Catherine discovered during those lonely hours in her rose garden or the Drawing Room, nursing her gin and tonic, that—though she loved Highclere—it was far more her husband’s home than hers. Her place in it was contingent on their marriage. He could come and go, choose to live his life elsewhere, at his club or on the racecourse, but Highclere would still be his ancestral home until the day he died. And if Porchey chose to shift the centre of his world away from Highclere, and away from her, there was nothing she could do about it.
There was a potential ally who was ideally placed to understand this particular aspect of Catherine’s difficulties, of course. Almina’s tenure at Highclere lasted twenty-eight years. Her money saved it over and over again, and funded the expeditions to Egypt on which her late husband’s fame rested; but when he died, she had to leave. Streatfield, the long-serving house steward, lived there longer than she did. She felt a certain degree of ambivalence about both her former home and her son for years afterwards.
So Almina might in theory have been the perfect person to talk to about the challenges of being Countess of Carnarvon, despite the fact that Catherine, disinclined even to talk to her own family about her marriage, would surely not have confided in her mother-in-law about the specifics of her woes with Porchey. She might also have worried that Almina, who, partly through temperament, partly through the power of her money, had found it much easier to stamp her own personality on Highclere, would not understand her. It’s true that Almina was tougher and more pragmatic, but she would probably have sympathised with her daughter-in-law, whom she liked very much. As the illegitimate daughter of Alfred de Rothschild, who married into the aristocracy, she had once known a great deal about not quite feeling at home.
The biggest obstacle to the flourishing of Catherine and Almina’s relationship was that the two women rarely saw one another. There had been a considerable warmth between them in the early years, when Almina championed Catherine’s cause with her late husband and hosted parties for her. Almina’s subsequent involvement with Ian Dennistoun froze her relationship with her son and, by extension, her daughter-in-law. They had always corresponded and saw each other occasionally in town, when Catherine took the children to visit their grandmother, but in the ten years after her departure in 1923, Almina visited Highclere only once, in the October of 1931.
By that time things had started to thaw between Porchey and his mother, though the guestbook records that she came alone, without Ian. That weekend, two of Porchey’s great friends were also staying: Jock Delves Broughton and the Marquess of Blandford, heir to the Duke of Marlborough. They were joined by various others including Dolly Wilde, niece of Oscar, who liked to dress up as her uncle and hold court. Dolly was a faintly scandalous figure, notorious for her heroin and alcohol addictions but, even in the star-studded literary salons of inter-war Paris, which was where she spent most of her time, she was also famed for her gifts as a conversationalist. She too came alone, without her long-term lover, American socialite Nathalie Barney.
The party must have been a boisterous one but it would take more than a cross-dressing heroin addict or the first visit to her old stomping ground in eight years to cow Almina. One imagines that as Dolly was in full swing, Almina took the opportunity to explain to Catherine in detail her latest project, the nursing home, at Alfred House. The home was named after her father and had been open since 1927 on a street just off Portland Place, close to the BBC’s new headquarters, then under construction. It had built up a reputation for excellent nursing care, both for patients convalescing from surgery or illness and for mothers having their babies. Before long it was the choice for large numbers of society patients, including, in 1934, Lady Diana Cooper, who gave birth to her son at Alfred House. Almina’s nurses still wore the strawberry pink uniforms she had insisted on at the military hospital she founded at Highclere in 1916 for wounded officers. The food they served was excellent and the standards of care they provided exceptional. Sir Berkeley Moyniham, who was President of the Royal College of Surgeons as well as a leading surgeon at Leeds General Infirmary, was the medical director whom Almina had worked closely with during the Great War.
