Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey: The Lost Legacy of Highclere Castle

by The Countess of Carnarvon

  Almina shared her husband’s appreciation of the highly aesthetic and was thrilled that now they were seeing concrete results, an abundance of gorgeous things. But Almina wouldn’t have been Almina if she hadn’t also looked for an outlet for all her restless energy. Before long, she found a way to stamp her genius for party organising on the local social scene.

  One evening she organised an unforgettable dinner party in Karnak Temple. She appropriated all the staff from the Winter Palace Hotel and dressed them in costumes inspired by the One Thousand and One Nights. The Carnarvons received their guests in the temple of Rameses. Long tables set with crisp white linen, glass and silverware stretched the length of the chamber. The food and wine were, naturally, of the very best quality. Maspero sat at the head of one table of Egyptologists, the Carnarvons at another. The whole scene was flooded with moonlight as well as candles and lamps that Almina had arranged to throw into relief the columns of the Hippostyle Hall. When the meal finished, everyone wandered down to the Sacred Lake and contemplated in silence the breathtaking view before making their way back to the Winter Palace. Then the staff glided in and removed every trace of the event. It was as if the party had been a vision conjured up by one of the genies in Scheherazade’s Arabian Nights.

  8

  The Passing of the Golden Age

  The Edwardian era came to a close with the death of Edward VII on 6 May 1910. He had been king for just nine years but had restored the sparkle to the monarchy and embodied the values and vices of the upper classes in spectacular form. Alfred de Rothschild, his longstanding supporter and friend, was terribly grieved. It was the beginning of a long slide into disappointment for Alfred, who was shortly to suffer the pain of having family and friends in both Britain and Germany, as the two countries lurched towards war.

  The new king was in precisely the same boat. George V was related to virtually every crowned head in Europe. One of his first cousins was the Tsar of Russia; another was, of course, the Kaiser. Victoria had made little secret of preferring Wilhelm II to George V, but the new King had identified Germany as a serious threat as early as 1904. He was right; there was disaster bubbling under, mud and horror and death on a scale that no one could imagine in an era when mechanised mass warfare was still inconceivable.

  But Britain had a last few precious years of peace to relish before the carnage. Not that it was uneventful: 1910 was a year of political turmoil and, in a sign of the pressure of the times, Almina briefly became involved with political activism. But at Highclere, for now, all was calm. Or rather, all was the usual mad swirl of fun and adventure. Throughout 1910, Almina put on parties and balls, accompanied her husband on trips to Scotland for shooting, made the annual trek to Egypt. When they were in town, she and Lord Carnarvon – along with her mother Marie – were often at Alfred de Rothschild’s box at Covent Garden.

  The Earl, meanwhile, was facilitating a piece of aviation history. He remained fascinated by motor cars and technology of all kinds. As early as 1908 he had begun to invite pioneers of aviation such as John Moore-Brabazon and Monsieur Gabriel Voisin to stay at Highclere. In 1909, when the brilliant young engineer Geoffrey de Havilland was casting around for somewhere to store and test his experimental aircraft, Moore-Brabazon suggested he use his sheds on the edge of Highclere estate and approach Lord Carnarvon for permission to carry out a test flight off the lower slopes of Beacon Hills. In November of 1909, de Havilland and his assistant loaded the biplane that was the prototype for the famous Gipsy Moth into a lorry and took it to Highclere. When Lord Carnarvon and Mr Moore-Brabazon visited the men, who were staying at the local pub, they were hugely impressed. Carnarvon said de Havilland could use the fields, and promised to keep the grass mown.

  Over the next ten months, de Havilland made numerous test flights. The first were tiny hops but gradually, as he tweaked the design, the flights grew longer. He was lucky to escape several crashes, but by the end of autumn 1910 he had kept the aircraft airborne for more than 50 feet, banking to the left over the road into Highclere, turning a full circle and then landing. Lord Carnarvon, who witnessed this flight, was ‘elated at the success which attended the efforts of the flying men.’

