Richard Carruthers via
2015-08-24 01:06:21 UTC
At Leo van de Pas's urging, I include this the initial portion of what
I have written about my research into this subject.
Richard
Cherchez la femme: The Influence of Bishop Welby’s Paternal
Grandmother Edith James on her son Gavin Welby.
By Richard Carruthers-Żurowski, 15 December 2012 (3rd version)(and, of
course, copyright to me)
Behind every man stands a regiment of women: his wife, his sisters,
his teachers, and many others. As with Christ, however, the central
figure is his mother. Divinely inspired maybe, but rooted in our
nature.
Gavin Welby’s mother’s name has come down to us as Edith James. Yet
much about her is unexplored perhaps because her name makes her seem
so ordinary and English, a supposition underlined by the fact that her
recorded father, Herbert James, was, according to her 1909 marriage
certificate, a deceased wool merchant. These dull details imply that
no tale hides here; at least nothing to interest sensation seekers
fascinated by the background of her grandson, incoming Archbishop of
Canterbury, Dr Justin Welby. Instead, Edith’s German-born Jewish
husband, Bernard Welby, formerly Bernard Weiler, Gavin’s ostrich
merchant father, has stolen the limelight in a slew of revelations
about Bishop Welby’s father’s secret life obscuring the truth about
the Archbishop-designate’s unexpected non-Christian and non-British
patriline.
This is a mistake.
For although we know enough about the importance of a man’s mother to
think we have explored that angle by discussing the Bishop’s own
mother, we have missed a salient detail. It is true that the woman who
bore the Bishop is the former Jane Portal, now Lady Williams. Her
distinguished connexions among the British Establishment, to
Churchill, Rab Butler, and that lot, have been well aired. But in
1959, she divorced her adulterous husband, Gavin Welby, leaving her
three-year-old son, Justin, the next chief of the Church of England,
to be brought up by the man she had cast off, her young son’s
alcoholic playboy father. So while genetically the Bishop’s mother
cannot be denied, psychologically her influence is more that of an
absent mother than the active maternal shaper of a future cleric’s
boyhood and adult character.
No, for good or bad, Gavin Welby became both father and mother to his
son while his ex-wife, Jane, became a career woman who married again
when her son, Justin, was in his late teens. Earlier reports showed
that Gavin Welby nearly married Vanessa Redgrave, but that she broke
their engagement when she was convinced by her parents that she was
being recruited by Gavin to mother his toddler-son, Justin.
Thrown into a one-sided parental role, Gavin Welby, however
unsuitably, wielded extraordinary power over his son, exercising sole
custody, before sending him to St Peter’s school, and, famously, on to
Eton.
In effect, Bishop Welby was brought up singlehandedly by his father,
with a great deal of help from the English preparatory and “Public”
school system. In adulthood, the Bishop says his father was a
secretive character who eventually succumbed to his long-term love
affair with the alcohol around which he had built his transatlantic
career as a New York bootlegger-become-legitimate-liquor-purveyor and
post-war London whisky exporter. Despite this, Dr Welby depicts his
father as a loving-if-somewhat-feckless much older parent, who never
revealed much about himself, withdrawing into illness when his son,
Justin, was at university. At his 1977 death, Welby père took many
secrets to the grave, leaving his son and heir at a loss even about
the basic details of his father’s real given names, true birthdate,
and actual parentage.
Some of these hidden details of his father’s life and background now
stand revealed, but little is said of the mother of the man who became
both the paternal and maternal influence on the only relic of his
three-year marriage to the future Bishop’s mother, his son Justin.
Failing to explore the main source of what mothering skills Gavin
could have learned at his own mother Edith’s knee leaves a big gap in
the story.
Absent this factor, we are left wondering where the character that
influenced the Bishop’s character was formed. What role did Gavin
Welby’s mother play in shaping the persona of her multi-faceted son
Gavin, the Bishop’s father?
Gavin Welby now appears to us as an urbane con-man with the drive to
labour from lost middle class respectability through poverty and back
to riches. He is also revealed to the world as a man who had an
unquenchable appetite for sexual diversion which gained him an adult
reputation as a notable womaniser. The German-Jewish factor may
explain his intelligence and his entrepreneurial flair: but just as we
might suspect that his good looks must have stemmed partly from his
mother, my research shows that she is key to understanding his reasons
for lying to fit into the British and American Establishments, for
developing a polished well-bred mien and cut-glass accent, and for
laying claim to an aristocratic British pedigree. She also seems to
have transmitted to her son a gene for sexual unconventionality that
is absent from the Jewish side of Gavin Welby’s genealogy. Indeed, in
glossing over her as so typically English that she must not be worth
time investigating, we have seriously underestimated her influence on
her descendants.
Who then was Edith James?
[the article continues for another 4 pages]
I have written about my research into this subject.
