Lilla's Feast (48 page)

The Howell family, England, ca. 1910.

Wyndham Somerset (Barbie’s husband), Lilla, Auberon Howell, Ernie Howell, Evelyn Howell, Jane (a nurse), and Fred Henniker (Ada’s husband).

Bob Howell (Auberon’s wife) with their daughter Barbara on her lap, Russell Harmer (child, standing), Laura Harmer with Freddie Harmer on her lap, Mama Howell, Mark Henniker (child, standing), Papa Howell, Ada Henniker with her daughter Alison on her lap, and Barbie Somerset.

A friend, Arthur Howell, Jeanne Howell (Auberon’s daughter), Alice Howell, and Roy Somerset.

Ernie with Arthur in his goat cart, Kashmir, 1904.

The raging torrent at the bottom of Lilla and Ernie’s garden in Kashmir, 1904.

A friend and Ernie. Front row: a friend, friend’s child, Arthur (in kilt), Lilla, and Nurse Desmond holding Alice.

The emblem of the Tsingtao Special Police, showing the flags (clockwise, from top left) of Germany, White Russia, the United States, and Britain, whose nationals joined forces to keep the peace and hand the town over to the advancing Japanese. Designed by N. A. Piculevitch, 1938. A photograph of a cell block in Weihsien internment camp. The woman bending over is attempting to grow vegetables to supplement camp rations. Published in the pro-Japanese German-run
Peking Chronicle,
May 20, 1943. A painting of one of the kitchen blocks and outside yards, Weihsien internment camp. By Father Frans Verhoeven, an internee. Freedom at last! Weihsien internment camp shortly after the arrival of the American liberators, August 1945.

First Beach waterfront from Consulate Hill, Chefoo (now Yantai), in May 2000. The Casey & Co. building is just to the right of the wide waterfront skyscraper in the center. To the left, all along the seafront, are old European-style buildings.

Lilla at her hundredth birthday party, Tunbridge Wells, 1982.

Embroidered handkerchief from Casey & Co.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book has been a long journey, and there are a great number of people who deserve my thanks for helping me to complete it. Very sadly, not all of them are still alive to see this book’s publication, but I have included their names, as they are certainly far from forgotten.

Much of the research in the latter half of the book I owe to Lilla’s fellow internee Norman Cliff, without whose generosity in both thought and time this book would not have been written. Others who have been equally unstinting in their help include Ron Bridge, Peggy Caldwell, Martin Cornish, Joan Croft, Colonel Patric Emerson, Alison Holmes, Rosie Llewellyn Jones, Bob McMullah, George McWatters, Colonel Patrick Mercer, MP, Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, Jimmy Murray, Patricia and Brian Ogden, Leopold Pander, Algernon Percy, Mary Taylor Previte, and James H. Taylor III; Dan Waters and Sarah Parnell of the Royal Asiatic Society in Hong Kong, Christopher Hunt of the Imperial War Museum, Sarah Parker of Historic Royal Palaces, Sarah Dodgson of the Athenaeum, Frances Wood and the staff of the Oriental and India Office Reading Room at the British Library. And, of course, Elizabeth Filby, my researcher, who managed to unearth long-forgotten documents and details from the recesses of London’s archives with a flourish.

My research in China could not have been completed without the help of Susan Liu, Liu Xingbang, Mark O’Neill, Sun Liping, and Zhang Tao, all of whom extended me generous hospitality during my visit. The other great set of people who threw open their doors to me are my many rediscovered relations, whom it was a joy to meet. Rugs and Audrey Eckford in particular showed me the sights of Vancouver while producing a treasure trove of memories, photographs, and diaries that form the backbone for several chapters in this book. Carol Bartlett, Anne and Shelagh Eckford, John and Nan Elderton, Nicholas Gibbs, George Howell, Phyllis Morley, Liz Murton, Dilys Philps, Jean and Jack Polkinghorn, Gerry Simmons, and John, Maureen, Nicky, Tom, Mike, and Belinda de Sausmarez each gave me several pieces of the jigsaw puzzle of Lilla’s life and have discussed and rediscussed their reminiscences with me at length.

Several of my friends, too, have provided me with both their advice and encouragement at crucial points along the way. Chief among these is Amanda Foreman, who has nudged me in the right direction both professionally and as a friend. I can safely say that, were it not for her enthusiasm at several critical stages,
Lilla’s Feast
would still be one of those many books that were never quite written. And Corisande Albert, Matthew d’Ancona, Catherine Fall, Simone Finn, Henrietta Green, Edward Heathcoat-Amory, Santa Montefiore, Catherine Ostler, Kate Pope, Albert Read, Andrew Roberts, Sarah Schaefer, Simon Sebag Montefiore, Victor Sebastian, and Alice Thomson have each passed me a few pieces of information worth their weight in gold.

I can boast a handful of new friends that I have made along the road—namely, Claire Paterson, my agent, and Jane Lawson and Elisabeth Dyssegaard, my editors. They are the ones who ultimately teased
Lilla’s Feast
out of my mind and onto its many pages, guiding me up the vertiginous slope of writing my first book, cajoling me back to work after the arrival of Liberty midway through with their eagerness to read it. And, with the exceptional skill of haute couturiers, Jane and Elisabeth used their great expertise on all things editorial to help me tuck and pin this book into its final shape. Thank you, too, to Sheila Lee, who seemed to enjoy looking at my family photographs and has done a fantastic job in finding more.