And Their Chicago Connection
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Lady Curzon , the former Mary Victoria Leiter of Chicago
By Megan McKinney
The Souls were made up of a small group of English aristocrats who led the intellectual, social—and even political—elite in the United Kingdom from 1885 to the turn of the century.
Arthur Balfour
Arthur Balfour, UK Prime Minister from 1902 to 1905, was a major player in the original group.
nationaltrust.org.uk
George Curzon
The Chicago connection is the future Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India, who is most frequently credited with creating the Souls and would marry Chicagoan Mary Victoria Leiter, daughter of mega-merchant Levi Leiter, a one-time partner of both Marshall Field and Potter Palmer. Lady Curzon is pictured at the top of this column.
dreadnoughtproject.org
Lord Charles Beresford
The name reportedly came from turn of the twentieth century British Admiral and Member of Parliment Lord Charles Beresford, who in 1888 said: “You all sit and talk about each other’s souls—I shall call you the Souls.”
Souls member Countess of Oxford and Asquith—Margot to her friends—was married to fellow Soul H. H. Asquith, British Prime Minister 1908-1916. Volume Two of her autobiography leads off with a thorough discussion of the Souls.
Margot’s husband, Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith
londonremembers.com
Laura Tennant Lyttelton
Laura Tennant was Margot Asquith’s sister as well as a Souls member. She married Alfred Lyttelton in 1885 and died a year later giving birth to their son.
npg.org.uk
Alfred Lyttelton looking down from a wall in London’s National Portrait Gallery.
Laura’s husband and Souls member Alfred Lyttelton was the 12th child of the 4th Baron Lyttelton.
Credit:The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Wyndham Sisters as seen in a cut of John Singer Sargent’s famous painting of the trio.
According to Jane Abdy and Charlotte Gere’s 1984 bookThe Souls, the Wyndhams of late 19th century London “were truly a Souls family, between them they could muster at least ten members of the very inner circle of friends”. The sisters in the Sargent image are from left Madeline Adeane, Pamela Tennant and Mary Constance, Lady Elcho.
Lady Randolph Churchill
American born Souls included Lady Randolph Churchill, the beautiful former Jennie Jerome of Brooklyn, New York, who would be mother of Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
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Edith Wharton
American Souls knmember Edith Wharton was able to write realistically about the lives and morals of Gilded Age Americans through her knowledge of the period’s New York “aristocracy.” In 1921, she became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her novel The Age of Innocence.
thefamouspeople.com
The former Consuelo Vanderbilt
Consuelo Vanderbilt reluctantly became Duchess of Marlborough when her mother forced her into marriage with the Duke. It was scarcely a love match, but her fortune benefited the upkeep of Marlborough’s Blenheim Palace and she made English friends within the Souls.
Author photo: Robert F. Carl