Richard
Cherchez la femme: The Influence of Bishop Welby’s Paternal
Grandmother Edith James on her son Gavin Welby.
By Richard Carruthers-Żurowski, 15 December 2012 (3rd version)(and, of
course, copyright to me)
Behind every man stands a regiment of women: his wife, his sisters,
his teachers, and many others. As with Christ, however, the central
figure is his mother. Divinely inspired maybe, but rooted in our
nature.
Gavin Welby’s mother’s name has come down to us as Edith James. Yet
much about her is unexplored perhaps because her name makes her seem
so ordinary and English, a supposition underlined by the fact that her
recorded father, Herbert James, was, according to her 1909 marriage
certificate, a deceased wool merchant. These dull details imply that
no tale hides here; at least nothing to interest sensation seekers
fascinated by the background of her grandson, incoming Archbishop of
Canterbury, Dr Justin Welby. Instead, Edith’s German-born Jewish
husband, Bernard Welby, formerly Bernard Weiler, Gavin’s ostrich
merchant father, has stolen the limelight in a slew of revelations
about Bishop Welby’s father’s secret life obscuring the truth about
the Archbishop-designate’s unexpected non-Christian and non-British
patriline.
This is a mistake.
For although we know enough about the importance of a man’s mother to
think we have explored that angle by discussing the Bishop’s own
mother, we have missed a salient detail. It is true that the woman who
bore the Bishop is the former Jane Portal, now Lady Williams. Her
distinguished connexions among the British Establishment, to
Churchill, Rab Butler, and that lot, have been well aired. But in
1959, she divorced her adulterous husband, Gavin Welby, leaving her
three-year-old son, Justin, the next chief of the Church of England,
to be brought up by the man she had cast off, her young son’s
alcoholic playboy father. So while genetically the Bishop’s mother
cannot be denied, psychologically her influence is more that of an
absent mother than the active maternal shaper of a future cleric’s
boyhood and adult character.
No, for good or bad, Gavin Welby became both father and mother to his
son while his ex-wife, Jane, became a career woman who married again
when her son, Justin, was in his late teens. Earlier reports showed
that Gavin Welby nearly married Vanessa Redgrave, but that she broke
their engagement when she was convinced by her parents that she was
being recruited by Gavin to mother his toddler-son, Justin.
Thrown into a one-sided parental role, Gavin Welby, however
unsuitably, wielded extraordinary power over his son, exercising sole
custody, before sending him to St Peter’s school, and, famously, on to
Eton.
In effect, Bishop Welby was brought up singlehandedly by his father,
with a great deal of help from the English preparatory and “Public”
school system. In adulthood, the Bishop says his father was a
secretive character who eventually succumbed to his long-term love
affair with the alcohol around which he had built his transatlantic
career as a New York bootlegger-become-legitimate-liquor-purveyor and
post-war London whisky exporter. Despite this, Dr Welby depicts his
father as a loving-if-somewhat-feckless much older parent, who never
revealed much about himself, withdrawing into illness when his son,
Justin, was at university. At his 1977 death, Welby père took many
secrets to the grave, leaving his son and heir at a loss even about
the basic details of his father’s real given names, true birthdate,
and actual parentage.
Some of these hidden details of his father’s life and background now
stand revealed, but little is said of the mother of the man who became
both the paternal and maternal influence on the only relic of his
three-year marriage to the future Bishop’s mother, his son Justin.
Failing to explore the main source of what mothering skills Gavin
could have learned at his own mother Edith’s knee leaves a big gap in
the story.
Absent this factor, we are left wondering where the character that
influenced the Bishop’s character was formed. What role did Gavin
Welby’s mother play in shaping the persona of her multi-faceted son
Gavin, the Bishop’s father?
Gavin Welby now appears to us as an urbane con-man with the drive to
labour from lost middle class respectability through poverty and back
to riches. He is also revealed to the world as a man who had an
unquenchable appetite for sexual diversion which gained him an adult
reputation as a notable womaniser. The German-Jewish factor may
explain his intelligence and his entrepreneurial flair: but just as we
might suspect that his good looks must have stemmed partly from his
mother, my research shows that she is key to understanding his reasons
for lying to fit into the British and American Establishments, for
developing a polished well-bred mien and cut-glass accent, and for
laying claim to an aristocratic British pedigree. She also seems to
have transmitted to her son a gene for sexual unconventionality that
is absent from the Jewish side of Gavin Welby’s genealogy. Indeed, in
glossing over her as so typically English that she must not be worth
time investigating, we have seriously underestimated her influence on
her descendants.
Who then was Edith James?
[the article continues for another 4 pages]
Actually, His Grace didn't find out til he was chosen to be the next
ABC, and people began to do the spadework into his ancestry. He didn't
even know his father's correct birth date because he had been
misinformed about his age.
