Violet Fane

Violet Fane (1843-1905). Portrait engraved by Edward William Stodart (1841-1914), from Poems by Violet Fane, 1892. Courtesy Internet Archive.

Violet Fane was the pen name of Mary, Baroness Currie (24 February 1843 - 13 October 1905), an English poet, novelist, and essayist of the Victorian era.

Life

Fane was born Mary Montgomerie Lamb at Beauport, Littleharnpton, Sussex, the eldest daughter of Anna Charlotte (Grey), daughter of Arthur Hopwood Grey of Bersted, Sussex, and Charles James Saville Montgomerie Lamb. Her grand-father, Sir Charles Montolieu Lamb, second baronet, of Beauport, Sussex, married Mary, daughter and heiress of Archibald Montgomerie, eleventh earl of Eglinton; her great-grandfather was Sir James Bland Burges, afterwards Lamb . Her ancestors both English and French numbered among them many literary amateurs.

Brought up at Beauport, she early showed a love of nature and of poetry, and from a youthful age tried her hand, in spite of her family's stern discouragement, at verse-making and story-writing. She etched illustrations for a reprint of Tennyson's Mariana (Worthing, 1863). On 27 February 1864 she married Henry Sydenham Singleton of Mell, co. Louth, and Hazely Heath, Hampshire, an Irish landowner.

Her earliest publication was a volume of verse entitled From Dawn to Noon (1872), written under the pseudonym of Violet Fane, which she chose at random, and retained in permanence in order to conceal her identity from her family. (It is the name of a character in Disraeli's Vivian Grey.) In 1875 appeared Denzil Place: A story in verse, an interesting love-tale, never rising to high passion, but showing much feeling. The Queen of the Fairies, and other Poems appeared in 1876, and in 1877 Anthony Babington, a drama in prose and verse. In 1880 she issued her Collected Verses.

As Mrs. Singleton she became well known in London society. Possessed of great personal beauty and charm of manner, she was an original and witty talker. Mrs. Singleton also wrote prose, beginning with the witty social sketches entitled Edwin and Angelina Papers (1878). Three novels, Sophy; or, The adventures of a savage (1881); Thro' Love and War (1886); and The Story of Helen Davenant (1889), were followed by further poems, Autumn Songs (1889). In 1892 her poems were again collected, in two handsome volumes.

Mr. Singleton, by whom she had 2 sons and 2 daughters, died on 10 March 1893. On 24 Jan. 1894 Mrs. Singleton married Sir Philip Henry Wodehouse Currie (afterwards Baron Currie of Hawley). She accompanied him to Constantinople, where he was ambassador. While there she produced two volumes of poems, Under Cross and Crescent (1896) and Betwixt two Seas : ... Ballads written at Constantinople and Therapia (1900). In 1898 her husband was transferred to Rome, and there she lived until his retirement in 1903.

Settling at Hawley, Hampshire, Lady Currie took a keen interest in gardening. She died of heart failure at the Grand Hotel, Harrogate, and was buried at Mattingley Church, Hampshire.

Writing

Her poems, generally in a minor key and slightly sentimental, show command of metrical technique and a gift of melody. Some of them were set to music, notably 'For Ever and for Ever,' by Sir Paolo Tosti. Her novels, while they take original views of life and show careful delineation of character, are somewhat dull and over-long. Her best prose is to be found in her light essays, contributed to periodicals and afterwards republished in volume form (cf. 'Edwin and Angelina Papers,' 1878; 'Two Moods of a Man,' 1901; and 'Collected Essays,' 1902). A prose work of a different character was 'Memoirs of Marguerite of Valois, Queen of Navarre' (1892).

Critical introduction

by Alexander Hay Japp

She has written much, and has in some lines of work received the best proof of public acceptance — her books have sold. She was the author of several novels, some of which are exceptionally attractive by their fresh views of life and careful delineations of character. She was the author, too, of a drama titled “Anthony Babington,” which, if it is ambitious in its scheme and aim, contains passages of remarkable power.

Denzil Place: A story in verse shows uncommon facility and resource, and has here and there pictures and lyrical turns that tell of real imagination, while it escapes the somewhat broad, almost Hudibrastic boldness of such tales in verse as Mrs. Jerningham’s Journal — which, though very original, err, by failing to mark off definitely enough the lines of verse from those of prose.

