Ronald Tree
Ronald Tree | |
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Member of Parliament for Harborough | |
In office 28 November 1933 – 5 July 1945 | |
Preceded by | The Earl Castle Stewart |
Succeeded by | Humphrey Attewell |
Personal details | |
Born | Eastbourne, Sussex, UK | 26 September 1897
Died | 14 July 1976 London, UK | (aged 78)
Political party | Conservative |
Spouses | |
Children | Ditchley Heron Bay, Barbados |
Arthur Ronald Lambert Field Tree (26 September 1897 – 14 July 1976) was a British Conservative Party politician, journalist and investor who served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for the Harborough constituency in Leicestershire from 1933 to 1945. He later established the Sandy Lane resort in Barbados.[1]
Biography
Tree's American-born father, Arthur Tree, was an English gentleman of leisure, self-identifying as a 'horse breeder and farmer' and son of Lambert Tree, a former U.S. minister to Russia. His mother, Ethel Field, was a daughter of Marshall Field, a co-founder of Marshall Field's department store in Chicago, Illinois.[2] Born in Eastbourne, he was educated at Winchester College in England.[3][4] Both sides of the family had great wealth and even though his parents divorced, Ronald and his father continued to enjoy a life of great luxury, not least Arthur's yacht 'The Adventuress'.
Two months after his parents divorced in 1901, Tree's mother married her lover, Capt. David Beatty, the future 1st Earl Beatty and First Sea Lord. His half-siblings were David Beatty, 2nd Earl Beatty, and the Hon Peter Beatty; he also had two full siblings, both of whom died in infancy. After the divorce, he remained with his father at Ashorne Hill House, Warwickshire, as the court had given Arthur custody of Ronald. There he was tutored by a convent girl from Cork in Ireland, his governess Kate Walsh, who was also Arthur's partner, the mother of six further half-siblings of Ronald; Dennis (1898–1969), Kathleen (1901–1975), Patrick (1905–1991), James, Gerald and Elizabeth Waring (1914–1991). Arthur and Kate were never married and while Ronald grew up with them at Ashorne Hill, he would have had little or no contact with a Catholic, half-Irish and illegitimate family after Arthur's death in 1914, when Ronald was already at the cusp of adulthood. Dennis, Kathleen and Patrick all had issue including notable architect, Michael Blower.[5]
Tree edited
Politics
Tree returned to England with his wife, the former Nancy Keene Perkins (the widow of his cousin Henry Marshall Field) in 1927, where they had two sons, artist, Michael Lambert Tree and racehorse trainer, Jeremy Tree, and a daughter, who died at birth. At first the couple took a 10-year repairing lease on Kelmarsh Hall near Market Harborough, Northamptonshire which Nancy redecorated with help from Mrs Guy Bethell of Elden Ltd.
In November 1933, Ronald was elected
Tree was among a small group who saw the rising
In February 1938, after
World War II
On the outbreak of war, the security forces were concerned by the visibility of Churchill's country house
Churchill gave Tree a job in the
He left Parliament when, in the election in 1945 at the end of the war, he was defeated by the Labour candidate at Harborough by 204 votes.
Marriage to Marietta Peabody
Although Tree was
Marietta moved into Ditchley, but found herself bored with English country life. Tree and most of his friends were conservatives, and Democrat Marietta found herself isolated. Recognising his wife's unhappiness, and for the first time in his life short of money due to the taxation of Foreign Trust income enacted by the 1945 Labour Government, Tree sold Ditchley and agreed to return to New York with Marietta, her daughter Frances FitzGerald, their daughter,[12] and his butler Collins.[2][4]
Marietta immediately joined the Lexington Democratic Club, and two years later was elected the county chairwoman. She was elected to the Democratic State Committee in 1954. In 1952, Marietta became involved in the presidential election campaign of
Marietta had started an affair with Adlai Stevenson between his two failed presidential campaigns, but her husband was unfazed by this, as the couple's marriage had largely disintegrated to a friendly separation, with Tree spending much of his time at Heron Bay, his house in Barbados. Marietta had turned down the option of returning to her earlier lover, the director John Huston, even when he had given her a role in his 1960 movie The Misfits. It was while walking in London with Marietta that Adlai suffered a heart attack, and later died at St. George's Hospital. That night in her diary, Marietta wrote, "Adlai is dead. We were together."[4]
Ronald Tree died of a stroke on 14 July 1976 in London, England.
Houses of Ronald Tree
Ronald Tree was, like his grandfather
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Studio BLG Chicago
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Ashorne HIll House, Ashorne, Warwickshire, North Front
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Stable courtyard at Ashorne Hill House, Warwickshire
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Stables at Ashorne Hill House, Ashorne, Warwickshire
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Ashorne Hill House, Ashorne, Warwickshire - The Great Hall
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43 Harrington Gardens - BU London
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Kelmarsh Hall (2)
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Ditchleyfront2
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Ogden Codman, Jr. House 7 East 96th Street from east
References
- ^ "The History of Sandy Lane" (PDF). www.sandylane.com. Archived from the original (PDF) on 31 January 2012. Retrieved 19 June 2012.
- ^ a b "Come to the Party - TIME". 30 May 2008. Archived from the original on 30 May 2008.
- ^ ‘TREE, Ronald’, Who Was Who, A & C Black, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing plc, 1920–2016
- ^ a b c d Human Rights Commission & Marietta Peabody Tree biography Archived 5 September 2008 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ The Gazette
- ^ a b "History Lives at Ditchley and Bletchley – The Churchill Centre". Archived from the original on 16 October 2006.
- ^ "Oxford DNB theme: Glamour boys". www.oxforddnb.com.
- ^ "Winston Churchill". Archived from the original on 14 July 2011. Retrieved 14 May 2011., Ditchley Foundation page on Churchill
- New York Times, 9 November 1997
- ^ No Regrets: The Life of Marietta Tree, Caroline Seebohm, New York: Simon & Schuster
- ^ No Regrets: The Life of Marietta Tree. - book reviews. Washington Monthly
- ^ New England Historic Genealogical Society Archived 27 September 2007 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ "Home". The Devoted Classicist. 4 June 2014.