Harry Smith Parkes - Family

Family

The second daughter of Sir Harry, Mabel Desborough Parkes, was married to Flag Lieutenant (Royal Navy) Egerton Bagot Byrd Levett-Scrivener of Sibton Abbey, Yoxford, Suffolk.

While in England, Parkes met Miss Fanny Plumer, granddaughter of Sir Thomas Plumer (the first Vice Chancellor of England) at the home of a mutual friend. "She was a a beautiful girl," wrote a friend about her, "tall, well-proportioned, and graceful, her coloring rich and soft, her features expressing sensitiveness and the power of warm emotion; her dark brown eyes full of intelligence and speaking earnestness of purpose. She possessed in a large degree the power of fascination in which all her family were remarkable." After a six-week courtship the two were married on New Year's Day, 1856, at St Lawrence's Church, Whitchurch, and the couple left England on 9 January.

Mabel Parkes Levett died in a fall from her horse in 1890. Her older sister Marion was married to J.J. Keswick of the Keswick family interests and partner in the Hong Kong trading firm of Jardine Matheson.

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