Tredegar House Parody : John Morgan, Lord Intriguer: The Last Mole Standing in Bassaleg Fields

Ringo Mole

John Morgan : Lord Intriguer 

 The Last Mole Standing 

In Bassaleg Fields

TIME LINE 1908-1962

John Morgan, Lord Intriguer, aka Johnny-Boy “ Ringo” Mole “ The Mad Hatter” was the last Man Mole standing in the reconstituted  Intriguer- Gould- Morgan line of descent.

 It was a line that closed during the  infamous  Beeching era.

 Having been kick started in  womanly glory in 1792 it  ended with the embarrassing  collapse of all  its male Mole Hills in year of our Lord 1962.

 The  future of Intriguer House was put  into the  paws of a contingent of  pious Mole nuns named after the venerable St Joseph- The Carpenter Mole.

 The  land slippage was obvious long before Johnny-Boy’s rise to power.

 Johhny -Boy showed  no early promise, and was troubled with pinhead eyes, pinhead ears and a pinhead brain.  But he stood tall, aloof, absurdly pompous and puffed up, and was self-opinionated, even at 12.

 His dearest  Papa, Freddy–Mole, aka  ‘Intriguer the Silent’,  gave him the unspoken treatment but  that poor sod  was tongue tied because by the time Freddy ever spoke up the conversation had moved on, or the seasons had changed. 

 Later when Johnny -Boy came marching home from various inane foreign digs in his 20s  he  sported a brand  new hat, all  just a fashionable fad  to make him alluring.  These  mad hatter escapades  was the total extent of his  souvenir hunting from numerous sabbaticals , even although his irritating  little sister Hon. Avi-ation Gurney Mole asked him to bring her back some bars of  striped sticky rock. 

 After  spending  two years avoiding the horse ploughs  of New Zealand where he  befriended some fellow Etonites  in the tangata whenua ,  (Māoris)  the indigenous Moles there,  he hardly ever took off his Fedora or stopped flashing his Eton three fold, reppe striped silk, tie.

 Johnny-Boy  had several aliases. He  fancied himself as  being a Mexican bandit, like Garcia rustling  cattle cakes for worms , but  he thought “Ringo” was a much better name for a  robbing bastard. He also  bought out by bullying all the tortilla chip mines from  peasants,  and filled his  winter larders as  he preferred tortillas to eating worms. The tortilla  deal  came with a  free  sombrero hat.

 When Johnny-Boy became Lord Intriguer the lawyers told him he didn’t need to rob banks or  rail trains or mistreat peasants  as  the Intriguer millions ( from banks and rail trains and  peasants hard graft ) had already been fully exploited and pilfered by all kinds of  illegality and stealth  by his ancestors and kinfolk by mastering  slavery,  rascality  and acts of  sodomy.

 Johnny-Boy  as Lord Intriguer ( after  as many deaths as the list of Adrian Messenger ) marked the end of  feudalism in the Bassaleg Fields.  Intriguer House was sold to the Church of Rome as a private  Mole School,  but with a brilliant snub by Johnny- Boy upon the  ‘National Truss’ -  a venomous organisation  who were rounding up  Mole Hills for the nation and wanted Intriguer House despite  their Inspector, Jimmy Milly- Mole being a  trifle disappointed by the coarse, unrefined quality of the landscape and the general dimness of the area’s non-Anglican population. 

An Extract from " The Moles of Intriguer House, Bassaleg Fields, South Wales"

A parody on the Morgans of Tredegar House, Newport, South Wales

By William Cross, FSA Scot

A Piece Of Madness - Written During Lockdown

                      FOR  MOLE/ MORGAN ENQUIRIES

                            PLEASE EMAIL WILL CROSS

                                      williecross@aol.com

 

John Morgan, 6th And Last Lord Tredegar

Died 17 November 1962

Frederic Charles John Morgan, 6th Baron Tredegar (26 October 1908 — 17 November 1962), was a Welsh Peer and Landowner.

