03/10/2026
The 5th of October 2026 marks 100 years since the death of Dorothy (Dolly) Tennant Stanley. A beautiful, intelligent woman and a talented artist.
She was born in 1855, the second daughter of Gertrude and Charles Tennant, an English landowner and politician. She studied painting at the Slade School of Fine Art in London and in Paris. She first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1886, then at the New Gallery and the Grosvenor Gallery in London. Outside London, Tennant featured in exhibitions by the Fine Art Society in Glasgow and also in the Autumn Exhibitions held in Liverpool and Manchester.
So, what is her connection to Dunfermline, you ask?
Dorothy’s connection is not to Dunfermline directly, but to one of the city’s beloved sons and world philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie.
This story might have remained forever hidden if it had not been for a remarkable discovery in 2005. In the attic of a family farmhouse, two old oak chests belonging to Gertrude Tennant and her daughter Dorothy were opened for the first time in around half a century. Inside were diaries, manuscripts and thousands of family letters, revealing the world of an extraordinary Victorian family. The rediscovered archive brought this long-forgotten Victorian world and some of its secrets back to life through the work of biographer David Waller.
The Tennants came from respectable upper-middle-class society, but it was Gertrude’s (Dorothy’s mother) intelligence, charm and remarkable ability to bring people together that placed her at the heart of London’s cultural and social life. Her drawing room welcomed some of the most distinguished figures of the age: Prime Minister William Gladstone, artists John Everett Millais and George Frederic Watts, writers Oscar Wilde, Robert Browning and Henry James, French novelist Gustave Flaubert, explorer Henry Morton Stanley and, among many others, Andrew Carnegie.
Dorothy met Carnegie in 1883 during his brief visit and instantly fell in love with him. What’s there not to love for a young woman - a magnificent, rich, attractive, intelligent man with powers stretching all over the world? Carnegie was then nearing 50 and Dorothy was 30.
They met at a party given by Gladstone, but quite what passed between the steel magnate and Dolly thereafter, we will never know, as her mother could not bring herself to write about the liaison, and Dolly ripped out the relevant pages of her diary and inked out all but a few subsequent references to him. In the one mention of the affair which was not deleted, Dolly said she had foolishly believed in him. Then came the “bewildering trial, its volcanic eruptions of folly”. She vowed to tell any future husband everything apart from the identity of “AC”.
The revival of the relationship in July 1885 proved short-lived. “End of all things!” wrote Gertrude when her daughter returned that evening after spending the day with Carnegie in Putney. That brought a romance of two long years to an end.
Of course, we know this story only from the perspective of Dolly and her mother. You will never read any of this in Carnegie’s biographies.
There aren’t a lot of details about this romance. Dolly scored out and covered most of the notes in her diaries that had to do with Carnegie, her feelings for him and their time together. Only bits and pieces were left. However, she neither deleted her last letter to Carnegie nor hid the subject behind her remarkable painting “The Death of Love”, which she finished in 1888.
Meanwhile, in September 1883, Andrew Carnegie and Louise Whitfield, his future wife, who was 22 years younger, became secretly betrothed. In her diary, Louise would describe how, some time after the engagement, her moods shifted from joy to dolefulness. Whether the reason they did not marry sooner was the mothers of both, or something else, we’ll never know. Louise called off the engagement in the spring of 1884; however, it didn’t last long. They started seeing each other again in the autumn of the same year. Carnegie was travelling abroad, regularly sending her letters addressed to her as “My dear friend.”
And yet, during roughly the same period, 1883–1885, Carnegie was also involved in his liaison with Dorothy Tennant. What ultimately influenced Carnegie’s choice, we will never know. He was also going through an extremely difficult time, with his beloved mother’s health rapidly deteriorating, and, quite likely, the necessity of remaining by her side in the United States helped bring his relationship with Dorothy to a close.
Perhaps he never seriously considered Dolly as a future wife, but rather as the object of a passionate infatuation. In the end, he chose Louise. Perhaps she was more like-minded and practical, better suited to the life he envisaged and to running a busy household that was constantly full of guests and visitors.
After the deaths of his brother and mother in the autumn of 1886, Andrew proposed to Louise, telling her that she was the only light left in his life.
In 1887, Andrew Carnegie married Louise Whitfield. Seemingly, they became a happy couple and, after ten years of marriage, they had their miracle daughter, Margaret. Their marriage lasted until Carnegie’s death in 1919.
In 1888, Dorothy finished her remarkable painting “The Death of Love”, through which she commemorated and, hopefully, said goodbye to her unfortunate romance with Carnegie.
When the explorer, journalist and politician Henry Morton Stanley proposed to Dorothy in 1886, she said no. He looked incredibly similar to Andrew Carnegie, had the same sort of mind, and even a similar background. Of course, he wasn’t as influential or as rich as him. It was a “no” nevertheless. However, she later changed her mind and accepted his offer, and they married in 1890.
Dorothy and Henry Stanley didn’t have any children of their own. They adopted Denzil, a child of Stanley’s cousin. Their marriage lasted until Stanley’s death in 1904. She remarried in 1907 to Henry Jones Curtis, a surgeon and a writer.
This is the last letter that Dorothy addressed to Carnegie but never sent.
“'Dear Andrew Carnegie, I dedicate [the enclosed collection] to you, as I shall henceforth, in my heart, dedicate to you everything I may do of any worth, you were the first who told me, who showed me that trying to be something for oneself was far from a selfish aim - I was selfish, I wanted to be first clever and great, I wanted to keep away from and beyond others .. . when your wild fancy died out, when you came to regret your foolish part in all this, comforting yourself with the thought that my pain would be very transient, you left me bewildered .. So you see it is goodbye, dear Andrew. Believe me I loved you more than anyone else in the world, foolishly impulsively childishly but for all that passionately and powerfully. I shall tell the man I shall possibly marry all the truth, all excepting your name, and if he cares for me notwithstanding, he shall have his way. If not, I am indifferent.'
Sources: David Waller “The Magnificent Mrs Tennant”, B.J.Hendrick “Louise Whitfield Carnegie: The Life of Mrs Carnegie”.
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