30. Mary Elcho to Hugo Elcho, 14 August 1887, Stanway Papers.
31. Mary Elcho to Hugo Elcho, December 1886, quoted in Ellenberger, ‘The Souls: High Society and Politics’, p. 201.
32. Laura Lyttelton to Lady Frances Balfour, 9 October [1885], Whittingehame Papers, NRS GD433/2/477 f. 10:13r.
33. Ibid.; and see also Laura Lyttelton to Arthur Balfour, n.d. [c.1885], Whittingehame Papers, NRS GD433/2/477 f. 8r, in which Laura declined, on behalf of herself and Mary, Arthur’s suggestion that they dine at the New Club, with Hugo Elcho and Arthur Lyttelton out of town: ‘dear Mr. Arthur I wd not go to the new Club anyhow with the awful protection of 10 Alfreds & 15 Hugos because it is full of gratuituous gossip & I think it wd be idiotic …’.
34. Mary Elcho to Madeline Wyndham, 3 June 1885, Stanway Papers.
35. Laura Lyttelton to Lady Frances Balfour, 9 October [1885], Whittingehame Papers, NRS GD433/2/477. f. 10.13r.
36. Madeline Wyndham to Mary Elcho, May 1885, Stanway Papers.
37. Mary Elcho to Madeline Wyndham, 3 June 1885, Stanway Papers.
38. Ellenberger, ‘The Souls: High Society and Politics’, p. 244.
39. Laura Lyttelton to Lady Frances Balfour, n.d. [autumn 1885], Whittingehame Papers, NRS GD433/2/477/4 f. 17r.
40. Madeline Wyndham to Mary Elcho, August 1885, Stanway Papers.
41. Madeline Wyndham to Mary Elcho, 10 August 1885, Stanway Papers.
42. Mary Elcho to Madeline Wyndham, n.d. [August 1885], Stanway Papers.
43. Laura Lyttelton to Lady Frances Balfour, n.d. [autumn 1885], Whittingehame Papers, NRS GD433/2/477/4 f. 17r.
Chapter 6: Clouds
1. Quoted in Dakers, Clouds, p. 81.
2. Ibid.
3. Georgiana Burne-Jones to Mary Elcho, November 1885, quoted in Dakers, Clouds, p. 81.
4. Dakers, Clouds, p. 225.
5. Ibid., p. 106.
6. Ibid., p. 104.
7. Ibid., pp. 87–9.
8. Percy Wyndham to Mary Elcho, September 1886, quoted in ibid., p. 82.
9. Quoted in Dakers, Clouds, p. 81.
10. Asquith, Haply I May Remember, pp. 40–1.
11. The auction was of the collection of William Graham, Frances Horner’s father and an eminent art collector. In fact, the painting was by Pseudo Pier Francesco Fiorentino. This was only discovered later. Dakers, Clouds, p. 142.
12. Ibid., p. 94.
13. Pamela Adeane, daughter of Madeline and Charles Adeane, quoted in ibid., p. 91.
14. Dakers, Clouds, p. 130.
15. Wemyss, Family Record, pp. 20–1.
16. Asquith, Haply I May Remember, pp. 40–1.
17. Madeline Wyndham to Pamela Tennant, 19 August 1897, Glenconner Papers, NRS GD510/1/26 f. 33r.
18. Mackail and Wyndham, Life and Letters, 1.31.
19. Dakers, Clouds, p. 81.
20. Ibid., p. 119.
21. Ibid., p. 107.
22. Percy Wyndham to Philip Webb, c.January 1886, quoted in ibid., p. 82.
23. Quoted in Dakers, Clouds, p. 83.
24. Ibid., p. 81.
25. Violet Bradby, A Family Chronicle, quoted in ibid., p. 116.
26. Madeline Adeane to Mary Elcho, 18 December 1885, Stanway Papers.
27. Dakers, Clouds, p. 119.
28. Fiona MacCarthy, ‘Lethaby, William Richard (1857–1931)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/34503, accessed 22 October 2013].
