Adeline Kingscote and Headington
Mrs Adeline Georgiana Isabella Kingscote (1860–1908) lived at Bury Knowle House in Headington for only four years; yet in that time she made her mark on Headington, leaving a trail of devastation in her wake.
Adeline Kingscote was the daughter of Sir Henry Drummond Charles Wolff (1830–1908) and his wife Adeline, who married at Leghorn in 1853. Her grandparents on her father’s side were the Revd Joseph Wolff (co-founder of the Irvingite church) and Lady Georgiana (daughter of Horatio Walpole), and her maternal grandfather was Walter Sholto Douglas.
Sir Drummond Wolff, as Adeline Kingscote’s father was known, was a politician and diplomatist. As a result, the child Adeline travelled all over Europe with her family in the 1860s and early 1870s, and became an accomplished linguist who loved to travel. Her family settled in England when she was about 13, and her father became an MP in Hampshire (for Christchurch in 1874, and then for Portsmouth in 1880).
After her marriage to Colonel Howard Kingscote in the 1880s, Adeline spent a period in India, as a result of which she wrote two books: Tales of the sun or Folklore of southern India (1890) and The English baby in India and how to rear it (1893). The birth of her son in Bangalore was announced in Jackson's Oxford Journal of 3 December 1889.
In 1895, when her husband had returned to England and was commander of Cowley Barracks, they moved into Bury Knowle House. It was while living in Headington that she first turned to fiction, writing four novels there between 1895 and 1897 under the pen-name of Lucas Cleeve.
Mrs Kingscote was notorious for her charm and her extravagance. In 1898 an 18-year-old solicitor’s clerk, Frank Gray, had to go up to Bury Knowle to serve writs on her; later (when MP for Oxford) he described her as "the finest adventuress I ever met", and said, "I thought this woman with the consuming brown eyes was the most wonderful thing on earth". She also captivated and usually bankrupted the men who kept her financially afloat. First there was the Liverpool money-lender who lent her a large amount on the strength of her promise to introduce his daughter to "everybody who mattered" in the south of France, followed by the estate agent whom she duped into lending her £500 after getting him to value a country estate that (unbeknown to him) was not even hers. Then there was a Lord Byron, who had advanced her £50,373 and went bankrupt in May 1899. Finally there were two men of the cloth who stood surety for her: the Revd John Holford Scott-Tucker (Vicar of Headington) and the Revd George Moore (Vicar of Cowley, and a man known for settling disputes with his fists).
In 1899 Mrs Kingscote went bankrupt to the tune of £100,000 (then a tremendous sum), bringing the two Vicars down with her. The contents of Bury Knowle House had to go under the hammer in June that year. The sale was held on the premises by J. R. Mallam & Son, and their catalogue provides a snapshot of life in a Headington mansion during the last century. Everything in the house is itemized, from the chandelier in the dining room to the slop-pails in the housemaid’s closet, and from the Moët et Chandon champagne in the cellar to the last heap of manure in the yard.
Bury Knowle House (which the Kingscotes called "The Beeches") in the time of the Kingscotes was larger than the present library, as it included the accommodation in the extensive rear wing that had been added by the previous owners, the Fieldens. The sale took place over four days:
- First day: Contents of the twelve bed and dressing rooms, the gymnasium, and the schoolroom;
- Second day: Contents of the kitchens, the servants' hall, the billiard room, the dining room, the boudoir, and the drawing room;
- Third day: Contents of the halls, staircases, and butler’s premises, plus small items such as books, pictures, china, linen, and wine;
- Fourth day: Contents of the basement offices, laundry and dairy, plus the horses, carriages, harness, bicycles, cows, poultry, and general outdoor effects. The animals for sale included five horses; two Alderney cows in calf; seventeen ducklings; seven Aylesbury ducks, two drakes, and sixteen ducklings; ten guinea fowl; 34 Buff Orpington hens and two cocks; eleven Indian game hens and one cock; a cock and hen turkey; ten silky hens; ten Buff Orpington ducks and drakes; a hen and seven chicks; another two hens with ten chicks apiece; six frizzle hens; six silver sea bright hens; and twenty small chicks.
Adeline Kingscote does not appear to have pined away at the prospect of losing all her possessions; in fact, when Frank Gray paid his last visit to her, she copied out the words "Victoria by the Grace of God, Queen Defender of the Faith" from the writ he served on her and used them as the opening words of her next novel, What a woman will do (1900). She did not stay in England, however, to see the humiliation of the Vicars of Headington and Cowley at the Oxford Bankruptcy Court in July 1899: her husband testified that she had already fled to Switzerland.
