Tangled Souls E-Book

Jane Dismore

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 546

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

'With painstaking skill, Dismore lays bare the double standards of the Souls - a brilliant group who thought themselves superior, in morals and intellect, to the rest of their class.' – Artemis Cooper 'Harry Cust has long needed to emerge from the shadows. A rich tapestry unfolds.' – Hugo Vickers Outrageously handsome, witty and clever, Harry Cust was reputed to be one of the great womanisers of the late Victorian era. In 1893, while a Member of Parliament, he caused public scandal by his affair with artist and poet Nina Welby Gregory. When she revealed she was pregnant, horror swept through their circle known as 'the Souls', a cultured, mostly aristocratic group of writers, artists and politicians who also rubbed shoulders with luminaries such as Oscar Wilde and H. G. Wells. With the unconventional Margot Tennant and philosopher-statesman Arthur Balfour at their centre, the dazzling Souls eschewed the formalities of upper-class etiquette, valuing conversation and clever games above gambling and racing. Talented and glamorous women such as Violet Granby and Ettie Grenfell joined rising politicians George Curzon and George Wyndham at grand country houses to talk, play and flirt. Passions raged behind their courtly code. Married Souls discreetly bore their lovers' children – and public figures got away with much worse – yet bachelor Harry's seduction of a single woman of the same class broke the rules. For the rest of their lives, Harry and Nina would fight to rebuild their reputations and maintain the marriage they were pressurised to enter. In Tangled Souls, acclaimed biographer Jane Dismore tells the tumultuous story of the romance which threatened to tear apart this distinguished group of friends, revealing pre-war society at its most colourful and most conflicted.

Leseprobe

Also by Jane Dismore:

The Voice from the Garden: Pamela Hambro and the Tale of Two Families Before and After the Great War

Duchesses: Living in 21st Century Britain

Princess: The Early Life of Queen Elizabeth II

First published 2022

The History Press

97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Jane Dismore, 2022

The right of Jane Dismore to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 7509 9986 1

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ Books Limited, Padstow, Cornwall.

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

CONTENTS

Glossary of Main Characters

Prelude: Precipice

1     All the Gifts

2     Friends and Lovers

3     Coming Together

4     Flirtations

5     Ambitions

6     A Kind of Fame

7     Temptations

8     Suffer the Little Children

9     Panic

10   Fallout

11   For Love’s Sake

12   Crises

13   Acceptance

14   Tensions

15   The Young Ones

16   New Horizons

17   Love and War

Epilogue: Brighter than the Sun

Appendix 1: The Margaret Thatcher Theory

Appendix 2: Miscellany by Harry Cust and Nina Cust

Acknowledgements

Bibliography

Notes

GLOSSARY OF MAIN CHARACTERS

Late Victorian Britain was fascinated by an unconventional, mostly aristocratic, group of men and women, dubbed ‘the Souls’, who came together as friends in the 1880s. Writers, politicians, artists, intellectuals and creatives, they were dominant in political and cultural life. Many Souls were married, a few were single, and some were siblings. Others admired or envied them from the fringes, mixing with them but never becoming a part of them.

At the centre of this book is Harry Cust, one of around forty Souls; most are mentioned, although not all of them play a major part. The purpose of this glossary is to serve as a brief guide to those who feature most prominently and give some clarity to family relationships. Those Souls whose spouses were also part of the group are indicated in bold print, with occasional reference to their emotional entanglements. Mention is also made of those grand country houses in which the Souls gathered for ‘Saturday to Mondays’ to talk, play and love.

Families

The Custs and Brownlows

Harry Cust (Henry John Cockayne Cust, 1861–1917). Born into a family of distinguished politicians, lawyers and churchmen, Harry was handsome and clever, a poet, editor and MP, predicted at school to become prime minister. Lover of and loved by many women, he was the biological father of Lady Diana Cooper (née Manners) and perhaps others. In 1884, he inherited Cockayne Hatley in Bedfordshire from his father, Henry Francis Cockayne Cust, and later became heir to his second cousin, Earl Brownlow. In 1893, circumstances forced his marriage to Emmeline ‘Nina’ Welby-Gregory and the resulting scandal compromised his career and reputation.

Nina Cust (Emmeline Mary Elizabeth, née Welby-Gregory, 1867–1955). A poet, artist, sculptor and linguist, she was the quiet, intellectual and lovely daughter of Sir William and Lady Victoria Welby-Gregory (née Stuart-Wortley) of Denton Manor, Lincolnshire. Nina was related to the Duke of Rutland and, distantly, to Harry Cust, whom she had long loved. In 1893 they married after she told him she was carrying his child.

3rd Earl Brownlow (Adelbert Wellington Brownlow Cust, 1844–1921). Harry Cust’s second cousin, a Conservative politician and courtier. His wife was the Countess Adelaide, née Talbot. The Brownlows entertained at their country estates, Belton (Lincolnshire) and Ashridge (Hertfordshire), and at their London house at 8 Carlton Terrace. Older than most Souls, Lord and Lady Brownlow were supporters of the arts and close friends of the Prince and Princess of Wales (later Edward VII and Queen Alexandra).

Lady Brownlow’s sisters included Gertrude, ‘Gity’, wife of George Herbert, 13th Earl of Pembroke (1850–1895), who was ten years his senior. The Pembrokes entertained the Souls and other society figures at Wilton, their Wiltshire estate.

The Tennants

A family of eleven children, whose father was the wealthy industrialist and Liberal MP, Sir Charles Clow Tennant. The family home was The Glen in Peeblesshire. In London, they lived at 40 Grosvenor Square. The youngest two of his six daughters, intelligent, amusing and dismissive of social convention, were the vital force in the formation of the Souls, favouring friendship over political differences:

Laura Tennant (1862–86). Gifted, mercurial and enchanting, after rejecting other suitors, in 1885 she married the budding barrister, cricketer and future Liberal politician Alfred Lyttelton but died in childbirth a year later, after which the group of friends drew together more closely.

Margot Tennant (1864–1945). Original, witty and socially bold, her unlikely friendship with the older Arthur Balfour, a Conservative MP, led to regular gatherings at The Glen of politicians of all persuasions and other interesting people. Some became close friends and were known as the Souls. In 1894, she married widower Herbert Henry Asquith, Home Secretary in William Gladstone’s government, and drew him into the group. In 1908 he became prime minister. She and Harry Cust enjoyed a long and enduring friendship.

Other Tennant sisters in the Souls were:

Lucy Graham Smith (1860–1942). An accomplished watercolourist and talented rider, she married Thomas Graham Smith, a landowner and horse fanatic, when she was too young, and they lived at Easton Grey in Wiltshire. It was not a happy marriage and she fell in love with Harry Cust. She became increasingly afflicted by crippling arthritis.

