Harriot Beauclerk (née Mellon), Duchess of
St Albans by Charles Turner, after Sir William
Beechey mezzotint, published 1806 – National
Portrait Gallery, London
The engraved initials and coronet are those of the former
actress, Harriot (née Mellon, 1777-1837), widow of Thomas
Coutts (1735-1822) and first wife of William Aubrey de Vere
Beauclerk, 9th Duke of St.
Following her husband’s death, Mrs.
Coutts, ‘opulent in
person and big of heart,’ continued as one of London’s most
liberal hostesses.
The Press delighted in giving details of
her various entertainments.
One such, a ‘petite dejeuner’ at
her Highgate villa in July 1824, was attended by about 700
ladies and gentlemen of rank and fashion, lead by their Royal
Highnesses the Duke of York and Prince Leopold and the
Dukes of Wellington, St.
Albans and Leinster.
We are told
that a ‘stupendous’ temporary room was erected at the rear
of the house, the interior of which was decorated ‘in a very
fanciful style with pink, white, and blue stripes, hanging in
close festoons from the room, and forming fluted columns.
Victoria and Albert Museum, design for a silver sauce tureen, by Edward Hodges Baily,
Accession number E.70-1964
number, for fifty-four each; and these tables were five times
replenished; the first three with every thing served on china,
and the last two on massive plate, sent the preceding day by
RUNDELL and BRIDGE.
Within about sixteen columns, tables were laid, four in
Detail of engraved initials and coronet of Harriot (née
Mellon, 1777-1837) on the present pair of tureens
presumably made possible by the support of Mr.
Coutts:
‘Miss Mellon (the actress) made the poor round her beautiful
house [Holly Lodge, built in 1809] on Highgate Hill happy on
Christmas Day, by distributing 600 quartern loaves, and 600lbs.
of fine beef, to that number of old men; and to every distressed
aged female that applied, a chemise, a cloak, a blanket, and
wine; and to the children of poverty, one shilling each.’
3
Following Thomas Coutts’s death on 22 February 1822, the
extraordinary extent of his wealth was revealed and widely
reported; so, too, was the lavish provision he had made for
his widow:
‘Various statements have appeared respecting the manner
in which the late Mr.
Born in Bristol in 1788, Baily went to London in 1807 and was
accepted as a pupil by the famous sculptor John Flaxman
(1755-1826).
After almost eight years in Flaxman’s studio,
and with several awards from the Royal Academy School to
his credit, he joined Rundell, Bridge & Rundell in 1815 at £600
per annum, suggesting that he was already viewed as an
established designer.
His salary was raised to £1,000 when he
became a member of the Royal Academy.
Albans, a descendant of Charles
II, whom she married in 1827 at her house, 1 Stratton Street,
Piccadilly, Westminster.
There were three waggon-loads of
plate used, and forty well-dressed attendants, out of livery.’
5
Although Miss Mellon made her debut at Ulverston in the Lake
District at the age of 10 in 1787, she did not arrive in London
until 1795.
Her first appearance there was on 31 January
that year at Drury Lane as Lydia Languish in a revival of The
Rivals.
In fact, it was thanks to the play’s author, Richard
Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816), who had seen her perform in
the provinces, that she became a favourite with metropolitan
audiences.
‘She never reached the first rank of actresses,’
according to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography,
‘but she was praised for her good-natured readiness to take
over parts in cases of illness, afterwards returning with good
humour to the secondary roles she was accustomed to play.’
It was from about this time that Mrs.
Coutts and the Duke
of St.
Albans, were often seen in each other’s company.
Eventually, on 16 June 1827 at her house in Stratton Street, the
couple were married: she was 50, he was 26.
Scarcely able to
believe her good fortune, the Duchess wrote soon afterwards
to her friend, the author Sir Walter Scott: ‘What a strange
eventful life has mine been, from a poor little player child,
with just food and clothes to cover me, dependent on a very
precarious profession, without talent or a friend in the world
– first the wife of the best, the most perfect being that ever
breathed.
and now the wife of a Duke!
You must write my
life.
my true history written by the author of Waverley.’6
Baily must have become even more important to the firm after
the death of Rundell’s designer William Theed in 1817, and the
Coutts service (later the St.
Albans service) of around 1817
must have been among Baily’s earliest direct work for the
company.
Baily’s name has also been linked to an impressive
monumental covered wine cooler, made in 1821-22 and sold to
Thomas Coutts and Harriet Mellon Coutts; four others of the
same model were later supplied to George IV.
Baily became
chief designer/modeller for Rundell’s on the death of Flaxman
in 1826, but in 1833 he left to work with Paul Storr (then
senior partner in Storr & Mortimer), who had himself left as
superintendant of Rundell’s silver factory in 1819, just after the
Coutts service would have been finished.
