Counting One's Blessings
Page 8
* The Strathmores rented 20 St James’s Square, designed by Robert Adam for Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn in the 1770s, from late 1906 to 1920.
† Elizabeth’s elder sister, May (1883–1961), married Sidney Herbert, sixteenth Baron Elphinstone, at St Margaret’s Westminster on 14 July 1910. Elizabeth was a bridesmaid at the wedding. Lord Elphinstone had been a big-game hunter and explorer. In 1900 he had travelled to the Tian Shan Mountains on the Sino-Russian border. He lived at Carberry Tower outside Edinburgh.
* The Earl and Countess of Airlie lived near by at Cortachy Castle.
† One newspaper described a typical match: ‘This year the Glamis team includes the Earl of Strathmore (captain), the Earl of Airlie, Lord Carnegie, Lord Coke, and two of the young Lyons. It puts on no aristocratic airs however, it plays with the local Forfarshire clubs, one of them being the Dundee Drapers.’ (Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser, 10 September 1910)
‡ Alec, the Strathmores’ third son, had been injured at Eton when he was hit on the head by a cricket ball. This appears to have caused a tumour and he suffered from headaches thereafter. He died in his sleep on 19 October 1911, aged twenty-four. His humour and bravery under suffering were mentioned in many letters after his death.
* Hon. Fenella Hepburn-Stuart-Forbes-Trefusis (1889–1966), known in the Strathmore family as ‘Neva’, younger daughter of the twenty-first Baron Clinton. She married Hon. John Bowes Lyon, ‘Jock’, on 29 September 1914.
* Unknown.
* The Bruces of Aberdare, an influential Welsh coal and iron family. Hon. Clarence Bruce (1885–1957) became third Baron Aberdare on the death of his brother in 1929. He stayed at Glamis in October 1908 and 1909. Years later, after the announcement of her engagement, Elizabeth wrote to him: ‘Thank you so very much for the tomato! How clever of you to remember our old joke …’ (27 January 1923, reproduced courtesy of Glamorgan Archives DBR/176)
* ‘Gregory’s Powder’, the commonly used name for ‘Rhubarb Compound Powder’, a foul-tasting brew that was nevertheless popular for its ability to settle the stomach without side-effects; it was also used as a laxative for children.
† Dr Bernard Thomas, the family doctor from the surgery in Welwyn.
* Rosslyn Chapel, situated in fine landscape seven miles south-east of Edinburgh, founded in 1446 as the Collegiate Chapel of St Matthew by William St Clair. The architecture of the Chapel is richly beautiful and complex; its history has been turbulent. The building was seized by Protestant reformers in 1571, in 1592 the altars were demolished and it fell into disrepair. By the time Elizabeth visited, however, the Chapel was a consecrated church again. (The Earl of Rosslyn, Rosslyn Chapel, The Rosslyn Chapel Trust, 1997)
† Lady Helena Balfour (1865–1948), née McDonnell, daughter of fifth Earl of Antrim, married to Captain Charles Barrington Balfour of Newton Don near Kelso, and Balfour House, Balgonie, Fife. In the summer she lived at Bisham Abbey on the Thames. She was a great friend of Cecilia Strathmore.
* ‘North Britain’ was often shortened to ‘N.B.’ in Scottish postal addresses in the nineteenth century; the practice gradually died out but there was evidently still such writing paper at Glamis.
* Elizabeth did not write this diary entry herself. The handwriting could be that of either Mike or Jock, teasing her, as her brothers often did, for the enthusiasm she showed for her food.
* Ricciardo Meacci (1856–[1938]), Florentine painter popular among the British community. Ten years later Meacci was commissioned by Aunt Vava to create an elaborate triptych as a wedding present for Elizabeth. He also painted another wedding present, a headboard incorporating the arms of the Strathmores and of the British Royal Family.
* Käthe Kübler, the daughter of a Prussian official living in Erlangen, came to the Strathmores in 1913, aged twenty-one, as a governess to Elizabeth. On 12 July 1914 she left to take her month’s holiday. War began and she never returned; she volunteered for the German Red Cross in Erlangen and was sent to nurse in field hospitals in northern France, from where she continued to correspond with Elizabeth. Two wartime letters from her survive in the archives at Glamis. In 1933 Käthe Kübler wrote to her former pupil defending Hitler, something she may have come to regret. She came to see the Queen in 1937 and asked to dedicate her memoir Meine Schülerin – die Königin von England to her. Queen Elizabeth said many years later, in conversation with Eric Anderson: ‘She was headmistress of a big school in Munich and then those horrible Nazis discovered she was a Jew and she was out in a day. She was sacked.’
