A mustering of Marchionesses

On reading of the recent death of Serena Belinda ("Lindy") Rosemary Guinness, "the last Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava", and learning that one of her bequests was the magnificent Shamrock Tiara above, my interest was piqued enough to find out more about the Marchionesses and their finery...

First of this esteemed (and now defunct) line was the stern-looking Hariot Georgina Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood. Born into a convoluted line of inheritance (her father, despite being a wealthy landowner and inheritor of Killyleagh Castle, once part of the estates of the Viscounts Clandeboye, was a famed Irish independence campaigner) and her marriage to her distant cousin Frederick Temple Blackwood (another in the Clandeboye line) was originally seen as merely "politically prudent", by way of healing rifts among the claimants upon the various strands of this inheritance. However, in contrast to so many women of her class and generation, rather than just remain the loyal "hostess-wife" as her husband rose in stature through various important diplomatic posts in the British Empire - including missions to the Middle East, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Governor General of Canada, ambassador to Imperial Russia and to the Ottoman Empire, culminating in becoming Viceroy of India - she became actively engaged in cultivating social ties and welfare services in all the lands where her husband's postings took her. To this day, numerous 'Lady Dufferin' hospitals and clinics still exist in India, providing healthcare and health education to the poor; in particular, to women.

The diamond and pearl Dufferin and Ava Shamrock Tiara was first commissioned for the wedding of Hariot and Frederick, and became a favourite piece in the first Marchioness's ensemble.

Whether the second Marchioness, the American heiress and singer Florence (Flora) Hamilton Davis - who assumed the title when her husband, the second son (his older brother was killed in the Boer War) Lord Terence John Temple Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, succeeded his father in 1902 - ever got to wear the tiara seems unlikely, as Terence died of pneumonia in 1918, and his mother, the Dowager, lived on until 1936. It is doubtful whether it mattered much to Flora, however, as she went on to wed "one of the richest and most distinguished nobleman in England," Richard George Penn Curzon, 4th Earl Howe. The story begins to resemble "The Fall of the House of Usher"; as the title passed to the third son Frederick, and his wife Brenda (née Woodhouse) became third Marchioness - but he, too, predeceased his mother when he was killed in a plane crash in 1930. Brenda also remarried well, becoming Lady Somerset on her marriage into a branch of the aristocratic Beaufort dynasty. At least Fred and Brenda [they sound such terribly parochial names nowadays] had kids...

Basil Sheridan Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, the son and heir to the Dufferin and Ava title, was a notable Conservative politician and married to brewery heiress Maureen Constance Guinness, who became the fourth Marchioness. She was born of very different stock to her predecessors - having been known as one of the "Guinness Golden Girls", she was fabulously wealthy in her own right, a flamboyant socialite, and took to her new title with aplomb. The parties she hosted at their homes both in London and at Clandeboye in Northern Ireland were the talk of society. When Basil, like his father and uncles before him, died prematurely fighting in Burma in WW2 he left the family estate up to its neck in debt - so Marchioness Maureen bought it!

True to form, the estate now in the hands of its own stand-alone trust, she also kept the Marchioness title for most of her life (despite re-marrying twice) - and at every opportunity, she wore the Shamrock Tiara! [Although some members of her family probably wished she hadn't; her granddaughter recalled in her own memoirs: "At my mother's coming-out ball, attended by Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret, my grandmother 'overserved' herself champagne and slipped on the dancefloor, cracking the priceless shamrock-shaped family tiara. She never drank again."]

In his obituary for the formidable fourth Marchioness, the "biographer of great historical gays" Philip Hoare said of her:

Throughout the Fifties and Sixties she played her role as part of the international set who moved restlessly around the world. In 1961 she visited Noel Coward and the Flemings in Jamaica, and in 1965 was "the rehearsal" for Coward's famous lunch party for the Queen Mother...

Even in her nineties she was still throwing lively annual dinner parties for the Queen Mother at her home in Knightsbridge, at which the likes of Sir Alec Guinness and Barry Humphries could be found. Indeed, in later life the Marchioness - the model for Osbert Lanchester's Maudie Littlehampton - appeared also to have inspired Dame Edna.

The story doesn't end there, of course. True to their stock, courtesy of their unconventional mother, two of the offspring of Basil and Maureen went slightly "off the rails" (as far as high society circles are concerned). Only the middle child, Perdita, a respectable horse breeder (still alive, aged 96), seemed to have passed through unscathed. Lady Caroline eloped with the painter Lucien Freud and hung out with bohemians and beatniks before, a couple of marriages later, becoming a writer (and alcoholic).

As for Sheridan - the apple of his mother's eye and heir to the Marquessate - he entered the art world as a gallery owner and art patron [he supported David Hockney, and later, Derek Jarman, including his film Sebastiane] and, despite being well known as an outrageous queen, got married in style to his fourth cousin Belinda "Lindy" Guinness - the fifth Marchioness. She, of course, wore the Shamrock Tiara at the wedding.

Lindy and Sheridan, despite the unusual nature of their marriage, followed the Dowager's lead and became consummate society party hosts in the trendy art world of the Swinging Sixties - as Warhol acolyte Mark Lancaster described: "they were legendary in the late 1960s. You would find yourself talking to Princess Margaret or Duncan Grant and Angelica Garnett, or Francis Bacon or Stephen Spender or the Queen Mother."

And so we come full circle... Sheridan Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 5th Marquess of Dufferin and Ava, died of AIDS in 1989, leaving "the last Marchioness" to continue managing the estate trust. Her own family was another particularly unconventional" one - her father Loel Guinness left her mother for the glamorous Gloria Rubio y Alatorre who, as Gloria Guinness, became one of the most lauded glamorous fashion icons of her generation; it was through this connection that young Lindy met Truman Capote [Gloria was one of his "swans"]. Another friend of hers was Duncan Grant of the Bloomsbury Group, and Lindy became an artist in her own right even before marrying Sheridan. Under her guidance, the Clandeboye estate hosted an artistic and a conservation centre, as well as making prize-winning yoghurt, hosting music festivals, a golf course and banquet hall for weddings.

The Shamrock Tiara is currently on loan to the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London, but no-one is quite sure who will inherit it...

Lindy Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava (née Guinness, 25th March 1941 – 26th October 2020).