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| Laura Beattie’s Lillie Langtry: Manners, Masks and Morals, p.99. Chatto & Windus (1999) | Laura Beattie’s "Lillie Langtry: Manners, Masks and Morals"] (]) 19:46, 30 April 2023 (UTC), p.99. Chatto & Windus (1999) | ||
| 2. FALSE STATEMENT | 2. FALSE STATEMENT | ||
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Copyrighted text?
A large portion of this entry is a direct cut-and-paste from the "History of the Langtry Manor" section of the Langrty Manor homepage (http://www.langtrymanor.co.uk/history.htm). The Langtry Manor text is copyrighted and no permission from the owners is seen.
- "This text is reprinted here with permission of the Howard Family" at the bottom seems pretty explicit. It ought to be rewritten in a "more encyclopedic" style, but until we get a letter from the owners to the effect that the permission statement in the article is erroneous, I don't we need to worry about it. Stan 05:05, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)
- Might it be an idea to move the Langtry Manor text to Langtry Manor? It is rather more about the history of the house than the life and works of Lillie herself. Man vyi 14:32, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)
Caesar
Does anyone have details of Edward VII's dog Caesar? Some references seem to think Princess Alexander gave Caesar to Lillie but the is difficult to verify. Caesar led the mourners at Edward funeral, following the gun carrage that carried the coffin. -Sidpickle (talk) 19:32, 24 March 2013 (UTC)
- I don't but Misplaced Pages does. Looks like "Caesar" stayed with Queen Alexandra. More details about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/Caesar_(dog) Inspector Colombo (talk) 01:56, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
Lillie Langtry and Hampstead
Is there any direct contemporary evidence that Lillie Langtry lived in Alexandra Road, Hampstead? Her cousin the well known Hampstead politician Philip Hemery Le Breton (1806-1884) is said in the Victoria County History for Middlesex, vol. 9, pages 60-63, to have lived at Leighton House in Alexandra Road in the 1870s. Lillie is there, said to have been another inhabitant. However, it seems from his other known addresses that Philip was only here for a very short time. The London Encyclopaedia, edited by Ben Weinreb and Christopher Hibbert (1983) page 16, says that Lillie lived here "behind a high brick wall at Leighton House" which (now that other details of her biography have been established in some detail) seems most unlikely. Perhaps she visited her cousin when he was here, but again evidence seems lacking. The eastern end of Alexandra Road was named Langtry Road in 1967. AnthonyCamp (talk) 11:00, 11 June 2017 (UTC).
Inspector Colombo: Two bytes worth considering: (1) "... while the rest of the estate was 'well-to-do, middle-class'. (fn. 26) Inhabitants included Lillie Langtry, a cousin of the local politician Philip Le Breton, who lived in Leighton House in Alexandra Road in the 1870s, the Harmsworth family at no. 94 Boundary Road from 1874 to 1888, and Herbert Spencer, the philosopher, at no. 64 Avenue Road from 1889 to 1897. (fn. 27) Samuel Palmer, of the biscuit firm, lived at no. 40 College Crescent, a large house called Northcourt built in 1881. (fn. 28) Source: https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/middx/vol9/pp60-63#anchorn26 (2) Now, when you check the reference in the quote above (fn.26) you will realize the source (of this information which includes the reference to Lillie) could date back to 1889 (...)
A. Camp: Lillie Langtry did not meet the Prince of Wales until the dinner given by Sir Allen Young on 24 May 1877. What one needs in this connection are a few more facts and far less speculation and wild imagining. AnthonyCamp (talk) 09:08, 11 July 2020 (UTC).
Inspector Colombo: In my reply to Mr. Camp (below) I was referring to an early comment (investigation leads really) which I unfortunately deleted when updating the two above points - and earlier points (mine) had become irrelevant as my investigation went on. Reply: Are you saying that the date of 24 May 1877 is incompatible? Incompatible with 103 Alexandra Road? With Lillie staying there now and then for short or longer periods, sometime between 1877-1880? Look at these as "working hypotheses" - based on common sense and the mores of the time. Who knows if the dots were accidentally joined?