Baily, who was often
in financial distress, and was banrupt twice, in 1831 and again
in 1838, died on 22 May 1867.
Coutts has disposed of his immense
property; but we understand the following is correct: Some
time previous to his death, he settled upon Mrs.
C. the sum of
£600,000, with the house in Stratton-street [Piccadilly], all
the plate, linen, wines, &c
the service of plate is said to be the
most valuable of any in this country, and the stock of wines
greater than any two private cellars in the kingdom; together
with the house at Highgate, and all its appurtenances.
Mrs.
C.
is likewise left half proprietress of his immense banking
establishment, with all monies due to him at the time of his
decease.
The affairs of the house have been made up since
his demise, and it is said there is a balance of £670,000 due
to Mrs.
C.
which sum will be proved under the will.
The whole
amount of property (with the annual profits of half the banking
business) now in possession of this Lady, it is supposed,
makes her the richest widow in the United Kingdom.’
In 1805 in the Drury Lane comedy, The Honeymoon by
John Tobin, she ‘was very lively and playful’ and during the
next year, in London, when she was Louisa in the Rev.
Mr.
Moultree’s musical comedy, False and True; or, The Irishman
in Italy, The Times hinted at her popularity when, upon one of
the characters addressing her as, ‘’’My lilly of the valley, my
Melon!’’
there was a loud burst of applause.’1
By all accounts the union was a very happy one.
The couple
celebrated a year of married life in June 1828 at Holly Lodge
with a ‘Grand Fete Champetre’ attended by the Dukes
of Cumberland and Sussex, and many members of the
aristocracy and gentry.
The Duke and Duchess exchanged
gifts: his to her, a suitably inscribed silver basket; hers to him,
a six-oared cutter called Falcon, complete with crew attired in
yellow and green silk.7
It was in 1805 that Miss Mellon became secretly intimate with
the wealthy banker, Thomas Coutts.
He was still with his wife,
Elizabeth Susannah (née Starkie, 1743-1815), who he married
in 1763 and by whom he had three daughters, but the closing
years of her life were clouded by mental illness.
As soon as he
was able, Coutts married Miss Mellon; first, clandestinely, on
18 January 1815 and then openly on the 12 April following:
‘MARRIED.
On Wednesday, at St.
Pancras Church, Middlesex,
Thomas Coutts, Esq.
the opulent banker, to Miss Mellon, the
actress of Drury-lane Theatre, who thus becomes the mother-
in-law of the Dowager Countess of Guildford, the Dowager
Marchioness of Bute, and of Lady Burdett.’
2
Elements from the Coutts/St.
Albans service regularly
appear at auction.
A pair of soup tureens of this model, mark
of Philip Rundell for Rundell, Bridge & Rundell, 1821 (not
immediately identifiable in the 1914 Coutts Heirlooms auction),
was formerly in the Al-Tajir collection and sold at Christie’s,
London, 7 June 2011, lot 353 for £193,250.
A single Storr/
Rundell tureen of 1817 was sold at Sotheby’s, New York, 21
October 1997, lot 177 for $266,500.
Upon her death nine years later, the Duchess left the bulk of her
wealth and collection of the Coutts/Mellon plate to Mr.
Coutts’s
granddaughter, Angela Georgina (1814-1906).
She, who was the
youngest daughter of Sir Francis Burdett, 5th Bt.
(1770-1844)
by Sophia (1794-1849), eldest daughter of Thomas Coutts and
his first wife, Susan, changed her name by royal licence in 1837
to Burdett-Coutts.
In 1871 Miss Burdett-Coutts, who was a NOTES.
friend of Queen Victoria and one of the greatest philanthropists
of the 19th century, was created Baroness Burdett-Coutts
Miss Mellon had just retired as an actress, making her last
appearance as Audrey in As You Like It at Drury Lane on 7
February 1815.
Her final salary is said to have been £12 a
week, so her generosity reported at the beginning of 1815 was
112
A pencil, pen and ink and brown wash drawing
corresponding to the model of these tureens is in the album
of designs for plate from Rundell, Bridge & Rundell, now at the
Victoria and Albert Museum.
The design has been attributed
to the artist Edward Hodges Baily.
8
113
1.
The Times, London, Wednesday, 24 September 1806, p.
The Salisbury and Winchester Journal
March 1815, p.
4b
3.
The Bury and Norwich Pos
4.
The Lancaster Gazette
5.
The Morning Post, London, Thursday, 8 July 1824, p.
3c
6.
David Douglas, editor, The Journal of Sir Walter Scott
1825-1832, Edinburgh, 1891 7.
The Southern Reporter
Thursday, 26 June 1828, p.
4d
8.
Accession no.
, Salisbury, Monday, 6
t, Wednesday, 4 January 1815, p.
E.70-1964
4c
, Friarage, Saturday, 16 March 1822, p.
1d
, Cork,