‘Such views!
Such depths of blue … sea on one side and the numberless ranges of mountains on the other ending in a real snow-capped range – peaks of white reaching up into the sky – all of the most beautiful shapes for drawing.’
In 1863 she married Hugo Meynell Ingram (1822-1871) of Temple Newsam, Yorkshire and Hoar Cross Hall, Staffordshire. Despite the differing politics (he was a Tory) and the disparity in ages, it was a marriage of love, which tragically lasted only eight years, when Hugo died after being fatally injured in an hunting accident. Emily (like her friend Queen Victoria) was never reconciled to the loss of her dearest husband and grieved for most of her life.
On his death, Emily inherited the entirety of the vast Meynell Ingram estates and became one of the wealthiest independent women of her time. To help the newly widowed Emily cope with the enormous task of running of two estates as well as extensive investments, her younger brother, Frederick, left his career at the Bar to assist her. In 1878, Frederick married Lady Mary (née Lindsay) and they moved in with Emily, having private apartments at both houses and accompanying her everywhere. It was not always an easy situation, Emily was an intelligent, strong and in grief a difficult woman; Mary was younger, bright and optimistic, and Frederick was torn between his duties for both. But, they made a success of this unusual arrangement and Emily became very fond of Frederick and Mary’s five children as well as her other nieces and nephews.
In 1886, Emily bought the 380 ton racing schooner, Ariadne, a magnificent yacht with a crew of over 25, an unusual purchase for a woman in that period, but she found solace and freedom in travel and in nature as she had done in her youth.
Over the next decade, accompanied by parties of friends, she cruised the Mediterranean each spring, for several months, sometimes fitting in a trip during the summer to the Netherlands and Germany. A record of each year's cruising survives in the form of a journal kept by members of the party and illustrated with photographs and watercolours by Emily and her fellow travellers.
However, in January 1889, Emily forwent the Ariadne and she and her party travelled to Egypt, a journey again described in letters to her brother Charles. The party journeyed by steamer from Brindisi to Ismailia, arriving late at night with 60 pieces of luggage. The next day they joined their dahabiya, the Horus and began their trip down the Nile. The party consisted of; her brother, the Hon Frederick Wood; his wife and fellow watercolourist Lady Mary Wood; and friends, Louise Magennis and William Wadham. She reflected in one of her letters to her brother Charles, ‘I do nothing except sit under the awning making bad sketches all day, play whist at night and go to bed at 9.30’. To start the nights were very cold but as they got closer to Luxor the heat intensified and they turned back. The cruise lasted two months and the party returned to England via Venice. On 15 April 1889, Emily wrote to Charles from Venice ‘It is quite delightful being here in this lovely place after the mud and barbarianism of Egypt’.
The watercolours from this trip, bound in a leather volume, are by both Emily, who signed with a distinctive monogram consisting of an M and I entwined with a heart, and her sister-in-law, Lady Mary Wood, whose monogram was an M and W superimposed on each other.
Emily was a passionate woman, her descriptive letters to her brother Charles reflect her true happiness when travelling away from the responsibilities of the estates. The appreciation of the world around her, she equally expresses in words and in her watercolours.
‘My dear the lights tonight on the endless ranges of dark purple hills, the golden sunset behind them with the gorgeous effects of colour on the sea & rock, the tropical planets, the exquisite beauty of the whole thing would make an idiot draw …’ (James Lomax, Victorian Chatelaine. Emily Meynell Ingram of Temple Newsam and Hoar Cross, Leeds: Leeds Art Fund, 2016, page 89, letter to Charles Wood)
In the remaining decade of her life, Emily appears happier and more reconciled to her grief. She was occupied with good causes, her building projects at home (she built a chapel to commemorate her husband and turned the Old Hall at Hoar Cross into an orphanage for boys) and also her sojourns abroad with her family, her friends and her paintbrush. She died on 21 December 1904 at Temple Newsam. Her legacies were broad and generous to both the family and her staff. Emily bequeathed her Yorkshire estates, including Temple Newsam, to her nephew, Edward Wood, the future third viscount and Hoar Cross was inherited by her brother, Frederick Wood, who in 1905 changed his name to Meynell.
