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- Lady Drummond-Wolff (n?e Adeline Douglas) is variously described in the censuses as having been born in Brussels, Scotland, and London. Her census age also varies, making her year of birth anything between 1832 and 1840; in fact, however, not only was she older than her husband (having been born in 1826/7), but her whole existence may have been a deceit, as her alleged father, Walter Sholto Douglas, does not appear to have existed.
In her book Mary Diana Dods, A Gentleman and a Scholar (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), Betty T. Bennett puts forward a convincing argument that Walter Sholto Douglas was in fact a woman, Mary Diana Dods, the illegitimate daughter of the 15th Earl of Morton [Ed. unlikely; the Earl died (1774) before Mary was born (1790)] and the close friend of Mary Shelley. Having worked successfully as a writer under the pseudonym David Lyndsay, she appears to have fashioned an entire life for herself as a man, calling herself Walter Sholto Douglas.
Betty Bennett believes that in 1826 Mary Diana Dods rescued the reputation of her unmarried friend, the coquette Isabella Robinson (1809? 1869), by "marrying" her in the persona of Walter Sholto Douglas. Mary Shelley then helped the couple get passports and escape to Paris, where Adeline Douglas (Mrs Kingscote's mother) was born soon afterwards. In Paris Mary Shelley introduced the couple to ?lite Anglo-French society and they mixed with intellectuals such as Stendhal and Fauriel.
Mary Diana Dods died in 1828, leaving her "wife", Isabella Douglas, a respectable widow. Isabella's daughter Adeline Douglas was then only about one year old and may never have known about her background. In 1840 her widowed mother married a clergyman, the Revd William Falconer. She died at the Villa Falconer near Pistoria at the age of 59 on 7 February 1869.
Henry Drummond-Wolff's entry in Who's Who stated that his wife was the daughter of Walter Sholto Douglas, and if Betty T. Bennett's theory is correct, it is possible that he too was deceived about her origins.
Lady Wolff was granted a civil-list pension in 1909 following the death of her husband. At the time of the 1911 census she was the head of the household at 6 Ashburnham Mansions, Chelsea. Her married son, Cecil Drummond Wolff (47), was with her, but not his wife, and they only had one servant. Lady Wolff died at her grace-and-favour apartment at Hampton Court on 31 March 1916, and her age in the death register is (for once) correctly given as 89.
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