  That autumn there was a family celebration. Lord Carnarvon’s half-brother Aubrey was getting married, and no one, least of all the groom, could quite believe his luck in acquiring such a lovely wife.

  Aubrey was careless with money and physically frail, just like his older brother. He had terribly poor eyesight and unconventional taste in clothes, but his gestures were expressive and warm and, like Lord Carnarvon, he was wholly unpretentious. Mary, his intended, was the daughter of Anglo-Irish nobility: the 4th Viscount de Vesci, and was tall, elegant and very well educated; she also moved in the most fashionable circles. Aubrey met her through his friend Raymond Asquith, the Prime Minister Herbert Asquith’s son, who was a great friend of his from Oxford, and whose sister Violet was one of Mary’s confidantes. Opinion on Aubrey’s spectacular luck divided the Asquith siblings, with Raymond happy to acknowledge that Aubrey would be a very fortunate man on his wedding day and Violet sniffily retorting that he was quite undeservedly blessed.

  Mary seems to have thought that he would brush up well enough to be taken to Gosford Castle in Ulster to meet her grandfather the Earl of Wemyss. She was more worried about curtailing the overflowing parties of drunken diplomats at Pixton, the house in Somerset he had been gifted by Elsie, his mother.

  Aubrey might have been a scruff and a dilettante, but he was also an acknowledged regional expert on the Middle East. He had been in Egypt in 1904 and then gone to Constantinople on a two-year diplomatic posting. He was reasonably fluent in Turkish, Greek, Albanian and Arabic as well as French and German, and well liked across the region. (So well liked that, just before the outbreak of the Great War, he would be approached by the government of Albania and asked whether he would like to become king. He cabled home. Have been offered throne of Albania stop may I accept love Aubrey. The Earl’s reply was terse and to the point. No. Carnarvon.)

  Aubrey and Mary were married on 20 October 1910 at St James’s, Piccadilly. It was a quintessential Society wedding, and Almina was insistent that the couple should begin their honeymoon at Highclere. The children, Porchy and Eve, were particularly delighted with that suggestion, since they adored their bumbling, exuberant uncle.

  It wasn’t long before Aubrey’s dress returned to its naturally chaotic state, and the house parties at Pixton were made only marginally more dignified by the introduction of Mary’s elegant friends.

  Aubrey and Mary were given her mother’s magnificent house at 28 Bruton Street as a wedding gift. They were living just a few doors down from Almina’s mother Marie, and round the corner from Carnarvon HQ in Berkeley Square. The family network was extremely handy when Lord and Lady Carnarvon were abroad, as they very frequently were. Porchy remembered lots of stays with his grandmother, who was only too pleased to look after the children and spoke nothing but French with them.

  Almina was by this time thirty-six years old. She had been married for seventeen years, had metamorphosed from a slightly suspect young unknown to the public face of the Carnarvon partnership. As her husband’s health got worse, she took on more and more of the hosting duties, more of the networking that sustained their lives. These days, Carnarvon preferred to ask connections from Egypt to stay at Highclere. He was beginning to acquire a notable collection of small exquisite works of Egyptian art. Carnarvon appropriated the breakfast room for his ‘Antiques Room’ and – through the British Museum – organised proper display cupboards to be made. Almina had to ensure that the staff completely cleared the Dining Room at the end of an evening because the family would have to breakfast in there from now on.

  Small details like this were not enough to keep Almina occupied. Her vast energy lacked outlets and she was patently looking around for something other than the social whirl and household management to occupy her.

  For a while she seems to ha
ve thought her passion might be politics. The year 1910 was a big one in British politics. In 1909 the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Liberal government, David Lloyd George, had proposed the ‘People’s Budget’, which included radical reform of the tax system, explicitly designed to redistribute money from the wealthy to the poor via an increase in social welfare. More controversially, it also included a land tax. The budget was rejected by the House of Lords, causing a furore and triggering a general election in January 1910 that produced a coalition government led by the Liberals in alliance with the Irish Parliamentary Party. The Liberals won just two more seats than the Conservatives and promptly began to try to limit the power of the House of Lords to veto legislation. By the middle of the year, everyone was waiting for another general election to be called since the government was virtually deadlocked, particularly over the budget and the issue of Home Rule for Ireland.

