Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey

by The Countess of Carnarvon

  The train from Paddington was due to arrive at Highclere Station at 6.30 p.m. Lord and Lady Carnarvon alighted and took their seats in an open landau drawn by a pair of bay horses and driven by the under-coachman. A mile later, the carriage turned in to the lodge gates, winding through arching trees and dark rhododendron bushes. As they passed the Temple of Diana above Dunsmere Lake, a gun was fired from the tower of the Castle. Ten minutes later, the landau arrived at the crossroads in the park and the couple got down from the carriage. A processional arch studded with flowers had been set up over the driveway. The horses were unharnessed by heads of departments from the estate: Mr Hall, Mr Storie, Mr Lawrence and Mr Weigall. Ropes were attached by the farm foreman and the forester foreman, and the couple took their places once again. Twenty men then picked up the ropes to pull the landau beneath the archway and up the hill to the main door of the Castle, accompanied by a lively march from the Newbury Town Band, which had been paid seven guineas for its services.

  The Mayor of Newbury was in attendance and would shortly present His Lordship with a wedding gift on behalf of the people of the local town: an album containing their good wishes on the occasion of his marriage, exquisitely illuminated in the style of a medieval manuscript. It was illustrated with views of Newbury Corn Exchange and Highclere itself, and bound in cream calf’s leather with the linked Carnarvon initial C’s stamped on the front.

  Some of the estate tenants were in the gardens to watch proceedings. They had all been entertained in a marquee by the band and there had also been a tea party given for 330 of the local children. The event had been threatened by thunderstorms, but luckily the weather had cleared in time for both the tea party and the arrival of the bride and groom. It was almost the longest day of the year, and the sun was still strong.

  As well as the fee for the band, £1 11s 6d was paid for the attendance of five constables and a donation of £2 was made to the Burghclere bell-ringers, who had been sending out peals of bells from the local church spire ever since the Earl and Countess disembarked from the train.

  The red and blue flag proudly displaying the colours of the family’s coat of arms flew from the top of the tower, whose delicate turrets and stonework were interspersed with all manner of heraldic symbols and beasts, that seemed to survey the scene.

  Drawing up at the heavy wooden door of the Castle, the Earl and his new Countess alighted once again from the carriage and were greeted by Mr Albert Streatfield, the house steward (a position more commonly referred to as that of butler) and Major James Rutherford (the agent who ran the estate) and his wife.

  What must Almina have thought as she watched the men of Highclere labouring to haul her to her destination? What ran through her mind when she gazed upon this house as its new chatelaine? It was not her first sight of it. She had visited twice before, for the weekend, with her mother. But now she was the Countess of Carnarvon, expected to manage the running of the household and to perform her numerous duties. Everyone at Highclere, whether they worked above or below stairs, on the farm or in the kitchen, had a role to fulfil, and Almina was no different.

  It must have felt exhilarating. Almina was an energetic and high-spirited girl, and marriage, motherhood and now service to the Carnarvon dynasty would have looked like a very agreeable destiny to most girls able to imagine themselves in her shoes. She was accustomed to living an indulged life, and had no reason to suspect that she would ever want for anything she desired. She was already very much in love with her new husband. But surely there must have been feelings of trepidation, too.

  If she had been in any doubt beforehand, she needed only to glance at the press on the Saturday after her wedding to see that her life would henceforth be lived in public. Then, as now, the weddings of the aristocracy and the rich and famous were eagerly covered by the press. The ‘World of Women’ column in the Penny Illustrated paper carried a full-length portrait of Almina (although in a slip-up she was described as Miss Alice Wombwell in the caption) and described her gown in detail. Almina had passed from almost total obscurity to object of media scrutiny in a moment. With her new status came all sorts of pressures.