29. Wemyss, Family Record, pp. 21–2.
30. Madeline Adeane to Mary Elcho, 16 September (1883), Stanway Papers.
31. Dakers, Clouds, p. 94; Asquith, Haply I May Remember, p. 42.
32. Mary Elcho to Evelyn de Vesci, 24 September 1889, De Vesci Papers, DD/DRU/87/3.
33. Mary Elcho to Madeline Wyndham, 15 September 1884, Stanway Papers.
34. Pamela Glenconner, The Earthen Vessel: A Volume Dealing with Spirit-Communication Received in the Form of Book-Tests (New York, John Lane, 1921), p. 138.
35. Walburga, Lady Paget, In my Tower, 2 vols (Hutchinson, 1924), 1.5–6.
36. Samuel Hynes, The Edwardian Turn of Mind: First World War and English Culture (Pimlico, 1991), pp. 134–5.
37. Ibid., p. 139.
38. Ibid.
39. Madeline Wyndham to Mary Elcho, September 1884, Stanway Papers.
40. Glenconner, The Earthen Vessel, pp. 136–7.
41. Dakers, Clouds, p. 78.
42. Ibid., p. 105.
43. Angela Lambert, Unquiet Souls: The Indian Summer of the British Aristocracy (Macmillan, 1984), p. 144.
44. Ibid.
45. Madeline Wyndham to Mary Elcho, c.September 1884, Stanway Papers.
46. Percy Wyndham to Mary Elcho, 14 March 1892, Stanway Papers.
47. Petworth Papers; Jeremy Musson, Up and Down Stairs (John Murray, 2009), pp. 148–9.
48. Ibid., p. 245. Horne’s memoir was splendidly titled What the Butler Winked At (T. Werner Laurie, 1923), confirmation for suspicious employers of just how much their staff knew about their most intimate lives.
49. Dakers, Clouds, p. 107.
Chapter 7: The Birth of the Souls
1. Marquand, Britain since 1918, p. 32.
2. White, London in the Nineteenth Century, p. 375.
3. Marquand, Britain since 1918, p. 58.
4. Mary Elcho to Hugo Elcho, n.d., Stanway Papers.
5. Mary Elcho to Hugo Elcho, 28 January 1886, Stanway Papers.
6. See Mary Elcho to Madeline Wyndham, 21 March 1885 and 6 January 1886, Stanway Papers. The Cadogan Square house was originally numbered 36, and then renumbered 62 as the square expanded. Hugo’s initial objection – that the house did not come with stables – was overcome when Mary found stables nearby that the Elchos could buy.
7. Mary Elcho to Madeline Wyndham, 20 March 1883, Stanway Papers.
8. Mary Elcho to Madeline Wyndham, 7 February 1886, Stanway Papers.
9. White, London in the Nineteenth Century, p. 376.
10. Mary Elcho to Madeline Wyndham, dated 7 February 1886 (in fact, the riots were on 8 February), Stanway Papers.
11. Mary Elcho to Madeline Wyndham, 21 February 1886, Stanway Papers.
12. Mary Elcho to Arthur Balfour, 1 February 1906 (Letters, p. 231).
13. Mary Elcho to Hugo Elcho, 27 February 1886, Stanway Papers.
14. Mary Elcho to Madeline Wyndham, 21 February 1886, Stanway Papers.
15. Laura Lyttelton to Arthur Balfour, 2 April 1886, Whittingehame Papers, NRS GD433/2/479/1 f. 6r.
16. Margot Asquith to Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, 10 and 28 May 1906, 27 January 1911, quoted in Longford, Pilgrimage of Passion, p. 375.
17. Mary Elcho, diary entry, 24 April 1886, Stanway Papers.
18. Laura Lyttelton to Arthur Balfour, 2 April 1886, Whittingehame Papers, NRS GD433/2/479/1 f. 6r.
19. Asquith, An Autobiography, 1.63–4.
20. Spencer Lyttelton to Mary Gladstone, 22 April 1886, quoted in Ellenberger, ‘The Souls: High Society and Politics’, p. 54.
21. Mary Elcho to Madeline Wyndham, 26 April 1886, Stanway Papers.
22. Quoted in Ridley and Percy (eds), Letters of Arthur Balfour and Lady Elcho, p. 24.
23. Mary Elcho to Arthur Balfour, 8 May 1886 (Letters, pp. 24–5).
24. Ellenberger, ‘The Souls: High Society and Politics’, p. 54.
25. Ibid.
26. Mary Elcho to Arthur Balfour, 8 May 1886 (Letters, pp. 24–5).
27. Wheatcroft, The Strange Death of Tory England, p. 33; Marquand, Britain since 1918, p. 57; James, Aristocrats, p. 337.
