Hugo Charteris, 11th Earl of Wemyss

Hugo Richard Charteris, 11th Earl of Wemyss and 7th Earl of March DL (25 August 1857 – 12 July 1937), styled Lord Elcho from 1883 to 1914, was a British Conservative politician.

The Earl of Wemyss and March
Pictured in Suffolk Celebrities, 1893
Member of Parliament for Ipswich
In office
1886–1895
(with Charles Dalrymple)
Preceded byJesse Collings
Henry Wyndham West
Succeeded byCharles Dalrymple
Daniel Ford Goddard
Member of Parliament for Haddingtonshire
In office
1883–1885
Preceded byLord Elcho
Succeeded byViscount Haldane
Personal details
Born
Hugo Richard Charteris

(1857-08-25)25 August 1857
Edinburgh, Lothian, Scotland
Died12 July 1937(1937-07-12) (aged 79)
NationalityBritish
Political partyConservative
Spouse
(m. 1883; died 1937)
Children7
Parent(s)Francis Charteris, 10th Earl of Wemyss
Lady Anne Anson
ProfessionPolitician

Early life

Lord Elcho as caricatured by Spy (Leslie Ward) in Vanity Fair, March 1892

He was the fifth but eldest surviving son of The 10th Earl of Wemyss and his wife, Lady Anne Frederica Anson. His sister, Evelyn Charteris, was married to John Vesey, 4th Viscount de Vesci; their only child (Mary Gertrude Vesey) was the second wife of Aubrey Herbert (second son of The 4th Earl of Carnarvon), whose daughter Laura Herbert married the writer Evelyn Waugh and was the mother of Auberon Waugh.[1]

His father was the eldest son, and heir, of The 9th Earl of Wemyss (and 5th Earl of March). His mother was a daughter of Thomas Anson, 1st Earl of Lichfield.[2]

Career

He entered Parliament for Haddingtonshire in 1883 (succeeding his father), but lost his seat in the 1885 general election. He returned to the House of Commons in a by-election in 1886 as one of two representatives for Ipswich and held it in the subsequent general election and would continue to hold it until 1895.

Lord and Lady Elcho visited British India to attend the 1903 Delhi Durbar held in January 1903 to celebrated the succession of King Edward VII as Emperor of India.[3]

He succeeded his father in the two earldoms in 1914 and served as Lord-Lieutenant of Haddingtonshire from 1918 to 1937.

Personal life

Portrait of his wife, and her sisters, The Wyndham Sisters, by John Singer Sargent, 1899 (Metropolitan Museum)
The grave of Hugo, 11th Earl of Wemyss and 7th Earl of March, Aberlady Churchyard

In 1883, he married Mary Constance Wyndham (1862–1937), daughter of Percy Scawen Wyndham and sister of George Wyndham. They were both two of the original members of The Souls. His married life was detailed in the book Those Wild Wyndhams by Claudia Renton.[4] Among their children were:[2]

By 1912, Lady Angela Forbes was his mistress, sharing his house in East Lothian, while his wife lived at Stanway in Gloucestershire.[7][8] Although he and his mistress lived together for many years, he remained married, and his wife became Countess of Wemyss when he inherited the earldom. She died in April 1937, aged 74.[9] Lord Wemyss survived her by three months and died in July of the same year, aged 79. He is buried in the family burial enclosure on the north side of Aberlady churchyard.

Descendants

Lord Wemyss was succeeded in his titles by his grandson David; two of his sons, Captain Hugo Francis Charteris (1884–1916) and Lt Yvo Alan Charteris (1896–1915), had been killed in action during the First World War.[10]

His grandson by Hugo Francis Charteris was Martin Charteris, Private Secretary to princess, then queen Elizabeth II.

His grandchildren by Guy Lawrence Charteris was the socialite Ann Fleming,[11] and, Hugo Charteris, a renowned post-war author and screenwriter.

He is the great-grandfather of the Scottish cartoonist Jamie Charteris, and Lady Mary Charteris of the band The Big Pink.

References

  1. John Howard Wilson, Evelyn Waugh: a Literary Biography (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press 2001), p. 111 ff.: see also "Lady Evelyn Charteris", The Peerage, 30 May 2008.
  2. "Wemyss, Earl of (S, 1633)". cracroftspeerage.co.uk. Cracroft's Peerage. Archived from the original on 26 November 2011. Retrieved 25 July 2018.
  3. "Court Circular". The Times. No. 36945. London. 8 December 1902. p. 9.
  4. Renton, Claudia (30 January 2014). Those Wild Wyndhams. William Collins. ISBN 978-0007544899.
  5. "Casualty Details | CWGC". www.cwgc.org.
  6. "Casualty Details | CWGC". www.cwgc.org.
  7. Clayre Percy, "Forbes [née St Clair-Erskine], Lady Angela Selina Bianca (1876–1950)" in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (OUP, 2007)
  8. Arthur Balfour, Mary Elcho, The letters of Arthur Balfour and Lady Elcho, 1885-1917 (Hamilton, 1992), p. 295
  9. "Mary Constance Charteris, Countess of Wemyss". Librarything.com. Retrieved 28 December 2017.
  10. Guest, Philip; Guest, Wendy (2012). "A Prime Minister and his Family at War: Part II". Siegfried's Journal. Siegfried Sassoon Fellowship. 22 (Summer 2012): 17–23.
  11. Andrew Lycett, "Fleming , Ann Geraldine Mary [other married names Ann Geraldine Mary O'Neill, Lady O'Neill; Ann Geraldine Mary Harmsworth, Viscountess Rothermere] (1913–1981)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2014 accessed 9 Feb 2017

Sources

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