* Gavin Ralston, factor (agent) at Glamis, 1913–49.
† Several generations of the Fairweather family worked at Glamis in the first half of the twentieth century. This could have been William or George Fairweather, who in turn held the post of Head Keeper.
* Dorothy Irene Beryl Poignand (1887–1965), daughter of Colonel George and Catherine Maud Poignand. Engaged by Cecilia Strathmore as governess to Elizabeth, 1914–17. She quickly became, and remained for many years, Elizabeth’s most intimate confidante outside her family. During the Second World War she was temporarily employed by the Royal Household in the Central Chancery of the Orders of Knighthood, and stayed on until 1949. In 1947 she helped organize the exhibition of Princess Elizabeth’s wedding presents and compiled the catalogue. Until her death in 1965 she remained in touch with Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, whose letters to Beryl were subsequently returned by her cousin Mrs Leone Poignand Hall.
* Henry Ainley (1879–1945), a classical actor who starred in numerous theatre productions and many films over a forty-five-year career. Elizabeth had a crush on him in the early part of the war and frequently went to his performances.
† A chauffeur working with the Red Cross, whose headquarters was in St James’s Square, close to the Strathmore home. Elizabeth and Beryl very much admired him.
‡ Another Red Cross chauffeur. Elizabeth pretended he was Beryl’s heart-throb.
* Lady Lavinia Spencer (1899–1955), second daughter of sixth Earl Spencer; married 1919 Hon. Luke White, later fourth Baron Annaly. Lady in waiting to the Duchess of York on the East African tour, 1924–5.
† Basil Hallam (1889–1916), another actor whom Elizabeth admired. His most famous role was as Gilbert the Filbert in the revue The Passing Show. He joined up in 1915 and was killed in a parachute jump on the Western Front in 1916.
* Fergus Bowes Lyon (1889–1915), the fourth son of Lord and Lady Strathmore, was an officer in the Black Watch. In September 1914 he had married Lady Christian Dawson-Damer (1890–1959). Their daughter Rosemary was born on 18 July 1915. Two months later, on 27 September 1915, he was killed at the Battle of Loos.
His death plunged the whole household, particularly his mother, into grief. The soldiers at Glamis wrote to Lady Strathmore in sympathy. She thanked them and said that she hoped they would carry on using the Castle just as before. No letter from Elizabeth describing Fergus’s death has been found, but her friend Lavinia Spencer to whom she wrote replied on 5 October 1915, ‘your letter was so brave.’ Glamis Archives (Box 270).
Rosemary married 1945 Edward Joicey-Cecil and had two children, James Joicey-Cecil (1946– ) married 1975 Jane Adeley, and Anne (1950– ) married 1971 Alastair Malcolm. Rosemary died in 1989.
† New type of German battlecruiser named after the nineteenth-century military strategist Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke.
‡ Lydie Lachaise (1888/9–1982), holiday governess to Elizabeth and David for the Easter and summer of 1915. She never forgot the sadness in Lady Strathmore’s face when Fergus left to return to the Front. (Information from Clare Elmquist, daughter of Lydie Lachaise)
* Catherine Maclean (c. 1890–1966), lady’s maid and subsequently dresser to Elizabeth both before and after her marriage. She retired in 1952. In the 1950s and 1960s she and her two sisters ran the Dores Inn on Loch Ness, where Queen Elizabeth sometimes visited them.
† Zeppelins, the lighter-than-air machines, caused terror over England in the Firs
t World War. One historian wrote that the Zeppelin ‘was the H-bomb of its day, an awesome sword of Damocles to be held over the cowering heads of Germany’s enemies’ (quoted in Martin Gilbert, First World War, Harper Collins, 1995, p. 42). Wood Street in the City of London was bombed on the night of 8–9 September 1915.
* Field Marshal Horatio Herbert Kitchener, first Earl Kitchener KG KP GCB OM GCSI GCMG GCIE ADC PC (1850–1916). In 1898 Kitchener won the Battle of Omdurman, after which he was created Lord Kitchener of Khartoum. He was crucial to the British victories of the Second Boer War and, in 1914, became Secretary of State for War. He was one of the few men to foresee a long war and organized the largest volunteer army Britain had ever seen. The recruiting posters bearing his image and the words ‘Your Country Needs You’ are potent even today. He died in 1916 when the warship carrying him to Russia struck a German mine and sank.
