Path:  wieniawski.pl EN / Henryk Wieniawski / HENRYK WIENIAWSKI / Henrietta Claudine Wieniawska

Henrietta Claudine Wieniawska (1879-1962)



Henrietta Claudine Wieniawska was Henryk Wieniawski's daughter. The 1901 England Census gives her estimated birth as about 1879 in Belgium. At the time of the census she was living with her mother Isabella and sister Irene at 29 Melbury Mansions, Kensington, London SW4. She was then 22 years old. 

On 21 December 1904 she married Joseph Holland Loring, a stockbroker with the firm of Rose, Van Custen & Co, age 23, an American citizen, at St. Paul's Church, Wilton Place, London SW1. The ceremony was witnessed by his business partner Eric Rose and by her mother Isabella Wieniawska. They sailed on the SS Arabic from Liverpool arriving in New York on 21 January 1905. They had two daughters, Frances born in New York on 26 November 1906 and Joan born in London on 18 December 1908. On 15 April 1912 her husband drowned at sea when the SS Titanic hit an iceberg in the Atlantic. A month later, Henrietta accompanied by her late husband's business partner Eric Rose sailed on the SS Carmania and threw a wreath of flowers in memory of her husband into the water  near the place where the Titanic sank. A French artist, Rene Achille Rousseau-Decelle drew a picture of the event entitled "Le Supreme Adieu", probably for the French weekly magazine L'Illustration. On 15 June that same year she arrived in New York with her children on board the SS Lusitania. They returned to Liverpool on 14 February 1913.


Le_supreme_adieu.jpg 574.7 kB Joseph Loring.jpg 184.22 kB

Phot. Rene Achille Rousseau-Decelle: Le Supreme Adieu. Petera Rennie's gift for Archives of Henryk Wieniawski Musical Society.
Phot. Joseph Loring. San Francisco Chronicle, 17.04.1912 r.



On 7 January 1914 she re-married, this time an Englishman, Guy Thomas Lucas, an estate agent, age 41, at St. Michael's Church, Chester Square, London SW1. The ceremony was witnessed by her brother-in-law, Aubrey Dean Paul (husband of her sister Irene) and her mother Isabella Wieniawska. In 1917 she was living in London at 6 Tor Gardens, Campden Hill W8 where her mother Isabella was also living at that time. Three years later on 26 January 1920 she arrived in New York aboard the SS Mauretania. On the ship manifest her address in the UK is given as being Brackley in Northamptonshire and her husband as next-of-kin is described as Capt. Guy Lucas. With such a military title one could assume he had served in the army during the First World War. The British phone books for 1939-1958 list him as Capt. G T Lucas living in Turweston, Brackley, Buckinghamshire. He died in 1959 at the age of 86. Henrietta died in Turweston in 1962 at the age of 84. 

Henrietta's daughter Frances Holland Loring, an American citizen, applied for a US passport on 8 October 1919. In 1929 she married Douglas H Patteson-Knight in Brackley Northamptonshire. He was a colonel with the British Military Mission at the British Embassy in Washington DC, USA, in 1946. They had a son, Robin David, born in London on 5 September 1930 and a daughter, Jennifer, born on 14 October 1932. He was a lieutenant in the Royal Navy in 1955. He married Wavency Denne in 1957 and had two children Richard and Henrietta


Phot. A samovar of Henryk Wieniawski.


In 1996 he presented a samovar belonging to his great grandfather Henryk Wieniawski to the Musical Society in Poznań. He became a honorary member of the Society. There is a photograph of him on pp. 114 and 152 of the Society's book Da Capo. He died in 1998 at the age of 68. A UK incoming passenger list shows Jennifer accompanied her mother Frances on a return journey from New York to Plymouth on 19 July 1955. She married Gerald A Fitzgerald in London, also in 1955. 

Joan Loring, Henrietta's second daughter, also applied for a US passport in 1919. She married Anthony R T Coke (born in 1910) in Brackley, Northamptonshire, in 1931. A UK incoming passenger list for 12 June 1948 lists her and her husband, described as a secretary at the United Nations in New York, arriving in Liverpool from New York. A daughter Sara was born in Brackley in 1935. Joan is an honorary member of the Henryk Wieniawski Musical Society in Poznań. She died in July 1986 in Warminster, Wiltshire, at the age of 77. Her husband died in August 2003 at the age of 92, also in Warminster.


Peter Rennie