LATER ADDENDA
Inspector Colombo: The main section's recent addition does not provide conclusive evidence (or bona fide sources) that Electra Yaras, Adrienne Corri et al, invented such a story for their own ends.
Electra may have been telling a story she had heard from others (adding to it her paranormal experiences). Lillie's name or that of her cousin Philip Le Breton needed not to be in any register. Please read on (Laura Beattie's admonition below).
Also, Anita Leslie ("The Marlborough House Set") was likely to have had her own bona fide sources. Her great aunt was Winston Churchill's mother Jennie, said to have had (or "not have had") an affair with the king. I don't see her book having to rely on the Evening Standard's 1965 feature, for a description of Leghton House. It was more likely that it was the other way around. The way I see it, this is the problem with an Occam's Razor approach, which is vaguely reminiscent of Procrustes approach! Ref. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Procrustes
Also, let us not forget Laura Beattie's admonition, "Lillie was a master at covering her tracks. Like all of her generation who availed themselves of the fin de siècle loosening of morals, she was fanatically discrete" (adding) "important people like the Prince of Wales and the Marquess of Hartington had private secretaries who were responsible for their good character" ("Lillie Langtry: Manners, Masks and Morals").
The other detail is...
Where is the evidence that Leighton House was named after Leighton Buzzard (Bedfordshire) or for that matter that Samuel Litchfield's wife was from there? Sources? The author's blog? The Camden New Journal? No details are given in either. Probably there is evidence, except the researchers are not telling us. Also, the idea that those high walls (Leighton House) were common is not computing. Not from the photo they provide of old Alexandra Road (...)
This is not a thorough approach to research. It brings us back to what Max Arthur, OBE ("Lost Voices of the Edwardians") said: "There is often no stronger proof than rumour concerning historical anecdotes and speculation - and often no stronger proof is needed".
The investigation goes on.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Inspector Colombo (talk • contribs) 18:31, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
A. Camp: If you confine your investigation to 103 Alexandra Road (in the period when Lillie Langtry was supposed to be living there) you will soon see that the man who built it, Samuel Litchfield (1819-1894), a dealer in antique furniture, had for some years (as the London Post Office directories show) premises at 19 Green Street, Leicester Square, and at 28-30 Hanway Street, Oxford Street. He had married at St Marylebone in 1846 Catherine Helen Collings (1817-1885) and in 1861 the census tells us that he was living at 26 Belsize Road, Hampstead, and that his wife and his mother-in-law (who was living with them), were born at Leighton Buzzard. The City of Westminster Polls show that he voted in respect of the Green Street property as from 103 Alexandra Road from 1873 to 1875 but in 1876 moved to Coppins, Iver, Buckinghamshire, where he lived until 1881 when he moved to Cheshunt, Hertfordshire.
Inspector Colombo: Most the information you provide here is superflous. The only relevant byte was that about Samuel Litchfield - namely that in "1876 he moved to Coppins, Ive!". What you are telling us is that those polls place him there between 1873-1875 ONLY - and what we are after here IS: who stayed there on-and-off between 1877-1880? That is the question!
A. Camp (continued): No 103 was taken by William George Strickland, a master tailor, who in 1871 had lived at 71 Boundary Road, Hampstead, and employed some 30 hands. The 1881 Census of No 103 shows him and his family and two servants occupying the whole house with Thomas Harden, a gardener, his wife and a son who was a groom, also there. Strickland died at 32 Priory Road, Kilburn, in 1891, and by 1884 the Directories shown that No 103 was occupied by Alfred Savill. Samuel Mayne Frankstein, an oil merchant and dry salter, was there in 1891, and it seems that the house remained a single family residence until 1945 when its lease for twelve and a half years, with vacant possession, was auctioned, and its furniture sold on 20 June 1945 . Presumably this was the lease that Mrs Yaras bought. Thereafter, the house, which had twelve or so main rooms, was sub-divided, the Electoral Registers showing Electra and Romuald Yaras there with about ten other couples from 1956 onwards. The publicity given to the house in newspapers in 1971 (The Times on 8 October 1871 and the Daily Telegraph on 9 October 1971) gave ample information to Anita Leslie for her book, which came out the following year. AnthonyCamp (talk) 15:27, 8 June 2021 (UTC).
