George’s recent comment here about Evelyn Waugh’s (Wu as Conrad calls him) generous opinion of Conrad Russell was written after Conrad’s death. He had not had an opportunity to read Conrad’s letters.
”To Diana Cooper, 28 December or Innocents Day, 1944
I’ve very nearly finished Wu’s novel – early de luxe edition lent by the Hollises. I think it so very bad. Such dull uninteresting people, drinking and catamiting and adultery and becoming and unbecoming Catholics. They are a lot of boring puppets and never come to life. Surely it’s a great waste of time to write such books, as it is to read them. I suppose it makes money in an easy way and that’s a consideration. What an old snob he is with his showing off … K (Katharine Asquith) says the people in the book are the Lygons. I shouldn’t know. …
What a pitfall, what a snare the peerage and titles are to the unwary. The story is about the family of a marquis. Quite at the end Wu tells one there is a barony of the time of Henry V (Agincourt) in the family. It’s unlikely of course but not impossible. The dying Marquis muses on his deathbed that if his son ‘Bridie’ has no children the barony will on his death be inherited by Julia his eldest daughter as it ‘descends in the female line’.
As there are two daughters nothing of the kind would happen. The barony would fall into abeyance between the two sisters. Peerage law and the inheritance of baronies by writ is an abstruse subject which Wu had better have left alone. Shall we tell him? Or do you think it might kill him?”
When we had unstoned fruit for pudding at Barmeath I arranged the pits around the rim of my plate and recited tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief. Of the eight careers on offer I tried soldier (Irish Guards) but in the absence of genealogist, went into the City aspiring to be a rich man. I did try to join the College of Arms and have retained an interest in the subject. Conrad is on the money. For example, the Howard de Walden barony, created by writ of summons in 1597 by Elizabeth I.
“In 1999, while a cousin succeeded as Baron Seaford, the barony of Howard de Walden fell into abeyance among the 9th Baron’s four daughters and co-heiresses, who also inherited jointly substantial estates in London. By royal warrant dated 25 June 2004, the Queen called the barony of Howard de Walden out of abeyance in favour of the eldest daughter, Hazel Czernin (born 1935).” (Wikipedia)
Perhaps not in 1944 but today the monarch can reinstate a title in abeyance. Another dodge, a writ of acceleration, was last used in 1992 when Viscount Cranbourne was summoned as Lord Cecil when his father, the Marquess of Salisbury, was alive. The House of Lords Act (1999) abolished this convenient device for the time being.
