Social Victorians/People/Webb

Also Known As

• Family name: Webb
• Godfrey Webb: Webber

Demographics

• Nationality: British

Residences

• Milford House, Godalming, Surrey (by 1882–1901)
• 36 Hans Place, London (1881 census)
• 167 Victoria Street., S.W., Westminster (1890–1903 at least)

Family

• Robert Smith Webb (1794 – 2 March 1868)
• Harriet Augusta Currie (c. 1805 – before 1851)
  1. Robert William Webb (8 September 1831 – )
  2. Godfrey John Webb (2 December 1832 – 25 October 1901)
  3. Louisa M. Webb Gifford (c. 1834 – )
  4. Ellen H. Webb (c. 1836 – )
  5. Mary Webb (c. 1836 – )
  6. Emily H. Webb Crosse (c. 1837 – April 1878)
  7. Captain Francis David Webb, "The Reefer" (c. 1839 – )

Acquaintances, Friends and Enemies

Friends

• Besides some members of the Crabbet Club
• Thomas Littleton Powys
• George Wyndham
• Margot Asquith
• The Souls

Organizations

Godfrey Webb

• Crabbet Club
  • Wilfred Blunt, founder
  • George Curzon: Lord Curzon of Kedlestone
  • George Wyndham
  • George Leveson-Gower
  • Lord Houghton: Lord Crewe
  • Mr. Harry Cust
  • Mr. Mark Napier
  • Lord Cairns ("the late Lord Cairns")
  • Mr. "Lulu" Harcourt
  • Oscar Wilde (attended one meeting)
  • Lord Alfred Douglas (attended one meeting)
  • many more
• Brasenose College, Oxford (1850–1854)
• Cosmopolitan Club
• The Souls

Timeline

1841 June 6, Sunday, the 1841 UK Census lists the following household at Milford House: Robert S. Webb (45 years old), Harriett Webb (30), Louise Webb (7), Elen Webb (6), Emley Webb (5), Mrs. Edward Parker (55), Mrs. Isebell Parker (25), Aggefl Parker (55), George Saxby (30), Anny Mostan (30), Charlott Richard (20), Hallah Melum (25), Jane Walhom (15), Charles Street (15), Robart May (25), Elizabeth May (25), Elizabeth Richard (20). A number of other people are also listed, at least 3 probably visitors and the rest likely servants — if so, then 7 females and 3 males.

1851 March 30, Sunday, the 1851 UK Census lists the following household in Milford: Robert Smith Webb, magistrate, as head of household (56 years old), Louisa Webb (17), Ellen H. Webb (15), Emily H. Webb (14), Frances D. Webb (8), 2 male servants (62 and 14) and 6 female servants (19–44).

1861 7 April, Sunday, the 1861 UK census lists the following household at Milford House, Robert S. Webb as head of household (66 years old), Robert W. Webb (29), Godfrey J. Webb (28), Louisa M. Webb (27). Ellen H. Webb (25), Emily H. Webb (24), Frances D. Webb (18), 2 male servants (57 and 13 years old), and 6 female servants (15–52 years old).

1871 April, Emily Webb and Arthur Crosse married.

1878 June 1, Louisa Webb and Hon. Rev. George Robert Gifford married.

1879, Francis David Webb and Catherine Augusta Dalton married.

1879 February 1, Robert William Webb and Catherine Hugonin married.

1879–1880 Hunting Season, Sir Reginald Henry Graham, Bart., writes about a hunting party that included Godfrey Webb:

An unwelcome feature in this country were the dense fogs, which often came on suddenly without a minute's warning, and I remember that many of the field used to carry small compasses in their pockets. A great friend of mine, Mr. Godfrey Webb, was staying with me at Netheravon; he was well known in London life but not much accustomed to the chase. I persuaded him to have a day's hunting on a steady old horse of mine named Mortimer. In the afternoon of that day, when the sport was nearly over, we suddenly found ourselves in a fog and separated from my friend, who did not make his appearance at our house until late that evening. He then told a pathetic story of the sudden darkness which had come on about four o'clock, how he finished his last sandwich, how he drained the remnant of his flask, how he smoked his last cigar, and then resigned himself to his impending fate in the open air until day/light. Happily for him, however, the sound of the dinner bell at Netheravon reached the ears of old Mortimer, who quickened his steps, and not long afterwards found his way in the dark to his own stables. As we came out from the dining-room about nine that evening, Godfrey Webb walked into the hall, and all ended well.