* Abell, Pegg, Pearce and Ralph were all convalescent soldiers. Ernest Pearce developed a lifelong relationship with Elizabeth. She described him as ‘A most delightful Corporal, nice boy indeed’, (Elizabeth to Beryl Poignand, 7 September 1915, Glamis Archives (CH)) and often played boisterous card games with him and other soldiers. He survived the war and then worked in a shipyard in Sunderland, until Elizabeth offered him a job as gardener at her home, Royal Lodge in Windsor Great Park. He stayed with her until he died in 1969; and his niece, Mary Ann Whitfield Pearce, worked at Royal Lodge also, becoming head cook.
† ‘Bobbish’ meant hearty and in good spirits. The word occurs in Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations. Sadly it appears to have fallen into disuse.
‡ Catherine Maud Poignand, mother of Beryl.
* Arthur Barson (1879–1944) served the Strathmore family through several generations. In the 1901 census he is listed as ‘footman’ and in 1911 as ‘valet’, and he then became butler. No job title describes his important place in the family. ‘Nothing would go on without him – he keeps everything going,’ the young Elizabeth once said. He could turn his hand to everything and also acted as Lord Strathmore’s loader – indeed ‘Father and Barson’ is a phrase that often appears in Elizabeth’s letters. Anecdotal evidence suggests that his fondness for the grape and the grain in no way impaired his skills or the family’s affection for him. He is included in a family portrait painted in 1909 by Alessandro Catani-Chiti, which hangs at St Paul’s Walden Bury. When Lady Strathmore died in 1938, Barson was distraught. At her memorial service at St Martin-in-the-Fields, in the words of Arthur Penn, a close family friend, Barson ‘advanced down the aisle with his battered old face full of grief, making apologetic & deprecatory noises at being given the place to which his long and ample service so amply entitled him’ (Arthur Penn to Queen Elizabeth, 28 June 1938, RA QEQM/PRIV/DEATH/STRATH). When he died in 1944 as butler at St Paul’s Walden, the house had been turned, once again, into a wartime convalescent home for soldiers.
* The junior examination of the Oxford Local Examinations Board took place at the Hackney Examination Centre. Elizabeth subsequently received a letter from the Examination Board stating, ‘you do not appear to be entitled to a certificate’. (RA QEQM/PRIV/PERS/Education)
* Blanche, widow of fifth Earl of Airlie (1826–1921).
† Jeanne Paquin (1869–1936), innovative French dress designer who became, in 1891, the first woman to open her own fashion house. Her designs were vibrant and beautiful and she publicized them with élan.
‡ Mabell (1856–1956), widow of sixth Earl of Airlie, who had been killed in the Second Boer War on 11 June 1900 at the Battle of Diamond Hill, Pretoria, leading his regiment in a charge that saved the guns. She was a lady in waiting to Queen Mary from 1901 until the Queen’s death in 1953.
* Princess Mary (1897–1965), daughter of King George V and Queen Mary; married 1922 Viscount Lascelles, later sixth Earl of Harewood. Elizabeth was a bridesmaid.
† Prince Albert Frederick Arthur George (1895–1952), later King George VI, second son of King George V and Queen Mary. He married Elizabeth in 1923.
‡ Duchess of Sutherland (1891–1943), née Lady Eileen Butler, daughter of seventh Earl of Lanesborough, married 1912 fifth Duke of Sutherland.
§ Lady Mary (‘Moucher’) Alice Cecil (1895–1988), daughter of fourth Marquess of Salisbury, married 1917 Lord Hartington (later tenth Duke of Devonshire).
¶ Lady Bury (1889–1928), née Lady Judith Wynn-Carrington, daughter of first Marquess of Lincolnshire, married 1909 Viscount Bury (later ninth Earl of Albemarle).
| Lady Maud Cavendish (1896–1975), eldest daughter of ninth Duke of Devonshire, married 1917 Capt. Angus Mackintosh (d. 1918); 1923 Hon. George Baillie.
** Arthur Horace Penn (1886–1960), served in Grenadier Guards in the First World War (MC, mentioned in dispatches), practised as a barrister and worked in the City, appointed groom in waiting to King George VI, 1937. A friend of Jock Bowes Lyon at Eton. Elizabeth met him at this time and found him entrancing. During the Second World War he served as her Private Secretary and Treasurer, remaining in the latter role until his death.
* Edmund Dulac (1882–1953), celebrated book illustrator, who also designed costumes and sets for the theatre.
† Thelma Cazalet (1899–1989), daughter of W. M. Cazalet; became an MP (1931–45), was briefly a junior minister at the end of the Second World War and sat on many public committees afterwards; married David Keir in 1939 and was known as Thelma Cazalet-Keir after that. Sister of Peter Cazalet, the Queen’s postwar racehorse trainer.