Almina might have been busy with her own life and an infrequent visitor to Highclere, but she was concerned about Catherine and knew exactly what was going on. Eve was a constant source of information. In early 1934, Porchey absented himself from Highclere for two months’ racing in Egypt, where he competed as a jockey and won several events. He returned, tanned and fit, at the beginning of April, in time to host some weekend parties with Catherine for the Newbury races. This was probably around the time when he began what would evolve into a more serious relationship, with Tanis Montagu. When, in October of that year, he contrived to include her in a house party at Highclere attended by their mutual friends, Poppy and Peter Thursby, Almina was furious with him. Catherine, by contrast, was in despair. She had known he’d met someone, and Catherine had been sitting it out at Highclere, hoping that it was again a casual fling and would not escalate. She was still tormented by doubts over what to do.
Porchey had in fact known Tanis for some time. She had been born into the influential and aristocratic Anglo-Irish Guinness family. Her father, Benjamin Seymour Guinness, was a very wealthy lawyer and philanthropist, and in 1931 Tanis had married the second son of the Earl of Sandwich, Drogo Montagu. By 1934 their divorce was almost complete. Tanis was Titian-haired, a soignée beauty, confident, worldly and a fixture in Hollywood circles. She was intensely exciting to Porchey and would soon prove to be the last straw for Catherine.
The wedding of Prince George might have clarified Catherine’s thoughts somewhat, and prepared the way for her realisation that she would have to act. Prince George had been an admirer of hers for years and a staunch friend to both Carnarvons. It had been twelve years since he had stood as guest of honour at their wedding, and now, as they attended his, Catherine must have mused on the sad turn of events. The irony was that everyone admired Catherine except her husband, who, as Catherine was beginning to appreciate, simply didn’t love her enough.
On 27 November 1934 she and Porchey attended the glittering reception for 2,000 people given at Buckingham Palace by King George V and Queen Mary, who were delighted that their son was marrying Princess Marina of Greece and had created him Duke of Kent for the occasion. Catherine looked exquisite but Porchey, who was supposed to dance the first dance with his wife, refused on the grounds that he had already spent a lot of time with her. Catherine had so many friends and admirers that she nonetheless enjoyed a spectacular evening’s dancing.
The new Duke and soon to be Duchess were already established as the celebrity royal couple of their age. They were handsome, glamorous, informal and very much in love, with an appeal to newspaper readers all over the world. That evening, moving among their guests in the crimson and gold state rooms lit by twinkling chandeliers, they were dazzling.
Prince George stopped to introduce his fiancée to his old friends, Porchey and Catherine. A few moments later, the Prince of Wales also paused. He was alone and Porchey thought he looked wistful. The two royal brothers had been so close, living together at York House in London, carousing in nightclubs in town and spending weekends at Fort Belvedere, the Prince of Wales’ country retreat in Windsor Great Park.
This was the first occasion on which Catherine observed Mrs Simpson, whom the Prince of Wales had persuaded his reluctant parents to invite. They disapproved of their eldest son’s relationship with the once divorced, and indeed still married Mrs Simpson, but they were desperately hoping, against all mounting evidence, that it would prove to be just another of the Prince of Wales’ numerous infatuations.
Wallis Simpson arrived wearing exquisite jewels given to her by her royal lover. Her husband, Anglo-American shipping executive Ernest Simpson, stood awkwardly at the side of the rooms for much of the evening. The Prince of Wales managed to ensure Wallis was presented to King George and Queen Mary. Their indignation was cloaked by
good manners, but this only stoked their anxiety that Mrs Simpson was of a different order to the Prince’s previous dalliances.
Back at Highclere, Catherine forgave Porchey everything and tried to carry on in the hope that she could still save her marriage. She had no shortage of admiring visitors. The very well-known conductor Malcolm Sargent found Catherine quite entrancing. Impeccably dressed and nicknamed ‘Flash Harry’, he was good for her self-esteem. Porchey’s old friend Jack Clayton, the racehorse trainer, was also devoted to Catherine and came down often towards the end of 1934 so that she was not on her own.
