrilled with her choice: The nephew of the Earl of Buckinghamshire, true, but in reality a mere captain in the infantry.

Did captains in the infantry—a segment of the military where men have frequently been disposable pawns in a war—make far less than captains in other areas of the Army? If Mills had been a Royal Engineer, cavalry, or artillery, I feel certain he could have made enough to support himself and wife. As we already know, however, Mills was seemingly unable, even as a captain, to make enough money to support a wife at home during the First World War.

More from Lady Dorothy as her plans progressed:

In 1916 I got married after a three years' family warfare; warfare that one might say ended in a draw, in that on the one hand I had done what I intended, on the other that I was cast into utter darkness, to become the Outlier I have ever since remained. I had no trousseau, we had no prospects and no money, scarcely enough even to pay for the wedding celebrations. For though everyone advised a registry office, I decided on a church wedding, and a fashionable one too, that should be, if needs must, my last defiance to a sceptical world. I was the first London bride to wear a gold wedding dress, and incidentally, that bit of gold brocade was to be the last evening frock, except of my own making, that I was to know for several years, until finally it was turned economically into a sofa cushion!

I had never arranged a wedding before and had no one to help me, and I learnt then that arranging a fashionable wedding is harder work than running an African safari. I was so tired when the moment came to walk up the aisle of the church that the flowers and the people and the strains of sweet music seemed to whirl about me in a mist. But the wedding was well worth the trouble it gave me, and the money it cost that we hadn't got, for it proved that even an Outlier has friends and wellwishers angelic in their kindness and goodwill.

One thing we can probably assume is that there was no help forthcoming from the Mills family. Arthur's mother, Lady Catherine, had passed away during the previous century when Arthur was just two years old. Rev. Barton R. V. Mills, Arthur's father, had been married to Edith Ramsay since 1894, over 20 years, and had three children with her. They lived close to Edith's mother and father in Kensington, and the family must have been, after 22 years, very Ramsay-centric.

Include the fact that Barton and Edith, realizing they had their own daughters, Agnes and Violet, aged 21 and 14 in 1916, were likely anticipating the expense of two weddings of their own in the very near future. Given that, the idea of springing for an additional wedding, and that for a Lady of the Earldom of Orford, whose own landed family was against an alignment with their son, Arthur, made the prospects of much help from the Mills quite small.

Still, although it subtracted any of Arthur's savings and put the fledgling couple in debt, Lady Dorothy had her grand wedding. Lady Dorothy, according to the Times, "wore a short dress of white and gold chiffon brocade, the bridal veil falling from a wreath of gold leaves, and carried a bouquet of white orchids."

The bride was given away by Sir Mortimer Margesson, Arthur's uncle, who had married his Arthur's mother's sister, Isabella Augusta. The Times also carried an abridged roster of what were termed "invited guests": "The Earl and Countess of Buckinghamshire, the Earl and Countess of Dundonald, the Earl and Countess of Kimberly, the Countess of Roden, Viscountess Campden, Lady Albinia Donaldson, Lady Vere Hughes, Mr. and Lady Isabel Margesson, Lord and Lady Hollenden, Lord and Lady Mostyn, Lady Lawrence and Miss Lawrence, Lady Maxwell, Catherine Lady Decles, Sir Thomas Acland, Sir Edward and Lady Stracey, Sir George and Lady Cooper, Lady Dixon Hurtland, and Colonel and Mrs. Horace Walpole."

Invitations, it seems, had been delivered to some quests after all. It is odd among London wedding pieces of the era not to have named the bride's attendants. After all, Lady Dorothy herself had been listed in the Times as a bridesmaid at a good many weddings earlier in the decade. Was the rift with her family something that caused the Times to reduce coverage of the affair? Or was the dearth of coverage of these nuptials orchestrated by Lady Dorothy herself—a woman who knew exactly what she wanted out of this wedding, far beyond merely acquiring a husband.

In closing, the article on the wedding adds: "Captain Arthur Acland, of the bridegroom's regiment, was the best man." Not only was Arthur Frederick Hobart Mills nine year older than his half-brother, George Mills, and hence they were probably not close, but it's likely that George, having enlisted in the Army Reserves on 15 January 1916, was already at the Rifle Depot by 22 June, not at St. Paul's [pictured, right]. An Acland family relative and fellow soldier stood up for Arthur instead.

Having now read quite a few early 20th century wedding pieces in the London Times, I can't say there have been many—if any—in which the living parents and siblings of a bride or groom, being in attendance, were not mentioned. Is it possible that Rev. Mills, his wife, Edith, and Arthur's step-sisters Agnes and Violet, were either uninvited or chose not to attend? Or was this short article manipulated to be a shot across the proverbial bow of the Walpole family, showing them clearly that Arthur and Dorothy's angelic "friends and wellwishers" were still extremely gentrified, despite her "disinheritance."

Let's take a few more moments to peek into the life of our newlyweds, now setting sail on the seas of marital bliss, already in debt:

That first year of marriage was my first taste of the economic problem. I had no knowledge of house-keeping in any shape or form, I knew nothing of petty household and personal economies and makeshifts, I had never before learnt to do my own hair without a maid, or how to mend holes in my stockings, and my first attempt to lace up my own boots gave me a headache and intense desire to cry. In fact, never had there been such a useless young creature, till necessity turned me into a very fair Jack-of-all-trades.

Forgive me my inclination to just smack this 27-year-old who'd never done her own hair or laced her own boots right upside the head!

