Chapter 2: Why the name?
The obvious question everyone asks about Cannizaro is why the Italian name? It certainly intrigued the locals of Wimbledon when they first heard it in the early 19th century. It dates back to 1830 when the resident of what was then Warren House, a large mansion beside the Common, secured the Sicilian title, Duke of Cannizzaro. The lucky man was Francis Platamone, Count St Antonio, who had been leasing the Wimbledon house since 1817, supported by his wealthy heiress wife, Sophia.
This was their country retreat in Surrey. Their main home was number 20 Hanover Square, central London, where they owned the freehold. But for nearly a quarter of a century, the bucolic Warren House and its parkland also provided a setting for their disastrous marriage, a pairing that brought neither of them happiness but did give plenty of material to the gossip and scandal-mongers of the day.
So who exactly were this exotic Italian migrant and his wife and why did they choose to live in Wimbledon?
Count who?
Francis Platamone, Count St Antonio, was born in 1784, one of three children of Baldassare Platamone, Duke of Cannizzaro near the Sicilian town of Catania. The family apparently originated in Spain and had been important in Sicily (once a Spanish possession) since the 16th century. Francis’ brother Michele, Prince Ludica, was a year older and their sister Concetta, the Contessa Platamone, Princess St Cataldo, younger. (Both were to survive him as they are mentioned in his last will and testament.4 )
They appear to have been a pretty wild family because in 1799, they were joined by a slightly older French youth, Eugene de Mazenod, who was brought in to live with them as a mentor. A future Bishop of Marseilles who would one day be sanctified, Eugene was clearly seen as a restraining influence on a family he described as “an inexhaustible source of madness”. He stayed for three years but clearly failed to achieve much. The Platamone brothers seem to have been uncontrollable. Michele’s punishment for adultery was apparently being locked up in a monastery. Francis joined the palace guard, the Royal Grenadiers, but is said to have “plunged into an evil life”.
How it came about is unclear but by 1813, Francis had come to London, apparently representing the Sicilian monarchy in some role at the Court of St James. He is first mentioned at the Prince Regent’s levee at Carlton House and certainly mixed in the highest of social circles, later becoming a naturalised British citizen. He is described by the contemporary diarist Charles Greville as “a good looking, intelligent but penniless Sicilian of high birth who was pretty successful in all ways in society”5.
At that time, British court society took its lead from the Prince Regent, the future King George IV, and social acceptability depended upon a combination of family history and evident wealth. Those who boasted both impressive aristocratic antecedents and plenty of money were well placed to reinforce their status through advantageous marriages. If, like the Count St Antonio, you had little wealth but could boast a pedigree and match it with charm and charisma, you still stood a reasonable chance of success. On the other hand, wealth alone was insufficient to guarantee respect within the highest social circles. The upper, not the middle classes, ruled the roost. The rest of the population didn't count at all.
A test of quality was success at the fashionable Almack’s Assembly Room in London. This is described by another contemporary diarist, the Duchess of Dino, as “an institution where young ladies find husbands, women of position an exercising ground for their pretensions, novelists the most brilliant scenes in their stories, foreigners their introduction to society, and everybody a more or less legitimate interest to occupy them in the height of the season”.
To obtain sponsored entry to Almack’s and impress the influential at its many balls and social engagements was a distinct advantage to anyone with high society ambitions. No easy matter, however. The Duchess of Dino called it “the despair of the middle classes, the object of the emulation and desire of so many young ladies in the provinces, Almack’s which gives or withholds the stamp of fashion, Almack’s the despotism par excellence, ruled with a rod of iron by six of the most exclusive ladies in London”.
Breeding and charm alone helped Francis Platamone, Count St Antonio to pass the Almack’s test. In June 1814 he married the heiress Sophia Johnstone, setting up house in Hanover Square near her mother’s home. According to The Times, Sophia was “a beautiful heiress, daughter of a celebrated pin-maker, who bequeathed to her an immense fortune”. However, Greville describes her as “very short and fat with rather a handsome face, totally uneducated but full of humour, vivacity and natural drollery, at the same time passionate and capricious”. Her caricature in the National Portrait Gallery may be closer to the mark although the portrait top left of this page is certainly very pleasant.
