Those Wild Wyndhams (57 page)

George Wyndham, hard at work, and already showing the signs of age.

A rhapsody in white: the Adeanes at Babraham in 1897. From left, Mananai, Madeline, Sibell, Pamela and Charlie.

The next generation at Clouds. From left, Mananai’s daughters Madeline and Lettice Adeane prepare to sally forth with Pearson the coachman. Madeline Wyndham, holding one of her beloved dachshunds, looks on from the steps.

The men in their lives, as seen by the cartoonists of
Vanity Fair
.
Clockwise from top left: Harry Cust, Percy Wyndham, Hugo Elcho and Eddy Tennant.

Mary and Balfour in old age, with one of Mary’s beloved chows.

Pamela in her fifties, communing with the birds.

Integrated

1
. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt © imagebroker/Alamy

2
. Madeline Wyndham, by Edward Burne-Jones © Peter Nahum at The Leicester Galleries, London,
www.leicestergalleries.com

3
. Mrs E. Tennant, afterwards Lady Glenconner, by Violet, Duchess of Rutland (pencil on paper, 1895) © Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum, Bournemouth, UK/The Bridgeman Art Library

4
. Mr Henry Cust, by Violet, Duchess of Rutland (pencil on paper,
c.
1890s
)
© Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum, Bournemouth, UK/The Bridgeman Art Library

5
. Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon, by Harry Furniss (pen and ink, 1880s–1990s) © National Portrait Gallery, London

6
. ‘They don’t call it Home Rule, but the path is the same’, after Sir Francis Carruthers Gould (line block postcard,
c
.1903) © National Portrait Gallery, London

8
Edward Wyndham Tennant, by John Singer Sargent © Lebrecht Music and Arts Photo Library/Alamy

Picture section

1
. Madeline Wyndham, by G. F. Watts © Private Collection

2
. Percy Wyndham, by Frederic Leighton © Stanway House

3
. Guy, Mary and George Wyndham © Stanway House

4
. Madeline Wyndham with Pamela Wyndham © Stanway House

5
. Percy Wyndham with George Wyndham © Private Collection

6
. Mary Wyndham, by Valentine Princep © Stanway House

7
. Mary Wyndham, by Edward Poynter © Stanway House

8
. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt © British Library

9
. Arthur James Balfour, by London Stereoscopic & Photographic Company (albumen cabinet card, 1870s–1900s) © National Portrait Gallery

10
. George Wyndham, by Frank T. Foulsham, published by Underwood & Underwood (albumen stereoscopic card, 1900)

11
. Mananai, Madeline, Sibell, Pamela and Charlie Adeane © Private Collection

12
. Madeline Wyndham and Madeline and Lettice Adeane © Private Collection

13
. (top left) Henry John Cockayne-Cust, by Sir Leslie Ward (‘Spy’), 15 February 1894,
Vanity Fair
cartoon (colour litho), in Private Collection © Look and Learn/Peter Jackson Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library; (top right) The Hon. Percy Scawen Wyndham, by Sir Leslie Ward (‘Spy’), 30 October 1880,
Vanity Fair
cartoon (colour litho), in Private Collection © Look and Learn/Peter Jackson Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library; (bottom right) Lord Elcho, by Sir Leslie Ward (‘Spy’), 26 March 1892,
Vanity Fair
cartoon (colour litho), in Private Collection © Look and Learn/Peter Jackson Collection / The Bridgeman Art Library; (bottom left) Sir Edward Tennant, 2 November 1910,
Vanity Fair
cartoon (colour litho), in Private Collection © Look and Learn/Peter Jackson Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library

14
. Arthur Balfour and Mary Charteris, by Lady Ottoline Morrell (vintage snapshot print, 1925) © National Portrait Gallery, London

15
. Pamela Grey, by unknown photographer (sepia-toned vintage bromide print on card mount, mid-1920s) © National Portrait Gallery, London

The correspondence between Mary Elcho and Arthur Balfour lies principally in the Stanway archives, at Stanway House in Gloucestershire, and the Whittingehame archives. Professor Jane Ridley and Clayre Percy have edited a wonderful collection of this correspondence
in
Letters of Arthur Balfour and Lady Elcho
1887
–
1917
(Hamish Hamilton,
1992
). For the reader’s ease, where the letter I have referred to also appears in this published collection, I have referenced it according to the page at which it may be found in the
Letters
.

