On The Track Of My Great Uncle Harold
Feb. 5th, 2017 04:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloI have decided he was gay. If he wasn't he's not around to set me right. Nobody is. And though I don't believe I ever met him I may be the last person standing who knows he ever even existed.
Until now.
The records of his life are terribly sparse. I have the usual birth and death certificates and a few- a pitifully few- photographs. I've posted one of him as a soldier. Here are most of the rest.
I can't even be entirely sure this is him, but, then who else could it be? Who else in the family was this dapper? Who else took his holidays in North Africa? It says on the back that this was taken in the Coronation Mosque on 24/7/21 by Hedley Mitchell Esq. Who he?
Well, perhaps he's the chappie in the white suit with Harold in this next picture...
We're still in North Africa for the next snap. High jinks are being had. Harold is in the middle. At least I think that's him but none of these pictures have his name on them. Is that a golf club he's holding? If so, why? Are we having a game of donkey-golf?
And now we're back home in Blighty. This is Harold with his parents and much younger sister Joan. If there were no other clues you'd know him by the tilt of his hat.
Shall me follow him to the end? I hesitate to post the next because it's such a blurry image- below my standards, really, but so far as I can see it's the only picture I have of him as a (comparatively) old man. He died in his early 50s.
That's him on the left- the smartest man at the wedding (though whose I have no idea.) Next to him in order are his sisters Joan, Ethel and Kathleen and Ethel's husband Laurie White. Missing from the line-up is his sister Violet, my granny. Perhaps she was behind the camera.
P.S. Since posting the above I've done a little more research and- well I never- it was my parents wedding. That would explain why my granny isn't in the shot. She wasn't any old guest, she was the bridegroom's mother!
Until now.
The records of his life are terribly sparse. I have the usual birth and death certificates and a few- a pitifully few- photographs. I've posted one of him as a soldier. Here are most of the rest.
I can't even be entirely sure this is him, but, then who else could it be? Who else in the family was this dapper? Who else took his holidays in North Africa? It says on the back that this was taken in the Coronation Mosque on 24/7/21 by Hedley Mitchell Esq. Who he?
Well, perhaps he's the chappie in the white suit with Harold in this next picture...
We're still in North Africa for the next snap. High jinks are being had. Harold is in the middle. At least I think that's him but none of these pictures have his name on them. Is that a golf club he's holding? If so, why? Are we having a game of donkey-golf?
And now we're back home in Blighty. This is Harold with his parents and much younger sister Joan. If there were no other clues you'd know him by the tilt of his hat.
Shall me follow him to the end? I hesitate to post the next because it's such a blurry image- below my standards, really, but so far as I can see it's the only picture I have of him as a (comparatively) old man. He died in his early 50s.
That's him on the left- the smartest man at the wedding (though whose I have no idea.) Next to him in order are his sisters Joan, Ethel and Kathleen and Ethel's husband Laurie White. Missing from the line-up is his sister Violet, my granny. Perhaps she was behind the camera.
P.S. Since posting the above I've done a little more research and- well I never- it was my parents wedding. That would explain why my granny isn't in the shot. She wasn't any old guest, she was the bridegroom's mother!
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no subject
Date: 2017-02-05 06:57 pm (UTC)I don't know how far out of the closet he was. I think his family sort of knew- and some of them- I suspect- kept their distance. He doesn't feature much in my grandparents' photo collection.
Joan- his youngest sister- was the one who stood by him- and was there for him. Joan was a lovely person. I'll be posting about her in due course.
I'm romancing, of course. Most of this is supposition and deduction and intuition. I may be getting things quite wrong.
no subject
Date: 2017-02-05 07:57 pm (UTC)Of course we'll never know if he went there to share a bed with Hedley Mitchell Esq., or whether they went there together to find the readily available "services" of straight Moroccan boys; for all we know he might have gone for the architecture. The evidence seems circumstantial - but it does seem to point in a particular direction.
(Also, how did a clerk afford a trip to North Africa? It seems terribly extravagant.)
no subject
Date: 2017-02-05 08:31 pm (UTC)I believe he lived with his parents for much of his life. They weren't badly off and may well have subsidised his lifestyle.
no subject
Date: 2017-02-05 08:45 pm (UTC)Another LJ friend has this "Hedley Mitchell" in her family records... Apparently from Australia - but she has no pictures of him. Still, I'm seeing the beginning of a fictional internet family history!
no subject
Date: 2017-02-05 08:53 pm (UTC)My man in the white suit (who may not be Hedley) looks a good deal older than Harold. Also- perhaps because of the white suit- I have him down as an American.
no subject
Date: 2017-02-05 08:59 pm (UTC)It's completely improbable, but since we know so little let's just assume a lot!