ABSTRACT
The Honourable Anne Seymour Conway Damer seemed to her friends and most of her contemporaries to lead a blameless life. Widowed at 27, she embarked on a quiet routine of travel, friendship, and commitment to the art of sculpture. Anne Seymour Conway was born in Kent in 1748, the only child of a countess and an army general. The writer Horace Walpole was her father's cousin and great friend, and he took a great interest in his young godchild, looking after Anne at his Twickenham villa, Strawberry Hill, when her parents were abroad in the summers. Anne Damer prepared herself to go and live in France with the husband she loathed, and his brothers, so that they could avoid prosecution in England. But in the event, John Damer brought the melodrama to its finale by spending the evening in the upstairs room of a London tavern with four prostitutes and a blind fiddler, then shooting himself dead.
