Height overall: 39.4cm (15.4in)
Silver. Finely modelled and chased standing figure of a senior officer of the 7th Hussars mounted review order comprising bagged and plumed busby with caplines worn in the manner specific to 7th Hussars; tunic with six rows of frogging, Austrian knot sleeve decoration, shoulder belt of regimentally specific Vandyked (Austrian wave) pattern and pouch bearing the Queen Charlotte cypher; pantaloons with regimental lace as worn for a levee, and hessian boots; with sword and sabretache with the Queen’s Own cypher. Raised on an ebonised stepped cylindrical base applied with a silver plaque inscribed, 'Presented / to / Maj Gen Douglas Haig C.B., C.V.O. /on his marriage / by some old Brother Officers / of the / 7th (Queen’s Own) Hussars / 1905’. Height of silver figure: 29cm (11.5in). Maker’s mark of Carrington. Hallmarked 1905.
In 1904 Douglas Haig, the future Commander-in-Chief of British forces in France and Flanders during the First World War, became the youngest major-general in the Army. He met his future wife the Hon. Dorothy Maud Vivian while he was a guest of King Edward VII at Windsor Castle. A whirlwind courtship ensued. She had spotted him for the first time when he was playing polo at Hurlingham two years earlier. Dorothy was the daughter of the 3rd Baron Vivian, who at the time of his death in 1893 was British ambassador to Italy, and his wife Louisa Alice Duff. Dorothy was a Maid of Honour to Queen Victoria from 1899 and afterwards to Queen Alexandra. Haig and Dorothy were married in the private chapel at Buckingham Palace in July 1905. During the First World War Countess Haig worked with the Red Cross, and was appointed a Lady of Grace of St John of Jerusalem. Her biography of her husband, ‘The Man I Knew’, was published in 1936.