I traced the Weiler line back to Germany and made contact with the
relevant town archives a couple of years back.
I then contacted a fellow Anglican who runs an all things
Anglican-related blog to apprise her that her research into His
Grace's paternal ancestry as it then stood was incorrect. Perhaps
because she was unhappy to learn this, I had a very rude reply from
her which concentrated on a small typo I had made (the omission of the
letter 'n' in the indefinite article before a vowel) in rearranging
the text of my message to her (writing in the middle of the night when
I probably should have waited to be rested and better guard against
just such 'late night' errors [for as they say, 'even Caesar nods']) .
Anyway, she eventually came across the vital clue I had reached
earlier, and got her story into the "Jewish Chronicle". You can read
about it there if the particular back issue is still available via
google search.
There are some inaccuracies in what is available about His Grace's
paternal lineage as published online, but while I informed one
newspaper about them, I have not published my findings. Being in
Canada, it appears to be more difficult for me than for some who are
more strategically located in the Anglosphere's metropoles to interest
British and other non-Canadian newspapers in what I find on a topic.
Richard
P.S.
His Grace's non-Jewish paternal side (his father's mother's ancestry)
is also something I have researched, but it has not been published. It
held a number of interesting surprises as there was a consistent
desire to mislead posterity due to events that might have then
occasioned scandal, and might still be the source of amusement and/or
derision or dismay in some circles.
Also, I was contacted by one of the larger English newspapers when the
German archives told them of my enquiries, because the reporter there
was looking for other possible children of His Grace's father (who was
rather a lady's man, and who also had a marriage or two prior to
wedding His Grace's mother), and thought I might be one such because I
had made my enquiries before him.
He told me my findings on the non-Weiler paternal side line merited
publication, but that his paper had concluded its coverage since I was
not His Grace's sibling which was the story they wanted and were then
prepared to publish.
ABC, and people began to do the spadework into his ancestry. He didn't
even know his father's correct birth date because he had been
misinformed about his age.
I traced the Weiler line back to Germany and made contact with the
relevant town archives a couple of years back.
I then contacted a fellow Anglican who runs an all things
Anglican-related blog to apprise her that her research into His
Grace's paternal ancestry as it then stood was incorrect. Perhaps
because she was unhappy to learn this, I had a very rude reply from
her which concentrated on a small typo I had made (the omission of the
letter 'n' in the indefinite article before a vowel) in rearranging
the text of my message to her (writing in the middle of the night when
I probably should have waited to be rested and better guard against
just such 'late night' errors [for as they say, 'even Caesar nods']) .
Anyway, she eventually came across the vital clue I had reached
earlier, and got her story into the "Jewish Chronicle". You can read
about it there if the particular back issue is still available via
google search.
There are some inaccuracies in what is available about His Grace's
paternal lineage as published online, but while I informed one
newspaper about them, I have not published my findings. Being in
Canada, it appears to be more difficult for me than for some who are
more strategically located in the Anglosphere's metropoles to interest
British and other non-Canadian newspapers in what I find on a topic.
Richard
P.S.
His Grace's non-Jewish paternal side (his father's mother's ancestry)
is also something I have researched, but it has not been published. It
held a number of interesting surprises as there was a consistent
desire to mislead posterity due to events that might have then
occasioned scandal, and might still be the source of amusement and/or
derision or dismay in some circles.
Also, I was contacted by one of the larger English newspapers when the
German archives told them of my enquiries, because the reporter there
was looking for other possible children of His Grace's father (who was
rather a lady's man, and who also had a marriage or two prior to
wedding His Grace's mother), and thought I might be one such because I
had made my enquiries before him.
He told me my findings on the non-Weiler paternal side line merited
publication, but that his paper had concluded its coverage since I was
not His Grace's sibling which was the story they wanted and were then
prepared to publish.
Fascinating!
Can this Bernard Weiler line be traced further in Germany?
DSH
His grandfather was German Jewish - Bernard Weiler, immigrant and after
WWI broke out, he changed to Welby.
Justin didn't find out until he was an adult.
David Samuelsen
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Can this Bernard Weiler line be traced further in Germany?
DSH
His grandfather was German Jewish - Bernard Weiler, immigrant and after
WWI broke out, he changed to Welby.
Justin didn't find out until he was an adult.
David Samuelsen
I find it curious that the Welby surname, in the case of the Archbishop,
is only a generation or two long. There seems to be no link to other
Welby
families. I'm not sure if there is a question in here somewhere - in my
periodic searches in the Beresford families, a long Welby pedigree
appears
to be attached to Beresford of Leadenham.
-------------------------------is only a generation or two long. There seems to be no link to other
Welby
families. I'm not sure if there is a question in here somewhere - in my
periodic searches in the Beresford families, a long Welby pedigree
appears
to be attached to Beresford of Leadenham.
To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to
quotes in the subject and the body of the message