‘The Director reported that Mrs. Howard, Green Gates, Albion Hill, Loughton, Essex, had gifted a portrait of herself as a young child by Robert Brough, and the committee agreed that the gift be accepted and that a letter be sent to Mrs. Howard conveying their appreciation therefor’.1
(‘Green gates’ was a house that Edith and her husband occupied temporarily while they were looking for permanent accommodation in London). 2
In the catalogue of donations to Glasgow, the painting is entitled Edie, Daughter of O. H. Edinger, Esq., London (2285) and was presented by Mrs Geoffrey E. Howard, of Ashmore, near Salisbury on 6 June 1942.3
There is no photograph available of the painting as it is currently on extended loan to Edith’s family.
The portrait was painted about 1900 when ‘Edie’ was nine. It was exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy (RSA) Exhibition of 1900 having been sent from the Rossetti Studios, Flood Street, Chelsea, London. 4 The artist was a protégé of John Singer Sargent who in turn was a friend of Edith`s father which is probably why Brough was chosen to paint the portrait.5
Edith Julia Emma Edinger (“Edie”) was born in London on 15 May 1891 6. Her parents were German Jews who emigrated to Britain and took British citizenship. Her father, Otto Henry Edinger was born in Worms in 1856; her mother was Augusta Fuld, whose date of birth was 24 June 1869 7. They married in Germany on 2 July 1890 8. Edith had two younger brothers, Valentine (born 1894) and George (born 1900) 9.
Otto had first visited London in 1875 and set up in business there. He appears on the 1881 Census as a ‘lodger’ at 72 Prince`s Square, Paddington. 10 He was employed as a clerk. However, by 1901 he was living with his family at 83 Cadogan Gardens, Chelsea. He was now a stockbroker and employed six servants.11 He made several trips to New York between 1904 and 1907 but seems to have been unaccompanied. 12
Otto`s family was now ‘rich and fashionable ……..kept a carriage and a butler, rode in Rotten Row, and in the winter months took the train out to Leighton Buzzard to hunt’. 13 As a result, Edith received a privileged upbringing. She ‘went to a fashionable, girls` day-school near Sloane Square and to finishing schools in France and Germany’. She was a debutante at the court of Edward VII and was also presented to the Kaiser aboard his yacht. (She reported to the family that the Kaiser spoke better English than Edward VII). ‘She dined with his officers, flirted with the King of Norway (and) attended the Berlin premiere of Rosenkavalier. She was lively, witty, wealthy ……….. and very beautiful’. She met her husband, Geoffrey Eliot Howard, at a dance at the Alpine Club in London in 1913 and they married on 19November the following year. 14
Geoffrey was thirty-even and Edith twenty-three. He was a director of the family firm of Howards and Sons based in Ilford and was later appointed chairman 15. The firm manufactured pharmaceutical and industrial chemicals. (Their main medicinal products were ether, quinine and aspirin, the latter being marketed with the slogan ‘Howard’s Aspirin is not the cheapest – it is the Best’) 16
After their marriage, Geoffrey and Edith moved into a house in Brompton Square ‘in a highly fashionable area on the borders of South Kensington and Chelsea’. Their first son, John Anthony Eliot Howard was born there in 1916. The next three years saw the birth of another son, Denis Valentine Eliot Howard but also the death of both of Edith`s parents. Her brother Val was killed on the Western Front in 1918. After the war they moved to a larger house looking on to Ennismore Gardens where a third son, Michael Eliot Howard was born in 1922.
According to Michael, the 1920s were happy times for his mother. Her family was growing up and living in some style with a retinue of servants to look after them. She had a wide circle of friends in London and in the country. In addition, ‘She collected pictures and (Chinese) jade with enthusiasm and discrimination with a taste for modern artists’. She possessed works by Walter Sickert, Laura Knight, Duncan Grant, Jacob Epstein, Paul Maitland, Mary Potter, Marie Laurencin and Matthew Smith. She and her brother George were founder members of Chatham House set up in 1920 to analyse and promote understanding of major international affairs.
Geoffrey`s father, Eliot Howard, died in 1927 and his house The Cottage on the Ashmore Estate, near Salisbury in Dorset passed to Edith and Geoffrey . Later as the house became too small for their needs it was ‘swapped’ for the village Rectory. Michael recalled ‘My mother spent what were probably the happiest years of her life redecorating what had now become The Old Rectory……in the elegant and comfortable style of the 1930s’.
‘But in the 1930s ……she slipped into a decline from which she never entirely recovered. Still implacably elegant, increasingly neurotic ………she spent the rest of her life in a search for the kind of stability that the world of the twentieth century proved unable to provide’. Her depression was exacerbated by the likely outbreak of war and the prospect of all three of her sons being called up for military duty. When war did break out, she moved with the family out of London to Ashmore. They returned to London in early 1940 when the more valuable pictures (in her collection) were placed in store’.
However, in the bombing which followed, their house in Brompton Square although not directly hit was declared unsafe and they were again evacuated to Ashmore. In the spring of 1942, they moved back to central London to a flat in Ennismore Gardens. Edith ‘regained her old elegance and sparkle ……. visiting picture galleries and adding to her small, excellent collection of contemporary, British painters’. She also worked in the Red Cross attending to the needs of prisoners-of-war. ‘Air raids she took in her stride, refusing to go to the shelter at night and next morning, immaculate in twinset and pearls……..she crunched in her high heeled shoes through the broken glass of Knightsbridge and Piccadilly to the Redfern Gallery or Harrods; this was her finest hour’.
After the war she and Geoffrey moved to a house in Egerton Crescent, London. Geoffrey Howard died on 16 January 1956 and was buried at Ashmore. Edith survived him by 20 years and died in the spring of 1977 aged 86. Her ashes were buried at Ashmore beside her husband.
It is still not clear why Edith took the decision to donate her portrait to Glasgow since it seems unlikely that she ever visited the city. The painting itself had crossed the border once before to be exhibited at the RSA exhibition of 1900. It may have been sent north to escape the bombing in London although many of her other paintings were placed in storage at that time. It may also be that as she continued to collect the works of modern artists, she needed space to display them.
References
- Minutes of the Corporation of Glasgow, November 1941 to May 1942, C1/3/105, Mitchell Library, Glasgow. Minute of the Committee on Art Galleries and Museums, 21April 1942.
- Information from Professor Sir Michael Howard, Edith’s youngest son
- Catalogue of Paintings Donated to Glasgow Corporation, Glasgow Museums Resource Centre
- Baile de Laperriere , Charles, editor, The Royal Scottish Academy Exhibitors, 1826-1900, Hillmartin Manor Press, 1991
- Information from Professor Sir Michael Howard
- www.pennyghael.org.uk/Howard.pdf
- www.familysearch.org
- ibid
- ibid
- www.ancestry.co.uk, Census, England, 1881
- www.ancestry.co.uk, Census, England 1901
- www.ancestry.com New York, Passenger Lists 1820 – 1957
- This and subsequent quotes are used with permission from Captain Professor, a life in war and peace – The Memoirs of Sir Michael Howard, Continuum UK, 2006.
- www.pennyghael.org.uk/Howard.pdf
- The Times, 7 September 1942
- Graces Guide, http://www.gracesguide.co.uk%2FHowards_and_Sons&usg=AOvVaw3QmZ_9-idPcVhrdv8g0SXF
Glasgow Museums Art Donors Group 