Inspector Colombo: Again, too much irrelevant information. What you are NOT telling us, IS the year William George Strickland took over 103 Alexandra Road. All you are telling us (or those records are telling you) is that he and his family are on voting records for 1881 - repeat 1881 - in connection with 103 Alexandra Road AND that Samuel Litchfield left 103 Alexandra Road in 1875-76 (as per Census and London Post Office Records).
BUT what did those records tell you about the "critical period between 1877-1880? Nothing? That is the question and you know that.
Just one aside in connection with Leighton Buzzard and Leighton House, if I may - a bit of lateral thinking I am inclined to agree with but, by the same token, I have to pose this question to you: Did you know there is a place in Leighton Buzzard named "Langtry Court"? What should we make of it? Any suggestions? Source (several): https://www.zoopla.co.uk/property/uprn/10002271577/
TO SUMMARIZE:
(1) Litchfield (assuming the data you collectd is correct) left 103 Alexandra Road in 1875 (-76 at the most). (2) The Prince's affair with Lillie, as you point out, was between 1877-1880 at the most. (3) NOW, was Strickland - the master tailor - already living at 103 Alexandra Road in that period (1877-1880)? According to your records Litchfield left in 1875 (-76 at the most) and Strickland does not appear on record as living there until 1881. So I must infer that you don't know and/or that those registers are not telling you either. Correct?
THE QUESTIONs REMAIN:
(a) Was Strickland living at 103 Alexandra Road between 1877-1880? (b) YES or NO? (c) And if NO - then WHO? (d) And if YES - what evidence do you have, such was the case? Checkable sources with links, please. Thank you.
I need not remind you that "Important people like the Prince of Wales and the Marquess of Hartington had private secretaries who were responsible for their good character" (Laura Beattie's in "Lillie Langtry: Manners, Masks and Morals"). I suspect that "reputation management" in those days could take many forms, "special arrangements" (with master tailors if necessary particularly those from Savile Row); erasing and falsifying records (if needed be) - particularly when you consider the parties involved! A future king, on the one hand, and a lady whose cousin was the MP for the Hampstead area, on the other (...) Lateral thinking is of the essence! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Inspector Colombo (talk • contribs) 01:46, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
You ask where Lillie Langtry was between 1878 and 1880. There is no mystery about that and the details appear in Laura Beatty's 1999 book. Lillie and her husband leased 17 Norfolk Street, Park Lane, early in 1878 (a small house with a tiny staff) and gave it up in October 1880. Her husband was hardly ever there except in the early days and Lillie used his absences to entertain a variety of gentlemen including Arthur Jones, the Prince of Wales and Lord Shrewsbury. She sometimes muddled her afternoon callers and Wilfrid Scawen Blunt's diary (quoted by Beatty, page 165) noted that on one occasion the Prince came and was not pleased to find Shrewsbury there. There was obviously no need for her to go anywhere else. AnthonyCamp (talk) 16:21, 18 February 2023 (UTC).
- THAT WAS NOT THE QUESTION
- Welcome back Sir! I am afraid you're evading the question! Again ...
- The question was NOT where Lillie Langtry matrimonial home was between 1877 and 1880.
- Everyone, who has researched the subject, knows that was in Mayfair - or more precisely at 17, Norfolk Street - now 19, Dunraven Street - and before that in Eaton Place, in nearby Belgravia.
- The question was (and I made this very clear) whether Mr. Strickland - the master tailor from Mayfair - was living at 103 Alexandra Road between 1877-1880, as you have lead Misplaced Pages readers to believe. Simple.
- POINT REMINDERS
- This is what you wrote in the main page:
- "No 103 (Alexandra Road) was taken (in 1876) by William George Strickland, a master tailor (evidence?) The 1881 Census of No 103 shows him and his family and two servants occupying the whole house." (quote)
- I am afraid that one census document alone (for 1881) which you mentioned, does not prove Mr. Strickland and family were living at Leighton House in 1876, 1877, 1878, 1879, 1880, does it?
- Do you have any other bona fide document proving that Mr. Strickland bought the lease of the place from Mr. Litchfield in 1876?
