Louise and Dorothy Rachel Melissa Walpole; Part 2

In her autobiography, A Different Drummer: Chapters in Autobiography [Duckworth: 1930], Lady Dorothy Mills writes of her youthful years before her engagement to Arthur Mills, brother of George Mills:

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 it 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.

She continues:

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!


Lady Dorothy was disowned by her family, unwilling to play her expected familial (and financial) role by selecting a suitable bridegroom with the money necessary for admittance into the Earldom. It would be uncanny to me if part of her independent spirit was not, in fact, due to beliefs about family, love, and marriage passed along by Louise Corbin Walpole, directly or indirectly, from the time Dorothy had attended the rancorous Wiedemann trial within her mother's womb, through having been raised under the cloud of the scandal, the tragedy of the death of her brother (the family's much-needed heir), and a bevy of burdensome expectations.

Louise and Dorothy, even if it never had been uttered aloud, had to have known they were disappointments to her father, Robert Horace Walpole, 5th and Final Earl of Orford. Louise, saddled with ill-health and anguish stemming from the scandal and the death of a child, bore up well (as a Walpole should) and eventually became a noted 'globe trotter.' Dorothy, however, eventually chafed under her own set of external expectations and the need to keep up appearances, perhaps even in tribute to her late mother.

Was there a curse bestowed upon the family by the vindictive Fraulein Valerie Wiedemann? Walpole died alone in New Zealand nursing home, far from his family's estates, the Earldom having become extinct with his passing when he was unable to produce an heir. He never got any of wealth of afther-in-law D. C. Corbin: Lady Dorothy collected an inheritance from her distant grandfather only after the passing of her estranged father, the Earl.

Louise passed away at the age 42, the result of a seemingly inconsequential "indisposition" after years of unhappiness, which included with a phobia of having her picture appear in public.

Lady Dorothy slowly estranged herself from her husband, Arthur, and his family as well—neither Dorothy nor Arthur, for example, attended brother George's 1925 wedding although they lived only a few city blocks away—becoming a world traveller and explorer who fascinated society by doing it all without dragging husband Arthur along. She openly wrote of what little need she actually had for him, in addition to the amusing romantic entanglements that arose during her adventures, none of which, according to her, ever came to fruition.

At the height of her career, Dorothy was seriously injured in a car accident in 1929 and never fully recovered. She managed a subsequent trip along the Orinoco, about which she wrote a book that was published in 1931. She also was planning a trip to the Middle East when her father passed away in 1932, allowing her access to the trust fund that had been waiting for her since her grandfather Corbin's passing in 1918.

In that same year, 1932, she filed for divorce from Arthur on the grounds of his adultery. Arthur, like her own flirtatious father, would never see a penny of her American inhertitance.

Lady Dorothy never wrote another book, although she continued to publish the occasional sensational article about her adventures in newspapers in the United States and elsewhere througn the 1930s, just as she had always done. She was soon largely forgotten.

She retired to Brighton, where she lived in a seafront hotel until her passing in 1959. She never remarried and remained childless.

A curse, perhaps? It seems she got what she wanted, and always on her own terms.

Her life, as she packaged and sold it to readers, was both legend and myth [above, left, an illustration that accompanied a wire service story she wrote in 1922 about her real-life adventures]. One wonders, though, if it all made her content with her own life in reality.

The most telling photograph of her mother, Louise Corbin, throughout this entire tragic tale is one I recently found in, oddly, the Badminton Library's 1895 edition of Sea Fishing, a book of which it had been implied by the press that Lord and Lady Orford had been the authors.

Almost expectedly, as was the case virtually with all of the exaggerations that had been published as facts about the Orfords in 1905 (we read about them last time), Robert and Louise Walpole actually are not listed among the main writers of the text: The main author was John Bickerdyke, but the section entitled "Tarpon" is credited to Alfred C. Harmsworth.

That section begins on page 445 of the text, and is fully titled "Tarpon Fishing in the Gulf of Mexico."

On page 448, Harmsworth writes: "Among the most successful tarpon anglers are the Lord and Lady Orford. Lady Orford is probably the only woman in the world who has killed two in one day. Her best fish was 128 lbs. Lord Orford has killed one weighing 183 lbs., the fifth largest known tarpon at the time of the writing.

