A shoot is bait for persuading people to travel a long way for a winter weekend. When I had had enough practice for friends to realize I was not intent on murdering their other guests, they invited me to shoot. An annual treat was Keir, Bill Stirling’s Perthshire home, where we sometimes had five days’ shooting on the trot, a sporting highlight that became known as The Festival. The same team of guns gathered every year, with Bill’s sons, Archie and Johnny, representing the younger generation. The same old jokes were repeated – we would have resented any new ones. General Sir George Collingwood, Royal Artillery, was part of The Festival scene, as was Lord Sefton, the legendary Lancastrian owner of Croxteth in Liverpool and Abbeystead in the Forest of Bowland. Collingwood was not a good shot and after a drive in which he had failed to distinguish himself, Lord Sefton said with mock scorn, ‘Call yourself a gunner?’ One icy morning our convoy was driving along a main road with a nasty drop on the left. Archie’s Land Rover skidded and landed upside down in the field below. His father saw it happen and drove on. ‘The stupid boy will be late for the first drive,’ is all he muttered. Of such were the Stirlings made. Bill’s brother David has gone down in history for founding the Special Air Service, and when Bill led the 2nd Special Air Service Regiment, the SAS was known as ‘Stirling and Stirling’.
After two or three days, Bill, who was the most restless man I have ever known, would disappear to Greece, Abu Dhabi or wherever his business interests took him, and we carried on without him. The head keeper at Keir was Jimmy Miller. He was as square as a wrestler (which he was in his spare time) and I would not have liked to meet him on a dark night if I were up to no good, but as a guest of Bill’s I could do no wrong. When Archie was about ten and at a loose end in the holidays, he said to Jimmy, ‘Shall we go to the cinema this afternoon?’ ‘Nature is the best cinema, Mr Archie,’ came the reply.
Through Ann Fleming, I got to know Sybil Cholmondeley. The second time we met she said, ‘I believe you are fond of shooting, would you like to come to Houghton in December?’ I would. Sybil was already old, but brimful of energy, opinions and brilliance. She was born Sassoon and she and her brother Philip were of Middle Eastern origin, which gave them a touch of the exotic. A product of pre-First-World-War Paris and London, Sybil had acted as her father’s hostess from the age of seventeen and her upbringing had given her the impeccable manners of her generation and kind. I have seen her sitting bolt upright, in apparently rapt attention, being talked at by a thumping bore. She was an example to us all.
After marriage in 1913 to the Marquess of Cholmondeley, Sybil took on Houghton Hall, the magnificent eighteenth-century Norfolk house built for Sir Robert Walpole. Rock Cholmondeley, who was beautiful looking – and aware of it – was a sportsman, soldier, landowner and hereditary Lord Great Chamberlain. He was not fond of social life and as Sybil was of a generation of women who arranged their lives around their husbands, they did not invite many people to stay. Sybil took to country life, learned about the farms, woods and the people who looked after them, and soon joined Rock in the excellent shooting the estate provided. It was unusual for a woman to shoot in the 1930s but Sybil quickly became proficient, as she did in everything that interested her.
I had never seen Houghton before and, like everyone else, was knocked sideways by its unique beauty and by the Cholmondeleys themselves. The approach to the house is past rows of white estate cottages, through a display of white iron gates by a white lodge and into the park; more white comes as ghostly fallow deer pass to and fro under the great oaks. William Kent’s opulent rooms were the ideal background for Sybil. On an easel in the sitting room, which was hung with yellow silk, was Holbein’s Lady with a Squirrel. In the room next door, Oudry’s White Duck overlooked the French furniture that Sybil described in a throwaway line as ‘My brother Philip’s things, the best of their kind’. The portraits of her mother and herself by Sargent and one of her by William Orpen (‘Old Orps’ she called him) positively glowed. Whatever she said was made important by her precise enunciation and clipped tones, lips closing on the last word and often followed by a laugh. When talking one day of diminishing congregations in country churches, she said, ‘The trouble is that they don’t understand what “verily verily” means.’ You soon got to know who ‘our neighbours’ were – the royal family at Sandringham. The Queen Mother told me that one evening after dining with the said neighbours, Sybil looked for her sable coat in the hall. ‘Where’s my weasel?’ she said to a bemused footman.
