The Daily Mirror reported her reappearance into society less than a month after giving birth: “The Lyric Theatre stage yesterday morning was in a state of bustle and movement. It was the final rehearsal for to-day’s great ‘Swinburne Ballet’. Gorgeous indeed were the gowns; in a lovely rosy gown was the girlish-looking Lady Loughborough, whose first public appearance it was for some little time past.”
A few weeks later she was highlighted again, this time for being stylish alongside friend Diana Manners who, as Lady Diana Cooper, would become one of the most famed beauties of her time: “Veiling or chaining the throat seems popular. Lady Loughborough came with a blue film draped nun-wise around the oval of her face; Lady Diana Manners ‘wimpled’ like a mediaeval abbess in white under a vast pale blue hat; her attractive young friend Miss Phyllis Boyd, had ribbons under her chin.”
Loughie’s aunt, Millicent, now the Dowager Duchess of Sutherland, had also returned from France and took the young mother under her wing, first at a society wedding at Westminster and then for an extended stay at historic Dunrobin Castle, the Sutherland estate in Scotland. Sheila had met her son George, the new duke whom Sheila would always call Geordie, in Egypt and had also formed a close friendship with his wife Eileen, the duchess, who had also been a nurse and had now become Mistress of the Robes to Queen Mary, a senior court title responsible for the Queen’s clothes and jewellery.
Sheila became a committed participant in the social work championed by the St Clair-Erskine sisters, particularly the plight of Belgian and French children orphaned by the conflict. Her involvement was even being noticed abroad. A column titled “With Women of Today” appeared in a New York newspaper and was effusive in its praise:
Eminent and esteemed writers, cartoonists and woman-haters have long made fun of women and their pet philanthropies or uplift work. The woman who has been interested in “social work” has been satirized in books, in newspapers and on the stage but it has not dampened her ardour any. And now with reclamation work to be done abroad there is a new and fertile field opened for the woman who “wants to do some good in the world”. Lady Loughborough is an Australian woman engaged in such work. She is organizing a society to care for and educate the Belgian and French orphans. The organization plans to teach the orphans some trade or profession which will fit them to be self-supporting and good citizens. Lady Loughborough is called “Mother of the Orphans”.
It was a title that contrasted sharply with her private role as a new mother.
5
“CALL THEM SIR AND TREAT THEM LIKE DIRT”
February 16, 1918: It was just after 10.30 p.m. as the crowds emerged from the plush warmth of the latest West End play and Leicester Square musical into the ice cold, late winter streets. Three years of war in Europe had not dulled Londoners’ thirst for night-time entertainment, particularly now there was a sense that the fighting might soon be over. Debates about a new curfew and a crackdown on whistling for taxi cabs raged alongside warnings of rationing and the horrors of the Front—“a wonderful people, unwearied by war work”, as one editorial noted of the nation’s populace.
But the dangers were far from over and, as the streets quickly emptied, air-raid sirens began to wail, forcing stragglers to scurry. Five German Zeppelin-Staaken bombers had taken off from a base in Belgium, thundered across the channel and managed to avoid coastal air defences as they followed the Thames to their ultimate target. Sorties by British aircraft had failed to stop the winged monsters, each capable of carrying 2000 kilograms of bombs. Dover had been hit and now the capital was under threat.
Among those making their way home was Mrs Freda Dudley Ward, wife of prominent MP, William Dudley Ward. Having dined with friends, she had shunned a cab in favour of walking back to the Belgravia home she shared with her estranged husband and their two young daughters. As the sirens sounded, she and a fellow diner who had offered to walk her home ducked into the doorway of a home unknown to them both; they were unsure how close the aerial threat was. By chance there was a dinner dance at this house that night; despite the blackened windows and hooded lamplight, its vigilant staff noticed the couple standing on the porch. The two of them were invited inside to wait out the sirens in the cellar with the others, including the guest of honour, the flamboyant Edward Prince of Wales.
