Twenty inches square, made from finely woven linen with handstitched hems, embroidered in white on white with his initials and crest, and a laundry mark in red, the handkerchief belonged to William Hall Goodier, whose crest is a pun – a bird, possibly a partridge, holding three (good) ears of wheat. My great-aunt Doris Cundell gave me family albums, handwritten passports, and this relic of her grandfather.
A handkerchief is a flimsy thing to have survived so long in a family of wanderers. But for one tiny hole, it is in excellent condition. I like to think it is the one tucked in his top pocket in his sepia portrait photo.
WHG was born in Manchester on 25th November 1830, married Mary Ann Radnor Edwards there in 1854 and died in St Petersburg on 22 September 1893. Aunt Doris told me the following story. Her grandmother Mary Ann was an only daughter, the middle of five children of the captain of a tea-clipper. One night, shortly after returning from China, he visited a friend to deliver some Chinese brocade for the friend’s wife. There he had a drink too many, and on the way home he fell into the Ship Canal and drowned. He was 35. His widow married a widower who seemed a good match but turned out to be a gambler. Mary Ann was sent to Scarborough to work as a housekeeper for an uncle. There she met WHG, who traded goods, including herring-barrels, between England and Russia. They married, and later went to live in St Petersburg. All their children, including my great grandmother Etty Verena, were born in Manchester. The boys, one after another, sailed to Australia. Etty married James Hamilton Cundell, a Scottish civil engineer, in Moscow in 1888. Their two daughters, Aunt Doris and my grandmother Phyllis, were born near Moscow in 1889 and 1894.