Charty (Charlotte) Ribblesdale (1858–1911). Considered to be the most beautiful of the Tennant sisters, in 1887 she married Lord Ribblesdale (Tommy). A former soldier, keen hunter and archetypal English gentleman, dubbed by Edward VII ‘the ancestor’, he suffered intermittent ill health. Charty found strength in Harry Cust, with whom she was very close. The Ribblesdales’ country home was Gisburne in Lancashire.

The Wyndhams

An aesthetically aware family of three girls and two boys headed by the Hon. Percy Wyndham (son of Lord Leconfield) and his wife Madeline, a follower of the Pre-Raphaelites. At their Wiltshire home, Clouds, they entertained artists and writers and gave intellectual and physical freedom to their children. Aristocratic by upbringing and bohemian by inclination, three of them became quintessential Souls:

Mary Elcho (1861–1937). Free-spirited and spontaneous, the eldest of the Wyndham siblings had wanted to marry Balfour but in 1883 was persuaded to marry Hugo Charteris. They shortly became Lord and Lady Elcho when he became heir to his father, the 10th Earl of Wemyss and 6th Earl of March, whose estates included Gosford in Scotland. A Conservative MP with a sharp wit, Hugo was also a gambler and womaniser, whose affair with the Duchess of Leinster had lasting consequences. Mary became known for her parties at their Gloucestershire house, Stanway, and maintained a close and lifelong relationship with Balfour, although she was not immune to other admirers. In 1914, Hugo inherited his father’s title, becoming 11th Earl and Mary, the Countess.

George Wyndham (1863–1913). The second of the five siblings, the former soldier was a politician and poet, dark-haired and handsome. In 1887 he married the older widow, Sibell, Lady Grosvenor, who kept her title at the insistence of her former father-in-law, the 1st Duke of Westminster – her first husband was his son, the Earl of Grosvenor, by whom she bore the heir to the dukedom. The Wyndhams lived at Saighton Grange, Cheshire. George inherited his family’s home, Clouds, in 1911. His political career began with his appointment as Balfour’s private secretary in Ireland; his marriage, however, was less successful.

Pamela Tennant (1871–1928, later Grey). The youngest of the Wyndham siblings, she was literary, musical and self-centred. After her romance with Harry Cust was abruptly curtailed upon his marriage to Nina, in 1895 she married Sir Charles Tennant’s son, Edward, a Liberal politician and businessman (soon created Lord Glenconner). They made their home at Wilsford in Wiltshire, but Eddy was not enough for her needs, and she turned elsewhere.

The Lytteltons

A family headed by George William, 4th Lord Lyttelton, Baron of Frankley, who had twelve children with his first wife, Mary Glynne; the children’s uncle was William Ewart Gladstone, four times Liberal prime minister. The Lytteltons’ eleventh child, May, was Arthur Balfour’s first love, who died in 1875.

Alfred Lyttelton (1857–1913). The youngest of the twelve Lytteltons, a barrister, Liberal and a brilliant cricketer, Alfred was a good friend of Balfour’s. He married Laura Tennant in 1885 but was widowed eleven months later. In 1892, he married ‘DD’ (Edith) Balfour (no relation to Arthur) and followed a political career, becoming Colonial Secretary.

Other Lyttelton siblings and their spouses also appear in the book, not as Souls but as players in the lives of Harry and Nina Cust:

Reverend Arthur Temple Lyttelton: vicar of Eccles, married to (Mary) Kathleen (née Clive), a supporter of suffragist Millicent Garrett Fawcett.

Lavinia Talbot (née Lyttelton): married to Dr Edward Stuart Talbot, who was Vicar of Leeds and later a bishop. He was related to both Nina Cust and Lady Brownlow.

General Sir Neville Gerald Lyttelton: married to Katherine Stuart-Wortley, Nina’s cousin.

Sybil Cust (née Lyttelton): born 1873 to their father’s second wife and married to Sir Lionel Cust, Harry Cust’s cousin.

Individuals

Arthur Balfour (1848–1930)

A philosopher and Conservative politician, his friendship with Margot Tennant led to the formation of the Souls and, respected and admired, he was at their centre. Balfour’s uncle, Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, Marquess of Salisbury, was three times Conservative prime minister and gave Balfour his first Cabinet post as Chief Secretary for Ireland. Balfour himself became prime minister in 1902.

His sweetheart, May Lyttelton, died young, and he never married but maintained a lifelong and intriguing relationship with Lady Elcho (Mary, neé Wyndham). His family home was Whittingehame in Scotland, and his London house was 4 Carlton Gardens.

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt (1840–1922)

Poet, anti-imperialist and devotee of Egypt, his political stance was different from most Souls, yet their friendship largely endured. Some of the men were members of the Crabbet Club, which he founded. Blunt was also linked to the Souls by blood (as a cousin of the Wyndhams) and romantically, for despite being married (to Lady Anne née Noel, a granddaughter of Lord Byron), his infidelities were legion.

George Curzon (1859–1925)

Son of Baron Scarsdale of Kedleston Hall, Curzon suffered a harsh upbringing and was plagued by a spinal condition. Fiercely ambitious, he travelled across Europe and Asia, becoming an expert on foreign affairs. In 1895 he married American heiress Mary Leiter. In 1898 he was made Viceroy of India and created Baron Curzon of Kedleston.

Mary’s death in 1906 left him with three daughters, after which he lived at Hackwood Park in Hampshire. His desire to serve another term as viceroy was thwarted, but he continued in politics. In 1911, he was created Earl Curzon of Kedleston (elevated to marquess in 1921).

Violet Granby (1856–1937)

A respected artist and unconventional even by the Souls’ standards, Violet Lindsay married Henry Manners in 1882. In 1888 they became Marquis and Marchioness of Granby when his father became 7th Duke of Rutland. They lived at Belvoir Castle, Leicestershire, and in London, and shared a love of theatre, although Lord Granby favoured the actresses.

Violet fell in love with Harry Cust and in 1892 bore their daughter, Diana (who later became Lady Diana Cooper by marriage), which linked the pair inextricably, although Granby raised her as his own. In 1906, Violet became Duchess of Rutland when he became 8th Duke.

Ettie Grenfell (1867–1952)

Losing her brother and her parents at a young age, Ettie Fane was raised first by her grandmother, then her childless uncle and aunt, the Earl and Countess Cowper, who made her heir to their Hertfordshire estate, Panshanger. In 1887, she married Willie Grenfell, politician and sportsman, and at their Maidenhead home, Taplow Court, she became a noted hostess and confidante.

