Social Victorians/People/Strong

Also Known As

• Family name: Strong

Demographics

• Nationality:

Family

• Arthur (Sandford Arthur) Strong (10 April 1863 – 18 January 1904)
• Eugénie Sellers (25 March 1860 – 16 September 1943)

Relations

• Thomas Banks Strong, Arthur Strong's father, was a civil servant; his mother specialized in
• brother Thomas Strong was Bishop of Ripon and then Oxford.

Acquaintances, Friends and Enemies

Arthur Strong

Friends

• The Duke of Devonshire
• Countess Feodora Gleichen

Eugénie Sellers, "the Classical Archaeologist"

Friends

• Katharine Jex-Blake (1860-1951)
• Sir Charles Newton, the British Museum
• Frederic, Lord Leighton
• Edward Burne Jones
• Lawrence Alma Tadema
• Jane Ellen Harrison
• Vernon Lee
• Adolf Furtwängler
• Ludwig Traube (1861-1907)

Organizations

Arthur Strong

• King's College, London
• Clerk, Lloyds (1878-1880)
• Sub-Keeper and Librarian, Indian Institute at Oxford (1885-1895)
• Professor of Arabic, University College, London (1895-1904)
• Librarian to the Duke of Devonshire, Chatsworth (1895-1904)
• Librarian to the Duke of Portland, Welbeck (1896–1904)
• Librarian, House of Lords (1897-1904)

Eugénie Sellers

• Girton College (–1882)
• Teacher, St. Leonard's School, St Andrews, Scotland
• Teacher and lecturer, British Museum (1890–1891)
• First female student, British School in Athens (1891)
• Teacher, British School at Rome, under Thomas Ashby (1909–1925)
• Librarian, Chatsworth House (1904–)
• Life research fellow, Girton College (1910)

Timeline

1897 July 2, Mr. Arthur S. Strong attended the Duchess of Devonshire's fancy-dress ball.

1897 December 11, Saturday, S. Arthur Strong and Eugénie Sellers married. A notice of the wedding was reported in the "Court Circular" section of the Morning Post, with the group of notices under the sub-header "The Prince and Princess of Wales": "The marriage of Mr. S. Arthur Strong and Miss Eugenic Sellers took place on Saturday, very quietly, before the Registrar at Kensington. Mr. and Mrs. S. Arthur Strong left the same day for the Continent."

1901 April 1, Monday, in the 1901 UK census, Sandford Arthur Strong and Eugenie Strong are living at 36 Grosvenor Road with 8 female servants.

Costume at the Duchess of Devonshire's 2 July 1897 Fancy-dress Ball

At the Duchess of Devonshire's fancy-dress ball, Mr. Arthur Strong (at 613) was dressed as "Voltaire, at the age of 25," in a "coat, Louis XV. period; broad skirts, grey velvet, Iarge turned-back cuffs, and lappels delicately embroidered in silver; real lace jabot shirt, front, and cuffs."

Notes and Questions

1. No likely candidate for Arthur S. Strong appears in The Peerage, Wikipedia, Ancestry, or the British Newspaper Archive. S. Arthur Strong was the librarian at Chatsworth House and, at the recommendation of the Duke of Devonshire and others, he was appointed Librarian for the House of Lords. That his wedding was announced in the Court Circular section of the Morning Post and that obituaries and discussions of his life occurred in a number of newspapers suggests that he might logically have been invited to this ball. Similarly, the Duke of Devonshire's private secretary was present. A long obituary in the Derbyshire Times says, "The Duke of Devonshire will have lost a personal friend, as well as an assistant in whom he reposed the greatest confidence, in the death ... of Mr Sanford Arthur Strong." An obit that focuses more on his character than listing his accomplishments is M. Kathleen Martin's "A Scholar's Work at Chatsworth."
2. Was Eugénie Sellers invited to the ball?
3. Records say Sandford Arthur Strong and Sanford Arthur Strong, but the more formal ones seem to be spelling his name Sandford Arthur Strong.
4. Eugénie Seller Strong sympathized with Mussolini.