Diamonds at Dinner Read Online Free PDF

reputation for meanness. Newspapers of the day had already decided he was fair game for satire and ridicule and they reported gleefully that he bought all of his clothes from second-hand shops and claimed that he dined with his tenants – the poor farm workers on the estate – six days out of seven. One such report stated, ‘How noble it is to find a Peer of the Realm,possessing his thirty thousands a year, dining off a rasher of bacon and preferring that rasher at another’s expense!’ While a subsequent report of what in other circumstances would have been seen as a normal act of civic duty by a local landowner was turned about to become a savage satire:
    This is certainly the age of wonders. It is said that the leopard cannot change its spots, but we must now believe the contrary. Dinner was lately held at Tewkesbury among the new Corporation, and we are told that ‘the Earl of Coventry kindly presented the venison’. Are we to believe that he presented the venison free gratis and all for nothing? Is it likely, we ask, that this man, the meanest of the mean among the aristocracy, would give away a haunch of venison, when he will not allow any one of his own brothers, relatives or acquaintances – for friends he cannot have – to take away a single head of game from the grounds on which it is shot? The presenting of venison by Lord Coventry is about as liberal and gratifying as the presenting of a bill by one determined to sue you, if it be not paid.
    The Earl sought solace from this public ridicule in a string of completely unsuitable – and, in their own way, scandalous – affairs, including a number of local working-class women and an opera singer. These liaisons produceda number of illegitimate children, with resulting demands for large sums of money to ensure their upkeep and education. The chaotic state of his personal life was reflected in a series of wills. He tore the first one to pieces in 1836, made a second four years later in which he left most of his wealth to his housekeeper, and a third one bequeathed an annuity to a mysterious Fanny Brunton, of whom his family had no knowledge whatsoever.
    The 8th Earl’s life was blighted with conflict, public ridicule and personal tragedy. His eldest son, who was heir to the Coventry title, had been publicly labelled a simpleton and lived a somewhat dissolute and wasteful life before being shot in the eye in a bizarre hunting accident in 1836. Two years later he attended a party held by Queen Victoria, caught a severe cold and died within weeks – thus predeceasing his father. It would not be the last time that the heir to the Coventry name passed away before inheriting.
    The upshot of all this was that, when the 8th Earl finally died in 1843 – still being lampooned in the press and abused in Parliament – his successor was just five years old. It really wasn’t an auspicious start and anyone looking on from outside would have viewed the succession as just the latest twist in what had become a very public soap opera.
    But the 9th Earl – that kindly old bewhiskered gentleman we saw in the Pathé Newsreels at the start of this chapter – was to be the saving of the Coventry family. Hewould restore its good name – if not its fortunes – and once again earn for the Earldom the respect of rich and poor alike. Which is probably just as well because, if he hadn’t, I can’t imagine my father would have allowed me to take employment at Croome Court.
    Born in 1838, George William Coventry had been brought up on the Seizincote Estate in Gloucestershire but he visited Croome Court regularly and was determined to restore it – and the family name – to its former glory. He would be the first Earl in many generations to take seriously the responsibilities that came with being one of the leading aristocratic families in England, as well as reaping its rewards.
    Because he was only a child when the 8th Earl died, the estate was looked after by his great-uncle