Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey

by The Countess of Carnarvon

  Carnarvon and Carter stood in wonder, beginning to assess the scale of the glorious task that lay ahead of them. They were going to need an army of expert help to remove, catalogue and preserve every single object, each one at least 3,200 years old. They were also going to have to make the tomb secure, immediately. Any find that included gold was a magnet for every tomb robber in the area. That night an armed guard was placed at the top of the steps leading down to the first chamber and the following day, Carnarvon hired military policeman Richard Adamson to oversee security. Carnarvon built him a police hut to provide some shelter from the blistering sun, and Adamson virtually took up residence there.

  The first viewing for visitors took place on Wednesday 29 November. There was to be a tour with Howard Carter followed by lunch. It was a low-key affair. Lady Allenby deputised for her husband the British High Commissioner; also invited were Monsieur Lacau, the Chief Inspector of Antiquities; the local chief of police and, crucially for subsequent events, the correspondent of The Times, Arthur Merton.

  There had been a series of murders of British citizens since the declaration of independence and the imposition of martial law, so there were anxieties over drawing too much attention to what was taking place. But even more than that, nobody in officialdom had yet woken up to the enormity of what had just been found on their doorstep. M. Lacau and his assistant missed the official unveiling entirely: they were too busy to turn up until the following day.

  By the time they did, The Times had published the first article in what became the longest-running news item ever. There has still never been a story that took more column inches than Carnarvon, Carter and Tutankhamun. Merton, like a good newspaperman, had immediately seen the significance of what he was being shown. Instantly the world’s press descended upon Luxor in force, camping in hotel gardens when the rooms ran out. The Times approached Almina and asked her to write an exclusive article about accompanying her husband on his trips to excavate in Egypt, which she duly did.

  There was a siege around the site, and it immediately created problems for the men who were simply trying to carry out their painstaking work. Carnarvon and Carter took the decision to reseal the tomb while they dealt with the publicity and assembled a full team of expert help.

  Still, alongside the desire to get on with the job was a huge urge to celebrate. Carnarvon threw a party that was open to everyone at the Winter Palace Hotel. Telegrams of congratulation poured in from all over the world. One of the first was from King Fuad, who thanked the two men warmly for their work. M. Lacau, who had evidently put right his previous indifference, wrote to commend them for their disinterested attitude and scholarly investigations.

  The scale of the interest from the world’s public, not to mention the unprecedented historical and cultural significance of the find, had knocked its discoverers sideways. Carnarvon decided to return home with Eve to plan how they should proceed. He left with a growing sense of unease about the vested interests, tension and rivalries they had unleashed.

  Carnarvon and his daughter arrived back in Britain as celebrities. On 22 December he visited Buckingham Palace at the King’s request to regale Their Majesties with the story of the discovery. The King and Queen requested more and more details, and Carnarvon listed the priceless objects and exquisite workmanship on display in the first chamber. He assured the King that further searches would yield the actual tomb of the Pharaoh.

  The family spent Christmas at Highclere in a state of mild shock. They all wrote to Carter on Christmas Eve. Carnarvon’s letter was a long summary of the current issues, to be dispatched with their old friend Dr Gardiner, who was sailing for Egypt in early January and whom he had asked to join the team. Carnarvon told Carter he had arranged for them to have the use of a Ford motor car, which would make life easier. A plum pudding was enclosed in the package.

  Eve wrote to say how thrilled she was for Howard, and that he thoroughly deserved his success after all the years of hard work. ‘Of course one is pestered morning noon and night … there [is] no hour or place that one [is] not met by a reporter.’ She remarked that her father was really tired by all the attention, but that if she needed to perk him up she simply referred to the imminent discovery of the sarcophagus and this reference to ‘the Holy of Holies always acts like a magnum of champagne.’ Eve is sweetly swept away by the splendour of being the first woman to step inside the burial chambers. ‘I can never thank you sufficiently for allowing me to enter its precincts, it was the best moment of my life.’

  Almina sent her love, blessings and congratulations for his success after all his long-suffering perseverance. She had been discussing how to manage the newspapers with her husband and had various typically practical thoughts on the subject. She also told Carter that she was still too unwell to come out to join them. It looked as if she would have to have an operation on her jaw.

