Some years later, as her daughter’s marriage began to unravel, Margaret Chisholm revealed to Sheila a conversation she’d overheard back at the Shepheard’s Hotel after the wedding ceremony: “I cannot understand how they could have allowed their child to marry into that effete, unreliable family,” the unidentified person remarked.
But it would have made no difference to her strong-willed daughter: “Ag had tried to explain the facts of life to me but I didn’t want to listen. I thought I knew everything.”
4
A SON AMID THE AIR RAIDS
To marry into the British aristocracy was an exciting and daunting prospect for any young untitled woman, let alone for a stranger from the colonies. Yet, almost from the moment she arrived in London, the new Lady Sheila Loughborough was not only accepted, but feted, by society.
News of their marriage had taken time to penetrate the roar of wartime gunfire, and details of the union and how they had met changed ever so slightly from one version to another, but there was a clear sense of acceptance in the tone of the media coverage that found its way into the social pages of the major newspapers.
Some reports were matter-of-fact and recognised that wartime marriages were frequently precipitous—often desperate and tragically fleeting when, as in many cases, the husbands later failed to return from the Front. But other accounts were more enthusiastic and almost whimsical about wartime love, as in the following item from a “Ladies’ Letter” column published in the Camperdown Chronicle:
Whenever you hear that two adventurous spirits have just murmured the usual “I wills”, if you’ve any room left for feminine curiosity under those tight waists they make you wear nowadays, you wonder how they first came to meet, and where it was that he realised she must be his little too-tums for ever. Well, in the case of young Lord Loughborough, who was married at Cairo the other day, these details are frightfully romantic, with a background of Armageddon and a nasty noise of guns going on all the time. Lord Loughborough, who is the Earl of Rosslyn’s heir, and an officer in the RNVR, has been at the Dardanelles, and so has a certain Tommy Kangaroo, a member of the Australian Contingent. Miss Sheila Chisholm is this soldier’s sister, and she journeyed with her mother all the way from Sydney to be near her brother. In Cairo she met Lord Loughborough who was wounded, and—well, the orange-blossoming went off without a hitch.
To others she arrived as a woman of substance in her own right. The Sunday Times reported:
Lady Loughborough has been a most energetic worker for the Australian wounded in Egypt, and it was her mother, Mrs Harry Chisholm, who started the Empire Soldiers’ Club at Heliopolis, a club that was greatly appreciated by thousands of Anzacs and others. It is a fine building, situated opposite Luna Park, near the No. 1 Australian General Hospital, where numbers of Australian and New Zealand women in Egypt gave their services to comfort and cheer their men. The refreshments were provided at cost price. The average daily takings were £60, which is an evidence of how much the club was appreciated.
But despite this media acceptance, behind the scenes Sheila was desperately unhappy, other than her husband alone among much older strangers at Calcot Park where they continued to stay. It had been a mistake for the young couple, who should have been striking out together establishing a home of their own. Instead, the only time they seemed to spend in each other’s company were the forays to London.
They usually stayed at the Ritz—opened a decade before by hotelier Cesar Ritz and already among the city’s finest hotels, with bathrooms in every bedroom, walk-in wardrobes and brass rather than wooden beds—and attended dinners chaperoned by Loughie’s cousins, the Sutherlands: Geordie’s sister Rosemary and wife Eileen, whose influence would help Sheila ease her way into society.
But the weekends also gave Loughie, unfit for service due to his wounds, an opportunity to misbehave. His gambling had been barely tolerable in the surreal atmosphere of war, but now that they had returned to the genteel, safe environs of London it had become a worrying aspect to his character.
Sheila recalled one weekend, which she described as typical: “We dined and went to a play and I felt we were closer than we had been for some time. When we got back to the hotel he put me in a lift and said: ‘Goodnight, be a good little girl while I go out with the boys. I won’t be late.’”
“Please take me with you,” she implored, fearing a repeat of the poker night when they’d first arrived.
“Most unsuitable, my child, it is what we call a ‘tarts’ party’.”
Sheila could not sleep and when Loughie finally returned near dawn they sat crying together in the luxurious suite. Just as he had done before, her husband promised that he would never do such a thing again, then went out and bought her a fox terrier she named Billy.
Sheila somehow found a way to blame herself, finding it difficult to tell her mother exactly what was happening and that her marriage, less than a year old, looked to have been a mistake and doomed for failure: “There was no doubt that Loughie was difficult but he had such charm and sweetness at times, although he was definitely a weak character,” she would write on reflection. “I didn’t know how to cope with him or my life and unfortunately there was no sign of a baby. I thought if I produced a son then things might get better.”
In early September Margaret finally saw through her daughter’s obfuscation, realised she was in crisis and took the next ship from Egypt to London where she arranged to talk to the Rosslyn family lawyers about the possibility of divorce. It was not an easy proposition because Britain’s restrictive laws would not give women the same rights as men for another seven years. But to her surprise, the senior partner agreed wholeheartedly, commenting: “I advise you to take your daughter back to Australia before they break her heart.”