I was the only guest on that first visit – the other guns were local Norfolk farming friends – and I felt honoured to be there. We set off in a white Land Rover to see country unknown to me but which was to become familiar over the years. An east wind straight from Russia can make waiting in a field of frozen plough uncomfortable, but at Houghton there were no long waits because the pheasants were wild and got up as soon as the beaters entered the woods – unlike reared birds that are apt to flush. Sybil was impervious to wind or rain and wore a miserable little pair of short gumboots. ‘Naval issue,’ she announced proudly (she had helped to found the WRNS during the First World War and rose to be a much respected Commander during the Second). She knew the army of beaters by name and fully appreciated their efforts, which involved tramping through wet kale up to their waists, to provide the sport she loved. Like all well-mannered hosts she was often the ‘walking gun’, dealing with the birds that fly back over the beaters. She shot with a pair of 16-bore ‘over and unders’ and missed few. I was impressed and remained so every time I saw her in action.
Sybil came to Chatsworth to shoot, complete with loader, guns and heavy luggage. She went up to change for dinner but could not find her jewel box. There was a frantic search. Where could it be? It transpired that the box was so big and heavy that the pantry staff had mistaken it for her cartridge case and taken it to the gunroom. Andrew asked her what she would like for breakfast, always plentiful before a cold winter’s day in the open air: ‘I like lifting the lids,’ was the answer.
I was visiting a friend in King Edward VII hospital one day and as I was leaving an ambulance drew up. I stepped aside for the stretcher to go in and realized its burden was Sybil. She had broken an ankle tripping up in her hurry to answer the telephone. ‘Stay and talk,’ she said, so I followed the stretcher into her room. A nurse with a clipboard came to take her details. ‘Hello,’ she said breezily. Not used to being addressed in the modern manner with such familiarity, Sybil gave a withering look and said, ‘What is all this HELLO?’ and dismissed the nurse with, ‘I will ring when my friend has gone.’
Andrew’s family had been connected to the Sport of Kings for centuries and racing was one of his great loves. I had been passionately interested when I was growing up but the reality of owning a racehorse was different from my dreams as a sixteen-year-old and I never saw the point of it. Had the stud been at Chatsworth, it would have been a different story and we would have known the horses since they were foals. As it was, they were bought, trained and sent to stud by A. N. Other. It was remote control and therefore not attractive to me, though of course I understood the thrill for Andrew whenever he had a winner, and I still keep a keen interest in the progeny of Bachelor Duke and Compton Place, two of his horses that were good enough to stand as stallions.
Race meetings were part of the social round which we both enjoyed. In 1948, and again in 1950 and 1953, we were invited to stay at Windsor Castle for the Royal Meeting at Ascot. During those bleak post-war years, these visits were the most cheering days I can remember. It is uplifting to see something arranged and carried out to perfection, down to the most minute detail. The invitation was for five nights (Monday to Saturday) and four days’ racing. The weather is always a gamble and had to be taken into consideration, but somehow four daytime outfits for the races and five best evening dresses were gathered up.
Andrew and I were allocated a bedroom, dressing room and even a sitting room looking out over the Long Walk – the straight double ave
nue of trees that leads to the famous copper horse. The day’s plans and the times when we had to be ready were typed out and left on our writing table each morning – all very helpful in an unfamiliar world. The welcome and ‘putting at ease’ by the ladies-in-waiting and equerries made everything immediately enjoyable. One year I had not been well and was allowed breakfast in bed. The tray was as big as a table and apparently made of cast iron – a knee-breaker – but the exquisite set of china and the delicious things on it reminded me that it was old-fashioned and therefore desirable. A band played under our window every morning and also in the room next to the drawing room where we sat (or rather stood) in the early evenings.