Ettie sought male attention and fascinated many, including some of the Souls. In 1905, she became Lady Desborough when Willie was created a baron.

Gay Windsor (1863–1944)

Christened Alberta but known as Gay, she was the creative and enigmatic daughter of Sir Augustus and Lady Paget, a German countess who influenced Gay’s views on animal welfare and her choice of husband. In 1883, aged 19, Gay married Lord Windsor (Robert Windsor-Clive), a talented architect, who designed their home Hewell Grange in Worcestershire; they also lived at St Fagans, near Cardiff.

In 1905, Gay became Countess of Plymouth when Robert was created earl. Seeing two unfulfilled marriages, Lady Paget did not discourage her daughter’s relationship with George Wyndham.

PRELUDE

PRECIPICE

The afternoon of 12 August 1893 was still and humid in Hertfordshire. At Ashridge, the magnificent estate of the 3rd Earl and Countess Brownlow, at which Elizabeth I had lived as a child and where royalty still visited, a group of their friends had arrived for a ‘Saturday to Monday’ house party and were settling themselves in the glorious grounds. Some strolled lazily through the sweet-smelling Italian garden, others sought the coolness of the sunken grotto but most idled under the great cedar of Lebanon, for the lack of a breeze made anything other than talk too taxing.1

Besides, conversation was what they were good at, for several of them were part of a cultured set dubbed ‘the Souls’ by outsiders who envied their originality and wit. A largely aristocratic group of writers, artists and politicians, they had come together as friends nearly a decade earlier, sharing a disregard for the restrictions of Victorian upper-class etiquette: the dull drawing-room talk on ‘acceptable’ subjects; the separation of the sexes in social activities.

Although the Brownlows were half a generation older than most Souls, their patronage of the arts made them popular, and they often hosted the gatherings the group enjoyed at country houses, where they discussed an esoteric range of subjects and played clever word games. ‘The only unforgivable sin was to be dull or stupid,’ said Lady Cowper, aunt of Soul member, Ettie Grenfell.2

The weekend saw the start of the Brownlows’ Silver Wedding Anniversary celebrations in Hertfordshire, a continuation of those already enjoyed with their tenants at their other estates, Belton in Lincolnshire and Ellesmere in Shropshire. As part of the festivities, the Brownlows were also marking an event of national interest, the recent marriage of Queen Victoria’s grandson, Prince George, Duke of York, and Princess Mary of Teck, which they had attended at St James’s Palace. The earl was part of the royal household and both he and the countess were regarded by the duke’s parents, the Prince and Princess of Wales, as close confidants.

The Brownlows could chat about the wedding with one of their weekend guests, Arthur Balfour, who had also attended. Balfour, nephew of the former Conservative prime minister, Lord Salisbury, was now the Leader of the Opposition to Gladstone’s Liberal government; within a decade of the gathering, he would himself become prime minister.

Attractive to women and admired by men, Balfour was at the heart of the Souls, a trained philosopher who believed that civilised discourse was possible among those of differing political views. At a time when the controversial issue of Home Rule for Ireland was threatening to divide the United Kingdom, such an ideal distinguished and elevated the Souls.

On that hot afternoon, as Balfour sat down and began to talk, not everyone wanted to be in his orbit; he could be intimidating to those who did not know him well. One such guest sat slightly apart, as she often did when in the company of the Souls. Nina Welby-Gregory, aged 26, an artist, poet and translator, knew they thought her too enigmatic, too quiet for their exuberant confidence.

Ashridge was more familiar to her than to many of the guests, for the Brownlows had known her since birth. In Ashridge House, so large that one visitor mistook it for a village, Nina knew her way through the ‘endless chain of imposing rooms’,3 with their classical carvings and columns of fluted marble. The house had been exquisitely refurbished by Adelaide, the countess, with fashionable oak panelling and statues of Malta stone, while on every surface stood huge jars of roses from the garden. As an artist, Nina appreciated the earl’s famed picture collection; his wife remained as striking now, at 49, as she was in Sir Frederic Leighton’s portrait painted fifteen years earlier and still exuded an air of otherworldliness. To Nina’s cousin, Susan Grosvenor, the Brownlows were one of the most handsome couples she had ever seen, ‘They were both very tall and had a kind of impressive magnificence of air’.4

Nina had been at Ashridge on more than one occasion when royalty was present and the dining table gleamed with a mass of gold plate, some of it given to the Brownlows by their mutual godmother, Queen Adelaide, for whom the countess was named. She knew its bedrooms too, which could accommodate forty guests and their servants. That weekend, she was particularly interested in where her room was situated in relation to another of their regular visitors, the earl’s second cousin, Henry John Cockayne Cust, known to the world as Harry Cust.

For all their wealth and privilege, one thing missing from the Brownlows’ marriage was a child, but they were fond of Harry, now 32, whose parents were dead. Blonde and blue-eyed, with ‘the profile of a Greek coin’,5 he had the Brownlow Cust good looks and, at over 6ft tall, their height. Blessed also with intellect and charm, and considered the best conversationalist of his time, he seemed to possess all life’s gifts.

Early on, ‘radiant with youth and spirits and early success’,6 he had discovered the effect he had on women, often older, married ones. The countess, seventeen years his senior, had a soft spot for him: Harry noticed she wrote to him, ‘perhaps too lovingly’, while he was abroad, ‘saying how much she missed her dear boy’.7

Predicted at school to become a future prime minister, he had been Conservative MP for Stamford in Lincolnshire since 1890, his campaign supported by the Brownlows and other local grandees. Now he was also approaching the end of his first year as editor of a major evening newspaper, the Pall Mall Gazette, following the enthusiastic request of its owner, William Waldorf Astor. Being an MP was still an unpaid role and Harry was far from unusual in having another career.

Through his close family connection, Harry knew Ashridge even better than Nina, to whom he was distantly related. The first time he visited was just before his second birthday, when he was part of the lavish coming-of-age celebrations for the earl’s elder brother, the second earl. When he died at just 25 from congenital tuberculosis, Adelbert became third and present earl.

Poor health had always plagued the Brownlow Custs, but it was a more recent death that had unexpectedly changed Harry’s prospects. In the absence of children, Adelbert’s heir was a first cousin – but he had suddenly died in May. Harry, next in line, became heir not to the earldom, which would die out with Adelbert, but to the barony and the estates that went with it. Given that the Brownlows’ fortune was one of the biggest based on land in Britain, it was a seismic shift for Harry.

