MARY
Lady JEUNE
later Lady St Helier
Susan
Marie Elizabeth STEWART-MACKENZIE (1849-1931)
With
no real court influence in the decades of Queen Victoria’s withdrawal from society
after Prince Albert’s death in 1861 the social life of London had come to be
led by its society hostesses. Under their watchful eye, old aristocracy,
intelligence, colonial money, industrial wealth and political power rubbed
shoulders in conversation, ideas, gossip and wit.
Queen Victoria,
Scottiche Widow
One of
the younger leaders of London society was Mary Jeune. She was born Susan Marie
Elizabeth Stewart-Mackenzie, of the Seaforth family of Lewis and Brahan Castle,
widow of Colonel Stanley and mother of his two young girls, and from 1881 the
wife of barrister Francis Henry Jeune (1843-1905). She was an energetic and well connected hostess, busy magazine writer and
indefatigable charity worker. A
contemporary American wrote: “Fortunate were those who, visiting London,
took with them a letter of introduction to Lady Jeune, who on her husband's
elevation to the peerage became Lady St. Helier. The daughter of an ancient but
impoverished Highland family, she had been brought up like a Spartan child in
austerity and simplicity, with little foretaste or foresight of the ascendency
which she was to achieve as much through her personality and natural gifts as
through her aristocratic connections. She more than anybody else fused and
liberalized London society, leading it out of the ruts of rank and class into a
fellowship with art and letters, and surprising both elements by the results of
her tact and magnetism. An introduction to her became a passport to many social
privileges. May I attempt a picture of
her? — A girl in figure, simply dressed, and fresh as her own heather, with
large and beautiful eyes, which might be likened to one of her native lochs in
their changing moods, now full, cool, and placid, as in calm and shadow, then
as a loch swept by wind and sun, luminous, shimmering and dancing with, in her
case, a sort of mischievous and communicative humour. She brought dissimilar
elements together, and, as by magic, turned them into affinities. Under her
spell the shyest put off their reserve, and the lofty their aloofness. Nor was
she merely a mistress of social arts. It
was her privilege to be admitted to conferences of the leaders of public
opinion at which no other women were present. Her intellectual and politicial
influence was as great as the charm which made her salon so brilliant.”
Mary Jeune’s dinner parties became legendary. As a hostess, she enjoyed
bringing people together and encouraging them to talk freely on all sorts of subjects.
She made sure that there were never too many around the table, and the food was
light and tasty –a la Russe- instead of the heavy ill-cooked
ill-considered banquets which had been such a trial of stamina in the past.
Above all, she could be relied upon to introduce sparkling and interesting
women to match her own conversational talents and those of her chosen male
guests. As lions among the men around
her table she might place Thomas Hardy (who stayed at her house when in
London), Russell Lowell, Matthew Arnold, Robert Browning, Oscar Wilde and
Joseph Chamberlain.
Thomas Hardy 1840-1928 James
Russell Lowell 1819-1891
West country novelist and moralist U.S. poet, critic, editor, and
diplomat.
Matthew Arnold 1822-1888 Robert
Browning 1812-1889
poet and cultural critic poet and playwright
Oscar Wilde 1854-1900 Joseph
Chamberlain 1836-1914
Irish dramatist, poet, talker and wit Wealthy radical
businessman-politician
Mary Ward 1851-1920 Mona Caird 1852-1932
Jennie Churchill 1854-1921
Women at Mary Jeune’s table might include Matthew Arnold’s Tasmania-born
neice the writer Mrs Humphry Ward, the lively, gentle Mona Caird, or witty Americans
like Jennie Jerome Churchill "Treat your friends as you do your
pictures, and place them in their best light." “We owe something to extravagance, for
thrift and adventure seldom go hand in hand” or Pearl Craigie (1867-1906) "There
is no such thing as everybody -that is a
newspaper vulgarism. One is either a somebody or a nobody -irrespective of rank or profession”.
Mary Ward wrote of those days: “In
the following year, 1885, I remember a long conversation on the Gordon
catastrophe with Mr. Chamberlain at Lady Jeune's. It was evident, I thought,
that his mind was greatly exercised by the whole story of that disastrous
event. He went through it from step to step, ending up deliberately, but with a
sigh, "I have never been able to see, from day to day, and I do not
see now, how the Ministry could have taken any other course than that they did
take." Yet the recently
published biography of Sir Charles Dilke shows clearly how very critical Mr.
