Unraveling Dora’s Legacy: Connecting Key Family Figures

Over the years that I have been researching Dora’s story, I have always tried to make connection with key characters in her life. I tracked down Hugh Cass‘s family and returned to them his love letters to Dora from 1915. John Metcalf, Dora’s husband, has no descendants but I have visited the village in Yorkshire where his sister was a district nurse and met people who remembered her. I also found a descendant of Dora’s friend and business partner, Sam Haughton, and was able to return his letters. But I couldn’t find anyone descended from Everard Greene, Dora’s cousin, business partner and lifelong mentor. Until last week.

Ancestry.co.uk has a new feature whereby it gives you a score for your family tree based on how accurate they believe it to be. Then it prompts you with names of people in your tree that may be incomplete or duplicated. Everard’s 2x great aunt, Mary Letitia Greene (1787-1859), came up as someone whose details I needed to corroborate. Everard, Dora and I are both descendants of her brother William. When I looked at the ‘hints’ for MLG, one of them was a blog post written about her by Lord Henry Lytton Cobbold of Knebworth House, explaining her connection to his family. On further investigation I found that he had written a book about his ancestor Emily Bulwer-Lytton (1828-48), based on MLG’s writings and crediting her as co-author.

Emily was the daughter of Edward Bulwer Lytton, the most renowned novelist of his day. He gave us phrases such as ‘it was a dark and stormy night,’ and ‘the pen is mightier than the sword.’ He had a tempestuous relationship with his Irish wife, Rosina Wheeler, and neither of them wanted to parent their daughter – she was sent to a wet nurse at a farm 20 miles from their home, within days of her birth on 27 June 1828. We share a birthday, what a coincidence! MLG had been a friend of Rosina since she was 17, and the Greene and Wheeler families lived close to each other near Dublin.

It seems that MLG became a sort of second mother, known as Aunt Mary, to Emily and her little brother Teddy (who later became Viceroy of India) and to two children in her own family – Grace (known as Bonnie, later to become Everard’s grandmother) and Rose Greene. She seemed to be nurse, parent, governess and friend, a constant loving presence in the children’s lives. MLG recorded her experiences of looking after the Bulwer Lytton children until Emily’s tragic death, aged 19, in 1848. Her reminiscences made their way back to Knebworth House in the 1880s, where they lay unread until the 21st century.

Lord Henry Lytton Cobbold became interested in Emily’s story but needed the help of an expert to read MLG’s illegible handwriting. Much of it was “cross-written,” a paper saving device whereby you write across the page first and then overwrite vertically down the page (you can see a sample of it on the cover of Lord Cobbold’s book, above). Eventually, after many readings of the transcribed text, visits to various relevant locations in the UK and Europe, hunting down living connections and visiting graveyards and archives, he was able to write his book, In The Bosom Of Her Father. A key connection was with Jean Greene (1929-2024), who held many relevant Greene family items. She was the wife of Everard’s son, Alfred Greene (1921-2006). At last, an Everard descendant!

I have learned much of this tale through correspondence with Lord Lytton Cobbold, as well as by reading his fascinating and beautifully illustrated book at the National Library of Scotland. He has very kindly helped me to connect with Jean’s daughter, Jenny.

I was amazed to learn that Jenny remembered Dora, having met her many times at Everard’s home, when they all lived in Kensington in the 1950s. Jenny had also spent a family holiday visiting Dora and John at Loch Morar in the 1960s. She solved the mystery of why Everard (whose full name was Christian Augustine Everard Greene) was nicknamed Kitten – apparently, when he was a child, his younger brother couldn’t pronounce the word ‘Christian,’ instead saying Kitten. It was wonderful to bring the close relationship between Everard and Dora to life with these intimate details! Jenny also mentioned that one of her sons is a professor of statistics and was a founding director of the Alan Turing Institute, connecting him back to BTM’s role in the Second World War. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree!

Another interesting snippet from Lord Cobbold’s research is that a relative of ours called Elizabeth Greene was mother to James Patten, Captain Cook’s surgeon. Patten accompanied Cook on his second voyage, aboard HMS Resolution, and saved his life after Cook fell ill near Antarctica. It seems that the Greene family has a long and intriguing history!