REGINALD WYNDHAM :1876-1914 : THE POBBLE

REMEMBERING DEAR REGY

LIEUTENANT THE HON. WILLIAM REGINALD WYNDHAM

Regiment: 1st Life Guards

Service No: Officer

Date & place of birth: 16 March 1876, Petworth, Sussex

Date & place of death: 6 November 1914, Belgium

With much thanks to June Clark ( of Swansea) for taking a photograph of Regy's grave, a few years ago, at Zillebeke Cemetery.

 

Always Known as ‘Regy’ or ‘ Reggie’ he fought in the Boer War as well as the First World War.

 

He was born in Petworth House the son of the 2nd Lord and Lady Leconfield. He was the third youngest of seven children. He was in the 17th Lancers and in the Boer War from 1899 to 1902 he was given the Queen’s Medal with three clasps.

 

He left the army after a riding accident in 1903. He farmed in East Africa, then moved to the Rockies, USA where he went hunting and suffered severe frostbite, requiring the amputation of several toes and gaining the nickname of “Pobble”.

 

He eventually returning to England, spending his winters in Grantham where he still hunted with the Belvoir hounds. When war broke out he was gazetted as a Captain in the Lincolnshire Yeomanry and later attached to the Household Cavalry First Life Guards. He was sent to France on 8 October 1914.

 

Regy never married, although he was deemed a possible husband for the Honourable Gwyneth Ericka Morgan, ( 1895-1924),  Lord Tredegar's wayward daughter, they were linked not so much in romance but a family arrangement that would have given Gwyneth a life of dignified obscurity.

 

In his Will Regy left £3000 to the officers of the 17th Lancers for the promotion of sport in the regiment, and his collection of stuffed hunting trophies to the Borough of Grantham. There was a rumoured romantic link between Regy and an American woman Phyllis Langhorne, one of the five daughters of C D Langhorne of Greenwoods, VA. She had married a New York millionaire Reginald Brooke, but also “captured the heart” of Regy Wyndham and also Captain the Hon. George Douglas Pennant. It was claimed that both these men, killed in action left a fortune in their Wills to Phyllis, who later remarried a Captain Robert Brand.  There is a Wyndham Memorial Park in Grantham which was opened in 1924, after Lady Leconfield donated £1000 towards it as a memorial to her son.

“The war is sad….So many nice men gone! “

Letter of Charles Whibley, Scholar and Critic referring to Regy Wyndham.(2018)

“Poor Reggie Wyndham fell by my side shot through the heart.“

George Fisher Baker, a biography. ( 1938)

Bless him.

 

GRAVE OF REGY WYNDHAM IN BELGIUM

AT ZILLEBEKE CEMETERY

 

DEAR  REGY

FOR MORE INFORMATION EMAIL WILL CROSS

williecross@aol.com

BECAUSE OF THE LINK WITH GWYNETH MORGAN REGY FEATURES IN WILL'S BOOK OF THE TREDEGAR WAR DEAD OF THE GREAT WAR

Hon. Simon Fraser (1888-1914) Gordon Highlanders

 

Hon. Simon Fraser (1888-1914)

Gordon Highlanders

KILLED IN ACTION 29 OCTOBER 1914

A WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN

The photograph of Simon, above, is from Charterhouse School. [1]  The only surviving photograph of  Simon otherwise is as a young boy. [2]   Alas,   no photograph survives of Simon  in the Gordon Highlanders Museum Collection.

Hon. Simon Fraser, 2nd Lieutenant 3rd Battalion (attached to 2^nd Battalion) Gordon Highlanders was  killed in action on  29 October 1914. [3]  He is remembered on Panel 38 Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial.  Son of 18th Baron Saltoun and Lady Saltoun, of Philorth, Fraserburgh, Aberdeen. Several of  the sons of the Saltouns served in the Great War.  [4]

Simon was born on 7 September 1888, educated at Winton House, Winchester (prep school) and Charterhouse School, Godalming. He took up a business career in the City of London with Greenwell & Co, and in 1912 became a member of the Stock Exchange.  He was gazetted a 2^nd Lieut. 3^rd Gordon Highlanders 7 September 1914.  Served with the Expeditionary Force in France and Flanders. Later attached to the 2^nd Battalion of the Gordons.