That August weekend, Harry may have looked with renewed interest at the armorial garden, where the Cust coat of arms was one of four planted in box and yew representing the families associated with Ashridge. He might have reflected on the fact that, after the earl’s death, he would be the latest link in an unbroken male line of landowners since 1500. But he had more pressing matters on his mind, and his ‘sunny disposition’8 was unusually clouded.

As Balfour would afterwards tell his close friend, Lady Elcho, ‘HC seemed to me rather to neglect his harem – those who were there – but was pleasant enough to the outside world.’9 He used ‘harem’ without malice, for he liked Harry, as everyone seemed to. That he was ‘consistently run after by women, and such was his temperament that they seldom had to run very far or very fast’, mattered little, for Harry made people feel ‘close to the springs of life’.10

For reasons appreciated by his peers, his era was often more generous to him than history has been, dismissing him lazily, even brutally, as a notorious lothario or a fornicating MP.

Two women who loved him would not have recognised such descriptions. In Harry, Nina found ‘all life’s stay’, and she drew from him ‘all life’s light’.11 The Brownlows often invited them both to Ashridge, where Nina would sit quietly with Harry’s unmarried sister and watch him dazzle the wide circles the Brownlows entertained, from prime ministers and princes to playwrights.

During the last year, Nina and Harry had become closer (‘And then white passion blazed in our glad eyes’, she wrote in a poem),12 although they had kept their sexual relationship from their friends. At the core of the (mostly married) Souls was the belief, originally espoused by Balfour, that platonic friendship between the sexes was possible, but often it did not remain as innocent as intended. Like other country houses the Souls frequented, Ashridge was more accustomed to concealing adulterous liaisons than embracing the passions of an unmarried couple.

Coming from an upper-class family, Nina knew that, as a single woman, sleeping with Harry could compromise her reputation, even among the unconventional Souls. But another woman had encouraged her to believe that a future with him was possible.

That woman was her friend and artistic mentor, Violet Manners, Marchioness of Granby, who attended the Ashridge party without her husband. The marquis may have been with one of his favoured actresses that weekend, but in any event, he did not share the Souls’ love of intellectual pursuits, feeling more at home on the back of a horse. Violet had dutifully borne four children, including the necessary heir, although the fourth, Letty, was possibly the lovechild of Lord Rowton. Considered one of the most beautiful women of the age, the outgoing and uninhibited Violet ‘floated around effectively in clinging garments’, as Lady Paget observed.13

Violet was eleven years older than Nina and related to her through marriage: the marquis, son of the Duke of Rutland, was Nina’s cousin. An acclaimed artist, Violet had drawn many of society’s figures, including the Souls. Her portrait of Nina captures well the younger woman’s delicate beauty: the elegant neck, the oval face with its solemn mouth and large, mournful eyes. But the hair has about it a wildness that goes beyond the decade’s natural look to suggest a loss of control, and her expression is wistful. By contrast, in her self-portrait, Violet appears as the quintessential Pre-Raphaelite heroine, hair tumbling artistically, gaze direct, almost challenging, the hint of a smile around her lips.

While the difference in their demeanour may be due to their temperaments, it might also be found in a common cause. Not only did they share a love of art, but they also loved the same man. Nina had long adored Harry from afar but unbeknown to her, when Violet drew his portrait in 1892 – capturing his wide-eyed, even guileless gaze – they were lovers. More than that, she was carrying his child.

Nina had not questioned the coincidence of what Violet described as their ‘chance meeting’ in Venice in 1890, the year after their relationship began, telling Nina, untruthfully, that she had seen him for a ‘very short time’.14 If, when present at a social occasion with them, Nina intercepted a glance or heard them laugh at the other’s wit, she could tell herself that Violet saw in Harry the same qualities she did.

When Violet gave birth to her fifth child, Diana, in August 1892, Nina assumed, as did much of society, that she was the marquis’s. In an era when divorce was not a desirable option, the marquis agreed to raise Diana as his own, enabling her to retain the benefits of legitimacy.15 But his magnanimity came with a price, for it made the continuation of Violet’s affair with Harry too risky.

She thought she saw a way around it, though. If Harry married Nina, their affair could continue behind the cloak of respectability that marriage conferred.

If Nina suspected Violet of having feelings for Harry, she had nevertheless allowed herself to be persuaded that the time had come for him to settle down – with her. After all, they had much in common, sharing a deep intellect and literary appreciation; furthermore, their families were connected through blood and friendship. While his female admirers were legion, Nina believed that emotionally Harry was more than the sum of his liaisons; she felt she knew his very essence.

Like Balfour, Nina could not fail to notice Harry’s distraction that afternoon. If she hoped it was consideration of their future that occupied him, she would be right, but not in the way she wished. After dinner there was ‘general conversation’ which, according to Balfour, was ‘chiefly chaff between Matthews, HC and me’,16 and must have seemed excruciatingly long to Nina, impatient to have Harry to herself. But his intention that weekend was to break off their relationship. For probably the first time in his life, he had found a woman he really loved, and it was not Nina.

Harry’s talents, like Nina’s, included poetry. As well as some exquisite compositions, he was known also for his self-mocking verse. In 1892, he had written ‘Marriage’, which begins:

Cust, who at sundry times in manners many

Spake unto women – and is speaking still –

Eager to find if ever or any

One would obey and hearken to his will …

The poem ends:

Various vigorous virgins may have panted,

Willing widows wilted in the dust: –

To no female has the great God granted

Grace sufficient to be Mrs Cust.

That same year, Harry realised he had found her, but it was only in the last few months, since becoming Earl Brownlow’s heir, that he had decided to take matters further.

Pamela Wyndham, aged 22, was the youngest sibling of two prominent Souls, Mary Elcho and politician George Wyndham. Beautiful, cultured, pleasure-seeking – ‘My capacity for enjoyment is like elastic, only it has not the power of retraction – it simply gapes like the mouth of Hades’17 – she was used to being the centre of attention. Now, as Nina and Violet each mused on the part they played in Harry’s life, they could not know he was considering proposing to Pamela. By next morning, Nina realised their relationship was over.

On Monday morning, leaving the Brownlows to host a celebratory party for their tenants, their guests departed, Balfour for the House of Commons to continue the endless debating of the Home Rule Bill, Harry for his editor’s desk in London to contemplate the week ahead and see what the post had brought: perhaps another emphatic letter from his acquaintance Oscar Wilde or a literary contribution from Alice Meynell or Rudyard Kipling.

For the purpose of his work, journalistic and political, he lived during the week at the Brownlows’ elegant London house, 8 Carlton Terrace. He would be back at Ashridge in three weeks’ time to give a party for three hundred of his Pall Mall staff and their families. Violet was to join the marquis and go to his father’s hunting lodge in Sheffield, for the grouse shooting season had just begun.

