AN Aubrey Beardsley illustration come to life’ was how architect Clough Williams-Ellis remembered Henry Cyril Paget, 5th Marquess of Anglesey: ‘A sort of apparition —a tall, elegant and bejewelled creature.’ Unlike Beardsley’s illustrations, in sinuous black and white, the short-lived Lord Anglesey was a Technicolor vision. To a journalist from the Daily Mail, in October 1904, he apologised ‘for not appearing before you in peacock-blue plush wearing a diamond and sapphire tiara, a turquoise dog-collar, ropes of pearls and slippers studded with Burma rubies’. Six months later, the 29-year-old aristocrat was dead, a victim of pneumonia brought on by tuberculosis in exile in Monte Carlo, bankrupt and disgraced, a glamorous pariah in Edwardian high society, ‘that frilled and painted decadent’, as the Nuneaton Observer described him, witheringly.
Today, little remains of Lord Anglesey’s sunburst existence. To his successors, the man who, in 1898, inherited the equivalent of £60 million and an annual income estimated at £12 million, plus 30,000 acres in Derbyshire, Staffordshire, Dorset and Anglesey, bequeathed mountainous debts and a fragrant reputation. His contemporaries called him ‘the Dancing Marquess’. Censorious obituaries labelled his, uncompromisingly, a wasted life.
Denne historien er fra December 09, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra December 09, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Happiness in small things
Putting life into perspective and forces of nature in farming
Colour vision
In an eye-baffling arrangement of geometric shapes, a sinister-looking clown and a little girl, Test Card F is one of television’s most enduring images, says Rob Crossan
'Without fever there is no creation'
Three of the top 10 operas performed worldwide are by the emotionally volatile Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, who died a century ago. Henrietta Bredin explains how his colourful life influenced his melodramatic plot lines
The colour revolution
Toxic, dull or fast-fading pigments had long made it tricky for artists to paint verdant scenes, but the 19th century ushered in a viridescent explosion of waterlili
Bullace for you
The distinction between plums, damsons and bullaces is sweetly subtle, boiling down to flavour and aesthetics, but don’t eat the stones, warns John Wright
Lights, camera, action!
Three remarkable country houses, two of which have links to the film industry, the other the setting for a top-class croquet tournament, are anything but ordinary
I was on fire for you, where did you go?
In Iceland, a land with no monks or monkeys, our correspondent attempts to master the art of fishing light’ for Salmo salar, by stroking the creases and dimples of the Midfjardara river like the features of a loved one
Bravery bevond belief
A teenager on his gap year who saved a boy and his father from being savaged by a crocodile is one of a host of heroic acts celebrated in a book to mark the 250th anniversary of the Royal Humane Society, says its author Rupert Uloth
Let's get to the bottom of this
Discovering a well on your property can be viewed as a blessing or a curse, but all's well that ends well, says Deborah Nicholls-Lee, as she examines the benefits of a personal water supply
Sing on, sweet bird
An essential component of our emotional relationship with the landscape, the mellifluous song of a thrush shapes the very foundation of human happiness, notes Mark Cocker, as he takes a closer look at this diverse family of birds