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Tangled souls : love and scandal among the Victorian aristocracy

Dismore, Jane2022
Book
Outrageously handsome, witty and clever, Harry Cust was reputed to be one of the great womanisers of the late Victorian era. In 1893, while a Member of Parliament, he caused public scandal by his affair with artist and poet Nina Welby Gregory. When she revealed that she was pregnant, horror swept through their circle knonw as 'the Souls', a cultured, mostly aristocratic group of writers, artists and politicians who also rubbed shoulders with luminaries such as Oscar Wilde and H.G. Wells. With the unconventional Margot Tennant and philosopher-statesman Arthur Balfour at their centre, the dazzling Souls eschewed the formalities of upper-class etiquette. Married Souls discretely bore their lovers' children - and public figures got away with much worse - yet bachelor Harry's seduction of a single woman of the same class broke the rules.
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