He has kindly furnished me with some notes of his experiences during his visit in 1894. He says, after remarking that few tarpon fishers agree as to the details of the sport, and that every man has his own theory on the subject:

Our first attempts at tarpon fishing were at Punta Gorda, but we had no luck, and I do not think well of the place from an angling point of view. About the middle of April we went to Fort Myers, and there my wife and I killed seventeen fish, my best 183 lbs, smallest 75 lbs. I have presented one weighing 150 lbs. to the Norwich Museum, and am keeping my 183-pounder and Lady Orford's 106-pounder. There can be no doubt in my opinion that the tarpon, as a fish, is quite as game as the salmon."

After several paragraphs of discussion of the actual catching, reeling in, and killing of the fish, Walpole adds: "One has many slips while tarpon fishing and it should never be forgotten that the slightest check can be fatal to one's chance of killing. One of my fish (it had only fouled the trace by getting it under its scissor jaw) took three hours to kill."

Harmsworth adds a few lines about the difference between tarpon and salmon fishing, but Walpole sums it up this way: "Of course there is not the pretty scenery, the casting, and the same amount of knowledge of where fish are to be found that makes salmon angling so delightful. Nevertheless, tarpon fishing is a magnificent sport, and I wonder that more Englishmen do not take to it."

Right off the bat, I'll say that I love Punta Gorda, far more than Walpole ever could have—my parents lived there for some 25 years after my father retired!

Secondly, what's interesting is what's written about Lady Orford: "…probably the only woman in the world who has killed two in one day."

That brings us to the point here: The somber photograph seen adjacent to this text. It is taken from page 447 of the book, and depicts a woman standing between two tarpon, strung up after the catch.

Now, I've seen this sort of trophy photograph before, and the angler usually is smiling ear to ear, reflecting pride and determination, or both.

Here we see what is ostensibly an anonymous "angler and her catch," but it is clearly Louise Walpole posed between her 106- and 128-pounders. Don't forget, she very much preferred not to have her photograph displayed in public, hence the attempt at anonymity. And Lord Orford probably probably provided it as well as very correctly feeling that, despite the very open clue in the text, the vengeful Valerie Wiedemann, one-time stylish German governess and current debt-ridden madwoman, was unlikely to be reading deep into a tome about the fishing habits of rich Englishmen.

The utter neutrality of Louise's face is stunning. I can make out no pride in her catch, and certainly no joy. In fact, beyond the distinctly neutral expression seemingy encompassing her entire face, there seems to also have been a touch of sadness, or perhaps resignation, in her eyes.

We saw a hint of ominous melancholy in her LIFE magazine photograph above as well.

One occasionally sees a similar vacant expression in a criminal's mug shot, by a grave site after the funeral, or perhaps in a pensive moment, when a person is alone and and solemnly contemplative. One would not associate this woman's face with the exhilaration of this sport—described here as making the "kill"—as well as having earned the distinction of becoming the first woman to bring two of these magnificent creatures to their demise at one time.

One also must consider the idea that it was likely Lord Orford's description of his bride's enthusiasm for tarpon fishing that we've read about all along, not her own.

That notion is corroborated in the June 1905 issue of Ainslee's magazine (Vol. XV, No. 5), in whch the author, Lady Willshire, describes the renowned outdoorswoman, Louise Corbin Walpole (Lady Orford), who we know throws popular shooting parties in Norfolk: "Next after music, sport—fishing most especially—engages her particular interest. Though she rarely goes out with the guns, her husband declares she is a capital shot, and that she could and would ride to hounds with the most daring of our fox-hunting peeresses."

This is a woman who suffered a great deal during a life that ended all too soon. Making that publicly apparent, however, would have been out of the question, as we can can read above and observe in her seemingly noble bearing in an image she [or Lord Orford] did allow to be published. As Lady Dorothy wrote above, "[Walpoles] had a part to play in the world... [as] a cog in a great machine, the juggernaut of Family Tradition."

We see etched very clearly on the drawn face of Louise Corbin Walpole in 1894 the so-called joy she took in sharing the "globe trotting" hunting and fishing adventures of her hsuband.

The record shows that Lady Dorothy was along on many of those excursions. On page 138 of her autobiography, Dorothy writes her own recollection of that 1894 deep sea fishing trip to florida:

The Christmas of my fifth year brought me my first sight of an alligator. It was in southern Florida, where my parents were deep sea fishing, and the negligence of a nurse gave me opportunity to wander unattended by the river bank, where a party of negroes had just landed—to my childish eyes—the dragon of all my fairy tales. Round, blue eyes surveyed the Apochryphal beast with a faint fear that merged into fascination.

"When I am big I shall kill those," I announced grandiloquently. The darkies roared delightedly with a flash of white teeth.

"When li'l Missy big, she hunt 'em 'gaitor good," they assured me. I think on that Christmas Day came the first premonition that, many years hence, the prototypes of those good-natured darkies would be my hunting companions and brothers in the dark jungles of Africa, where so many strange beasts have their habitation.


