Michael Temple Canfield


Michael Temple Canfield was an American soldier who worked in London as a representative of Harper & Row.

Early life

As an infant, he was adopted by Katherine Temple Canfield, a descendant of Irish patriot and New York State Attorney General Thomas Addis Emmet, and her then husband, Cass Canfield, a publishing executive who was the longtime president and chairman of Harper & Brothers and, later, Harper & Row. His older brother was Cass Canfield Jr., also a publishing executive. His parents divorced in June 1937 and his father remarried to Jane Sage Fuller, a sculptor. She was the former wife of Charles Fairchild Fuller and a daughter of Ernest Ingersoll White.

Disputed paternity

According to the memoirs of Loelia, Duchess of Westminster, King Edward VIII believed that Canfield was actually the biological son of his brother Prince George, Duke of Kent and Kiki Preston, a "glamorous but drug-addicted American socialite who was a member of Kenya’s notorious Happy Valley set" who committed suicide on December 23, 1946.

Education and career

Canfield attended the Brooks School in North Andover, Massachusetts on the shores of Lake Cochichewick, before serving in the United States Marine Corps during World War II where he was wounded at Iwo Jima. After the war, he returned to the U.S. where he attended Harvard University, graduating in 1951.
After Harvard, he went to London as an aide to Winthrop W. Aldrich and secretary to John Hay Whitney when they were Ambassadors to the Court of St James under President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
He later worked in London as an editorial representative of Harper and Row where his father was publisher. In London, he lived at Canfield House in Eaton Square and was elected a member of White's, the elite gentleman's club in St James's. In New York, he was a member of the Knickerbocker Club.

Personal life

On April 18, 1953, he was married to Caroline Lee Bouvier at the Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Washington, D.C. She was a daughter of stockbroker John Vernou Bouvier III and his wife, socialite Janet Norton Lee. A few months after their wedding, Lee's older sister Jacqueline Bouvier, was married to U.S. Senator, and future President, John F. Kennedy and Michael and Lee were best man and matron of honor at the wedding. Michael and Lee divorced in 1958, and the marriage was annulled by the Roman Catholic Church in November 1962. In March 1959, Lee married the Polish aristocrat Prince Stanisław Radziwill.
On June 13, 1960, he remarried to Frances, Countess of Dudley in a civil ceremony in the registrar's office at Amersham, Buckinghamshire followed by a reception at Frances' country home, Hertfordshire House, Coleshill. She was twice divorced from Walter Long, 2nd Viscount Long and William Ward, 3rd Earl of Dudley. France was a daughter of Captain the Hon. Guy Lawrence Charteris and Frances Lucy Charteris. Her younger brother was novelist and screenwriter Hugo Charteris and her sister was Anne Charteris, who married Ian Fleming, author of the James Bond novels.
Canfield died of a heart attack on December 20, 1969, at the age of 43, while on a BOAC flight from New York to London. After his death, his widow married for the fourth time to John Spencer-Churchill, 10th Duke of Marlborough, the eldest son of the American heiress Consuelo Vanderbilt and her former husband, Charles Spencer-Churchill, 9th Duke of Marlborough.