  After Christmas, Carter resumed work. He had been busy sifting through the numerous offers of help and deciding which to accept. Mr Lythgoe of the Metropolitan Museum in New York cabled his congratulations and was duly taken up on his offer. Four more American Egyptologists joined him, including the distinguished Chicago University professor, James Breasted. Harry Burton joined as official photographer and Mr Lucas, a chemical specialist with the Egyptian government, also signed up. The team headed to Cairo to purchase supplies of wadding, rope, packing materials and a steel gate, which was placed at the entrance to the tomb.

  Carter was irascible at the best of times, and he loathed the constant interruptions from the press. All he wanted was to get on with the complex job in hand. On 27 December the team had begun to remove the first objects and transfer them to the Tomb of Seti II, where further work could be done before they were transported to Cairo. Carter was completely focused on clearing the antechamber in a methodical way, and it drove him mad to have to deal with the endless stream of journalists and supposed VIP visitors who were invariably in possession of a ‘special pass’. The work was hard and stressful: space was cramped and hot and the objects were extremely delicate. Each one presented difficulties: how to stop it disintegrating, how to restring beads or stop wood from shrinking as it was exposed to the dry air. As far as Carter was concerned, all of that was far more important than talking to the media or to tourists.

  Meanwhile, back in London, Carnarvon was concentrating on precisely that. He had been talking to Pathé-Cinéma about filming, to the directors of the British Museum and the Metropolitan in New York – and at length to The Times. He discovered that the newspaper had just paid £1,000 for fifteen exclusive cables from the Mount Everest Expedition. After a lot of discussion with Howard Carter (he sent him the summary of terms in cypher), Lord Carnarvon decided to sign an agreement giving the paper sole rights to interviews and black-and-white photographs. He was to be paid £5,000, and he retained all rights to any book, lecture or film. Carnarvon stipulated that The Times had to pass on articles, without charge, to the Egyptian press and the Newbury Weekly News but could charge a fee to other newspapers.

  It was a money-making scheme, of course, a desperately needed one given the expense of the operation, but it was also intended to make working conditions on site more manageable. The theory went that this way they would only have to deal with one set of journalists. The plan backfired spectacularly when the rest of the press, furious at being cut out of the biggest story in history, stepped up their hounding and began to spread all sorts of scurrilous reports about Carnarvon and Carter’s plans. They were painted as arrogant adventurers who intended to close the Valley of the Kings to tourists.

  Carnarvon summoned his resolve as he prepared to return to Egypt. In his mind the issue of the press was settled, whatever the ludicrous headlines in the papers. He said goodbye to ‘poor Almina’, who, as he wrote to Carter, had been ‘doing various things, all of them very well’, but was still too poorly to travel. He encouraged her to go for treatment in Paris, where she would be less visible to the press, and to join them wheneve
r she could. Then he took his leave of his son and daughter-in-law. He was relieved to catch them before they sailed for India again with Porchy’s regiment. They left him Susie, the little three-legged terrier that had belonged to Porchy when he was a boy but had been adopted by Lord Carnarvon and slept on his bed when he was at Highclere.

  Susie stayed at the Castle when Lord Carnarvon and Eve set off once again from Highclere, even more burdened with hopes and expectations than the last time they had made this trip, just weeks previously. The 5th Earl’s attention was all focused on his destination, not his point of departure. He paid no particular mind to the last view of the house as he and his daughter were driven through the park to the waiting train that would take them to Southampton. Why should he? He assumed he would be back soon enough, and with plenty of new pieces for his ‘Antiques’ Room. In fact he would never see his lifelong home again.

  20

  Lights Out

  There was an enthusiastic welcoming committee to meet Lord Carnarvon and Lady Evelyn as they stepped on to the red carpet that had been laid on the platform of the little train station in Luxor on 25 January 1923. In his excitement, the Earl, who was always absentminded, had left his two false teeth in the railway carriage; they were returned to him on a crimson cushion. Eve was presented with a bouquet and the cameras of the world’s press flashed as she, her father and Carter edged their way through the crowds. Carter went straight to the site; Eve got her father settled comfortably at the Winter Palace and spoke to the chef about the menus for various lunches and dinners that she was helping her father with. There was going to be a great deal of entertaining and Eve was delighted to act as her father’s hostess. The Times had assigned Arthur Merton to cover the story round the clock. He wrote that it was ‘impossible not to be impressed with the extremely friendly, even affectionate attitude of the Egyptians towards Lord Carnarvon. He likes them and he likes Egypt.’

