Memories (volume 1 of 2)

A memoir written in the early 20th century. It offers an aristocratic life-story that mixes deep family genealogy with firsthand sketches of people, places, and public events, from a Northumbrian cradle to courts, embassies, and salons at home and abroad. The opening of the book sets out the author’s aim to preserve private, character-revealing details about notable figures, and acknowledges help from contemporaries in verifying episodes (notably in Japan). It then ranges widely through his ancestry: the Mitford and Ashburnham lines, the Norman Bertram connection, the ruins and border wars around Mitford Castle, and the legend of the Hermit of Warkworth, before tracking forward to William Mitford the historian, John (1st Lord Redesdale) as Irish Lord Chancellor and his controversies, and the 2nd Lord Redesdale’s long parliamentary career. The narrative shifts to Batsford and family ties with the Ashburnhams, peppered with vivid anecdotes (a royal relic of Charles I, a Garter bestowed by George IV, musical and artistic circles in Florence). It then moves to the author’s own early years: birth, a stint at Exbury, childhood in Paris (Tuileries gardens, glimpses of Louis-Philippe, court gossip, émigré survivors’ stories, the old Morgue, bustling fairs), and formative summers at Trouville—local characters like the devoted Marie Letac, a theatrical quack dentist, and the seaside’s transformation into a chic resort under Dumas’s patronage.