Alex Deane Profile picture
18 Feb, 15 tweets, 3 min read
This is the 31st instalment of #deanehistory.

Adeline, Countess of Cardigan and Lancastre, (not a typo, albeit it's sometimes anglicised) played fast & loose with naming conventions.
This habit may have stemmed from her father’s use in later life of her mother’s cool maiden name, “de Horsey.” Nicer than the apian cruelty of his own name, Kilderbee.
Briefly engaged to a pretender to the Spanish throne, she scandalised society by being out & about with the notorious rake the 7th Earl of Cardigan, without a chaperone – quelle horreur! After the death of the Earl’s wife, they formalised things by getting married themselves.
They tied the knot in Gibraltar, momentarily away from the censorious eyes of the court and press, for she vacillated between flirting with public attention and ostentatiously shunning it. This doesn’t remind us of anyone in the present day, of course.
Her first husband gets one of the best lines in the history of cinema: played by Trevor Howard, upon being given the order (or not: the question is disputed) to carry out the Charge of the Light Brigade – “Well, here goes the last of the Brudenells. The Brigade will advance!”
She received numerous proposals after Cardigan’s death in 1868. One came from her lifelong acquaintance Benjamin Disraeli, who wasn’t badly placed in terms of the kind of eye-catching public role she liked as he was in post for his first, short stint as Prime Minister that year.
She was certainly fond of Disraeli, but marriage was out of the question given his halitosis. So she married a Portuguese nobleman, Don António Manuel de Saldanha e Lancastre, Conde de Lancastre, in 1873.
It was by whacking the two titles together, which apparently is a no no, that she got the moniker that graces her rather racy memoirs.
After time together in Lisbon & Paris, she parted ways with Don longname, whose bronchitis meant he avoided English weather, & returned to live at the home left to her by Cardigan. For quiet in her twilight years? Oh, no. Fair to say that she didn't go gentle into that goodnight.
Her pursuits scandalised society in ways we might find surprising. She rode a bicycle – modern view straight to sainthood, Victorian view unladylike. She smoked – modern view straight to hell, Victorian view pearl clutching, view in between more sympathetic.
She entertained guests by running steeplechases through the estate’s graveyard, or playing the castinets in full regalia, or by dressing up as a ghost haunting her own house. A nun, in fact. She had a sense of humour. These activities were interrupted only slightly by bankruptcy.
Her approach to death was equally eccentric. In her twilight years, she took to keeping a coffin in her ballroom, and would regularly get in it when visitors came calling, to ask them how they thought she looked.
Though separated, she remained married to the Don until his death and survived him by quite some time. She died at Deene (no relation) Park in Northamptonshire and is buried there with Cardigan.
What lesson..? Well, I haven’t seen her grave, but wouldn't be surprised if it had a cod Latin motto translated as “I did what I liked– so what?” Possibly atop a rococo stylised V-sign. Be yourself, no matter what they say. Unless what they say amuses you, in which case, good.
For this story, many thanks indeed to @pollsstar for the suggestion. Albeit I'm afraid some of the raciest points raised about Adeline, which may well be true, could not be substantiated on my research...!

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More from @ajcdeane

19 Feb
This is the 32nd instalment of #deanehistory.Hat tip: @FredTitmus.

Ignaz Trebitsch-Lincoln was born to an Orthodox Jewish family in Hungary. It was the last orthodox thing he ever did.
Whilst he did not complete his studies at the Royal Hungarian Academy of Dramatic Art, I think you’ll agree that what follows confirms a flair for the dramatic.
Regular arrested for theft, he abandoned his course and moved to England where he converted to Christianity & was sent to Germany by missionaries to train for religious orders, a vocation for which subsequent events showed him to be singularly ill-suited.
Read 22 tweets
17 Feb
This is the 30th instalment of #deanehistory

My grandfather was a glider pilot at Arnhem, so I have always taken an interest in paratroopers. But the first Allied parachute drop in enemy territory wasn’t by British troops.
The Cichociemni (chick-a-chem-ney) were Polish paratroopers. Cichociemni means “the silent and unseen.” They trained in exile at Audley End, a beautiful stately home in Essex perhaps best known to you because a nearby railway station is named after it.
Our heroes generally trained in secret in Audley End’s grounds, but one foray further afield involved doing a mock raid on the train station. Spare them a thought the next time you pass through it on the way to Cambridge.
Read 10 tweets
31 Jan
This is the 22nd instalment of #deanehistory.

If you are of a squeamish disposition, look away now.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Leonid Rogozov served as the doctor on the 6th Soviet Antarctic Expedition, September 1960 to October 1961. This expedition established the Novolazarevskaya Station, on the Schirmacher Oasis- nominative false advertising if ever there was.
They’d come by ship from Russia; it took over a month. The ship wouldn’t be back for a year.

Setting up the base was OK; winter struck by February & the dozen men hunkered down to see it out, hoping not to recreate The Thing no doubt.
Read 14 tweets
30 Jan
This is the 21st instalment of #deanehistory.

In this challenging time people are understandably reflecting on things & realising that there are things that they regret.

Looking back, I realise that I was insufficiently rude to two people. The first was Geoffrey Howe.
I partially owe that conclusion, and the existence of this thread, to the brilliant “The Spy & the Traitor,” by @BenMacintyre1, which you should read.
In the dark days of Soviet Russia, Oleg Gordievsky spied for us for a generation. He was blown because of a CIA traitor. Whilst he thought he was probably discovered, he still went back to Moscow from London (where he could have claimed asylum and all would be fine) because…
Read 16 tweets
29 Jan
This is the 20th instalment of #deanehistory.

We’ve all - until these recent, housebound times - enjoyed the occasional “night on the tiles.”

But the Day of the Tiles was quite different & (depending on how you spend your nights, I suppose) rather more painful.
The ancient city of Grenoble was the capital of the old, proud French region of Dauphiny in the southeast. (Possession of the region by French royalty came with the condition that the heir to the throne be called “Dauphin” after it. Obvious parallel with “Prince of Wales.”)
Louis XVI did not have a good run of things, what with being the only French monarch to be executed, presiding over the end of a thousand years of royal rule and so on. But he could hardly have appreciated things would kick off in the southeastern corner of the realm at Grenoble.
Read 17 tweets
28 Jan
This is the 19th instalment of #deanehistory.

Die Hard is the best Christmas film. This truism is well known.

But the phrase “Die Hard” actually has a much longer history.
In the early 1800s, Spain & Portugal fought the Peninsular War against the invading / occupying French. As usual, in any given scrap in the last millennia or so, the British were on board, against the French.
At the Battle of Albuera, quite near the Spanish/Portuguese border, in 1811, a British/ES/PT force fought Napoleon’s Armée du Midi (included some Poles from the Duchy of Warsaw). In sum: heavy losses on both sides, result a score draw. Such conclusions belie the human stories.
Read 12 tweets

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