But the divorce did not go ahead. Instead, Margaret persuaded the earl to finance the young couple into a London residence—a white, stuccoed, late-Georgian townhouse in Stanhope Place on the fringe of upmarket Hyde Park in the city’s north-west where the homes were smaller than the grand mansions of Belgravia but generous enough to house a modest staff—generally a butler, a cook and two maids—who lived and worked in the basement floors and ascended, unseen, to the upper floors using internal staircases.
But as he gave with one hand, Harry Rosslyn took away with the other. Just as his son and daughter-in-law were moving into their first marital home, he placed a front-page advertisement in The Times to announce that he would not be responsible for his son’s debts. It read:
WARNING to MONEYLENDERS—Messrs Terrell and Varley, as solicitors for the Earl of Rosslyn, are instructed to give notice that his Lordship is aware that his son, Lord Loughborough, is being tempted by moneylenders and touts to borrow money. The Earl of Rosslyn himself is his son’s largest creditor and persons lending Lord Loughborough money are WARNED that Lord Rosslyn is not responsible for his son’s debts and will not make himself responsible for them under any circumstances.
Three days later Rosslyn authorised an interview with an unnamed friend of Lord Loughborough, which appeared in the Evening Standard newspaper. The friend described the earl’s actions as “a father’s kind thought, drastic though it may appear, to protect a charming young man from the temptations which are besetting all young army officers at this moment”. The friend went on: “His allowance is ample, but advantage has been taken of him more than once.”
The hypocrisy of the earl’s declaration, and the damage it was likely to do to his son’s reputation, was not lost on others. The novelist Marguerite Cunliffe-Owen, writing under the nom de plume of La Marquise de Fontenoy, published a scathing article, which questioned the earl’s own character and motives. She concluded:
While it is possible that Lord Loughborough may be somewhat extravagant, the warning published in the papers comes with singular ill-grace from his father, Lord Rosslyn, who has been twice divorced, thrice married and repeatedly bankrupted—so many times that it is difficult to consider seriously for one moment t
he idea that he could ever make himself responsible for anyone else’s debts. In fact, the warning would seem to partake rather of a bit of paternal irritation, not to say spite, than a fatherly care for a cherished son.
It was a well-directed barb, particularly as this public announcement of his son’s waywardness only made it more embarrassing and difficult for Loughie to establish himself back in London.
And Sheila had more news—she was pregnant.
As much as Harry Rosslyn was an infamous, frivolous scoundrel, his sisters would become famous for being significant contributors to the social, political and philanthropic work of English society. Beautiful, rich and famous, all of them married important men and lived in splendour, but Frances and Millicent in particular, and Blanche and Angela to a lesser extent, were also tireless wartime volunteers, politically active and driven social activists who would have an impact on the life of Sheila Loughborough.
Frances, or “Daisy” as she was always known, was the eldest and the most prominent. Curvaceous enough to pose for Rodin, she was wilful enough to refuse when Queen Victoria picked her as an appropriate wife for her son, Prince Leopold, and she married instead Francis Greville, Lord Brooke, who was heir to a much greater title: the Earl of Warwick, which he inherited in 1893. By then they had five children, and his wife, after earlier rejecting Leopold, was in the midst of a long-standing—and socially acceptable—affair with his older brother Edward (“Bertie”), Prince of Wales before he became king.
As the Countess of Warwick, she was one of the leading “Professional Beauties” at a time when a new celebrity culture was taking hold, and was the inspiration for one of the most popular music hall songs, “Daisy Bell (Bicycle Built for Two)”. But after an obscure newspaper, the Clarion, dared criticise the pomp and ceremony of her husband’s celebrations when the family moved into Warwick Castle as “a vulgar saturnalia of gaudy pride”, she stormed to London and confronted the editor. Instead of extracting an apology, she emerged an advocate of socialism—a rarity among the aristocratic classes.
It was her outspoken criticism of the wealthy, and her decision to champion the poor and embrace socialism, that would ultimately make her life politically notable. Daisy developed several charitable socialist organisations, became friends with socialists like George Bernard Shaw, HG Wells and Gustav Holst and stood for parliament as a Labour Party candidate, addressing political gatherings in her furs and jewels. But she didn’t abandon society altogether. She continued to live at Warwick Castle and another family property, Easton Lodge in Essex, where she threw society parties to raise funds for her charities.
Daisy’s younger half-sister Millicent, six years her junior, led a less controversial but equally progressive and famous life. In 1884, on her seventeenth birthday, she married Cromartie Sutherland-Leveson-Gower, a man almost twice her age from one of England’s wealthiest families, which controlled more than 500 hectares of land across England and Ireland. He was heir to the title of Duke of Sutherland and a clutch of other peerages; when he inherited the title in 1892, he became one of the most senior peers in the House of Lords. The duke and duchess would have four children before his death in 1913.
