Emily Key Hoffman, known upon her marriage as Mrs. F. Y. Dalziel, (1876 – September 12, 1927) was an American socialite, heiress, dancer, and big-game hunter. A prominent debutante of the Gilded Age, she was a leading figure in New York and Newport high society. Hoffman was an accomplished amateur dancer and performed Spanish dances at various social events. Dubbed "the Carmencita of New York society", one of her performances in 1900 at the Waldorf-Astoria earned her a standing ovation and an invitation from Lew Fields and Joe Weber to perform on Broadway, an offer she declined due to the rigid expectations for women of her social class.
After marrying British financier Frederick Young Dalziel in 1901, Hoffman lived the life of an expatriate socialite in Paris during the Belle Époque. She returned to the United States shortly before the outbreak of World War I. An avid big-game hunter, she went on hunting expeditions in the Western United States and in Eastern Africa. She hunted grizzly bears, lions, rhinoceroses, and hippopotamuses. On one hunting trip she was nearly killed by a charging rhinoceros, but was saved when Sir Charles Ross, 9th Baronet, fatally shot the animal.
Hoffman was the mother of Vogue editor-in-chief Diana Vreeland and of Alexandra, Lady Kinloch.
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Early life and family
Emily Key Hoffman was born in 1876 to the lawyer George H. Hoffmann and his wife, Mary Martin Ellis. Both of her parents were members of prominent families with roots in Colonial Virginia and Maryland that were part of the planter class. On her father's side, she was a relative of the Key family of Maryland and a cousin of Francis Scott Key. Her paternal great-grandfather was Philip Barton Key, a chief justice and U.S. congressman. Her paternal great-great-grandfather was Governor George Plater of Maryland. On her mother's side, Hoffman was a relative of the Washington family, descending from one of George Washington's brothers. Her maternal grandfather, John Washington Ellis, made a fortune as a partner of a wholesale dry goods firm in Cincinnati, and was a co-founder of the First National Bank of Cincinnati.