 Of the Northamptonshire and Lincolnshire landed gentry, he was educated at The Oratory School (a Roman Catholic school) and Woburn School, Weybridge, where he arrived in 1885, and finally at Christ Church, Oxford, where he was active as a cricketer and violinist.At the age of 22 he married Lady Winifride Mary Elizabeth Feilding, a daughter of Rudolph Feilding, 8th Earl of Denbigh.After Oxford he trained as a lawyer and diplomat, spending some years in Brussels, where he began his first formal singing lessons at the age of 28.