Read Online The Ka of Gifford Hillary by Dennis Wheatley - Free Book Online
Authors: Dennis Wheatley
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wrong horse by siding with Monmouth against James II; and two generations later they made another blunder by joining Bonny Prince Charlie in ’45; so from 1685, for about a hundred years, they were very much under the weather.
Then there had come a sudden revival, obviously due to the Earl of the day having married the daughter of a Sheffield Alderman. This heiress brought into the family not only a considerable fortune but also business acumen. Her son cashed in on the industrial revolution and by the time Queen Victoria came to the throne the Le Stranges were once more immensely rich. But by the middle of the century, probably without realising it themselves this time, they had begun to go downhill again.
To all the extravagances to which the more empty-headed of the Victorian nobilty were prone they took like ducks to water. Scores of servants, a plurality of houses, ceaseless entertaining, grouse moors, yachts, villas in the South of France, cards, horses, and secret establishments for pretty ladies, reduced them in three generations from great landowners to titled people of only modest fortune.
Courage they had never lacked; so two of them fell in the 1914 war. The double death duties administered the final blow to the already crippled estate. The family seat, the town house and the last acres all had to go. In 1918, at the age of eighteen, Bill came into the title. Of course, he had been educated at Eton and was already an ensign in the Life Guards; so his friends were mainly young men with extravagant tastes who did not have to worry much about money. In the circumstances one can hardly blame him for having dissipated,during the early twenties, the few thousands that had been saved from the wreck.
In 1923, as a means of averting bankruptcy, he had married an American heiress; but he was much too transparent a character to disguise for long that his heart was not in the match. He must have been extremely good-looking. I’m told that when it was discovered at Eton that his first name was Annibal, his school fellows had nicknamed him ‘handsome Annie’. Anyhow, women had fallen for him like ninepins and he had had scores of affairs; yet the fact remained that the only person he had ever really loved was a second cousin of his, the lovely Lady Angela Chippenham, and she was just as much in love with him.
The young American wife soon tumbled to the situation, and she was not prepared to keep her coronet at that price. One cannot blame her, but I think she might have been a little less malicious about it. Not only did she throw her Earl out on to the pavement from their flat in Grosvenor Square, but nothing could persuade her to refrain from citing Lady Angela.
Actually I don’t think Lady Angela minded, because
it
meant that she would get Bill for keeps. Proud as they make ’em, she refused to deny the charge and said some pretty cutting things about plain little girls who thought they could buy love with dollars. As soon as the divorce came through Bill made an honest woman of her; but her family were by no means wealthy, so he had to leave the Guards and try his hand at commerce.
As a peerage was still something of an asset for shop-window dressing in the business world of those days, he managed to keep himself afloat; but only just, because he was too lazy to make the best of his opportunities, abhorred routine, and got so bored with his jobs that he chucked most of them up after a few months.
Meanwhile, his wife had presented him with a son and daughter. Fortunately in 1928 Lady Wiltshire was left by an aunt the income for life on quite a tidy sum. It was anyhow sufficient for her to meet the expenses of a medium-sized house in one of the streets off Belgrave Square and to educate the children; but in 1946 she died from injuries received in a car smash, and her income reverted to another member of her family.
The four years that followed proved far from easy ones for Bill. His boy, who enjoys his second
Then there had come a sudden revival, obviously due to the Earl of the day having married the daughter of a Sheffield Alderman. This heiress brought into the family not only a considerable fortune but also business acumen. Her son cashed in on the industrial revolution and by the time Queen Victoria came to the throne the Le Stranges were once more immensely rich. But by the middle of the century, probably without realising it themselves this time, they had begun to go downhill again.
To all the extravagances to which the more empty-headed of the Victorian nobilty were prone they took like ducks to water. Scores of servants, a plurality of houses, ceaseless entertaining, grouse moors, yachts, villas in the South of France, cards, horses, and secret establishments for pretty ladies, reduced them in three generations from great landowners to titled people of only modest fortune.
Courage they had never lacked; so two of them fell in the 1914 war. The double death duties administered the final blow to the already crippled estate. The family seat, the town house and the last acres all had to go. In 1918, at the age of eighteen, Bill came into the title. Of course, he had been educated at Eton and was already an ensign in the Life Guards; so his friends were mainly young men with extravagant tastes who did not have to worry much about money. In the circumstances one can hardly blame him for having dissipated,during the early twenties, the few thousands that had been saved from the wreck.
In 1923, as a means of averting bankruptcy, he had married an American heiress; but he was much too transparent a character to disguise for long that his heart was not in the match. He must have been extremely good-looking. I’m told that when it was discovered at Eton that his first name was Annibal, his school fellows had nicknamed him ‘handsome Annie’. Anyhow, women had fallen for him like ninepins and he had had scores of affairs; yet the fact remained that the only person he had ever really loved was a second cousin of his, the lovely Lady Angela Chippenham, and she was just as much in love with him.
The young American wife soon tumbled to the situation, and she was not prepared to keep her coronet at that price. One cannot blame her, but I think she might have been a little less malicious about it. Not only did she throw her Earl out on to the pavement from their flat in Grosvenor Square, but nothing could persuade her to refrain from citing Lady Angela.
Actually I don’t think Lady Angela minded, because
it
meant that she would get Bill for keeps. Proud as they make ’em, she refused to deny the charge and said some pretty cutting things about plain little girls who thought they could buy love with dollars. As soon as the divorce came through Bill made an honest woman of her; but her family were by no means wealthy, so he had to leave the Guards and try his hand at commerce.
As a peerage was still something of an asset for shop-window dressing in the business world of those days, he managed to keep himself afloat; but only just, because he was too lazy to make the best of his opportunities, abhorred routine, and got so bored with his jobs that he chucked most of them up after a few months.
Meanwhile, his wife had presented him with a son and daughter. Fortunately in 1928 Lady Wiltshire was left by an aunt the income for life on quite a tidy sum. It was anyhow sufficient for her to meet the expenses of a medium-sized house in one of the streets off Belgrave Square and to educate the children; but in 1946 she died from injuries received in a car smash, and her income reverted to another member of her family.
The four years that followed proved far from easy ones for Bill. His boy, who enjoys his second
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