Portrait of a lady of style and humanity
Lady Sligo’s letters show a woman who cared deeply about her tenants’ welfare
A RENOWNED beauty born into privilege, Lady Hester Catherine de Burgh could have indulged herself in a life of luxury. Instead the Portumna woman, who became Lady Sligo when she married the second Marquess in 1816, showed an exceptional compassion to the downtrodden that extended from the slaves of Jamaica to the famine victims of Westport.
‘She was a bit like Angelina Jolie,’ says Professor Christine Kinealy, who has studied the life of Lady Sligo. ‘She was a society woman even into her later age, the papers would track her down and write that she was at an opera last night. From her letters we see she was a compassionate wife and mother. She also loved clothes I have to say, she lived up to her beautiful image.’
But at an exhibition of Lady Sligo’s letters opening this Thursday at her former estate, Westport House, it is her which compassion shines through.
The Sligo family break the stereotype of famine landlords being ‘heartless, evicting and absentee’ according to the professor. They cared greatly about their Westport estate and in the midst of the famine, she wrote from England, ‘Which do you think best – that I should send you £25 to buy blankets for some of the very poor people at Westport …or that I should buy the blankets here and send them to you.’ Prof Kinealy says: ‘What the Sligo family show is a humanity towards their tenants. They showed it before the famine and they certainly showed it during the famine, at great expense because they had to borrow to keep the estate going.’ US Ambassador Kevin O’Malley will open the exhibition of Lady Sligo’s letters, most of which were written from a house near Kent during the early 1840s when she was nursing her ailing husband.
After Lady Sligo returned to Westport in 1846 the family’s good works continued, and in the following year, along with two other landlords, the family paid for a ship full of food to come into Westport.
Her husband was similarly kind. During his short term as Governor of Jamaica in 1834, he freed the slaves on his land. In return they named the first ‘free village’ on the island Sligoville.
Before her death in 1878, at the age of 78, Lady Sligo wrote that her funeral was to have ‘no ostentations’. But still she was remembered as a great beauty. ‘If you see the painting of her you can see she has her own style,’ says Prof Kinealy. ‘She signed her letters with a distinctive flourish. Everything about her had a flourish.’
‘They had to borrow to
keep estate going’