Evan Morgan ( Viscount Tredegar) and the ‘True Cross’ of Christ

 

AN EASTER STORY  FROM WILLIAM CROSS

       Riverside, California, Evan Morgan's retreat  in the 1920s

                           

Hon. Evan Morgan in the 1920s

 In the late 1920s  the Hon. Evan Morgan [1]  ( later Viscount Tredegar)  was in Riverside, California as a guest of Frank A Millar [2] the proprietor of the Mission Inn hotel.

Evan’s visit made such an impact that it features in a book published about Frank Millar and the Mission Inn:

The book declares that:-

There was the incident of the visit of the Honorable Evan Morgan, son of Baron Tredegar of England.”  [3]

Several tall stories are told of how Evan acquired a piece of the ‘ True Cross’ on which Christ was crucified, including  one ludicrous yarn of Evan making the find in the Holy Land (  he did  visit Jerusalem at least once ). Another ridiculous romp mentions Evan hiring a whole carriage of a train passing through Turkey to convey the relic back to  his home in Britain.

In  fact the real story of Evan’s precious possession relates to a reliquary of St John on the Cross at Mission Inn.

“ Mr Morgan had arrived at the [ Mission]  Inn on a trip around the world. Wandering among the crosses of the collection, he came upon a reliquary of St John of the Cross. Mr Morgan’s Catholic sympathies were pronounced, and St John was his patron saint; he went to the curator, saying that he wished to buy this cross. The curator told him courteously that nothing in the cross collection was for sale.

“I must buy it.” The Honourable Evan Morgan repeated. “ You must let me buy it.”

Impressed by the absence of any mention of price or inclination to bargain, Mr Borton, the curator promised to lay the matter before Mr Miller. Mr Miller replied that he was sorry, that nothing in the cross collection could be sold.

Mr Morgan now cried.  “Please tell Mr Miller that I will pay anything he wishes, but I must have the cross.”

This word he followed with a personal letter to Mr Miller, repeating the wish to have the cross at any price, and enclosing three papal rings, whose settings were exquisite intaglios cut in amethyst and topaz. Sitting before an open fire in his cowled monk’s dressing gown of brown burlap, Mr Miller dictated his reply.

My DEAR FRIEND:  I cannot find it in my heart to traffic in anything which you value as manifestly you this cross. Take it, with my appreciation of you.

I am returning the three papal rings, which I am sure that you value more than I would know how to do.

Sincerely yours, 

FRANK  A MILLER”[4]

Another  teller of the same tale suggests that on Evan’s visit to Riverside he  “ secured a relic of the ‘True Cross’  in exchange for a Cross which he [ Evan] procured from the Belgian battlefields and had blessed by the late Cardinal Mercier”. [5]

 An Extract  ( with additional text ) from the book “Evan Frederic Morgan : Final Affairs Financial and Carnal” By William Cross ISBN-13: 978-1905914241

Contact William Cross, by email

williecross@aol.com

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[1] Hon. Evan Frederic Morgan ( 1893-1949). The last Viscount Tredegar of Tredegar Park, Newport, South Wales, UK

[2] Frank A Miller( 1858-1935) . Owner and developer of Mission Inn Hotel

[3] Gale, Zona. ‘Frank Miller of Mission Inn.’  D Appleton-Century company. (1938).

[4] Ibid.

[5] Advocate ( Melbourne), Vic. National Library of Australia. 18 August 1927. NB Désiré-Félicien-François-Joseph Mercier (21 November 1851 – 23 January 1926) was a Belgian Cardinal of theRoman Catholic Church. He served as Archbishop of Mechelen from 1906 until his death, and was elevated to thecardinalate in 1907. Mercier is noted for his staunch resistance to the German occupation of 1914–1918.

SECRET FEAR BY REGINALD UNDERWOOD: A QUEER TALE FROM FORTUNE PRESS IN 1943

A  BOOK REVIEW  FROM  WILLIAM CROSS

                                             OF "SECRET  FEAR"

BY REGINALD UNDERWOOD (1943)

A RARE TITLE FROM FORTUNE PRESS 

   

                                                            THE  BOOK COVER 

 

This crime curio  offers, as the publisher’s own  publicity  declares, a queer plot that is  a far cry from others stories of the same genre at the time of its writing ( i.e. 1943). The  comparable titles are “ a little jaded by the ever-sinister Nazi"  or of the image of the  conventional  cloak and dagger detective, murderer or thief.

Secret Fear is  a  very hard to get  war time novel by  the prolific Reginald Underwood from the notorious FORTUNE PRESS.

