horses like that at home’.13 Gray also recalled the peacefulness and beauty of the surrounding countryside while taking her boat out onto the river Slaney, which ran through the estate. She had very fond memories of Ireland, describing it as home.
1.11 Thora and Eileen Gray picnicking in Wexford, circa 1895, black and white photograph © NMI
Eileen Gray’s father, James Maclaren Smith was an artist, a minor figure in Victorian painting of portraits and landscapes. He was also quite an accomplished watercolourist. Her father was well connected in the art world and corresponded with great artists of the time such as William Holman Hunt (1827-1910), John Brett (1831-1902), William Powell Frith (1819-1909) and John Everett Millais (1829-1896).14 He sublet his studio to Hunt. Eileen Gray often travelled with her father in Italy and Germany as he painted a lot in these countries, and in Switzerland.15 When her parents separated he remained in Italy permanently except for a few visits. Gray ‘couldn’t understand why he (her father) had to spend such a long time in hot landscapes where even the ground and walls looked parched in villages instead of painting cool green things that were shiny and silky in Wexford’.
1.12 Watercolour by James Maclaren Smith, circa 1870, black and white photograph © NMI
After her father’s departure, many things began to change. On 23 July 1888 Gray’s eldest sister Ethel (1866-1946) married Henry Tufnell Campbell (d.31 January 1945), the Earl of Lindsay and the grandson of Sir Henry Bethune, first Baronet of Kilconqhaur, Scotland. The 1891 census reveals that 33-year-old Henry was a stockbroker and married to 25-year-old Ethel. The couple divided their time between England and Brownswood. Throughout the 1890s Henry and Ethel lived in London at 1 Creswell Gardens and then moved to 7 Collingwood Gardens. Eileen’s relationship with Ethel and her husband would remain a tentative one throughout their lives.
1.13 James Gray, Henry Tufnell Campbell, Rick Campbell and Eileen Gray, at Brownswood, 1890s, black and white photograph © NMI
On the death of her uncle George Philip Stuart, fourteenth Earl of Moray and eighteenth Lord Gray, on 16 March 1895, Gray’s mother Eveleen stood to inherit the title Baroness Gray in the peerage of Scotland and her son-in-law Henry persuaded her to claim it. Following this Gray’s father received royal licence in 1897 to change his name from Smith to Gray and the children’s names were changed accordingly. This news appeared in Irish newspapers at the time. On 27 April 1895 The Enniscorthy News and County of Wexford Advertiser reported, quoting from an article in the Dundee Advertiser on 10 April 1895:
Mrs. MacLaren Smith who in consequence of the death of the fourteenth Lord Moray has succeeded to the Barony of Gray is a granddaughter of the tenth Earl and the vicissitudes of families have been remarkably illustrated in her case, in as much as her mother, through whom she inherits, was originally only the seventh in the succession to the title as she had six brothers, all of whom however died without issue. She married first Sir John Archibald Drummond Stewart of Grentully and after his death Mr. Lonsdale Pounden of Brownswood, County Wexford, who had amassed a large fortune, and the present Baroness Gray being the only child of the marriage. Lady Gray married in 1863 Mr. MacLaren Smith of Hazelgrun Lanchashire and has two sons (the second of whom is an officer in the Carabineers) and three daughters.
Another article appeared in the same newspaper on 11 July 1895 under the headline ‘Gray Peerage Successful Claim of an Irish Lady’. The article reported that:
A somewhat curious case came before the committee of privileges of the House of Lords on Tuesday, in which a Mrs. Eveleen Smith, the daughter of Mr. Jeremiah Lonsdale Pounden of Brownswood Co. Wexford, established her claim to the title of Baroness Gray, in the peerage of Scotland. Mr. Lindsay who appeared on her behalf said that the only difficulty in connection with it was that of finding direct formal documentary evidence of the petitioner’s birth. Her mother was Lady Jane Stuart daughter of the 10th Earl of Moray, and sister of the 11th, 12th, 13th and 14th Earl of Moray (all of whom died unmarried), was united in matrimony to Sir John Archibald Drummond Stuart (sic) of Grantully who died in May 1838 without leaving issue. Three months after the death of Sir John Stewart, the lady married again by license to Jeremiah Lonsdale Pounden, a physician of Irish birth. In 1840, two years after the original marriage the lady having reason to believe she was about to become a mother, again went through the marriage ceremony with Mr. Pounden. That was in August 1840, and the only issue of that marriage was the present petitioner, who had always been led to believe that she was born in Dresden on or about the 3 May 1841 nine months after the date of the second ceremony, which second marital ceremony had been gone through in consequence of some doubts having been suggested as to the validity of the first. In those days there was no official registration of births and deaths. There was however a registration of baptisms and it would be proved that the petitioner was baptised in Ireland as the daughter of Mr. Pounden and Lady Jane Stuart. She was not however baptised in infancy, and therefore the certificate of baptism was not direct evidence of the date of birth. Except as to the latter point the proofs were conclusive and the Earl of Moray had promised to state the facts, which had always been accepted by the family. Evidence was then adduced and several letters written by the late Earl of Moray were put in to show that the deceased peer fully acknowledged the relationship with the petitioner.
Gray herself would rarely use her own title ‘The Honourable Eileen Gray’; she was not close to her sister Ethel or Henry Tufnell Campbell due to this situation of her mother reclaiming the title. Gray’s mother was also persuaded by Henry to redevelop Brownswood House. This work was carried out between 1895 and 1896 by the architect Sir Thomas Drew (1838-1910) making it ‘a magnificent specimen of Elizabethan architecture, with a charming parterre laid out in faultless style; the entrance lodge, which has recently been completed, is quite a gem’.16 In Gray’s opinion it was an ostentatious mock-Tudor structure.17 New additions were added, firstly a new stable block, 1889, a new cowshed, 1890, and additional stable buildings, 1892, by Drew’s close friend architect William Mansfield Mitchell (1842-1910). Throughout her life she was unable to forget this act of vandalism; the destruction of Georgian purity for flamboyant Elizabethan decoration. ‘It was the destruction of her childhood home, more than anything else that finally drove her from Ireland’.18 In the final years of her life Eileen Gray remained upset at the changes that occurred to her family home. She described the style of the house as ‘unimaginative’19 and constantly showed visitors two images she kept of the early Irish Georgian house and the later nineteenth-century conversion.20
Many believe that Gray never returned to either Brownswood or Ireland after the death of her mother on 24 December 1918. Due to the previous death of Gray’s father and both her brothers the Brownswood estate was inherited by her sister Ethel and Henry. On 17 July 1926 The Irish Times advertised the sale of Brownswood estate by Battersby and Company. The description is quite impressive:
Brownswood Co. Wexford on 150 acres freehold for sale with possession. Beautiful modern country house overlooking the River Slaney which flows through the property, with magnificent views of Mount Leinster and Blackstairs.