1880 Ascot Week, Sir Horace Rumbold writes of a party Ascot Week, 1880, which included Godfrey Webb:

For the Ascot week I was again asked to Minley Manor, where I found two of the Harris young ladies, Constance and Florence — the latter afterwards the wife of Sir Charles Grant — and the latest additions to the French Embassy in London: namely, La Ferronnays and Montebello with their wives. Madame de Montebello — a niece of the then ambassador, M. Léon Say, and very smart and attractive — was destined later to dispense for a long period the splendid hospitalities of the French Embassy in Russia. But the clou, as they say at Paris, of this Ascot party was—to quote the enthusiastic language of our host, old Mr. Raikes Currie — that simply glorious creature, Lady Ramsay, afterwards Lady Dalhousie, quite the loveliest woman of her generation in London society, who but a few years later died, in all the splendour of her youth and beauty, literally within a day of her husband, for whose health they had been travelling in America. She contracted blood-poisoning at New York, and died almost immediately after landing at Havre; Lord Dalhousie only surviving the shock of her death twenty-four hours. Gone, too, of that party is charming, bright Lady “Conty” Harris, as well as Godfrey Webb, one of the most popular and amusing of diners out in London. Saddening in all conscience it is to summon up—as I am seeking to do in these pages — a retrospect filled so largely, as it must be, with those who have passed beyond us, too many of them in their prime.

1881 April 3, Sunday, the 1881 census lists Godfrey Webb (48), his sister Louisa M. Gifford (47), cook Emma Townsend (21), and 3 other female servants, all about 10 years older than Townsend.

1882 January 28, Augustus Grimble, Captain F. D. Webb, and Godfrey Webb had a successful day hunting around their property around Milford House, Godalming.

1885 January, Robert William Webb and Barbara Dorothea Lyall married.

1886 August 23, Godfrey Webb was in Homburg, as were a number of aristocrats and the Prince of Wales.

1889, Godfrey Webb donated £1 to the Edmund Gurney Library of the Society for Psychical Research.

1890, Wilfred Blunt outlines the history of Crabbet Club, ending with its reconstruction with younger men in 1890:

The Crabbet Club was in its origin a purely convivial gathering, unambitious of any literary aim. It began in this way: When George, Lord Pembroke (the 13th Earl) came of age in 1871, having been a very popular boy at Eton, with many school friends, and afterwards at Oxford, he thought it would be amusing to continue in some measure the life they had led by having them to stay with him once or twice every summer at Wilton, for a day or two at a time, to play cricket, and row on the river, and otherwise divert themselves, and they took the name of the “Wilton," or "Wagger” Club, and it proved a great success. In 1876, though much older than the rest of the members, I was asked to join it as one who had known the Herberts from their school days. Pembroke was staying with me at Crabbet, and his two brothers and their sister Gladys (afterwards Lady Ripon), and several of their friends, and several of mine, and I drove them all to Epsom for the / Derby (Silvio's year), and we had a cricket match and a lawn tennis handicap (lawn tennis was in the process of being invented, and we played on a court 20 feet longer than what afterwards became the regulation length), and it was on this occasion that I joined the club. The party at Crabbet had proved such a success that the next year it was proposed that the club should make one of its regular meetings there, and so it gradually came about that the members came to Crabbet annually. The members of the club were never more than a few, a dozen to twenty, and consisted, besides the Herbert brothers, of Eddy Hamilton, who was afterwards Gladstone's private secretary, Lord Lewisham, Jocelyn Amherst, Granny Farquhar, Lionel Bathurst, with Harry Brand (afterwards Lord Hampden), Nigel Kingscote, Godfrey Webb, Button Bourke, Frank Lascelles, Mark Napier, and half-a-dozen more of my own intimates, and these came regularly to Crabbet every summer, and we gradually adopted the “Crabbet Club” as the name of our branch.

