The Lathom Angel
Introduction
I am still standing in that sunny breeze-swept meadow just by a wall at Lathom House in the late afternoon of a summer’s day in 1985 watching the deer idly grazing in the former kitchen garden. My family wandering away to search for fragments of cast deer antler to carve and top walking sticks. Turning for the first time to stare at the blackened-stone walls of the derelict west wing of one of Giacomo Leoni’s famous Palladian buildings, Lathom House. Derelict and eerily silent, decay in every piece of fallen masonry and timber. A historic roost offering a panoramic view across the sweeping parkland of its previous estate, past its 500 year-old chapel and the scattered ancient and modern dwellings on its boundary, to the valley of Ellerbrook, the town of Burscough, and the marshlands of Martin Mere and Hoscar Moss. From that moment I was hooked. I wanted to know who had lived there, how they lived and later, why their family line, titles, houses and estates had been lost.
It was the connection between two men a theatrical dilettante Edward William Bootle-Wilbraham who was the 3rd Earl of Lathom 4th Baron Skelmersdale, and Noël Coward a 20th century master of the theatrical, musical and literary arts, that finally turned interest into the desire to write a book but now a website. Ned Lathom was Noel’s earliest know patron, providing him with the money to go to America for the first time, bailing out his family’s domestic debts on several occasions and in 1922 sponsoring his first revue, written in partnership with Ronald Jeans for Andre Charlot, London Calling!.
What started as a quest to discover the truth about Ned, his family and friends has I hope ended as a testament to Ned, his father and grandfather, the three Earls of Lathom, an earldom that lasted barely 50 years and ended with Ned’s demise. Three very different men, showing a variety of ideals and aspirations, but all with a love for music and the theatre and all possessing a strong and occasionally eccentric sense of humour. This site looks at the development of the world of theatre through what is known about each man, their families, their role in society, and particularly Ned Lathom himself. A committed dilettante with professional aspirations who had such a passion for the theatre that it led him to pour thousands of pounds into often unsuccessful productions, rising stars and theatrical acolytes many of whom ran out when Ned’s money did the same.
There also is a desire to put the record straight. Much is said about Ned and his family that is fair and accurate but much is not and if this site does nothing more than invite people to reconsider the life of this significant family, it will have done well.
It can be argued that Ned had the background and standing of a stereotypically gay man. The early death of his father, a childhood dominated by a talented mother with a strong personality and a desire to live life to the full, supported, in adulthood by a devoted sister and befriended by a coterie of gay and straight theatrical and artistic friends. That is all far too simplistic and unhelpfully distracting. What drove this man more than anything else was his desire to be taken seriously as a professional playwright. Unfortunately his fatal illness, great wealth, impatient and often flippant and indulgent lifestyle severely hampered his desire and ability to develop and refine his work. He was always far too satisfied with the first flush of dramatic prose that flowed from his pen. Had he really observed the work of one he particularly admired, Noël Coward, he would have realised that dramatic success is hard won through consistent application, hard work and the ability to learn from failure – exceptional talent also has a lot to do with it.
Ned was an attractive, intelligent man with a lively and warm personality. During war service in the trenches he earned considerable respect from his men but was clearly not in possession of the essential qualities for an officer. He must at times have been a rather bizarre figure riding his white horse at the battlefront, and on more than one occasion falling off. Yet correspondence and local stories have it that he was widely respected and loved by his men – and generous to a fault! On his 21st birthday he sent home for vast and sumptuous supplies of food that were shared out amongst his company.
The foul nature of life in the trenches with its constant menu of daily death and gory injury scarred Ned for the rest of his life. On his return after a period in India he picked up the reins of the Earl with its annual round of local duties but spent increasing time in London with a strong desire to never be alone. His passion for friendship may have often been bought and the cheapness for life that the trenches evidenced plus his own increasing disability due to consumption made him determined to enjoy every minute of his life that he could.
He had a total lack of interest in the property he had inherited and in financial matters generally. His disregard for the management and husbandry of his holdings treating them as a bank to be plundered endlessly for any and all ventures and pleasures led to the eventual death of a large rural estate of considerable historical significance. He did have a genuine concern for those who depended upon him. At the dissolution of his estate in 1924 he and his banker Arthur Debenham did their utmost to ensure that property of public value was donated to the local community and that tenants received considerable discount when purchasing their rented holdings.
Marie Tempest, a close theatrical friend said of him:
“He was a delightful companion and the complete dilettante of the theatre. I don't like dilettantes usually, mind you, but he had talent and his damnation was that he was rich. His tragedy, to him, was that be had failed as a dramatist. Every play that he wrote fell short of success. He had great talent, but the curse of the amateur was on him. The lack of finish, the sense of hurry, the fatal satisfaction with the first draft of what he wrote. I was his friend in his unhappy days also. He had thrown money to the winds, perhaps with some sort of foreboding about his early death. I do not know. I saw him many times in the months before he died, when his money had gone. He was in a small house in St. John's Wood. He said to me, the last time I saw him, “Mary, how lovely it is to be without possessions.”
This website would not have been written without the family link with Lathom and the support offered by my in-laws, Stan and Joan Gaskell and their daughter, my wife, Beryl. The support and partnership provided by Pam Nanson and Howard Whitaker makes them as much responsible for this book as I am. On matters legal Mark Roper-Hill has been a sound and reasoned voice. The Noel Coward Society has supported all my efforts and provided a platform for early attempts to tell this story. The Political Editor of the Independent on Sunday, Colin Brown who started his journalistic career on the Ormskirk Advertiser gave me a head start with his articles on Ned and Lathom and offering continuing support on the story I am sure he would want to have written himself. Countless people from the Ormskirk area have provided me with anecdotes, photographs, text and memories. Kenneth Starrett, an American actor, has been an essential researcher and friend providing a lot of the material on Ned’s productions in New York.