Announced by the Press  in their “ Summer and Autumn Titles” for 1943,   as a striking “thriller”   the author  is better  known for his other Fortune Press delights including the frolicsome  relationship teaser,   “Flame of Freedom”, the  racy gay classic “Bachelor’s Hall “ and the torrid story of illigitimacy   “An Old Maid’s Child”. Yes, Secret Fear  is a  whole new departure in the literary career  of dear old Reggie Underwood.

The  book’s “Contents of  Chapters” gives ample warning of the nature of the storyline to come, with  stark headlines  including “ An  Inexplicable Burglary”;  “ Murder?”; “ Terror Finds The Doctor”;  A Strange Death”;  “An Appalling Ordeal” ; and “Escape”.

The action kicks off in Bruges in Belgium, in order to introduce the central character, 40-year-old  Roderick Farne, MA, a shy,  English  ex-schoolmaster, freed from having to seek  employment  in a profession he detests, after having gained a modest inheritance and, with it,  a taste for  travel and exploring the world at large.

Farne is drawn into this  mystery-suspense- vendetta, with the origin of the apparent “Secret Fear”,  set around concerns for the well being of  some old acquaintances of  his back in England. 

Quite whether Farne’s  informant in Bruges, Tom Smeathers a creepy ex- Butler to a rich family in Farne’s past life is an honest broker is part of the mystery, mayhem and murder that unfolds.  Mr Smeathers appears to have plenty of  secrets, and a odd ball and strange wife who keeps the dangerous company of men in the shadows.

Farne’s friends in England  are apparently in mortal danger  from the  evil intent  of a mother and child killer, a  heavy drinking aristocrat,  Clive Lowick.   This wretch is  believed  to be quite mad and, “cruel as hell”, he has  spent several  years in Dartmoor  prison and  upon his release from there was ordered abroad, to Canada.  It seems that Lowick was done out of his inheritance and  the family pile was left by his wealthy father to an old doctor and not to him, so on this count he is seething with anger and bitter as a lemon.

Trouble is the villainous  Lowick is  now back in England looking for revenge, and the line up of his would targets for revenge starts with the old butler in Burges,  and hot favourites by a mysterious  stranger ( possibly cavorting with the ex-Butler’s wife)  against  the old family doctor and his beautiful  daughter,  these being the close friends of Farne.  In fact Farne has  quite a notion for the doctor’s alluring  daughter, although no talk of romance has been exchanged between them.

The damsel in distress is  one Adele Burfield,  who was once promised in marriage to an older, effete,  English  Lord,  named Ploughdon, but for some reason or other she  remains single.  Adele is living with her father in a  quaint little cottage, having sold the Lowick family pile ( that was previously inherited)   and oddly it seems the doctor  is no longer  a rich man and has been the subject of a recent burglary that  has dumb founded and unsettled them all.   

Farne takes on the role of detective to investigate a  growing spiral of  conflicting  threads in  the relationships  and  he is soon deeply embroiled in  endeavouring to solve  a  trail of crime,  robbery, deception, lies, false Wills  and  multiple murders in search of the  truth.  What a jolly  good chap he is, and he seems to enjoy this quest.

Add to the mix a element of the supernatural, of controlling, fiendish females and there you have it to try to keep up and  unscramble.

A quite different,  honest and refreshing  storyline from the usually salacious,  middlebrow, gay-themed fictional flirts  from Reginald Underwood, who keeps up the  pace of Farne’s scrutiny of events,   and lays on the reader exhilaration fairly well, albeit  there is some muddling and the narrative  is  a bit short on the detail on character development. But we get hooked  as Farne tramples across the Midlands and back in Bruges looking for testimonies and answers to the riddles.

And, in the end  cleverly, and unexpectedly Underwood pulls it all off  in exposing the “Secret Fear” or fears of  almost all the key players  and with this some further gasps.

Farne is no Sherlock Holmes or Poirot, but  he is still a steady handed sleuth albeit  in the making. 

Is there a resolution and happy ending,  I won’t spoil it! That said : the only copy of the book is on my  book shelves albeit looking for a new, loving home. 