Where I provide calculations of money values in today’s terms, I provide three values for the sum. For income or wealth: the simple RPI calculation (RPI), the economic status value, which may be described as the ‘prestige value’ of that income or wealth (ESV), and the economic power value, which measures the amount of income or wealth relative to the total output of the economy (EPV). Both these latter calculations are based on GDP, and help to give a better idea of relative wealth within contemporary society. For commodity values I give the real price; the labour value, which is measured by using the relative wage for a worker to buy that commodity; and the income value, which measures the relative average income that would be used to buy the commodity. All calculations are from
www.measuringworth.com
.

1
J. W. Mackail and Guy Wyndham,
Life and Letters of George Wyndham
,
2
vols (Hutchinson,
1925
),
2
.
723
.

1
. Pamela Glenconner, ‘Fantasia – of a London House Closed’, in Pamela Glenconner,
The White Wallet
(T. Fisher Unwin,
1912
), pp.
211
–
12
.

2
. Frances, Lady Horner to Edward Burne-Jones, quoted in Caroline Dakers,
Clouds: The Biography of a Country House
(New Haven and London, Yale University Press,
1993
), p.
163
.

3
. The phrase is that of William Lethaby, the architectural historian, and friend and biographer of Philip Webb, cited in Dakers,
Clouds
, p.
83
.

4
. Percy Wyndham to Pamela Tennant,
7
February
1900
, Glenconner Papers, NRS GD
510
/
1
/
26
.

5
. Pamela Tennant to Percy Wyndham, quoted in Dakers,
Clouds
, pp.
164
–
5.

6
. Pamela Tennant to Percy Wyndham, quoted in ibid., p.
164
.

7
. Ibid.

8
. Mary Elcho to Madeline Wyndham,
18
January
1899
, Stanway Papers.

9
. Ibid
.

10
. Madeline Wyndham to Pamela Tennant,
16
February
1900
, Glenconner Papers, NRS GD
510
/
1
/
26
.

11
. William Howe Downes,
John S. Sargent: His Life and Work
(Thornton Butterworth,
1926
), p.
17
.

12
. James Lomax and Richard Ormond,
John Singer Sargent and the Edwardian Age: An Exhibition Organized Jointly by the Leeds Art Galleries, the National Portrait Gallery, London, and the Detroit Institute of Arts
(Leeds, Leeds Art Galleries,
1979
), p.
53
.

13
. Pamela Tennant to Percy Wyndham, quoted in Dakers,
Clouds
, pp.
164
–
5
.

14
. Arthur Balfour to Mary Elcho,
22
September
1900
, quoted in Jane Ridley and Clayre Percy (eds),
The Letters of Arthur Balfour and Lady Elcho
1885
–
1917
(Hamish Hamilton,
1992
), p.
176
.

15
. Quoted in Downes,
John S. Sargent
, pp.
188
–
9
.

16
. Quoted in ibid
.
, p.
50
.

17
. Quoted in ibid
.
, pp.
109
–
10
.

18
. Quoted in Lomax and Ormond,
John Singer Sargent and the Edwardian Age
, p.
55
.

1
. Constance Leconfield to Madeline Wyndham,
15
March
1909
, Petworth Papers.

2
. Emily Eden,
Miss Eden’s Letters
, ed. Violet Dickinson (Macmillan,
1919
), pp.
250
–
1
n.
423
.

3
. Quoted in Fiona MacCarthy,
The Last Pre-Raphaelite: Edward Burne-Jones and the Victorian Imagination
(Faber & Faber,
2011
), p.
324
.