It all happened in an instant. Ruth Vilmi had emailed from Finland to say she was going to send some photographs. Brian was at the computer when I heard him murmur, ‘That’s him,’ as a peculiar image filled the screen (fig. 101).
There were words handwritten beneath it that I could not make out.
‘What does it say?’
‘It says “Henry and Goolameisii, his Indian bearer.”’
‘Henry!’ I exclaimed.
‘And Goolameisii – don’t forget him!’
The next moment Brian had another image of a slightly older child, with shoulder-length fair hair, with ‘Henry’ scrawled across the mount. He was a pretty child but his expression had a suggestion of spoilt belligerence. He was sitting in an upholstered Victorian chair with long fringing, holding a hat and riding crop, which gave him an assertive, almost adult, air of assumed authority (fig. 94).
We looked back at the earlier photograph in which the child was younger, perhaps two or three. With his white dress and curly blond hair his prettiness was almost doll-like, but the expression was still detached, with a hint of sulkiness. The bearer’s face, by contrast, was aglow with a gentle, inscrutable smile. We kept staring from one to the other of the soft, sepia images. We knew it was Henry Burke, because we knew the bizarre route by which it had come to us was authentic and credible at every step along its path.
It had begun with a routine internet search for background information about his sisters. We had entered ‘Mabel Emma Burke’ and there was an unexpected response under a heading called ‘Write-it’. It was posted by Ruth Vilmi, an English-woman living in Helsinki. The purpose of her website was to display her paintings, plus some watercolours done by her grandmother, Mabel Emma Burke. We posted a blog with a request for information.
Fig. 102. Henry in India at five years of age.
Ruth replied, full of excitement. She remembered her grandmother mentioning the name Biddulph, but had never worked out what the connection was. She confirmed that her grandmother did have a younger brother called Henry, and two sisters – Auntie Hope, whom she remembered well, and Sybil, whom she never met.
Once contact with Ruth was established, things began to move quickly. Her brother had done extensive research into their family history, collecting old photographs and cataloguing them. He confirmed he had several photographs of Henry, including two which had been together on a single page in an ancient album, and inscribed ‘Henry in India’. We had given up expecting to find any evidence of Henry’s life in India, let alone photographs from the 1870s which actually recorded him as a child. After reading Rowland Bateman’s biography, we had become convinced that Henry, his sister and his mother Katherine had returned to England shortly after his birth, since there was no reference to them after Katherine’s arrival in Lahore in September 1873. But we had been wrong. These photographs showed that Henry had been there, growing up, over a period of at least five years, from his birth to the end of his father’s employment at the High Court in Lahore.
We were interested to know if there were similar pictures of his sister, Mabel Emma, in India. Ruth could only find one picture of Mabel Emma as a child, which was inscribed ‘Agnes and Mabel Emma with their governess, Miss Greenslade’ (fig. 103). This showed an attractive young woman with the two little girls. The older looks about seven and the younger about three or four. We knew that Agnes was the name of the only child of John Bateman, Robert’s eldest brother, so it appears that at the age of three or four, Mabel Emma was living at her uncle’s house, Brightlingsea Hall in Essex, where she shared a governess with her older cousin. She was clearly not arriving in Lahore with her pregnant mother.
Fig. 103. Mabel Emma (centre), Agnes (right) and their governess Miss Greenslade at Brightlingsea Hall, Essex.
This seemed inconsistent. Surely it would have been much safer and more natural for Katherine to stay in England with her little girl till she had had her new baby, and then travel to India, when the danger and trauma of childbirth were behind her, and Mabel Emma was older and less vulnerable. One thing was certain. She did not follow this course, because she is recorded in Rowland’s biography as arriving in Lahore in September 1873, in the critical last months of her pregnancy.
So Henry grew up in India, from his birth until his father’s return to London in 1879, but he had been completely ignored in Maconachie’s biography of Rowland Bateman. The more scraps of information we managed to unearth, the stranger the puzzle seemed to become. We hoped that Ruth, as the living grandchild of Mabel Emma Burke, could shed some light on these formative years of Henry’s life. When I rang her, she was fascinated by our story and keen to discuss her family. She was about fifteen when her grandmother died, and had known her well as she lived with her family.
‘Did she ever speak about her early life?’
‘Yes, sometimes. I suppose, to be truthful, we probably weren’t that interested.’
‘Did you ever hear her say anything about her childhood in India?’
‘No, not that I can remember. Not at all. Was she there? Somehow I had the impression that Henry was there, but that probably only comes from the pictures, which we found after she died. We had never even heard his name before that. We didn’t know he existed. We knew Auntie Hope. We liked her. Do you think Gran was out there?’