Whatever, the couple maintained a very active life within the highest social circles but regardless of their marriage, the Count St Antonio continued his reputation as a dance partner at Almack’s. The engraving at the top of this chapter, dated 1815, shows him at the centre, dancing with Princess Esterhazy, wife of the Austrian Ambassador, while Beau Brummell, fashion-setter of the day, converses with the Duchess of Rutland. The Count St Aldiconde, watches nearby.6
Italian expatriates were particularly noted in English high society gossip at that time. Most notorious was Bartolommeo Bergami, chamberlain to and lover of the Princess of Wales. Their relationship led to divorce proceedings, enforced exile, and her rejection as Queen when the Prince Regent succeeded to the throne in 1820. The future Duke of Cannizzaro didn’t reach quite such dizzy heights but does seem to have held his own in the circles that mattered.
Living in Wimbledon
In May 1815, Sophia gave birth to their only child, George Wellington Francis Balthasar Saint Antonio. Sadly he didn’t live long enough to make his own mark on the world but at least his names represented both families well enough. “George” was in the Johnstone family tradition, “Wellington” the hero of the day, and the rest pure Cannizzaro. He died two years later on 17th May 1817 and was buried in Westminster Abbey alongside Sophia’s late brother, also George.
Wimbledon, a peaceful rural retreat, offered a much needed bolt-hole from the rigours of London so Francis and Sophia sought consolation there, leasing Warren House in the same year. The Surrey village had long been a favourite of the rich and famous so there should have been no shortage of social possibilities, even if it seemed a little slow compared to the capital. The Count became a voluntary - if irregular - subscriber to the local evening lectures given by Rev H Lindsay. After an apparent break he was seen there again three years later.
Sophia, on the other hand, was passionate about music and introduced what would become a lasting tradition of recitals or concerts at the Wimbledon house. She built up a library of musical manuscripts and organised frequent concerts for select circles, although apparently annoying some local people by holding them on Sundays.
It was not difficult to cause a stir in the small community. Furthermore, for all its romantic setting, Warren House did nothing to change a marriage that was clearly not made in heaven. Greville says the Count was “disgusted” by his wife and for most of the following 24 years from 1817, only one or other of the couple actually lived there. For some years they shared a place in society, hosting spectacular parties for distinguished guests yet the marriage really survived in name only for the rest of their lives. The poor rate book for 1831 records the house in Sophia’s name, the highways rate book for 1833 records the Duke, while the poor rate book for 1838 reverts to Sophia.7
The Duchess’s roots
The Count’s family history may be shadowy but his wife’s certainly is not. She was the illegitimate daughter of a pretty controversial figure whose political career made him enemies and whose private life was certainly open to criticism. It may explain something of Sophia’s refusal to be defeated by her hopelessly unfaithful if seemingly charming husband.
Sophia’s father was Commodore George Johnstone MP, director of the East India Company and former Governor of West Florida. He fathered several children by a woman far younger than himself, maintained them in a comfortable lifestyle at Hanover Square, and then married someone else - unhappily - apparently just to secure a title for legitimate offspring. It was the sort of thing the Royal family got away with, despite contemporary cartoons, but it may well have raised eyebrows among lesser mortals.
Born in 1730, fourth son of Sir James Johnstone, the 3rd Baronet of Westerhall, Dumfries, George Johnstone joined the Merchant Navy before switching to the Royal Navy in 1746. Shortly after his promotion to Lieutenant in 1755, he faced a court martial for “insubordination and disobedience”. However, his record of gallantry in combat was taken into account and he was merely reprimanded in 1757. He was promoted Captain in 1762 and Commodore in 1763.
In November 1763 he was appointed Governor of the newly conquered British possession of West Florida. He held the post for four years while British settlers established a community that would remain loyal to the Crown during the American War of Independence before being absorbed later.
His private life was less exemplary. He was “naturally of an amourous complexion”8 and while still a Lieutenant, established what would become a lifelong relationship with Martha Ford, an actress, whom he “debauched...when quite a child”. Despite this, she was said to be “a very respectable, accomplished and witty woman who...conducted herself in the most irreproachable manner”. Their eldest son John was born around 1760 but drowned aged 20 during a hurricane off the coast of St. Lucia. They had three more sons - George Lindsay, James Primrose and Alexander Patrick - and one daughter, Sophia. Born in 1785, she would become Duchess of Cannizzaro.
Commodore Johnstone returned to Britain in 1767 and gained a series of seats in Parliament as an Independent for the next 20 years, becoming notorious for “his shameless and scurrilous utterances”9. In December 1770, after publicly insulting the Colonial Secretary, Lord George Sackville-Germain, for “cowardice in battle”, he fought an inconclusive duel rather than apologise.