William Cross, FSA Scot

Enquiries   email :

williecross@aol.com

 

A  BOOK REVIEW  FROM  WILLIAM CROSS

                                             OF "SECRET  FEAR"

BY REGINALD UNDERWOOD (1943)

A RARE TITLE FROM FORTUNE PRESS 

A TALK ON RONALD FIRBANK : A TELLER OF FAIRY TALES FOR GROWN UP PEOPLE

 

“The Firbank Beneath My Foot”
A Tribute to Ronnie Firbank
In an illustrated  talk by  William  Cross, FSA Scot
 
Arthur Annesley Ronald Firbank 1886-1926

  “A teller of fairy tales for grown up people”

Ronnie Firbank was born in London in 1886, but his passport recorded an address of St Julians, Newport, Monmouthshire.  His paternal grandfather Joseph Firbank ( 1819-86) made his pile from the railways and lived at St Julians House, Newport where he revelled as  High Sheriff of Monmouthshire.  Ronnie’s  father ( Sir)  Joseph Thomas Firbank, (1850-1910) was old Joseph’s eldest son, and sometime an MP. Ronald’s mother, Jane Harriette Garrett, was of Irish descent. 

Ronnie was educated at Uppingham School, Rutland, and tutored privately, notably by Rollo St Clair Talboys (1877-1953).  He learned several languages, travelled abroad and later attended Trinity College, Cambridge from 1906-9, where he was a contemporary of the war poet Rupert Brooke and Oscar Wilde’s son, Vyvyan Holland. The family homes were at Newport, Chistlehurst and London. 

There were two brothers, but Ronnie’s closest kin was a younger sister, Heather.  Both  of them shared a bizzaire shyness, strange foibles and eccentricities.

Known by his family as “Arthur” ( Artie) he  was a sickly child, spoilt by his mother, he converted to Roman Catholic in 1907. 

In adulthood  Firbank  “cut a  figure as a rich, shy and utterly fastidious dandy”. He frequented the Café Royal and the Eiffel Tower (two fashionable London restaurants). He was thought of as a very clever young man with a flair for art  and history. But he was an insecure loner who curled up in a chair, in his own thoughts.  He was tolerated and indulged by his artistic and literary contemporaries including Evan Morgan, Augustus John, Nancy Cunard, E M Foster, Wyndham Lewis, Alvaro Guevara and Aldous Huxley. Augustus John, Wyndham Lewis and Alvaro Guevara all painted Firbank’s portrait. Every visual image of Ronald Firbank differs in an extraordinary  way.  Augustus John said it was impossible to do his portrait as he wanted to “ look over my shoulder”.  

Ronnie’s  books were published at his own expense from 1915-1926. They are  “long sustained and complex epigrams..”. This is a list of his main titles & dates published:  1905: Odette  d’ Antrevernes ; 1915: Vainglory; 1916 : Inclinations; 1917 : Caprice; 1919: Valmouth;  1920 :The Princess Zoubaroff; 1921:  Santal; 1923: The Flower Beneath the Foot;  1924: Prancing Nigger (aka Sorrow in Sunlight);  1926: Concerning the Eccentricities of Cardinal Pirelli. 

His “ Letters to His Mother”, Dearest Baba,  are also in print.

Some Opinions on Firbank

“ I always think of Ronald Firbank as an unhappy man who luckily for him, had the power of expressing himself through his books”.   Vyvyan Holland.
 
“ He was like a dipping strand of willow with a nerve of steel, and that “ something” floating bending but unbreakable in him is, of course, the integrity of the good artist.”  Nancy Cunard
 
Ifan Kyrle Fletcher had Newport links with Firbank. He  wrote an early Memoir of him . “ While others thought of vice and virtue, he ( Firbank) was concerned about vulgarity and elegance.” 
 
 “ …..the reclusive dandy-novelist Ronald Firbank, a man so consumed by shyness that he once spent a dinner party hiding under the table.”   D J Taylor ( 2009)
 

Ronnie travelled extensively to write, with much of his work compiled in France, North Africa, Italy ( in particular Rome), Haiti, USA and London,  his publisher was Grant Richards.

Firbank  is buried in Campo Verano, Rome’s largest Catholic Cemetery. A white marble ground slab in Section 38  records :

 “RIP : PRAY FOR THE SOUL OF  ARTHUR ANNESLEY RONALD  FIRBANK WHO ENTERED INTO REST ON 21^ST MAY 1926   FAR FROM HIS COUNTRY”

 AND THEREBY HANGS A TALE REVEALED IN THE TALK    

Ronnie's Grave in Campo Verano, Rome, by Monty Dart 

                      Blue Plaque for Ronnie 33, Curzon Street Mayfair, London

For more information, please contact William Cross, FSA Scot 

      Thanks to Monty & the late Tom Dart, Tony Friend & Ian Burge, Alan Smith, Digory Firbank & Ronnie Firbank

 

Ronnie Tried To Join The Swiss Guards 

                

                  Will cleaning up Ronnie's Grave in Rome's Campo Verano 

Email For  WILL CROSS

 williecross@aol.com