http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-41159
Frances Anne, Marchioness of Londonderry
(1800 - 1865)
K. D. Reynolds
https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/41159
This version: 03 January 2008
Frances Anne Vane, marchioness of Londonderry (1800 - 1865)
by Simon Jacques Rochard
private collection. Photograph: Photographic Survey, Courtauld Institute of Art, London
Vane, Frances Anne, marchioness of Londonderry (1800 1865), society hostess and businesswoman, was born on 17 January 1800 in St James's Square, London, the only child of Sir Henry (Harry) Vane-Tempest, baronet (1771 1813), and his wife, Anne Catherine MacDonnell, in her own right countess of Antrim (d. 1834).
Disappointed in their hopes of a son, her parents neglected Lady Frances Anne: she recalled in 1848 that 'Never was any child so harshly treated as I was by my Father, Mother, and Governess. I met with nothing but cuffs and abuse' (Frances Anne, 14). At the same time the child had impressed upon her by servants and other relations, particularly her aunt Frances Taylor, a sense of her position as the heir to the family fortunes of some 60,000 a year. The mixture of flattery and abuse, fawning and neglect, inevitably damaged her character, and she became by her own account 'sly, artful, and deceiving'; haughty arrogance, which was to be her defining characteristic, also became ingrained.
The death of her father brought her into possession of vast estates in co. Durham but also into conflict with her mother. Hence Frances Anne was made a ward in chancery, and at thirteen was given her own establishment and had her first love affair (with the brother of a suitor of her mother). By the time she was sixteen she had been the object of proposals from Lord O'Neil (twice her age) and the duke of Leinster, who had travelled over from Ireland specifically to inspect the heiress.
In 1818 she met Charles William Stewart, Baron Stewart (1778 1854) [see Vane, Charles William], heir presumptive to his half-brother Robert Stewart, then Viscount Castlereagh and from 1821 second marquess of Londonderry. Stewart, a forty-year-old widower with a young son, was ambassador in Vienna, and had a reputation as a ladies' man. Lady Antrim encouraged the relationship, but Mrs Taylor (the other guardian) opposed it. Only after the case was heard in the court of chancery did the marriage go ahead, on 3 April 1819.
It was an ideal match. Frances Anne's pride met its equal in her ultra-conservative husband, and he revelled in the vast wealth and territorial power which the match brought him. (In 1829 he changed his own surname to Vane to reflect the importance of the connection.)
In Vienna, Lady Stewart flaunted her wealth - especially her ever-increasing collection of jewellery - and her new position, to the amusement of some and the disgust of others. Mrs Bradford, the wife of the embassy chaplain, described the couple: 'She, decked out like the Queen of Golconda seated on a Sofa, receives you with freezing pomp and the atmosphere which surrounds her is awful and chilling. He is her most humble slave' (More Letters from Martha Wilmot, 35).
The pride of the Stewarts offended people more important than Mrs Bradford: the Austrian imperial family refused for some time to have social contact with the embassy after they offended against court protocol. But another emperor, Alexander I of Russia, was greatly taken with Lady Stewart on their first meeting in November 1820, and when they met again in 1822, after the successive deaths of Stewart's father and brother, the relationship between the new Lady Londonderry and the tsar, pursued at the congress of Verona, became the talk of Europe. The congress, however, saw the end of Londonderry's ambassadorial career, and they returned to England in 1823.
Londonderry's political career faltered henceforward: his extreme toryism even alienated him from the duke of Wellington. But the couple maintained a glittering presence in London, where they entertained the Conservative aristocracy and political aspirants at Holdernesse House on Park Lane, and devoted themselves to the maintenance of their interest at Mount Stewart in co. Down, and at Wynyard Park and Seaham Hall in co. Durham, all of which properties they either purchased or substantially remodelled at great expense: Wynyard Park was remodelled by Philip Wyatt at a cost of some 147,000, only to burn down partially in 1841 and be rebuilt by Bonomi with the expenditure of a further 40,000.
After the death of her mother, Lady Londonderry inherited further property in co. Antrim, where she built herself a retreat, Garron Tower. The couple's income was huge, and was enhanced by the dramatic expansion of their industrial interests.
Their family, too, was large: after an early miscarriage in 1819, Frances Anne had had a son in Vienna on 26 April 1821. He was followed by a daughter in 1822, another miscarriage, and two more sons and three daughters, one of whom died as an infant.
Her youngest child [Ernest] was born in February 1836; five months later the Londonderrys travelled to Russia via Berlin, where they spent several months before returning via Warsaw in April 1837. Lady Londonderry's vivid account of what was then a most unusual holiday destination for British aristocrats was eventually published in 1973. In her own lifetime she published her account of two further journeys as Narrative of a Visit to the Courts of Vienna, Constantinople, Athens, Naples, etc (1844).
[PB: I have downloaded a pdf of A Journal of a Three Months' Tour of Portugal, Spain, Africa &c, (1842). The journey lasted September 1839 - January 1840. "The object of publishing this Volume is to contribute the Profits towards the projected erection of an Infirmary, on a small scale, at Seaham Harbour, in the County of Durham." In EJBA as "frances_vt_journalofthreemo00lond.pdf". It's a good read. Notice the (very) long list of subscribers at the start, a suggestion of the extent of her social network: it is headed by Queen Victoria and her family, with numerous aristocrats and other dignitaries from across the UK, but with many local names. Source: ?]