The first few months of 1935 were an intensely miserable period for Catherine. Christmas had felt like a charade. Henry, young Lord Porchester, returned from school and found his home an oppressive place of tension, in which his mother drifted and the staff were at a loss. Catherine was anxious to conceal the extent of the crisis from her children, but it was impossible to maintain the fiction that the cocktails and dancing, race meets and shooting weekends were still as they had been. Porchey’s evident hurry to get back to London made Catherine’s position impossible.
Porchey spent most of the spring of 1935 with Tanis, either in London (her family home in Carlton House Terrace) or in Paris, a city they both loved. Rumours circulated in society that the Carnarvon marriage was on the point of ending. Porchey began to plead with Catherine for a divorce. Perhaps it was this that finally allowed Catherine to act. For as long as there had been no direct threat to her position, she had trained herself to co-exist uneasily with Porchey’s various flings and just about ignore the damage his sparse attention was doing to their marriage and her wellbeing. But Porchey had found another woman he wanted to marry. She saw that her position was completely untenable.
Catherine asked Gar to come to stay at Highclere for the first two weeks of May. On 3 May, elegantly dressed as ever and accompanied by her brother Jac, Catherine, Lady Carnarvon, travelled to the City of London offices of solicitors Broad and Son to enquire about divorce proceedings. She had spent years hoping that it would not come to this, but had allowed herself to be persuaded by Jac that she needed to take some control, to start looking for a way forward for her and the children. There were the mundane but necessary questions of maintenance, of where they would live. A plan was required.
In contrast to her personal disaster was the national celebration of King George V’s Silver Jubilee, throughout the month of May. Catherine had taken a cab from Paddington Station and made her way along streets decked with Union Jack banners and bunting. The King was seventy years old and frail, but he undertook a programme of carriage rides to greet his subjects, accompanied by Queen Mary and their granddaughters, the Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret. The royal family could not have known it, but their own family scandal was just around the corner. For now, though, the mood of the nation and the Empire was buoyant.
Catherine, on the other hand, returned to Highclere full of the saddest sense that the life she and Porchey had made for themselves was at an end. Having resolved that she must leave as soon as possible, she took just a week to pack up her most important possessions and make arrangements to move out. Doll reverted completely to her former role of lady’s maid and confidante. She and Gar took charge of practicalities and rallied the entire staff to help. The household was in shock. Though everyone had known this outcome was always a possibility, the staff now found themselves in the invidious position of having to wrestle with divided loyalties. Lord Carnarvon was their employer, but Lady Carnarvon was better known to them, and an object of sympathy.
On 12 May, Catherine, her mother and Lady Penelope left Highclere, driven by Trotman, the head chauffeur. In a demonstration of the extent to which individual members of staff had sided with Lady Carnarvon, Porchey’s valet, Mr van Celst, left too. He became Catherine’s butler in London. Mrs Gibbins, who had been head housemaid, became Catherine’s housekeeper, leaving behind her husband who remained as second chauffeur. The ever-faithful Doll rode in the car with the family to provide comfort for both Penelope and Catherine.
Porchey knew that Catherine had resolved to leave him but she had said nothing to him about where she was going, or when. He returned to the castle from Paris one evening and, as he handed his hat and stick to Charles, enquired, ‘Where is Her Ladyship?’ ‘I believe Her Ladyship is staying at the Ritz hotel, my lord. There is a letter on your desk, my lord,’ the footman replied.
Porchey walked through to the study and sat down. He was almost overwhelmed by mixed feelings of guilt, relief and excitement. Unfolding the familiar notepaper, embossed with Highclere’s address and his wife’s crest, the words swam in front of him and he wondered in panic what on earth he had done. ‘It is better we should part … I must have peace of mind … I am not really accustomed to this way of life.’
Tanis was still in Paris, and his wife had left him and taken their children, not to mention several of the staff. The full import of the new reality hit him. He at once telephoned Catherine at the Ritz, who insisted that they should not speak that night but that he would be welcome to come to see her at the hotel. She assured him that she didn’t want any scandal and that Jac would handle everything for her. The effort of maintaining a dispassionate tone nearly resulted in her collapse.