Setting aside any criticism regarding colonialism and racism, this is—at least in hindsight, and in the mind of Lady Dorothy—a premonition that her own path would be markedly different than the one taken by her mother and father. And her choice in that regard could have been as much due to her mother's long term reaction to her father's illicit liaison as it was from the highly publicized affair itself.

One wonders, as well, what sort of speculative and gossipy discussions of the scandal young Dorothy was privy to while governesses, nurses, and parlour maids assumed she was playing, studying, or wrapped up in reading a book [as we see her in her youth, left]. One also wonders of the impact all of that had on her. The passage above is the only reference to Louise Corbin, directly or indirectly, in Lady Dorothy's memoirs.


In the end, Lady Dorothy married a man like her father: A soldier, a traveller, and a flirt. Unlike her mother, she was determined that she would not need a man—or even a family—and spent a lifetime proving just that.

Family time together could not have been so very important to the Walpoles clan in general. In her autobiography, she also relates, "My first actual memory of a foreign Christmas was as a very small and miserably seasick child crossing the Atlantic to North America, in the teeth of an icy northerly gale. Perhaps it was that initiatory experience that atrophied [my] Dickens' spirit." The chapter goes on to describe all of the Christmases in her life, 1888 – 1929, that she had spent away from friends, family, and especially England.

That would have included Christmases spent without husband Arthur, who doesn't seem to have figured much into her holiday agendas. One Christmas during the 1920s, while Arthur may have been enjoying festivities with his own family (or amusing himself in other pleasant ways with another pleasant person who happened to be located in England at the time), Lady Dorothy was in the Sahara where, on a certain Christmas Day, she and her guide, Ismael, had discovered a dying man and chose to pass him by. A half hour later, they watched from the saddles of their camels as the vultures finally swooped down for their own holiday meal. Ismail placidly told her, "To-morrow his bones will make a good landmark for the caravans. We needed one in those dunes."

Christmas is, after all, about giving—just as that poor wretch had.

It seems that Lady Dot's estrangement was not simply from her own family, but everyone's family, and England's fascination at the time with her daring exploits doesn't make those deeds seem any less empty when considered in the context of a more fully realized life spent at times with one's own, loving family. Still, she had a vision of herself that included other things, many real and some undoubtedly the product of her vivid imagination [at right, an illustration from a 1934 newspaper story sold into U.S. syndication by Lady Dorothy].

We see this no better than in the contrast between the first two illustrations of Lady Dorothy above—cool, stiff, and aloof—and the certainly more lurid, sensual, and vulnerable autobiographical newspaper imagery that percolated up from somewhere within her. She was clearly the antithesis of her mother when it came to having a desire for one's likeness to be published.

Thank goodness Louise had passed away before Robert Horace Walpole and his daughter, Dorothy Rachel Melissa, her loved ones, made the uncompromisingly mutual decision to divest themselves of each other—permanently.

In this tragic tale of family obligations and tradition without accompanying familial love, yes, Louise Melissa Corbin Walpole to me is the most tragic of all the characters life with which life seems to have dealt bitterly during my study of the life and times of George Mills.

I hope I'm wrong about her profound suffering. But I suspect I'm not.

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.

Lady Ursula Helen Abbey and Some Other Surprises

As promised, we'll now peek into the life of a member of the peerage...

Lady Ursula Abbey was born on 14 June 1899, the daughter of Wilfred Dallas Cairns, 4th Earl of Cairns, and Olive Cobbold of Greyfriars, Storrington. On 7 July 1921, she married John Roland "Jack" Abbey (He had dropped the 'w' from 'Rowland'), son of William Henry Abbey and Florence Belcher, who lived a Sedgwick Park, Horsham, Sussex. As well as being an entrepreneur—already a partner for decades, he took over Brighton's Kemp Town Brewery in 1933—W. H. Abbey was named High Sheriff of Sussex in 1935, and commissioned a portrait of himself [pictured, left] to be painted that year by Oswald Birley. Lady Ursula presented the image to the Brighton and Hove Museums in 1970.

"Jack" Abbey, born 23 November 1894, was educated by a private tutor instead of attending school after suffering a serious elbow injury as a boy.

He was commissioned into the Rifle Brigade, Prince Consort's Own, as a regimental lieutenant on 21 November 1914, serving two years on the Western Front in the 13th and 8th Battalions. He was the only surviving officer of his battalion after the Battle of Flers-Courcelette. By 17 January 1919, Abbey was the Deputy Assistant Provost Marshal attached to HQ, having been promoted to captain during WWI.

