Edward William Bonham, E. M. Delafield’s grandfather and Betty’s father, was born in Tabriz (then Persia, now in Iran) on 30 April 1844; his father Edward Walter was consul there at the time and had married Edward William’s mother, Elizabeth Floyd, in 1843. She survived the birth of her son but succumbed to typhus in December 1844. Father and son returned to England in 1845, and in 1846 Edward Walter was appointed Consul at Calais, a much easier base from which to educate his young son. Once again, I’m indebted to Andrew George’s history of the Bonhams available on Ancestry.
Edward William was probably educated at Charterhouse School like his father; he would send his own son Walter there too. In 1862, when Edward William was 18 and probably looking about for a career, his father was appointed Consul-General at Naples. This may have allowed him to argue for more staff at the Consulate, and to appoint his son as Vice-Consul in the family firm. He was working in this role by the time of his marriage to Anne Bage, the daughter of a doctor in the Naples English colony, in 1865.
At some consulates, a vice-consul like Edward William might have been tempted to send his young wife Anne back to England, safe from political unrest and the risk of disease. But Anne had grown up in Naples, and clearly they saw no reason for her not to remain there, as the younger Bonhams had four children in four years: first Elizabeth (Betty) in 1866, then Evelyn in 1867, Walter Floyd in 1869, and Anita Constance (always known as Constance or Connie), the last baby, in 1870. Sadly, Anne died a few days afterwards, presumably from complications of childbirth. Like his father, Edward William found himself widowed and with young children to care for (George 15).
In 1871, he left the Naples consulate and in the census of that year is living at 36 Lansdowne Road, Kensington in London with his children. This would be the family’s London home into the 1890s (George 15). Unlike his father, Edward William married a second time: his wedding to Henrietta Currie (1835-1910) took place on on 13 November 1872 in Staplefield, West Sussex. Henrietta was nine years older than Edward William but they would go on to have two more children, Julia (1873-1963) and Mark (1880-1902). Henrietta’s father was Captain Mark John Currie (1795-1874), sailor and a coloniser of Australia where he founded the Swan River Settlement. The Curries lived in Cuckfield, West Sussex, not far from Chailey where Edward William’s grandmother Charlotte was living by the 1870s (George 15). It seems likely that Henrietta brought money to the marriage, because she and Edward William could afford a country home, the rather grand Bramling House near Canterbury. Here’s Henrietta Currie Bonham in a studio photograph from 1862:
Henrietta Blackwood Bonham (née Currie) by Camille Silvy. Albumen print, 11 June 1862, NPG Ax58507 © National Portrait Gallery, London
During the early 1870s Edward William seems not to have been working as a consul; in 1873 he submitted a patent application for “improvements in asphalted pavements to prevent their surface from becoming slippery” (London Gazette, 3 March 1874), although there is no evidence he took this idea any further. By 1877 Edward William’s consular career had picked up again, and he was appointed Consul for Jassy (now Iași) in Romania. In 1879 he accepted the post of Consul for Cayenne in what was then French Guiana, but before he could take up this role, he was sent instead to be Consul at Pernambuco in Brazil. At some point after the birth of Mark in London in 1880, Henrietta travelled out to Brazil too, because they were both involved in a shipwreck in 1882. The Douro, on the last stage of her journey from South America between Lisbon and Southampton, collided with a steamship near Cape Finisterre. Both vessels sank and 59 people lost their lives; the Bonhams were rescued (George 15-16). Their children were either at school or living with their grandfather Edward Walter in Penge at this time.
Possibly in response to this trauma, Edward William’s next posting in 1883 was to Boulogne in France. Since his father had been Consul at Calais, this would have been an area he knew well already, would probably have spoken the language, and been a generally less challenging posting than South America in terms of comfort and the ability to sustain family life. Edward William’s sons were sent to school, but it’s not clear that his daughters were; they certainly have a governess with them at Penge in the 1881 census. But it would have been relatively easy for them to visit him in France, as he did his own father. It’s probable that EMD’s mother Betty was living with him in France in the mid-1880s; she married in 1887, as did her sister Evelyn, whose wedding took place in Boulogne. Evelyn sadly died after the birth of her son in 1888. In the late 1880s, Edward William seems to have been become interested in the case of Jack the Ripper, and wrote to the Home Office identifying a suspect. This rather unfortunate man, an American called John Lagan who had contacted Edward William for consular support, was interviewed by the police but cleared of all involvement (see https://casebook.org/ripper_media/book_reviews/non-fiction/cjmorley/110.html). Also at this time, Edward William compiled a family history of the Bonhams, tracing them back to the first Samuel Bonham. This was privately printed in 1891; there is a copy in the British Library.
Edward William’s final consular posting was to Corfu in Greece in 1894. Two years later, he died at the early age of 51, on 2 January 1896, and is buried in Folkestone like his father. Edward William left an estate valued at £16,595; most of his estate was left in trust to his sons, and in the event of their deaths to his daughters and their children. This means that Betty and her daughters may well have benefited from this will after Henrietta’s death in 1910, because both Walter Floyd and Mark Bonham died without marrying or having children. EMD, born in 1890, may just have been old enough to remember the only grandparent whose life overlapped with hers.
The cover image shows Boulogne around the turn of the twentieth century, author anonymous/unknown, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.