Miss Mary Callander
(1846-1935)
17 July 1861

Volume 4, page 225, sitting number 4971.

Mary Hermoine Callander was the daughter of the Scottish politician and laird James Henry Callander of Ardkinglas in Argyllshire and Craigforth in Stirlingshire. She was born at Munich in Bavaria in or about 1846.

She married, firstly, Charles Sartoris, a naturalised British Subject born in France in or about 1826.

The couple appear on the 1871 census living at Wilcote House, Northleigh, near Charlbury in Oxfordshire. Also present on the night of the census were seven servants, not counting a coachman and gardener living in outside buildings.

In 1881 they were either living at or visiting 12 Chesham Place in Belgravia, the home of Charles Sartoris’s 90-year-old unmarried aunt, Eliza Wright Tunno. She died at her residence on 10 February 1883, leaving an estate valued at £24,482.

Mr Sartoris died suddenly at St Moritz in Switzerland on 24 September 1884. His estate was valued at £321,785.

According to the Cork Constitution (30 January 1886): ‘A rumour is current in society, and is repeated with some positiveness, that the Duke of Marlborough is about to marry the widow of Mr Charles Sartoris. Strikingly handsome herself, it is said Mrs Sartoris also possesses a jointure of £8,000 a year.’ Several other newspapers also ran the story.

Clearly that came to nothing for on 15 June 1886 Mrs Sartoris married, secondly, George Henry Dawkins of Over Norton Park, a large country estate in Oxfordshire. The Dundee Evening Telegraph (28 June 1886) reported that: ‘The beautiful Mrs Sartoris, the eldest sister of Lady Archibald Campbell, was married on the 15th to Mr George Henry Dawkins.’ The 1891 census shows the couple living in Mrs Dawkins’s old home, the ‘Great House’ near Wilcote. Mr Dawkins was eleven years younger than his wife.

Mary Hermione Dawkins died, aged 91 [sic], at Wilcote on 22 October 1935, leaving an estate valued at £45,067.