Dryden House

A human, often humorous story of 150 years of adventure, romance, human weakness and strength, war and peace worldwide and five generations of the Dryden family. Events within a still today standing Dryden House bind it into a credible narrative, beginning with an original Henry Rayfield Dryden- Dryden at Waterloo in 1815 and the French girl he married in 1816. It follows with the unhappy life of his wayward daughter Clara, her illegitimate son and her suicide... Charles, his elder son rejects the family but comes to regret it.... The other son Rayfield and his wife Fanny (whom Charles had hoped to marry) have two quarreling children, Henry and Sophia. There is tragedy at sea. Australia during the gold rush.... The Eureka Stockade, the events leading up to and following it.... Coach travel in nineteenth century America.... Southern state slavery and the American Civil War.... The battles at Fort Sumter, Bull Run and Gettysburg. After the Civil War the story leads on to the growth of the small but thriving English DRYDEN Company into DRYDENWORLDWIDE INC and its resurrection of the American cotton industry. Family love problems in England, America and South Africa.... Thomas Dryden's sexual adventure and the amusing details of his enlistment in the army.... His involvement in the tragic battle at Spion Kop during the Boer War and what followed it.... His post Boer War search for purpose in South Africa. The tragic loss of his fiancee. It ends back at Dryden House in England with the last of the Drydens - no marriage and no issue - and the strange, occult vision of Sophia, the lady on the stairs, and the secret of six golden sovereigns.