Chamberlain had already become of his great leader, Mr. Gladstone, and how many
causes were already preparing the rupture of 1886…. I first met Mr. Browning in
1884 or 1885, if I remember right, at a Kensington dinner-party, where he took
me down. A man who talked loud and much was discoursing on the other side of
the table; and a spirit of opposition had clearly entered into Mr.
Browning. À propos of some recent acting
in London we began to talk of Molière, and presently, as though to shut out the
stream of words opposite, which was damping conversation, the old poet --how
the splendid brow and the white hair come back to me!-- fell to quoting from
the famous sonnet scene in "Le Misanthrope" … Browning repeated the French in an undertone,
kindling as he went, I urging him on, our two heads close together. Every now
and then he would look up to see if the plague outside was done, and, finding
it still went on, would plunge again into the seclusion of our tête-à-tête;
till the chanson itself--"Si le
roi m'avoit donné- -Paris, sa grand ville"--had been said, to his
delight and mine. The recitation lasted through several courses, and our
hostess once or twice threw uneasy glances toward us, for Browning was the "lion"
of the evening. But, once launched, he was not to be stopped; and as for
me, I shall always remember that I heard
Browning--spontaneously, without a moment's pause to remember or
prepare--recite the whole, or almost the whole, of one of the immortal things
in literature. … His health began to
fail just about the time when we first met, and early in 1889 he died in the
Palazzo Rezzonico.”
Alfred Tennyson 1809-1892 Herbert
Spencer 1820-1903 Henry George 1839-1897
It was at one of Lady Jeune’s receptions that Herbert Spencer
so disappointed his admirer Henry George, the progressive American political
economist. ‘It was a "London crush," the drawing-rooms
thronged and many notables present, among them, Tennyson, tall, careless and
dreamy – in appearance every inch a poet; and Browning, on this occasion at
least, smart and dapper, and so far from appearing a great poet, looked, as
Mrs. George said, "like a prosperous merchant draper." Mr.
George admired both of these men, but was introduced to neither. He met
Spencer, however, as soon as the latter appeared. This gave him real pleasure.
He had been hearing stories of vanity in the English philosopher that he could
scarcely credit, as he put him on a high plane, not because of the evolutionary
philosophy, for it was that to which George referred when, in writing to
Charles Nordhoff before leaving San Francisco, in 1879, he said he would like
some time to write a book dissecting "this materialistic philosophy,
which, with its false assumption of science, passes current with so many."
But he had all along held Spencer as immovably against the institution of
private property in land, and had in "Progress and Poverty"
quoted from the English philosopher's scathing ninth chapter of "Social
Statics." He, therefore, expected to find a man who, like himself, saw
in the agrarian struggle in Ireland the raising of the question of land
ownership and fundamental economic principles. Their conversation quickly
turned to Ireland, for scarcely had they exchanged civilities when Spencer bluntly
asked what George thought of Irish matters. The American condemned the
Government and praised the League. Spencer burst into vehement dissent. "They,"
said he, meaning the imprisoned Land Leaguers, "have got only what
they deserve. They are inciting the people to refuse to pay to their landlords
what is rightfully theirs – rent." This speech and the manner of its
delivery so differed from what was expected of the man who in "Social
Statics" wrote, "equity does not permit property in
land," that Mr. George was first astonished and then disgusted at this
flat denial of principle. "It is evident that we cannot agree on this
matter," was all that he could say, and he abruptly left Mr. Spencer.
The meeting had proved a deep disappointment. Mr. George seldom outside the
family circle spoke of it, but to Dr. Taylor he wrote soon after the occurrence
(March, 1882): "Discount Herbert Spencer. He is most horribly
conceited, and I don't believe really great men are."
Judge Francis Henry Jeune -Vanity Fair 1891
As a journalist Lady Jeune was prolific. Something of the flavour
of her work can be seen in London
Society (1892), London
Society and its Critics (1892), Dinners
& Diners (1894), English
Women in Political Campaigns (1895 . Her
views can be contrasted with Marie Corelli’s, Flora
Annie Steel’s and the Countess of Malmesbury’s in The Modern
Marriage Market (1898) . She liked to think she
could both reflect and influence opinion, and this was the key to her interest
in the Primrose League. Many found her a
useful barometer. She was a prominent
organizer of the Writers Club, of which her friend Princess Christian was
president, and a member of the Women Journalists’ Club where Pearl Craigie presided.