In November 1916, he was gassed, necessitating a five month period of hospitalization before being invalided out of combat in October 1917, a year before his younger brother, Noel Roland Abbey of the Grenadier Guards, was killed in action on the Western Front.

A member of the reserve class of officers at the onset of WWII, Jack Abbey returned to the military as an officer in the Army Catering Corps before reuniting with the Rifle Brigade on 17 November 1941. He served from 1941 to 1943 as a staff officer of the Admiral-Superintendent at Great Yarmouth, and was awarded the honorary rank of Major in 1946.

After the First World War, however, Jack became manager of his father's Kemp Town brewery. He then married Lady Ursula in 1921, shortly after a series of whole-plate glass negative images of her was taken by famed Regent Street portrait photographer, Alexander Bassano, on 4 June 1920. These images [one is seen at right] of the seemingly vulnerable, strikingly beautiful Lady Ursula are simply captivating, and can be found at the National Portrait Gallery.

The year 1925 saw the birth of a daughter, Juliet Hermione Abbey, who married the naval war hero, Lt. Commander John Somerville Kendall Oram of Wiltshire, in 1948.

In 1942, Lady Ursula served the war effort by managing a committee that worked six days a week assembling care parcels for the Rifle Brigade's prisoners-of-war.

By 1929, though, Jack had begun collecting books, at first from modern private presses. Eventually, however, he began collecting antiquarian volumes, and by 1946, he began buying medieval illuminated manuscripts. In 1943, he had become president of the brewery upon his father's death, allowing him to build a collection that at one time held of 1,300 volumes [Abbey's book plate is seen, left]. Like his father, Jack would soon be named High Sheriff of Sussex in 1945, a position he held for a year.

According to his biography at bookrags.com, "Maj. J. R. Abbey's book collection was the largest and one of the most remarkable of his generation. He is perhaps best known for his collection of color-plate books and fine bindings, but he also collected many illuminated manuscripts and at one time owned seven books from the library of the sixteenth-century French book collector Jean Grolier. Abbey was one of the first to collect neglected minor works and bought copies of them in their original wrappered parts. From the beginning it was the appearance of books that appealed to him, and two Arts Council exhibitions of bindings from his collection show that he was attracted by the strong geometric patterning and vibrant colors of contemporary English and French binders. Although he was not a scholar, he was an avid visitor of libraries and bookshops, making note of his own observations and also drawing on the advice of distinguished scholars such as A. N. L. Munby and G. D. Hobson when adding to his collection."

In the 1950s, Abbey sold much of his collection of illustrated books and illuminated manuscripts to Paul Mellon (K.B.E., 1974), an American collector, who later bequeathed it to Yale University.

Although he had donated or sold off books from his collection during his lifetime [a 1965 Sotheby's catalog is pictured, right], the bulk of Abbey's collection was sold at auction after had passed away on 24 December 1969. The auction sales spanned the years 1970 to 1975 and brought Lady Ursula the tidy sum of £993,509. She did maintain some of the collection after Jack's death, and that was auctioned by Sotheby's on 19 June 1989 for tens of thousands of pounds, just a year after her own passing in October of 1988.

During their lives together, Lady Ursula had been an avid dog breeder and her canines participated in dog shows at the Royal Agricultural Hall. In addition, she often presented an award to selected participants in the form of a go, cup.

In fact, her retriever, Chiltington Light, is still listed on-line for its pedigree. It's probably only a coincidence that the wife of a brewmaster had a dog called Chiltington Light, which would be a fine upscale name for a mass-produced American "Lite" beer!

Incidentally, one of that dog's categories according to the 1930 catalogue of the Cruft's Dog Show and Exhibition of Sporting Appliances at the Royal Agricultural Hall, Post Graduate Bitches [below, right], does rekindle memories of my first marriage...

Dogs weren't her only interest, however. The Guernsey Cattle Society's Hand Book, volume 63, records the transfer of stock from C. Micklem of Long Cross House, Chertsey, Surrey, to Lady Ursula Abbey of Storrington on 5 November 1947.

Although she is mentioned above as being of Storrington, her family's home, Lady Ursula has been associated with other locales as well.

Many sources provide the residence of the Abbeys as being Woldhurst Manor, Crawley, Sussex, as early as 1929's Armorial families: a directory of gentlemen of coat-armour by Arthur Charles Fox-Davies. Researching Woldhurst Manor, however, isn't as easy as it may seem: Google wants desperately to change any search for it to one for "Windhurst Manor." Finding a map of its location has been frustrating!

