Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/475

 Davenant' (1889), were followed by further poems, 'Autumn Songs' (1889). In 1892 her poems were again collected, now in two handsome volumes.

Mr. Singleton, by whom she had two sons and two daughters, died on 10 March 1893. On 24 Jan. 1894 Mrs. Singleton married secondly Sir Philip Henry Wodehouse Currie, G.C.B., afterwards Baron Currie of Hawley [q. v. Suppl. II]. She accompanied him to Constantinople, where he was ambassador. While there she produced two volumes of poems, 'Under Cross and Crescent' (1896) and 'Betwixt two Seas : ... Ballads written at Constantinople and Therapia' (1900). In 1898 her husband was transferred to Rome, and there she lived until his retirement in 1903. Settling at Hawley, Hampshire, Lady Currie took keen interest in gardening. She died of heart failure on 13 Oct. 1905, at the Grand Hotel, Harrogate, and was buried at Mattingley Church, Hampshire.

Her poems, generally in a minor key and slightly sentimental, show command of metrical technique and a gift of melody. Some of them were set to music, notably 'For Ever and for Ever,' by Sir Paolo Tosti. Her novels, while they take original views of life and show careful delineation of character, are somewhat dull and over-long. Her best prose is to be found in her light essays, contributed to periodicals and afterwards republished in volume form (cf. 'Edwin and Angelina Papers,' 1878; 'Two Moods of a Man,' 1901; and 'Collected Essays,' 1902). A prose work of a different character was 'Memoirs of Marguerite of Valois, Queen of Navarre' (1892). First editions of her early poetical volumes are valued by collectors.

A portrait engraved by Stodart forms the frontispiece of 'Poems ' (2 vols. 1892).

 CURRIE, PHILIP HENRY WODEHOUSE, first (1834–1906), diplomatist, born in London on 13 Oct. 1834, was fourth son of Raikes Currie (1805-1881) of Bush Hill, Middlesex, and Minley Manor, Hampshire, M.P. for Northampton 1837-57, by his wife Laura Sophia (d. 1869), eldest daughter of John, second Baron Wodehouse. After education at Eton, he entered the foreign office at the age of twenty, and served in that department for forty years, passing through the various grades of the political staff until his selection to be assistant under-secretary of state for foreign affairs in 1882 and permanent under-secretary of state in 1889. He was precis writer to the earl of Clarendon during his tenure of office as foreign secretary in 1857-8, and was temporarily attached to the British legation at St. Petersburg in 1856 and 1857 during Lord Wodehouse's special mission to that capital on the conclusion of the Crimean war. He assisted Julian Fane [q. v.] in his duties as protocolist to the conferences on the affairs of Luxemburg in May 1867. When Lord Salisbury was sent to Constantinople in 1876 to act as British plenipotentiary in the conferences held there on the Eastern question, Currie was appointed secretary to the special mission, and Lord Salisbury formed on that occasion a high estimate of his ability. On Lord Salisbury's accession to the office of foreign secretary in April 1878 he appointed Currie to be his private secretary, and when Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Salisbury went as the British plenipotentiaries to the congress of Berlin in June following, Currie and Montagu Corry (afterwards Lord Rowton) accompanied them as joint-secretaries to the special mission. He received the C.B. in recognition of his services at the close of the congress, and on his return to England in addition to his work as private secretary was entrusted by Lord Salisbury with the correspondence respecting Cyprus, which had been leased from the sultan under the convention of 4 June 1878.

On Lord Salisbury's resignation in 1880 Currie resumed his work as a senior clerk in charge of the Eastern department. He was attached as secretary to the marquis of Northampton's special mission to invest King Alfonso XII of Spain with the garter in 1881, and in October 1882 was appointed assistant under-secretary of state by earl Granville, who succeeded Lord Salisbury as foreign secretary. In June to August 1884 Currie acted as joint protocolist to the conferences held in London on the finances of Egypt. In 1885 he received the K.C.B., and in December 1888 he was promoted permanent under-secretary of state in succession to Lord Pauncefote, who had become British envoy at Washington.

After five years' service as permanent under-secretary, during which he was made G.C.B. in 1892, he was appointed by Lord Rosebery in December 1893 British ambassador at Constantinople, being sworn as usual a privy councillor. This post he held for four and a half years. 