George Button

**George Button**, Viscount or Baron Button, is the great grandson of Francis Button and his wife Isabelle Higham, and also the husband of Fanny, who is his father's cousin's wife's sister's daughter.

## Biography

George was described as "wayward" by his father's cousin. He married Fanny at some point, when she and her parents were secretly in financial ruin due to her father's gambling debts. Fanny was only slightly older than George. One day, Fanny and her mother Lavinia came to Button House and George was heard welcoming them politely.

At the time of his marriage, George was "heir to the Higham textile fortune."

However, what we do know is his family had been trying to find him a wife for some time, and George was uninterested in his bride. Despite not having interests in women, George clearly did consummate his marriage with his wife, and would have had at least one child with Fanny as they became great grandparents. At some point, in his wife’s and his late fifties or early sixties, Fanny discovered his secret homosexual relationships, George then decided it would be best to murder his wife to prevent her keeping his secret by pushing her out a second-story window to her death.

It can be assumed that how Fanny died was thought to be a tragic accident, and that no one thought it was George who killed her. It was impossible for George to know that even in death Fanny did actually keep his secret until Julian pushed Alison out the window decades later.

Some time before 1912 the last Tsarina of Russia, Alexandra Feodorovna, gifted him an Arabic jewel which was almost priceless. It is unknown how he came to meet Russia's queen or what he did to please her to the point of such a gift, but he later gave the jewel to his wife as a present. Fanny took great care to hide it and protect it from possible theft by putting it underneath a floorboard in the library where she thought it had remained, although, when she gives it to Alison it is revealed that he'd actually pawned it many years ago before her death and left a note in its place; this prompts Fanny to scream 'you thieving git!'

## Appearance

The only point of reference for George's appearance is a portrait within Button House which indicates he was a balding man with fair hair and a bushy moustache. He had pale skin and - at least in the portrait - wore suits befitting the Edwardian era.

## Personality

As George has never actually appeared there is only Fanny's word and a few comments from the older ghosts such as Robin. According to Fanny her husband wasn't very attentive and often ignored her, though it is unclear whether this was because of his sexual orientation, if he simply did not like his wife or both.

However, a lot of this is obviously bias and exaggerated. George gave her an Arabic jewel gifted to him by Tsarina Alexandra of Russia - wife of Tsar Nicholas II - as a present, showing he was attentive enough to give her expensive, nice presents. (It is not mentioned what George did to get the Tsarina to give him such a gift). Fanny and George hid the jewel under a floorboard in the hopes of their descendants finding it and showing it off in their family name. However, unbeknownst to Fanny, he sold it. It is fairly obvious that George was terrible with money, and seems to have had a gambling addiction. He pawned off many expensive items like the jewel.

One thing can be confirmed regarding George Button is that he was a homosexual man determined to keep his secret; he began a threesome affair with both his butler and groundsman. They were possibly not interested in him but just trying to keep their jobs.

## Trivia

* Kitty and Mary referred to George's sexual relationship with the butler and groundskeeper as 'a man sandwich' and 'a manwich' respectively.
* Mike uses his portrait to fill the hole he'd made between Fanny's and Kitty's rooms, he does however take it out later and switch it round.
* As Fanny and George became great grandparents, they must have had sex and given birth to at least one child.

## References

1. ↑ As revealed in *Ghosts: The Button House Archive.*
2. ↑ George's actual title is unknown. "He Came!" indicates that Fanny was not born into nobility and inherited the title of "Lady Button" on marriage. However, the fact that the great-granddaughter of her and George - Heather Button - is known as *Lady* Heather and was *unmarried* implies that one of the descendants of George and Fanny later became at least an Earl as the daughters of Viscounts and Barons do not receive the title of *Lady*, merely *The Honourable Miss [first name] [surname]* (i.e *The Honourable Miss Heather Button*). This implies that Fanny is only known as Lady Button because that was George's title at the time she died (sometime in the 1910s); George is, in fact, known as "Mr George Button" when they first meet and, if he was the eldest son of anything higher than a Viscount (which he was as he inherited the family estates), he would be *Baron/Viscount [title]* on introduction, not "Mr George Button". There are more than 8 such families in British history, where the title is also the surname, including: Spencer, Russell, Cadogan, Talbot, Fortescue and Grey.
3. ↑ *Ghosts: The Button House Archive:* Page 174.
4. ↑ While the Tsarina and the Romanovs died in 1918, Fanny was killed by George in 1912, meaning the meeting and gifting of the jewel had to occur before then.