‘I don’t know. But we assumed that if Henry was there, the whole family must have been with him.’
There was a pause. Ruth seemed a little perplexed.
‘Yes, it makes sense – where else would she have been? But it’s strange, I never had the slightest idea that she had ever been in India, and somehow I feel that I would have been told something by her or my mother.’
‘She would have been nine years old when they left India and came home to England,’ I said.
‘Really? Oh, that’s extraordinary!’ she gasped. ‘She would never have forgotten it, would she? The total change, the smells, the weather, the servants, the boat trip home to the cold and drizzle. At that age. What an impression it would have made! But she never said a word about it, ever, as far as I know. She had nothing from there. No beads, no trinkets, nothing in her things after she died. I’m upset now. We should have asked her – but we were only kids, you know.’
We were shaken by what Ruth had told us. We agreed that a boat journey that took a nine-year-old girl from India to the utterly different environment of respectable middle-class England would have been indelibly etched on her memory. Surely it would have been the very thing that she would have retold, to entertain her grandchildren with whom she lived when she was old. Had she stayed in Essex at her uncle’s all the time her family were away in Lahore? It seemed hard to believe.
Or had Katherine had Henry out in India and, after a little while, simply gone home without him, leaving him in the care of his Indian bearer? Again, it seemed inconceivable that if she had wanted or needed to go home she would not have taken the baby with her, leaving her husband to pursue his work as a lawyer unhindered by a vulnerable infant. From knowing nothing about Henry Ulick Burke, we were fast becoming swamped in unintelligible facts and images that were threatening to obscure him again, this time in a fog of contradictions.
So when two more images came through from Ruth we were a little apprehensive. Both pictures were later, post-Lahore, but easy to date and just as fascinating as the earlier ones. The first was a group of three children, identified as Mabel, Henry and Hope in ink along the bottom of the mount (fig. 104). Since Hope was born in 1880, and is about three, we can assume that Henry is nine or ten and Mabel Emma fourteen. The poignant anxiety on their faces is intensified by the stiltedness of their pose, giving the whole picture an air of acute discomfort. Henry has clearly been ordered to hold little Hope’s hand, to add a touch of intimacy to the scene. However, he does it so awkwardly and she ignores it so totally that it emphasises rather than alleviates the complete lack of interaction between the children who stare suspiciously out at the camera.
Fig. 104. Henry in his sailor suit with Hope (centre) and Mabel Emma.
Fig. 105. Henry and Rose Parry-Okeden on their wedding day at Turnworth House, November 1902, with Hope Burke and Violet Parry-Okeden as chief bridesmaids.
Henry is recognisable from the Indian photographs, but all trace of girlishness has gone. He is every inch the miniature Victorian male, serious and sombre in his sailor suit, Eton collar and bow tie, with his cropped hair neatly parted and brushed to one side. His fine, straight, completely blond hair is in marked contrast to his sister’s, which is thick, curly and dark.
The next photograph portrays the adult Henry on 4 November 1902, the day of his wedding to Rose Parry-Okeden at her family home of Turnworth House in Dorset (fig. 105). He has become a tall, lean, handsome young man. His fair hair is unchanged and, with the addition of a neat blond moustache, is a decisive component of his good looks. His direct gaze gives him an air of quiet self-confidence, but with an edge of hardness. We suspected that Henry was already living in Peru, as he was not listed in the 1901 census and on his marriage certificate he gave his address as Southampton, suggesting he had sailed back for the wedding.
Henry and Rose must have gone back to Peru soon after, as their first child, Katrina, was born at Talara in February 1904. After their return to England a son, Ulick Richard, was born in Liverpool in 1907, and a second son, John Okeden, was born in Bristol in 1912. By then Henry was managing a tobacco factory for W. D. & H. O. Wills in Bristol. We discovered this because the company kept personnel archives on senior executives who were not members of the Wills family. We were told that Henry’s file, largely comprising of speeches given at the time of his retirement, was placed in the archive in 1933. The entire Wills archive had been transferred to the Bristol Records Office. We thought the contents sounded too dull to merit a separate journey, so decided to postpone a visit to Bristol until we could tack it on to a more rewarding trip elsewhere. For the moment, we were keen to begin the search for missing Bateman paintings by following the trail of Henry’s children. Katrina and Richard were teenagers when their father received his handsome legacy. If Robert and Caroline’s intense relationship with Henry encompassed his children, they might have been inclined to keep any paintings for personal reasons, despite their style having become profoundly outdated by the mid-twentieth century.
