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Virginia Surtees

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Virginia Surtees
Photograph of Virginia by Cecil Beaton, 1953
Born
Virginia Bell

(1917-01-09)9 January 1917
London, England
Died22 September 2017(2017-09-22) (aged 100)
London, England
OccupationHistorian
Spouses
​
​
(m. 1937; div. 1960)​
David Craig
​
​
(m. 1960; div. 1962)​
RelativesEvangeline Bruce (sister)
Sir James Dodds (stepfather)
Sir Conyers Surtees (grandfather)
Sir Patrick Ramsay (uncle)

Virginia Surtees (née Bell, formerly Virginia, Lady Clarke and Virginia Craig) (9 January 1917 – 22 September 2017) was a British art historian and author.[1][2]

Early life

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Born in London on 9 January 1917, she was the second daughter of American diplomat Edward Bell (1882–1924) and his second wife, English heiress Etelka Bertha (née Surtees) Bell, whom Virginia did not like.[3] Her elder sister, Evangeline, later married the American diplomat David K. E. Bruce. Her father, who was involved in the reception in 1917 of the Zimmermann telegram, died in Peking while serving as the acting British Minister to China (when Minister Jacob Gould Schurman was back in Washington) in 1924.[4] After the death of her father in 1924, her mother remarried to Sir James Leishman Dodds, a British career diplomat who served as the British Minister to Bolivia, Cuba and the Ambassador to Peru.[5] From her mother's second marriage, she had a younger half-sister, Josephine Leishman Dodds,[6] who married Squadron Leader Hugh Glyn Laurence Arthur Brooking, the King's Messenger, in 1949.[7]

Her maternal grandparents were Brig. Gen. Sir Herbert Conyers Surtees and the former Madeleine Augusta Crabbe (a daughter of Edward Crabbe and Ruth Herbert, artist's model to the English poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti, of whom Virginia later wrote a catalogue of his drawings and watercolours).[8][9] Her aunt Dorothy was married to Sir Patrick Ramsay, the second son of John Ramsay, 13th Earl of Dalhousie and a brother-in-law of Princess Patricia of Connaught (through her husband Sir Alexander Ramsay), a granddaughter of Queen Victoria.[10] On her father's side, she was a grand-niece of the publisher James Gordon Bennett Jr.

When Virginia was young, the family lived in Beijing, and then according to her step-father's international movements.[11][8]

Career

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After her divorces and as an heiress living in London, she concentrated on research in art history, publishing several books and editing several others.[8] Her books included a biography of George Howard, 9th Earl of Carlisle, and his wife, Rosalind Howard, Countess of Carlisle, a biography of Louisa Baring, Lady Ashburton, the Scottish art collector and philanthropist, and a book about the friendship of art critic John Ruskin and Pauline, Lady Trevelyan.[12]

Personal life

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On June 15, 1937, Virginia Bell married the diplomat Henry Ashley Clarke in Tokyo. Clarke was a son of Dr. and Mrs. H. H. R. Clarke of Kent.[13] During their marriage, he was posted to Lisbon and Paris, before he was knighted KCMG in the Queen's Birthday Honours of 1952,[14] and in 1953 became the British Ambassador to Italy in Rome.[15] In 1956, she met David Craig, the general manager in Italy for the British European Airways and began an affair which led to Lady Clarke divorcing Sir Ashley in 1960. She remarried to Craig, but the marriage ended after two years.[12]

Virginia was photographed by Cecil Beaton and was friendly with critic and biographer Percy Lubbock, writer Osbert Sitwell and essayist Max Beerbohm.[12]

Upon the death of her grandmother, Lady Surtees, in 1948, Virginia inherited Mainsforth Hall and, in 1962, changed her surname to Surtees.[16] Until 2014, she lived in a London flat overlooking Onslow Square in South Kensington. She sold her most important works at Christie's in 2014 and bequeathed others to the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Ashmolean Museum and the Fitzwilliam Museum.[17]

Virginia Surtees spend the last years of her life in a Pimlico nursing home. She turned 100 in January 2017, but her health was poor by this point, and biographer Richard Dorment described her as "tired of living"; she eventually chose to stop eating and died on 22 September 2017.[3] She was buried at Mainsforth.[3]

