Harry Cust
Background to a Scandal
a proper going scoundrel, amoral and practically insane, if the smoke-room story be true he is a cur and deserves to be kicked, villainy, no better than a prostitute, all is denied except that Mrs Cust was pregnant before marriage
All statements from various characters in Millicent Garrett Fawcett's letters and papers relating to her Henry Cust campaign - to prevent him standing for Parliament as an MP as morally unfit!
The nub of the matter was whether Harry Cust intended to snub the pregnant Nina Welby and marry Pamela Wyndham, with whom he is seen lunching in the Summer of 1892 (banner image). And whether he made a joke of all this to his acquaintances in the 'smoke-room'.
Read this research and you decide on the aggrieved parties.
In 2022, Jane Dismore published her book, Tangled Souls: Love and Scandal Among the Victorian Aristocracy, a narrative about the Harry Cust scandal. Eileen Davies examined the original documents a few years ago and provides the transcripts that the book is based on. With footnotes and additional material from Ian Ross.
Banner image: a lunch party at Ashridge House with Adelaide & Adelbert Brownlow, Harry Cust wth his inrended bride, Pamela Wyndham standing with guitar to his right. Summer 1892.
Henry John Cockayne Cust (1861-1917)
Nicknamed Harry, MP and journalist. Son of Major Henry Francis Cockayne-Cust, nephew of the 1st Earl Brownlow, and Sara Jane Cookson, daughter of Isaac Cookson of Meldon Park near Morpeth. That estate remains in the Cookson ownership.
Harry was, educated at Eton College and Trinity College, Cambridge, and then called to the Bar. He went on to Paris to study law. Said to have a weakness for cigarettes, dogs & flowers. He edited the "Pall Mall Gazette" from 1892 to 1896.
Harry’s family home was the remote Cockayne Hatley Manor. Lucy Cockayne Cust settled the estate on her nephew Brownlow Cust, 1st Baron Brownlow, with the provision that it should then pass to his second son Henry Cust. By descent it came to Harry on the death of his father in a bequest worth £3 million today (Wigton Advertiser 16 August 1884).
Lady Diana Manners, ‘daughter’ of Henry Manners, Marquis of Granby, later 8th Duke of Rutland, was christened at St John the Baptist, Cockayne Hatley in 1892. Diana is the acknowledged illegitimate daughter of Harry by Violet Manners, the Marchioness of Granby, considered the ‘queen’ of ‘The Souls’. From 1894 to 1897 the Hall was rented to the Manners family, where Diana was brought up as a child. It was sold in 1898. One can speculate that Harry was obliged to the Marquis to make this ‘rental’. It is now privately owned. Cockayne Hatley Hall Property Tour, gives some idea of the estate, the house diminished after a fire destroyed the south face in 1931.
J.M Barrie may have created the character Wendy in Peter Pan during his visits there. He knew the Henley family who buried their only daughter, Margaret, at the church after she died from meningitis aged five in 1894. It was at the suggestion of Harry Cust, too, a friend of the Henleys, that she be buried there. Barrie wanted to keep a part of her alive in the book - and created Wendy in her memory.