  The same positivity could not be said to characterise relations with the rest of the press. The Valley was full of people, journalists and tourists alike, hanging around to catch a glimpse of the latest precious artwork as it was removed to the field laboratory. When they got frustrated, as they invariably did, tempers frayed. The criticism in the newspapers was getting more vitriolic and looked likely to affect crucial relations with the Egyptian Department of Antiquities. Carnarvon decided to leave Carter and the team to their work and go to Cairo to settle matters diplomatically and make preparations for the grand opening of the burial chamber.

  The day chosen to break through was Friday 16 February. The antechambers had been completely emptied by then and only the two black and gold-kilted guardian statues were left, staring at each other across the sealed entrance to Tutankhamun’s burial chamber. There were about twenty people assembled at the entrance to the tomb: Lord Carnarvon, Lady Evelyn, the Hon. Mervyn Herbert (Carnarvon’s half-brother), the Hon. Richard Bethell, (Carnarvon’s private secretary, recently hired to assist him with his now vast correspondence), Howard Carter, Arthur Mace, Arthur Callender, Professor Breasted, Harry Burton with his camera, Dr Alan Gardiner, Mr Lythgoe and Mr Winlock from the Metropolitan Museum, Sir William Garstin, Sir Charles Cust, equerry to King George V and M. Lacau from the Department of Antiquities, Mr Engelbach with three local inspectors, and H. E. Abd el Halim Pasha Suleman, representing King Fuad’s government.

  Carter began to remove the stones from the blocked entrance, working from the top down. He had built a little platform to cover the gap through which the three of them had entered the previous time. After half an hour his audience could see what appeared to be a sheet of solid gold appearing, just a few feet beyond the entrance. Carter dropped a mattress through to protect the object and laboured on, assisted by Lacau and Callender, for another two hours of infinitely careful work. When it was done they had revealed a large golden shrine, as big as the antechamber they were standing in but some four feet lower.

  Carter, Carnarvon and Lacau lowered themselves into the narrow passage, paying out the electric cable to give themselves some light. The walls of the chamber were brightly painted with scenes from the Book of the Dead featuring larger-than-life-size figures. In one corner were propped the seven oars needed by the dead Pharaoh to ferry himself across the Underworld. The two golden shrine doors were covered in cartouches and hieroglyphs and were held shut by a bar and ropes. Gently extricating the bar and loosening the ropes, they drew back the outer doors to find another golden shrine nestled within, seals intact.

  The rest of the party was following them. Eve came next. Carter had turned his attention to a further chamber, a treasury, containing a canopic shrine of creamy alabaster that he later described as one of the most awe-inspiring works of beauty he had ever seen. The burial chamber was now filled with people, all of them struck dumb by an enormous sense of privileged amazement. They were in the presence of the Holy of Holies, staring at the spectacular remains of a vanished world.

  That was enough for one day. To go any further meant handling the sarcophagus itself and Carnarvon and Carter were both quite clear that it should be treated with the strictest reverence and ultimately left in its resting place in the Valley of the Kings. The group retreated, utterly staggered by what they had seen. The two men directing the enterprise were exhausted and stressed already, torn between jubilation and worry.

  From 19 to 25 February the tomb was opened to the press and public. Carter and Carnarvon hoped in this way to take the edge off the press’s rancour. It didn’t work. The American journalists, furious that US expertise was being used while they were being denied complete access to the story, began to report the entirely erroneous line that Carnarvon wanted to remove Tutankhamun’s mummy to England. He was angry and hurt. Carter was at breaking point, ground down by the endless interruptions. His diary tersely records, ‘Visitors to tomb, Given up to visitors’ for eight consecutive days.

