The Principle Characters

Vivien Gould (above), at the age of seventeen became engaged to Lord Decies. Her mother Edith delighted in staging a New York society wedding, early in February, 1911.  The previous year, Vivien's older sister Margorie  had the society wedding of the year on a Saturday afternoon in springtime.

Only two very similar press photographs of the bride were discovered in the research for Decies' Deal. 

Captain John Graham Hope de la Poer Horsley Beresford, an accomplished international horseman and recently retired army officer, became entangled in the social aspirations of the Gould family when he inherited his title, Lord Decies the fifth.

George Jay Gould  was a railroad mogul and financier. At the time of his daughter’s marriage to Lord Decies  he was regarded as probably the wealthiest man in America. 

In 1923 he travelled to Egypt as a guest of Howard Carter to inspect Pharaoh Tutankhamun's recently discovered tomb. While there he was bitten by a mosquito, caught a fever, and died from pneumonia during his journey home..

Frank Anderson, a solicitor from England  was commissioned in November 1910 to negotiate a marriage settlement between his client, Lord Decies, and George Jay Gould. His life ended in 1915 having suffered from a heart attack while racing to catch a train.

Edith Kingdon Gould was sent as a child to England for her schooling at an exclusive girls school. Her career back in America as a professional actress was cut short when she married George Jay Gould. She had social ambitions to mix with high society in New York and England, and the marriage of her second daughter, Vivien to an English aristocrat was ideal.

Molly Anderson, at just 18 years of age, accompanied her father and her maid on the journey to New York. They travelled first class on the Mauritania, and stayed at the Waldorf Astoria. She wrote a diary called 'My American Experiences'. This diary became the foundation for the novel, "Decies' Deal". 

In May of 19011 she travelled again with her father, this time to Budapest in Hungry. He had business with a group of Americans with railway interests. Molly wrote another diary about her travels. This will provide the bones for another novel by Adam Pym. 

Fearnley Anderson served in World War 1 as a capltain in the Seafrth Highlanders regiment. After the war he went to serve in India  where he privately conducted business trading polo ponies while continuing to serve in the army. In 1923, while on patrol in the Khyber Pass, he was killed by a sniper. Using Cockney slang, his descendants always laughed about his tragic demise by referring to the fact that he was genuinely "shot up the khyber".