The drawing rooms were brilliantly decorated with lashings of gold leaf and the furniture, which was upholstered in bright green in one room and bright red in the next, was polished to such a degree that it nearly outshone the guests and their diamonds. The King and Queen and the Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret were the last to enter so there was plenty of time to gaze at the scarlet, six-foot-high standard fuchsias growing in Sèvres tubs. There were about twenty-four guests at dinner and the King and Queen sat opposite each other in the middle of the long table. If an owner or trainer had a winner whilst a guest at the castle, it was traditional for him or her to say a few words after dinner. Jeremy Tree, who was successful from the start of his career as a trainer, turned out a winner and was so worried about having to speak that he was unable to eat a morsel, most unusually for him – as his figure showed. The superb china plates followed by gold ones were whisked away from him as clean as they arrived. But his speech passed off well and I expect he had double helpings for breakfast the next morning.
On our second visit to Windsor, I found sitting next to the King at dinner a rather difficult and frightening experience. No doubt because of frustration at his increasing frailty, his mood was uncertain and at one point he banged his fist on the table so hard that the glasses trembled, and so did I, thinking I had said or done something wrong. The Queen, opposite, gave me reassuring glances. No doubt the King’s anger was a symptom of the illness about which we knew nothing then. It must have been an ordeal for him to sit through all those dinners and if we had been told how unwell he was, we would have understood the outburst.
To be driven in a carriage as part of the procession down the racecourse at Ascot was a fascinating experience. As well as the obvious fun of it – the jockey’s-eye view of the course and the intoxicating smell of horses and harness – it had an unexpected side. We were taken by car through the park from Windsor Castle to join the carriages. Trotting down the narrow lanes to reach the racecourse, our route was lined with onlookers who, I imagine, had no idea that whatever they said could be heard by the occupants of the carriages: ‘Doesn’t she look awful in that hat?’ ‘Who’s he?’ as well as admiring words for the Queen. When it was our turn to drive between the lines of critics, there was an audible ‘Ohhh’, a groan of disappointment when they realized that all the royals had passed and they were left with a few unknowns, not even a movie star.
Some forty years later when Stoker became Her Majesty’s Representative at Ascot, I stayed with him and Amanda in the ‘tied house’ that goes with the job. The house is just behind the racecourse stands and one can see the legions of workers arriving in the early morning. Stoker took me round the private boxes used by the most prosperous owners. These were decorated in a way new to me, with walls covered in a loose backing on which hung rows of waterproof pockets. Once the florists had finished filling these, the walls were solid with lilies, roses and other midsummer blooms – the last word in sweet-smelling luxury – and they looked like extravagant chintz. It was as entertaining to see these preparations as to watch the racing itself – the best horses in the world competing for the glory of winning (as well as for prize money).
On Epsom Derby Day, racing affects the English public across the board – as the old saying goes, ‘All men are equal on the turf and under it.’ Four-in-hand coaches and gypsies with their coloured horses join open double-decker buses in the jostling crowds. When the Derby was run on a Wednesday, things seemed to come to a full stop in government and elsewhere, and anyone who could headed for Epsom. Andrew’s cousin Betty Salisbury (married to Bobbety, who joined his House of Lords colleagues at Epsom) was not a regular racegoer. In 1968, when the American-owned horse Sir Ivor won, a friend asked her if she had seen Sir Ivor. ‘Sir Ivor who?’ she said. There was a long walk from the members’ enclosure to the paddock, all of it in full view of what is called ‘the general public’. I often thought that when the Queen and the royal family walked down to the paddock they were as close to their sporting subjects as they would ever be, drawn together by a shared enthusiasm (today the paddock is immediately behind the stands). One year when Uncle Harold, the popular Minister of Housing at the time, and Aunt Dorothy were walking to the paddock, the crowd seemed extraordinarily vociferous in their welcome, clapping and cheering him all the way. He took off his top hat and smiled at these devoted supporters. What he did not know was that immediately behind him were the newly wed Aly Khan and Rita Hayworth.
