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17 July 1909 — Carlsbad | |
Saturday. 17th [July 1909]. After the usual business of drinking waters in the morning, reading &c I went for a walk with Monsig. Stanley going up by the Jaegerhof, Aberg way & back by the woods. He was very entertaining & told me much about his own family & especially his strange eldest brother Lord Stanley of Alderley & his queer marriage. He had begun life as a secy of legation. His father had never liked him & he was not fond of his home. He was a fine linguist—speaking turkish Arabic & even Chinese. The ordinary life of a diplomat bored him & he at last left his post without leave from the F.O. & quitted the life. At Consple (I think) he met the lady whom he married. She went by the name of Fernandez, & spoke a queer kind of Spanish mixed with Italian & French. I told Mons. S. that I had known her in Spain & that Gayangos & the Riaños had said that she spoke the Spanish of the Levantine Jews wh was also my husband’s opinion– Well—after the Mohammedan marriage Lord S. thought it had not been quite a correct ceremony & had a 2nd done– On bringing his wife to England, his mother urged him to be married before the Registrar wh he did– Later on he had another marriage in a R.C. Church & it being then discovered that there was some informality in the marriage before the Registrar he again had one before a Registrar—making the 5 marriage wh ought to have bound him very tight. A short time after her death it was discovered that all the while she had a first husband living & none of the 5 marriages were valid! She used to visit her Fernandez relatives at Jaen where she was never known under the name of Stanley. When Mong. was young he was brought up for the church with a view to his having the living of Alderley but Lord S. objected to having him living so near the home & so he was kept out of it. When Ld S. died he was buried by a roadside near his own place according to the Mohammedan rites performed by an Imam who was fetched from Manchester– Not very long ago his sister Maud succeeded in finding a turkish tombstone with a turban on top wh she has had placed over his grave & enclosed it with a railing. Mons. S. says he knew my brother in law Edgar out in Fiji when he was staying there with Adl Goodenough who was his cousin. He has travelled much & we had pleasant talks abt distant lands we had both visited. | |
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