Though we professed no kind of politics, and looked to amusement only, nearly all the members of it were Tories, two or three of them in Parliament, and when in 1882 I took the somewhat violent line I did about Egypt and war ensued, several of the members taking offence ceased their attendance, and the Club as far as the Crabbet meetings were concerned became less popular, and this state of things was aggravated when I stood for Parliament as a Home Ruler in 1885 and 1886, and it was all but submerged by my imprisonment at Galway. Hardly any of the old Wilton members would answer the invitations to it, and Pembroke himself, the most tolerant of men, as an Irish landlord with large interests at stake in the county of Dublin, felt it a grievance that I should have identified myself with the Land League and the Plan of Campaign. All this was natural enough, and I could not complain of the defection. The Club as the “Crabbet Club” was still continued, but reconstructed on different lines with a number of young men, Oxford undergraduates, most of them professing Home Rule opinions. The chief of these were the two Peels, Willy and George, sons of the Speaker, Arthur Pollen, Herbert Vivian, Leo Maxse, Percy Wyndham (son of Sir Hugh), Theodore Fry, Theobald Mathew, Artie Brand, and Loulou / Harcourt, the only three of the old set being Mark Napier, Eddy Hamilton, and Nigel Kingscote.

1891 September 15, Tuesday, Wilfred Blunt writes about a shooting party with the Comte and Comtesse de Paris: "The party consisted of the Comte and Comtesse de Paris, with three French gentlemen of their suite, of Wagram, the Prince de Broglie, Lord Crawford and his son Balcarres, Algy Grosvenor, Godfrey Webb, Needham, and me."

1892 May 24, Wilfred Blunt describes a dinner party:

Dined with Philip Currie in Connaught Place, Mrs. Singleton doing the honours. I sat between Mrs. Algy Grosvenor and Oscar Wilde. Beyond Oscar Mrs. Singleton, then Godfrey Webb. There were also Lady Ducane and a daughter, Lady Sykes, Lady Baring, just made a peeress, O'Connor [n. 1, "Afterwards Ambassador at Constantinople."] and Trench, diplomats, and three or four more. Oscar was in good form, and he and I, Philip and O'Connor sat up till half-past twelve talking when the rest were gone.

1892 July 23 and 24, Blunt describes a meeting of the Crabbet Club:

Meeting of the Crabbet Club, those present were:

George Wyndham.           Charles Laprimaudaye.
George Curzon.            Harry Cust.
Nigel Kingscote.          Hubert Howard.
Charles Gatty.            George Leveson Gower.
Theobald Mathew.          Dick Grosvenor.
Godfrey Webb.             Mark Napier.
Loulou Harcourt.

George Wyndham performed a wonderful feat, writing a long poem in a most complicated metre, and full of excellent things in hardly more than an hour, between sets of lawn tennis. Cust wrote another under like conditions, so full of wit that we nearly gave him the prize. George Leveson was also good. The tennis handicap was won by Hubert Howard, the laureateship by Mathew. Hubert won the cup through Grosvenor's magnanimity, who having the last set in hand suddenly found himself lame and retired. Cust is interesting, and of great abilities. George Leveson a delightful butt, and cause of wit in others with untouchable good humour. These occasions are the salt of life.

1893 July 1–2, Saturday and Sunday, Blunt describes "Crabbet. Annual meeting of the Crabbet Club":

We sat down over twenty to dinner, and did not leave the table till half-past one.

The members present were:

George Curzon.              Hubert Howard.
George Leveson Gore.        Godfrey Webb.
George Wyndham.             Percy Wyndham.
George Peel (the 4 Georges) Loulou Harcourt.
Morpeth.                    Theodore Fry.
Mark Napier.                Theobald Mathew.
Harry Cust.                 Charles Laprimaudaye,
Charles Gatty.              and Lawrence Currie.

St. George Lane Fox, and two new men, Esmé Howard and Eddy Tennant.

George Curzon was, as usual, the most brilliant, he never flags for an instant either in speech or repartee; after him George Wyndham, Mark Napier, and Webber. The next day, Sunday, Harry Cust won the Tennis Cup, and the Laureateship was adjudged to Curzon.

1894 June 22, Friday, Blunt says he "[g]ave a dinner at Mount Street to Lady Granby, Lucy Smith, d'Estournelles, Alfred Lyall, and Godfrey Webb, all of us more or less poets. After dinner we read and recited poetry, d'Estournelles being by far the most effective, having an admirable manner."

1894 June 30 and July 1, Blunt says,

Our Annual Crabbet Club Meeting. The members present were:

George Wyndham,        Hubert Howard,
George Curzon,         Godfrey Webb,
George Peel,           Mark Napier,
George Leveson Gower,  Theobald Mathew,
Esmé Howard,           Charles Gatty,
St. George Lane Fox,   Lawrence Currie,
Eddy Tennant,

with three new members, Lord Cairns, Alfred Douglas, and Basil Blackwood.

