George Bredon Wimsey, 2nd Duke of Denver of the second creation, commonly referred-to as the 14th Duke, was the son of Charles Wimsey, 1st (or 13th) Duke of Denver, and his wife Grace Wimsey (a distant relative). According to students of the history of the Dukedom (such as C.W. Scott-Giles, author of The Wimsey Family), George Bredon married Mary Death (the second inter-marriage between the two families), and their eldest son Mortimer Gerald Wimsey, 15th Duke of Denver succeeded him in the titles. George Bredon is thus the grandfather of Lord Peter Wimsey.
In Tarzan Alive, Philip José Farmer states that the 14th Duke of Denver was the same man whom, in The Lost World, Arthur Conan Doyle called the Duke of Pomfret. Farmer therefore tends to refer to the Dukedom as 'Pomfret', combining both names.
In The Lost World, Lord John Roxton is said to have been the third son of the Duke of Pomfret. According to Farmer, this was not quite accurate, and that Roxton - real name "John Byron Wentworth" - was the adopted son of the Duke, and older than the Duke's two biological sons-and-heirs. Wentworth's mother Joane Clayton married the Duke and had her elder son brought up in his household.
In his article A Look at the Wimsey Family, Wold Newton scholar Mark Brown points out that the "ancient and noble" Deaths could easily be the Clayton family, and that therefore Mary Death and Joane Clayton are one and the same person. He also identifies "Lord James Roxton", a big-game hunter identified in the works of J.T. Edson as Lord John Roxton's father, as George Bredon Wimsey.
In The Original Wold Newton Crossover Chronology, Win Scott Eckert identifies the eighty-year old Duke of Denver who appears in Michael Kurland's Professor Moriarty novel Death by Gaslight, set in 1887, as George Bredon Wimsey. It should be recognised, however, that Scott-Giles notes that George Bredon Wimsey's parents were only married in early 1817.
Farmer also identifies the 1st Earl of Whimsey, mentioned in Edgar Rice Burroughs's novel Tarzan Triumphant as the father of Barbara Collis, as the son of the 14th Duke and Joane Clayton.
External Links
- "A Look at the Wimsey Family" by Mark Brown
- "The Original Wold Newton Crossover Chronology" by Win Scott Eckert (entry for Death by Gaslight)