28. Asquith, An Autobiography, 1.203–4.
29. Ibid., 1.207.
30. Ibid.
31. Asquith, An Autobiography, 1.217; 2.14–15.
32. Robert Blake, quoted in Ellenberger, ‘The Souls: High Society and Politics’, p. 1.
33. Frances Horner, Times Remembered, quoted in ibid., p. 5.
34. Quoted in Blow, Broken Blood
, p. 202.
35. Quoted in Longford, Pilgrimage of Passion, p. 297.
36. Mary Elcho to Hugo Elcho, 28 October 1886, Stanway Papers.
37. Quoted in Abdy and Gere, The Souls, p. 12.
38. Arthur Balfour to Mary Elcho, 29 April 1890 (Letters, p. 69).
39. Abdy and Gere, The Souls, p. 11.
40. See MacCarthy, The Last Pre-Raphaelite, p. 478. Burne-Jones described Poynter, his brother-in-law, as filled with ‘dull excellencies’.
41. Cynthia Asquith, quoted in Abdy and Gere, The Souls, p. 108.
42. Quoted in ibid., p. 11.
43. Ibid., p. 12.
44. Lambert, Unquiet Souls, p. 93.
45. Nancy Waters Ellenberger, ‘The Souls and London “Society” at the End of the Nineteenth Century’, Victorian Society 25:2 (Winter 1982): 133–60, 146 n. 43; Robert, Lord Vansittart, The Mist Procession: The Autobiography of Lord Vansittart (Hutchinson, 1958), p. 90.
46. Edith Lyttelton, quoted in Ellenberger, ‘The Souls: High Society and Politics’, p. 83.
47. Ellenberger, ‘The Souls: High Society and Politics’, p. 5, and ‘The Souls and London “Society”’, p. 133; see also Abdy and Gere, The Souls, p. 10.
48. Arthur Balfour to Mary Elcho, [10 April] 1890 (Letters, pp. 67–8); also quoted in Ellenberger, ‘The Souls: High Society and Politics’, p. 84.
49. Mary Elcho, diaries, 30 May 1887, Stanway Papers.
50. Ibid., 20, 25 June 1887.
51. Ellenberger, ‘The Souls: High Society and Politics’, p. 85.
52. Lady Sibyl Lubbock, quoted in Abdy and Gere, The Souls, p. 169.
53. Quoted in ibid., p. 15.
54. Ridley and Percy (eds), Letters of Arthur Balfour and Lady Elcho, p. 19; Blanche Dugdale, Family Homespun (John Murray, 1940), pp. 72–3.
55. Lady Frances Balfour to Lady Betty Balfour, June 1889, Whittingehame Papers, NRS GD433/2/301.
56. Mary Elcho to Ettie Grenfell, 19 November 1890, Desborough Papers, HALS DE/Rv/C477.
57. Mary Elcho to Ettie Grenfell, n.d. [c.1929], Desborough Papers, HALS DE/Rv/C477/101.
58. See, for example, Arthur Balfour to Mary Elcho, 28 February [1894] (Letters, p. 102), and Mary Elcho to Arthur Balfour, 15 May 1895 (Letters, pp. 124–5).
59. Margot Asquith, Off the Record (Frederick Muller, 1944), p. 52.
60. Ellenberger, ‘Constructing George Wyndham’, p. 497.
61. Elizabeth, Countess of Fingall, Seventy Years Young: Memories of Elizabeth, Countess of Fingall (Dublin, The Lilliput Press, 1991), p. 273.
62. Quoted in Egremont, The Cousins, p. 141.
63. Paget, In my Tower, 1.110.
64. Fingall, Seventy Years Young, p. 271.
65. Abdy and Gere, The Souls, p. 92.
66. For an account of the episode see Egremont, The Cousins, pp. 78–9.
67. Alfred Lyttelton to Mary Gladstone, 31 December 1886, quoted in Ellenberger, ‘The Souls: High Society and Politics’, pp. 62–3.