Unless she had any social or artistic engagements in the London area, Nina would have returned to Denton Manor, her family home in Lincolnshire, in a heightened emotional state. Without a chaperone, she was considered to be in the care of the Brownlows so to sleep with Harry under their roof was an abuse not only of their hospitality but of their role, as well as a deception of them by him. Unmarried couples were, even if ‘strongly incited’, generally supposed to be ‘restrained by virtue and the moral heinousness of yielding to desire’.18 She knew, too, that there was a risk at a time when birth control was widely considered immoral, even for married women, and ‘natural’ methods were unreliable. While she fretted, Harry left London for a weekend at Clouds, the Wyndham family home in Wiltshire, to talk to Pamela of marriage.

Nina had inherited not only her mother’s formidable intellect but also her fragile health. Her energy came in fits and starts, her pallor, while fashionable, indicating an underlying cause. Soon, Nina became unsettled, even frantic. Harry was not around.

Balfour had separately been to Clouds but, being less acquainted with Nina and innocent of their intimacy, he was unlikely to impart any news of significance. Presumably she had not experienced ‘her monthly sickness’,19 for, at a time when no pregnancy test existed, a woman had only indications to go by. Whatever her reasons, it was surely desperation that made her contact Violet, who, alarmed on so many levels, referred her to a doctor.

Shortly afterwards, Balfour received a letter from Nina written at Denton Manor:

I am coming to you for advice on a matter of life and death. I come to you because there is no other man in the world in whose honour & judgment I have so implicit a confidence – and because I also feel that if you did allow yourself to be biased in any direction, it would not be in my favour, who am but a recent acquaintance. I had intended to write to you fully & at length, but Violet is taking the matter out of my hands & will tell you all.20

The ensuing events would rock society and lead Nina and Harry to become objects of vilification and speculation. In many ways, they have been misrepresented, even misunderstood. It is fairer, perhaps, to look back at what formed them and ahead to what they became. As Oscar Wilde said, ‘The truth is seldom pure and never simple.’21

1

ALL THE GIFTS

Harry Cust was surrounded by adoring women from birth. Five sisters lovingly greeted the fair-haired, blue-eyed child who arrived on 10 October 1861 as a bookend in a family with three young men at its top, the eldest of whom was already 20. Harry’s father, Francis, was delighted too, for this was his first son. The other boys, along with the eldest girl, aged 10, were his stepchildren for whom he had assumed responsibility when he married the widowed Sara Jane Streatfeild in 1852. Harry was their fifth child and, at the age of 40, Sara Jane’s tenth.1

Having a large family indicated not only fecundity but a compliance with Victorian expectations. However, according to her friend, the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Harry’s mother was far from conventional. The daughter of a wealthy glass and chemical manufacturer,2 Sara Jane had met Elizabeth and her husband Robert in 1851 in Paris, where she had moved with her children after the death of her first husband. The poets were enjoying major success and, as Sara Jane knew Elizabeth’s aunt, she asked to be introduced.

She immediately made a favourable impression. Elizabeth liked Sara Jane’s ‘face & manner’ and three months later, referring to her as ‘our friend’, she praised her highly, ‘a more graceful, winning creature, & fuller of intelligence, it would be hard to find … grace & high breeding are the great characteristics of face & person’.3 Robert was also charmed by Sara Jane, and in those early days in Paris they both saw much of her.

The two women had much in common: they came from the north-east of England and each had endured painful emotional experiences. As a true friend would do, Elizabeth pondered on the suitability of the man whom Sara Jane was considering taking as her second husband, Captain Henry Francis Cockayne Cust.

Francis and Sara Jane had met a decade earlier when she was in Spain with her husband, Sidney Streatfeild, already ailing. The recounting of their meeting surely appealed to Sara Jane’s sense of the dramatic, a trait her son would share. Francis was a handsome young captain in the 8th Hussars, returning to England on leave from India, when he decided to break his journey. One evening by moonlight, he made his first visit to the Alhambra, and on entering a courtyard came across the Streatfeilds. The lady was tending her husband, and Francis quickly fell in love with this woman whom Elizabeth Barrett Browning found ‘charming – even fascinating’.4 From that moment, there could be no other wife for him.

Francis was from an old and wealthy landowning family of distinguished clergymen, lawyers and politicians, one of whom had risen as high as Speaker of the House of Commons. In the spring of 1852, a year after Sidney’s death, Sara Jane agreed to marry Francis. Whether he would be too conventional for her was something Elizabeth pondered upon, for she had noted her friend’s liberal politics and her independent nature: she ‘is as wild as a bird, & won’t sit upon everybody’s finger’.5 To Francis, Sara Jane’s individuality was compelling; as a couple they shared ‘irregular brilliance and kindliness’.6

Returning to England in June 1852 in preparation for the wedding, Sara Jane left her daughter, 2-year-old Barley,7 in Paris with a close friend, and was so confident in her friendship with the Brownings that she asked them to visit the child and report on her welfare: Robert did the visiting, Elizabeth the reporting. Robert even tidied up a vexing financial matter on Sara Jane’s behalf concerning a piano she had leased.

On 5 August, she and Francis were married in the church at Cockayne Hatley, the Bedfordshire estate owned by Francis’s clergyman father,8 which had been in the family since 1408. Sara Jane was 30, Francis two years older.

Just six days after the wedding, Elizabeth was concerned to receive a letter from her friend which suggested she was ‘by no means in an ecstatical state’.9 Sara Jane became inconsistent in her correspondence, with long silences that upset Elizabeth, eventually followed by warm letters that compensated for the time lapse, so that her friend forgave her.

The cause of Sara Jane’s mood swings is unknown, although the timing suggests it may have been connected with her new life in Dublin, where Francis had been serving as aide-de-camp to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Francis had just been promoted to private secretary and he and Sara Jane moved into Phoenix Park, the lord lieutenant’s official residence.

Perhaps she was disappointed to find her husband’s new role would often take him away from home, albeit often with royalty, but his appointment was short-lived. A new British Government saw a new lord lieutenant and Francis’s career took a different direction.

By 1855, the Cust family, which now included Lucy, the first child of their marriage, were back in England, where Francis began a non-military role. He was to manage Ellesmere, a country estate in Shropshire, on behalf of his late cousin’s son, who had not yet reached the age of majority.

At the age of 11, John William Spencer Egerton Cust had found himself with two titles, 2nd Earl and 3rd Baron Brownlow, inherited from his grandfather. After a legal battle, the young earl was allowed to succeed to his father’s share of the vast estates of the Duke of Bridgewater, leading to Francis being appointed agent for Ellesmere. He and Sara Jane settled the family into Ellesmere House, a gracious fourteen-bedroom mansion.