Three of the bombers reached the city soon after and dropped their payload, one bomb hitting the Chelsea Hospital and killing five patients. The man-made thunder could be heard across the inner city, including by those in the Belgravia cellar; they couldn’t discern from which direction the noise was coming, nor how close the bombers might be. It was a nervous although cheerful wait, something to which the city had become accustomed in a war that had dragged on far longer than most had anticipated.
When the danger had passed and the sirens were finally silenced, the Belgravia party resumed and Mrs Dudley Ward’s life had changed forever. Instead of continuing home, she bade farewell to her escort and stayed to dance the night away with the smitten prince, who had spent his time in the cellar chatting to the petite, pretty interloper. The music stopped at 3 a.m. and, before he went to bed that night, Edward scrawled in his diary that he’d “just met the world’s most beautiful and marvellous creature!!!!!!!!!!” The next day he wrote to Mrs Dudley Ward, inviting another meeting, and an affair began that would last fifteen years.
The prince was on leave from his duties with the army, which largely consisted of morale-boosting visits to the troops, a role he despised. London’s wealthy and titled mothers were falling over themselves to invite the handsome dandy to parties and dances where their daughters might catch his eye. The writer Lady Cynthia Asquith would note: “No girl is allowed to leave London—and every mother’s heart beats high.”
The previous year his father, King George V, had accepted a significant change in royal protocol, not only adopting the family surname Windsor, but also allowing his sons to take a British wife instead of the tradition of a union with the royal houses of Europe. That decision had been driven by the war, which had significantly reduced the number of potential partners, given that so many royal brides had previously been drawn from the German court.
But the prince was not particularly interested in marriage, having only lost his virginity at the age of twenty-four, in late 1916, to a French prostitute named Paulette. Since then he’d become obsessed with pursuing women and exploring sex (“I don’t think of anything but women now,” he wrote in his diary) and the notion of settling with one woman appeared a distant objective. He also had a penchant for married women, having previously courted Lady Marion Coke, a mother of four and wife of the 4th Earl of Leicester.
He had been linked with half a dozen or more noblewomen, mostly casual friendships or innocent dalliances, but all this appeared to change in a moment the night he met Freda. Edward showered her with attention over the next fortnight, writing almost daily, seeking opportunities to meet and even dining at her marital home on March 2, the night before travelling to Glasgow to tour shipyards. He was anxious to see her again when he returned three days later, although pleading with her to find a rendezvous other than her Lowndes Square marital home—“which I must confess, rather terrifies me!! But of course it is up to you to say whatever you wish me to do!”
On March 7 he tried telephoning, but missed her, so he penned a note and had it couriered from Buckingham Palace barely a kilometre away. There was a dinner dance that night to which both had been invited, although Edward was reluctant. He would much rather be alone with Freda so they could organise details of a getaway the following weekend: “Now about this dance this evening? You didn’t seem very keen to go last night (or rather this morning) & I can’t say I am really unless it’s the only chance of seeing you!! . . . Could you send me a message to the Bath Club to say Yes or No as I shall be there after 6 p.m.”
Freda said yes, excited by the attentions of her royal admirer in the face of what had become a loveless marriage to a man sixteen years her senior.
She was already fighting off a clutch of admirers who gathered around her at parties—she would call them “barrages”—but the attentions of the heir to the throne would prove irresistible. However, it would have to be discreet.
Her husband, William Dudley Ward, was serving as a lieutenant commander in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve. He was also the Liberal MP for Southampton and had been appointed the previous year as vice-chamberlain to the royal household, a 400-year-old senior political position which required him to write daily reports to the reigning monarch, detailing the proceedings in the House of Commons. “Duddie” was also known as a prominent sportsman, having rowed for Cambridge and competed in yachting at the 1908 Summer Olympics—a “kind, jolly and vague” man, as a friend would describe him, whose marriage had foundered and now existed in name only.