- Interesting to note that those Kilburn 'storians you took under your wing, seem to have made the same jump to conclusions. I guess that's the problem with the athletic approach to problem-solving! Here is a quote from them:
- "Using a variety of sources, such as the census, rate books, and electoral registers, we have looked at ALL the people who lived at Leighton House between 1870 and 1907."
- They looked at "ALL the people"? Really! That's impressive! "ALL the people"! And they credit you for it. How nice of them. I can only hope the Media outlets who wrote about their scoop credited them too. Their fiction was gripping.
- "We would like to thank Anthony Camp MBE, the former director of the Society of Genealogists, for his help and information about Lillie Langtry."- wrote the Kilburn 'storians.
- THE SOG
- You were a director of the SOG? And an MBE at that! Mamma mia!
- Adrienne Corri - the talented actress you cast as a fictile character in your version of events - was also a member of the SOG! And an Art expert at that! Which for the purpose of our investigation, counts more than an MBE. No disrespect intended.
- Incidentally, if I remember correctly, she had a few words to say about your society in general, and you in particular. This was in a book she wrote in 1984 entitled ... let me think ... "The Search for Gainsborough"! That's it!
- Where did I put it?
- Aspettare!
- I found it! Here it is!
- Page 58!
- On her diary for June 13th 1978 Adrienne wrote and I quote:
- "I have joined the Society of Genealogists in South Kensington, a glorious muddle of information and confusion...there is a certain amount of upmanship from the staff...Mr. A.J. Camp the expert on wills, thinks I am an idiot and shows it. I am determined to prove him wrong".
- Which she proceeded to do with great aplomb. Never underestimate a refined lateral thinker with investigative skills (...)
- Something just occurred to me! You don't hold a grudge against her, do you Sir? Just asking ...
- I particularly liked that later paragraph (p.262) in which she wrote:
- "To make an honest mistake is not the end of the world, but to have lost the wish to find the truth, or to deny it because it is not your truth, is bigotry." (Adrienne Corri)
- THE DECONSTRUCTION OF SOME OF YOUR ASSUMPTIONs CONCERNING 17, NORFOLK STREET
- Quite frankly, I didn't expect a pro who tends to rely on census, rate books, electoral registers, lease records, London post office directories, birth/death certificates and such paraphernalia, to try to prove - or evade a point - by collating, and then elaborating, a few details from a book! Including details that pertain to 1880 or thereabouts! Prego!
- Let's examine some of these fallacies, shall we?
- 1) You state that "her (Lillie's) husband (Edward) was hardly ever there except in the early days" (Norfolk Street that is, no mention of Eaton Place). Except in the early days? How early?
- Perhaps you meant early years - unless you were referring to the first few days she and her husband moved in 1878? First few weeks, say. I am sure you meant "early years". Right?
- 2) Then, Sir, you go into what you might call "wild-imagining" mode (not to be confused with lateral thinking!) and try to convince us that "Lillie used her husband's absences ("he was hardly there" you wrote) to entertain a VARIETY of gentlemen including Arthur Jones, the Prince of Wales and Lord Shrewsbury" (sic). Did you forget to include the bailiffs?
- 3) You are entitled to your own hypothesis, but "a variety of gentlemen?" That sounds like an overgeneralization, Sir, does it not? Quite a jump to conclusions ...
- Looks like you have ignored a statement by the author (Laura Beattie) - on the same page - that says: "There is no further mention of elopement in her correspondence". Apparently there was just one and that dated to early 1880 (...)
- 4) I am familiar with Laura Beattie's work and the names you throw in to support your fallacy, but are you asking Misplaced Pages's readers to believe that at the height of the Victorian Age, Lillie was having trysts with gentlemen (inc. the PoW) in her own marital home in Norfolk Street? With resident staff? In Mayfair, of all places? That beggars belief!
- Moreover! All these comings and goings taking place at a time when "the Prince was keenly spied on by the new society papers such as "Truth", "Vanity Fair" and the "World"? Which were competing for royal scoops and syndicating their scoops to the provincial press"? (Prof. Jane Ridley). No one with a modicum of common sense will believe that. Sorry.
