Equality In The Bible And Dornford Yates

A character asks why the Bible does not command equality. Because there was a smaller surplus of wealth when it was written. Also, the Bible contains many barbaric laws which we rightly ignore.

Socialists know that their doctrine is unnatural, therefore wrong? No, sir, they disagree with you about it, which is a different matter.

Books That Exist Within Dornford Yates' Universe

The History Of The Pleydell Family by Vandy Pleydell.
White Ladies, the history of the Pleydells' ancestral home.
Berry Pleydell's Memoirs.
the "Dornford Yates" books, written by Boy Pleydell.

Thus, three Pleydells are authors. White Ladies may be written by a government appointee since the house has been handed over to the nation.

We have the "Dornford Yates" books but not the other volumes.

Since the Epilogue to the tenth and last Berry Book is a letter written by one of the servants, we at last learn the first name of Jonah's servant, Carson.

Berry And Co.

My copy of Berry And Co. by Dornford Yates, which looks like this:

not like various other editions (see here):

was printed without a publication date;
begins with a dedicatory letter dated November, 1920;
was given as a present at Christmas, 1929;
does not have the Pleydell family tree;
contradicts that tree in its text. (See Other Cousins.)

White Ladies

Henry the Eighth suppressed a very rich abbey in Hampshire. However, when his men arrived, the Abbey plate (gold chalices, platters, flagons etc) was not to be found so the King's men burned the abbey to the ground and hanged the Abbess from an oak. Five years later, some time in the 1540s, White Ladies was built on the site and was given an oak front door which was still in place in the early twentieth century at which time a dowser discovered that the Abbey plate had been buried in the large wine cellars which were still in use.

The Pleydells owned White Ladies from an early date, possibly from the beginning, because:

in 1652, Nicholas Pleydell was succeeded by his only child, William.
-copied from here.

In 1663, a sun-dial bearing the year date and the initials, W.P., was erected in the garden of the old dower-house, which passed out of the hands of the family in the early nineteenth century.

In 1937, Berry Pleydell and his family became unable to maintain White Ladies and handed it over to the nation to be used as an official retreat for the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. An era ended. 

Other Cousins

This family tree appears in most editions of Dornford Yates's ten Berry Books, except that it is wrong as shown here. Daphne Pleydell marries Jonathan Mansel. That is correct. However, the family tree as shown here makes Jonathan Mansel a son of Bertram Pleydell and does not show Daphne as a daughter of Bertram, which is obviously wrong. 

As I wrote in The Five, Boy winds up married to Jill and there are no great-grandchildren of the first Bertram listed here.

In And Berry Came Too, CHAPTER VI, Berry claims that he himself bears the name of a great-great-uncle, Bertram, although the family tree shows us that he also bears the names of his own father and grandfather. Thus, he, Berry, should be listed as Bertram/"Berry." Otherwise, "Berry" might have been construed not as an abbreviation of Bertram but as an independent name. See here. Similarly, the texts of the books confirm that "Jonah" is an abbreviation of "Jonathan."

Thus:

Berry bears the name of his father, grandfather and great-great-uncle;
Berry's first cousin and wife, Daphne, bears the name of her aunt;
Daphne's brother, Boy, bears a name that reads like a shortened version of his own father's name, Bois;
their first cousin, Jonathan/"Jonah," bears the name of his father.

In Berry And Co., CHAPTER VI, Boy, the narrator, has another cousin, Madrigal.

In Berry And Co., CHAPTER X:

Boy, the narrator, describes Berry and Daphne as second cousins;
there is yet another set of cousins, Vandy and his sisters, Emma and May;
Vandy and Co. would have inherited White Ladies if not for the birth of Berry;
Vandy wrote The History Of The Pleydell Family;
in 1652, Nicholas Pleydell was succeeded by his only child, William.

The Five

By the end of Dornford Yates's Berry series, Boy Pleydell is both first cousin and brother-in-law to both Berry Pleydell and Jonathan "Jonah" Mansel. Jonah's sister, Jill, has married Boy whose sister, Daphne, is married to Berry. Thus, these five grandchildren of Bertram Pleydell comprise:

two brother and sister pairs;
two married couples;
one bachelor -

- yet remain just five people.

They have no children. The family turns in on itself and ends. They also consider that the world in which society has changed and in which they have been unable to maintain their ancestral country mansion is not worth living in. 

Dornford Yates' Universe

This post will mean nearly nothing to almost anyone. Its purpose is, as far as possible, to re-arrange Dornford Yates's interconnected titles into chronological order of fictional events. Some revisions will be necessary.

The Brother Of Daphne (before Adele) 
The Courts Of Idleness (Boy meets Adele)
Berry And Co. (Boy becomes engaged to Adele)
And Berry Came Too (set earlier, before Adele) 
Anthony Lyveden (Boy engaged to Adele)
Valerie French (Lyveden marries Valerie) 
Jonah And Co. (Boy and Adele married; Eulalie; Jill becomes engaged)

Blind Corner (Mansel with Chandos and Hanbury, not with Berry, Boy etc; "Rose" Noble; Punter) 
An Eye For A Tooth (direct sequel to Blind Corner; Mansel; Chandos; Hanbury) 
Perishable Goods (Adele's affair with Mansel; Chandos; Hanbury; "Rose" Noble; Punter) 
Blood Royal (Chandos marries; Hanbury) 
Fire Below (Hanbury marries; Chandos) 
She Fell Among Thieves (the Hanburys dead; Chandos, widowed, marries Jenny; Mansel)

Maiden Stakes (a collection; Chandos Books are fiction written by Boy!; Toby Rage) 
As Other Men Are (a collection; Simon and Patricia Beaulieu; the Master) 
She Painted Her Face (Porus Bureau) 
Shoal Water (the Wet Flag; Mansel) 
The Stolen March (the Beaulieus; the Master; Auntie Emma; Eulalie; Porus Bureau) 
Adele And Co. (Boy and Adele still married; Jill married with children; Auntie Emma; the Wet Flag)
Gale Warning (Mansel, Chandos and Bagot) 
Red In The Morning (sequel to Adele And Co. and Gale Warning; Mansel; Chandos; Bagot; Jenny; Auntie Emma; Punter; Toby Rage; Falcon) 
Safe Custody (Punter; Bugle) 
Storm Music (Bugle) 
Cost Price (sequel to Safe Custody; Mansel; Chandos; Jenny; Punter)

And Five Were Foolish (a collection) 
Period Stuff (a collection, including four Falcon stories) 
The House That Berry Built (Mansel helps Falcon; Jill, widowed, marries Boy) 
The Berry Scene (Adele's departure mentioned; the Beaulieus; the Lyvedens; Toby Rage; Jenny)
Ne'er-Do-Well (Falcon reports back to Mansel, Chandos and Jenny) 
This Publican (written by Boy before As Berry And I Were Saying) 
Lower than Vermin (also written by Boy before As Berry And I Were Saying) 
As Berry And I were Saying (all "Dornford Yates" books are written by Boy) 
B-Berry And I Look Back (sequel to As Berry And I Were Saying) 
Wife Apparent (written by Boy during B-Berry And I Look Back)