Selected publications

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  • Paintings and Drawings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti: A Catalogue Raisonne - 2 vols. (pub. Oxford University Press, 1971)
  • Sublime & Instructive: Letters From John Ruskin To Louisa, Marchioness Of Waterford, Anna Blunden And Ellen Heaton - editor (Michael Joseph, 1972)
  • Charlotte Canning: Lady in Waiting to Queen Victoria and Wife of the first Viceroy of India, 1817-61 (John Murray, 1975)
  • A Beckford Inheritance: The Lady Lincoln Scandal (Michael Russell, 1977)
  • Reflections of a Friendship: John Ruskin's Letters to Pauline Trevelyan, 1848-1866 - editor (George Allen & Unwin, 1979)
  • The Diaries of George Price Boyce - editor (Real World, 1980)
  • The Diary of Ford Madox Brown - editor (Yale University Press, 1981)
  • The Ludovisi Goddess: Life of Louisa, Lady Ashburton (Michael Russell, 1984)
  • Jane Welsh Carlyle (Michael Russell, 1986)
  • Artist and the Autocrat: George and Rosalind Howard, Earl and Countess of Carlisle (Michael Russell, 1988)
  • A Second Self: Letters of Harriet Granville, 1810-45 - editor (Michael Russell, 1990)
  • Rossetti's Portraits of Elizabeth Siddal: A Catalogue of the Drawings and Watercolours (Scolar Press, 1991)
  • Coutts Lindsay, 1824-1913 (Michael Russell, 1993)
  • The Grace of Friendship: Horace Walpole and the Misses Berry - editor (Michael Russell, 1995)
  • The Actress and the Brewer's Wife. Two Victorian Vignettes (Michael Russell, 1997)

References

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  1. ^ "Virginia Surtees". 1 December 2017 – via www.thetimes.co.uk.
  2. ^ "Virginia Surtees, scholar of Pre-Raphaelite art – obituary". The Telegraph. 25 October 2017 – via www.telegraph.co.uk.
  3. ^ a b c Dorment, Richard (2021). "Surtees [née Bell], Virginia (1917–2017), art historian and biographer". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/odnb/9780198614128.013.90000380362. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  4. ^ "SUDDEN STROKE KILLS EDWARD BELL IN PEKING; Death of the Legation's Charge Shocks Washington -- F.L. Mayer Succeeds Him". The New York Times. 29 October 1924. Retrieved 7 April 2020.
  5. ^ "Dodds, Sir James Leishman, (1891–13 Aug. 1972)". www.ukwhoswho.com. WHO'S WHO & WHO WAS WHO. Retrieved 8 April 2020.
  6. ^ Debrett's Peerage, Baronetage, Knightage, and Companionage. Kelly's Directories. 1973. Retrieved 8 April 2020.
  7. ^ "1947 Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith Hooper Touring Limousine. - www.realcar.co.uk". www.realcar.co.uk. Retrieved 7 April 2020.
  8. ^ a b c Dorment, Richard (5 December 2017). "Virginia Surtees obituary". The Guardian.
  9. ^ Fox-Davies, Arthur Charles (1929–30). Armorial Families (7th ed.). London: Hurst & Blackett. p. 1242.
  10. ^ "Dalhousie, Earl of (S, 1633)". www.cracroftspeerage.co.uk. Heraldic Media Limited. Retrieved 7 April 2020.
  11. ^ Kahn, David (2014). How I Discovered World War II's Greatest Spy and Other Stories of Intelligence and Code. CRC Press. pp. 113–4. ISBN 978-1-4665-6204-2.
  12. ^ a b c Dorment, Richard (5 December 2017). "Virginia Surtees Obituary". The Guardian. Retrieved 9 April 2020.
  13. ^ Scarborough, Nan (16 May 1937). "DIPLOMAT TO WED MISS VIRGINIA BELL; Daughter of the Late Edward Bell of New York Will Be Bride of H. A. Clarke GERARD ATTENDS PARTY Overseas Visitors in London Are Guests at Reception Given by English-Speaking Union". The New York Times. Retrieved 7 April 2020.
  14. ^ "No. 39555". The London Gazette (Supplement). 5 June 1952. p. 3011.
  15. ^ "Sir Ashley Clarke, Former British Ambassador, 90". The New York Times. 24 January 1994. Retrieved 9 April 2020.
  16. ^ "Personal and Literary Papers of Virginia Surtees". Durham County Record Office. 15 December 2016.
  17. ^ "ROSSETTI SCHOLAR VIRGINIA SURTEES TO SELL COLLECTION AT CHRISTIE'S" (PDF). www.christies.com. Christie's. 17 June 2014. Retrieved 9 April 2020.
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