From Fitzroy's Private Diary (Extract 47)
At birth, I was so far down the family food chain that my presence barely registered with anyone but my mother. As my father’s second wife, of independent means, she was more than able to provide for my future herself. Which is just as well, as my share of my father’s estate would be less than a shilling.
As I have never much liked the man who sired me, this suits me down to the ground. It also leaves me with no responsibility to reproduce for the sake of the title. Again, a positive bonus in my mind. If one is to have children, I have always thought it should be because one wants them, and as a child of an unwilling father, I am quite adamant in the belief.
Sadly, my family has passed through several decades of attrition; wars and plagues (or influenza, if I must be less poetic). This coupled with accidents brought about by carelessness, arrogance, and in a very few cases, simply damn, bad luck, has brought the title very much nearer my head than anyone ever thought it would come.
The situation is bad enough that my father has not only written to me for the first time in over twenty years but is advising me to acquire a wife! The sole purpose of which would be for me to impregnate her, and beget an heir for the succession before, as he tactfully puts it, ‘I may finally heed the call to serve my country in its hour of need.’
None of my family have ever known what I do, and other than having to ignore their sneers and snubs (rather than planting them a facer), it hasn’t bothered me much. I owe them nothing, but now it appears they believe I owe them my seed.
It is, admittedly, an old title, and perhaps if family relations had been more amiable since I left home, I might feel some pressure to bow to their request. As it is, I have no intention of marrying for their convenience, let alone setting up a nursery. I regard myself as being in my prime, but a lady of a similar age to myself would almost certainly be past her child bearing years, and I have no desire whatsoever to marry some foolish, younger woman, whose head is turned by the possibility of being present at the next coronation.
But all this has led to me to reflect on my lack of offspring. I chose, open eyed, an occupation totally unsuited for a family man. I have enjoyed enormously being a bachelor. I suspect my single status is written through me, as the name of a seaside town is written through a stick of rock.
Euphemia once asked me to befriend, or at least try to be an uncle, to her younger brother, as he had no significant male adult to look up to. As I still felt somewhat beholden to that family, and wanted her to remain on my team, I did so. Her mother did later marry a Bishop, who was enough of an educated gentleman that you could almost forget he was a man of the cloth. However, he was already an old man when he came into Joe’s life.
If I am honest, I cannot say that my interventions with him went well. Once it was clear he would inherit his grandfather’s estate (another family suffering the effects of the Great War), and that having been home schooled by his ferocious mother, he had no intention of entering university, and there was really very little left in my skillset to offer the chap. We did have a couple of conversations about women, but as he has followed me into a bachelor lifestyle, I don’t think I helped there either. I did manage to steer him away from older, grasping women on more than one occasion, and I did put a downer on some of the wilder parties he threw after his grandfather’s demise. Fortunately, his mother has come to live with him now, so on that level I need have no more fears (and by wild, I mean hedonistic and cocaine fuelled, something which I have kept from Euphemia as she still dotes on him).
Overall, the experience has led me to believe I would make a poor father. Having effectively not had much of one myself, I simply don’t have the knack of it.
When Hope became my goddaughter, it was very different. I wasn’t keen when Euphemia first asked me, but when she explained she wanted her daughter to grow up knowing spy-craft for her own protection, in case any of her (or rather our) old enemies ever came out of the woodwork, I at least knew what I could and would do. That Hope turned out to be such a darling child, who in many ways is a reflection of her mother, but in calmer and deeper waters, was an unlooked-for delight. Of course, she had a father, but Bertram’s continuing bad health, for which some of that blame is rightly laid at my door, meant he could not be the active type of parent a country child required. I found sharing my love of the outdoors, teaching her to ride, and how to live on the land, as enjoyable as training a young mind in spy craft (that, in and of itself, was a fascinating experience).
But Hope is not my child. She is her mother's daughter, and I believe the heart of her has been formed by this unique and remarkable woman. I suspect I might have faired slightly better with a daughter, but clearly without Euphemia’s assistance, I would have been hopelessly lost.
All in all, I think it better for the world I remain childless. I am too much of a maverick, and too much of a wanderer, to be a decent parent. My fourth cousin, Gerald, will simply have to step up to the mark when I shuffle off this mortal coil and take on that dratted title. May the poor oaf enjoy it!