Of Henry’s children, John Okeden had died at eight years old; Katrina and Richard each had one son. We felt that if we could trace either or both of Henry’s grandsons, we stood a chance of finding at least one of the lost pictures. John Louis Beauchamp was born in 1930, the son of Guy Louis Beauchamp and Katrina Marian Burke; Jeremy Ulick Burke was born in 1931, the son of Ulick Richard Burke and Cynthia Moya Darling. They would now be about eighty years of age, possibly still alive and able to talk to us directly about their grandfather, who did not die until 1960.
We managed to track down an old address for Jeremy Ulick. When we rang, a quietly spoken woman answered and identified herself as Sheila Ralph. She had bought the house from Jeremy and Prudence Burke, and fortunately remembered them. She thought she had a card with their address on the board in her kitchen.
I heard her walk through and say, ‘No, no, I just can’t see it, no, that’s not it. It’s a long time, five years, I’m sure it was here.’
The more she searched, the more tense I became. I had developed an instinct for recognising the moment when a decisive, but deceptively dull, little fact was within reach. Whether she had lost the address or could find it might determine the whole outcome of our pursuit of Henry Burke and Robert’s lost work.
Eventually she found it. She read out the address, adding mysteriously, ‘Of course, there’s no phone number. They’re always ex-directory.’ That was presumably why we had found them so difficult to trace. That evening we wrote a letter to Jeremy Burke, explaining our interest in his grandfather and the house he had inherited at Nunney. Two days later we received a reply by email which shed new light on Henry’s later life:
Thank you for your very interesting letter about Nunney Delamere and Robert Bateman.
You are quite correct, Henry Ulick was my Grandfather, and Ulick Richard was my father, who unfortunately died quite young. My understanding is that I was taken to Nunney as a very young child, but have no recollection of that visit. It was a surprise to learn that Nunney was left to my Grandfather, I had no idea, you know much more than I! I am certain that you are aware that Henry’s mother was the only daughter of James Bateman of Biddulph Grange and Knypersley Hall. This would explain why he was left Nunney, and named his own daughter Katrina. After my Grandmother died in 1931, Henry remarried and, as far as I am aware, they always lived in hotels after that. I am assuming that any letters, papers and pictures would have been disposed of when leaving Nunney, there being little storage space in an hotel, as in a London flat, where I was brought up. I have no recollection of any references to such relics. I am so sorry not to be able to have far better news for you, as this is absolutely fascinating.
I am wondering if my aunt (Katrina) might have held such documents, as my father was living with her at the time of his death. In this case they may have been passed on to my cousin, his address is 37 George Lane, Marlborough, Wilts. I wish you every success in your fascinating project, and am so sorry that this surviving member of the Burke family is unable to help you. I do not think that my mother will remember anything constructive, she will soon be 102, but I will nevertheless ask her.
Inevitably, the main contents of this email were a sad disappointment to us. It seemed amazingly unlucky that after identifying one of Henry’s two grandsons, and finding he had happily survived all the disasters, such as world wars, that had intervened since his birth in 1931, he had no understanding or awareness of Robert’s role in his family’s fortunes. We had expected to hear that Robert’s work had been considered utterly old-fashioned by the mid-twentieth century so had been sold when it was passed to Jeremy’s father after Henry’s death in 1960. But it seemed strange that it was completely unknown to Jeremy, who would have been thirty at the time. However, the rest of the information helped us move forward, especially the fact that Katrina’s son, his cousin John Beauchamp, was alive and well and living in Marlborough.
Jeremy’s account of visiting Nunney Delamere as a young child told us that Henry, Rose and their children had moved into the house after they inherited it in 1922, and lived there into the 1930s when Rose died. His life ‘in hotels’, with his next wife, was a strange twist and not something we could have fully understood from public documentation. The fact that Jeremy’s father, Ulick Richard, had died separated from his wife and living with his sister Katrina in 1963, shortly after Henry’s death in 1960, did hold out the fascinating possibility that Henry’s possessions had all gone to one place, Katrina’s house, and were then likely to have passed to her only son, John Beauchamp.
As a formula for preserving a coherent body of art works where it could be retrieved from obscurity, this represented a piece of almost miraculous good fortune. We wrote to John Beauchamp. Ten days later, when we had heard nothing, we contacted Jeremy Burke to ask if he knew of any problems. He emailed us the next day to say that his cousin was suffering with leg ulcers, and he would let us know when he was better. We did not want to burden a sick man with our fixation about past members of his family and their belongings. However, I had John Beauchamp’s telephone number on my desk and, disgracefully, it was only a matter of days before I rang it. His wife felt sure John would want to talk to me but he was asleep at that moment as his painkillers made him drowsy. She proposed that I ring back at four o’clock.