Sara Jane ‘added elements of life and music’10 to the more serious Cust family and seemed to have everything: beauty, intelligence, charisma and, thanks mostly to her late father, wealth. But around 1860, the year she gave birth to another daughter, Annette, she also discovered she had heart problems. She began receiving specialist treatment in London, a city she was always happy to visit for its vibrancy, and her condition did not stop her falling pregnant with Harry in early 1861.

Around this time, she was saddened to learn that, after a lifetime of undiagnosed ailments, Elizabeth Barrett Browning had died. Robert replied to her condolences with a poignant letter, in which he shared with her the intimate details of his wife’s last hours. ‘She always loved you and never forgot you,’ he told Sara Jane. Robert’s relationship with the Custs would endure.

After Harry’s birth in London in October, he was brought back to Ellesmere. His half-brothers missed his arrival. Sidney, by then 20, was in the Royal Navy; Herbert, 19, had joined the Bengal Army; and Ernest, 14, was away at school. But the girls were there to welcome him: Barley, aged 10; Lucy, 7; Marion, 6; Violet, 2; and Annette, 18 months. The Custs’ staff was also mainly female, with a governess for the older girls and six servants; the only male presence was the footman.

Harry’s christening, in December 1861, took place at Cockayne Hatley, which Francis had recently inherited. Francis was delighted, not only that he now had a son and heir to pass it to, but also that it was in a much better condition than the ‘most lamentable state’11 in which his father Henry had inherited it from his father, Sir Brownlow Cust. The baron had raised his family at Belton, his grander Lincolnshire estate,12 and had spent little time at Cockayne Hatley.

Henry had carried out major building and restoration work, and now the christening guests could appreciate his legacy in the rich Flemish carvings he had installed in the church, illuminated by the light that streamed through the new stained-glass windows. As Harry was received at the font,13 the sweet-faced angels in the beams above looked down on the child who was bestowed with such gifts that most children born in Victorian Britain could only dream of: aristocratic lineage, loving parents, intellect, good looks. Later that century, when those angels witnessed the baptism of Harry’s illegitimate child, they may have wondered whether the gifts had been too bountiful.

The Cust household may have been predominantly female but society still celebrated men. So delighted were Ellesmere’s tenants by the birth of Captain Cust’s son and heir that they formed a committee (which naturally met in the local inn) to discuss what form their rejoicing should take. The birth was an opportunity to express their affection for Harry’s parents and they decided that a congratulatory address would be presented to Francis, followed by a dinner at the Red Lion Hotel ‘and a treat to the females, who, generally speaking, are much in the background on occasions of this description’.14

The premature death of Queen Victoria’s husband and Prince Consort, Albert, delayed the celebrations until January 1862, but the enthusiasm was undimmed. The address paid tribute to the couple’s kindness and thanked Francis warmly for everything he had done for the neighbourhood since he took up ‘the difficult and important position’ as Earl Brownlow’s representative.

The tenants also expressed ‘admiration for the acts of Christian charity that are exemplified in the daily life of Mrs Cust’, whose health issues were known. At the dinner, the chairman spoke of his relief that mother and baby were doing well, for he knew Mrs Cust ‘had been a little anxious about the state of her health, and when she is unwell there is nobody who knows her who is not sorry’.15

As for Harry, he surely had a promising start: ‘May the good qualities of which he is the natural inheritor ever influence your son, and lead him onwards in the path which his parents have trod before him’.16 Sara Jane’s intellect and temperament, in all its light and shade, would manifest itself in Harry, while Francis was a model of constancy and public service.

As the subject of their celebrations approached his second birthday in 1863, Sara Jane anticipated a happy reunion with her son, Herbert, now a lieutenant, who was coming home on army leave from India. He never arrived. During the passage home, he died on board the Simla in the Red Sea, just before his 21st birthday.

Shortly afterwards, Earl Brownlow, Francis’s young employer and cousin, reached the same milestone, although it had been a struggle. Since birth, the earl had suffered from a form of congenital tuberculosis, probably inherited from his father, and he had not been expected to reach maturity. At over 6ft tall, he had also inherited the Cust height, as Harry would.

After studying at Oxford, where he became good friends with the Prince of Wales,17 the earl’s coming of age was celebrated in great style at another of the estates to which he was now legally entitled, Ashridge in Hertfordshire. Tenants from all his estates joined the wider Cust family in celebrations that lasted for days, beginning with a grand dinner for seventy which Harry was allowed to attend. At nearly 2, he must have marvelled at the birthday cake, which was almost as tall as the earl himself and covered with frosted silver and coloured flags, while the buzz from the adults around him, drawn from the aristocracy, the arts and the highest echelons of public life, would one day be his lifeblood.

At Ellesmere, Francis and Sara Jane were known for their generosity, seldom refusing a request to allow the grounds to be used for local events. With their children, they were indulgent as far as pets and other youthful interests were concerned but firm on their education and the importance of considering others. The children saw Francis assuming wider public responsibilities, sitting as a justice of the peace in Shropshire and Bedfordshire.

Sara Jane’s life, too, extended beyond the locality. Now back in England, Robert Browning accepted her invitation in 1865 to stay with her in London. Presenting her with an inscribed copy of Elizabeth’s Last Poems, he expressed regret that they could not meet more often. Perhaps she entertained him on the piano, a reminder of his help in Paris.

Sara Jane always enjoyed the chance to use her musical talents, sometimes joined by her daughter, Barley. During Christmas 1866, they took part in an ambitious concert in aid of a local hospital, which inspired music critics to compare it favourably with professional productions. Sara Jane, ‘a full and rich soprano’, sang duets with 16-year-old Barley and trios with male voices, and received several encores. ‘Mrs Cust was really the guiding spirit of the orchestra, and with her carefully trained voice and good musical knowledge, kept her band of performers in excellent order.’18 Francis was in the audience with his stepson Ernest, down from Oxford for the holidays; Harry, now aged 4, would be firmly in the charge of his sisters.

Perhaps relaxation after the hard work of the concert, together with the pleasure of Christmas, caught Sara Jane off guard because, at the age of 45, she fell pregnant for the eleventh time. Her due date was in September 1867.

That year was one of mixed emotions for the Custs. It began happily enough with the wedding of Sara Jane’s eldest son, Sidney. Days later, however, the family had a shock when Earl Brownlow died in the South of France at the age of 25, having ruptured a blood vessel during a coughing fit. Dying unmarried and without heirs, his titles and estates passed to his only brother, Adelbert Wellington Brownlow Cust, an officer in the Grenadier Guards, who at 22 became 3rd Earl and 4th Baron Brownlow.

