The painter Frances Hodgkins was known for her portraits, mostly of her friends. Some of these include Cedric Morris and Kitty Church and Anthony West, but this post is about the lesser known Elizabeth Curtis.
Elizabeth Curtis nee Carr was a teacher whose husband Arthur Curtis died in the First World War. In 1923 she had set up a school at Langford Grove, a Georgian mansion in the Essex village of Langford near Maldon to give herself a better income.
The school was a private boarding school for girls aged from about 8 to 17, known for for music and art. One of the most notable pupils was Angelica Garnett. She employed other teachers who were often exhausted at her flippant impulses, as she would barge into the classroom to pick girls to join her to see plays in London or concerts in Cambridge. She also wrote poetry, with a booklet of her works being published by a memorial fund in her name. She retired from her school in 1962.
As well as being painted by Hodgkin, Elizabeth also owned some of her works, some included in this blog, but many more.
Elizabeth chose to send her son Dunstan to Eton. He went to Trinity College, Oxford studying PPE and became a lawyer and politician. In 1939 he married Monica Forbes of the American political family (William Cameron Forbes, John Kerry). After their divorce Monica married the poet John Pudney and Dunstan married the sociologist Patricia Elton (daughter of Australian psychologist Elton Mayo) in 1955, this post work work spent working in Europe and drafting a copy of the European convention on human rights.