Chapter 8: The Summer of 1887
1. Mary Elcho to Hugo Elcho, 13 January 1887, Stanway Papers.
2. Ibid.
3. Ridley and Percy (eds), Letters of Arthur Balfour and Lady Elcho, p. 17.
4. Mary Elcho to Hugo Elcho, 12 January 1887, Stanway Papers.
5. Mary Elcho to Hugo Elcho, 13 January 1887, Stanway Papers.
6. The Times, 8 February 1887.
7. Dakers, Clouds, p. 119.
8. Ibid.
9. Patrick Jackson, ‘Sir George Trevelyan’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
10. Lambert, Unquiet Souls, p. 59; Ridley and Percy (eds), Letters of Arthur Balfour and Lady Elcho, p. 33.
11. For the suggestion, see Adams, The Last Grandee, p. 71. However, there does not appear to be an example in print of this phrase until Eric Partridge’s Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (George Routledge, 1937), which would make it surprising if the phrase really dated back to 1887.
12. Mackail and Wyndham, Life and Letters, p. 37.
13. Adams, The Last Grandee, p. 76.
14. Mary Elcho to Arthur Balfour, 8 December 1921, Whittingehame Papers, NRS GD433/2/229/1 f. 29.
15. Mary Elcho to Arthur Balfour, 7 March 1929 (Letters, p. 353).
16. Quoted in Davenport-Hines, Ettie, p. 62.
17. Quoted in Longford, Pilgrimage of Passion, p. 297.
18. Arthur Balfour to Lady Frances Balfour, 6 March 1887, quoted in Ridley and Percy (eds), Letters of Arthur Balfour and Lady Elcho, pp. 33–4.
19. Mary Elcho, diary entry, 8 July 1887, Stanway Papers.
20. Mary Elcho to Madeline Wyndham, 4 July 1887, Stanway Papers.
21. Mary Elcho to Hugo Elcho, 12 August 1887, Stanway Papers.
22. Mary Elcho to Hugo Elcho, 26 August 1887, Stanway Papers.
23. Mary Elcho to Hugo Elcho, 12 August 1887, Stanway Papers.
24. Mary Elcho to Hugo Elcho, 29 August 1887, Stanway Papers.
25. Asquith, An Autobiography, 2.83.
26. Abdy and Gere, The Souls, p. 145.
27. Quoted in Longford, Pilgrimage of Passion, p. 303.
28. Mary Elcho to Hugo Elcho, 18 August 1887, Stanway Papers.
29. Ibid.
30. Marie Adeane married, in 1891, Sir Bernard Mallet. Her recollections of her life with Queen Victoria were published under her married name.
31. Mary Elcho to Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, 27 March 1899, Blunt Papers, FM 492-1975.
32. MA vol 10.
33. Madeline jokingly adopted the name herself: see her signature in a letter to Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, 21 February 1901, Blunt Papers, FM 258-1975.
34. Madeline Adeane to Madeline Wyndham, 19 August 1899, Adeane Papers.
35. Madeline Adeane to Madeline Wyndham, 15 November 1887, Adeane Papers.
36. Hibbert, Queen Victoria, p. 467.
37. Mary Elcho to Hugo Elcho, 18 August 1887, Stanway Papers; Pamela Tennant to Mary Elcho, 27 September 1903, Stanway Papers.
38. Hugo Elcho to Mary Elcho, 29 August 1887, Stanway Papers.
39. Hugo was born on 25 August 1857, making him just short of five years older than Mary. Charles Adeane was born on 2 November 1863, making him about five and a half years older than Mananai, born on 31 March 1869.