The Abbeys are also associated with the Wyvis Estate [pictured left, with boathouse and lodge visible] in Scotland.

In 1904, Lt. Colonel Rupert Wilkin, CMG, a nephew of deceased furniture magnate Walter Shoolbred, inherited the estate from his bachelor uncle. Shoolbred had acquired the lands of Wyvis and Kildermorie, and had even had a steamer ship reassembled in its entirety on Loch Glass to facilitate moving of building materials throughout his land.

Although the date of its acquisition is uncertain, Jack and Lady Ursula Abbey apparently purchased Wyvis from Wilkins, or perhaps his estate. The estate had been valued at £607,507 when Rupert had inherited it in 1904, and it would be of interest to know what the Abbeys paid for Wyvis and for how long it was theirs.

1992's continuing Evanton Oral History Project by Adrian Clark adds this about the Abbey's residence at Wyvis: "Rupert, a bachelor, was followed by Major and Lady Ursula Abbey, also from England. They are remembered as having been very friendly; she was reputedly keener on the shooting than he was."

That makes sense: A pair of the above-mentioned portraits of Lady Ursula from before her wedding show also show her in outdoor attire with hat and gloves [One is seen, right].

And Lady Ursula, fond of animals and competition, would seem tailor-made for the outdoors and shooting, while her husband, brewery owner and book collector Jack, seems to have been happier engaging in indoor pursuits. (Abbey owned Kemp Town Brewery in Brighton, East Sussex [below, left], until merging it with Charringtons & Co. Ltd., London, in 1954.) Imagine what a wonderfully serene and scenic place Wyvis Lodge must have been for Abbey to peruse manuscripts and texts from his collection, fireside, with a nice cup of tea!

Needless to say, the Abbeys were quite unlike Lady Dorothy and Captain Arthur Hobart Mills, brother of our George Mills. While Lady Dorothy, daughter of the 5th Earl of Orford, was a hunter, a fisherwoman, and came from a family that was a cash-starved and longed for her to marry into money—and disowned her when she did not—Lady Ursula seems to have made a match that surely would have pleased the Hon. Robert Horace Walpole, Lady Dorothy's father, to no end.

Eventually, Lady Ursula's name appeared less and less in The Times under the headings of "Court Circular" and "Kennel Club Show" and increasingly more often under "Sports in Brief" and "Croquet."

Her very first croquet tournament match, according to the lamentable search engine of The Times, was played on 25 September 1951 at the Roehampton Club's autumn tournament. She defeated Mrs. M. B. Reckitt [pictured below, right] (+10) in the second round of Handicap Singles, Class X. I can find no record of Agnes, Violet, or George Mills having played in that fall tournament.

The last match the nefarious search engine of The Times yields for Lady Ursula Abbey is a loss (-18) in the first round of Handicap Doubles at Parkstone at the East Dorset Tournament on 12 September 1973 to J. W. Haynes and R. H. C. Carder. Lady Abbey had been paired with Capt. M. F. Buller.

By that year, 1973, George Mills had been gone for a year and Agnes and Violet, while they still may have taken a turn around a lawn for sport, had ceased their tournament play. By the end of July 1975, the spinster sisters of George Mills would no longer be with us either. Lady Abbey would live until 1988.

The mercurial archive of The Times shows Lady Ursula having been in competition with the Mills siblings on 3 occasions, playing singles and winning against Agnes at Eastbourne on 27 September (+6) and 5 October 1965 (+18), after having lost (-19) in doubles to "Aggy" and her partner, Capt. W. A. T. Synge, on 7 July of that same year in tandem with her partner, Miss H. D. Parker, at Budleigh Salterton.

Lady Ursula's husband, Jack—listed in The Times croquet results as "Major J. R. Abbey"—played a Mills sibling once, beating Violet (+3) on 13 September 1960 at Parkstone.

Once again, it's likely that Lady Ursula's love of competition and the outdoors exceeded Major Abbey's—The Times engine provides 79 results after searching '"lady ursula abbey" croquet', from 1951 through 1973, while searching '"j r abbey" croquet' yields only 64 "hits," those ranging from 1913 (in which a "J. R. Abbey" won a doubles match at Brighton on 18 September in tandem with the Hon. Mrs. S. Coleridge) through 1967—a phenomenally long time to have played such a relatively few matches!

Examining Jack Abbey's final tournament match, at least according to the capricious search engine at The Times, is interesting. He lost (-20) to the legendary Mrs. Alex Fotiadi of the Bowdon Croquet Club [pictured, left] on 3 October 1967 at Eastbourne in the first round of Handicap Singles "X." Mrs. Fotiadi was a dominant figure in that era of tournament croquet.

