Author: Smythe, Percy Clinton
Biography:
SMYTHE, Percy Clinton (1780-1855: ODNB)
His full name was Percy Clinton Sydney Smythe; on the death of his father he became the 6th Viscount Strangford of Strangford, Co. Down. His father Lionel Smythe, the 5th Viscount (1753-1801), had served in the British army in America; his mother Maria Eliza (Philipse) Smythe was American-born. From Harrow and Trinity College Dublin Smythe went on to be a successful career diplomat with postings in Portugal, Brazil, Sweden, Turkey, and Russia. His first publications, a translation of Virgil and a collection of original poems, date from his student days. As a literary figure he is best known for the translations of Camoens that followed his first diplomatic post, but he retained his love of literature all his life and Moore, Croker, and Rogers (qq.v.) were among his friends. Smythe married Eleanor (Burke) Browne of Galway, a widow, and with her had five surviving children born respectively in Stockholm (two), Constantinople (two), and St. Petersburg (one). Lady Strangford died in St. Petersburg in 1826. By a liaison with the singer Katherine Benham before her marriage to the artist William Morrison Wylie, Smythe had three more children not mentioned by ODNB, one of them the painter Lionel Percy Smythe (1839-1918). In 1825 Smythe was rewarded for his diplomatic work with a peerage as Baron Penshurst of Penshurst that gave him a seat in the Lords, but he was already under a cloud for disclosing the contents of confidential papers and his appointments came to an end in 1828, after which he devoted himself to the Lords, to the arts, and to occasional writing projects. He died at his home on Harley St. in London and was buried at Ashford, in Kent. (ODNB 30 Sept. 2020; ancestry.com 30 Sept. 2020)