  There was a huge feeling of outrage from Conservative voters about the possible break-up of the Union, the Liberals’ attempts to reform the House of Lords, immigration and the inadequacies of the National Insurance Bill. Almina felt it was her duty to get involved to champion the Tory Party cause. In anticipation of her increasing workload, she hired a secretary, Miss Mary Weekes.

  Mary had previously worked for Alfred de Rothschild and was supremely efficient, used to dealing with the slightly capricious style that characterised both Almina and her father. She was very much the equivalent of the modern PA, booking in Her Ladyship’s social engagements in London, organising her at Highclere, travelling with her at all times. She was tall and slim and completely devoted to Almina. She was also a sign of the changing times, a woman in the Countess’s employ who was not strictly speaking a servant, certainly not a lady’s maid.

  Mary helped Almina to push the bounds of her role far out beyond the confines of the Castle. There is a red cuttings-book at Highclere in which are pasted the transcripts of Almina’s speaking engagements in the years 1910 and 1911. They must have been typed by Mary, and they range from the straightforward speeches delivered at village fetes: ‘I am delighted to declare this bazaar open!’ to addresses to the ladies of the South Berkshire Unionist [Conservative] Association.

  Almina’s tone when she spoke at political meetings was highly charged, her language designed to touch the hearts of her listeners as well as to stir their campaigning zeal. In a speech opposing the Liberal government’s attempts to reform the House of Lords, she pointed to the Lords’ defence of every parent’s right to determine what religious education their child should receive as evidence that the Upper Chamber didn’t need reforming. Almina’s rhetoric is perfectly judged for her audience, her tone supremely confident. ‘We maintain that the poor man has as good a right as the rich to choose in what religion his child should be brought up … [Here we see] the importance of a strong Upper House to every mother in the land.’ You can almost hear the enthusiastic applause of the mothers in the audience.

  Almina goes on to urge her listeners to campaign for their values, which were seen to be under attack by the Liberals, whom she insists on calling the Radicals. Her speeches are eminently readable; she seems to be relishing this chance to get out into the world and talk about something of national importance, rather than being merely the public face of Highclere. There is an exuberance in her words that suggests she was probably a very good public speaker. ‘The Constitution under which we have flourished and found the highest civilisation and the most perfect freedom is in peril. Remember, we were caught napping in 1906 [when the Conservatives lost their seat in Newbury in a landslide victory for the Liberal Party] and that the slightest weakening in our work may jeopardise Mr Mount’s seat …’ Almina comes across like a seasoned pro of political speeches, building up to a stirring finish and a direct call to action. ‘Don’t forget Reading. Urge your friends not to rest content until the flag of national unity, trade reform and social progress waves triumphantly in that important centre of industry.’

  In the January 1910 general election, the Conservatives regained Newbury from the Liberals. You can’t help wondering what part was played by the army of South Berkshire women Almina sent out to campaign.

  Almina might have been a skilled orator and energetic defender of Conservative politics, but she was also a woman at a time when women did not have the right to vote, let alone to stand for election. Any ambition to be involved in politics would have to be channelled into behind-the-scenes campaigning work. It seems that Almina, despite her modest assertions that she was unaccustomed to public speaking, very much enjoyed it, and when Aubrey decided to stand as the Conservative candidate for Somerset South in a 1911 by-election, she relished helping him to write electioneering speeches and campaigning on his behalf. Aubrey won. They must have been a dream team, both of them big personalities overflowing with self-assurance.