While her husband was alive, Lady Londonderry was, if not typical of her class, then at least an exaggerated caricature of it: autocratic, extravagant, and proud, she was Jane Austen's Lady Catherine de Bourgh made flesh.
It was in her widowhood that she finally came into her own, in all senses of that phrase, and she rapidly took control of the empire she had brought to the Londonderry family after her husband's death on 6 March 1854. Far from handing control of the huge coalmining and coal-shipping concern that was the basis of her fortune over to her sons or agents, and retiring into obscurity, Lady Londonderry soon established herself at Seaham Hall as the active and effective head of the business. Benjamin Disraeli, who had been something of a protege of hers, visited her at Seaham in 1861, and described her life:
on the shores of the German Ocean [North Sea], surrounded by her collieries and her blast furnaces and her railroads and the unceasing telegraphs, with a port hewn out of the solid rock, screw steamers and four thousand pitmen under her control - she has a regular office - and here she transacts, with innumerable agents, immense business - and I remember her five-and-twenty years ago a mere fine lady; nay, the finest in London! But one must find excitement if one has brains.
Letters Londonderry, 268
In addition to the business enterprises, Lady Londonderry was active in the electoral politics of the county and city of Durham; her contributions to the election funds of Conservative candidates and the scale of her local commercial and industrial operations gave her an authoritative voice in the process. She was likewise active in providing Anglican churches and schools, especially in Seaham, a town which had come into existence solely to serve the Londonderrys' industrial interests.
She spent the summers at Garron Tower in co. Antrim, where she continued to entertain in the grand style, and where she took an active and admonitory interest in the agricultural practices of her tenants. Unlike most women of the period, she regularly addressed large gatherings of her tenants and employees, delivering speeches at tenants' dinners and at the huge fetes held for the Durham colliers.
Frances Anne Londonderry did not inspire affection, but she earned the respect which she required. Some of her family proved troublesome: her eldest daughter, Frances (d. 1899), married the seventh duke of Marlborough, and the second, Alexandrina (1823 1879), who was named after the tsar of Russia, became countess of Portarlington, but the youngest daughter, Lady Adelaide (d. 1882), disgraced the family by eloping with her brother's tutor. The eldest son, George (1821 - 1884), was inoffensive enough, and succeeded his half-brother as fifth marquess of Londonderry in 1872.
But Lord Ernest (1836 1885) fell in with a press-gang, and had to be bought a commission in the army, from which he was subsequently cashiered. And Lord Adolphus (1825 1864), who was his mother's favourite child and the member for North Durham, married Lady Susan Pelham-Clinton against her family's wishes, became insane, and had to be medically restrained. His death in 1864 was a great blow to Lady Londonderry.
Having suffered for some years from liver disease and an 'enfeebled heart', Lady Londonderry died on 20 January 1865 at Seaham Hall, and was buried in the family vault in the parish church at Long Newton, co. Durham, bedecked in her turquoise rings. Her personal estate was probated at under £400,000 in England (Londonderry had left her a life interest in the estates and houses which she had brought to the marriage), and under £25,000 in Ireland. Her will included a careful catalogue of her jewels, which were to be distributed among her family strictly according to her instructions.
Appointing her son to the Order of St Patrick in 1874, Disraeli recalled her as 'a grande dame who was kind to me when a youth, though she was a tyrant in her way' (Letters Bradford, 1.74 5).
Sources
Edith, marchioness of Londonderry, Frances Anne (1958)
K. D. Reynolds, Aristocratic women and political society in Victorian Britain (1998)
Letters from Benjamin Disraeli to Frances Anne, marchioness of Londonderry, 1837 1861, ed. Edith, marchioness of Londonderry (1938)
The Russian journal of Lady Londonderry, ed. W. A. L. Seaman and J. R. Sewell (1973)
Letters of Disraeli to Lady Bradford and Lady Chesterfield, ed. marquis of Zetland, 2 vols. (1929)
The Creevey papers, ed. J. Gore, rev. edn (1963)
More letters from Martha Wilmot, ed. Edith, marchioness of Londonderry and H. M. Hyde (1935)
Burke, Peerage (1901)
d. cert.
will
CGPLA Eng. & Wales (1865)
CGPLA Ire. (1865)
Archives
Durham RO, corresp. and papers
PRONI, corresp. and papers, travel journal
Likenesses
T. Lawrence, oils, 1818, repro. in Londonderry, Frances Anne; priv. coll.
J. Ender, drawing, 1820, repro. in Londonderry, Frances Anne; priv. coll.
T. Lawrence, double portrait, oils (with her son), repro. in Londonderry, Frances Anne; priv. coll.
S. J. Rochard, miniature, priv. coll. [see illus.]
portrait (in middle age), repro. in Londonderry, Frances Anne; priv. coll.
portraits, repro. in Londonderry, Frances Anne
Wealth at Death
under 400,000: probate, 7 June 1865, CGPLA Eng. & Wales
under 25,000: probate, 22 June 1865, CGPLA Ire.
See also
Vane [formerly Stewart], Charles William, third marquess of Londonderry (1778 1854), army officer and diplomatist
Stewart, Robert, Viscount Castlereagh and second marquess of Londonderry (1769 1822), politician
External resources
Bibliography of British and Irish History
Copyright, Oxford University Press 2017.
