Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/474

 minister at the disruption of 1843) and the presbyterian church of England. He restored at a large cost the choir of Dunkeld cathedral. To Belfast, where he spent his boyhood, he was especially generous. To the 'Better Equipment Fund' of Queen's College there he gave 20,000l., a gift which 'The Donald Currie Laboratories' there commemorate. He contributed a fourth of the cost of an athletic field for the Belfast students. In the Belfast Royal Academy, his first school, he founded scholarships at a cost of 2000l., and, scholarships in the Royal Belfast Academical Institution at an expense of 1000l. He helped, too, to pay off the debt of Fisherwick presbyterian church, Belfast, of which his father had been a member.

Sir Donald's tall, manly figure was singularly striking, especially in old age. A man of shrewdness and sagacity, of large and broad ideas, energetic, tenacious of purpose, and pious, he was a staunch friend and a genial companion. He died on 13 April 1909 at the Manor House, Sidmouth, Devonshire, and was buried in the churchyard of Fortingal, beside his Highland home. A sculptured Iona cross of granite, ten feet in height, was placed above the grave in 1910.

Currie was married in 1851 to Margaret, daughter of John Miller of Liverpool and Ardencraig, Bute, who survived him. He left three daughters, who are erecting at a cost of 25.000l. a university hall to their father's memory in the University of Cape Town, of which the foundation stone was laid by the duke of Connaught in 1910.

Currie was the recipient of many honours. In 1880 he was awarded the Fothergill gold medal of the Royal Society of Arts in recognition of 'the improvements which he had introduced into his passenger steamers.' In 1881 he was created C.M.G., and in 1897 G.C.M.G. In 1906 he was made hon. LL.D. at Edinburgh, and received the freedom of the city of Belfast.

A lifelike portrait was painted in 1908 by Walter W. Ouless, R.A., and hangs in the dining-room at Garth. Two others by the same artist hang respectively in the library of the medical school of University College, London, and in his town house, 4 Hyde Park Place, London. A cartoon portrait by 'Ape' appeared in 'Vanity Fair' in 1884.

Currie had a fine taste in pictures. In his London residence he formed one of the best collections of Turner's works, containing eighteen oil paintings, seventy-two watercolours, and three pen-and-ink sketches.

 CURRIE, MARY MONTGOMERIE, (1843–1905), author under the pseudonym of, born at Beauport, Littleharnpton, Sussex, on 24 Feb. 1843, was eldest daughter of Charles James Saville Montgomerie Lamb by his wife Anna Charlotte, daughter of Arthur Hopwood Grey of Bersted, Sussex. Her grand-father, Sir Charles Montolieu Lamb, second baronet, of Beauport, Sussex, married Mary, daughter and heiress of Archibald Montgomerie, eleventh earl of Eglinton [q. v.]; her great-grandfather was Sir James Bland Burgos, afterwards Lamb [q. v.]. Her ancestors both English and French numbered among them many literary amateurs. Brought up at Beauport, she early showed a love of nature and of poetry, and from a youthful age tried her hand, in spite of her family's stern discouragement, at verse-making and story-writing. She etched illustrations for a reprint of Tennyson's 'Mariana' (Worthing, 1863). She married on 27 Feb. 1864 Henry Sydenham Singleton of Mell, co. Louth, and Hazely Heath, Hampshire, an Irish landowner.

Her first publication was a volume of verse entitled 'From Dawn to Noon' (1872), written under the pseudonym of 'Violet Fane,' which she chose at random, and retained in permanence in order to conceal her identity from her family. (It is the name of a character in Disraeli's 'Vivian Grey.') In 1875 appeared 'Denzil Place : a Story in Verse,' an interesting love-tale, never rising to high passion, but showing much feeling. 'The Queen of the Fairies and other Poems' appeared in 1876, and in 1877 'Anthony Babington,' a drama in prose and verse. In 1880 she issued her 'Collected Verses.'

Meanwhile, Mrs. Singleton became well known in London society. Possessed of great personal beauty and charm of manner, she was an original and witty talker. Mr. W. H. Mallock dedicated to her his 'New Republic' (1877) in which she figures prominently as Mrs. Sinclair, 'who has published a volume of poems, and is a sort of fashionable London Sappho.' Mrs. Singleton also wrote prose, beginning with the witty social sketches entitled Edwin and Angelina Papers' (1878). Three novels, 'Sophy, or the Adventures of a Savage' (1881); 'Thro' Love and War' (1886); and 'The Story of Helen 