Arthur Lee, 1st Viscount Lee of Fareham
Rowland Edmund Prothero | |
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Succeeded by | Arthur Griffith-Boscawen |
Personal details | |
Born | Arthur Hamilton Lee 8 November 1868 philanthropist and patron of the arts. |
Arthur Hamilton Lee, 1st Viscount Lee of Fareham,
Early life and family
Arthur Hamilton Lee was born at The Rectory,
Education and early military career
After attending Cheltenham College, Lee entered the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. He was commissioned into the Royal Artillery as a second lieutenant on 17 February 1888.[1][3] He was posted to the Far East, China, as Adjutant of the Royal Hong Kong Regiment (the Volunteers). He was promoted lieutenant on 18 February 1891.[1][4] He returned to England in 1891, and was stationed on the Isle of Wight for the next two years.
Professor at Royal Military College of Canada
On 18 August 1893, at the age of 24, Lee became a
Diplomatic postings
He did not receive substantive promotion until the completion of his RMC appointment on 18 April 1898.
Marriage, retirement from military
On 23 December 1899 Lee married Ruth Moore (died 1966), daughter of New York banker John Godfrey Moore. He had first met her at parties in Kingston and Gananoque, and had taken her to balls at the Royal Military College, Kingston. Ruth was left a substantial inheritance after her father's death shortly before the wedding. Lee was promoted brevet major on 8 August 1900, returned to regimental duty on 22 August 1900,[12] and retired from the army on 12 December 1900.[13]
Politics
In 1900, Lee returned to England and embarked upon a political career. He was elected as a Conservative
The resignation of Arthur Balfour as Conservative Prime Minister in favour of Liberal Leader, Henry Campbell-Bannerman, in 1905 and the defeat of the Conservative Party in the elections of 1906 and 1910 postponed Lee's further office for a decade. He was Chairman of the Parliamentary Aerial Defence Committee, from 1910 to 1914. He also introduced the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1912.[15]
First World War
At the beginning of the
On 8 June 1917, with Lloyd George now
Joins Cabinet
Lee joined the
Productive from House of Lords
Conservative Prime Ministers
Chequers
Lee and his wife took on a long lease of Chequers, a country house and 1,000-acre (4.0 km2) estate in Buckinghamshire, in 1909. The Lees bought the property in 1912 after the owner died, and began restoration. In 1917, they gave the estate, and the entire contents of the house which included a library, historical papers and manuscripts and a collection of Cromwellian portraits and artefacts, in trust to the nation to be used as the official residence and retreat of successive British Prime Ministers in perpetuity, enabled by the Chequers Estate Act 1917, the first piece of legislation to recognize the figure of a Prime Minister. The Lees left the property in January 1921, and Lloyd George was the first Prime Minister to use the property.[33][34][35]
Patron of the arts, and later life
After furnishing Chequers, Lee began a second collection. He gained the financial backing of Samuel Courtauld and Joseph Duveen, and established the Courtauld Institute of Art with the University of London. The institute, the first to offer degrees in the history of art in Britain, opened in 1932 with William George Constable as its director at Lee's request. Also with Courtauld, he persuaded the University of London to accept the transfer of the Warburg Institute from Hamburg; it was loaned to him prior to its re-establishment in 1944. He also donated a silver collection and other objects to Hart House, at the University of Toronto in Canada in 1940. In 1935 he donated a Madonna of Venetian painter Bartolomeo Vivarini (c. 1480) to Westminster Abbey.
Additionally, in the 1920s Lee was a trustee of the
Between 1917 and 1939 Lee was President of Cheltenham College.[37]
Lee wrote his autobiography, entitled A Good Innings in 1941, and this was privately published in three volumes that year. It was later republished by his good friend Alan Clark, also a Conservative politician, for publishers J. Murray in 1974 (see below).
Death
Lord Lee died at Old Quarries, a grade II listed building in Avening, Gloucestershire, in 1947. Lee had no children and his viscountcy became extinct upon his death.
His widow, Viscountess Lee, presented to the Royal Military College of Canada Museum a silver-headed walking stick of her late husband, which he had used daily at RMC fifty-four years earlier. The stick has two silver bands listing the places where Lee served, or visited, between 1888 and 1904, which include the Royal Military College of Canada. Lady Lee also presented the RMC Museum with three photographs of Lord Lee –- two of them taken in Kingston, one in uniform in 1893, and the other in 1896 wearing a checked suit, silver-topped stick in hand. The third is a photograph of the portrait by Herbert James Gunn in full regalia of a Knight Grand Cross of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath.[38]
Bibliography
- Lee of Fareham, Viscount; Clark, Alan (1974). A Good Innings; The Private Papers of Viscount Lee of Fareham. London: J. Murray. ISBN 0-7195-2850-X.