Her output abroad increased to between five and eight books a year, bringing her total oeuvre to 65 books when she died at Chateau d'Œx in Switzerland on 13 September 1908 at the age of 48, one month before the death of her father. She wrote prolifically right up to the last moment, and six of her books were not published after her death.
Books by Adeline Kingscote
(written under the pen-name Lucas Cleeve unless otherwise indicated)
1890
- Tales of the sun; or Folklore of southern India
(collected by Mrs H. Kingscote and Pandit Natêsa Sástrî)
1893
- The English baby in India, and how to rear it (Mrs H. Kingscote)
1895
- The woman who wouldn't
1896
- Epicures
1897
- The Water Finder
- Lazarus. A tale of the earth’s great miracle
1900
- What a woman will do
- The world’s blackmail
- Yolande the Parisienne. A dream of the twentieth century
1901
- What men call love
- Plato’s handmaiden
- Mostly fools and a duchess
- As the twig is bent
- Mary Anne of Parchment Buildings
- The real Christian
1902
- Woman and Moses
- Blue lilies
- His Italian wife
- The magic of Rome
- The purple of the Orientzsa
1903
- The man in the street
- The indiscretion of Gladys
- From Crown to Cross
- Eileen
- Anglo-Americans
- Free soil, free soul
1904
- Our lady of beauty. Being the story of the love of Charles VII, King of France, and Agnes Sorelle, Demoiselle de Fromenteau
- Lady Sylvia
- The children of endurance
- The fool killer
1905
- Mademoiselle Nellie
- Stolen waters
- Saint Elizabeth of London
- The dreamer
- The progress of Priscilla
1906
- Soul twilight
- The secret church
- Billy’s wife
- Love and the king
- Seven nights in a gondola
- The confessions of a climber
- Counsels of the night
- A double marriage
1907
- Selma
- Her father’s soul
- The mascotte of Park Lane
- The rose geranium
- The confessions of a widow
- Nathan Todd. A story of modern Virginia
- Dollar city
- The fool’s tax
1908
- A woman’s aye and nay
- The love seeker (written as Mary Walpole)
- The Cardinal and Lady Susan
- What woman wills
- Duchinka
- An old man’s darling
- The hoverers
1909
- Bruised lilies
- The one moment
- The arbitrator
1909
- Lady Susan and not the Cardinal
- Rosabel. A story of the greater love
- Friends of fate
1911
- The love letters of a faithless wife
In The Love letters of a faithless wife, which was published after her death, Adeline appears to reveal some of her own feelings. The fictitious wife, Hertha, is only 27, but feels so neglected by her husband, Captain Ralph Atherton that she considers taking lovers, but in the end she does not succumb. Hertha felt that she "might do all that worst in one way, but she would still be sublime in others", and that there were two classes of husband: "The men who love again anywhere and everywhere, and who are unfaithful; and the men who, when they have married a wife, don't want to love or be loved any more." Hertha has the latter kind of husband, and asks:
"Why can I not be as other women are, content with a cold, unmeaning kiss, an occasional kindly word in the midst of how many angry ones; content to see the dear children at play, and to order the household, and inquire into the price of meat, and of groceries and of vegetables?"
Note that there is an entry on Adeline Kingscote in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
The sensational court case of the novelist was reported in great detail week after week in Jackson’s Oxford Journal.:
- 29 April 1899: "Lord Byron's financial affairs"
- 6 May 1899: "The Affairs of Lord Byron"
- 27 May 1899: "Failure of the Vicar of Cowley"
- 10 June 1899: "Vicar of Cowley in the Bankruptcy Court"
- 1 July 1899: "Local Bankruptcy Cases: John Holford Scott"
- 2 July 1899: "A local cause celebre"
- 8 July 1899: "The Bankruptcy of the Vicar of Headington"
- 22 July 1899: "Bankruptcy of the Vicars of Cowley and Headington — The Kingscote Loans — Extraordinary Disclosures — Threats of Criminal Proceedings"
- 29 July 1899: "Bankruptcy of the Vicars of Cowley and Headington — Adjourned Examination — Further disclosures" and "The Bankruptcy of Lord Byron — Where is Mrs Kingscote?"