A souvenir of our honeymoon.
7. An emblem of married life.
8. Your next birthday present; the 32 diamonds and the large amethyst, making 33 stones, corresponding to the years of your life.44
Timothy H appears to have written his final letter to Miss Clark on 24 April lamenting the end of their relationship:45
During the few last terrible weeks how gladly would I have purchased a single daily hour of your presence at the cost of $100 per visit had it been possible, so that sitting by my bedside I might have had the comfort of your presence, the sweetness of your guileless spirit, the tenderness of your true loyal heart and the deep pathos of your tender unfeigned sympathy.
If you prefer our intercourse and relations should not be renewed, I will acquiesce regretfully, but subserviently and uncomplainingly.Yours ever.
T.H. Porter.
Within five days, however, on 29 April,Timothy H was writing to Kingsley’s governess, Miss Mabel Earle, requesting a meeting of a confidential nature: ‘I feel I must have a leisurely long personal interview with you. There are many, many things that are vital to my happiness if not to my life that I feel sorely in need of, I must advise and confer about. And you are the only person living to whom I could confide them.’46
Between May and June of the same year, several letters were written to a number of women, including a friend of his late wife’s on 16 May, asking her to consider marriage and outlining the esteem in which ladies in general held him:
Perhaps I ought to say that I have and have always had the most exalted opinion and admiration for women. I most firmly believe that in every point of comparison they are not only the equal of men but vastly superior to us men in every desirable respect, except alone in the matter of physical strength. As a consequence of this belief, I have always had such a feeling of respect, deference and reverential regard for ladies as has always made me a favourite with them, and they give me their love because they soon see that I appreciate it and prove myself worthy of it. In this way only can I analyse the esteem in which my lady friends have always held me.47
Sometime during the latter months of 1893, Porter’s sons, Louis and Blachley, became aware of their father’s correspondence. Not only were they deeply shocked by their elderly, paralytic father’s pursuit of women almost forty years his junior, they were also enraged that their mother’s fortune was being whittled away on jewels and other gifts for his various female acquaintances. Blachley, now aged 17, began to take copies of his father’s love letters whenever he could obtain access to his personal journals.48 The situation was brought to a head in January 1894 when Timothy H informed his family that he was engaged to Kingsley’s former governess, 28-year-old Mabel Hastings Earle.
This was the final straw for the family. The eldest sons, in consultation with the executors of their mother’s will, Schuyler Merritt and Thomas Ritch, ruminated that Timothy H had completely lost his sanity.49 This was an era when raw sexual desire, particularly in an ailing, elderly widower who was deemed to hold a respectable position within the community, was totally unacceptable. Freud’s theories of sexual development and repression were as yet unknown. The prevailing medical model viewed sexual deviation from an accepted norm as a symptom of mental illness that needed to be controlled and treated, often by committing the patient to an asylum.
In January 1894 the first of a series of lengthy lawsuits and counter suits commenced, amid much prurient interest. In the Probate Court in Stamford, Porter’s sons and co-executors began legal proceedings to have Timothy H declared insane. This dispute coincided with the legal battle already being pursued in the courts to settle the will of J.B. Hoyt.50
Fearing an immense sexual and financial scandal, the family confined Timothy H to his home, under restraint of two Stamford officers, Bolster and Shoeck.51 Timothy H’s brother, David, his sister, Mrs Walton, and a nephew were also advised of the situation. They arrived at Blachley Lodge and took up residence to care for their relative while the Probate Court decided his fate.52
Timothy H was held captive in his own home for several weeks. This bizarre situation, of having his father’s authority superseded by that of his brothers and uncle, must have been highly traumatic for the 11-year-old Kingsley.There must also have been a torrent of emotions erupting when he discovered that his pretty governess had suddenly been transformed into his elderly father’s fiancee. After the happy, idyllic years of his early childhood, Kingsley was now a reluctant witness to the destruction of his family. The press set about humiliating every aspect of his father’s previously impeccable reputation as, one by one, his love letters were read out in court and printed in newspapers each day for all the world to savour. The coverage of the case in The Sun (New York) was typical of the blend of sensationalism and humour that was employed by reporters to fascinate and amuse their readers. The edition of 11 January 1894 described Timothy H as ‘a model old gentleman, and he used to carry himself with a full realization of the dignity of his character. He was tall and erect and his beard and hair were quite white.’53
The next day’s edition lampooned the romantic exploits of the eccentric millionaire:
The epistolary part of the love making which seems to have occupied the leisure time of the paralytic millionaire,Timothy H. Porter, since the death of his wife three years ago, and which is presumably the main excuse for the application recently brought to have him adjudged insane, was produced in court through his son Blacheley[sic], who copied them from a book in which his father first wrote them. It is largely upon these letters that the case of the sons rests. It is insisted on Mr Porter’s side of the controversy that they allow evidence not of mental weakness or aberration, but the contrary. In the absence of a standard for love making at various ages, this may be a matter of opinion; but his sons think that any one who could write such letters and send them should certainly have someone to guide him in his affairs.54
In court, Timothy H swore that his brother-in-law, the wealthy manufacturing magnate Schuyler Merritt, along with Thomas Ritch, had conspired to destroy his character and dismantle his estate.55 Porter’s sons gave evidence that they began to question their father’s sanity, not only when he began writing love letters and giving lavish presents to a series of women, but also when his spelling deteriorated, as this was a sign of his failing powers. Further revelations followed. Louis testified that his father believed his paralysis could be cured by the installation of an electric plant, consisting of a four-horsepower engine and a dynamo. Louis had been put to work in the cellar to operate the plant. He also testified that Mr Porter insisted on maintaining a temperature of eighty degrees in the house, while he continued to wear a huge cape overcoat.
The strain and complexity of the whole situation must have been enormous as Kingsley was forced to choose sides between his father and the rest of the family. It was at this time that Kingsley’s uncle, Schuyler Merritt, became a surrogate father to his young nephew. The close relationship between Kingsley, his uncle and his Merritt cousins, particularly Katherine, continued throughout his life.
During the ensuing scandal, Kingsley attended King’s Academy, a private school for boys located in Stamford.56 At 11 years old and on the cusp of puberty, there is little doubt that he had to endure a constant barrage of bawdy repartee from his schoolmates concerning his father’s sexual transgressions. Kingsley, sensitive and imbued with an artistic nature, must have been deeply humiliated by this relentless onslaught of lewd jokes and jibes, while struggling to come to terms with his own awakening sexuality. It was probably at this time that Kingsley began to withdraw from his peers and to spend as much time as possible alone, either buried in his beloved books or roaming the countryside, marvelling at the many wonders to be
