The Center of the World by Thomas van Essen

While the father had been loose and easy in his relations with others, the son was comically strict and formal. He banished the artists and painters from Petworth. He kept the property up in a conservative way, he hunted, and he engaged in a series of petty quarrels over the demarcation of his hunting grounds.
    “His wife, Mary,” Gina went on, “was a pious woman, with a strong Evangelical streak. She set the tone that prevailed at Petworth in the years following Egremont’s death. She and her husband both worried that the ‘sins of the father’ would be visited upon the son.
    “It’s with this background that you need to read the document that I’m about to give you. Sometime in the early 1840s, when Wyndham was in his mid-fifties, he had a kind of conversion experience and was tempted to write one of those spiritual biographies that were popular in Evangelical circles at the time. He never completed it, but the manuscript turned up in that used bookshop, in an old register book detailing the proceedings of the Sussex hounds.” Gina opened her portfolio and gave Bryce a stack of yellowing manuscript papers, covered in an awkward hand. She turned her attention to the salad and the cheese; Bryce ordered more coffee and began to read.
    I was born into the curse of illegitimacy on the fifth of June 1787, my father being George O’Brien Wyndham, 3rd Earl of Egremont of Petworth House, Sussex, and my mother being Elizabeth Iliffe of Westminster. My mother and father were married in 1801, too late to cleanse me of that stain which attended my birth
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    My father was avowed to be during his lifetime one of the greatest men in all of England, celebrated for his enlightened view of Agriculture to which he made many improvements, including advances in the breeding of swine. He was also known as a man of taste and fashion due to his wonderful collection of paintings and statues. He was much given to Immorality of the flesh. I was the oldest of the nine children that he had with my mother, and to this I owe my position and property, for which I am grateful. But the Countryside was filled with Rumours as to his carryings on with the daughtersof his tenants as well as ladies and girls of fashion both here and in London, and only God knows what the true number of my brothers and sisters is
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    My mother was a jolly woman and most kind but hard worn out by my father’s Irregularities. In her youth she was no better than she needed to be, coming to Petworth without the benefit of matrimony when she was but fifteen years old and eighteen years younger than my father. She tried for many years to become a decent woman and do what she could to make amends for the sins of her past and to confer some decency on her children. Well do I recall the fierce quarrels they had on this subject when I was young. At last my father gave in to the pleas of decency and common sense and married her when I was already fourteen years of age
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    But Matrimony and advancing age did not confer Morality upon my father and he continued with his irregular ways, often bringing his whores to Petworth and carrying on most shamefully. My mother bore all with good humour and the patience of a Saint, but at times his outrages provoked her to leave. He thought no more of it than a sixpence and carried on as before, knowing she would always return to him, as she was dependent on him for Income
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    My mother died in 1822, done to death by my father’s Sinfulness. At that time I was returned to Petworth, married to my beloved Mary and attempting to live a life of sense and decency amidst all the licence of artists and so forth who surrounded my father and mother. My father had been truly fond of my mother and was sorrowful for her. I had hopes thather Death would be a Lesson to him and he would live out his days as a decent old Widower, for he was an old man now of seventy-one
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    After she died my father went to London for a month or two. When he came back he had with