Lady Catherine, the Earl, and the Real Downton Abbey

by The Countess of Carnarvon

  Porchey decided he wanted company, and in September and October a steady trickle of visitors came to Highclere. There were no big house parties, but Jeanne was frequently there, and several old friends—who were in need of time away from London and the stress of war work—took Porchey up on his offer of peace, quiet, some early shooting and a good meal cooked by Monsieur Pavillard.

  Harcourt ‘Crinks’ Johnstone was one of the most prominent Liberal politicians in the National Government. He had unexpectedly returned to government in 1940 (despite the fact that he was not a Member of Parliament at the time), thanks to his friendship with Churchill, who considered him an extremely able man and appointed him Secretary to the Department for Overseas Trade. Two months later the irregularity was cleared up when Johnstone was elected MP for Middlesbrough West. He was renowned for his love of good living and spent much of September 1942 enjoying the hospitality of Highclere. The following month Alfred Duff Cooper also came down briefly for a couple of days away from his desk. The three men had known each other for twenty years and the company of old friends was just what Porchey needed to lift his mood.

  In November there was a massive boost to Allied morale and prospects when General Bernard Montgomery and his men secured a decisive victory over Rommel at the Second Battle of El Alamein. This was the turning point in the Western Desert Campaign, which Montgomery had long ago correctly predicted would be a war of attrition similar to the battles of the First World War. Monty had proved to be just the injection of energy and confidence the 8th Army needed. He was also an extremely astute and able commander, much to the surprise of Churchill, who had only reluctantly appointed him.

  El Alamein was the Allies’ first decisive victory over the Axis powers on the ground and the last battle fought solely by the forces of the British Commonwealth without American input. Churchill briefly forgot his dislike of Montgomery and allowed himself to be jubilant. Back at Highclere and throughout Britain the church bells were rung in celebration. It didn’t take long for the Prime Minister’s acerbic wit to reassert itself, though. After his capture, General von Thoma was taken back to Allied HQ where, to the subsequent disapproval of the British public, he dined with General Montgomery. Churchill remarked, ‘I sympathise with General von Thoma: defeated, humiliated, in captivity and … dinner with Montgomery.’

  Despite the breakthrough, the desert war sputtered on into the following year. Rommel, ill and exhausted, fell back to Fuka and was finally allowed to leave Africa on 9 March. Only when his successor General Hans Jürgen von Arnim was captured along with 230,000 troops on 13 May 1943 could General Montgomery declare that the job was done and turn his attention to his next campaign, the one in which young Henry would serve: the invasion of Sicily and the battle for Italy. Elsewhere in North Africa a joint Anglo-American force had launched Operation Torch on 8 November. The object was to take control of Vichy-French North Africa (Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria), thereby consolidating the Allies’ grip on the region and drawing more troops away from the Eastern Front.

  That Christmas, the moment that Catherine had been dreading for years finally arrived. Henry had left Eton and put his name down for the Army.

  Catherine worried that she would be unable to bear the strain. She had lost her beloved husband in the opening months of the war, one of her dearest friends when the Duke of Kent perished and had been separated from her daughter for two years. She tried to keep busy with her voluntary work and to take comfort in her faith and the support of her many friends but she was very fragile. There were millions of women like Catherine all over the world, wondering how they would find the strength to brace themselves for the possibility of more tragedy.

  Porchey tried to be stoical, as was his way, but he too had hoped against hope that his son would not have to fight. Now, as the number of people pulled under by the tow of catastrophe grew ever larger, it was plain that Henry was going to have to do his bit. Despite American involvement, the war looked set to drag on for years.

  In January of 1943 Henry turned nineteen. He would start officers’ training in the summer but, for now, he decided to spend some time with his father at Highclere. Porchey had invited friends for a few days’ shooting and Henry was looking forward to going out with them, but there were other attractions, aside from sport.

  Monica Sheriffe, one of Porchey’s great racing friends, was coming to stay and had announced that she intended to bring her new best friend. Elvira de la Fuente Chaudoir was Peruvian, extremely chic, and an inveterate gambler, who was particularly fond of the casinos of London and the south of France. She was born the daughter of a Peruvian diplomat and had been brought up in Paris. Highly intelligent but easily bored, she made a brief marriage to a Belgian exchange trader but decided in 1938 that running away with one of her many rich lovers to gamble in Cannes was much more fun than life in dreary Brussels. When the Germans invaded, she and her friend escaped to England, where Elvira was turned down for a position with De Gaulle’s Free French government in exile on the catch-all grounds of being ‘unsuitable’. MI6 didn’t think she was unsuitable at all, and in 1940 she was recruited over a game of bridge at Hamilton’s in Mayfair.

