Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey: The Lost Legacy of Highclere Castle
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She championed the view that poorly trained or loosely managed nurses might take their eyes off the ‘care’ ball, resulting in poor hygiene and patient morale and a consequent increase in the mortality rate. Her patients were always at the centre of her thoughts and actions. A great believer in new surgical techniques, Almina enjoyed the company of some of the leading practitioners of her time but, even so, she believed that their work should never take precedence over good nursing practice. Severe bacterial infections may have been a major problem in the trenches, but they would not be tolerated at Highclere.
Almina felt a real duty to help and care for the wounded and sick of the war. Her generous spirit and Christian view of the world inspired her to spread her wealth and share its benefits. Small in stature, she glowed with charisma as a powerhouse of energy and willpower.
She lived a long life, as did her son. Consequently the Castle was not subject to further rounds of death duties; it survived intact into the age of a different way of thinking about the old country houses. The welcome and well-timed establishment of English Heritage was a critical development in the preservation of many of the UK’s historic houses and their contents.
Highclere Castle, like its alter ego, Downton Abbey, remains an ensemble cast of characters today, just as it was in Almina’s time. I have felt so much affection for the ‘real’ characters such as Aubrey, and his mother Elsie, as I researched their stories. Meeting relatives of the staff from those times has also thrown invaluable shards of light on to life ‘downstairs’.
Today, the Castle and estate still house families who have worked and lived here for generations. They pass down stories of predecessors. Retirement is possible but not mandatory. The new generation learns from the old. ‘Newcomers’ have worked here for fifteen or twenty years and ‘proper Castle people’ may stay for up to fifty years. Some people think they are coming to work for a short time and find it hard to leave.
The challenge for Highclere is to ensure that the Castle and its estate businesses remain strong enough to preserve their rich heritage. It is the same need to balance business and conservation that confronted Almina. We hope that, if she were here today, she would recognise things and feel a sense of pride that much of what she loved had been preserved and that the spirit of her work was continuing through her great-grandson and his family.
Acknowledgements
I must say thanks and love to my patient husband Geordie, for his help with research and editing. Thanks as well for repeated encouragement from my sisters; Sarah in particular has consistently clarified my thoughts and language. I cannot thank Patricia Leatham enough for her hilarious stories.
Hodder & Stoughton have been enthusiastic partners in this enterprise and also assigned Helen Coyle to support me as a more than able editor who retained a sense of humour during the midnight hours.
Thank you to Kevin Morgan and Mike Blair from ITV who introduced me to Hodder & Stoughton and thereby helped me undertake the book in record time. Part of the research for this whole project was also for the ITV Country-wise programme who have sought to visually share Highclere and its Estate with ITV viewers – the real Downton Abbey.
The staff at Highclere have been wonderful, supporting me in so many different ways. David Rymill, our archivist, has been unfailingly detailed and knowledgeable, Candice Bauval has organised me and aided my research and Duncan Macdougall has been invaluable and helped me find images and files. Paul and Rob the chefs made sure I ate, and the household staff such as Diana Moyse and Luis Coelho have quietly worked around me trying to tidy and giving me endless cups of tea. Thank you to so many others who have forgiven me for forgetting to do things and to John Gundill who has encouraged my progress whilst he interrupted me, which was always most welcome.
Outside the Castle, the staff at the Bodleian archives were very helpful and expedited my research; thank you to Dr Verena Lepper (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin) who introduced me firstly to Dr Malek, Keeper of the Archive, (Oriental Institute, Oxford) who allowed me to peruse Howard Carter’s diaries and secondly to the Metropolitan Museum of New York who allowed me to spend time reading through their archives. Peter Starling at the Royal Army Medical Corp Museum was very helpful suggesting books to read and aiding the research into First World War records.
I am also grateful that Julian Fellowes was inspired to write a series Downton Abbey based around Highclere Castle which Carnival Films produced and Peter Fincham (ITV Chief Executive) took the bold decision to back. It has been an extraordinary journey. So many people have come to love Highclere and be enthralled by its television alter ego.