Mrs. Singleton also published several volumes of poetry pure and simple. From a study of these, we come to the conclusion that “Violet Fane” was a singer, and a thinker as well. Her muse not only treasured up observations of life and nature, and turned them to good account; but the “painful riddle of the earth” was much with her. She brooded over inequalities in the lot of man — the fortune that deals out wealth to one and poverty to another, with which merit apparently has nought to do. The sorrow for which there is no anodyne, the regret for which there is no remedy, the pain for which there is no salve, and the remorseful remembrance for which there is no nepenthe, insisted on being present with her and colouring her life, and consequently her poetry. The ministry of the past to the present — as though the present was the inevitable full-flower of the past — is an idea that comes out in many of her poems.... 

Inevitably, therefore, much of “Violet Fane’s” poetry is set in a minor key: she was artist enough to relieve this by many devices of metre (of which she had considerable command), her poems flowing with a sense as of easy freedom. Occasionally she essayed blank verse, and with more success than has fallen to the lot of many women.

Recognition

In popular culture

W.H. Mallock dedicated his novel The New Republic (1877) to Fane. She appears in it as "Mrs. Sinclair", "who has published a volume of poems, and is a sort of fashionable London Sappho."

1st editions of her early poetical volumes are valued by collectors.

Publications

Poetry

• From Dawn to Noon: Poems. London: Longmans Green, 1872.
• Denzil Place: A story in verse.. London: Chapman & Hall, 1875.
  • printed in U.S. as Constance's Fate: A story of Denzil Place. London: Chapman & Hall / New York: G.W. Carleton, 1876.
• The Queen of the Fairies (a village story), and other poems. London: Chapman & Hall, 1876.
• Anthony Babington (drama in verse). London: Chapman & Hall, 1877.
• Collected Verses. London: Smith Elder, 1880.
• Poems. New York: G.W. Dillingham, 1887.
• Autumn Songs. London: Chapman & Hall, 1889.
• Poems by Violet Fane. (2 volumes), London: John C. Nimmo, 1892. Volume I, Volume II.
• Under Cross and Crescent. London: John C. Nimmo, 1896.
• Betwixt two Seas: Poems and ballads. London: John C. Nimmo, 1900.

Novels

• Sophy; or, The adventures of a savage. (3 volumes), London: Hurst & Blackett, 1881. Volume I, Volume II, Volume III
• Thro' Love and War. (3 volumes), London: Hurst & Blackett, 1886. Volume I, Volume II, Volume III
• The Story of Helen Davenant. (3 volumes), London: Chapman & Hall, 1889. Volume I, Volume II, Volume III.

Short fiction

• The Edwin and Angelina Papers. London: published at the World office, 1878.

Non-fiction

(as "Mary Currie")

• Collected Essays. 1902.

Collected editions

• Two Moods of a Man with other papers and short stories. London: J.C. Nimmo, 1901.

Translated

• Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre. London: John C. Nimmo / New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1892

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

Poems by Violet Fane

1. Let Me Arise

See also

• List of British poets

References

•  Lee, Elizabeth (1912). "Currie, Mary Montgomerie". In Lee, Sidney. Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement​. 1. London: Smith, Elder. pp. 454-455.  . Wikisource, Web, May 25, 3013.

Fonds

• Papers of Mary Montgomerie Currie (Violet Fane) at the University of Reading

External links

Poems

• "In Green Old Gardens" at About.com
• "Forbidden Lave" in A Book of Women's Verse
• 3 poems by Fane: "A May Song," "A Rainy Summer," "New Year's Day"
• Violet Fane at PoemHunter (2 poems)
• Lady Mary Montgomerie Currie in A Victorian Anthology: "A May Song," "A Foreboding," "In Green Old Gardens," "Afterwards"
• Violet Fane at Poetry Nook (4 poms)
• Fane in Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century: "Time," "Divided," "A Reverie," "The Lament of a White Rose," Song: "I Wonder will you Twine for Me",

About

• Mary M. Singleton (“Violet Fane”) (1843–1905) critical and biographical essay in Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century, 1907.

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Dictionary of National Biography, 2nd supplement​ (edited by Sidney Lee). London: Smith, Elder, 1912. Original article is at: Currie, Mary Montgomerie