1895 October 8, in Constantinople, Blunt writes that he was "[w]ith Godfrey Webb, Mrs. Horner, Mrs. Crawshay, and Lord Llandaff (Matthews) to see the Museum and St. Sophia's—and with Norman to see the street door of the Armenian church in Pera."

1896 August 16, Monday, Blunt was camping and visiting relatives and friends:

From Stockton I went on through Warminster and Longleat Park to Mells. “Longleat is very fine approached from this side, but the house disappointed me. It is very perfect, too perfect, and, large as it is, it is lost in the size of the park. What makes it look dull is the uniform plateglass which has been put in every window. It is astonishing. how this destroys the beauty of old buildings. It is as though the eyes in a beautiful face had been put out and replaced with spectacles. I prefer Mells, where I now am, a really fascinating little place, a comfortable eighteenth-century house, remote and shut in, which gives a sense of immemorial quiet screened from the world's view. I arrived late at half-past seven, but they had not yet gone to dress for dinner, and presently out rushed the whole family. Mrs. Horner, with her children, very pretty ones, and Godfrey Webb, who is staying there, and Horner, who went out to help me choose a camping place, and invited me in to dinner. I was not expected, but travelling in this way calls out the latent hospitality of the countryside almost as much as if one were in the East, and Horner gave himself endless trouble about my road to Wells next morning.

1896 October 3, the Fishing Gazette reported that Webb had been fishing:

The Hon. Oliver Borthwick drove the Duchess of York and Lady Elizabeth Meade and Mr. Godfrey Webb to Loch Mu'uck on Monday last, where they had a few hours' loch fishing, and had some fair sport. The loch is well stocked with trout, but July and August are the best months for fishing it.

1897 July, Godfrey Webb's retirement from his post of Clerk of the Journals for the House of Lords:

RETIREMENT OF THE CLERK OF THE JOURNALS.

The Committee have heard with regret of the approaching retirement, by superannuation, of Mr. Godfrey Webb, who is well known to the House by a service extending over 41 years and performed mainly in the Journal Office, of which for the last 12 years he has been the Head, and desire that their appreciation of his valuable services should be recorded in their Report and thus placed upon the Journals of the House, in the preparation of which those services have been so long and efficiently employed.

The Committee recommend that, in accordance with the usual scale, a retiring allowance of 6661. 13s. 4d. per annum be granted to Mr. Webb from the 1st of November next.

1897 July 2, Mr. Godfrey Webb attended the Duchess of Devonshire's fancy-dress ball.

1900 June 27, Wilfred Blunt writes that he "[d]ined with Godfrey Webb and Hugh Wyndham at the Travellers. The excitement of the moment is the trouble in China, where the Foreign Embassies are in danger from the mob. The Chinese, after a long course of bullying by the Powers, worrying by missionaries, and robbing by merchants and speculators have risen, and are, very properly, knocking the foreign invasion on the head. Admiral Seymour, with two thousand men, mostly English, who was sent up to relieve the Embassy, is himself blockaded, as is Tientsin behind him, and the rumpus is general."

1901, Alfred Lyall describes his travels to Alfred, Lord Tennyson, whom he was writing a book about: "Then I came here (Milford House, Godalming) to see poor Godfrey Webb, who is slowly declining towards his end."

1901 March 31, Sunday, the 1901 census lists Godfrey Webb as head of household, with visitor Elizabeth Plowright (33), and two servants who were married, Jean Sanbor (59) and Eugenie Sanbor (30).

Costume at the Duchess of Devonshire's 2 July 1897 Fancy-dress Ball

At the Duchess of Devonshire's fancy-dress ball, Mr. Godfrey Webb (at 331) was dressed as Martin Frobisher in the Queen Elizabeth procession.

Notes and Questions

1. Sir Horace Rumbold, Bart., says in his memoir that Godfrey Webb was "one of the most popular and amusing of diners out in London." (201) The Right Hon. Sir Algernon West, G.C.B., says, "The genial humour and ever ready wit of Godfrey Webb proved a valuable asset of the Club, which was regretfully parted with at his death."
2. Some of Godfrey Webb's letters are collected with the Stanway papers.