While Daisy became increasingly more political, “Millie” embraced her role as one of the leading society hostesses of her day, a member of the so-called Marlborough House Group who clustered around the Prince of Wales and were credited with beginning the breakdown of social barriers by admitting outsiders, such as Americans and Jews. She was also among a lesser-known group of society figures, called the Souls because they met to discuss humanitarian issues rather than politics.
But it was her philanthropic work which created a mystique around the Duchess of Sutherland. She travelled to Europe during the Great War to help provide medical relief for wounded soldiers, for which she was awarded the Belgian Royal Red Cross, the British Red Cross and the Croix de Guerre, one of France’s highest military honours. Back in England, she followed her older sister’s example. On top of supporting numerous charities, she used her own funds to establish several of her own, as well as lobbying the government to tackle industrial issues, such as the problem of lead poisoning in potteries.
Another sister, Blanche, widow of the Duke of Richmond, also found her niche with the nursing corps during the Great War and took her daughter, Ivy, to France, where they managed a series of “rest clubs” created to provide nurses with a safe haven as they moved through the war zone. She would later be invested as a Dame Commander, Order of the British Empire, as well as Dame of Grace, Order of St John of Jerusalem.
The youngest sibling, Angela, was a divorced mother of two by the time war broke out. Lady Forbes, as she was known, volunteered at a hospital in Paris where, untrained, she took notes for surgeons in operating theatres. But her enduring role began after she saw trainloads of wounded being delivered from the Front and left for hours without food or water at a rural railway station. She opened a canteen for soldiers in the station waiting room and this subsequently expanded into a series of canteens, which became known as “Angelinas”, and recreation huts. She became known as the “Forces’ Sweetheart”—a title later bestowed on Dame Vera Lynn in World War II.
But Angela’s canteens would end in controversy in 1917 because of a disagreement with senior military commanders who accused her of unseemly conduct—she had been heard to say “damn” and seen to wash her hair in public! Undaunted, she set up training schemes for disabled soldiers after the war. Years later she reminisced about the impact of war on women:
Looking back, the social life of the late Victorian and Edwardian era seems to have consisted of a round of amusements, which went to make up the rather futile existence of the bulk of society. What a wrong impression of our latent capabilities the public would have if they were to judge them by looking at this. But the war proved most conclusively that these butterflies were really made of sterner stuff, and with hardly one exception, they rose to the most unexpected heights of capability. When I went to France I could hardly make a cup of tea, and in three months I felt I could run Lyons!
“Lady Loughborough gave birth to a son yesterday morning. Both are doing well.” The notice in The Times “Court Circular” column on May 18, 1917 was simple but prominent. No elaboration was needed for either the title or the woman who now carried it. Sheila had captured media attention since her arrival in London, with magazines such as Tatler and The Sketch already taking an interest in the strangely beautiful new peeress, despite the contretemps between her troubled husband and his father, or perhaps because of it.
Then there was the Australian connection: she was perceived as a frontierswoman from the land of the wattle, who could ride a horse and sing like an angel. The colonies were no longer outposts but allies, and now one of Australia’s most beautiful women was mother to a future peer—Anthony Hugh Francis Harry St Clair-Erskine.
But as self-assured as she appeared, privately Sheila was struggling like many women expecting their first baby, as she wrote to Anne Douglas, a childhood friend back in Australia, six days before the birth: “I am waiting impatiently for the babe to arrive. I really can’t believe it; it seems so queer and the whole time I feel it’s not happening to me at all, but to someone else.”
Amid the joy and apprehension of motherhood there was also fear from overhead, as she would recount in her memoir: “The air raids were horrible and, of course, I thought every bomb was aimed at Tony. I adored him. He was the beautiful bouncing boy that Loughie always wanted.”
London’s social scene had retreated from its pre-war grandeur into mostly private parties and the occasional dance—the carefree fun of the 1914 Season was now a distant memory as war slipped into a third year. Buckingham Palace had closed its doors to the summer presentation of debutantes; feathers and tiaras had disappeared from formal attire; the dull sheen of pearls had replaced the glitter of diamonds around the throats and wrists of the ladies who kept up appearances. Occasionally, even among the newspaper column
s that daily listed the dead and injured, there would be small items lamenting the loss of splendour and wistfully expressing the hope that it all might someday return, such as this from the Daily Express of July 15, 1917:
Somebody murmured “Goodwood” at lunch yesterday, and that reminded us all that next week would in other times have marked the end of the London season and tomorrow have set a rush to the country of jaded society with the famous Sussex race meeting and Cowes a few days ahead. Then one of our party—a man whom we have always called a pessimist, and a man who hears more than most of us and says less—offered a wager of five to one that there would be a Goodwood meeting next year. I took it, and I hope I lose.
There was still the theatre, as well as frequent events to raise funds for the troops and to ease the financial burden of a nation spending an estimated £8 million a day to fund a war that was killing its young men in their tens of thousands. And this was where Sheila would make her mark in the world of society philanthropy as the “pretty Australian wife of Lord Loughborough, winning praise for her work on stage”, at a charity performance of the Swinburne Ballet, for example.
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