- 5) Also, it is interesting to note that on the same page (p.165) Beattie refers to Scawen Blunt maliciousness in relation to Lillie, yet you seem to rely on him as a reputable source. The end justify the means, I guess.
- 6) Let me (politely) remind you, if I may, of what Laura Beattie writes at the very beginning of the book you quote (p.9) - perhaps to absolve herself later ...
- "The sources are scarce...she (Lillie) was fanatically discreet...important people like the Prince of Wales and the Marquess of Hartington had private secretaries who were responsible for their good character...Lillie did not have the services of secretaries (reputation managers as such). She did it herself... Lillie was a master at covering her tracks".
- 7. Please reflect on Laura Beattie's expert statements above - not to mention Prof. Jane Ridley's - and then, when you're ready, confirm (if possible) whether Mr. Strickland - the master tailor from Mayfair - was living at 103 Alexandra Road between 1877-1880? Please add any bona fide evidence to support it if you have.
- Grazie tanti!
- THE BOTTOM LINE IS:
- If you are unable to provide an answer for Mr. George Strickland charade (and provide bona fide evidence to support it) then we have to assume that you jumped to conclusions - in which case your mainstream argument loses its credibility, and Lillie Langtry's page must be amended accordingly. Misplaced Pages's principles must be upheld!
- Inspector Colombo (talk) 16:44, 30 April 2023 (UTC) NEXT EPISODE : A LIST OF FALSE STATEMENTS AND ERRONEOUS ASSUMPTIONS
- The number of such instances is increasing as my investigation proceeds.
- Incidentally, I am learning a lot from Adrienne Corri's approach. She is a natural! They don't work like this in the LAPD! Nor do they in Kilburn, I assume! Inspector Colombo (talk) 23:51, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
A LIST OF FALSE STATEMENTS AND ERRONEOUS ASSUMPTIONS THAT YOU HAVE MADE - CONTINUING ...
1. ERRONEOUS ASSUMPTION
In our previous Talk (above) you wrote:
“You ask where Lillie Langtry was between 1878 (sic) and 1880. There is no mystery about that and the details appear in Laura Beatty's 1999 book. Lillie and her husband leased 17 Norfolk Street, Park Lane, early in 1878 (a small house with a tiny staff) and gave it up in October 1880. Her husband was hardly ever there …“
Now let’s compare this with another quote, from the same source, you seemed to have missed.
"Prince Rudolph makes a nuisance of himself at Norfolk Street where he called at all times of day and night. When once he arrived alone and excited, having left his constant chaperone in an overturned growler in Oxford Street Lillie was forced to call upon the ever watchful Ned for protection” (Laura Beattie)
So, according to Laura Beattie, Lillie’s husband was mostly there - or “ever watchful”, as she put it.
What made you think that her husband (Ned) was “hardly ever there”?
Are we to assume that “her husband was there all the time - or “ever-watchful” - and therefore hardly ever there?” This clause does not make sense! Does it Sir?
Reference:
Laura Beattie’s "Lillie Langtry: Manners, Masks and Morals"Inspector Colombo (talk) 19:46, 30 April 2023 (UTC), p.99. Chatto & Windus (1999)
2. FALSE STATEMENT
In the article’s main page you wrote: "On 2 April 1965 the Evening Standard reported an interview with the former actress Electra Yaras.”
Incorrect! Mrs. Electra Yaras was NOT an actress and had NEVER been one. She was a "tour director" - as the Evening Standard correctly reported.
References: Microfilm of the Evening Standard - 2 April 1965 edition. British Library (St. Pancras). Confirmed by the Yaras' family.
DISCUSSION:
Why did you describe Mrs. Yaras as a "former actress"? For added effect? Denotation and connottion?
Turning a tour director into an actress, absurd as it may seem, may have suited your source underlying narrative and you Sir, followed suit!
Actors represent, pretend or in common parlance "lie". This is in my opinion, the main connotation.
The addition of a well-known actress (Adrienne Corri) - deeply disliked by your good self - further highlighted the connotations - and made it all seem more plausible. Funny how the human unconscious works ...
