Postcard view, Tredegar House, Newport, Monmouthshire, [Wales].
Collection of the Author

Now owned by Newport City Council, Tredegar House was the seat of the Morgan (as in Captain Morgan fame) family and the Lords Tredegar for five hundred years. Godfrey Morgan, the first Viscount Tredegar rode into the valley of death in the Charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimean War and was succeeded by a cousin Courtney who "enjoyed less arduous pursuits." Courtney's son, Evan Morgan (1893 - 1949), 4th Baron, 2nd Viscount Tredegar, was the last of the family to live at Tredegar and entertained a diverse circle of friends at weekend parties here, including Aldous Huxley, Augustus John, Aleister Crowley, and the great American beauty Denham Fouts (1914 - 1948), sometimes called the "best kept boy in the world" who stayed with Morgan for a while before running off with Prince Paul of Greece.  

According to the Duke of Bedford, the Morgans were "the oddest family I have ever met"; Evan wrote poetry, dabbled in the occult and kept a menagerie at Tredegar House which included a kangaroo, a baboon and a macaw; [go Here for a rare photo of Evan with his parrot Blue Boy]; his mother used to build birds nests in the trees in the park big enough to sit in; his sister, Gwyneth Erica Morgan was found dead in the Thames in 1924, said to have been the victim of illegal drug use, and his father owned one of the largest yachts in the world.

His relationships with men notwithstanding, Evan was married twice, first in 1928 to Hon. Lois Sturt (1900-1937), an actress and daughter of the 2nd Baron Alington; and in 1939 in Singapore, to Princess Olga Sergievna Dolgorouky (born 1915 - unknown), the marriage annulled in 1943.  He died without issue in 1949.