So I did, and John answered.
He was quietly spoken, but direct and decisive. He wanted to arrange a meeting but hated the idea that he might still be using a walking frame which, as a ‘fit, active chap’ he was ashamed of needing.
‘The only thing is, I have to say I know almost nothing about your Mr Bateman. I’ve heard the name spoken about, but more than that I haven’t a clue, but I suppose I must know some things that would be of value to you.’
I asked him if he remembered his grandfather.
‘Oh, certainly, but it was after he’d sold Nunney, when he was living in hotels. He and Elsie, his second wife, never really settled anywhere. They were either on cruise liners or in hotels. I often met him at one near Bromley. Wonderful place, frightfully grand, you know, with two golf courses. He loved golf.’
‘Has anything come down to you?’ I asked.
‘Precious little. I live in a modern house. There are a few bits, mostly of my mother’s – that’s how I think of them, but I don’t really know where they came from, I suppose it might have been Nunney. Who knows? Anyway, nice to talk to you – let’s meet up if you think it’s worth it.’
I knew it was, so we made arrangements to meet at his house. As we would be on the road anyway, we decided to make our long postponed visit to the Bristol Records Office the same day.
In the meantime we received a copy of Henry Burke’s will from the Probate Office. It was a long, professional, and slightly impersonal document, giving a strong sense of an astute commercial mind being applied to a task with minimal concession given to emotional considerations. It made no reference to any specific personal possessions, such as paintings, furniture, books and papers. Its single non-financial clause gave all his unspecified personal possessions to his second wife. The rest of the will was entirely taken up with financial arrangements which were much more painstaking and precise. The reason for this was evident from the probate document attached to the will, which recorded Henry’s death on 22 December 1960 at St Teresa’s Nursing Home, Eastbourne, and the gross value of his estate as £102,768 10s 10d, net value £100,399 5s 9d. His address was given as the Mansion Hotel, Eastbourne. His wife Eva Mary was joint executor.
So, despite spending twenty-seven years from his retirement in 1933 either travelling round the world on cruise ships or being waited upon in hotels, Henry Burke had died in 1960 an extremely wealthy man. Whatever else it told us about him, it did not suggest that Henry had kept his uncle’s paintings with him to the end of his life, as he roamed from hotel rooms to first-class cabins and back again over almost thirty years.
Henry’s arrangements for his children and grandchildren, after his wife’s death, are meticulously even-handed and fair. His estate was to be divided between his children Katrina and Ulick Richard, but Richard was to make money available from his share to provide an income for his separated wife and son (Jeremy Ulick). In the event of either of his children predeceasing him, the money was to pass direct to the relevant grandson, provided he had reached twenty-one, or be held in trust until he did so.
The only other, more personalised, paragraph listed a group of small annuities, for their lifetimes, to two of his sisters and two friends:
To my sister Hope Katherine Burke Fifty pounds during her life.
To my sister Mabel Emma Humphries Eighty pounds during her life.
To my friend Alice Lilian Hargraves Thirty-four pounds during her life.
To my friend Millicent Caroline Parry-Okeden Sixteen pounds during her life.
So Henry had made modest provision for two of his three sisters and Alice Hargraves, whom we had never come across. The last annuity was fascinating for two reasons. First, because Millicent is one of only two people named in the will who is not a direct relation, and secondly, because Henry chooses to describe her as ‘my friend’ rather than ‘my sister-in-law’, she being the eldest sister of his first wife, Rose Parry-Okeden.
Intriguingly, Millicent alone, of all her family, gave her birthplace as India, and was born in 1874, the same year as Henry. In the light of the central role the Parry-Okedens were to play in Henry’s life, was it possible that his friendship with Millicent predated his marriage to her sister by nearly thirty years, and was that why he remembered her, even at the end of his life, and left her a small annuity?
By leaving their estate to Henry, Robert and Caroline must have contributed directly to his ability to end his life as a wealthy man. However, it was looking increasingly as if he had failed to repay them by cherishing his inheritance and safeguarding Robert’s reputation. None the less, we still held out great hopes for our meeting with John Beauchamp. We felt certain that something he had, or something he knew, would provide the golden key that would unlock the door to the mystery of Robert and Caroline’s wills which would, in turn, set us on a path to the lost paintings.
Fig. 106. Henry Burke in middle age.
