“I wish you’d forget this zeppelin crap and come on over for the coronation!” — Ruth Kobart as Hattie in The Hindenburg (1975)
Gentility is what is left over from rich ancestors after the money is gone. — John Ciardi
1) A couple days ago it was finally announced that Francis Dymoke, the King’s Champion, will bear the Royal Standard in the coronation procession of King Charles III on May 6. I made plans to be there as soon as the date was announced in October, and have been on tenterhooks waiting for this confirmation. Now I have to figure out just exactly where I can elbow my way in for a view of the procession on the sidewalk with the rest of the hoi polloi.
2) Throughout my preparations I have been thinking a lot about my Granny Dimmick, for whom this would have meant a great deal, and her mother Alice Vivian. (Those who have already listened patiently to the Dimmick genealogy may skip ahead; those who who have listened impatiently already have 😉.) Early in my childhood my Granny impressed on me and my sister* that we were descended from the Dymokes, the Champions of the Kings of England. Turns out Thomas Dimmock, who helped settle Barnstable, was the first one in the colonies. We were taught that he deliberately changed the spelling of his name to disassociate from the family in England.
Henry Dymoke, championing away at the coronation of 1821. It’s all about accessorizing.
2a) Just what is a King’s Champion? William the Conquerer first created the position. Over time the Champion’s role fighting the sovereign’s personal battles was reduced to a ceremonial appearance at the coronation banquet, riding in on a white horse to throw down the gauntlet three times as a challenge to any present. When Queen Victoria’s coronation came along, there wasn’t enough money for a banquet (those Hanoverians and their appetites!), so (I believe) the Champion’s role was reduced to leading the procession into the Abbey bearing the Royal Standard.
2a) The role of Champion is associated with the estate of Scrivelsby in Lincolnshire, where the Dymokes still live. Childhood Me was thrilled when my cousin Hal actually got to visit there about 50 years ago. Granny was overjoyed with the large brass rubbing he did of Sir Robert Dymoke’s memorial in the little church there, and the special album Hal created for her. I was thrilled when I got to visit Scrivelsby in 2013, something I never ever expected to get to do.
3) So, this Dymoke ancestry was very important to Granny. As important to her and her sisters was their descent from Fielding Lewis, George Washington’s brother-in-law (through his second wife Betty) who sacrificed his fortune to run the foundry for the Continental Army during the Revolution, and was therefore their ticket into the DAR. (We are descended from Fielding’s son John by his first wife, Catherine Washington, who was George’s first cousin.)
4) I have been asking myself why would these grand and very distant associations mean so much to my grandmother, and to her mother? Alice Vivian was the daughter of a Confederate general who died in 1862, so it’s easy to assume that they declined from a position of some affluence to . . . to something substantially less than that. Then of course she married a man who didn’t seem to do much but sit around and read the newspapers (accounts vary), so to keep body and soul (and seven children) together, Alice Vivian had to run a boardinghouse in New Orleans. Even with a cook, a hall boy, and six daughters to help out, that’s a lot of work!** It may be that this was one way Alice Vivian could assert her claims to gentility, better than just a landlady.
My grandmother’s family sometime in the 1940s. Top row L to R: Granny (Mary Ella), Jim, Johnnie, Kate (for Kathleen Mavourneen); bottom row L to R: Bess (or Sister), Sister (or Bess), their father John Anthony Evans, and Fannie.
4a) By all accounts Alice Vivian was a strong character, and so were all her daughters. I never knew Fannie or Sister or Bess, but I had my granny right next door growing up, and we saw Kate and Lal (widowed and sharing a house) fairly often, and Johnnie (who lived in Tennessee) on rare visits. They all had that big Evans smile, which was inherited by my father and his siblings, and to a degree by me.
5) So perhaps this trip is as much an homage to my granny as for my own enjoyment. And I am certainly determined to enjoy it! While I’m on the island, I’ll also visit, in chronological order: Kensington Palace, the Queen’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle; my friends in Coventry/Kenilworth; Bath (which is to say Bahth, not Baath or Bawth), including No. 1 Royal Crescent, the Roman Baths, and the Pump Room (which features in Jane Austen’s Persuasion); and back in London, tea at Fortnum’s, a Royal Opera performance of my beloved Aïda, and Hampton Court. Wish me luck on this orgy of history!
*My older cousins may have been spared slightly as Granny and Grampa lived next door to us. It’s quite something to have grandparents right next door.
**Aunt Kate, the youngest, once told me that in the evenings after dinner there could be up to 40 people sitting around in the parlor: two parents, seven children, and around 30 boarders, who I gather were often Tulane Medical students. She said they’d hold their seats as long as they could because as soon as someone made a move for the door, they’d be met with a chorus of “And while you’re up, could you get me . . .”