Life and Death of the Wicked Lady Skelton by Rowland Hughes Page A

jokes about matrimony, and vicarious excitement. The tenants of Maryiot Cells presented the young couple with an illuminated address 4 and a Sheffield plate dinner service which included a venison dish suggestive in shape and size of a baby’s bath.
    Judging from the family album of this date, a heavy leather volume with brass clasps, the photographer of the local town must have reaped a rich harvest from this notable family gathering. It seems likely that he was summoned, camera, black velvet cloth and all, to Maryiot Cells, for it is hardly probable that the Skelton (to say nothing of the Allen) clan – from the Dowager Lady Skelton, a frail wistful figure with her lace cap, white corkscrew curls and blackand white striped dress, to little Arthur Skelton (who in default of a direct male heir was to succeed to his uncle Wilfrid’s title and estates) in his muslin dress with tartan shoulder knots and sash – could have undertaken the trip into the county town.
    At any rate, thanks to the photographer’s labours, it is possible to have a clear idea of the family party, collectively as well as individually.
    There is, of course, the group of groups, taken on the wedding day. There are what the French unkindly describe as ‘déplorables groupes de famille’, seated on the terrace steps or clustered round the front door – Father in shepherd’s plaid trousers and dark jacket, Mother in a bustled, beruffled walking-dress, their offspring in braided clothes, striped stockings and buttoned boots. All of them wearing hats that appear to modern eyes to be too small for their heads. There are the bachelor groups – young men wearing foulard cravats and a mildly rakish air, seated with their arms on the backs of chairs. Mother and child groups, with younger matrons propping up limp-looking infants in décolleté frocks. There are schoolboys whose pugnacious expressions are set off rather than disguised by their turned-down collars and somewhat long hair. There are small consequential girls with long ringlets and tiny pork-pie hats…
    To identify them all would be tedious and difficult, perhaps – at this date – impossible, for, with a touching belief in the permanency of their memories and of the golden security of family and class which enwrapped them, no names have been written beneath the photographs. But the resolutely good-looking young man in hunting kit, withside-whiskers and an impeccable profile, is almost certainly Desmond Allen, younger brother of the bridegroom who, if family tradition is to be credited, won more than a small part of Isabella’s heart (he died three years later of consumption).
    There is Isabella herself. She is wearing a dark dress with ruffles at the throat and wrist, and is seated at a table gazing down pensively at a very artificial-looking rose which she holds in her hand. She has a round, childishly earnest face and smooth, demurely parted hair. Thus she must have looked, only with the addition, no doubt, of a little round hat or small bonnet and a jacket, when she set off for that evening stroll which was to bring her so shocking an experience.
    It was the eve of her sister’s wedding day. All that day, and for many days previously, Isabella had been assisting with the multifarious preparations which a wedding entails – answering letters for Mama, unpacking and making lists of wedding presents, helping to amuse the children of the party, attending to the comfort of the older ladies, training the village choir in the nuptial hymns, making white satin favours for the gentlemen, helping fellow bridesmaids to try on wreaths, cutting out frills for the candlesticks, walking down to the garden with a message to the gardener about the white chrysanthemums. Whenever anything needed doing, a cry went up of ‘Where is Isabella?’, and Isabella, whom one of her aunts truly described as ‘a bright, active girl’, never failed