Early Life and Education
She was born Marion Jean Catherine Hamilton at Brodick on the Isle of Arran on 21 June 1846, the illegitimate daughter of the Duke of Hamilton and a local island beauty, Elizabeth Hamilton. The Duke owned Brodick Castle, where one of his regular summer visitors was a popular landscape painter George Hering, son of a German baron. Hering and his wife Caroline had lost their only child at the age of six and the Duke suggested that they adopt Marion. Her mother was reluctant but was persuaded that her daughter would get a much better start to life with this wealthy and well-connected couple.
They took her to London at around the age of four, returning to their house, Ormidale, on Arran in the summer months. In London she was known as Jeanie Hering, the name she later used for her children’s books. After receiving a good schooling to the age of sixteen she spent two years at a finishing school in Westphalia in Germany. After returning to London, the family were travelling to Arran by train for the summer when they were fortunate survivors of a train crash that killed hundreds.
Read more about this topic: Marion Adams-Acton
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