In 1965 Andrew achieved his ambition of owning a top-class horse. Park Top had cost five hundred guineas as a yearling when she was bought by Andrew’s friend and trainer, Bernard van Cutsem, for another of his owners. The owner thought the filly too cheap and decided he did not want her, so Bernard offered her to Andrew – a proof, if proof were needed, of the part played by luck in racing. Andrew had to be patient; Park Top did not run as a two-year-old, but Bernard saw a future for her and she went on to be a successful three-, four-and five-year-old, winning the Coronation Cup at Epsom, the Hardwicke Stakes, the Ribblesdale Stakes and the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Ascot, among other important races, as well as coming second in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe.
Andrew’s book, Park Top: A Romance of the Turf, which was published in 1976, revealed as much about him as it did about the mare. The ease and speed with which he wrote it were amazing: he went to a hotel in the north of Scotland for a weekend and came back with the manuscript as good as finished. In 2003, when he began work on his memoirs – drawn from notes he had made over a period of twenty years – it was a different story. He was unwell and found it difficult to concentrate for more than an hour or so at a time. Had it not been for Helen Marchant, who persuaded him to produce a little more each day, and his publisher, Michael Russell, Accidents of Fortune would have fizzled out unfinished. As it was, his two helpers were in constant touch and wove his words into a highly readable, honest account of his life. It is too self-deprecating but people can read between the lines, especially when it comes to his account of war service in Italy.
In the 1960s, Shetland ponies became of paramount interest to me. Muv had bought two mares and a stallion to run on Inch Kenneth and their first foal, Easter Bonnet, was born a few days before Muv died. She bequeathed the ponies to Sophy and they came to Chatsworth, but Sophy was more interested in riding ponies than in showing them and so I took them on. Their numbers grew as foals were born and purchases made; at one point I had fifty-five Shetlands, both standard-height blacks and coloured miniatures.
The ponies were looked after by Tommy Jones, a Welshman who came to Chatsworth for a few weeks in the late 1930s to walk a Shire stallion and stayed for the rest of his days. After the advent of tractors, he had had the dismal task of taking the magnificent Shire stallions, pride and joy of Andrew’s grandfather, to be shot and hauled away for dog meat. From Shires to Shetlands was a downgrade in Tommy’s eyes, but our success in the show ring made up for it, and he and his wife, Emily, became part of the Shetland scene. I bought a big horsebox with a sleeping compartment, which became known as The Queen Mary by fellow exhibitors. Tommy and Emily stayed in it and gave tea and drinks all round. We showed the ponies all over the country and in 1973, our best year, three of my Shetlands took the championships: ‘Chatsworth Darkie’ at the Royal Welsh, ‘Chatsworth Drogo’ at th
e Royal, and ‘Wells Erica’ at the Royal Highland.
In 1969 Tommy drove The Queen Mary to Austria and came back with Maximillian, a Haflinger stallion, and two mares – some of the first of the breed to be imported into this country. To announce their arrival to the British horse-loving public I took a stand at the Royal Show where they created a tremendous amount of interest. My sister Pam and I hired a caravan, parked it behind the horses’ stalls and spent the week there. Pam made lunch for crowds of friends, we sat on straw bales and were totally happy. Across the grass was the caravan of the renowned show jumper Harvey Smith and his early morning ablutions became of increasing interest as the days went by. The Haflingers soon grew in popularity and numbers, their quiet temperament and sturdy shape making them suitable for heavy riders and disabled adults. I like the heavier type of Haflinger, capable of hauling thinnings in woods too steep for tractors. These were set to work at Chatsworth but I soon realized that the handlers needed training as well as the horses. A young man on our forestry staff, who had never led a horse or pony, put his foot in the way and was trodden on. After this the head forester thought it wiser to withdraw the horses from service.
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