R. W. Symonds

Robert Wemyss Symonds FRIBA (31 December 1889 – 5 September 1958) was a British architect, and "the pre-eminent 20th century scholar and authority on English furniture". His complicated love life, before he married respectably, included affairs with two women, the first of which produced children he never acknowledged, and the second with a woman who he discovered was already married and who was subsequently jailed for perjury in her divorce case.

Early life Robert Symonds was born on 31 December 1889, the son of the artists William Robert Symonds and Margaret Hogg Swan Symonds.

Family Symonds married Daphne Loveland in 1921. They had two daughters, Anne and Virginia, before her death in 1948. Symonds married secondly Monica Sheila Harrington in 1948, the daughter of Sir H. M. Grayson, Bt. a woman of Lithuanian Jewish origin, that produced two children, John (1914–2006), an author and the literary executor of Aleister Crowley, and a daughter. Symonds did not acknowledge either child and they were brought up by their mother in Margate, although he paid for the family's upkeep.

Mrs Bamberger

Symonds also had an affair with Thelma Dorothy Bamberger who, according to his account, he met on the London Underground in 1914. Symonds and Bamberger became engaged and lived together for four years despite Symonds discovering not long after they met that she was married.

Bamberger claimed that Symonds had threatened her with acid and tried to kill her, but Symonds said that he had never been violent towards her, but that she had cut his head open and on another occasion thrust a pair of curling tongs in his ear; he also claimed that she had poured acid over him at a hotel where they were staying. Bamberger was found guilty of eight counts of perjury relating to her testimony in the divorce court and sentenced to nine months' imprisonment in a case that was regarded as unusual at the time due to the rareness of prosecutions for perjury arising from testimony in divorce proceedings.

Career Symonds trained as an architect and for a time was in partnership with Robert Lutyens, the son of Sir Edwin Lutyens. built on the site of the former Salters' Hall. He was a fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects.

Death and legacy

Symonds died at his home of The Ancient House, Peasenhall, Suffolk on 5 September 1958. He was survived by his wife Monica. His research papers and approximately 9,000 photographs were acquired by the Winterthur Library in 1959.

Selected publications Works by Symonds include: The present state of old English furniture. Duckworth, London, 1921. Old English walnut & lacquer furniture. The present-day condition and value and the methods of the furniture-faker in producing spurious pieces &c. Herbert Jenkins, London, 1923 . English furniture from Charles II to George II. A full account of the design, material and quality of workmanship of walnut and mahogany furniture of this period; and of how spurious specimens are made. The Connoisseur, 1929. Masterpieces of English furniture and clocks. A study of walnut and mahogany furniture ... together with an account of Thomas Tompion and other famous clockmakers of the 17th and 18th centuries. B.T. Batsford, London, 1940. A History of English Clocks. Penguin Books, London, 1947. (King Penguin Books No. K28) Veneered walnut furniture 1660–1760. Alec Tiranti, 1947. A book of English clocks. Penguin Books, London, 1950. Thomas Tompion: His life and work. Batsford, London, 1951. Furniture making in seventeenth and eighteenth century England. An outline for collectors. The Connoisseur, London, 1955.