He was a member of the Carlisle Peace Commission during the American War of Independence but the colonists refused to negotiate with him in 1778, accusing him of bribery. Still loyal to the Crown, he was given command of a naval squadron off the coast of Portugal in 1779 and won a battle against the French, allies of the Americans. It made no difference as Britain lost the war anyway and the United States was born, later joined by his former colony in Florida.
In 1783 he became a director of the East India Company where he obstructed a formal action against his brother, a retired nabob, for exploiting Indians. He spent his last years engaged in legal battles over lost prize money from a confiscated Dutch ship and personal wranglings with a former subordinate. (He also made an enemy of Cabinet Minister Henry Dundas who happened then to be living at what later became Cannizaro House.) Forced to resign in 1785, he was beset by throat cancer and died in May 1787.
In 1782, despite repeated promises of marriage to Martha, he had married Charlotte Dee, daughter of the vice-consul in Lisbon, aged just 20 who is described as a tartar, adding to his self-inflicted misery. It was Charlotte’s son, John Lowther Johnstone (1783-1811), who became Baronet of Westerhall on the death of George’s older brother, William Johnstone Pulteney. The title then lapsed.
According to his biographer, Johnstone’s “career demonstrated how the 18th century system, connection ridden racket that it was, enabled a man to rise to heights where he had no business to be”.
Aunt Sophia and the Johnstone clan
Sophia, the future Duchess of Cannizzaro, was just two years old when her father died. She and her three surviving older brothers are listed in his will of May 1786 and he supported them all, alongside Martha. He also left £500 a year to Charlotte. She then married a future Admiral who would have outranked Johnstone. Sophia’s half brother, the Baronet, died in 1811 and she inherited a substantial amount of money by outliving all of her brothers and her mother too.
Her brother George Lindsay (1767-1813) was her favourite. Known as George Jnr, like his father he became an MP and prospered as assistant to the British resident at Lucknow. However, he did not match the Commodore’s career. Leading a pretty dissolute life as a profligate gambler, he never married but fathered two daughters anyway. He was said to be “touched by madness” in his final years. Sophia is thought to have helped care for him before he died of a stroke at the age of 46. He was buried in the south cloister of Westminster Abbey, joined four years later by his nephew and namesake, Sophia’s infant son.
Her other two brothers, James Primrose and Alexander Patrick, both died young while in India. Alexander had married one Maria d'Aguilar and produced a son, George Bueller, and two daughters, Emily and Sophia Augusta. (They may have been twins, a recurrent feature of the Johnstone family.) Alexander also worked for the East India Company but died in November 1803. The following year his widow Maria and the three children all returned to England.
Sophia’s nieces would become familiar faces at her homes in Hanover Square and Wimbledon. When on 16th April 1820, Baron Philip von Neumann, the Austrian chargé d’affaires and friend of Ambassador Prince Esterhazy, dined with the Count and Countess St Antonio, he appears to have fallen head over heels in love with 17-year-old Emily as they all listened to the excellent musical entertainment.10 The visit was the first of many he would make in future to the Duke and Duchess of Cannizzaro, usually on separate occasions.
A month later on 19th May, von Neumann had another delightful encounter with Emily and her sister as they sang together. He afterwards described her as “a finished beauty” who gave “one an idea of Rebecca in Scott’s novel”. How good the singing really was remains unclear but he admits in his diary that he did not know a note of music “which proves that boldness comes to one’s help when talent is absent”.
The Morning Chronicle of 7th June mentions the Baron among guests who attended a concert of vocal and instrumental music held in the Great Saloon of the Hanover Square house when the Opera Corps and the Demoizelles de Lihu were present. The Esterhazys were there too, together with Prince Lichtenstein, Prince Francaville, Prince Sapicha, Earl of Glengale and the Viscount and Viscountess Granville.
On 9th July von Neumann was back at Warren House once again and delighted to see Emily, her sister and mother too. Things were becoming serious. He wrote in his diary afterwards that he was thinking of marrying Emily, adding: “She is an amiable, charming creature and appears to possess all that is necessary for domestic happiness.”
A few days later on 13th July while at a reception at the Duke of Devonshire’s home he “was bored because I was unable to get near her on whom my thoughts are now centred”. But he listened carefully when Count Lieven, another influential figure of the day, told him that “the three leading men in the state, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Chancellor and the Lord Privy Seal, had all run away with their wives”.
