[8] In January 1902 he performed at the annual Robert Burns event at Queen's Hall, under patronage of Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll.
[6] He began courting Anna “Naunette” Dalmas (1868-1944), a few years his senior of independent means; a wealthy American musician of French extraction, from Philadelphia, who was associated with the Arts and Crafts movement and moved within social circles that include Charles Robert Ashbee.
[12][13][14] Naunette or Nanette was the younger sister of Philip Dalmas, a charismatic and gifted diletante pianist and composer, who was already living in London and Paris from remittances from his country of birth.
[17] Their marriage was an unhappy one, of adultery and desertion of the part on Atherton-Smith; when in September 1908, he abruptly abandoned Naunette following the birth of their young child, Nigel Dalmas Atherton Macalister-Smith (1907-1993).
He set up a Parisienne studio, and let it out to fund his lengthy stays in Étaples, a small town situated on the northern coast of France where he painted landscape scenes.
Aline volunteered as an orderly in a newly built Parisian hotel, which served as a military field hospital, where she assisted Flora Murray (chief physician) and Louisa Garrett Anderson (chief surgeon), and collecting supplies from either British and French Army medical stores, and deliver to the Scottish Women's Hospital at Royaumont.
[23] Atherton-Smith remained in continental Europe after a cessation of hostilities in 1918, continuing his humanitarian aid work as a Captain in the American Red Cross.
[27] In a letter dated 13 November 1922, Atherton-Smith expressed his thanks for the honour: "Although I feel altogether unworthy of such a distinction I shall nevertheless be proud to regard it always as a cherished remembrance of one of the happiest experiences of my life - namely, of my work amongst Austrian students.
During the spring of 1940, she was placed on the special “wanted list GB”, compiled by the Reich Security Main Office, a directory of people to be particularly targeted in their anticipated invasion and occupation of the United Kingdom.