Transcript of Letters
this page – Letter from Charles Clout to Lady Almina, written on the night of his wedding in 1918, from the Lake House on the Highclere Estate where he and Mary Weekes, Almina’s secretary, honeymooned).
The Lake House
July 2nd
My Dear Lady Carnarvon
My Dear Fairy Godmother I should like to call you, as it is as such that I should always think of you, I am trying in this little note to express some of my thanks to you for all you have done, and are doing, for Mary and me. I cannot attempt to convey to you all I feel in a letter, but I will always try to live life to the great trust you have placed in me and will do my best to repay you, by every means in my power, for the great help that you have given me in my start in life.
May I thank you again for the splendid presents you have given me. I am delighted with the links and studs which are charming, and with the plate, I think I shall never want to dine out with such beautiful things to use at home, and also for the care and trouble you have given in arranging the details of the wedding for me and for your very kind loan of this house.
You will see from the few things I have mentioned for which I am indebted to you, how impossible it would be for me to attempt to thank you for everything in this note, but I hope you will believe me when I repeat that my life shall be an attempt to prove worthy of your help and trust.
With very best wishes and love from
Yours Sincerely
Charles W Clout.
this page – Letter from Mary Weekes to Lady Almina, written the day after her wedding to Charles Clout
July 3rd
Lake House
Wednesday
(note to top left side – “you must forgive this odd paper but the white note paper has not arrived”)
My dearest Little Lady
Thank you so much for your sweet letter which I was so pleased to get this morning.
How can I even try to thank you for all you have done for me. I just long to tell you what I feel about your wonderful love and affection, but alas! No words of mine could adequately express what I really feel. Had I been Eve you could not have done more. What a wonderful memory I have to carry into the future and if I can only be half as good and kind as you are I shall be pleased. I hope I shall always be a credit to the kindest little lady I know, who has indeed been a mother to me for the last 7 years and I know will go on being so in the future.
I think Charles wrote you last evening after tea. I was rather tired so had a bath and went and lay down.
It is glorious down here and there is nothing one could want for. The food, care and attention are all perfect.
I am going to write to Lord Carnarvon, he was so sweet to me on Tuesday and made one long to know him better. What a wonderful father and mother Eve and Porchy have got and it made me wonder on Tuesday if they realized it.
Well my darling little lady a thousand thanks for all you have and are doing for me.
With love from us both
Yours affectionately
Mary (C)
Picture Acknowledgements
Most of the photographs: © Highclere Castle Archive.
Additional sources:
© Alamy: 1.7, 4.3. By kind permission of the Clout Family: 3.10. © Corbis: 4.5. © Country Life Picture Library: 2.8. With special thanks to Country Life Magazine wh
o kindly donated these photographs to the Highclere Castle Archive: 2.12, 4.15, 4.18. © Getty Images: 1.15, 4.6, 4.8. © Mary Evans Picture Library: 1.2, 1.10, 4.10, 4.11, 4.16. © National Portrait Gallery, London: 1.9, 1.16. © TopFoto.co.uk: 1.11, 4.2, 4.3, 4.17, 4.19. © V&A Images: 1.1/photo LaFayette.
Every reasonable effort has been made to contact the copyright holders of material reproduced in this book. But if there are any errors or omissions, Hodder & Stoughton will be pleased to insert the appropriate acknowledgement in any subsequent printing of this publication.
