Читать книгу The Fatal Cup: Thomas Griffiths Wainewright and the strange deaths of his relations - John Price Williams - Страница 17

of reach – money which he regarded morally as being his own? The frustration and the temptation were to become so unbearable that he was willing to risk a death sentence by swindling the Bank of England and then to gain from mysterious deaths of his relatives.

With old Dr. Griffiths gone, Wainewright was brought up by his grandmother the shrewish, hard-headed business woman, who died in 1812, and her son George, an amiable easy-going bachelor and dabbler in the arts who took up the editorship of the Monthly Review.

George’s delights were planting tropical trees and building new conservatories in the grounds of Linden House. By 1822 money seems to have become tight, as part of the land was sold off to the Duke of Devonshire for £800.

The young Wainewright had a lonely if privileged upbringing, with a firm grounding in the arts; his grandfather’s dinner table and library had seen to that. Though he was to dismiss this in one of his essays years later:

As a boy I was placed frequently in literary society; a giddy, flighty disposition prevented me from receiving thence any advantage.

This was not true, the advantages were considerable; he was brought up in a bookish hothouse and knew the famous authors of the day who came to dine. He acquired a considerable body of knowledge which was to prove most important as it later gave him an entrée into artistic society.

JOHN PRICE WILLIAMS

17