Anyone who has been around here for long enough, knows that my Achilles heel is gossip- old or new, I love it. Eat it up with a spoon. I’ve always wondered if that is why I enjoy history so much- old gossip, dontcha know.

So this whole genealogy thing – * whisper* so, Bucky was born 6-7 weeks early, going from her parent’s wedding date.

Uh, would explain a lot.

Now, I wonder, just when did Bucky marry Tea. Exactly. There are no wedding photos, no scraps of memories of the occasion at all, although I came to know Tea quite well, his second wife, his children thereof. The Girl is named after one of his daughters- the Veronica in the long list of her very Catholic baptismal names.This is a question which no one ever dared ask Bucky when she was alive. She certainly dumped Tea within months of Dad’s birth. Well, she was very young, 19 after Dad was born, and few months later she miscarried ( in the kitchen- why do these images persist- to add that grain of truth to a story ?) what she always believed was a daughter, the one thing her heart most desired.

In fairness, I must say that -while a photo may not show it- Bucky was considered a great beauty in her time. Actually proposed to by Princes of postage -stamp sized principalities in Germany. Most likely because she was an utterly brilliant woman, filled with wit, and- unlike me- vivacious until the day that she died. I spent many a bored fragment of time teasing her about the guy with the Schloss overlooking the Rhine – eh, he died two years later, I would remind her, with an aura of exasperation. I could be a Princess now…

But she and I never got along.

It happens.