Edith Vane-Tempest-Stewart, Marchioness of Londonderry

Edith Helen Vane-Tempest-Stewart, Marchioness of Londonderry, DBE (née Chaplin; 3 December 1878 – 23 April 1959) was a noted and influential society hostess in the United Kingdom between World War I and World War II, a friend of the first Labour prime minister, Ramsay MacDonald. She was a noted gardener and a writer and editor of the works of others.

The Most Honourable The Marchioness of Londonderry DBE
Lady Edith Vane-Tempest-Stewart by Philip de László, 1927
Personal details
Born	Edith Helen Chaplin 3 December 1878 Blankney, Lincolnshire, England
Died	23 April 1959 (aged 80) Mount Stewart, County Down, Northern Ireland
Nationality	British
Spouse(s)	Charles Vane-Tempest-Stewart, 7th Marquess of Londonderry ​ ​ (m. 1899; died 1949)​
Children	Lady Maureen Vane-Tempest-Stewart Robin Vane-Tempest-Stewart, 8th Marquess of Londonderry Lady Margaret Vane-Tempest-Stewart Lady Helen Vane-Tempest-Stewart Lady Mairi Vane-Tempest-Stewart
Parents	Henry Chaplin, 1st Viscount Chaplin Lady Florence Sutherland-Leveson-Gower

Early life

Born as Edith Helen Chaplin in Blankney, Lincolnshire, she was the daughter of Henry Chaplin, landowner and Conservative politician and later the 1st Viscount Chaplin (1840–1923), and Lady Florence Sutherland-Leveson-Gower (1855–1881). After the death of her mother in 1881, Edith was raised largely at Dunrobin Castle, Sutherland, the estate of her maternal grandfather, the third Duke of Sutherland.

Public works

Lady Londonderry pictured in the uniform of the Women's Legion

In 1914, after the outbreak of World War I, she was appointed the Colonel-in-Chief of the Women's Volunteer Reserve (WVR), a volunteer force formed of women replacing the men who had left work and gone up to the Front. The WVR was established in December 1914 in response to German bombing raids on East Coast towns during the First World War[1]

Lady Londonderry also aided with the organisation of the Officers' Hospital set up in her house, and was the first woman to be appointed to be a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the Military Division, upon the Order's establishment in 1917.[2]

Lady Londonderry's friendship with Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, although platonic, was a source of gossip in her time and has since become an iconic friendship of English social history.[3]

In 1935 she helped to establish the Women's Gas Council,[4] as its first president,[5] assisted by organising secretary Katherine Halpin.

Circe and the Sirens: Group Portrait of the Hon. Edith Chaplin, Marchioness of Londonderry, and Her Three Youngest Daughters, Charles Edmund Brock.

Characteristically luxuriant planting contained within formally clipped edging

Gardens

When her father-in-law died in 1915, her husband inherited the title, whereupon Edith became Marchioness of Londonderry. This made her chatelaine of several large houses designed for entertaining, notably Londonderry House, the family's London townhouse in Mayfair, and Mount Stewart, the family seat in County Down. They also owned other properties such as Seaham Hall and Wynward Park in County Durham, and Plas Machynlleth in Wales.

During the 1920s, Lady Londonderry created the gardens at the Londonderry family estate of Mount Stewart, near Newtownards, County Down. She added the Shamrock Garden, the Sunken Garden, increased the size of the lake, added a Spanish Garden with a small hut, the Italian Garden, the Dodo Terrace, Menagerie, the Fountain Pool and laid out walks in the Lily Wood and rest of the estate. This dramatic change led to the gardens being proposed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.[6] She was a patron of the botanist and plant collector Frank Kingdon-Ward.[7]

After she created her garden and the death of her husband, she gave the gardens to the National Trust in 1957. They are regarded by Heritage Island as being one of the best gardens in the British Isles.[8]

Personal life

On 28 November 1899, she married Charles Vane-Tempest-Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh. They were both 21. She married into a prominent land-owning and political family. Her husband was a soldier in World War I and is best remembered for his tenure as Secretary of State for Air in the 1930s, preserving the Royal Air Force against cuts, and for his praise of Nazi Germany in the 1930s. He was forced out of the government in 1935 and never returned.[9] Together, they were the parents of five children:

• Lady Maureen Helen Vane-Tempest-Stewart (1900–1942), who married Oliver Stanley.
• Edward Charles Stewart Robert Vane-Tempest-Stewart (1902–1955), who was known as Robin and who became the 8th Marquess of Londonderry. He married Romaine Combe in 1931.
• Lady Margaret Frances Anne Vane-Tempest-Stewart (1910–1966), who married firstly Alan Muntz, and secondly Hugh Falkus.
• Lady Helen Maglona Vane-Tempest-Stewart (1911–1986), who married firstly Edward Jessel, 2nd Baron Jessel, and secondly Dennis Whittington Walsh.
• Lady Mairi Elizabeth Vane-Tempest-Stewart (1921–2009), who married Viscount Bury.

On the death of the 7th Marquess, in 1949, Lady Londonderry became Dowager Marchioness of Londonderry. Lady Londonderry died of cancer on 23 April 1959, aged 80.[10]

Descendants and legacy

One of Lady Londonderry's grandchildren, Annabel Goldsmith, is also a noted London socialite.