There was another reason Freda was keen to attend the dance that night. The event was being hosted by one of London’s most prominent socialites, Lady Eileen Duchess of Sutherland, which meant her close friend Sheila Loughborough, the duchess’s cousin by marriage, would be there. The pair had met socially and found a kinship in being young mothers of about the same age who were both in failing marriages and struggling against social norms that restricted women to a background role. Both were intelligent and strong-willed, and determined to have a voice besides being a wife and mother.
Freda regarded Sheila as the most beautiful girl she had ever seen, and Sheila had a similar opinion of her friend: “She was absolutely fascinating to look at,” she would recall years later. More importantly, she said of Freda, “She had a good mind, a tremendous character, great loyalty and a wonderful sense of humour. She built one up and made one feel amusing and attractive. She had a strong influence on us all.”
Sheila had been spending most of her time at Winchester, an hour’s train ride south-west of London, near where Loughie was now stationed, having been granted the rank of captain with the King’s Royal Rifle Corps, serving as adjutant to the colonel-in-chief of the rifle depot. A medical examination had concluded that he was unfit for active service and recommended that he be placed permanently in a desk job, where he continued until the war ended. Although this guaranteed his safety, the assessment did nothing for the self-esteem of a man who desperately needed a sense of purpose in his life.
They had even rented a large Gothic manor house called Lankhills in the wooded countryside on the outskirts of the city where Sheila was expected to play social hostess for the colonel, who was unwed. The responsibility had its benefits, taking some pressure off the marriage and opening up social opportunities as guests began appearing including a young English lord who, like many of the royals, had recently anglicised his German name, Battenberg. Lord Louis Mountbatten would become a lifelong friend.
There was a constant stream of visitors. Another was an American named Carroll Carstairs who, by some quirk, was serving with the Grenadier Guards. Carstairs would become known as an art dealer after the war but would also write one of the celebrated books of the Great War, A Generation Missing. After the book was published in 1930, Carstairs told Sheila he had been writing about her when his leading character had described his desire for a beautiful but untouchable woman: “When I look in your eyes I want to cry. When I look at your nose I want to laugh and when I look at your mouth I want to kiss it.”
The compliments only highlighted the struggle to hold together a marriage with a man who seemed unable to contain his own demons. The marriage may have appeared stable, but in truth it was held together by the birth of Tony, who was now nine months old.
A few weeks before the Sutherland party they had been photographed together to promote an amateur stage production to raise funds for the King’s Rifles at the Guildhall. Their body language made the strains obvious—Loughie posed stiff and awkward in uniform while Sheila, demure against his height, stared up worriedly at her husband, her hand pushed against his shoulder as if keeping him at bay.
Behind closed doors it was worse. He could be charming and amusing, particularly in company and playing games like charades. His favourite word was “depot”, for which he gave clues in two parts: the first “fishing in the River Dee” and the second when he reappeared wearing a chamber pot on his head. Sheila laughed every time.
But his mood changed with too much alcohol and there were times when his behaviour became threatening. One night he threw Sheila’s dog, Billy, into the fire (the dog was unharmed) and on another occasion he fired a gun at her kitten, claiming it had stalked his chickens. “I begged him not to drink. I knew it was the root of all his troubles but when we discussed it he would promise to give it up and then, in the next breath, refuse to admit that he drank too much, which was bewildering.”
Sheila attended the March 7 dance alone, dressed in a golden ball gown (lent to her by Eileen) and wide-eyed at the grandeur of the occasion, attended by powdered footmen in rooms full of paintings that belonged in museums. It was held in Stafford House which was considered, and certainly taxed, as the most valuable house in London. Near St James’s Palace, its rococo interior and state rooms were so grand that Queen Victoria, when she attended a dinner there many years before, had remarked on arrival: “I have come from my house to your palace.”