  Elvira was perfect spy material. Thanks to her Peruvian passport it was relatively easy for her to move through Occupied Europe. Her father’s diplomatic status helped there, too. She spoke fluent French, English and Spanish and was attractive to both sexes. Above all, she had the overwhelming advantage of appearing more stupid than she was. Elvira looked like a well-connected party girl, which indeed she was, but she was also brave, resourceful and smart. MI6’s deputy director, Charles Dansey, sent her off into France with the express purpose of attracting the Germans’ attention and making her into a double agent. By the time Henry met her at Highclere, she had been laying false information trails for the Germans for nearly two years. He was fascinated by her, and thoroughly enjoyed her indiscreet conversation and losing to her rather heavily at bridge.

  At the Casablanca Conference in January 1943, Churchill, Roosevelt and De Gaulle met to decide the Allies’ strategy for the next phase of the war in Europe. With the Battle for Stalingrad reaching a climax, Stalin was unable to attend. The leaders agreed that they should move their focus to southern Europe. The other priority was dealing with the U-boat threat in the Atlantic. In December 1942, Bletchley Park cryptologists had broken the latest generation of the German naval Enigma code. Extra resources in the form of aircraft and escort boats were committed. The Allies also took the fight into the German ports. The combined results of all these strategies were fast and impressive: the seven million tonnes of Allied shipping that were sunk in 1942 were three million in 1943, one million in 1944 and less than half a million tonnes in 1945.

  On 2 February Stalin was vindicated when the remnants of the German Army that had been holed up in the city of Stalingrad in a state of siege since the end of November 1942 finally surrendered. The Battle of Stalingrad was extraordinarily brutal. Somewhere between 1.7 and two million combatants died, as did countless civilians; but it was also, in the end, effective. It brought to a definitive stop Hitler’s campaign to defeat the Soviets. The war in Russia had been the Führer’s number one priority; now the Axis powers had lost in both North Africa and on the Eastern Front.

  In Newbury, Highclere’s nearest town, no one felt that the Nazi powers had been shaken or that war was receding. Quite the opposite. On the afternoon of 10 February, the town was bombed with the loss of fifteen lives; three of the casualties were children. The bombs fell very close to the school by St John’s Church; the whole area was devastated. Up at the castle they heard the faint sound of explosions. By now everyone was familiar with the sound of a hit, and from the maids in the kitchens to the teachers up in the schoolroom, there was a sickening sense that it had been a big one.

  Mrs Stacey lived with her family in one of the estate cottages, The Pens. On that day she had been visiting her sister in Reading and was just setting off from Newbury station to bicyc
le home when she heard the explosion. As she approached St John’s Church she saw the smoke and broken glass blown out of the windows and asked a policeman what had happened. ‘Jerry paid us a visit,’ came the answer. And then the information that made her heart practically stop beating. ‘The council school was bombed.’ Two of her boys attended the school.

  Trying to control her rising nausea and her useless legs, which seemed to have turned to jelly, she cycled furiously. The place was mayhem; the fire service was battling to put out the conflagration. Other desperate parents were milling around looking for their children. It was half an hour or so past the end of the school day and most of the school’s pupils had already set off for home when the bombs fell. But there would have been stragglers. Mrs Stacey clutched the arm of a teacher whose face she recognised. Where were her boys? They left before the attack, the teacher assured her, before wandering off in a daze. Powered by her need to believe, Mrs Stacey pedalled homewards, past Wash Common down the Andover Road, into the woods and at last through the park and along the muddy track leading to her little cottage. There they were, both of them shaky and tearful, but unharmed. Sobbing with relief, Mrs Stacey hugged her children to her. It was at least five minutes before she could pull herself together enough to make tea for them all.

  Three of her sons’ schoolmates were not so lucky. Two of their teachers who were still working when the bombs dropped were also killed. Forty-one people were injured, twenty-five of them seriously. It seemed likely that the German bomber simply wanted to unload his unused bombs so he could get home faster.

  Just over three weeks after the bombing, Henry Lord Porchester set off to Newbury to learn a very useful trade. A local garage, Wheeler’s, had been turned into a military training centre for vehicle mechanics. It was Porchey’s idea for Henry to attend. While he was waiting for the officers’ training courses to start in the summer, he needed something useful with which to occupy himself. And a skill such as vehicle maintenance would be a good complement to his other training courses. Henry was keen to do whatever might come in handy in the field and readily agreed. He passed out three months later as Vehicle Fitter Class II.

  A week after Henry started at Wheeler’s, the Carnarvon family had the best reason to celebrate in more than two long years. Penelope was home. She had been so determined to make it back in time for her eighteenth birthday, but in the end it simply wasn’t possible. Cousin Arthur had been lucky to secure any passage for her and Doll; everyone thought that it would be summer before they returned. Arthur was full of scepticism about the wisdom of crossing the Atlantic at all: even though the situation was stabilising, it was still fraught with risk of attack by U-boats. But Pen had been pushing to go home for months and Porchey and Catherine finally gave in to her pleas and agreed. The only tickets Arthur could obtain were to Lisbon in Portugal. From there Pen and Doll flew with BOAC back to an airfield just outside Bristol. This last leg of the journey was also fraught with stress. In theory both Allied and Axis powers respected Portugal’s neutrality, but in reality several civilian planes had been brought down by the Luftwaffe over the Bay of Biscay in the first few months of 1943. Pen and Doll were extremely relieved to land at Bristol and board a train to London.