Porchey did go to see Catherine, and walked out of the Ritz hotel afterwards feeling nearly as intolerably sad as she did. As he remarked in his memoirs, they had lived in harmony together for many years and he had forced the demise of their marriage. Now, despite his sadness, he wanted to play the game to the end. On 29 May he booked a room at the Charing Cross hotel with one Lucy Nugent, remaining there with her for an hour. He then passed this information to Jac so that he could in turn send it to Catherine’s solicitors. During the course of their conversation at the Ritz, Porchey had tried to persuade Catherine that the best thing for everyone was now a speedy resolution. He hoped that Catherine would file a petition as soon as possible.
By the time the news reached Catherine, though, she had suffered a complete nervous collapse and been taken by her mother and brother to a convent-run nursing home in Surrey. The strain had finally proved too much. She had adored her husband constantly; he had adored her, but with far less constancy. Theirs had been a love match that simply ran out of steam, exacerbated by his affairs, her sadness and turning to drink, and a gradual emotional retreat from one another. For Catherine, the suspicion that he would emerge practically unscathed from the wreckage was too much to bear. She would not return to Highclere for ten years.
(Picture Acknowledgment 10.1)
10
Bitter Sweet
Highclere was a forlorn place in the summer of 1935. Porchey spent a great deal of time there, more than he had in many months, and invited friends to stay, but the joie de vivre had gone out of the house. The staff were as lacklustre as their employer, wondering what on earth might happen next. Porchey urgently needed something to do, a project in which to lose his mixed feelings of sadness, remorse and nervous excitement about the future. The problem was that there was little to command his attention. Lord Carnarvon’s devotion to the stud was passionate but, now he had the enterprise well run and the estate well managed, there was no pressing need to be there unless he wanted to be.
The more one knows about Porchey, the more one suspects that his adult life was defined by the need to be a character, without having the advantage of actually possessing either definite talent or vocation. His role, of course, was to be the Earl of Carnarvon, but it was starting to become clear that it was no longer enough to play the lord of the manor without a little more substance to back up the feudal froth. Porchey was a great raconteur, a superb mimic, an entertainer. He was a serious sportsman, he was a very loyal friend—but none of these things were enough.
He fell back on traditions, his own and those of his class and generation. Porchey was, as always, concerned to maintain stability, but he was also aware that his children needed things to stay as close as possible t
o the way they always had been. Catherine had taken the responsibility for running a happy household, but he was determined to keep Highclere going as normal, despite the fact that he was desperate to be with Tanis, who was out of the country. He asked Eve if she would be able to host certain occasions along with him, to which she readily agreed, bringing Patricia and Bro with her as much as possible. There were racing weekends, and some new friends from the theatrical world came to stay. Henry and Penelope visited their father regularly over the summer, in the care of Lord Porchester’s tutor, Mr Bosanquet, and Doll respectively. Eve was conscious that her niece and nephew were dealing with the separation of their parents, and needed extra attention. She took all the children to play tennis, or out in the shooting brakes for picnics up in the woods above the park and on the downs.
Henry was now eleven years old, Penelope ten. They wrote to their mother while they were away, telling their ‘darling mama’ that ‘people missed her’, enclosing drawings, signing off as her ‘two little Ps’. From the recollections of Patricia, their cousin, who continued to play with them that summer at Highclere, it would seem that they were filled with the common desire of children of divorcing parents to see a reconciliation. To their credit, neither Porchey nor Catherine ever encouraged these desires, and neither did they speak badly of each other. Old-fashioned English decorum was, on occasion, extremely useful. Nevertheless, it was a huge sadness for the children, made worse by the fact that the collapse of the Carnarvon marriage was fodder for speculation in the press and chatter in society drawing rooms. The newspapers gleefully seized on this fresh opportunity to wheel out their beloved fantasy, the Curse of Tutankhamun, as explanation for the latest misfortune to overtake the house of Carnarvon.
Lady Catherine, the Earl, and the Real Downton Abbey Page 12