Hedley Hope-Nicholson

Who was Hedley Hope-Nicholson?

Hedley Hope-Nicholson, barrister and littérateur, and his wife Jaqueline Hope, were notable in English artistic and literary circles in the first half of the twentieth century. Hedley Nicholson counted among various eccentric hobbies a keen interest in King Charles I and was editor of the quarterly magazine of the Society of King Charles the Martyr. He kept a relic from the King's coffin and a piece of the shirt he wore on the scaffold in a box in the consecrated chapel in their London family home, More House, in Tite Street, Chelsea. His other great passion was for the Russian ballet. He was the author of The Mindes Delight: or Variety of Memorable Matters Worthy of Observation.

Jaqueline Hope-Nicholson was a genealogist, heraldic artist and impassioned costumier dealing with vast outdoor pageants and innumerable amateur theatricals but her greatest interest was in the Stuart kings, largely Charles II.

Their children were the artist Mary Lauretta Jaqueline Desirée Valentine Esmé who married the artist Jean Hugo in 1949 and worked as an assistant editor on the Burlington Magazine and with Richard Buckle on his publication 'Ballet'; Marie-Jaqueline Dorothea Beatrice Alexina Romaine Adriana, who compiled Brian Howard: Portrait of a Failure in 1968, about Brian Howard; and Charles Felix Otho Victor Gabriel John Adrian, genealogist and antiquarian.