Victoria Welby

Lady Victoria Welby, more correctly Lady Welby-Gregory, was a self-educated British philosopher of language, musician and watercolourist. Welby was born to the Hon. Charles Stuart-Wortley-Mackenzie and Lady Emmeline Stuart-Wortley, and christened Victoria Alexandrina Maria Louisa Stuart-Wortley. Following the death of her father in 1844, she travelled widely with her mother, and recorded her travel experiences in her diary. When her mother died on their travels in Syria in 1855, she returned to England to stay with her grandfather, John Manners, the 5th Duke of Rutland, at Belvoir Castle.

In 1858 she moved to Frogmore to live with a friend of her mother's—the Duchess of Kent, Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, Queen Victoria's mother. On the death of the duchess she was appointed a maid of honour to her godmother, the Queen herself. In 1863 she married Sir William Earle Welby-Gregory, 4th baronet (1829–1898), who was active in British politics. She and Sir William lived together at Denton Manor in Lincolnshire. They had three children.

Once her children were grown and had moved out of the house, Welby, who had had little formal education, began a fairly intense process of self-education. This included mixing, corresponding, and conversing with some of the leading British thinkers of her day, some of whom she invited to the Manor. It was not unusual for Victorian Englishmen of means to become thinkers and writers; Welby is one of the few women of her place and time to do the same.

Source: Wikipedia