The Honourable Lewis Wingfield
(1842-1891)
28 March 1861
Volume 3, page 20, sitting number 2777.
A younger son of Viscount Powerscourt, Wingfield was educated at Eton and at Bonn. He was originally intended for the diplomatic service but he chose instead the stage and in 1865 made his debut playing the goddess Minerva as an elderly spinster in F. C. Burnand’s burlesque Ixion. (Elderly spinsters frequently featured in Victorian humour.)
Reviews were mixed. Although one commentator praised his ‘sense of the humorous both in character and action,’ another wrote of ‘his idiotic dance in petticoats that might stand for something in competitive examination for admission into the Earlswood Asylum, but as a gentleman’s first bid for the honours of the English stage was a distressing sight to see.’
Less than a fortnight later he was appearing in a production of Hamlet at the Haymarket, where one critic thought he ‘impersonated Roderigo precisely as a school girl in male attire would have performed it.’
Wingfield soon abandoned his theatrical aspirations and by 1871 he was tending the wounded of Paris during its two sieges. He seems to have been one of those astonishing Victorian dynamos, for he later followed a varied career as an artist, a doctor and an author.
According to his entry in the Dictionary of National Biography, ‘[h]e led a varied career, being capricious and unstable, never remaining with any one activity for very long and never reaching the top rank in any of them. […] Wingfield has left many examples of his eccentric behaviour, such as going to the Derby as a "negro minstrel," spending nights in a workhouse and pauper lodgings, and becoming an attendant in a madhouse. He travelled in various parts of the East and was one of the first Englishmen to journey in the interior of China.’
Although Wingfield was married in 1868 to Cecilia Emma Fitzpatrick, fourth daughter of the 1st Baron Castletown, it seems more than likely that he was gay (in modern parlance). In April 1879 several newspapers reported on a 'Strange Charge of Watch Stealing.' According to one article, Lewis 'fell in' with Edward Smith, a private in the Grenadier Guards, in Hyde Park one morning but later accused the soldier of stealing his watch, which with its chain and ornaments was worth £70. The accused, in turn, made 'disgraceful allegations' against Lewis. 'In reply to the prisoner, witness denied ever seeing him at the Pavilion Music-hall in November, or on other occasions he mentioned, or that he had ever been to the barracks and asked Sergeant Whitworth if he could see him' (Reynolds Newspaper, 13 April 1879). Needless to say, the court sided with the peer's son and the unfortunate soldier got five years hard labour. It's not difficult to read between the lines and grasp what had really gone on between the two men.
Lewis Wingfield died in London at 14 Montague Place on 12 November 1891, aged 51. He was buried in Kensal Green cemetery.
[From an album probably compiled by either George Charles Pratt (1799-1866), 2nd Marquess Camden or by his son, John Charles Pratt (1840-1872), from 1866 3rd Marquess Camden.]