Lady holland biography

Elizabeth Vassall, the future Lady Holland, was born in March 1771, the only child of Richard Vassall, a proprietor of wealthy estates in Jamaica, and of his wife Mary, daughter of Thomas Clarke, a retired British Army officer who had settled on a farm in the neighbourhood of New York.

Vassall forebears had emigrated to America in the seventeenth century, but at the time of Elizabeth’s birth her parents were living mainly in England. When Richard Vassall died in 1795 his considerable fortune passed to his daughter, as she recorded in her Journal at the time:

‘I lost my poor father; a nobler, better man he has not left behind him. Towards me he was always fond and affectionate. His only failings arose from an excess of goodness. He was weak in character, as he idolised my mother and was completely subjected to her dominion. His death puts me in possession of great wealth, upwards of £10,000 per annum.’

English political hostess

Elizabeth Vassall Fox, Baroness Holland (1771 – London, November 1845) was an English political hostess and the wife of Whig politician Henry Vassall-Fox, 3rd Baron Holland. With her husband, and after his death, she hosted political and literary gatherings at their home, Holland House.

Biography

Elizabeth Vassall was born in 1771 in London, the only child and heiress of Richard Vassall, a planter in Jamaica, and Mary Clarke of New York. She was the granddaughter of Florentius Vassall, a wealthy planter and slave-owner, in Jamaica whose last will was dated 1777. She was also the first cousin of New York poet, scholar and real estate developer Clement Clarke Moore and second cousin of Theodosia Burr Alston, daughter of Aaron Burr.

First marriage

Vassall married Sir Godfrey Webster, 4th Baronet in 1786. He was more than 20 years older than she was. They had five children:

Webster was intensely unhappy in her marriage and she spent much of the early 1790s travelling in Europe, visiting France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. She enjoyed the guidance and friendship of the Duchess of Devonshire and the politician Thomas Pelham, with whom she had an affair resulting in a daughter, Harriet Frances (b.1794).

Second marriage

In 1794, Webster met in Naples the Whig politician Henry Fox, 3rd Baron Holland, two years her junior, and they embarked on a love affair. They had seven children:

On 4 July 1797, Fox was divorced by Webster on the grounds of adultery. She married Holland two days later, on 6 July. They lived together in Holland House in Kensington, then just outside London, and for many years hosted the elite of Whig society. Visitors included Lord Grey, George Tierney, Samuel Rogers, Walter Scott, Ugo Foscolo, Sydney

Saba, Lady Holland (née Smith; 1802–1866) was the eldest daughter of Sydney Smith and the second wife of Sir Henry Holland, a prominent physician and travel writer, with whom she had two daughters. She made a name for herself as the author of a much-read memoir of her famous father.

Some of Smith's often-quoted sayings were first recorded in Lady Holland's memoir, including:

Why, you never expected justice from a company, did you? They have neither a soul to lose, nor a body to kick.

and

Thank God for tea! What would the world do without tea? How did it exist? I am glad I was not born before tea. I can drink any quantity when I have not tasted wine.; otherwise I am haunted by blue devils by day, and dragons by night.

Her daughters were Caroline Holland (1834–1909; author of Notebooks of a Spinster Lady, published posthumously in 1919) and Gertrude Holland (1840–1898).

Notes

References