It’s none of my business, but I suspect your grudge with Adrienne Corri can be traced back to her days as a member of the Society of Genealogists’ in the late 1970s. Am-I right? Sorry Sir! I have asked you this already in our previous talk. Moving on ...
Reference: https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095710580
3. ERRONEOUS ASSUMPTION
Your source assumed that “Lillie would never have been seen dead here.”
Oh! Really? St. John’s Wood was known then as “an abode of love and the arts” – if I may paraphrase a title by Stella Margetson.
References:
The quote above is from an interview Mr. Dick Weindling of the "Kilburn ‘storians" gave to the Daily Telegraph (2 June 2021). Micro-film available in the British Library (St. Pancras).
The paraphrase is from Stella Margetson’s book: “St. John's Wood: An Abode of Love and the Arts”. Home and Law Publishing (1988)
A SHORT LIST OF LILLIE LANGTRY'S ASSOCIATIONS WITH ST. JOHN'S WOOD:
(1) Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (of Sherlock Holmes fame) seems to have known about Lillie Langtry's connection to the area as far back as 1891 well before the Yaras bought the lease of the house in 1946. I am referring to his short-story "A Scandal in Bohemia".
Central to this story is a character (Irene Adler) apparently inspired by Lillie Langtry who resided - guess where? In St. John's Wood! Just like Lillie did or is said to have done.
(2) There is at least one painting of Lillie Langtry and the Prince of Wales attending a cricket match in St. John’s Wood. This can be seen at the Lord’s Cricket Ground museum. The painting is by Sir Robert Ponsonby Staples and George Hamilton Barrable and is entitled: An Ideal Cricket Match (dated 1887). The painters, by their own admission, were just wild imagining things - or were they?
(3) Lillie Langtry grand-daughter - Helen Mary Malcolm (1918-2010) - lived, albeit much later, at 30, Queen's Grove (St. John's Wood). Not that far from Alexandra Road but let’s call that a synchronicity (…)
In a letter she wrote from that address (in the Yaras family archives) Helen Mary mentions two other addresses her grandmother is said to have lived in St. John’s Wood, presumably for short periods - namely “Regents Park (Road) and Regents Park canal” (quote).
(*) Given that “Lillie was a master at covering her tracks” (op. cit.) and the PoW had his “reputation management “ team, it all starts to make sense.
Signore! Aspetta! Quasi dimenticato!
(4) Just off Alexandra Road, up Loudoun Road, in a house at the corner of Marlborough Place lived Jane Belmond – the last mistress of King George IV (1762-1830). This, of course, was well before Bertie (1841-1910) Prince of Wales was in full swing - as it were.
King George IV brother, Edward Augustus (1767-1820) was, or course, the father of Queen Victoria (1819-1901) who, in turn, was the mother of Bertie – the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII). Small world.
References:
(1) "A Scandal in Bohemia" was first published on 25 June 1891 in the July issue of "The Strand Magazine", and was the first of the stories collected in "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" in 1892" (Misplaced Pages).
- More about the Irene Adler-Lillie Langtry connection can be found in a book by Christopher Redmond entitled: "A Sherlock Holmes Handbook", Dundurn Press. p. 51.
(2) For a photo of the Staples & Barrable painting click: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/art/what-to-see/lords-art-collection-home-cricket-cultural-identity/
(3) The evidence for Helen Mary Malcolm (Lillie Langtry’s grand-daughter) address at 30 Queens Grove is from the Yaras family archives. An handwritten letter by Lillie's granddaugther posted to Mrs. Yaras at 103 Alexandra Road in April 1965.
(*) Reference to Laura Beattie passage (p.9 op. cit.) (added details):
“Lillie was a master at covering her tracks (...) she was fanatically discrete (...) Important people like the Prince of Wales and the Marquess of Hartington had private secretaries who were responsible for their good character (…) Lord Esther (…) every personal letter or diary entry that was compromising was destroyed” ( op. cit. page 9)
(4) For Jane Belmond, King George IV mistress, see Mireille Galinou “Cottages and Villas – The Birth of the Garden Suburb”. (University Press, 2010) p.194. Also, Montgomery Eyre “Saint John's Wood its history, its houses, its haunts and its celebrities”. (Chapman and Hall, 1913) p.148.
