The Connection between "The Crown" and The Family in My Novel
...Although real history sometimes isn't as exciting as I want it to be
When I came across a family history that mentioned one of the Bridges married a niece of Sir Anthony Eden, the former British prime minister, this is who I pictured:
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I wouldn’t have been nearly as excited about this tidbit of research if I wasn’t a fan of the early seasons of the Netflix show “The Crown.” Despite the liberties that it sometimes takes with history—as I learned when I rewatched the show with my husband and we Googled the facts behind some of the more dramatic episodes—I thoroughly enjoyed the excellent writing and incredible acting.
Those of you who are also fans of the show might remember Sir Anthony Eden as Winston Churchill’s successor as prime minister. Prior to that, Eden was a member of Winston Churchill’s cabinet and War Secretary during World War II. Then he was in charge of the country during the Suez Canal Crisis, and he resigned two years after taking office because of ill health, as the show chronicles.
I found the mention of Sir Anthony Eden’s niece in a book about different “pioneers” and founding families of Ushuaia, compiled in celebration of Ushuaia’s centenary in 1984. Natalie Goodall, an American who married into the Bridges-Goodall family and became the family historian, wrote the account with the help of her daughter Abby (who was nineteen at the time) and the historian Arnoldo Canclini (who was also the editor of the compilation). The historical summary (in Spanish) describes Thomas Bridges’ life and work for the Anglican mission at Ushuaia, follows the family’s move to Estancia Harberton, and traces their descendants down to the fifth generation. It gives a flavor to the Bridges’ homelife that I found really helpful in adding details for my novel, and it provided facts about the descendants that I hadn’t found anywhere else.
Like the marriage of Guillermo Pakenham Bridges to the Hon. Susan Constance Eden.
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Guillermo Bridges was Thomas Bridges’ grandson, the third child of Will and Minnie May (Lawrence) Bridges. Though named after his father (“Guillermo” is the Spanish version of “Will”), he was known as Oliver to the family, apparently for the way he learned to walk, which reminded them of Oliver Cromwell. He was the only member of the family ever born at Estancia Harberton—tragically so, because his mother died giving birth to him. His aunt Alice became a surrogate mother as he grew up at the family’s principal sheep farm, Estancia Viamonte, and she taught him to love books and music. Like several other members of the family, he was fascinated by the flora and fauna of Tierra del Fuego. He also traveled all over the world. Natalie described him as the most polished and worldly-wise member of the family, with the manners of a gentleman. He was the one who usually welcomed guests at Viamonte—including the many people who stopped by because they were fascinated by Lucas Bridges’ book.
Guillermo/Oliver met the woman who would become his wife while traveling in Switzerland. Susan Constance Eden (known as Betsy) was the daughter of a British baron and an American woman from Jacksonville, Florida. She grew up in Florida and Europe, evidently in a life of privilege, if the picture below (the only one I was able to find of her) is any indication. As the daughter of a baron, she carried the title “Honorable” (or “Hon.”) before her name, though her father’s (male) cousin inherited his title rather than her.
Betsy’s parents divorced when she was seven, and her father died in an air raid in WWII when she was twenty-three. Her first marriage, in Mexico, was to a man named José Díaz de Rivera.
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Together, Betsy and Oliver moved to Estancia Viamonte with her thirteen-year-old son from her first marriage. The boy, named José Díaz de Rivera for his father and called Dennis, changed his name to Dennis Pakenham Bridges when he came of age, and he named his own son Oliver, in honor of the man who helped raise him.
Daily life at rural Viamonte was apparently isolating for Betsy, but she found consolation in books and good music.
In 1967, ten years after their marriage, Guillermo Pakenham “Oliver” Bridges was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE), and named Honorary British Vice-Consul of Río Grande, Tierra del Fuego.1
Oliver suffered a cardiac episode on a trip to Cuzco, Peru, in 1977. After that, doctors told him it was too dangerous for him to be in Tierra del Fuego during the winter, so he and Betsy lived primarily in Buenos Aires, where they became a prominent part of diplomatic circles. They continued traveling to Viamonte for the summers. After he died of a heart attack in 1980, Oliver was buried in the family cemetery at Viamonte and Betsy moved to New York.
