ABSTRACT
Edinburgh, 1942). Winifred Fortescue, née Beech (1888-1951) attended the last garden party which Emma Hardy gave at Max Gate in July 1912 before her death the following November. She was at that time staying with Colonel John Mount Batten, then Lord Lieutenant of Dorset, and it was during the garden party that she met her future husband, John Fortescue (1859-1933), military historian and librarian of the Royal Library, Windsor Castle. Lady Fortescue attended Max Gate in the company of Mrs Mount Batten and her father, James Sant, RA (1820-1916), court painter to Queen Victoria. Hardy wrote of this occasion that ‘he had returned to Max Gate just in time to be at a garden party on July 16 – the last his wife ever gave – which it would have much grieved him afterwards to have missed. The afternoon was sunny and the guests numerous on this final one of many occasions of such a gathering on the lawn there, nobody forseeing the shadow that was so soon to fall on the house, Mrs Hardy being then, apparently, in her customary health and vigour’ (Life, p. 386). Lady Fortescue, curiously, dates the party as being held in September.
