Lady Marjorie Manners

Well, having made a suitable header template for my blog a couple of days ago, I've decided to stick with a plain black background until such time as I can come up with something of my own. I kind of like black, or at least darker colours as a background as I think they tend to make things easier to read or look at - but I'll probably have changed my mind by tomorrow!

I've been looking at a lot of imagery today trying to fathom out my next photoshop project. It seems such a long time since I really got my teeth into anything in that respect as I seem to have concentrated more on providing stock photos over on deviant art, than doing any actual art myself. But I'm getting twitchy fingers again. A lot of the images I've looked at are of Edwardian women and actresses - old postcards and such like. I used to buy a lot of postcards myself, but sold my collection following my divorce a number of years back. At that point I was in desperate need of money and so parted company with rather a lot of stuff I'd previously been into. I still have a huge soft spot for such things though - there seems such an elegance about so many of the women depicted there which somehow appears to have got lost now in this age of plastic surgery and hair dye.

My all time favourite photo is of Lady [Victoria]Marjorie Manners (1883-1946), daughter of the 8th Earl of Rutland, which I first discovered in my teens;



The photo has remained a constant throughout my life - her wistful beauty, cascading hair and loose fitting dress all seem to pay homage to the pre-raphaelite brotherhood; another long standing fixation of mine. From what I've since learnt of her, Marjorie Manners was fairly theatrical in her youth - there are archived newspaper cuttings to be found on the net of her various exploits - and at one stage she was romantically linked to Queen Victoria's son, Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught, before eventually marrying Charles Paget, the 6th Marquess of Anglesey (a place of wild natural beauty itself) a former Mayor of Burton-on-Trent who later became Lord Chamberlain to Queen Mary until his death in 1947.

Charles and Marjorie went on to have six children, the eldest of whom, Lady Caroline, became the friend and possible lover of the painter Rex Whistler, who is said to have painted a nude portrait of her at the family home, Plas Newydd. It's a story of supposed unrequited love worthy of the pre-raphaelites themselves but unfortunately I can't find any photo of the painting large enough to do it justice here. To quote in full an article written by Rhodri Clark for 'Wales Online' about Rex and Caroline;

SHE was a beautiful socialite, the eldest daughter of the Sixth Marquess of Anglesey and granddaughter of the Eighth Duke of Rutland.

He was a brilliant artist who mixed with some of the most creative young people of the day – but although Rex Whistler was favoured by the late Queen Mother he was not of aristocratic birth.

His love was unrequited and he signed up with the Welsh Guards, only to be killed on his first day in battle.

Now the moving story of Whistler’s infatuation with Lady Caroline Paget can be followed in intimate detail.

The National Trust has placed his recently-acquired love letters on public display at Plas Newydd, where Lady Caroline once lived on the shore of the Menai Strait.

He was called to the Anglesey mansion by the Sixth Marquess, who wanted a mural painted along an entire wall of the dining room.

Whistler had previously met Lady Caroline briefly, and when he started work on the mural in 1936 he became obsessed with her.

The 60ft-long mural, which survives in all its detail, includes coded references to his feelings. He painted himself as Romeo, languishing beneath the balcony of a Juliet who is unmistakably Lady Caroline. He also appears as a gardener, which implies he felt he was rejected as a suitor because of his social status.

His love letters tell only one side of the story, and nobody knows how far she reciprocated his feelings.

Whistler – part of the “bright young things” set which included poet Siegfried Sassoon and photographer Cecil Beaton – painted several portraits of her. One shows her nude, although experts are unsure whether she posed naked or the painter used his imagination.

One of the first signs that the relationship was doomed to fail was her decision to spend more time in London while Whistler was completing the Plas Newydd mural.

Whistler’s response was a petition, imitating 18th-century French aesthetics. It implores “beautiful darling Caroline” to reconsider her decision to leave Plas Newydd on August 22, 1937.

David Ellender, house manager at Plas Newydd, said, “It can be argued that it is through his personal life that we can truly appreciate Rex Whistler’s work.

“Whistler’s fascinating correspondence with Lady Caroline carves out a remarkable love story and reflects the depth of his passion for her and his connections with the Plas.

“Sadly, it would appear from the letters that any romance between them was driven harder by Rex than Lady Caroline.

“Unfortunately, visitors to Plas Newydd will learn that it was not a tale of ‘happy ever after’.

“One of the last letters we have to Caroline is from late 1943 and is headed Codford, Wiltshire, an army camp where Rex was stationed with the Welsh Guards.

“He tells her he has five days’ leave coming up and is hoping to see her before he has to go for training at Linney Head [South Pembrokeshire] in South Wales.”

In that letter, Whistler wrote, “Please could I see you and perhaps waltz with you once or twice... we can have lovely waltzes and walks under the stars in that heavenly garden … how glorious if you could find that striped dress I loved so much, do you remember it?”

Mr Ellender said, “Whistler spent his last Christmas alone at Pickering, North Yorkshire, where he organised a party for the local children in the memorial hall.

“He was killed, aged 39, on his first day of action in Normandy in July 1944. We have a letter from his brother telling Caroline.”

Five years later, Lady Caroline married Sir Michael Duff, grandson of the fourth Earl of Lonsdale and godson of Queen Mary, wife of King George V. He owned the Faenol estate, on the opposite side of the Menai from Plas Newydd, and now the venue of Bryn Terfel’s annual festival. The marriage became acrimonious. She died, aged 59, in 1973.

A while back I tried my hand at colouring the photo of Marjorie Manners in photoshop. I'm unsure whether or not I've done the photo any justice - often as not their beauty lies in their sepia tones to me - but having seen numerous postcards guadily hand painted, it seemed a fun thing to try and emulate at the time;



During my travels around the net I've come across a couple of other photos of Marjorie, taken I'm guessing at later stages of her life, but neither, appeal to me quite so much as the girl with the wistful look and wild cascading hair...