  Almina wasn’t given very long to wonder what lay in store for her. Lord Carnarvon spent the next few days taking his bride around the park and neighbouring villages to meet the local families, in order that Almina could begin to explore alone and become familiar with her new home. They went to Highclere Church for morning service on the Sunday after they were married. Sir Gilbert Scott had been at work here, as in Westminster. He’d designed and built the church some twenty years previously, at the request of Lord Carnarvon’s father, the 4th Earl. And then, business concluded, the couple left for the Continent and the second part of their honeymoon. It was a chance to get to know each other properly, in private, at last. They spent two weeks away before returning to Highclere, when normal life resumed. Except that, for Almina, nothing would ever be the same again.

  2

  Welcome to Highclere

  When Almina stepped from the carriage outside her new home on that early summer day, her arrival had been much anticipated for months. A web of rumour and gossip had circulated all sorts of information and speculation about the Earl’s young bride amongst the people living at Highclere.

  The life of the great houses at the end of the nineteenth century was still marked by structures and patterns unchanged for centuries. Families served for generations. Highclere Castle was the family home of the Earls of Carnarvon, but the Castle was also the servants’ Castle, and the family their family. Highclere was a tight ship, captained by Streatfield, the house steward. The reality, as everyone knew, was that Countesses come and Countesses go. It wasn’t that Almina was without influence or importance, but she did need to grasp, quickly, that she was only one part of a machine that would long survive her. Part of her initial task on arrival was to understand the history and community that she was becoming a part of.

  Highclere Castle lies at a crossroads between Winchester and Oxford, London and Bristol, built on a chalk ridge of high land and guarded by an ancient route between Beacon Hill and Ladle Hill. Just to the south of Highclere is Siddown Hill, topped by an eighteenth-century folly, Heaven’s Gate. The views to the north extend beyond Newbury towards the spires of Oxford.

  It is an area long praised for its natural beauty. In 1792, just over a hundred years before Almina arrived at Highclere, Archibald Robertson wrote in his topographical survey, ‘High Clere Park stands in Hampshire; and for extent, boldness of feature, softened by a mixture of easy swelling lawns, shelving into pleasant vallies, diversified by wood and water, claims the admiration of the traveller, and may be considered as one of the most elegant seats in the country.’

  There has been a settlement at Highclere for thousands of years. There is an Iron Age hill fort at Beacon Hill and the land was owned by the bishops of Winchester for 800 years before passing into secular hands and eventually, in the late seventeenth century, to the Herbert family, Earls of Pembroke and ancestors of the Earls of Carnarvon.

  The park is a harmonious mix of natural and landscaped features, designed for the 1st Earl of Carnarvon in the eighteenth century by Capability Brown. The different drives wind amongst the contours of the land to hide and reveal the first views of the Castle. Long and short views have been created by skilful planting; everywhere you look there are exotic imported trees, gracious avenues and ornamental follies that direct your eye along some particularly glorious line. It is its own world and, even now, visitors are struck by the strong sense of place, the unity between the land, the Castle and the people who live and work there.

  The house in its current incarnation was built for the 3rd Earl by Sir Charles Barry, the architect of the Houses of Parliament. It was a major undertaking. The old Elizabethan brick manor had been remodelled into a Georgian mansion in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, but all that was to be transformed entirely. The first stone of the new house was laid in 1842. The work t
ook twelve years to complete and, by the end, Highclere Castle, as it was now called, dominated its surroundings completely. It is a statement house, purposeful and confident; it doesn’t feel like a place that has grown up over time, been added to and tinkered with. It is much more the product of a single architect’s vision. Gothic turrets were absolutely the pinnacle of fashion as early Victorian architecture turned to medieval influences in a backlash against the classical designs of the eighteenth century. The house was intended to impress visitors with the status and good taste of its builders. It has a peculiarly masculine feel about it, an aesthetic that prizes solid style and soaring immensity over prettiness.

  Almina and her mother had often visited Alfred de Rothschild’s country estate, Halton House in Buckinghamshire, which was completed in 1888. Halton was a different style again: all Baroque fantasy, and so over the top that it embodied what was called, slightly disparagingly, ‘le style Rothschild’. She must have been conscious when she looked at Highclere that, although it was only fifty years older than Halton House, its lands and its setting, its gorgeous honey-coloured tower in Bath stone, represented an idea of English tradition that was totally different to anything she had previously known.

