Tomb of George Nathaniel Curzon, 1st Marquis and Earl Curzon, Viceroy of India (1859-1925) and his first wife, Mary Victoria, Baroness Curzon (1870-1906), All Saints’ Church, Kedleston, Derbyshire
Nestling against the cool classical pile of Kedleston Hall in Derbyshire is the far older medieval parish church of the long-vanished village of Kedleston. The north aisle of the church is an early-twentieth century Gothic memorial to a great love match.
George Nathaniel Curzon, 1st Marquis and Earl Curzon, Viceroy of India (1859-1925), famously the “superior person” of an undergraduate ditty, like a number of his contemporaries married the daughter of an American millionaire.
Mary Victoria Leiter’s father was a co-founder of what became the Chicago-based Marshall Field department-store empire. Her wit, charm and elegance was legendary. The breaktaking peacock coronation gown, by Worth of Paris, which she wore as Vicereine at the Delhi Durbar in 1902 is on display within Kedleston Hall.
Perhaps the only sadness about their relationship was her inability to produce an heir, and the medical complications following a miscarriage destroyed her health. She died in her husband’s arms on July 18th 1906.
Curzon commissioned the Gothic Revival architect George Frederick Bodley to design the memorial chapel at Kedleston, and employed the Australian sculptor Bertram Mackennal to carve her effigy in 1913. Mackennal, by then Sir Bertram, ultimately provided an effigy of Lord Curzon which was installed in 1931.
Lord Curzon’s second wife, who has no obvious memorial at Kedleston, was Grace Elvina Duggan, a rich American widow aged 38 at the time of their marriage in 1917. Though she had three children from her first marriage she did not provide a Curzon heir, and the marriage deteriorated into a separation. She is buried in the churchyard of Kedleston Church.
The finest monument to Grace Curzon is not at Kedleston. She was the subject of John Singer Sargent’s final portrait in oils, now in the Currier Gallery of Art, Manchester, New Hampshire: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Grace_Elvina,_Marchioness_Curzon_of_Kedleston.jpg.