Francis continued as agent for his cousin, the new earl, and happier occasions followed in the spring. At six months pregnant, Sara Jane attended a grand London party with Barley, together with royalty, and at Ellesmere they hosted a lively celebration for the anniversary of the Ladies’ Bowling Club.

As Sara Jane entered the last full month of her pregnancy, distressing news came from Allahabad of the death of Francis’s sister-in-law, Emma, wife of his brother, Robert. It was the second time that Robert, until recently Home Secretary to the Government of India, had been widowed, each time losing his wife in childbirth. The Cust children, unaware of the fate of their aunt, eagerly anticipated the arrival of their new sibling, with Harry no doubt considering the pros and cons of no longer being the youngest.

On the morning of Saturday, 14 September, Sara Jane gave birth to a boy. The family rejoiced in the news of a safe delivery, and all seemed to be going well, until three o’clock that afternoon. Suddenly, Sara Jane exhibited alarming symptoms; four hours later, she was dead, the cause attributed to asphyxiation stemming from heart disease.

Six days afterwards, with the shops closed in tribute, Sara Jane’s body was taken from Ellesmere House to begin its journey to Cockayne Hatley for the funeral. A procession of 200 followed the horse-drawn hearse to the station. Apart from the baby, all of Sara Jane’s eight surviving children were present, from 26-year-old Sidney to Harry, aged 6 – he and Barley, walking with Francis behind the hearse, led the mourners. A special train carried the family and their household to London, from where they continued to Cockayne Hatley.

Robert Browning was in France when he learned of Sara Jane’s death, ‘which grieved me so much’, he wrote to Francis. Browning understood his situation all too well. ‘One cannot hope to be of the poorest service on such an occasion,’ he said, ‘but it seems natural to give some kind of witness to the existence of the feeling I have for the admirable and beloved friend that is lost, and for you who bear a blow to which mine is even light in comparison.’ He felt he knew Francis well enough to say, ‘Fortunately you are a brave energetic man, and will bear up, getting the good out of the consciousness of having deserved all those happy years.’19

The effect on Harry of the loss of his mother is incalculable. Had she lived, the course of his emotional life may well have run differently. Perhaps he derived some comfort from knowing how highly other people thought of her. Shropshire’s newspapers paid warm tribute:

Her loss will be most severely felt throughout the whole neighbourhood, where she was esteemed by persons from every rank in life. The poor will sorely miss her kindly and generous ministrations to their wants, and all who knew her will lament that one of the best of women has been taken away.20

On the bookshelves at Ellesmere House, her inscribed copies of the Brownings’ poems not only became part of Harry’s literary education but were a reminder of the affection the couple felt for her.21

At Ellesmere, two months after the death of Sara Jane, Harry’s brother was baptised Adelbert Salusbury Cockayne Cust, his first name the same as Earl Brownlow’s. Francis’s immediate priority was his family. A nurse and a nursemaid were already in place for the baby and a German governess for the other children, from whom Harry quickly learned the language. He had no excuse not to, for linguistic ability ran in the family: his uncle Robert spoke eight European and eight Asian languages.22

Francis, meanwhile, understanding his brother’s own grief and conscious of their respective children’s needs, gave a temporary home to Robert’s eldest child, Albinia, who had suffered the loss of both her mother and stepmother and had seen little of her father while he worked in India. Living in the Cust household with her cousins must have been cathartic. Sharing the grief of bereavement, the older girls could provide comfort to the younger children, while baby Adelbert, untroubled by the loss of the mother he had never known, provided a new focus for their love. The energy that was part of living in a large and lively family surely benefitted them all; in making his presence felt among the girls, especially with the competition of his new brother, Harry had excellent practise for the future.

Robert Cust remarried, but Francis never did. His focus remained the family, while he threw himself deeper into public life, exhibiting the energy that Browning had recognised. Determined to enter politics, a year after Sara Jane’s death, Francis responded to an invitation to put himself forward as Conservative candidate for Grantham in Lincolnshire, where Belton House was situated, and which seat his family had represented many times. The opposition candidates were Liberals during a politically difficult time in Britain, in which the Conservatives opposed Gladstone’s policy of Home Rule for Ireland. Francis also supported the new Reform Act, which enfranchised a wider group of men and made his particular passion, education, more important than ever. Eventually, in February 1874, Francis would be elected as one of Grantham’s two MPs.

Meanwhile, with no wife to support him, he increasingly looked to the older girls to help him at home and in his social duties, particularly his stepdaughter Barley, who was 17 when Sara Jane died. It was inevitable that the younger children would look to her now, while Francis sought her company at social functions.

When Earl Brownlow invited him and other cousins to stay at Belton House in 1869 to help entertain the Bishop of Lincoln, Barley was invited too. The occasion marked the opening of Grantham church after a lengthy restoration, to which the Brownlow Custs had widely contributed as befitted their 260-year ownership of the Belton estate. The guests could also congratulate Francis on being appointed High Sheriff of Bedfordshire, and it was a good opportunity to get to know the Countess Brownlow, formerly Lady Adelaide Talbot, whom the earl had married the previous year.

As part of their marriage celebrations, the Earl and Countess Brownlow embarked upon a tour of their estates, visiting Ellesmere for the first time in November 1869 and causing immense excitement. For most people, it was the first time they had seen their new landlord, and he and his wife, both 25, tall and striking, did not disappoint. Young Harry could observe Lady Brownlow’s dark beauty, a quality he would be delighted to discover later in her niece Theresa, the Marchioness of Londonderry.

Francis and the children were heavily involved in the organisation of tributes and events, including a tea party for hundreds of children from local schools and the workhouse. Barley, Lucy and Marion helped the ladies of the town to organise the young guests and assisted their father in escorting the Brownlows. At 8 years old, Harry, along with Annette, aged 9, and Violet, 10, would be expected to take their tea with the local children.

Soon Harry had to adjust to another change in his young life, for it was time for Barley to move on with hers. In February 1870, aged 19, she married Charles Donaldson Hudson, 30, a magistrate and landowner. The wedding at Ellesmere was a warm-hearted occasion, where the streets were decorated and the town had a day’s holiday; Barley was held in high esteem for her charity work, as her mother had been. On an emotional day, Francis gave away his dear stepdaughter, and the children realised they would no longer have their sister in their daily lives. What Harry said to Barley as she left for the honeymoon, and what she promised her little brother can only be imagined, but they would remain close.

