Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Currie, Mary Montgomerie
CURRIE, MARY MONTGOMERIE, Lady Currie (1843–1905), author under the pseudonym of Violet Fane, born at Beauport, Littleharnpton, Sussex, on 24 Feb. 1843, was eldest daughter of Charles James Saville Montgomerie Lamb by his wife Anna Charlotte, daughter of Arthur Hopwood Grey of Bersted, Sussex. Her grand-father, Sir Charles Montolieu Lamb, second baronet, of Beauport, Sussex, married Mary, daughter and heiress of Archibald Montgomerie, eleventh earl of Eglinton [q. v.]; her great-grandfather was Sir James Bland Burgos, afterwards Lamb [q. v.]. 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). She married on 27 Feb. 1864 Henry Sydenham Singleton of Mell, co. Louth, and Hazely Heath, Hampshire, an Irish landowner.
Her first 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.'
Meanwhile, Mrs. Singleton became well known in London society. Possessed of great personal beauty and charm of manner, she was an original and witty talker. Mr. W. H. Mallock dedicated to her his 'New Republic' (1877) in which she figures prominently as Mrs. Sinclair, 'who has published a volume of poems, and is a sort of fashionable London Sappho.' 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, now in two handsome volumes.
Mr. Singleton, by whom she had two sons and two daughters, died on 10 March 1893. On 24 Jan. 1894 Mrs. Singleton married secondly Sir Philip Henry Wodehouse Currie, G.C.B., afterwards Baron Currie of Hawley [q. v. Suppl. II]. 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 keen interest in gardening. She died of heart failure on 13 Oct. 1905, at the Grand Hotel, Harrogate, and was buried at Mattingley Church, Hampshire.
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). First editions of her early poetical volumes are valued by collectors.
A portrait engraved by Stodart forms the frontispiece of 'Poems ' (2 vols. 1892).
[Burke's Peerage, 1910; The Times, 16 Oct. 1905; Lady, 29 Dec. 1904; Men and Women of the Time, 1899; private information.]