4. FALSE STATEMENT
In the main page you wrote and I quote, that “Electra Yaras – in the 1950s had bought the lease of Leighton House, 103 Alexandra Road".
Incorrect! The Yaras’ bought the lease of 103, Alexandra Road in January 1946, therefore in the 1940s NOT in the 1950s. They moved into Leighton House, on the 13 February 1946, to be precise.
Reference:
The Yaras family archives.
5. A BUNCH OF ERRONEOUS ASSUMPTIONS
(a) Circumstances were not properly described. Why?
According to the “Daily Telegraph” (11/3/65 edition) the occupants of the Victorians houses in Alexandra Road, supported by their MP (Henry Brooke) were, back then, protesting against a property company scheme for redevelopment of the area. The Yaras were just one of the hundreds, if not thousands of individual lives affected.
Years later, the Daily Telegraph (9/10/71 edition) reported that the actress Adrienne Corri – along with Sir John Betjeman and Sir Hugh Casson plus the St. John’s Wood preservation societies - were leading a campaign to save Leighton House, and I presume the area, from demolition.
(b) Why did you place Mrs. Yaras and Adrienne Corri at the centre of the story (and ignored others)? To underline the notion that the two “actresses” had, for ulterior reasons, concocted the myth of Lillie Langtry? True she was the one that lived in Leighton's House but still ...
(c) Why didn’t you mention Sir John Betjeman - a founding member of The Victorian Society?
(d) Why didn’t you mention Sir Hugh Casson - director of architecture for the 1951 Festival of Britain and from 1976 to 1984, President of the Royal Academy?
(e) What made you think that Sir John Betjeman and Sir Hugh Casson were fooled by a story, allegedly crafted by a “former actress” - or two? Maybe they had bona fide reasons to believe that such was the case! No?
(f) I understand that you started working for the SOG in 1956. By 1962 you were the Director of Research. Why didn’t you address this question back in 1965? You were too busy? I see (...)
(g) More to the point, what made you think Mrs. Yaras was lying?
Even assuming Lillie Langtry had NO connection whatsoever with Leighton House (which remains to be proven) that, did NOT make Mrs. Yaras a liar. Did it?
If you had conducted your investigation properly you would have found that Electra Yaras was brought up in an affluent Athenian family and was privately educated in Switzerland. Suffice it to say that she spoke four or five languages fluently - including yours. She was not your average bigot, that's for sure.
I am afraid Sir that it was uncouth of you to assume, that someone with her education and social standing would concoct such a tale in the hope that it might change the course of events.
Has it occurred to you Sir, that Mrs. Yaras was sharing information that had been given to her, and her husband, around the time she bought the lease of Leighton House - back in January 1946? Information that was further substantiated by some of her older neighbours and/or by the Eyre Estate employees, who - back in the 1940s-1950s - would, on occasion, service the house?
Why didn’t you ask Sir Hugh Casson, Sir John Betjeman – or your nemesis Adrienne Corri – what they thought? When they were around, that is.
A proper investigation ought to start by interviewing those with first hand information about the “crime scene”. Wouldn't you agree. Sir?
(h) As for the "ghost of Lillie Langtry", that cannot be simply dismissed as (yet another) of the "former actress" fantasies.
Lillie's ghost is reported to have appeared too in her former house in Mayfair (Norfolk Street) as well as in Knightsbridge (Pont Street/ The Cadogan hotel). How do you rationalize that? That The Cadogan is earmarked for demolition? All these years? I doubt.
Apparently her ghost at the The Cadogan still appears now and then, usually around Christmas time (…)
Reference:
https://www.mysteriousbritain.co.uk/?s=lillie+langtry+
In case you are not aware Sir, there is a considerable amount of scientific research covering all kinds of paranormal phenomena (including ghosts and apparitions) and many of these cannot be easily dismissed as taradiddle - except perhaps by the less well informed strata of the intelligentsia corps.
Reference:
https://www.spr.ac.uk/about/whos-who-spr
The investigation goes on. Stand by for further announcements.
Inspector Colombo Inspector Colombo (talk) 19:44, 30 April 2023 (UTC)
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