Winnifred Rosalie Cavendish Huggins, the backer
Winnifred Huggins knows what it is to need a hand up in life. She was born on an unremarkable farm in an unremarkable county to unremarkable parents, a situation she sought to improve as soon as she was old enough to flirt shamelessly with eligible gentlemen who came to shoot and cavort on the neighboring estate.
She took to planting herself decoratively atop various stiles, proffering the perfect amount of ankle, until the perfect ankle-fancier rode past.
This was Mr Archibald Huggins, scion of Huggins Imperial Extruded Wire, Ltd. Dear Archie carried off darling Winnie to a new life in the city, whereupon they promptly lost interest in one another. Happily, so large was the house that for forty-three years they saw one another only by accident, usually on the way to the loo in the middle of the night.
It was a marriage that both agreed was quite perfect.
After dear Archie’s decease, Winnifred carried on much as she had done, especially indulging her passions for sumptuous clothes and for controversial causes. (As co-founder of the Anti-Bovine League, she campaigns against cows with a gusto only one born on a dairy farm could muster.)
She was an early champion of Foxe & Boxe, and indeed was the guiding hand (and heavy purse) behind their move out of the country and into Eglantine Crescent. Any sum of money, she insists, is worth not having to mingle with cows on the way to one’s dress fittings.