A number of gifts received by Lady Londonderry from Queen Mary, Sir Philip Sassoon and others were auctioned at Sotheby's in 2012.[11]

Published works

Lady Londonderry wrote and/or edited several books, among which are:

• Henry Chaplin: A Memoir (1926).[12][lower-alpha 1]
• The Magic Ink-Pot (1928).[13][lower-alpha 2]
• The Russian journals of Martha and Catherine Wilmot : being an account by two Irish ladies of their adventures in Russia as guests of the celebrated Princess Daschkaw, containing vivid descriptions of contemporary court life and society, and lively anecdotes of many interesting historical characters, 1803-1808 (1934).[15][lower-alpha 3]
• Retrospect (1938).[16][lower-alpha 4]
• Frances Anne: The Life and Times of Frances Anne, Marchioness of Londonderry, and Her Husband, Charles, Third Marquess of Londonderry (1958).[17][lower-alpha 5]

Ancestry

Ancestors of Edith Vane-Tempest-Stewart, Marchioness of Londonderry

16. John Chaplin, of Blankney, Lincolnshire 8. Charles Chaplin, of Blankney, Lincolnshire 17. Lady Elizabeth Cecil 4. Reverend Henry Chaplin, of Blankney, Lincolnshire 18. Robert Taylor 9. Elizabeth Taylor 2. Henry Chaplin, 1st Viscount Chaplin 10. William Ellice 5. Carolina Horatia Ellice 1. Edith Vane-Tempest-Stewart, Marchioness of Londonderry 24. George Leveson-Gower, 1st Duke of Sutherland 12. George Sutherland-Leveson-Gower, 2nd Duke of Sutherland 25. Elizabeth Gordon, 19th Countess of Sutherland 6. George Sutherland-Leveson-Gower, 3rd Duke of Sutherland 26. George Howard, 6th Earl of Carlisle 13. Lady Harriet Howard 27. Lady Georgiana Cavendish 3. Lady Florence Sutherland-Leveson-Gower 28. Edward Hay-Mackenzie of Newhall and Cromartie 14. John Hay-Mackenzie 29. The Hon. Maria Murray-Mackenzie 7. Anne Hay-Mackenzie, 1st Countess of Cromartie 30. Sir James Gibson-Craig, 1st Baronet 15. Anne Gibson-Craig 31. Anne Thomson

References

Notes

1. A memoir of her father, who was squire of Blankney and effectively the country's first minister of agriculture.[12]
2. A collection of children's stories with an Ulster flavour.[13][14]
3. Lady Londonderry, with the Ulster barrister H. Montgomery Hyde, edited the letters and journals of Catherine Wilmot and her sister Martha. Catherine had travelled on the Continent with Lord and Lady Mount Cashell, and Martha had spent several years in Russia almost as the adopted daughter of Princess Dashkova, the favourite of Catherine the Great. The society life that the sisters depict is like War and Peace.[15]
4. Lady Londonderry's autobiography.[16]
5. A memoir of Lady Londonderry's husband's great-grandparents.[17]

Sources

1. Noakes, Lucy (2006). Women in the British Army: War and the Gentle Sex. Routledge. p. 53. ISBN 978-0415390576.
2. Urquhart, Diane. "Stewart, Edith Helen Vane-Tempest-". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/45461. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
3. Kershaw, Ian (2004). Making Friends with Hitler: Lord Londonderry and Britain's Road to War. Penguin. pp. 17–19, 65–6, 108, 128. ISBN 0-14-303607-6.
4. Clendinning, Anne (1999). DEMONS AND DOMESTICITY: A HISTORY OF WOMEN AND THE LONDON GAS INDUSTRY, 1889-1939 (PhD Thesis). McMaster University.
5. Doughan, David; Gordon (2014). Dictionary of British Women's Organisations, 1825-1960. Routledge.
6. National Trust: Mount Stewart House, Garden and Temple of the Winds Archived 1 July 2008 at the Wayback Machine
7. "The Constant Gardener". The Australian.
8. Heritage Ireland Newsletter, April 2006, p5 Archived 17 November 2007 at the Wayback Machine
9. Alvin Jackson, 'Stewart, Charles Stewart Henry Vane-Tempest-, seventh marquess of Londonderry (1878–1949)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 accessed 6 Jan 2016
10. De Courcy, Anne. Society's Queen: The Life of Edith, Marchioness of Londonderry. London: Phoenix, 2004. ISBN 0-7538-1730-6 (Originally published as Circe: The Life of Edith, Marchioness of Londonderry. London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1992. ISBN 1-85619-363-2)
11. "Magnificent jewels and noble jewels". sothebys.com. Archived from the original on 16 March 2016. Retrieved 1 February 2016.
12. Vane-Tempest-Stewart, Edith Helen (1926). Henry Chaplin: a memoir. Macmillan.
13. "The Magic Ink-Pot". National Trust. Retrieved 29 May 2018.
14. "The Magic Ink-Pot - National Collection of Children's Books". nccb.tcd.ie. Retrieved 29 May 2018.
15. The Russian journals of Martha and Catherine Wilmot: Being an account by two Irish ladies of their adventures in Russia as guests of the celebrated Princess Daschkaw, containing vivid descriptions of contemporary court life and society, and lively anecdotes of many interesting historical characters, 1803-1808 Edited by the Marchioness of Londonderry & H. Montgomery Hyde.
16. Londonderry, Edith Helen (1938). "Retrospect. [An Autobiography. With Plates, Including Portraits.]".
17. Edith Vane-Tempest-Stewart, Marchioness of Londonderry (1958). "Frances Anne: the life and times of Frances Anne, marchioness of Londonderry, and her husband, Charles, third marquess of Londonderry". London : Macmillan ; New York : St. Martin's Press.

External links

• "Archival material relating to Edith Vane-Tempest-Stewart, Marchioness of Londonderry". UK National Archives.
• National Trust shines light on women's histories to celebrate the anniversary of female suffrage in 2018