Catalogue description Correspondence and other papers of Julian Fane, Henry Cowper, Anne Countess Cowper and other members of the Cowper and Fane families, 1806-1942

The papers in this collection primarily relate to the Honourable Julian Fane and his wife, Lady Adine Fane (née Cowper) and other members of the Cowper family.

Other letters in the collection are written by other members of Lady Adine Cowper's family. There are a great many written by the Honourable Henry Cowper, to his mother Lady Anne Cowper (see DE/Fa/C1-16) and from Lady Florence Amabel Herbert (née Cowper) to her brother Henry Cowper and her sister Lady Adine Cowper (see DE/Fa/C17-23; DE/Fa/C81)

Fane family

Cowper family

[Accession 2085]

Purchased 1994

• Fane, Hon Julian Henry Charles, 1827-1870, attaché and poet, 4th son of John, 11th Earl of Westmorland
• Cowper, Hon Henry, 1836-1887, son of Anne Cowper
• Cowper, Anne Florence, d 1880, née de Grey, Baroness Lucas, wife of 6th Earl of Cowper
• Fane, Ethel Priscilla, 1867-1952, Lady Desborough

Julian Henry Charles Fane was born in 1827, fourth son of John, eleventh Earl of Westmorland and his wife Priscilla. He was educated at Thames Ditton and then at Harrow. He matriculated from Trinity College, Cambridge in 1847. In 1850 he was awarded the Chancellor's medal for English verse for his poem "The Death of Adelaide, Queen Dowager" (see DE/Fa/F4; DE/Fa/C73).

In 1844 Julian Fane entered the diplomatic service as an unpaid attaché to his father's mission in Berlin. He was then an attaché in Vienna between 1851 and 1853. At the Congress of Paris in 1856 he was attached to Lord Clarendon's special mission. He was appointed secretary of the legation in St Petersburg in 1856 (see DE/Fa/O1) and he was transferred to Vienna in April 1858 (see DE/Fa/O1) and then on to Paris in 1865. He resigned from the diplomatic service in 1867, (see DE/Fa/C37-C74 for letters about his diplomatic business).

He married Lady Adine Cowper, daughter of the sixth Earl Cowper and his wife Ann, in 1866. She died in 1868 after having given birth to two children Ethel Priscilla (later Mrs Grenfell, then Lady Desborough) and Johnnie (who died in 1876). He became ill after Lady Adine's death and died in 1870.

He wrote a sonnet every year to his mother, Priscilla, Countess of Westmorland, on her birthday (see DE/Fa/F7-11; DE/Fa/C61).She was a talented artist in her own right. She died in 1879. John Fane, eleventh Earl of Westmorland, her husband was also a diplomat. He died in 1859