Partner Howard Sturgis, Wife Alice Maud Russell Sturgis
Queer Places:
Brandon Country Park, Brandon IP27 0SU, UK
William Haynes-Smith (1871–1937) was the partner of writer
Howard Sturgis (a son of Russell Sturgis from his third wife) until his death in 1920.[10] In 1924, when both were in their 50s, he married
Alice Maud Russell Sturgis, a daughter of American architect John Hubbard Sturgis and the niece of his later partner.[11][12]
William Haynes-Smith was born in 1871 in British Guiana where his father was a colonial official. He was the son of Sir William Frederick Haynes-Smith KCMG (1839–1928), an English colonial administrator in the British Empire, and Ellen Parkinson White (1838–1923), the daughter of English-born James Thomas White (son of Dr. Andrew White FRCS) and Anne Gordon Hubbard (daughter of John Hubbard and Jane Parkinson). Ellen's aunt, Mary Greene Hubbard, was the second wife of Russell Sturgis, an American merchant and banker who was the head of Baring Brothers in London.
Haynes-Smith was a distant relative of Howard Sturgis. Sturgis dedicated his first book (an anonymous novel about love at a same-sex boarding school) to him. Haynes-Smith was called the "Babe" by the couple's friends. Many did not like him because they thought him unreliable and a burden to Sturgis. They were wrong. Haynes-Smith stayed with Sturgis to the end, nursing him as he succumbed to cancer. In 1924 Haynes-Smith married Sturgis' first cousin, Alice Maud Sturgis (she was related to Odgen Codman, an interior designer and friend of Edith Wharton).
William Haynes-Smith and Howard Sturgis lived together until Sturgis' death in 1920 at an estate called Queen’s Acre near London where they "frequently and happily entertained a wide circle of friends, among them Henry James and Edith Wharton." After the death of his partner, in 1924 William Haynes-Smith married Maud Sturgis, when they were both in their 50s. They made frequent and often lengthy visits to Boston from their estate in England. Maud moved back to Boston permanently after the death of her husband in 1937. She died at the age of 95 in 1964. Her funeral was held in the Church of the Advent in Beacon Hill, designed by her father.
My published books:
