Henry Cust

Henry Cust
Henry Cockayne-Cust
Born	Henry John Cockayne Cust (1861-10-10)10 October 1861 London, England
Died	2 March 1917(1917-03-02) (aged 55) London, England
Education	Trinity College, Cambridge
Occupation	Politician and editor
Spouse(s)	Emmmeline Mary Elizabeth (Nina) Welby-Gregory (1893–1917)
Children	Lady Diana Manners (illegitimate daughter)
Relatives	Adelbert Brownlow-Cust, 3rd Earl Brownlow (cousin)

For his father, see Henry Cockayne-Cust.

Henry John "Harry" Cockayne-Cust, MP, JP, DL (10 October 1861 – 2 March 1917) was an English politician and editor who served as a Member of Parliament (MP) for the Unionist Party.

Biography

Cust was born to Sara Jane Cookson and Henry Cockayne-Cust,^[1] and was educated at Eton (where he was captain of the Oppidans) and Trinity College, Cambridge.^[2] While at Trinity, he was elected to the Apostles and graduated with second-class honours in the Classical Tripos with a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.). Initially pursuing a legal career, Cust was admitted to the Inner Temple in 1888 but was not called. Instead he decided to enter Parliament, and won a by-election in 1890 for Stamford, Lincolnshire. He left Parliament at the general election of 1895, but returned five years later in 1900 when he won a seat in the constituency of Bermondsey, remaining until 1906. Meanwhile, he served as Justice of the Peace (J.P.) for Bedfordshire and as Deputy Lieutenant (D.L.) of Bedfordshire, as well as Justice of the Peace (J.P.) for Lincolnshire.^[3]

Cust was one of The Souls and was attached to Pamela Wyndham, who later married Edward Tennant. Others in the same clique were Margot Asquith, Arthur Balfour, George Nathaniel Curzon, Alfred Lyttelton, Godfrey Webb, and George Wyndham. Considered a brilliant conversationalist by his contemporaries, he had a reputation as a womaniser and was the natural father of the socialite and philanthropist Lady Diana Cooper, by the Duchess of Rutland, although this was not acknowledged until much later. Cust was also rumoured to be the father of Beatrice Ethel Stephenson, born in 1889, who married in Grantham, Wesley Chapel, on 28 May 1917, Alfred Roberts, born in Ringstead, Northamptonshire, in 1893, and became the mother of British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, and although there was no solid proof of this connection, Lady Diana Cooper often jokingly referred to Mrs. Thatcher as her niece.^[4]

In 1892, Cust met William Waldorf Astor, who invited him to edit the Pall Mall Gazette. Despite lacking any background in journalism, Cust immediately accepted. He soon transformed the newspaper into the best evening journal of the period, thanks in part to his securing contributors including Rudyard Kipling and H. G. Wells. Yet Cust rejected contributions submitted by Astor himself, who had literary aspirations; and this, coupled with political disagreements, led to Cust's dismissal in February 1896.^[5]

After leaving the Pall Mall Gazette, Cust continued his career as an author. He wrote several poems, most notably "Non nobis domine".^[6]

During World War I Cust was active in propaganda on behalf of the British Government. In August 1914, he founded the Central Committee for National Patriotic Organizations.^[7]

Memorial to Henry John Cockayne Cust in St Peter and St Paul's Church, Belton

He died in 1917 of a heart attack at his home in Hyde Park Gate, London. He was heir to the barony of Brownlow, a position which at his death fell to his brother, Adelbert Salisbury Cust (b. 1867).^[7]

Marriage

As the result of a purported pregnancy, he married on 11 October 1893 Emmeline Mary Elizabeth Welby-Gregory (1867 – 29 September 1955), known as Nina, who was the daughter of Sir William Welby-Gregory, 4th Baronet, and Victoria, Lady Welby. The pregnancy was either false or a misrepresentation, and the couple, whose marriage was thereafter contentious, did not have any children. Nina Cust was a translator and editor of her mother's papers. She and her husband are buried together in Belton, Lincolnshire, with a monument designed by her.

Illegitimate descendants

His best-known lovechild was Lady Diana Manners, legally the daughter of Henry Manners, 8th Duke of Rutland (indeed, as she was not really the Duke's daughter, she was not really entitled to the style "Lady"). Internationally famous for her beauty, she married the politician Duff Cooper in 1919. In a curious twist of fate, it came to light in 2009 that Diana's son John Julius was the biological father of the writer Allegra Huston, whose legal father was the celebrated American film-maker John Huston; thus Henry Cust is Allegra Huston's great-grandfather.

A long-standing rumour has held that Cust had an affair with a servant at Belton House called Phoebe Stephenson, who consequently gave birth to a daughter named Beatrice, who married Alfred Roberts, a grocer in nearby Grantham; they were the parents of Margaret Thatcher.^[8] In the 1980s, the very elderly Diana Cooper referred to Thatcher as "my niece, the Prime Minister".

Anita Leslie, in her book Marlborough House Set, implies that Cust had many more children with aristocratic lovers than just Diana Cooper. She writes (pg. 248):

so much of the Cust strain entered England's peerage, and that from such a number of cradles there gazed babies with eyes like large sapphires instead of the black boot buttons of their legal fathers.

Legacy

• An annual Cust Lecture “on some important current topic relating to the British Empire” was endowed in Nottingham University to commemorate his work.^[7]
• His Occasional Poems appeared in 1918, printed in Jerusalem.^[7]

Footnotes

Further reading

• Anita Leslie, The Marlborough House Set, Doubleday, New York, 1973 - Contains an entire chapter on Cust (Chapter 23, pp. 241–248)

External links

• Works by Henry John Cockayne Cust at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Henry Cust at Internet Archive
• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Henry Cust