Simon had everything to live for, handsome, sporty, a talented young man, like so many that were killed in battle in the Great War.  A what might have been, had he been spared. In the last year of his life he was often seen in the company of Hon. Gwyneth Ericka Morgan, ( 1895-1924), a childhood and family friend, they enjoyed each other's company at dances, balls and weekend jaunts to house parties.

Lieut. Col. H P Uniacke, commanding the 2^nd Battalion Gordon Highlanders, wrote on 3 November 1914: “It is with the deepest regret that I write to tell you that poor Simon was killed .... when fighting a difficult rear guard action. Willie [5] (Simon’s younger brother) buried him in the morning of the 29 October in the grounds of an old chateau.”

  

A fellow officer, 2nd Lieut. Peter Duguid, adds: “Simon and I were with our platoons in a trench on the left of the Gordons’ position. The Germans came up on our left and drove back the troops there, and we had to take up new positions as we were enfiladed by a machine gun. In doing this I got a bullet through the flesh of my right arm. When we had time, Simon put on a field dressing for me, and also attended to two of his own men who were hit. We had to fall back to the village of Zandvoorde, where we helped to organise the men. About noon Simon very gallantly carried a box of ammunition to a machine gun over an open field under fire. I  rejoined him later and we took cover in a ditch during some very heavy shelling about 2pm. He had offered me a drink of water and had changed his position to further down the ditch when a shell burst near him and though I ran to him at once there was nothing I could do. I am sure he did not suffer.  I shall always think of his cheerfulness and fortitude whatever had to be done, He had an extraordinary aptitude for the work, and all his men liked him.” [6]

Ypres -Menin Gate Memorial

EXTRACTED FROM "THE MORGANS OF TREDEGAR HOUSE GREAT WAR ROLL OF HONOUR": BY WILLIAM CROSS, FSA SCOT

CONTACT THE AUTHOR  FOR FURTHER DETAILS

williecross@aol.com

---

[1] Provided by Mrs A C Wheeler of Charterhouse School in 2008.

[2]  Enquiries were made in 2008 to establish whether a photograph of  Simon Fraser  survived in his family.  His niece [ the late]  Lady Saltoun was  approached by e-mail.  This is her reply of 6 January 2008. “Dear Mr. Cross  I should love to help you but I think you know more than I do about Uncle Simon's life.  The only photos of him extant in the family are photos of all four brothers aged from c.9 down to 5,  playing at Philorth, which are in the family album,  and I am not quite sure which is Simon and which is my father! They were very close in age. The family album is at Cairnbulg Castle,  Fraserburgh,  AB43 8TN,  which now belongs to my eldest daughter, the Hon. Mrs. Nicolson.  I don't for a moment suppose that a possible photo of him as a small boy is quite what you had in mind!    In the unlikely event that it is,  I am sure my daughter would let you send someone to photocopy the photos,  in that case you should write to her direct,  at the address I have given you. Yours sincerely, Saltoun”

[3] Simon Fraser was killed on 28 October 1914 and buried by his brother Hon. William Fraser (serving also in the Gordon Highlanders, 6^th Battalion) on 29 October 1914.

[4] Lord Saltoun’s eldest son, Alexander, The Master of Saltoun (1886-1979) (from 1933 20^th Lord Saltoun)  was also a Lieutenant in the Gordon Highlanders and was taken prisoner after the Battle of Mons. The 2nd son, the Hon. George Fraser (1887-1970)  (later a Rear Admiral)  was a Lieutenant  in the Royal Navy in the Great War.  The 4^th Son, William Fraser (1890-1964), also in the Gordons.

[5] William Fraser ( 1890-1964). A British army officer in both world wars. Reached the rank of Brigadier.

[6] Extracted from the book “  Menin Gate South: In Memory and In Mourning” By Paul Chapman, Pen and Sword (2016).

Cliff Gordon: 1920-1964: Scriptwriter, impresario, actor …and Welshman!

