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Evan Frederick Morgan, Second Viscount and Fourth Baron Tredegar
Born: 13 July 1893. Died: 27 April 1949.
Evan Frederic Morgan, 2nd Viscount Tredegar, FRHortS, FRSL, FRSA, FZS, FAGS, FIL, was a Welsh poet and author. On 3 March 1934, he succeeded to the title of 6th Baronet Morgan, 4th Baron Tredegar, and 2nd Viscount Tredegar, after the death of his father. He was the last of the Morgans to live in Tredegar House, the old family mansion.
He was the son of Courtenay Morgan, 1st Viscount Tredegar, of Tredegar Park, Monmouthshire, Wales, and Lady Katharine Carnegie. The 13th Duke of Bedford described the Tredegar family as "the oddest family I have ever met".
The 2nd Viscount was educated at Eton College and Christ Church, Oxford University. While working as private secretary to a government minister, W.C. Bridgeman, in 1917, he became friendly with another Oxford man, the poet Robert Graves, who had been a school friend of Evan's cousin, Raymond Rodakowski. They shared an interest in both poetry and the supernatural.
A Roman Catholic convert, Morgan was a Chamberlain of the Sword and Cape to Popes Benedict XV and Pius XI. An accomplished occultist, he was hailed by Aleister Crowley as Adept of Adepts.
He fought in the First World War, gaining the rank of lieutenant in the service of the Welsh Guards. During the Second World War with MI8, his responsibility was to monitor carrier pigeons. He carelessly let slip on occasion departmental secrets to two girl guides and was court-martialed but not sent to jail or worse.
In 1929, he unsuccessfully stood as the Conservative candidate for Limehouse. After the death of his father, in May 1934, he took possession of the family seat of Tredegar House, near Newport, where he lived alone with a menagerie of animals and birds. He dedicated one room, his 'magik room', to his study of the occult.
Morgan provided inspiration for the characters of Ivor Lombard in Aldous Huxley's 1921 Crome Yellow, and for Eddie Monteith in Ronald Firbank's The Flower Beneath the Foot.
Evan Morgan has been called "a great eccentric". When he was just Evan Morgan he was a regular at the Eiffel Tower Restaurant in Percy Street, London along with his friends Augustus John, Aldous Huxley, Ronald Firbank and others like Nancy Cunard, Dylan Thomas, Peter Warlock, Walter Sickert, Nina Hamnett, Thomas Earp and the Sitwells. Nancy Cunard spoke fondly of this restaurant, calling it "our spiritual-carnal home." When Evans became Lord Tredegar in 1934, and Lord of the estate, he began holding wild weekend parties attended by a curious mixture of the famous and the entirely unknown such as H.G. Wells, Marchesa Casati, Aleister Crowley, Prince Paul of Greece and Lord Alfred Douglas to name only a few. His menagerie of animals at Tredegar included a boxing kangaroo, a honey bear, baboons that stalked the gardeners, an anteater, pigeons, birds of prey, which were often sent after suspected Nazi spy pigeons, and a parrot named "Blue Boy" who would sit on his shoulder.
He was decorated with the following awards: Knight of Honour and Devotion, Sovereign and Military Order of Malta Knight of Justice, Constantinian Order of St. George Knight of Justice, Order of St. John of Jerusalem (KJStJ) Commander, Order of the Holy Sepulchre (with star)
In 1937 or 1938 Edith Mary Hinchley painted him. This painting is in the National Trust collection.
Marriages: Despite his known homosexuality, he married twice:
Death: He died suddenly on 27 April 1949 at age 55, without issue, and his viscountcy became extinct, although the title of Baron Tredegar passed to his 76-year-old Uncle Frederick. To avoid death duties Tredegar House passed straight to Frederick's son John, the 6th Baron, who soon afterwards sold it to the Sisters of St Joseph.
His mother died in London in 1949, only a few months later. |
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