However, what I find just as interesting are these additional results from the same day's matches: George Mills (scratched) lost in a walk-over to Lady G. Fitzgerald, and George's sister, Agnes, lost (-17) to Mrs. E. M. Temple, and Lady Ursula fell to Mrs. J. Povey (-14) in the very same round at Eastbourne.

Needless to say, the incredibly moody search engine of The Times had never produced that particular day's matches for me when I'd searched repeatedly for croquet results for either G. R. or Miss A. E. Mills!

One last item, perhaps of interest only to me, is that on that same October day in Eastbourne, M. B. (Maurice) Reckitt [right]—a 5-time opponent and one time partner of the Mills siblings—beat Mrs. D. M. C. Pritchard (+4) in a second round match. Reckitt had also played in a match back in that 1913 Brighton tournament on the very same day Jack Abbey teamed with the Hon. Mrs. Coleridge. And his wife, Amy Reckitt, you'll recall from above, had been Lady Ursula's first croquet tourney opponent!

Jack and Lady Ursula Abbey were certainly the type of people with whom the Mills sisters (and perhaps George) liked to socialize. I'd be stunned to find that the Abbeys—or at least Lady Ursula—hadn't spent an afternoon or evening with the Mills at Grey Friars. Lady Ursula's love of croquet, competition, and the outdoors would have rivaled that of the Misses Mills, whom, I'll remind you, had a love of the outdoors (They were "charming and keen on the Girl Guides") as well as both being athletic.

The accompanying image of Lady Ursula [pictured, left] has been identified as "probably" having been taken in 1957 at Devonshire Park in Eastbourne during what appears to have been the so-called "Southern Championships" which apparently were attended by a great many players of the era—some in number 66 in just that one group photograph. In fact, the above images of Mr. & Mrs. Reckitt are cropped from the same image. Who knows how many overall players may have participated, but missed that photo op?

Since first viewing that photograph, found on the Bowdon Croquet Club website, I've been prone to think that the "Southern Championships" were the South of England Croquet Championship at Eastbourne, played in early October.

There's just one thing, though: There are no records showing that Lady Ursula Abbey played at all in that tournament in Eastbourne in 1957.

Two others in that group photograph are also not listed among the competitors in the Devonshire Park Championships in October 1957, according to The Times. Those two are George Mills and his sister, Violet.

Even if incorrectly dated, that Devonshire Park group photograph does, however, add much to our knowledge of the Mills siblings: A second photographic image of a dapper George Mills, and, at long last, glimpses of both Agnes and Violet!

We'll look at those three visages (among others), learn more about the photgraph, and read some thoughts from a man who, as a boy, knew George Mills, all in our next post!

Of Walpoles, Beauclerks, Ramsays, Aclands, and Mills

Let's take a holiday break from the sordid tale of Robert "Robin" Horace Walpole—whose fate was lamented in our last post by an unnamed "London correspondent"—and recall why his proceedings against German governess and alleged 'adventuress' Valerie Wiedemann are anything more than an interesting sidebar to our research on George Mills.

Remember that Mills's grandfather had been Arthur Mills, a moderately powerful Member of Parliament, friend of Gladstone, world traveler, expert on colonization, and son-in-law of Thomas Dyke Acland, 11th Baronet, M.P. for Devon North and Somerset West, and Privy Counsellor.

George's father had been the Reverend Barton Reginald Vaughan Mills, an Anglican cleric (who was a practicing Catholic) with a checkered career who became a foremost scholar researching, interpreting, translating, and publishing the writings of St. Bernard of Clairvaux.

Barton had two sons and two daughters, the first son having been born of his first wife, Lady Catherine Mary Valentia Hobart-Hampden, who was granted the rank of Earl's daughter at their wedding.

Barton's elder son, Arthur Frederick Hobart Mills [pictured, right, circa 1925], was born on 12 July 1887 after his mother had returned from Italy after surviving the February earthquake in San Remo, where Barton was apparently working as a chaplain. Lady Catherine would die two years later, an event that must have rocked the worlds of both Barton and young Arthur.

Barton eventually remarried, taking Elizabeth Edith Ramsay, daughter of Sir George Dalhousie Ramsay, C.B., as his second wife. "Edie" would give birth to Agnes Edith (1895), our George Ramsay Acland (1896), and Violet Eleanor Mills (1901).

Barton himself had married well, and his two boys would eventually do the same.