Edward, his social calendar overflowing with requests and expectations, had to attend an earlier event on this particular evening; he arrived at the dance just after 6 p.m. with his younger brother, Albert (or “Bertie” as he was affectionately known), in tow. Discretion overcame desire and the prince avoided making a beeline for Freda, instead circling the room as he and Albert were introduced to guests.
Eventually the two princes reached the group of women in which Freda had positioned herself; it included Lady Rosemary Leveson-Gower, the Duke of Sutherland’s younger sister, who had been one of the objects of Edward’s attentions in recent months. The pair had, it was said, even discussed marriage, but rumour was that his mother, Queen Mary, had been against the union because of possible “defects” in the duchess’s family line. The reference here was interpreted as doubts about the dowager duchess’s brother and Sheila’s father-in-law, the Earl of Rosslyn, whose gambling and womanising may have been greeted with some amusement and even lauded in some circles, but not by the King and Queen.
Having acknowledged Lady Rosemary, Edward’s attention turned to the woman next to her, dressed in a golden gown. They had not met before but, as with many other men, he fell for Sheila Loughborough’s wide eyes and insisted on a dance. Neither of them realised that their chance meeting would lead to a lifelong friendship, full of secrets. The prince referred to the meeting several months later in a letter to Freda, after he had resumed his duties in Europe: “I’ve only met Sheila once, I had a dance with her at one of the parties in March although I can’t remember which & she certainly seemed a ‘divine woman’ though we didn’t have a long talk: Rosemary introduced me to her!!!!”
Sheila would also recall their meeting. As the princes approached, she had asked Lady Rosemary what she should do and say when introduced to the royal brothers: “Curtsey to the ground, call them sir and treat them like dirt,” Rosemary replied quietly.
Neither Edward nor Sheila made mention immediately afterwards of the fact that she also met Prince Albert that night, his presence hidden behind shyness and the magnetism of his older brother. Sheila danced several times with both princes. She would note in her memoir: “It was an enjoyable evening, and I told them my grandmother was a kangaroo!”
Sheila was hiding another piece of news that night, or perhaps she wasn’t yet sure herself—she was pregnant again. It would be two months before she announced the news to Freda, who passed it on to the prince in one of her almost daily exchanges with him after he had returned to Italy in late March. He wrote back on July 18: “So Sheila is going to have a war baby & I can well imagine someone wanting to get away from Loughie for a bit as, although I don’t know him, I’ve heard the kind of fellow he is & he must be trying to live with!! He was
sacked from the RN College, Osborne, my 1st term there in the summer of 1907.”
Edward’s views, harsh as they appear here, were shared by many in London’s social circles, where Sheila’s marital difficulties were already being acknowledged, but the realisation that he was about to become a father for a second time did not slow down the young lord. In fact, the end of the war soon revealed the fragility of his personality as London went into a freewheeling celebration after Armistice Day on November 11, 1918.
Some of his antics could almost be amusing, like the day he and his friend Noel Francis climbed onto a roof of the Francis house in Grosvenor Square dressed in hunting tweeds with their guns and shooting sticks, where they hid behind chimney pots and shot down promotional Selfridges balloons as they drifted across the city. The police were called but the butler managed to convince the officers that the gunfire had come from another house. Sheila and Noel’s wife, “Poots”, revelled in the antics of their husbands: “Our husbands were such a crazy couple; we never could guess what they were going to do next,” Sheila would recall.
More seriously though, he would soon be lured back into heavy gambling.
By contrast, Sheila was attracting more and more media attention. In early September 1917 she had been photographed for the prominent magazine The Sketch; a dark, romantic image of her accompanied an article that repeated details of her wedding two years before and mentioned the birth of her elder son, Anthony.
Eight months later the magazine returned to photograph her, and this time her pose was demure, with her strong hands folded on her lap, gazing up past the camera and dressed in a crocheted top and a single string of pearls. Yet behind her almost coy exterior, the photographer had captured a hint of steel. The heading across the top of the page was dramatic—“From the land of the wattle: a beautiful peeress”.
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