The Right Honourable
The Viscountess Harcourt
GBE
Harcourt, c. 1911
Personal details
Born
Mary Ethel Burns

(1874-08-26)26 August 1874
Paris, France
Died7 January 1961(1961-01-07) (aged 86)
Westminster, London
NationalityBritish
Spouse
​
​
(m. 1899; died 1922)​
RelationsJ.P. Morgan (uncle)
J.P. Morgan Jr. (cousin)
Children4, including Doris Harcourt and William Harcourt
Parent(s)Walter Hayes Burns
Mary Lyman Morgan Burns
AwardsMédaille de la Reine-Élisabeth

Mary Ethel Harcourt, Viscountess Harcourt GBE (née Burns; 26 August 1874 – 7 January 1961) was an American-born British aristocrat and philanthropist.

Early life

Mary Ethel was born on 26 August 1874 in Paris, France. She was a daughter of American banker Walter Hayes Burns (1838–1897) and his wife, Mary Lyman (née Morgan) Burns (1844–1919), who lived at 69 Brook Street in Grosvenor Square, London and North Mymms Park in the English county of Hertfordshire.[1] She had two older siblings, William Burns, who died young, and American-born British art collector Walter Spencer Morgan Burns (lord of the Manor of North Mymms, who in 1907 married Ruth Evelyn Cavendish-Bentinck,[2] a daughter of William and Elizabeth (née Livingston) Cavendish-Bentinck).[3][4]

A member of the American Morgan family banking dynasty, her mother was a sister of banker J. Pierpont Morgan, both children of Junius Spencer Morgan and Juliet (née Pierpont) Morgan (daughter of poet John Pierpont).[5] Her paternal grandparents were William Burns and Mary (née Leaming) Burns.[1]

Career

Through her, the Harcourt family acquired the famous "Harcourt emeralds".[6] According to her husband's obituary in The New York Times, she was "very popular, and more than doubled her husband's social successes, which were an asset to past Liberal Cabinets."[7]

Mary, Viscountess Harcourt, was appointed a Lady of Grace of the Order of St John and then Dame Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire (GBE) in 1918,[5] as well as the silver medal of the American Red Cross and the Belgian Médaille de la Reine-Élisabeth After her husband's death in 1922, she became chairman of the council of the Society for the Overseas Settlement of British Women in 1927.[8]

Personal life

Photograph of her husband, the Viscount Harcourt.

On 1 July 1899, she was married to Lewis Vernon Harcourt (1863–1922) at St Margaret's, Westminster. Lewis, whose nickname was "Loulou", was the only surviving son of politician Sir William Vernon Harcourt (former Home Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer) and his first wife, Theresa (née Villiers) Lister Harcourt (sister of George Villiers, 4th Earl of Clarendon).[9] From 1910 to 1915, he served as Secretary of State for the Colonies under Prime Minister H. H. Asquith. Together, Lord and Lady Harcourt had four children:[10]

Lord Harcourt died in his sleep at his London town house at 69, Brook Street (now the Savile Club) in the early hours of 24 February 1922, aged 59.[14] He had taken an overdose of a sleeping draught, and there were rumours of suicide following accusations of sexual impropriety by Edward James, a young Etonian who later became an important collector of surrealist and other contemporary art. James's mother spread the story in society although the accusations remained unknown by the wider public for fifty years.[15]

Lady Harcourt died nearly forty years later on 7 January 1961 in Westminster, London.[8] She was buried at Old All Saints Church, Nuneham Courtenay.[5]

Descendants

Through her eldest daughter, she was a grandmother of John Baring, who succeeded as 7th Baron Ashburton.[16]

References

  1. ^ a b Starr, Frank Farnsworth (1904). The Miles Morgan Family of Springfield, Massachusetts: In the Line of Joseph Morgan of Hartford, Connecticut, 1780-1847. p. 57. Retrieved 28 May 2020.
  2. ^ "BURNS -- CAVENDISH-BENTINCK". The New York Times. 10 February 1907. Retrieved 24 February 2017.
  3. ^ Brock, Michael; Brock, Eleanor (26 June 2014). Margot Asquith's Great War Diary 1914-1916: The View from Downing Street. OUP Oxford. ISBN 9780191017087. Retrieved 24 February 2017.
  4. ^ "Ruth Evelyn Burns (née Cavendish-Bentinck)". npg.org.uk. National Portrait Gallery. Retrieved 24 February 2017.
  5. ^ a b c "Obituary: Dowager Viscountess Harcourt". The Times. 9 January 1961. p. 17.
  6. ^ "Magnificent antique emerald and diamond tiara". Christies.
  7. ^ "VISCOUNT HARCOURT DIES IN LONDON AT 59; Ex-Secretary of State for Colonies Married Miss Mary E. Burns,Niece of Late J.P. Morgan". The New York Times. 25 February 1922. Retrieved 28 May 2020.
  8. ^ a b Times, Special to The New York (12 January 1961). "VISCOUNTESS HARCOURT; Widow of Ex-British Colonial Secretary Dies at 88". The New York Times. Retrieved 28 May 2020.
  9. ^ MacColl, Gail; Wallace, Carol McD. (2012). To Marry an English Lord: Tales of Wealth and Marriage, Sex and Snobbery. Workman Publishing. pp. 328–329. ISBN 9780761171980. Retrieved 22 January 2018.
  10. ^ Burke, Sir Bernard, ed. (1939). Burke's Peerage, Baronetage & Knighthood (97th ed.). Burke's Peerage & Gentry. pp. 1211–1213.
  11. ^ Horn, Pamela (2014). Ladies of the Manor: How Wives & Daughters Really Lived in Country House Society Over a Century Ago. Amberley Publishing Limited. p. 30. ISBN 9781445619897. Retrieved 22 January 2018.
  12. ^ "The Hon Mrs J. Mulholland", The Times, 4 August 1984, p. 8.
  13. ^ "Probate of a Will: In the Estate of Barbara Vernon Baird, Deceased". The Times. 8 September 1961. p. 17.
  14. ^ "Death of Lord Harcourt". The Times. 25 February 1922. p. 14.
  15. ^ Jackson, Patrick (25 May 2006). "Harcourt, Lewis Vernon, first Viscount Harcourt (1863–1922), politician". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/33692. Retrieved 18 December 2018. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  16. ^ Mosley, Charles, ed. (2003). Burke's Peerage, Baronetage & Knighthood (107 ed.). Burke's Peerage & Gentry. p. 157. ISBN 0-9711966-2-1.

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