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My imagination pictured her at a party on the estancia, a glamorous woman in an evening dress, cigarette in one gloved hand, cocktail glass in the other, holding court over a group of visiting foreigners as she related anecdotes about how her uncle influenced British policy as War Secretary during World War II.
Unfortunately…when I looked at the facts more closely for the writing of this post, I discovered that Susan Constance Eden actually wasn’t Anthony Eden’s niece. Her father was the 6th Baron Auckland, and Sir Anthony Eden’s brother was the 6th Baronet of West Auckland. It turns out they were more like distant cousins, from different branches of the Eden family.
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I don’t know whether this detail in the Bridges’ family history originated in a mistake on Natalie’s part (confusing Baron Auckland and Baronet of West Auckland, as I did at first) or whether Betsy herself propagated the story because people kept asking if she was related to the former prime minister. Maybe she figured people from the New World wouldn’t notice differences in the ranks of British nobility. Maybe she really did like to tell stories about her famous “uncle.”
I’m the type of writer of historical fiction who likes to stick to the facts as much as possible. Sometimes there’s an important narrative reason for deviating from historical truth—like conflating two characters tangential to the story to avoid confusing readers—and sometimes I simply don’t know the relevant facts.
In this case, I now know Susan Constance “Betsy” Eden wasn’t actually the niece of Sir Anthony Eden, and the real connection between “The Crown” and my book might not be as close as I first thought it was. But do I leave in my manuscript the mention of Betsy bragging at a party about her uncle, the former British prime minister and War Secretary, and the tension that it creates when her German-born niece-in-law brings up the British bombing of Munich that devastated her childhood home?
I think this might be an instance in which I choose to follow the example of the writers of “The Crown” and lean in to the freedom of fiction for the sake of more dramatic storytelling.
SOURCES
Natalie Goodall, “Bridges-Goodall,” trans. and ed. Arnoldo Canclini, in Ushuaia: 1884-1984 : Cien años de una ciudad argentina (Ushuaia: Asociación HANIS, 1984)
“Anthony Eden,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Eden (accessed 31 May 2024).
“Hon. Susan Constance Eden,” ThePeerage.com: A genealogical survey of the peerage of Britain as well as the royal families of Europe, compiled by Darryl Lundy, https://www.thepeerage.com/p3502.htm#c35020.1, (accessed 31 May 2024).
Susan Morris, Wendy Bosberry-Scott, Gervase Belfield, “Auckland, Baron (Eden),” Debrett's Peerage and Baronetage (London: Debrett’s, 2020), https://www.google.com/books/edition/Debrett_s_Peerage_and_Baronetage_2019/99tHEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=jos%C3%A9+diaz+de+rivera+susan+constance+eden&pg=PA1621&printsec=frontcover (accessed 3 June 2024).
Censo nacional de población, familias y viviendas-1970, https://www.estadistica.ec.gba.gov.ar/dpe/Estadistica/censos/038%20-%201970-Censo%20Nacional%20de%20Poblacion,%20Familias%20y%20Viviendas.%20Compendio%20de%20Resultados%20Provisionales/PDF/1970.pdf (accessed 31 May 2024)
This was a grand title for a tiny place: fewer than 16,000 people lived in all the province of Tierra del Fuego at the time. I wasn’t able to find a reason for why Oliver was given an OBE. I could swear I read somewhere that he used his small airplane in Tierra del Fuego to quietly watch for Axis submarines rounding the tip of South America during World War II, and my imagination links this to his appointment, but I don’t have any confirmation for that. I also haven’t been able to find again the claim about his information-gathering flights, and I don’t know how I’d ever verify that. If anyone else has ideas on how to look up something like this, please let me know!