Bibliography
This is not an exclusive list but the following may interest those who wish to pursue areas of historical interest further:
Asher, Michael, Lawrence: The Uncrowned King of Arabia, Viking: London, 1998
Blunden, Edmund, Undertones of War, Penguin: London, 1972
Borden, Mary, Forbidden Zone: A Nurse’s Impression of the First World War, Hesperus: London, 2008
Budge, Wallis, Tutankhamen: Amenism, Atenism and Egyptian Montheism, Revised edition, Dover: Egypt, 2003
Campbell, Captain David, MC., Forward the Rifles: The War Diary of an Irish Soldier, 1914–1918, The History Press: Gloucestershire, 2009
Carter, Howard, Tutankhamen: The Politics of Discovery, Revised edition, Libri: Oxford, 2001
Carter, Howard and Mace, Arthur, The Discovery of the Tomb of Tutankhamen, Revised edition, Dover: Egypt, 1985
Cushin, Harvey, From a Surgeon’s Journal, Little, Brown: London, 1936
Davenport-Hines, Richard, Ettie: The Intimate Life and Dauntless Spirit of Lady
Desborough, Weidenfeld & Nicolson: London, 2008
Edwards, Amelia, A Thousand Miles Up the Nile, Routledge: London, 1889
Eksteins, Modris, Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age, Houghton Mifflin: Chicago, 1999
FitzHerbert, Margaret, The Man Who Was Greenmantle: Biography of Aubrey Herbert, John Murray: London, 1983
Hattersley, Roy, Borrowed Time: The Story of Britain Between the Wars, Little, Brown: London, 2007
Havilland, Geoffrey de, Sky Fever: The Autobiography of Sir Geoffrey de Havilland, Airlife Publications: Shrewsbury, 1979
James, T. G. H., Howard Carter: The Path to the Discovery, Revised edition, Tauris Parke: London, 2003
Jarrett, Derek, Pirton – A Village in Anguish: The Story of the 30 Men from a Hertfordshire Village in World War One, Pirton Local History Group: Pirton, 2009
Leatham, Patricia E., The Short Story of a Long Life, Wilton: Connecticut, 2009
Lewis, Bernard, The Middle East: 2000 Years of History from the Rise of Christianity to the Present Day, Revised edition, Phoenix: London, 2001
Macdonald, Lyn, They Called it Passchendaele: Story of the Third Battle of Ypres and of the Men Who Fought in it, Penguin: London, 1993
Maclaughlin, Redmond, The Royal Army Medical Corps, Leo Cooper: Yorkshire, 1972
Mansfield, Peter, A History of the Middle East, Viking: London, 1991
Melotte, Edward, Ed., originally by an anonymous MP, Mons Anzac and Kut: By an MP, Pen & Sword Books: Chicago, Revised edition, 2009
Messenger, Charles, A Call to Arms: The British Army 1914–1918, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005
Morton, Frederic, The Rothschilds: A Family Portrait, Readers Union: London, 1963
Owen, H. and Bell, John, Wilfred Owen: Collected Letters, Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1967
Reeves, John, The Rothschilds: The Financial Rulers of Nations, Gordon Press: Surrey, 1975
Reeves, Nicholas, The Complete Tutankhamun: The King, The Tomb, The Royal Treasure, Thames & Hudson: London, 1995
Roberts, Sydney C., Adventures with Authors, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1966
Shephard, Ben, A War of Nerves: Soldiers and Psychiatrists, 1914–1994, Jonathan Cape: London, 2000
Stone, Norman, World War One: A Short History, Penguin: London, 2008
Taylor, A. J. P., The Struggle for Mastery in Europe: 1848–1918, Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1973
Weintraub, Stanley, Edward the Caresser: The Playboy Prince who Became Edward VII, Simon & Schuster: London, 2001
Whitehead, Ian, Doctors in the Great War, Pen & Sword Books: Chicago, 1999
Winstone, H.V. F., Howard Carter and the Discovery of the Tomb of Tutankhamun,
Constable: London, 1991
I have been lucky to have had help from kind experts at the following archives:
The British Museum Archives
The Bodleian Archives
The Metropolitan Museum Archives
Griffiths Institute
Winchester Archives
Rothschild Archives
The Times Archives
Highclere Castle Archives
Every effort has been made to acknowledge the copyright holders of extracts used in this book, but full acknowledgement will gladly be made in all future editions.