  Back in October 1866, one particularly illustrious visitor was overcome with delight as he was driven through the park, crying out, ‘How scenical, how scenical,’ as he approached the Castle.

  Benjamin Disraeli, who at the time of this visit was Chancellor of the Exchequer, but who went on to be Prime Minister twice, had caught a specially laid-on train from Paddington to Highclere. He was met and driven by carriage past London Lodge, its gateway arch upheld by classical pillars and surmounted by the Carnarvon coat of arms.

  Through groves of rhododendrons and past spreading Lebanon cedars, now 150 years old, Disraeli, who was comfortably wrapped in carriage rugs against the autumn chill, could look around him, full of admiration. Every vista proved enchanting. As the road wound past the Temple of Diana, built over Dunsmere Lake, the highest tops of the Castle’s turrets, still more than a mile away, could be glimpsed above the trees. Disraeli noted the curving medieval embankment of the deer park before sweeping around towards the Castle drive. Capability Brown had taken tremendous trouble to construct the last approach. The Castle emerges obliquely in front of the visitor, thereby appearing even larger and more impressive than it actually is. The whole landscape so romantically lent itself to creative thought that the following day, Disraeli and his host, the 4th Earl of Carnarvon, took a very agreeable walk in brilliant sunshine through the grounds, and talked affairs of state.

  The 4th Earl, father of Almina’s husband, served in politics for some forty years. At the time of Disraeli’s visit he was Colonial Secretary, a position that satisfied his great love of travel and took him to Australia, South Africa, Canada, Egypt and New Guinea. Much of the time he travelled on his own yacht, but there were also numerous shorter missions on government business across Europe. He possessed considerable intellectual curiosity and was one of the foremost classical scholars of his generation, translating Homer and Aeschylus as well as Dante. In all, he served in three Conservative cabinets. He was appointed Secretary of State for the Colonies first by Lord Derby, then by Disraeli, and then made Lord Lieutenant of Ireland by Lord Salisbury. He was renowned for his hard work and thoroughness and for being a man of principle, who twice resigned his position, once over Disraeli’s handling of the Eastern Question, and later over the thorny issue of Home Rule for Ireland.

  The 4th Earl and his Countess pioneered the practice, which soon became a fashionable trend, of giving weekend house parties at the great houses. These were not only social gatherings but also networking opportunities and, thanks to the Earl’s prominent part in public life, Highclere was a hub of power.

  He was fortunate to have married a woman who turned out to be the perfect political wife. Lady Evelyn was the daughter of the Earl of Chesterfield and the couple married in Westminster Abbey in September 1861, the first time that honour had been extended to a non-royal partnership in many centuries. Sincere, kind, and possessed of quick wits and an instinctive understanding, Lady Evelyn was an asset to her husband. Invitations to Highclere were freely given to men of politics, public officials, intellectuals and travellers. Expertise could be pooled and congenial solutions to difficult problems found more easily whilst strolling in the park or over some excellent brandy and cigars in the Smoking Room, than in the febrile atmosphere of Westminster.

  The couple had four children: Winifred, who was born in 1864, George Edward, the son and heir who would go on to marry Almina, who had been born four months before Disraeli’s 1866 visit, and two more daughters. Margaret was born in 1870 and, on 30 December 1874, the baby who would be christened Victoria.

  Lady Carnarvon never recovered from giving birth to her last child. She lingered for a few days, during which time Queen Victoria made constant enquiries about her health and that of the baby. Victoria had been living in almost total seclusion ever since the death of her beloved Prince Albert fourteen years previously, but she kept herself informed about her friends’ lives and, when she heard the news that Lady Carnarvon was unlikely to survive, she expressed a desire to be the child’s godmother.