George, who became a schoolmaster masquerading as a graduate of Oxford, took the hand of Vera Louise Beauclerk, a society girl listed among the peerage in The Plantagenet Roll of Royal Blood, in 1925.

His half-brother, Arthur, had also married well, taking Lady Dorothy Rachel Melissa Walpole, elder daughter of our own Robert Horace Walople, 5th Earl of Orford, as his wife in 1916. Marrying Arthur, then an apparently impoverished commissioned officer and war hero in the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry, caused Lady Dorothy to become estranged from her father who insisted on a marriage to a more suitable [read: rich] match.

Lady Dorothy Mills [pictured, left, in 1924], of course, had been born and bred amid the turmoil and seemingly endless repercussions of the scandalous Wiedemann v. Walpole trials, and all of that could not have had any small impact on the entire family, including impressionable Lady Dorothy.

Nevertheless, the boys had done well for themselves in regard to matrimony, which is likely why we know so much about the family today. Even with such influential wives, the literary works of George and Arthur Hobart Mills have been largely forgotten. Having married into the peerage, however, assured that they had been recorded in the public record for posterity—at least the portions of their lives led within the duration of each man's childless marriage.

George's wife, Vera, died in 1942, after which George, in seriously ill health a year later, faded into almost impenetrable obscurity. He surfaced only as editions of his books from the 1930s were revived in the 1950s, as a summer instructor at the Ladycross School in Seaford, East Sussex, in 1956, and as an on-again, off-again croquet player in amateur tournaments around southern England while residing with his spinster sisters in Budleigh Salterton, Devon, where he passed away in 1972.

His brother, Arthur, was divorced by Lady Dorothy in 1933 after having been discovered engaging in an adulterous affair the previous year.

Arthur Mills did remarry later in 1933, but, like his brother, George, almost completely dropped off the proverbial map except to publish 14 lightly-regarded crime/spy novels. Apparently, Arthur primarily gardened, golfed, and spent time with his new wife, Monica, 17 years his junior, until his death at Winds Cottage, Downton, near Lymington, Hampshire, in 1955. George Mills appears to have never remarried.

The fact that we know so much about the Mills brothers, George and Arthur, is largely attributable to their "high profile" first wives.

There's still much to be known about Arthur's relationship with his entire family, and especially with his brother George [pictured, right, in 1956], whose 1925 wedding Arthur failed to attend.

We can glimpse some of what must have been Arthur's life through the eyes of Lady Dorothy, a prolific and extremely private travel writer, who left clues to her relationship with Arthur—a relationship that was certainly coloured by her own relationship with her father, the estranged Earl of Orford—bread-crumbed through her writings.

And so we have been exploring the relatively sordid roots of Lady Dorothy's family history for clues to both her relationship with her husband, Arthur Mills, and his brother, George.

There are still a few more twists and turns in the story of Robert Horace Walpole, the last Earl of Orford and father of our Lady D., and we'll examine them in upcoming posts, as well as linking interestingly ambiguous aspects of her autobiography to her father's life story.

And before I forget, many thanks to everyone who has helped me research the life and career of George Mills, and have a safe, healthy, and happy new year!

"One of the most melancholy figures to be seen in all London..."

This article, dated 2 October, appeared on 12 Whiringa-ā-rangi [November] 1891 on page 3 of New Zealand's Star newspaper. It is the last news story [although its journalistic integrity is clearly open to question] regarding the four years of courtroom wrangling between German governess Valerie Wiedemann and the heir to the Earl of Orford, Robert Horace Walpole, father of Lady Dorothy Mills.

Despite the icily acidic quality of the text, it's very much a heart-wrenching description the lengthy and scandalous proceedings had on Wiedemann in particular. One wonders what became of her. The immigration and travel records of ancestry.com describe none of her movements, nor any record of her birth, death, or marriages.
She seems to have disappeared from public records and memory—at least records and memories to which I have access. The same wire service report also appeared untitled on page 2 of the Bush Advocate on 3 Hakihea [December] 1891.

With that, here is the text from an unknown "London correspondent," professing to describe the last known condition of Miss Valerie Wiedemann...

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

[FROM OUR LONDON CORRESPONDENT.]

London, Oct. 2.

VALERIE WIEDEMANN AGAIN.

