Social Victorians/People/Spicer

Also Known As

 * Family name: Spicer

Timeline
1888 October 2, Lady Margaret Mary Fane and John Edmund Philip Spicer married.

1897 July 2, Friday, Lady Margaret and Captain John Spicer attended the Duchess of Devonshire's fancy-dress ball at Devonshire House.



Costume at the Duchess of Devonshire's 2 July 1897 Fancy-dress Ball
Lady Margaret Spicer (at 281) and Captain John Spicer (at 410) attended the Duchess of Devonshire's fancy-dress ball.

Lady Margaret Spicer was Countess Soltykoff or Zinotriff in the Court of the Empress Catherine II of Russia. John Thomson's portrait of "Lady Margaret Mary Spicer (née Fane) as Countess Zinotriff, Lady-in-Waiting to the Empress Catherine of Russia" in costume is photogravure #234 in the album presented to the Duchess of Devonshire and now in the National Portrait Gallery. The printing on the portrait says, "Lady Margaret Mary Spicer as Countess Zinotriff, Lady-in-Waiting to the Empress Catherine of Russia," with a Long S in Countess, Empress and Russia.
 * She was one of the Ladies and Gentlemen of the Court of the Empress Catherine II of Russia procession.
 * "Lady Raincliffe took the part of Catherine II. of Russia in a dress of white satin. The front was wrought in raised gold in a large pattern of conventionalised pomegranate spinging [sic] from a crown raised in gold at the hem, the fruit studded with rubies. In her suite were Lady Margaret Spicer as Countess Soltykoff, the Duchess of Marlborough in a superbly-handsome dress of the same period; the Duchess of Newcastle; Lady Henry Bentinck; the Countess of Yarborough; Lady Mildred Denison; and the Hon. Mrs. Erskine and her daughter."

It is not clear who Lady Spicer meant by Countess Zinotriff. Countess Darya Petrovna Saltykova (20 September 1739 – 23 December 1802) was a maid of honor and then lady in waiting in the court of Catherine the Great and thus seems likely to be who Lady Spicer was dressed as. Mr. Algernon Myddleton-Biddulph was dressed as Count Saltykov, but he was not in a procession and so we do not know if he and Lady Spicer arranged to dress as two members of a couple.

The portrait of Saltykova (right) was painted by François-Hubert Drouais in 1762 and is now in the collections at the Pushkin Museum of Art. Like many aristocratic Russians of her time, Countess Saltykova traveled in Europe. This portrait does not seem to be the original, if one exists, of Lady Spicer's dress.

Another Countess Saltykova existed at this time, Countess Darya Nikolayevna Saltykova (11 March 1730 – 27 December 1801). It is not clear how much of this Countess Saltykova's story Lady Spicer could have known. Married to Gleb Alexeyevich Saltykov, she was widowed when she was 25 years old and inherited an estate with 600 serfs, about 140 dying under suspicious circumstances and many more disabled. Because of appeals from serfs on Countess Saltykova's estate, the new Empress Catherine II ordered in 1762 that Countess Saltykova be tried publicly for having tortured and murdered serfs at her estate. Countess Saltykova was imprisoned while the investigation was conducted — 6 years — and then released because none of her surviving victims would testify against her. Another appeal led Catherine II to giving the Countess a "civil execution," that is, put on a platform in public in Moscow for 1 hour with a sign around her neck saying she had tortured and murdered. She was also sentenced to a "lifetime of torture," which involved being imprisoned in a basement cell in a convent with one candle at meals but otherwise no light. She was moved later to a cell in a monastery that had a window with a shutter, where she died, 39 years after having first been arrested.

Demographics

 * Nationality: British

Family

 * Captain John Edmund Philip Spicer ( – 31 March 1928)
 * Lady Margaret Mary Fane ( – 22 November 1949)

Relations

 * Lady Margaret Mary Fane was the daughter of the 12th Earl of Westmorland and Lady Adelaide Ida Curzon-Howe Fane.