40. Charles Adeane to Madeline Wyndham, 29 August 1887, Adeane Papers.
41. Percy Wyndham to Mary Elcho, 18 May 1888, Stanway Papers.
42. Quoted in Brendan, Decline and Fall, p. 295.
43. Ibid.
44. Tynan Hinkson, Years of the Shadow, p. 256.
45. See Constance Leconfield to Madeline Wyndham, 30 March 1898, 7 April 1898, Petworth Papers.
46. Longford, Pilgrimage of Passion, pp. 228–9.
47. Quoted in ibid., p. 246.
48. Quoted in Dakers, Clouds, pp. 126–7.
49. Quoted in Longford, Pilgrimage of Passion, p. 247.
50. Ibid.
51. Quoted in Lambert, Unquiet Souls, p. 62.
52. Mary Elcho to Hugo Elcho, 3 September 1887, Stanway Papers.
53. Lambert, Unquiet Souls, p. 63.
54. Madeline Adeane to Madeline Wyndham, 15 November 1887, Adeane Papers.
55. Madeline Adeane to Madeline Wyndham, 10 November 1887, Adeane Papers.
56. White, London in the Nineteenth Century, pp. 377–9.
57. Brendon, Decline and Fall, p. 295.
58. Arthur Balfour to Mary Elcho, 24 December 1887 (Letters, p. 46).
59. Pamela Tennant to Mary Elcho, 13 August 1888, Stanway Papers.
60. Longford, Pilgrimage of Passion, pp. 259–61.
61. Quoted in ibid., p. 252.
62. Quoted in Egremont, The Cousins, p. 130; Lambert, Unquiet Souls, p. 63.
63. Longford, Pilgrimage of Passion, p. 261.
Chapter 9: Mananai
1. Pamela Tennant to Mary Elcho, Good Friday (30 March 1888), Stanway Papers.
2. Percy Wyndham to Mary Elcho, 30 March 1888, Stanway Papers.
3. Madeline Adeane to Mary Elcho, 26 Novemb
er 1887, Adeane Papers.
4. Percy Wyndham to Mary Elcho, 18 May 1888, Stanway Papers.
5. Ibid.
6. Modern Society, 4 August 1888, Adeane Papers.
7. Charles Adeane to Madeline Wyndham, 26 July 1888, Adeane Papers.
8. Madeline Adeane to Mary Elcho, 1 August 1888, Stanway Papers.
9. Madeline Adeane to Madeline Wyndham, 4 August 1888, Adeane Papers.
10. Charles Adeane to Madeline Wyndham, 26 July 1888, Adeane Papers.
11. Madeline Adeane to Madeline Wyndham, 12 August 1888, Adeane Papers.
12. Madeline Adeane to George Wyndham, 25 August 1888, George Wyndham Papers.
13. George Wyndham to Madeline Adeane, 31 August 1888, quoted in Mackail and Wyndham, Life and Letters, 1.226.
14. Madeline Adeane to George Wyndham, 25 August 1888, George Wyndham Papers.
15. Marie Mallet, Life with Queen Victoria: Marie Mallet’s Letters from Court 1887–1901, ed. Victor Mallet (John Murray, 1968), p. xiv; Madeline Adeane to Mary Elcho, 27 March 1889, Stanway Papers.
16. Madeline Adeane to Percy Wyndham, 8 October 1889, Adeane Papers.
17. Madeline Adeane to Madeline Wyndham, 28 March 1889, Adeane Papers.
18. Charles Adeane to Madeline Wyndham, 6 September 1893, Adeane Papers.
19. Madeline Adeane to Madeline Wyndham, 17 July 1889, Adeane Papers.
Chapter 10: Conflagration
1. Pamela Tennant to Mary Elcho, 17 September 1893, Stanway Papers.
2. Percy Wyndham to Mary Elcho, 8 March 1887, Stanway Papers.
3. Pamela Tennant to Mary Elcho, 21 September 1888, Stanway Papers.
4. Ibid.
5. Dakers, Clouds, p. 134.
6. Mary Elcho to Lady Frances Balfour, 21 January 1889, Whittingehame Papers, NRS GD433/2/301 f. 11r.
7. Dakers, Clouds, p. 130.
8. Ibid., p. 131.
9. Wemyss, Family Record, p. 23.
10. Olivier, Four Victorian Ladies, p. 89.
11. Ridley and Percy (eds), Letters of Arthur Balfour and Lady Elcho, p. 58.
12. Abdy and Gere, The Souls, pp. 160–1; and see Mary Elcho to Arthur Balfour, 3 April 1905 (Letters, p. 221).
13. Mary Elcho to Arthur Balfour, 23 January 1889 (Letters, p. 56).
14. Ibid. (Letters, p. 55).
15. Mary Elcho to Arthur Balfour, 13 January 1889 (Letters, p. 55).
16. Mary Elcho to Arthur Balfour, 23 January 1889 (Letters, p. 56).
Those Wild Wyndhams Page 42