- Baddeley, V. W.; Brodie, Marc (January 2008). "Lee, Arthur Hamilton, Viscount Lee of Fareham (1868–1947)". doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/34466. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- Hesilrige, Arthur G. M. (1921). Debrett's Peerage and Titles of courtesy. 160A, )
References
- ^ a b c d e f g (Hesilrige 1921, p. 549)
- ^ a b c Lord Lee of Fareham Professor of Strategy and Tactics, R.M.C., 1893–98 By No. 2141, T. L. Brock; Royal Military College of Canada Review yearbook 1962 p 189
- ^ "No. 25790". The London Gazette. 24 February 1888. p. 1225.
- ^ "No. 26139". The London Gazette. 27 February 1891. p. 1120.
- ^ "No. 26433". The London Gazette. 18 August 1893. p. 4708.
- ^ "No. 26436". The London Gazette. 29 August 1893. p. 4923.
- ^ "No. 26967". The London Gazette. 17 May 1898. p. 3048.
- ^ "No. 27064". The London Gazette. 21 March 1899. p. 1905.
- ^ The Rough Riders By Theodore Roosevelt pg. 62
- ^ The Rough Riders By Theodore Roosevelt pg. 115
- ^ The Letters of Rudyard Kipling: 1911-19 By Rudyard Kipling pg. 262
- ^ "No. 27254". The London Gazette. 7 December 1900. p. 8306.
- ^ "No. 27255". The London Gazette. 11 December 1900. p. 8377.
- ^ "No. 27244". The London Gazette. 6 November 1900. p. 6770.
- ^ a b Lord Lee of Fareham Professor of Strategy and Tactics, R.M.C., 1893-98 By No. 2141, T. L. Brock; Royal Military College of Canada Review yearbook 1962 p 189
- ^ "No. 27606". The London Gazette. 16 October 1903. p. 6291.
- ^ "No. 27563". The London Gazette. 12 June 1903. p. 3721.
"No. 27765". The London Gazette. 17 February 1905. p. 1207. - ^ "No. 28956". The London Gazette (Supplement). 27 October 1914. p. 8752.
"No. 28994". The London Gazette (Supplement). 1 December 1914. p. 10277. - ^ "No. 29705". The London Gazette (Supplement). 11 August 1916. p. 7978.
- ^ "No. 29667". The London Gazette. 14 July 1916. p. 6977.
- ^ "No. 30118". The London Gazette (Supplement). 5 June 1917. p. 5618.
- ^ "No. 30460". The London Gazette (Supplement). 4 January 1918. p. 365.
- ^ "No. 30787". The London Gazette. 9 July 1918. p. 8063.
- ^ "No. 31123". The London Gazette. 14 January 1919. p. 712.
- ^ "No. 32235". The London Gazette. 22 February 1921. p. 14563.
- ^ "No. 32776". The London Gazette. 12 December 1922. p. 8793.
- ^ "No. 32835". The London Gazette. 19 June 1923. p. 4274.
- ^ "No. 33186". The London Gazette. 28 May 1926. pp. 4957–4958.
- ^ "No. 33417". The London Gazette. 31 August 1928. p. 5765.
- ^ "No. 33007". The London Gazette (Supplement). 30 December 1924. p. 3.
- ^ "No. 33501". The London Gazette (Supplement). 31 May 1929. p. 3668.
- ^ "No. 33618". The London Gazette. 24 June 1930. p. 3956.
- ^ "Lloyd Gearoge's New Home" (PDF). The New York Times. 20 October 1917. Retrieved 16 August 2009.
- ^ "People and history: Chequers". Chilterns Conservation Board. Retrieved 24 January 2012.
- ^ "Home from home". BBC News Online. 18 July 2001. Retrieved 16 August 2009.
- ^ "No. 33166". The London Gazette. 28 May 1926. p. 3454.
"No. 33727". The London Gazette. 19 June 1931. p. 3392.
"No. 34255". The London Gazette. 2 March 1943. p. 973.
"No. 37572". The London Gazette (Supplement). 21 May 1946. p. 3402. - ^ Morgan, Michael Croke (1968). Cheltenham College: the first hundred years. Chalfont St Giles: Richard Sadler. p. 217.
- ^ Lord Lee of Fareham Professor of Strategy and Tactics, R.M.C., 1893-98 By No. 2141, T. L. Brock; Royal Military College of Canada Review yearbook 1962 p 189
External links
- Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Arthur Lee