The Prince of Wales and my grandfather
A story of loss
Written as part of Amy Johnson Crow’s “52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks” challenge. This week’s topic: Loss
My Harley grandfather was a playboy who hung out with the fast and loose set in London in the so-called Roaring Twenties.
A merchant with a shop on London‘s Holborn Viaduct, Francis Cecil Harley was a cutler, jeweler and silversmith.
London not far from Grandpa Harley’s shop, 1920s.
We were told that grandfather had secured for the Viners company a royal warrant for supplying the Prince of Wales (A royal warrant is essentially a seal of approval: a Royal Warrant allows the supplier to boast that he has a royal (the issuer of the honor) as a client, gaining prestige by this fact.
https://www.viners.co.uk/cutlery-ranges/everyday-18-0/harley-elegance-18-0.html downloaded April 2 2021
And there is a line of Viners cutlery named “Harley” which I was told when l called the company had been named for someone who did something for the company in the 1930s. My brother and sister and I all received cutlery from the company as wedding gifts - probably arranged by an uncle, but it did seem to confirm the connection.
According to my mother, Cecil Harley hung out at times with the crowd that surrounded the Prince of Wales. That might explain how he would have got the royal warrant. She remembered sitting in a car outside Windsor Castle on several occasions, waiting for her father to emerge. When he came out, she told me, he would be the worse for wear, his business evidently including drinking and gambling. I had an image of her, as a child, waiting in the shadows under the walls of Windsor Castle, to be driven back to London by her inebriated father.
His Royal Highness, Prince Edward, the Prince of Wales,.
The future Duke of Windsor
So here we have this family tradition of a connection between my grandfather and the Prince of Wales.
But was it so? To my deep sense of loss, and some considerable sense of chagrin, I have to conclude that this connection seems to have been made up out of whole cloth, another family myth that has not stood up to the cold eyes of the family historian.
My grandfather did indeed have a connection to the Prince of Wales. But it was a very different connection than the one my mother remembered. Here’s what genealogical research uncovered.
My grandparents’ marriage was pretty rocky and eventually they split up. Exploring the London Directories to find out where he went I came across some startling information. Cecil was listed in the London phone book for many years.
One listing was of his business address: Harley, Cecil F. General Merchant, 57 Holborn Viaduct EC1 CITy 3481.
A second listing provided the home address (very familiar to me): Harley, C.F. Glengarry, Vivian Ave, NW4 HENdon 1335.
But from 1925-1938 there was a third address: “Prince of Wales”, 136 Hampton Road, Twickenham (Tel: POPesgrove 1054).
The “Prince of Wales”, 136 Hampton Road, Twickenham. (Image downloaded from Google maps)
That does not look like Windsor Castle to me!
Was my mother unable to tell the difference between Windsor Castle and a London pub?
I am forced to ask: how much of the story is true? And to realize that family historians are destined to disrupt family myths, however hard. But my sense of loss is acute. I treasured the image of my grandfather, the playboy, and of my mother at Windsor Castle, even if only in the shadows.
POSTSCRIPT: all is not lost
I sent the first draft of the story of the “Prince of Wales” to my cousin James on Sunday, having just realized about the pub in Twickenham and feeling a need to share. And what James told me was a wonderful example of “small world” and “coincidence” and isn’t family wonderful.
James lives not far from the Prince of Wales pub in Twickenham and has been there with his wife. It is situated in a nice area known as Strawberry Hill (after a local mansion house that has been preserved). Edward, the Prince of Wales was known to socialise in the area which had more than its fair share of stately homes. When plans were made to demolish another nearby pub, The Sawyers Arms, an attempt was made by the local residents to keep the pub open on the basis that the Prince of Wales used to frequent the establishment.
So all is not lost. The real Prince of Wales and my grandfather may truly have drunk a pint or two together after all.