She continues:

The war was to take its toll of us, and my husband of a year who had already been severely wounded in France, went out to serve in the Palestine campaign. Those were grim months of privation, of financial worry, of work and grinding anxiety in a world where nothing seemed stable, where the future did not bear dwelling on. Again my general uselessness in all vital things became apparent to me. Other young women were doing heroic things at home and in France; my purely decorative upbringing and my various accomplishments had taught me little that could be useful under the existing conditions. I worked at the East End of London [pictured, left and right] until my health gave out, I hammered ineffectually at a typewriter, I served in a war shop. I was of little use, I am afraid, but I learnt a good deal. And in the evenings, when the bulletins were more reassuring, I mingled with the unhappy, hectic crowd, that in dancing and noise tried to kill an ever-present gnawing anxiety. Much has been said about those war parties, but I learnt then that often they were the ultimate buffer against despair, a safety valve from recklessness and suicide.

One wonders how much of that last sentence actually is autobiographical, despite the fact that I believe it must have been intended to be written as a description of the parties and their effects on others, not as anything personal. If one reads the rest of the book, it's obvious that the former is Lady Dorothy's 'style.' Still, I think in the gravity of that last sentence, something personal, indeed, leaked from her. Is it possible that she was already regretting, if not her indebtedness regarding the cost of her wedding, then even having married Arthur at all, the marriage costing her a lifestyle that she simply couldn't afford to replace.

Lady Dorothy is soon out at night after working all day, attending parties that she later wrote about, and that she admitted gained her "temporarily the reputation of a dope-addict." She's doing her own hair, lacing her own boots, and house-keeping, all while Arthur is away in Palestine, leaving the poor thing to fend for herself. "Privation," though, seems too strong word in this case.

A charitable sort, Lady Dorothy, while she was still a Walpole, had donated a few quid now and then to The Times Fund, organized on behalf of the British Red Cross and the Order of St. John. Less than a year after her wedding, according to the 21 April 1917 edition of the Times, Dorothy was still able to come up with £4 for the Fund. Oddly, though, it is recorded in The Times as having been given, quite exactly, by "Lady Dorothy Walpole, Naples (Further contribution)." All of her previous giving also had included the tag line "further contribution." What's interesting here isn't that she was still charitable while in the midst of her "economic problem," or that she actually had £4 to send—"The City Land Syndicate, Ltd." only came up with the sum of £3 3s., for example.

No, what's interesting to me is the word "Naples." A quick check of Google Maps reveals that there is no "Naples" in England, and one would assume if it was Naples, Florida, the name of the American state would have been added. It seems to me that, in a newspaper from a European country like England, Naples means Naples… Napoli… in Italy, on shores of the beautiful Tyrrhenian Sea [left].

This couldn't have been Lady Dorothy Nevill (née Walpole), who had passed away back in 1913. This has to be our "Lady Dorothy," mailing in her latest contribution from her "economic problem" that she was obviously suffering there on the Italian coast. [Naples was attacked later during WWI, by zeppelin in August 1917. I find it odd that this wasn't mentioned by Lady Dorothy anywhere in her memoirs—either having experienced it, or having departed in time and just missing it!]

We read above that Lady D. "worked at the East End of London until [her] health gave out." Later, she "hammered ineffectually at a typewriter, [and] served in a war shop." What we don't know is what she did in the intervening time between her ill-health and the war shop. Where, exactly, had she been banging those typewriter keys, and when?

I do understand that physicians at the time often prescribed rest and a foreign clime for their patients, but I was under the impression that it was prescribed mainly to those who could afford it, not those suffering from "financial worry" and "privation." One wonders, could it have been Barton and Edith Mills who came up with the money for a rejuvenating trip to the Mediterranean for their new daughter-in-law? Arthur's uncle, Sidney Carr Hobart-Hampden-Mercer-Henderson, 7th Earl of Buckinghamshire? Sir Mortimer? Colonel and Mrs. Horace Walpole, the only Walpole wedding invitees?

One suspects that it may have been none of the above. The cynic in me whispers that the "economic problems" and "privations" have been exaggerated, if not actually fabricated, to make Lady Dorothy's life—circa October 1930, the publication date of A Different Drummer—more remarkable, and perhaps more saleable: "Poor little rich girl overcomes the odds and makes good on her own…" After all, there was this book, and hopefully many others, still to sell! A dose of the Gothic novel—a disinherited girl, East End dangers, ill-health, a handsome soldier, riches to rags to riches—couldn't hurt sales, eh?

One could suspect that Dororthy [pictured, right], feeling unhealthy, and following 'doctor's orders,' recuperated in the sun and sea breezes of Naples, not at her flat in London as she implies. And one could suspect that she paid for it out of her own [and/or Arthur's] pocket.

Again, much of this makes me feel as if A Different Drummer is far less an autobiography and more of the publishing version of a legendary singer coming out with yet another new "greatest hits" album, with some songs now recorded live on tour, along with a couple of previously unreleased tracks. James Taylor has made a decade of doing just that. Regarding Lady Dorothy's self-told story, there's not much new there. It really does seem a case of repackaging the old and calling it new, except for adding the thread of a 'backstory' that makes the saga of Lady Dorothy far more melodramatic.

The events of the wedding… The partial guest list… What the bride wore… The identity of the best man…

These things we know pretty much as facts [according to the Times]. Much of the rest is open to speculation—even the events recorded in Lady Dorothy's anything-but-revealing autobiography.

Have you any speculation, information, or ideas? Have you noticed an important detail I've overlooked?

Please let me know—and thanks!