  Almina’s values and politics were very much those you would expect of a woman of her social class at the time and it would, of course, be overstating the case to say that she was a champion of women’s rights. She never voiced any support for women’s suffrage. Even so, some of her speeches give a very strong sense of her forceful personality, her wit and her faith in women’s power to influence public life. She tells the Newbury Unionist Women’s Association in January 1911: ‘In the dark ages, which are not very far behind us, we used to be called the weaker sex. We never were, and we never shall be weaker in our patriotism. In this as in all similar matters we are neither inferior nor superior, but only very different and I am convinced that we shall do most good to our country and her cause if instead of imitating men we endeavour to widen and perhaps enrich the spirit of public life by being simply ourselves.’

  After her successes campaigning in the 1910 general elections and Aubrey’s by-election, Almina seems to have cast around for the next challenge and realised that there wasn’t one that really suited her. She was too theatrical and too restless to be content with delivering rousing speeches to local political societies, and although now you can imagine her as a fiery, eccentric MP, then she had no such outlet. Her instinct to be useful was clearly very strong because she kept up her public speaking and appearances at various charitable occasions including the East Ham Chrysanthemum Show and the Tunbridge Wells fundraiser for Dr Barnardo’s children’s homes. But she would have to wait another three years for her big chance to do some good in the world.

  And in the meantime there was always something to distract her from any lingering sense of purposelessness. Racing was perfect for that, and on 15 May 1911 Lord and Lady Carnarvon were at Ascot with the new King. There is a striking picture of them in the Royal Enclosure. The Earl is in top hat and tails, using a silver-topped cane to support his bad leg. He looks like a man who is confident that he is about to have fun in the company of friends. Almina is wearing an ankle-length dress in black-and-white striped satin, a dark fur and a spectacular wide-brimmed, ostrich-feather-trimmed hat. She is leaning away from her husband, seemingly laughing as she extends her hand to someone by her side. She looks as if she is graciously receiving the tributes due to her. It is utterly unlike the sweet and purposeful demeanour in the photo of her in nurse’s uniform that was taken barely more than three years later.

  Glitz, public life, the dignity of the Carnarvons – these were still very important to her in 1911, and they all combined on 22 June 1911, the day of the coronation of King George V and Queen Mary. The whole household had gone up to town to prepare. Fearnside, Roberts and Jessie Money, Almina’s new lady’s maid, had been in charge of bringing everything that would be required to the house in Berkeley Square. Meticulously, Fearnside brushed down the Earl’s ermine robes. They had last been used eight years previously, at the coronation of Edward VII, and had been carefully kept in camphor and checked twice a year for moths. Roberts and Money laid out Almina’s ornate dress, tiara and jewels. Lord and Lady Carnarvon each had a bedroom and dressing room on the second floor of the house and, by the time they arrived to get ready, th
e running along corridors and frantic unpacking of boxes was all finished and everything was ready for them. The Earl and Countess set off for Westminster Abbey to join the throng of peers and nobles of the realm.

  The procession to the abbey was splendid. The King and Queen travelled in the gold State Coach, drawn by eight heavily caparisoned carriage horses with four postillions riding and several footmen accompanying. Lord Kitchener rode in a place of honour to the right of the State Coach. He had been made Field Marshal, the highest rank in the Army, by Edward VII as he lay on his deathbed, in recognition of his service in Sudan, South Africa and India.

  As they waited for the ceremony to begin, there was plenty of time to observe the splendours of the abbey, familiar to them of course from all the State occasions they had attended there, and the dress of the other members of the congregation. The church was full of the Carnarvons’ friends and all the crowned heads of Europe, but Almina must have been irritated to have to shake hands with Herbert Asquith, the Liberal Prime Minister, leader of the dreadful ‘Radicals’.

  The Carnarvons watched anxiously for the arrival of the procession and strained to catch their first glimpse of their son, who had been chosen to be one of the Pages of Honour. He had been granted leave from his prep school, Ludgrove, to attend the endless rehearsals for the coronation, all masterminded by the Duke of Norfolk. The Duke was apparently meticulous in his supervision of the pages and required complete attention to detail, but Porchy remembered that, if a rehearsal had gone well, he dished out delicious chocolates to everyone afterwards.