 

Cliff Gordon : The Welsh Icarus

“Wales is not a country, it’s an emotion…”

 WHO DIED TODAY 16 OCTOBER 1964 AGED 44

A FORGOTTEN WELSHMAN

Cliff Gordon was born ( Clifford Thomas Moses)  in Llanelly,  West Wales in 1920 and died in Hastings in 1964. He found fame as an actor and playwright and a musical impresario.  Best known for his play “Valley of Song” (about two feuding Welsh choirs, which was made into a film) Cliff often found himself on the wrong side of the law, because he was a homosexual. In the world on stage and entertainment Cliff was secure and protected.

 

After serving in the army with ENSA he worked almost non stop in London shows, with his own musical reviews at the famous Windmill Theatre. He also toured with Ivor Novello and with Donald Houston (in Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood) and did a good deal of work for BBC Wales, earning a high regard.

 

He also made several feature films. After the death of Dylan Thomas in 1953, Cliff’s closest friend and confidante was Thomas’ widow, Caitlin, the two of them drunk each other under bars in London and in Italy.  Dubbed “ The Welsh Icarus” Cliff’s career was affected by alcoholism and depression and he drove himself  far too  hard .

 

In the mid-late 1950s Cliff saw Shirley Bassey perform in Cardiff Bay and later invited her to tour with two of his shows, thus effectively giving Bassey her first ‘big break’ into show business. Ill- health overshadowed Cliff his whole life, but in his last years he settled into marriage with Margaret, a devoted wife. A sad, brave but often amusing tale of a talented Welsh man, but born before his time who burnt the candle at both ends in pursuit of his dreams. He is hardly remembered by anyone, and is long overdue a tribute.

 

Cliff died 60 years ago today, 16 October 1964, aged 44.

 FOR MORE DETAILS EMAIL  WILL CROSS

 

williecross@aol.com

 

CLIFF GORDON

 

SOME OF THE SCRIPTS AND SHOWS OF CLIFF GORDON

Scriptwriter, Librettist, impressionist, impresario, actor, song writer, cabaret artist…and Welshman!

“Wales is not a country, it’s an emotion”

Hon. Gwyneth Ericka Morgan ‘ A Beautiful Nuisance’ A Crime Revisited 100 Years On

 

A TALK THIS AFTERNOON AT OAKDALE CENTRE, BLACKWOOD, SOUTH WALES

ON THE HONOURABLE GWYNETH ERICKA MORGAN

Hon. Gwyneth Ericka Morgan ‘ A Beautiful Nuisance’

A Crime Revisited 100 Years On : From William Cross, FSA Scot

“..and all that’s best of dark and light meet in her aspect and her eyes” Byron

Hon. Gwyneth Ericka Morgan: 1895-1925 was one of the richest and as a debutante of 1914, one of the prettiest and alluring of girls. The daughter of Lord Courtenay and Lady Katharine Tredegar of Tredegar House, Newport, and, only sibling of the notorious Evan Morgan, the last Viscount Tredegar.

Gwyneth was wayward and unpredictable. She had an adventurous streak and a reputation for being something of a bohemian in the era of the ‘Bright Young Things’. After a chequered childhood, WW1 & difficult struggle in her 20s and after a period of foreign travel including recuperating from ill health Gwyneth suddenly walked out of a house in Wimbledon on 11 December 1924 where she lived with a housekeeper & maid. She left in a thick London fog with £70 in her pocket. She told no one where she was going. After being missing for five months a rotting corpse, was pulled from the River Thames on 25 May 1925. It was claimed as Gywneth’s. But was it? Who benefited by clearing up Gwyneth’s fate?

We'll never really know for sure what happened to Gwyneth Morgan. After spending 7 years investigating her disappearance her biographers Will Cross and Monty Dart reached various conclusions but never found finality & peace.

"One of the saddest things about Gwyneth's death" "was the turquoise amulet found on her body. It had been given to her by her brother Evan ( perhaps to ward off evil influences ) , it was held together by a piece of wire from a ginger beer bottle. It must have meant a lot to her."

Today, as we near the centenary of Gwyneth’s strange disappearance, Will Cross offers some new evidence he’s gathered behind the whole mystery with some unanswered questions and sinister overtones.

FOR MORE INFORMATION YOU CAN CONTACT WILL CROSS BY E-MAIL

williecross@aol.com

 

 

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