Fanny Ronalds

Mary Frances "Fanny" Ronalds (August 23, 1839 – July 28, 1916) was an American socialite and amateur singer who is best known for her long affair with the composer Arthur Sullivan in London in the last decades of the nineteenth century.

After separating from her husband, Ronalds moved to Paris in 1867 and then to London in 1871, being accepted into royal social circles and becoming a popular hostess in both cities. A noted beauty, she became romantically involved with Arthur Sullivan during the 1870s and continued as his companion until his death in 1900. She was much admired as a singer and became famously associated with one of Sullivan's most popular songs, "The Lost Chord".

Mary Frances Carter was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the daughter of Joseph Ballard Carter and his wife. In 1859 at age twenty, already known as a beauty with a talent for singing, she married Pierre Lorillard Ronalds, a New Yorker called by The New York Times, "The Father of American Coaching". The young Mrs. Ronalds quickly became a noted socialite and hostess. At one magnificent ball that she gave in the early 1860s, Ronalds famously appeared dressed "as Music, in a white satin gown embroidered with bars from Verdi's Un ballo in maschera", wearing a harp-shaped, illuminated crown. The Ronalds had three children. A contemporary account described Ronalds as follows: "Her face was perfectly divine in its loveliness, her features small and exquisitely regular. Her hair was a dark shade of brown – châtain foncé [deep chestnut] – and very abundant... a lovely woman, with the most generous smile one could possibly imagine, and the most beautiful teeth."

By 1867, she had separated from her husband, whom she never divorced. She developed a relationship with the wealthy Leonard Jerome (Winston Churchill's grandfather), a notorious womanizer, but somehow maintained a friendship with his wife and daughters, including Jennie, who remembered Ronalds singing them to sleep. She often visited their home in Newport, and when Mrs. Jerome moved to Paris with her daughters, Ronalds followed, taking her two younger children. There, noted for her beauty and social talents, she joined the court circles of the pleasure-loving Empress Eugénie and Napoleon III. During a party, Napoleon rescued her after she fell into one of his ponds. She soon met Arthur Sullivan during one of his visits to Paris. According to The New York Times, she became the leader of the American community in Paris. With the fall of the Second Empire in 1871, her opportunities there collapsed, and Ronalds moved with her children first to Algiers, and then to London.

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