Diana de Vere Beauclerk, Lady Huddleston (10 December 1842 – 1 April 1905) was an English writer. She wrote Summer and Winter in Norway (1868) and True Love (1869) under the name Lady Di Beauclerk.
Life
editLady Diana de Vere Beauclerk was born on 10 December 1842 in London, the daughter of William Beauclerk, 9th Duke of St Albans[1] and Elizabeth Catherine Gubbins. In 1863, Diana Beauclerk was one of Queen Alexandra's eight bridesmaids.[2][3]
She married Sir John Walter Huddleston in 1872.[4] The night before the wedding ceremony, Bishop Samuel Wilberforce, who would conduct the service, wrote in his diary: "To All Saints', Knightsbridge, to marry Lady Di."[3] From then on she used the name Lady Diana Huddleston, but she was familiarly known as "The Beautiful Lady Di"[5] or "Lady Di".[6]
Lady Diana was well known in Norwich and, together with her mother, worked for Huddleston in his successful campaign there in the Parliamentary election of 1874.[7] She frequently sat on the bench alongside Huddleston during trials,[8] as she had done during the infamous case of Whistler v. Ruskin.[9]
Sir John Walter Huddleston died on 5 September 1890, with an expressed wish that he be buried with his wife.[3]
She never recovered from the loss of her husband in 1890, and everywhere she went the ashes of the Baron, who was cremated at Woking, accompanied her. The small bronze urn containing them always rested on a table beside her bed.[3]
Lady Diana Huddleston died on 1 April 1905 in London.[10] She was cremated and her ashes were buried alongside those of her husband. They had no children and she bequeathed a large sum of money to her servants.[11]
Books
editLady Di Beauclerk was the author of Summer and Winter in Norway (1868) and True Love (1869).[12] She, her mother, and their maid Teresina[13] left behind all luxuries to travel through Norway in the summer and winter of 1867.[14] The following year her travelogue Summer and Winter in Norway was published. It was reviewed favourably by The Pall Mall Gazette, which characterized it as a straightforward narrative which did not attempt to function as a guidebook.[15]
The Morning Post praised True Love's humour and characters, opining that "Lady Di Beauclerk, with her acute power of perception and no less sharp method of delineation, may, if it so please her, become one of the most powerful and popular writers of the time."[16] However, the Saturday Review called the novel "commonplace and dull", saying "the person who can write a pleasant book of travels is not always able to follow suit with a novel, and the kudos got by the one venture is not unfrequently lost in the other."[17]
References
edit- ^ Lee, Sidney (1891). Dictionary of National Biography, Vol XXVIII. Macmillan and Co. p. 144.
- ^ "The Royal Marriage, The train of Her Royal Highness". The New York Times. 27 March 1863. p. 1. Retrieved 24 January 2023 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^ a b c d "Nell Gwynne Was Lady 'Di's' Ancestor". The Inter Ocean. 4 June 1905. p. 15. Retrieved 23 January 2023 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^ "Section H". The County Families of the United Kingdom: 525.
- ^ Merill, Linda (1959). A pot of paint: Whistler v. Ruskin. p. 130.
- ^ "Our London Correspondence (by Private Wire)". The Manchester Guardian. 4 April 1905. p. 6. Retrieved 23 January 2020 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^ Hanson, Neil. The Custom of the Sea, Chapter 18. Times Literary Supplement.
- ^ Simpson, Brian (1994). Cannibalism and Common Law: A Victorian Yachting Tragedy. The Hambledon Press. p. 197. ISBN 9781852852009.
- ^ Caplan, Lincoln (1995). "The trial of Whistler v. Ruskin" (PDF). The Peacock and the Prodigy: 5.
- ^ "Huddleston". England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1858-1995: 240.
- ^ "Good to Servants". Portsmouth Herald. 10 April 1906. p. 4. Retrieved 24 January 2023 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^ "A Database of Victorian Fiction, 1837-1901".
- ^ Walchester, Kathryn (April 2017). "The servant as narrative vehicle in nineteenth-century travel texts about Norway and Iceland" (PDF). Studies in Travel Writing. 21 (2): 156–172. doi:10.1080/13645145.2017.1322168. S2CID 164451181.
- ^ Theakstone, John. "Summer and Winter in Norway [1868]" (PDF). Annotated Bibliography of Selected Works by Women Travelers, 1837-1910.
- ^ Walchester, Kathryn (1 December 2014). "Aristocrats and Socialites". Gamle Norge and Nineteenth-Century British Women Travellers in Norway. Anthem Press. pp. 57–58. ISBN 9781783083671. Retrieved 23 January 2020 – via Google Books.
- ^ "True Love". Morning Post. 10 May 1869. p. 5. Retrieved 23 January 2020 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^ "True Love". Saturday Review. 21 August 1869. pp. 264–265. Retrieved 23 January 2020 – via Google Books.