He and Emily apparently became engaged to be married. On 28th July the Baron accompanied her and her sister to the fashionable Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens. What happened next is not clear. It may have been no more than an infatuation since we don’t know what Emily herself thought. All went quiet in August, it seems, and the Baron makes no mention of her when meeting the Count and Countess St Antonio at Greenwich on 4th September, or when he and Princess Esterhazy visited Sophia alone in Wimbledon on 21st October. That same evening he headed off to Covent Garden to watch a performance of Shakespeare’s “Henry IV” without a word about “the amiable and charming creature”.
The relationship appears to have fizzled out. Von Neumann went on to others but remained a confirmed bachelor until finally marrying the Duke of Beaufort’s daughter many years later in 1844. Whatever happened between him and Emily Johnstone didn’t affect his friendship with the Cannizzaros, remaining on good terms with them both individually as their own marriage crumbled.
As for the “finished beauty”, Emily, and her sister Sophia Augusta, whatever romances they did have never bore fruit. Both were still spinsters over 20 years later when the Duke and Duchess of Cannizzaro died within months of each other and far apart.
Collapse of a Marriage, Rise of a Title
Neither their son’s death nor their fiery relationship stopped the Count and Countess St Antonio from demonstrating their wealth and status to society. In May 1819, the year before Baron von Neumann appeared on the scene, they had entertained the Duke and Duchess of Wellington, Count and Countess Lieven and other distinguished guests at the Hanover Square house, followed by a grand concert for 300 people. “Four magnificent drawing rooms were thrown open and most brilliantly illuminated,” the Morning Chronicle reported. This was the second event of its kind they had hosted and there were more to come.
The Count was on the Committee of Noblemen running the King’s Theatre (now Her Majesty’s) in the Haymarket and his other endeavours included a directorship of the South American Association for Agricultural and Other Objects, and a management role of the Royal Academic Concerts.
He did not hesitate to use his wife’s money to prosper in business as well as social circles. Thanks to the Johnstone fortune, they had a house in Brighton as well as those in Wimbledon and Hanover Square. He was also a property developer and had plans at one point to sell off a cloth factory in the Kings Road, Chelsea, in order to form a new square.
In 1825, the Morning Chronicle reported: “The greatest sensation was produced on Saturday by the sale of a single acre of ground, divided into 15 lots, on the West Cliff at Brighton, the property of the Count and Countess St Antonio. The 15 lots produced £8,500. The whole of this land was purchased within these 20 years for £512.”
Although the Count’s skills on the flute and dance-floor were admired, his Sicilian origins earned him the unflattering description of a “macaroni” in the press and “...he of scent and frippery, and foreign paste and patchwork”. He also made the news pages for appearances in the courts of justice. In 1824 he successfully defended a footman who had been arrested during a disturbance in Hanover Square involving servants. The following year he was himself summoned to appear before magistrates over non-payment of the poor rate. Failure to display his coat of arms on his carriage in order to avoid taxation also landed him in court.
In 1826 it was reported that the couple had finally separated, with one newspaper commenting that it had “never thought them very united”. Francis had never broken his links with Italy and he headed off to set up home in Naples with his mistress, Madame Visconti of Milan. Greville described her as “once a magnificent beauty” who “though no longer young, had fine remains of good looks and was eminently pleasing and attractive”. Sophia was undaunted, continuing to provide her absent husband with an agreed allowance regardless of his absence.
The musical entertainments at Wimbledon continued too. Baron von Neumann may or may not have improved his knowledge of music but he certainly became a tough critic. At a dinner with Sophia and other friends on 8th April 1828, he heard a performance by a renowned opera singer of the day, Mademoiselle Henrietta Sontag. He commented afterwards: “Her voice which is wonderfully flexible, skims over the greatest difficulties rather than overcomes them.”
At the end of September he met Sophia again at a shooting party at Lord Hertford’s Sudbourn home and on 22nd December she invited him to attend a performance of Rossini’s opera “L’Inganno Felice” by artists from the Academy of Music. He afterwards dismissed all but two of the performers as “very ordinary”.
While the music played, Sophia’s money continued to flow and Francis, despite everything, was back after three years. In October 1829, von Neumann visited them both on three successive evenings in Wimbledon.