  Evelyn rallied briefly but died on 25 January 1875. Her husband was devastated, as was her mother, who had been at her bedside throughout her illness. The diaries of her sister-in-law, Lady Portsmouth, contain a grief-stricken account of the courage and calmness that Evelyn showed as she slipped away. ‘How sore my heart is,’ she wrote. Lady Carnarvon lay in state in the Library at Highclere and was buried at the family chapel in a beautiful corner of the park.

  It was a cruel loss for the whole family. Childbirth was a perilous business, and no one was immune to risk, no matter if they had access to the best medical care available. Winifred was ten, George (who was always known as Porchy, a nickname derived from his courtesy title, Lord Porchester) was eight, Margaret four and little Victoria just three weeks old when their mother died. Although in aristocratic families the children were cared for primarily by a nanny, Lady Carnarvon had been much loved and her children were heartbroken. After her death they were passed between the households of two doting but elderly aunts, a slightly chaotic arrangement that fostered a particularly strong bond between the two eldest children. The loss of his mother at such a very young age may well have contributed to the 5th Earl’s sense of emotional self-containment, something that his own son later remarked upon.

  For a while the weekend house parties were no more, and Highclere and the Carnarvons went into formal mourning. There was strict etiquette governing mourning in nineteenth-century England, especially in the wake of the Queen’s decision to withdraw from public life after Prince Albert’s death in December 1861. Special clothes had to be worn and the bereaved were expected to seclude themselves from social life. A widower would wear a black frock coat for up to a year and children wore black for at least six months to mark the death of a parent. Even servants wore black armbands. No lady or gentleman could attend – much less give – a ball for at least a year after the death of a close family member.

  But, eventually, the 4th Earl decided that it was time to move on. In 1878 he visited relatives at Greystoke Castle in the Lake District and found a house full of laughter and conversation. It must have felt like a return to life, and it led to a proposal of marriage to his cousin Elizabeth (Elsie) Howard who, at twenty-two, was twenty-five years his junior. They had two sons, Aubrey and Mervyn, during twelve years of very happy marriage. Lord Carnarvon’s friend Lady Phillimore wrote to her husband, ‘They are happy together, those two, and make sunshine around them.’

  There’s no doubt that the children’s childhood and adolescence were made considerably easier by the arrival of their stepmother, to whom they were close for the rest of her life. Elsie was a motherly figure, and her presence at Highclere meant that Porchy, who had always been a sickly child, once again had somewhere stable to ca
ll home. The house could also resume its role as a social and political centre of power.

  If Elsie could be indulgent, Porchy’s father was quite clear that discipline and diligence were highly desirable qualities in a young gentleman who was bound to inherit significant duties. The 4th Earl loved practical jokes, but he was also driven by a powerful sense of public service, both at Highclere and in office. He expected his son to apply himself. ‘A good education is the best heritage we can give our children,’ he declared.

  But although Porchy discovered a love of books and reading, his ‘greatest solace’, he did not inherit his father’s academic diligence. He opted out of Eton early and briefly considered a career in the Army but, after failing the medical, he set off around the world on his travels. He was fortunate that his father was generous, broadminded and understood his restless spirit perfectly, since he was himself an avid traveller. The 4th Earl was on occasion frustrated by his son’s reckless streak, but he appreciated his heir’s native intelligence and curious mind; in any case, Porchy continued to receive an education since a tutor travelled with him constantly. He was reasonably fluent in both French and German as well as the classical languages, and also studied mathematics, music and history.

  Two years later he went to Trinity College, Cambridge, where the first thing he did was offer to scrape the paint in his room to reveal the original wooden panelling beneath. He loved the town’s curiosity shops and was more often found at Newmarket racecourse than in the library. He managed two years of study before buying a 110-foot yacht, the Aphrodite, and sailing from Vigo to the Cape Verde islands, from the West Indies to Rio. He heard Italian opera in Buenos Aires and was persuaded not to return through the Magellan Straits, since it was far too perilous at that time of year. His next journey was to South Africa, where he went elephant hunting and got a terrible shock when the elephant turned the tables and chased him up a tree.