‡ Lady Diana Manners, later Lady Diana Cooper (1892–1986), daughter of eighth Duke of Rutland, married 1919 Alfred Duff Cooper, later Viscount Norwich.
§ Duchess of Rutland (1856–1937), mother of Lady Diana Manners; married 1882 eighth Duke of Rutland.
¶ Countess of Lytton, née Pamela Chichele-Plowden (d. 1971), married 1902 second Earl of Lytton.
| (Helen) Violet Bonham Carter – see letter of 7 March 1944 (p. 359).
* Frederick Dalrymple Hamilton KCB (1890–1974), served in the navy throughout his life. While commanding HMS Rodney (1939–41) he took part in the destruction of the German battleship Bismarck in May 1941. A close friend of the Strathmore family, he met Elizabeth for the first time in 1911 and described her as a ‘little angel!!’. His diaries revealed the fun of life with the Strathmores. Marjorie was Freddy’s sister-in-law, born Lady Marjorie Coke, daughter of third Earl of Leicester, whom his brother, North, had married in 1910.
† From this time, Elizabeth often addressed Beryl as ‘Medusa’, presumably a reference to her hairstyle, which she sketched in this letter.
* William Spencer Leveson-Gower KG GCVO CB DSO (1880–1953). He became fourth Earl of Granville in 1939 on the death of his brother. After a distinguished career in the Royal Navy, he was appointed Lieutenant Governor of the Isle of Man in 1937 and was Governor of Northern Ireland, 1945–52.
† Margaret Goodman, Secretary of the Local Examinations Board, whose name was on the notice informing Elizabeth that she had failed the examination she took in Hackney.
* John Jellicoe, first Earl Jellicoe (1859–1935), commanded Britain’s Grand Fleet at the Battle of Jutland, 1916. He later served as First Sea Lord, but was removed from that office in 1917 over differences of strategy. Governor General of New Zealand 1920–24.
* My Darling Buffy, The Early Life of the Queen Mother, Grania Forbes, Richard Cohen Books, 1997, p. 84.
† Lady Strathmore to Beryl Poignand, 22 September 1916, Glamis Archives (CH).
‡ Sergeant Little’s poem to her was written in Elizabeth’s autograph book:
There is a young lady so charming and witty
(I’m really not forced to tell you she’s pretty)
But she is
She wrote some nice verses about where the sense ended
Of a Patient whom she thought would be rather offended
Needless to say that the patient was me
But he isn’t
But to think I’d been offended at a lady like she,
It will give me great pleasure to read those few lines,
When the great war is over, if, in between times,
I’m not shot.
Sergeant J. Little of the 8th E. Yorks Regt, October 1916 (RA QEQM/PRW/PERS)
* Philip de Laszlo MVO PRBA (1869–1937), renowned Hungarian-born portrait painter who settled in England in 1907 and painted many royal and society portraits. In 1925 Lady Strathmore commissioned him to paint Elizabeth as Duchess of York; later he painted Elizabeth’s sister May, both of her parents and her brother David. In 1931 he painted portrait sketches of the Duke and Duchess of York which were later hung in Clarence House.
† Michael, an officer in the 16th Battalion, the Royal Scots, had been leading his company in an attack at the village of Roeulx near Arras. The Germans counter-attacked and many of the British troops were listed as ‘missing’.
* John, Master of Glamis (1910–41), son of Patrick Lord Glamis, see p. 317.
† Helena (1846–1923), third daughter of Queen Victoria. She married Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein and they made their home in England. The Crown Princess of Sweden was her niece Margaret (daughter of Arthur, Duke of Connaught, third son of Queen Victoria), who had married Crown Prince Gustaf Adolf in 1905.
* The Strathmores took on Private C. Morris as a gardener at St Paul’s Walden Bury.
* Mr Parker, a New Zealand officer recuperating at Glamis. As Duchess of York, she met him again, in New Zealand while on her official tour in 1927. See letter to her sister May of 17 March 1927 (p. 157).
* Hon. Edward Wood (1881–1959), later Lord Irwin, then third Viscount Halifax and first Earl of Halifax, uncle of Margaret Sutton. He and his wife Dorothy became good friends to Elizabeth as both Duchess of York and Queen. He was Foreign Secretary under Neville Chamberlain and Winston Churchill and subsequently British Ambassador in Washington. Dorothy Halifax was a lady in waiting to the Queen. The ‘Lord Halifax’ mentioned by Elizabeth here was Edward Wood’s father, the second Viscount.