How the Count St Antonio actually managed to acquire the title Duke of Cannizzaro is unclear. His brother Michele would have inherited it on the death of their father many years before and he was still very much alive in 1830. Yet by 7th February, when Baron von Neumann dined with Sophia once again at Lord Hertford’s home, accompanied by Princess Esterhazy and the Duke of Wellington, she had become Duchess of Cannizzaro and would be known as such for the rest of her life. Was this really just a financial deal which suited everyone at the time? Who knows, but the name would henceforth be linked with Wimbledon forever, outliving both Sophia and Francis by well over 150 years.
Being a Duchess was clearly beneficial for Sophia. Just a week later she was among the Duke of Wellington’s guests at his home, Apsley House, London’s most prestigious private address. Furthermore, her musical entertainments continued to attract big names to Wimbledon. On 15th April 1830, the famous actress Fanny Kemble appeared at her house, described by von Neumann, who was also present, as “not looking so pretty as she does on stage”.
The new Duke of Cannizzaro’s relationship with his Milanese mistress apparently waxed and waned but this did not stop his return to Italy where his affairs attracted public attention alongside the great political issues of the day. In a letter from Rome dated 24th December 1830, Lord Hertford wrote to the British diplomat Thomas Raikes in St Petersburg that in Milan he had found “the Duke of Cannizzaro in great force though deserted by his Visconti for a younger man”.11
So time passed. In 1833, the Duchess of Cannizzaro engaged two of the greatest opera singers of the day, Pasta and Malibran, to perform the duet from Rossini’s “Semiramide”. On another occasion that year she hosted a concert attended both by the Duke of Wellington and Lucien Bonaparte, younger brother of the late French Emperor, Napoleon. This may have been the occasion when she received a gift from Lucien of two girandoles (possibly ear-rings or pendants), said to be “of splendid workmanship and estimated to have cost 800 pounds sterling”, a prodigious sum at the time, according to a catalogue dated many years later.12
Many years after the Battle of Waterloo, the name Bonaparte still aroused strong emotions. If Lucien thought his gift to the Duchess of Cannizzaro would assist his standing in the highest echelons of English society 12 years after his exiled brother’s death in St Helena, he may have been disappointed. The Duchess of Dino was also at the event and in her diary she says: “I saw him beg [the Duchess of Cannizzaro] to introduce him to the Duke of Wellington who was present. She added: “I saw him cross the room and come up bowing and scraping to be presented to the victor of Waterloo whose reception was as cold as such baseness deserved.”13
But however prestigious her guests and generous their presents, Sophia had no better luck in retaining her husband. The Duke continued to weigh her up against Madame Visconti and one day he slipped away from a “party of pleasure” to return to Milan. Greville details what happened next.
“When she found that he had gone off without notice or warning, she first fell into violent fits of grief, which were rather ludicrous than affecting, and then set off in pursuit of her faithless lord. She got to Dover where the sight of the rolling billows terrified her so much that after three days of doubt whether she would cross the water or not she resolved to return and weep away her vexation in London.
“Not long afterwards, however, she plucked up courage and taking advantage of a smooth sea she ventured over the Straits and set off for Milan, if not to recover her fugitive better half, at all events to terrify her rival and disturb their joys. The advent of the Cannizzaro woman was to the Visconti like the irruption of the Huns of old.
“She fled to a villa near Milan which she proceeded to garrison and fortify but finding that the other was not provided with any implements for a siege and did not stir from Milan, she ventured to return to the city and for some time these ancient heroines drove about the town glaring defiance and hate at each other, which was the whole amount of the hostilities that took place between them.
“Finding her husband was irrecoverable she at length got tired of the hopeless pursuit and resolved to return home and console herself with her music and whatever other gratifications she could command.”
The cat and mouse game continued in the following years. In 1835 the Duke was reported to have left Paris promptly on hearing that his wife would be hosting a musical event there. By 1838, Baron von Neumann’s diplomatic career had taken him to Italy and on 28th August he visited the Duke of Cannizzaro’s little villa at Santa Croce by the Italian lakes. The villa was “a very charming place” although the Baron was only able to see the downstairs rooms, occupied then by a Lady Clare. A month later in Genoa he met the Duke, “one of my old friends whom I found quite unchanged”.
Sad end
Sophia found some compensation for her husband’s departure in another Italian lover. Soon after her confrontation with Madame Visconti she fell for a “fiddler at a second-rate theatre in Milan” and took him home to England to live openly with her. For the fiddler this turned out to be “the most profitable business he could engage in”.
