Evan, Viscount Tredegar : Evan in California and the relic of the ‘True Cross’ of Christ

 

BUST OF EVAN MORGAN BY PRINCE BIRA OF SIAM

Evan Morgan in California and the ‘True Cross’ of Christ

 An Extract  ( with additional text ) from the book

“Evan Frederic Morgan : Final Affairs Financial and Carnal”

 By William Cross, FSA Scot

 ISBN-13: 978-1905914241

 In the late 1920s  the Hon. Evan Morgan [1] was in Riverside, California as a guest of Frank A Millar [2] the proprietor of the Mission Inn hotel.

 Evan’s visit made such an impact that it features in a book published about Frank Millar and the Mission Inn:

 The book declares that:-

 “There was the incident of the visit of the Honorable Evan Morgan, son of Baron Tredegar of England.”  [3]

 Several tall stories are told of how Evan acquired a piece of the ‘ True Cross’ on which Christ was crucified, including  one ludicrous yarn of Evan making the find in the Holy Land (  he did  visit Jerusalem at least once ). Another ridiculous romp mentions Evan hiring a whole carriage of a train passing through Turkey to convey the relic back to  his home in Britain.

In  fact the real story of Evan’s precious possession relates to a reliquary of St John on the Cross at Mission Inn.

“ Mr Morgan had arrived at the [ Mission]  Inn on a trip around the world. Wandering among the crosses of the collection, he came upon a reliquary of St John of the Cross. Mr Morgan’s Catholic sympathies were pronounced, and St John was his patron saint; he went to curator, saying that he wished to buy this cross. The curator told him courteously that nothing in the cross collection was for sale.

“I must buy it.” The Honourable Evan Morgan repeated.      “ You must let me buy it.”

Impressed by the absence of any mention of price or inclination to bargain, Mr Borton, the curator promised to lay the matter before Mr Miller. Mr Miller replied that he was sorry, that nothing in the cross collection could be sold.

Mr Morgan now cried.  “Please tell Mr Miller that I will pay anything he wishes, but I must have the cross.”

This word he followed with a personal letter to Mr Miller, repeating the wish to have the cross at any price, and enclosing three papal rings, whose settings were exquisite intaglios cut in amethyst and topaz. Sitting before an open fire in his cowled monk’s dressing gown of brown burlap, Mr Miller dictated his reply.

My DEAR FRIEND:  I cannot find it in my heart to traffic in anything which you value as manifestly you this cross. Take it, with my appreciation of you.

I am returning the three papal rings, which I am sure that you value more than I would know how to do.

Sincerely yours, 

FRANK  A MILLER”[4]

Another  teller of the same tale suggests that on Evan’s visit to Riverside he  “ secured a relic of the ‘True Cross’  in exchange for a Cross which he [ Evan] procured from the Belgian battlefields and had blessed by the late Cardinal Mercier”. [5]

A COPY OF THE BOOK MENTIONED ABOVE 

“Evan Frederic Morgan : Final Affairs Financial and Carnal”

IS AVAILABLE FROM THE AUTHOR WILLIAM CROSS

EMAIL :

williecross@aol.com

[1] Hon. Evan Frederic Morgan ( 1893-1949). The last Viscount Tredegar of Tredegar Park, Newport, South Wales, UK

[2] Frank A Miller( 1858-1935) . Owner and developer of Mission Inn Hotel

[3] Gale, Zona. ‘Frank Miller of Mission Inn.’  D Appleton-Century company. (1938).

[4] Ibid.

[5] Advocate ( Melbourne), Vic. National Library of Australia. 18 August 1927.

 

Evan, Viscount Tredegar: Books

BOOKS ON  THE LETTERS AND PROSE OF EVAN MORGAN,

 VISCOUNT TREDEGAR

Evan’s Letters and Prose.  Two  compilations of the  letters and prose of the charismatic Welsh peer Evan Morgan, Viscount Tredegar,  have recently  been edited by Newport’s Will Cross who is also Evan’s biographer.

Evan, Lord Tredegar, Selected Letters, Prose and Quotations: The Mystic Muse of Evan Frederic Morgan ISBN 9781905914241 Book Midden Publishing (2015)

This book offers a  wonderful  selection of letters and prose including  Evan’s intimate correspondence to his beloved  friend  ‘Krylie’  ( Cyril Hartmann) culled from the Tredegar House Archive. In addition  are Evan’s letters to the composer Cecil Gray and to literary giants George Bernard Shaw and  G K Chesterton from the British Library Manuscripts Department, published for the first time in ninety years. The letters reveal a surprisingly whimsical, witty, whilst occasionally warped side to Evan thoughts, relationships and deeds.

In addition  the compilation combines a broad base of  prose articles by Evan contributed to  magazines and newspapers offering his own personal memoir of time spent  in Algiers ( 1918); Paris ( 1919); Rome ( for the visit to the Pope at the  Vatican of  King George V and Queen Mary in 1923); and his view of Limehouse as its prospective Member of Parliament in 1929.  Evan’s vision on Catholic matters  is confronted in a serious article, but there is a lighter note  with a lyrical piece about how the Victorians are remembered. The sizable collection of quotations about  Evan will amuse and provoke.