  Relations were strained between the two men. On 21 February, Carnarvon visited Castle Carter to try to smooth things over. They had a heated argument and Carnarvon stomped back to the hotel. Eve was a practised mediator and she helped to soothe her father and placate Carter. She knew how much the friendship meant to both men. With her encouragement, Lord Carnarvon wrote a letter to Carter on the 23rd, to make peace, and five days later they took the joint decision to close the tomb and have a week of rest. Carter stayed at home and spent a few quiet days seeing no one except old friends General Sir John and Lady Maxwell. Carnarvon hired a dahabiyah (a sailing Nile houseboat) and cruised to Aswan in the company of his daughter Eve, Charles Mace and Sir Charles Cust. He was completely exhausted but the river breezes and gentle pace were very restorative. The only irritation was the mosquitoes at night. Annoyingly he was bitten on the left cheek. By the time he arrived back at Luxor he had nicked the bite while shaving with his favourite old ivory-handled razor.

  Lord Carnarvon arrived back in Luxor on 6 March; tempers had cooled and he and Carter were friends again. A few days later they were discussing their plans for the next phase of the work in Lord Carnarvon’s hotel room. He was still feeling tired and slightly unwell, and he complained to Carter that he felt rather poorly.

  Doctors advised more rest, so he took to his bed as Eve hurried off to Cairo to see her maid Marcelle, a casualty of the Egyptian heat who was returning to England, onto the ship to Marseilles. Carter visited Carnarvon every day and he seemed to be stronger, so he followed Lady Evelyn to Cairo on 14 March and settled in to the Continental Hotel. He still wasn’t right, though, and had to leave one social engagement because he was feeling ‘very seedy’.

  Eve nursed him constantly and tried to suppress her rising anxiety. Her father was never in the greatest of health, but Egypt usually made him better, not worse. She wrote to Carter a few days later to tell him that Pierre Lacau was laid up with flu but added, ‘what is much more important is that the old man is very, very seedy himself … all the glands in his neck started swelling … and he had a high temperature.’ Giv
en the hounding that they had already received at the hands of the press, Eve was anxious to keep her father’s worsening illness a secret. She ended her letter, ‘I wish, Dear, you were here.’

  Dr Alan Gardiner was also staying and wrote to his wife, ‘our great sorrow during the last few days has been Carnarvon’s serious illness … Evelyn has been splendid, really, a magnificent little girl full of pluck and common sense and devoted to her father. I really am extremely fond of her.’

  News reached Carter from Mr Lythgoe that Carnarvon had gone down with blood poisoning and was gravely ill. By the time Richard Bethell, Lord Carnarvon’s secretary, wrote to him to say that he was moving into the hotel to be of assistance, Carter had already received a telegram from Eve asking him to come to Cairo and was about to set off. Panic was rising. Eve telegraphed Almina, and General Sir John Maxwell cabled Porchy’s commanding officer in India. He was to grant him three months’ compassionate leave and expedite his immediate passage to Egypt. Porchester left that afternoon, leaving his wife Catherine to pack up their house and return to England.

  Almina was at Seamore Place when she received Eve’s telegram. She had been ill for weeks now, and seeing virtually nobody apart from Dr Johnnie. She loved to talk on the telephone, though, and had been in regular touch with Eve and her husband, so she knew that tensions had been getting the better of him and the work was on hold until everyone had had a rest. She was still totally unprepared for this escalation in the seriousness of Eve’s communication. Carnarvon was grievously ill, two thousand miles away, and their daughter was clearly terrified.

  It was the sort of situation Almina possessed all the right qualities to handle. Immediately she phoned De Havilland and enquired about chartering a plane and a pilot. Then she threw some clothes in a bag, informed Dr Johnnie that they were leaving for Egypt immediately, and set off for Croydon aerodrome. They flew in a three-seater plane to Paris, took the train to Lyons and picked up a second plane to take them all the way to Cairo. A journey that could still take up to three weeks by boat and train took them three days. Almina rushed to her husband’s bedside and, pausing long enough only to embrace Eve and resume her nurse’s air of patient calm, set about nursing him back to health. She had done it many times before and would not countenance anything less than a complete recovery. Her beloved husband was in the hour of his triumph; he simply must get better.