Greville continues: “There was not the slightest attempt to conceal their connexion; on the contrary it was most ostentatiously exhibited to the world but the world agreed to treat it as a joke and do nothing but laugh at it. The only difference the ‘Duchesse’ ever found was that her Sunday parties were less well attended but this was because the world (which often grows religious but never grows moral) had begun to take it into its head that it would keep holy the Sabbath night.”
Sadly, Sophia was never destined for happiness. The fiddler was apparently a “profligate blackguard” and “bullied and plundered her without mercy or shame”. Her family inheritance was seriously reduced as a result. She died on 3rd January 1841 having refused an operation for a hernia until it was too late and “after an illness lasting only 36 hours”, according to von Neumann. However, she bequeathed the remainder of her fortune entirely to the Duke in the words of Greville “notwithstanding his infidelities and his absence”. Nevertheless, Francis made no attempt it seems to attend her funeral.
Greville reported Sophia’s death in his diary ten days after the event: “The other day died the Duchess of Cannizzaro, a woman of rather amusing notoriety whom the world laughed with and laughed at while she was alive and will regret a little because she contributed to their entertainment.” Celebrity status then, as now, carried penalties.
The Duke Returns
On 10th April 1841, Baron von Neumann was dining with Sophia’s family and they were joined by the Duke who had come from Palermo to take possession of his late wife’s remaining property. He promptly ordered the sale of the entire contents of their former Wimbledon home. In May the music library, books and prints were auctioned at Christie’s and by June a census taker found the mansion empty, in the care of servants. The Duke had returned to Italy for the last time.
On 23rd October, von Neumann returned from two nights at Kew with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge to hear that the Duke of Cannizzaro too had died in Como. According to Thomas Raikes he had been “poisoned by overdoing the homeopathic system”. However The Times attributed his demise to “taking three pills at a time which his physicians had ordered him to take only at intervals of eight hours”.
It is hard to say how upset von Neumann was by the news. His diary entry simply continues by describing a trip the same evening to Haymarket to see a play by Bulwer-Lytton, “The Lady of Lyons”. He thought it “a feeble piece, the principal part being badly played” while two follow-up pieces were “indifferently rendered, the actresses being Common and vulgar”. Of the Duke of Cannizzaro he wrote not another word.
Despite his unreasonable treatment of Sophia, Francis did not forget her family on his own death. Where she had simply left all of her property to him, he bequeathed £1000 each to her spinster nieces Emily and Sophia Augusta. The sisters were then living in Chapel Street, Grosvenor Square. He left the same amount to their brother George, adding a colour portrait of Queen Victoria to the legacy.
The Duke’s will mentions one Smith, an old servant of the Duchess who had worked for her for many years and still lived at Hanover Square. He was left £200. Apart from £400 left to a friend in France and unspecified amounts for his own brother (the former Duke) and his sister, the Duke of Cannizzaro left everything else to be handled by his solicitor, Francis Broderick, who also received £1000 in his own right.
The London Gazette 3rd December 1841 said: “All persons having any claims or demands against the English estate of the late Duke of Cannizzaro who formerly resided in Hanover Square, London, are requested to send the particulars to Messrs Powell & Co, No 9 New Square, Lincolns Inn, London.”
The Wimbledon census taker was unsure how to spell their title 14 when he visited the empty home in June 1841. The former Warren House was now recorded as “Cannazerro House”. In the Ordnance Survey of 1865 it appeared as “Cennezero House”. Not until 1874 did the Post Office Directory register it as “Cannizaro House”. So it remains.
NOTES
4: Signed 11th June 1841. National Archives
5. Greville Memoirs, 1837-52 Part 2, 1885
6: Collection of Wimbledon Local History Museum
7: Cannizaro House and its Park, W Myson and JG Berry, 1972
8: Town and Country Magazine, 13 October 1781
9: Bombast and Broadside, The Lives of George Johnstone, R Fabel, 1987
10: Diary of Philipp Von Neumann 1819-33, Philip Allan & Co Ltd 1928.
British Library
11: Private correspondence of Thomas Raikes with the Duke of
Wellington, Richard Bentley, 1861
12: Madame Toussaud and Sons catalogue, 1866
13: Memoirs of the Duchess of Dino, William Heinemann, 1909. (Lucien
Bonaparte was unpopular. Elsewhere she refers contemptuously to a “rather abject
letter” in which he begged the Duke of Orleans to get him the job of French
Minister at Florence.) British Library
14: Cannizaro House and its Park, R Milward, 1991.