Now it was Lucy’s turn to take charge. She was devoted to their father, and although she was said to be ‘a born ruler’, her task was not always easy. Francis ‘for all his charm was an excitable man, with the habit of taking to his bed when unduly crossed by his family’.23 He was upset when Lucy became engaged to a clergyman called John Storrs, despite the fact that Francis was himself the son of a clergyman. Francis relented when John was offered a living with good prospects, but the young man’s experience of the Cust family was that it was ‘large, abnormally united by allusion and shibboleth, and not particularly encouraging’.24 The sharp Cust wit could be off-putting to outsiders, while the death of Sara Jane had bound them together ever more tightly.

Before Lucy’s wedding, it was time for Harry himself to move on. By the time he reached the age of 10, he had begun at a preparatory school, comfortably equipped with all those gifts bestowed on him at birth but now diminished by the most valuable of them all: a mother’s love.

2

FRIENDS AND LOVERS

In 1874, aged 13, Harry burst upon Eton College, the renowned boarding school for the sons of monarchs and ministers, the influential and the wealthy. Founded for poor boys by Henry VI in 1440, the college, with its beautiful chapel, stands imposingly by the River Thames near Windsor, its pupils instantly recognisable by their distinctive uniform which has changed little over the centuries. Harry, tall and good-looking even in adolescence, would have worn it well: the black tailcoat and waistcoat, starched stiff collar, black pinstripe trousers and, as the final flourish, a top hat.

Like other non-scholarship boys whose fees were paid by their parents, Harry boarded in Eton town rather than in school and was known as an Oppidan. The boys were divided into houses, between which competitiveness in study and sport was actively encouraged, and each house was headed by a master. Harry’s was Edward Compton Austen Leigh, who could boast an interesting literary connection: his great-aunt was the novelist Jane Austen.

Harry must have been a gift to teach, for not only did he exhibit literary and linguistic precociousness, but he was also a talented all-rounder. Among a coterie of adolescents destined for great things was M.R. James, later the acclaimed writer of ghost stories, who recognised his friend’s qualities:

For Harry Cust I think we did prophesy a brilliant future … An excellent Captain of the Oppidans, and of his House, a worker, the most shining of social successes, competent at games (what colours he had I don’t remember), good-looking, a most facile speaker, a delightful actor … He really was the expectancy and rose of the fair state. Any degree of intimacy with him at Eton was an honour and a delight.1

The games to which James referred were football and cricket but Harry also rowed, did long jump and won prizes for shooting and running. In 1880, he achieved the accolade of History Prizeman. He and his world looked perfect.

Yet, even at school, his life was marred by death. In 1879 he lost two friends. Richard Durant, ‘my very greatest Eton friend whom I had worked and lived with for five years’, died after a short illness, and two months later, Clarence Sinclair Collier drowned in the River Isis at Oxford. ‘The loss of two real friends, almost at the same time, leaves a great blank in one’s life and mind,’ Harry told ex-Eton master Oscar Browning in an anguished letter.2 He looked forward to talking about Collier at Cambridge, where Oscar Browning now taught – he had been dismissed from Eton in 1875 for his close friendship with Harry’s friend, George Curzon, and now worked at King’s College, where he already held a fellowship.

Meanwhile, in his last school year, Harry was entered for the prestigious Newcastle Select scholarship, Eton’s highest prize. Although he confounded expectation by not winning, it put him in Eton’s list of top boys, and he ended his school career effortlessly as editor of the Eton Chronicle. His friend A.C. Benson, later an academic and poet who knew Curzon and another future statesman, Lord Rosebery, predicted that out of the three, Harry was the most likely to become prime minister.

Harry was admitted to Trinity College Cambridge to study classics in June 1881, aged 19; without the Newcastle scholarship’s prize money he had to pay his own fees, and with an active social life, he was always hard up. He met again with M.R. James, studying at King’s, and together they appeared in a Greek play, Ajax, with Virginia Woolf’s cousin, James Kenneth Stephen, in the title role.3 Harry played Ajax’s half-brother, Teucer, a great archer, and was only less memorable ‘because Ajax is so dominant’, said James.4

In 1883, he and Harry performed in the comedy Birds by Aristophanes, of which even the London newspapers carried reviews. M.R. James, playing the lead, observed a characteristic of Harry’s which could be amusing or exasperating, depending on one’s position. In addition to the delights of rehearsing and performing the play, said James:

There were the anxieties which attended the appearances of Harry Cust (Prometheus) who had never committed any portion of his lines to memory, and had to get them from me as occasion offered, filling in the gaps with improvisation in an unknown tongue – and clad moreover in but one garment snatched up at the last moment.

Brilliance came with a price, and unpredictability could, in youth at least, be seen as endearing eccentricity. Harry’s friend, Sir James Rennell Rodd, an ambassador and poet, later said, ‘Impulsive, disinterested and affectionate, he could always claim indulgence and find forgiveness.’5

Harry needed the buzz of socialising, the thrust of witty repartee and the adrenaline of animated discussion. On Sunday evenings after a dull day of compulsory chapel and meals, he would ‘summon all his wide acquaintance to what he called a Hell in his rooms at Trinity: the name indicates the miscellaneous nature of the company’,6 in which M.R. James was a willing participant. The pair were also members of the university’s Pitt Club, founded in 1835 and named for the first Prime Minister of Great Britain and Ireland, William Pitt the Younger. Like most gentlemen’s clubs, its purpose was to foster friendship and build contacts, assisted as desired by alcohol.

Oscar Browning, a corpulent, eccentric gay man, held noisy, cheerful music parties, also on Sunday evenings, which clashed with Harry’s Hell nights, and he often had to decline Browning’s other invitations, on one occasion because he was ‘a devoted tho’ reluctant oarsman, and have to appear at a wholly undesirable training before breakfast on Saturday’.7 Oscar tended to make pets of those undergraduates who were handsome and attractive, but if Harry sensed he was favoured for that reason, it did not stop him keeping in touch with the Cambridge don after he graduated.8

Within Harry’s circle was fellow Trinity student and Pitt Club member, HRH Prince Albert Victor Christian Edward, known as Eddy.9 The son of the Prince of Wales (the future Edward VII), he had been tutored for his uncertain Cambridge admission by J.K. Stephen. Prince Eddy was two years younger than Harry and it seems unlikely they had much in common, not least because their intellects were far apart, but it would have been rude to ignore the longstanding Cust connection with the royal family. The Earl and Countess Brownlow were good friends of the Prince and Princess of Wales; another relation, Charles Cust, was a close friend of Prince Eddy’s younger brother, George (later George V); and Harry’s cousin, Lionel, a recent Trinity graduate, had become Eddy’s confidante.10 The elements of university life that Eddy and Harry shared meant that, in what would be the last years of the prince’s unexpectedly short life, Harry would be a useful guest at family events to which His Royal Highness was invited.