Evan, Lord Tredegar : Further Letters and Prose Pieces: With Anecdotes About Evan  978-1905914388 Book Midden Publishing ( 2016)

Among the letters included are those to the Welsh artist Augustus John, to The Archbishop of Cardiff, Francis Mostyn and to Marie Stopes who was involved with Evan and others in the campaign to try to secure a pension for Lord ' Bosie' Douglas. Other nuggets include two odd-ball letters featuring Evan from Aldous Huxley - his friend from the tragically insecure days spent at Lady Ottoline Morrell's Garsington Manor during the Great War. Here too are the letters from Evan to Frances Stevenson, David Lloyd George's private secretary and mistress; Frances later dubbed Evan " a hopeless liar and thoroughly degenerate". The new prose pieces include Evan's essay on " Youth", his personal views of what men and women of the 1920s would have made the ideal Prime Minister's inner Cabinet, and a curiously vain piece about " This Age of Vulgarity" as well as an equally heady essay entitled " I Believe in the Roman Catholic Church".

These books  are rare,  limited numbers,   the results of  Will Cross’s ten years of research. The work  fills a gap as very little of Evan’s written words ( except his poems and verse) are  readily available  in the public domain.

Copies can be obtained direct from William Cross at 58, Sutton Road, Newport, NP19 7JF.  Cheques/ POs payable to “ William Cross”.   Cost is £7.00 per title plus £2.25 post and packing. If you buy both titles the postage is free. The books are also available on AMAZON.

FOUR OTHER BOOKS ON EVAN MORGAN, LORD TREDEGAR ARE AVAILABLE FROM WILLIAM CROSS, INCLUDING THE CONTROVERSIAL BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH " NOT BEHIND LACE CURTAINS" COPIES ARE STILL AVAILABLE ON AMAZON AND FROM 'CRAFTED' IN THE KINGSWAY CENTRE , NEWPORT

Evan, Viscount Tredegar: Service in MI14 in Second World War

Evan, Viscount Tredegar and the Truth about what he did in the Second World War.

In 1943 Evan Morgan, Lord Tredegar of Tredegar House, Newport, South Wales was a Captain ( acting Major ) in the Royal Signals Corps, attached to MI 14, a branch of the Intelligence Services based at Wing House, Piccadilly, in London’s West End. This section of the army dealt with the use of carrier pigeons by the military. Pigeons were used in past wars to carry important, coded messages. 

In World War 2 they were requisitioned for use in a number of ways by the British Army, the RAF and also the Resistance in Holland and the Low countries. The messages were carried in special coloured containers on the legs of the birds or pouches on their backs. Evan’s lowly job was largely a desk bound one, but it included liaison with the pigeon fanciers/ breeders in Southern England.

This task involved some travel to meet the men who had given up their precious birds, moreover Evan was expected to keep the breeders’ morale up, since the mortality of the average bird was high. Evan was a man who enjoyed being at the centre of attention and revelled in sounding off about his own importance. In the course of ‘acting big’ he was careless about giving secret information about the work of MI14 to several people who were not entitled to have it, this included a group of pigeon breeders in Ipswich ( when Evan was visiting there for a meeting). He was also negligent in what details he passed on to a fellow officer who was a member of the Royal Medical Corps. There were additional disclosures made by Evan to two girl guides – who were on a PR visit to Wing House – this information was about the meaning of some positions flagged up on an operations map hanging up in one of the rooms. Evan was overheard making the various careless remarks about his work, he was reported and charged with three offences under the Official Secrets Act. He was tried and sentenced and found guilty on two of the three charges and ‘severely reprimanded’.

 The full story is told in the book “ ASPECTS OF EVAN : THE LAST VISCOUNT TREDEGAR. ISBN 9781905914159. This book contains a complete transcript of the Court Martial and the sentence passed. This disgrace led to Evan eventually leaving the army giving a leg injury as the reason. In all Evan served in the army in the Second World War for a few months, he was appointed to MI 14 in November 1942 and was Court martialled in April 1943. Despite the official records – and published sources based on the War Office files in National Archives and these files being completely accessible and available in the public domain there are still LIES and NONSENSE told about Evan in this period albeit a humiliating episode in Evan’s army career. Enough is enough! The lies told are reprehensible and unacceptable. They have been fuelled from time to time by newspaper articles such as in the news archives of Wales On Line and books about the second world war. 

 This doctoring of history – and leaving damaged history uncorrected is a bad reflection on the integrity of a Welsh publication produced by a major news organisation that wishes to be taken seriously about recording true facts and ensuring accuracy on its telling of Welsh and British history. Despite having pointed matters out regarding the inaccuracies ( that have now been published at least twice in the last two years ) the Editor of Wales on Line, has not had the good grace ( to date) to acknowledge a letter sent over a week ago. This is shameful, especially since they know they are culpable. Beware the surrogates of the history fraudsters who bathe Evan in a sort of romantic, heroic glory under the banner of what they call news and history and a good copy for what is deemed a better story than the truth. That cannot be right or acceptable history. Evan’s history warrants the unvarnished truth, readers of books, newspapers articles that feature Evan and visitors to Tredegar House should tell the truth too. Those who find the lies just a better story to tell in print or to relay to visitors at Tredegar House are equally shameless and dishonest. The National Trust -who are the present caretakers of Tredegar House should monitor for any rot and expunge any false stories and lies about Evan and the war. Any queries about this article please contact the Author William Cross, by e-mail. williecross@aol.com williecross@virginmedia.com