Country
Living
Lady
Jeune at home near Newbury
Arlington Manor photographs published in the Strand magazine 1894.
From a Photo. by] THE FREIZE IN THE DINING
ROOM. [Elliott & Fry
From Photographs..by] THE
HOUSEHOLD PETS. [Elliot & Fry
Mary Jeune
maintained her active charitable work, laying the foundation stone for the All
Saints Mission in Pentonville in 1901, a combined
church with gymnasium set up by the efforts of the Reverend Tiverton Preedy who had earlier founded the Barnsley
Football Club.
Tiverton Preedy (1863 - 1928)
Sir Francis Jeune
became Lord St Helier in 1905 and died in the same
year. Mary Jeune as Lady St Helier
sold their country house at Newbury and lived on in
She continued to give parties and promote her journalism, but for one who had
been so positive, she now took s more jaundiced view of society, seeing it
increasingly dominated by what she called “Mincing Lane millionaires”.
But at least one famous match was made at her table in the new century: Winston
Churchill was placed next to Clementine Hozier.
In 1909, Mary Jeune as Lady St Helier produced her reminiscences “Memories
of Fifty Years. Her publisher, Edward
Arnold, extolled the vintage of an era already past: “Lady Jeune's salon was
the rendezvous of all that was best in English society during the last thirty
years of the nineteenth century. To her house in Harley Street flocked
notabilities in every walk of life-statesmen, politicians, men distinguished in
literature, science, and art, famous generals and naval officers, legal
luminaries, and apostles of culture. It would probably be difficult to mention
a single person of distinction of either sex who had not at some time or other
been present at her receptions, sure of meeting there the most interesting '
lions ' of the day. To European and American visitors, Lady Jeune's parties
stood for the English counterpart of the brightest French salons, and their
popularity remained unabated after Sir Francis Jeune was raised to the peerage
as Baron St. Helier, until his death caused them to be discontinued. It can
truly be asserted that Lady St. Helier's ' Reminiscences ' form an integral
part of the history of the Nineteenth Century, if the social life of England
counts for anything in its pages. No mere summary of the book would give a clue
to the interest of its contents ; this is the grand vin of society, sparkling
and unique.”
With social life less attractive in her widowhood, Mary Jeune had turned to
her other interests: practical politics and charitable work. She helped to organise
thousands of hot meals for needy Londoners in the winter months, a holiday fund
for poor children, and a Rescue Home.
She became a London County Council alderman in 1910, with an almost
proprietorial interest in the Garden
City movement publicised by society journalist Charles Compton Reade. After the Great War, a vast garden suburb was
named after her among the lavender fields of Mitcham, and Reade designed
another Mitcham garden suburb on the other side of the world at Adelaide.
London County Council developed the Lady St Helier estate in the Surrey
countryside south of the metropolis between 1928 and 1936. Its purpose was to
rehouse people from overcrowded and decaying inner areas, and its success was
made possible by investment in fast and direct rail routes to central
London. Morden Underground station had
been opened as the terminus of a new Northern Line extension in 1926. The Lady St Helier estate was designed as a
garden city, following the ideas of Sir Ebenezer Howard, founder of Letchworth
and Welwyn, preserving as many as possible of the existing trees and natural
features, and including generous open spaces and sports and recreation grounds.
It was hoped that greens, gardens, and shrubberies, backed by houses with bays
and gables, would make the roads visually interesting and diverse. 120 acres,
more than an eighth of the site, were kept as open spaces. During building,
much of the material was distributed about the estate by a specially-built
light railway communicating with sidings at Mitcham. While all this was going
on, Mary Jeune died suddenly in 1931
Former Lady St Helier pub, Morden
Arlington Manor, Newbury,
now a school for the deaf
“About a couple of miles from
Newbury …is
"What is shopping in these days, but an unsuccessful struggle
against overwhelming temptation?"
–Lady Jeune, in The Ethics of Shopping; Fortnightly Review 1895
Lady Jeune’s grandfather is recorded in
James Alexander
Stewart Mackenzie: Portrait of a private note issuer by Peter Symes
First
published in the International Bank Note Society Journal Volume 37, No.1, 1998
NUMBER 61 of
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