Reading Group Guide
The real-life inspiration for the hit PBS show Downton Abbey, Highclere Castle has been in the family of the Earl of Carnarvon since the 17th century. Later transformed into a stately Georgian mansion with intricate Gothic turrets, the castle was a center of political life during the reign of Queen Victoria. When nineteen-year-old Almina Wombswell became the 5th Countess of Carnarvon in 1895, her marriage marked perhaps the most enticing chapter in the castle’s rich history—an era marked by lavish gatherings attended by England’s most powerful families as they savored the zenith of their way of life.
Transporting readers to a vanished time and place, Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey tells the story of a spirited young woman who captured the hearts of English society despite her dubious status as the illegitimate daughter of phenomenally wealthy industrialist Alfred de Rothschild. Offering a solace from the ravages of the Great War, Lady Almina opened the doors of Highclere Castle to wounded military officers; their stories would be preserved in the castle’s rich archive of letters, photographs, and diaries. After the war, Lord Carnarvon’s enthusiasm for Egypt led to headline-making expeditions with Howard Carter, culminating in the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun; many of these antiquities became part of Highclere’s collection.
By turns a mesmerizing biography and a unique portrait of history, Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey will captivate your reading group. The questions that follow are designed to enrich your journey to Lady Almina’s world.
Questions and Topics for Discussion
1. Lady Almina’s wealth contributed to her social success, but far more was required to achieve prestige in her husband’s circles. What special traits and wisdom did she possess?
2. How does Downton Abbey’s Lady Cora Crawley compare to Almina? Is Cora at a disadvantage because she is American, or did outsiders perhaps have the upper hand in Edwardian England?
3. When Lady Almina opened Highclere Castle to wounded military officers, she wanted to deliver more than first-rate medical treatment; she understood that a beautiful environment would enhance the healing process as well. What can twenty-first-century medicine learn from her?
4. The author describes heated Edwardian debates over taxing the wealthy, reforms to the House of Lords, immigration, and the National Insurance Bill—issues that remain controversial today. Lady Almina was a vocal conservative. If you had been a member of the landed gentry, would you have sided with the liberals or the Tories? How did Aubrey balance his election as a conservative with his liberal beliefs?
5. What inspired Lord Carnarvon and Aubrey to immerse themselves in worlds far removed from the English countryside? What was at the root of Lord Carnarvon’s enthusiasm for Egyptian antiquities? What surprising details did the book provide about foreign affairs in the early twentieth century?
6. Were you enticed or dismayed by the role of aristocratic women from Almina’s generation? How did they gain power? How was their power limited by their husbands and by social custom? If you were the widow Almina, would you have remarried as she did?
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br /> 7. As the author provided vivid descriptions of the wardrobes, interior decorations, and feasts that marked Highclere Castle, which aspects captured your imagination the most? Was Almina’s lavish spending a good investment?
8. How did you react to the parenting protocols of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras? Was it reasonable for children of the aristocracy, whose lives were woven with royalty, to be held to a higher standard of behavior? How were the expectations for raising Porchy different from those for raising Eve?
9. Discuss the solid marriage that Almina and Lord Carnarvon enjoyed. How were they able to make a good match despite the strict courtship methods they had to follow? What accounts for the way they balanced freedom and mutual support throughout their marriage?
10. Is nobility a burden or a blessing? How would you have fared at Highclere as a servant, or as an administrative aide such as Mary Weekes?
11. How do the woes of Downton Abbey’s Earl of Grantham compare to those of Lord Carnarvon? How does the history of Highclere enhance your appreciation for the show? What might Almina and Lord Carnarvon think of Downton Abbey?
12. The author notes that it was the economic fallout of the Second World War, combined with new tax structures, that made it impossible to maintain the opulence of previous generations at Highclere Castle. Why is it important to preserve the building and its history, if not the lifestyle, in contemporary times?
13. Discuss your own family legacies that are tied to this time period. How did status and class affect your ancestors? Did any of them serve in the Great War? Which of your family legacies—financial or otherwise—were formed a century ago?
Guide written by Amy Clements
Read on for an excerpt from the
Countess of Carnarvon’s second book,