George Vandeleur Lee

George John Vandeleur Lee 1830 - 1886

His legal parents were Robert and Eliza Lee, of Kilrush in co Clare, although he claimed to be the natural child of Colonel Crofton Moore Vandeleur, MP, JP, DL, of Kilrush House, county Clare, and he may have benefited financially, on his maturity, from a Vandeleur settlement. Robert, who was a coal merchant in Dublin, died in January 1843, aged forty-one, and Eliza died in March 1860. George John, as he was in his early years, had a brother, William, otherwise Harcourt William Nassau Lee, who had been born in 1831, and died in May 1862. Lee wrote a book; 'The Voice, its Artistic Production, Development, and Preservation'. He was for many years George Bernard Shaw's mother's music teacher, and she sang Donna Anna in Lee's production of Mozart's Don Giovanni.

Biographers are divided on the issue of whether Lee could have fathered George Bernard Shaw ; some cite similarities in appearance and mannerisms, while others are dismissive.