One of the most melancholy figures to be seen in all London just now is a faded, rather bilious-looking young woman, with watery eyes and a monomaniacal expression, who haunts popular public resorts trying to sell tickets for some "French and German Readings," to be given next week at the Piccadilly Hall. This is none other than Valerie Wiedemann, the heroine of the notorious Walpole case. A sane person would have been content with the £300 which the last Jury who tried the breach of promise issue so very unjustly gave the plaintiff. But Miss Wiedemann is mad, a raving lunatic on this one subject, and she is trying to raise money for more litigation. I saw her outside the Stock Exchange in Throgmorton Street on Monday. She waylaid all the men she could and persuaded them to buy tickets. A few, a very few did so out of curiosity or pity or both, but the majority fled like frightened rabbits at her approach. The whole affair is frightfully hard on Mr Walpole, who, by this never-ending scandal, has literally been driven out of England, as well as made bankrupt. Hot blooded youths, tempted to youthful indiscretions, should bear in mind his story. One evening's folly has cost him a lifetime of misery. What the end will be who can say, for Miss Wiedemann is mad, and lives only for revenge.

The World in 1891

Here's some perspective on the world at the time of Robert Horace Walpole's 1891 appeal of a ruling in favor of Valerie Wiedemann, a decision that was overturned in the Court of Appeal. I'd meantl to post this before leaving town for Christmas and simply forgot. Here it is…

Deaths in 1891 included author Herman Melville, painter Georges Seurat, U.S. General William Tecumseh Sherman, poet Arthur Rimbaud, and Circus magnate P.T. Barnum.

Notable 1891 births included author Zora Neale Thurston, U.S. Chief Justice Earl Warren, painter Max Ernst, composer Sergei Prokofiev, songwriter Cole Porter, wrestler Man Mountain Dean, Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, author Henry Miller, and the last verified living person born in 1891, Emiliano Mercado del Toro.

Events that occurred in 1891 included New Scotland Yard being named HQ of the London Metropolitan Police, James Naismith inventing basketball, the founding of Philadelphia's Drexel University and California's Stanford University, Maria Skłodowska [later Curie] entering the Sorbonne, Eugène Dubois discovering Java Man, John Heath scoring the first penalty kick awarded in a football [soccer] match, Liliuokalani being proclaimed queen of Hawaii, Thomas Edison displaying his prototype kinetoscope, Carnegie Hall opening in New York City with a concert conducted by maestro Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky [pictured, above left, in 1891], Nikola Tesla inventing the Tesla coil, and a New Orleans mob storming the Old Parish Prison and lynching 11 Italians arrested but found innocent of the murder of Police Chief David Hennessy.

In the world of art, Henri Matisse began his studies at Académie Julian, Claude Monet completed his Poplar Series [pictured, right] and began his Haystack Series, Paul Gauguin painted Femmes de Tahiti, ou Sur la plage [below, left], and the work of the Pre-Raphaelites was in bloom.

In music, Brahms debuted Clarinet Quintet in B Minor, Opus 115, a fourteen-year-old Pablo Casals performed a solo cello recital in Barcelona, the Chicago Symhony Orchestra first performed, and Henry J. Sayers wrote the words and music of "Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay".

The U.K.'s Strand Magazine debuted a new character, Sherlock Holmes, by Arthur Conan Doyle.

Also published during 1891 were Ambrose Bierce's An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Grey, and Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles, and a single performance of the controversial play Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen was performed at the Royalty Theatre in London to avoid censorship.

In the U.S., the Wrigley Company was founded in Chicago. Abroad, the Paris-London telephone system was opened, fees for primary schooling in the U.K. were abolished, and the Great Blizzard of 1891 sunk 14 ships and killed 220 in South and West England.

Capt. Walpole's Pyrrhic Victory

There isn't much immediate reaction available on the internet regarding the success of Robert Horace Walpole's 1891 appeal, a victory which left Valerie Wiedemann in far more debt than she had ever been, having now been burdened with the court costs of that final appeal as well as legal fees for all of her proceedings dating back to 1888.

This excerpt appeared the same day as the judgment, 29 July 1891, in the New York Evening World, on page 3. Most of the world incorrectly assumed Walpole's wife, Louise Corbin, was a native of New York, although she had never been a resident there. Hence, some immediate interest interest in the proceedings was shown in the Big Apple.

Walpole, it seems, scored only a Pyrrhic victory. While he ended up owing Wiedemann nothing, the toll the scandal took on his marriage must have been terrible, as we shall soon see. And there is every reason to believe that it had a long term effect on the life of his daughter, Lady Dorothy Rachel Melissa Walpole, who would eventually become the sister-in-law of George Mills.

The Wiedemann v. Walpole Appeal: 30 July 1891, Part 3

Welcome to the third and last installment of what I believe are images of the final courtroom clash between Valerie Wiedemann and the Hon. Robert Horace Walpole, this an appeal of the ruling of the third trial.

Click to enlarge each image in a new window.