Queer Places:
Eton College, Windsor, Windsor and Maidenhead SL4 6DW
University of Cambridge, 4 Mill Ln, Cambridge CB2 1RZ
Dalingridge Place, Chilling St, East Grinstead RH19 4JB, UK
St Margaret of Antioch Churchyard
West Hoathly, Mid Sussex District, West Sussex, England
Sir George Herbert Duckworth, CB, FSA (5 March 1868 – 27 April 1934) was an English public servant.
He was a Cambridge Apostles,
like Lytton Strachey and
John Maynard Keynes. The relation
between the two leaders within the Apostles was always an ambivalent one,
riven by rivalry over their loves. There was the charming George Duckworth:
Strachey discovered by accident that Keynes was also after him. There was a
bitter tussle as to who should sponsor him for the Apostolic fellowship;
Keynes, being more ruthless, won. We learn that "for two months following the
election of Duckworth, Lytton was filled with an almost demented hatred of
Keynes." He even "launched an extraordinary onslaught upon Keynes before the
assembled Apostles." Shockingly unethical, according to the gospel of the
Venerable Moore. Shortly Strachey transferred his affections to
Bernard Winthrop
Swithinbank, and Duckworth transferred his to the irresistible
Duncan Grant. So Strachey was one,
or possible two, up.
The son of Herbert Duckworth, a barrister, of Orchardleigh Park, Somerset, by his marriage to Julia Prinsep Jackson, a niece of the photographer Julia Margaret Cameron, Duckworth had a younger brother, Gerald, who later founded the London publishing firm of Duckworth & Co, and a sister, Stella (1869–1897). After Herbert Duckworth's death, Julia Duckworth married secondly the author Leslie Stephen, and Duckworth was thus a half-brother of the painter
Vanessa Bell and the writer
Virginia Woolf, leading members of the Bloomsbury Group, and of
Thoby Stephen and
Adrian Stephen. Both sisters, Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf later accused their two Duckworth half-brothers of sexually molesting them for many years as children and adolescents.[1]
Duckworth was educated at Eton, where in 1886 he was a member of the First XI for cricket, and then at Trinity College, Cambridge.[2][3]
From 1892 to 1902, Duckworth acted as secretary (without pay) to the philanthropist Charles Booth, and then from August 1902[4] to 1905 as private secretary to Austen Chamberlain, at a time when Chamberlain was in the Cabinet, first as Postmaster General and then as Chancellor of the Exchequer. From 1906 to 1908 Duckworth was secretary to the Treasury Committee on War Risks of Shipping, and from 1908 to 1933 Secretary to the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments. During the First World War he was appointed deputy Director of Munitions Finance, serving from 1915 to 1918, and in 1918 as Controller of Labour Finance. In 1919 he became a Companion of the Order of the Bath. After the war, from 1919 to 1920, he was Controller of Munitions Housing Schemes. In 1924 he became a Trustee and first Chairman of the Irish Land Trust, which had the aim of providing houses and land for ex-service men in Ireland. In 1927 he was knighted and the same year served as a member of the Royal Commission on London Squares and Open Spaces. The next year, 1928, he was on the Advisory Committee on the New Survey of London Life and Labour.[2][3]
On 10 September 1904, Duckworth married Lady Margaret Herbert (1870–1958), a daughter of Henry Herbert, 4th Earl of Carnarvon, and together they had three sons:[5]
Henry George Austen de l'Etang Herbert Duckworth (died 1992);
Anthony John Stanhope Duckworth-Chad; Captain
Auberon Charles Alan Campbell Duckworth (1907-1987).
They lived at Dalingridge Place, West Hoathly, Sussex. While in London Duckworth was a member of the Travellers and Garrick Clubs.[3]
Duckworth was Honorary Treasurer of the Royal Archæological Institute and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London.[3]
Duckworth's son Henry George married Mary Katharine Medina (1911–2009), the younger daughter of Admiral of the Fleet Lord Chatfield. Their twin daughters Harriet Angela Victoria and Sarah Margaret Katharine were born in 1951.[6]
Anthony Duckworth-Chad is Duckworth's grandson.
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