Lady Eleanor Smith

Lady Eleanor Furneaux Smith (7 August 1902[1] – 20 October 1945) was an English writer and active member of the Bright Young Things.[2]

Lady Eleanor Furneaux Smith (1920), from the National Portrait Gallery, London

Life

Born in Birkenhead, Smith was the eldest of three children born to politician F. E. Smith and Margaret Furneaux, daughter of the academic Henry Furneaux. Her brother was Frederick Smith, 2nd Earl of Birkenhead amd her sister Lady Pamela married Hon. Michael Berry. Her father was created Earl of Birkenhead in 1922.[3]

She went to Miss Douglas's school at Queen's Gate. At Queen's Gate she met Allanah Harper and Zita Jungman and together they became early members of what the British press would call the "Bright Young Things".[4]

Smith worked as a society reporter and cinema reviewer for a while, then as a publicist for circus companies. In the latter role she travelled widely, and gained inspiration for her third career, writing popular novels and short stories which often provided the basis for the "Gainsborough melodramas" of the period. These stories often had a romanticised historical or Gypsy setting, based on her own research into Romany culture (she believed one of her paternal great-grandmothers to have been a Gypsy).[5] Smith also wrote ghost stories; many of them were collected in her book Satan's Circus (1932).[5] Smith was a supporter of the Conservative Party.[5] In 1937, she responded to Nancy Cunard's survey of writers and poets on the topic of the Spanish Civil war, saying that she was a "warm adherent of General Franco."[6]

She died in Westminster in 1945 after a long illness.[2] Her requiem mass was conducted by Father Martin D'Arcy at Church of the Immaculate Conception, Farm Street on 31 October 1945. Her mass was attended by several other members of literary and high society, including Sir Osbert Sitwell Maureen, Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava, Cathleen, Marchioness of Queensberry; Margaret, Countess of Kimberley; Ann, Viscountess Rothermere; Bridget Parsons, and Lord Pakenham.[7]

In 1953, after her death, her brother, wrote a memoir about Smith, with whom he was very close.

Works

Novels
Year Novel Film adaptation
1930 Red Wagon Red Wagon (1933)
1931 Flamenco
1932 Ballerina The Men in Her Life (1941)
1935 Tzigane Gypsy (1937)
1936 Portrait of a Lady
1938 The Spanish House
1940 Lovers' Meeting
1942 The Man in Grey The Man in Grey (1943)
1943 Caravan Caravan (1946)
1944 Magic Lantern

Short stories
Year Books Notes
1932 Satan's Circus
1933 Christmas Tree

Others
Year Work Notes
1948 British Circus Life
1983 Cornish Coastal Walks for Motorists
1992 Coastal Walks in Cornwall
1995 Short Walks from Cornish Pubs
Mrs. Raeburn's Waxwork
No Ships Pass

Notes
  1. 1939 England and Wales Register
  2. "Lady Eleanor Smith – Novels of Gypsies and of the Circus". The Times. The Times Digital Archive. 22 October 1945. p. 6.
  3. Burke, Sir Bernard, ed. (1939). Burke's Peerage, Baronetage & Knighthood (97th ed.). Burke's Peerage & Gentry. p. 300.
  4. D J Taylor (30 September 2010). Bright Young People: The Rise and Fall of a Generation 1918-1940. Random House. pp. 24, 55. ISBN 978-1-4090-2063-9.
  5. Richard Dalby, (editor) The Virago Book of Ghost Stories: The Twentieth Century: Volume Two.Virago, London, 1991. 1-85381-454-7 (p.318).
  6. Cunard, Nancy. "Authors Take Sides of the Spanish Civil War" (PDF).
  7. "Requiem Mass – Lady Eleanor Smith". The Times. The Times Digital Archive. 1 November 1945. p. 6.
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