Many of you enjoy reading ‘The Shriving of Miss Esme Stamp’ and StatPress record over three thousand visitors to my blog each month, therefore I am going to continue to write this story and in smaller more frequent episodes, so thank you all, sit back and enjoy, and lets see where it takes us… Thank you once again
Episode 13
1926 came and went… Just as did 1927. Those two years were consumed in a sort of animated forgiveness for her mother. An air of informal obedience prevailed, and Charles paled a little in Esme’s thoughts. There were the endless parades of useless dinner parties presided over by her mother… Of politeness and petite-ness, of playing the devoted and yet available daughter… Available that was, to the right sort of man with the right sort of background and the right sort of money, and of course a suitable type for marriage. Life for Esme in those two years became a constant round of afternoon High Tea’s and smartly dressed shopping in fashionable Oxford Street.
Bayswater at that time was much praised and sort out by the wealthy. Its large department stores piled high their goods and matched their prices for the well-to-do of such locale’s as Notting Hill, and in the house of Constance and her beloved daughter… Bayswater never got a mention, much less that of Charles Hepworth. It was as if the two had been wiped from the face of the earth.
However, in the winter of 1928 Esme’s life took her on a quite different course and predestination in the form of one curiously odd man by the name of Edward A. Corton. He arrived at the house one cold December evening, at first shy, a new acquaintance in the comings and goings of her mother’s so-called cluster of friends. Over dinner it transpired that Mr. Corton was interested in Hop growing and selling on to the Brewers. He had been left a large inheritance by way of a deceased Aunt that also included several hundred acres of rather dilapidated land and a farmhouse close to Tunbridge Wells. The thought of turning this land over to hop growing had struck him as profitable as he already owned a small but yielding Tin Mine in Cornwall and from where his income mostly derived.
More to follow soon…
