Marginalia
(Found in a family copy of the 1912 “History,” annotated in a clerkly hand, presumed Blandy.)
– Page xii: The author’s claim that the Fitzarturs descend directly from the Bourbons is “fanciful in the extreme.” The only Bourbon in evidence is a wine-merchant of Rouen, whose accounts appear in the Duke’s papers (1786).
– Page xviii: The “counsellor to Plantagenets” cited here seems to have been a clerk of kitchens, dismissed for over-purchasing capons. The marginal note “Minister” may have been an error of translation.
– Page xxv: The “confidant to more than one Stuart queen” cannot be verified. A “Mistress Fitz-Arter” appears in Pepys’s diary but whether this is a misprint for FitzHarris remains disputed.
– Page xlii: The assertion that “no serious doubt” attends the continuity of the line is undermined by the two-year interregnum (1748–1750) during which the Mallard estate was in Chancery, owing to an excess of creditors and a shortage of heirs.
– Page lxxvii: The remark on “vulgar commerce” may be ironic, given the family’s present fortune rests chiefly upon soap-shares, purchased by the enterprising Hon. Mrs Fitzartur during her widowhood.
– Page cxii: “The steady flowing of the Thames” is an unfortunate metaphor. One branch of the family, attempting to escape its creditors, in fact drowned in it (1819).
– Marginal note, pencilled: “Grandmother Mab always said the deMallards kept their heads above water by marrying into clerks. They may yet try again—an Australian cadet line. God help them if they inherit the Blandy nose. Or worse, the Blandy candied ginger.”
(An ominous squiggle follows here, later thought to refer to the thallium incident of 1946, when one Mallard-Blandy expired most unexpectedly after tea.)
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