A good man but not a great one
Evelyn Joll
COUTTS LINDSAY 1824-1913 by Virginia Surtees Michael Russell, £15.95, pp. 213 Coutts Lindsay, we learn from this most admirable biography, was born with many advantages: aristocratic connections, good looks, exceptional charm and the devotion of his mother, his sisters Minnie and May, and his younger brother, Bob, whose gallantry in the Crimea was to win him the first Victoria Cross. But Coutts had one disadvantage, naturally unrecog- nised at the time: he was dyslexic. Thus, at ten, he was still unable to read fluently and remained a catastrophic speller so that his education was entrusted to a tutor in pref- erence to school.
Coutts inherited a baronetcy at the age of 13 from his grandfather and at 18 joined the Grenadier Guards. But in 1850 he resigned his commission and, having already shown a talent for drawing, devot- ed himself to art. It is now difficult to judge his ability as a painter, as so few of his works survive; for example, his mural deco- rations for Dorchester House for Robert Holford, who had married May, perished with the house and the only oil reproduced here hardly supports Lord Lindsay's view (he had married Minnie) that Coutts might become 'a second Benozzo Gozzoli'. Lindsay's partiality is confirmed by his opinion that Coutts's drama Alfred (1844) was 'the first genuine English play of real merit since the death of Shake- speare'.
There is plenty of evidence that few women could resist Coutts's charm. Thus Lizzie Chambers, whose background is unknown, bore him two sons in 1846 and 1854 before being finally apprised of 'the futility of her hopes', namely that Coutts
would marry her. His relationship with Lady Somers remains a mystery. She was Virginia Pattie, brought up in India, and the sister of the celebrated photographer, Julia Margaret Cameron. Virginia had the face of a madonna and 'a touch of the tar- brush', a combination which captivated Coutts. In 1850 she had married Lord Somers, a gnome-like figure with a squeaky voice. Virginia called Coutts her dearest friend but denied that he had been 'the object of a warmer feeling'. Mrs Surtees does not speculate further, but Coutts's brougham, spotted near the Somers' Lon- don house only eight days after his wedding and while his wife was still in Brighton, caused a few raised eyebrows at the time.
For Coutts had married Blanche Fitzroy, aged 19, on 30 June 1864. Somehow, despite Coutts's unfaithfulness and Blanche's own undoubted attractions and talents, it is difficult to warm to her. Partic- ularly unforgivable was her callous neglect of her dying mother whose fortune she nonetheless inherited. Her mother was born Hannah Rothschild, and, with 14 Lindsays and 19 Rothschilds in the index, family trees would have been wel- come.
As well as entertaining large parties at Balcarres, their house in Fife, the Lindsays were great travellers. On a visit to Venice, they heard Rawdon Brown praising the Coutts Lindsay outside the Grosvenor Gallery, 1883 Venetian method of rowing, but when someone dared to commend an English 'eight', Brown replied reprovingly, `Savages on a log, my dear Sir, savages on a log'.
Although Coutts had had ten pictures accepted by the Royal Academy between 1862 and 1875, others had been rejected. This, coupled with widespread dissatisfac- tion with the RA, described as 'the charnel house for dead reputations', encouraged Coutts to consider starting his own gallery. So, in May 1877, the Grosvenor Gallery opened at a cost of £120,000, borne equally between Coutts and Blanche, who was wholeheartedly supportive.
Coutts was described as 'Proprietor and Director' and invitations to exhibit were at his sole discretion. Artists were assured their work would be sympathetically arranged and not 'skied', although the illus- tration reproduced here shows three tiers of paintings with the top row still hung pretty high. The Gallery was a success at once, due to the excellent publicity it got from Blanche's ability to attract celebrated visitors. The Grosvenor, with Burne-Jones as its hero, became the showroom of the aesthetic movement and was immortalised in Patience with its reference to 'A green- ery yallery, Grosvenor Gallery, foot in the grave young man'.
But success was short-lived because Blanche, for long aware that Coutts had a mistress (Kate Burfield, who had borne him a son in 1869 only shortly after the birth of Blanche's second daughter), decid- ed to leave Coutts in 1882. Not only did Blanche withdraw her money but the social glitter of the Grosvenor dimmed with her departure. Despite some ambitious loan exhibitions, the Gallery's reputation declined and it finally closed in 1890, leav- ing Coutts with an overdraft of £111,000, but with the satisfaction of having con- tributed a valuable addition to the artistic life of London.
Coutts then retired to Roehampton with Kate and their son, and nothing of note is recorded of them until Blanche died on 4 August, 1912. Six days later Coutts, now 88, married Kate and reported that 'I feel more cocky now than I have for many years past'. But his health was frail and he died on 7 May 1913.
In retrospect, Coutts never fulfilled the high expectations predicted for him. His mother put this down to his having 'too many irons in the fire', while his sister Min- nie preferred the analogy of a many- branched plant that requires securing: `What Coutts needs is a stake'.
After Coutts's death, Minnie's grandson, Lord Crawford, wrote: 'Nevertheless with all his faults he was one of the most attractive personalities I ever met . . . He was a good man who assuredly ought to have been a great one'. Mrs Surtees enables us to see Coutts whole, and one cannot imagine that it could be better done.
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