  They must have chattered all the way up to town, delighted to be back on British soil, to see the landscape they loved, to be among their fellow countrymen again. But it would surely also have been shocking to see the evidence of bombing as they passed through Reading and the strain on people’s faces. At Paddington, Penelope scanned the crowd for her mother’s face. She had promised to meet them and Pen could hardly bear to wait another second. Catherine was tearful as she caught sight of her daughter and ran the last few steps to embrace her. Two and a half long years had elapsed and so much had changed. She had lost her beloved husband and then worried almost out of her mind that her daughter too would be killed on her journey back, but now here she was—taller, more confident, so much more grown up, and laughing as the two of them clung to one another.

  The following day Porchey took his beloved daughter to dinner at the Ritz and they toasted her eighteenth birthday in champagne. That weekend they travelled together to Highclere and Penelope wept as they drove past London Lodge, which had been damaged by a stray bomb, and caught the first glimpse of her childhood home.

  Safely back in England, Penelope started to look around for employment. Before long she found an administrative post at the Foreign Office, which she had thought sounded a rather glamorous place to work, though in reality the job was mundane with very long hours. It didn’t pay much, either, but Penelope was happy. She had moved into Wilton Crescent, and Catherine was making preparations to join her later in the year when Henry finished his training.

  Henry was in exuberant mood. His much-loved sister had returned, considerably more grown up but just the same unflappable and sweet-natured soul she always had been. He knew that she had wanted above everything to see him before he left for the war, and he was deeply touched. Once his mechanics course finished in early summer, he was itching to get on with training.

  In the first week of August, Henry and several of his closest friends from school arrived at the Acton Recruiting Office to enrol in the Blues and Royals. Part of the household cavalry, the Blues are regarded as the senior regiment in the British Army, thanks to their status as the monarch’s private bodyguard.

  During the war, abbreviated training courses were run so as to maintain a steady supply of newly qualified officers. Henry and his friends were about to embark on a punishing schedule of highly compressed information and skills training. Their first port of call was Combermere Barracks, Windsor, where the regiment were instructed in the use of armoured vehicles and combat. From there they would be sent to Caterham, to Pirbright and finally to the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, all close to Windsor. Henry had an exceedingly tough few months ahead of him, and Catherine wanted to be on hand for any brief time he could find to slip away for tea, toast and chat. Penelope frequently came down form London on Friday afternoons after work. Despite her anxiety about Henry, Catherine was happier than she had ever been since Geoffrey’s death. With her two children teasing one another over toast and their mother’s homemade jam, she felt a surge of hope for the future.

  Scarcely three months later, Henry Porchester was awarded the Belt of Honour, presented to the most promising cadet of his class. As Catherine watched him command the passing-out parade, she was so incredibly proud that she almost forgot that it could only be a matter of weeks at the most before her son was sent abroad. For now, Henry and his class were posted back to Combermere Barracks.

  A graduating officer cadet is typically designated a Second Lieutenant, but in the Royal Horse Guards, in his first most junior rank he is referred to as a ‘cornet’. Henry Porchester had achieved the goal, passionately wished for, of his last three years. He had distinguished himself in training and was facing the beginning of his military career with steadiness as well as enthusiasm. Less than two weeks later, he got the call he had been waiting for. The new officers of the Blues were shipping out to the Middle East to join their regiment and await the expected order to deploy to Sicily and thence to mainland Italy.

  Henry was granted short leave to say goodbye to his family and went first to see Catherine and Pen, who begged a day off from the Foreign Office in light of exceptional circumstances and travelled from London to Windsor. She planned to stay overnight with her mother, whom she knew would be in need of encouragement.

  Both his mother and his sister wanted Henry to have something of theirs to take with him into battle. Catherine gave her son one of her old watches, a hip flask and a map case; Pen gave him a chain. When the time came for him to leave, everyone did their utmost to be brave but, afterwards, when her boy had disappeared from view, Catherine cried. She felt that all her happiness was in the lap of the gods.

  From Windsor, Henry made his way to Highclere to say goodbye to his father. Porchey’s present was
his advice on how to handle active service, dispensed as the two men rode side by side around the estate. One imagines that though Henry must have been grateful to his father, he struggled to pay full attention. Everywhere he looked he saw his family’s heritage, his inheritance. What would happen if, unimaginable thought, he didn’t come home?

  When they got back to the castle the light had faded to dusk and father and son took a drink in the Library. Porchey handed him three letters of introduction to friends of his in Cairo, and then it was almost time for Henry to go. He went to say goodbye to the estate and household staff, shaking hands with each person, receiving the curtseys of the women and the hand-clasps and back-slaps of the men—only the old men, now, whom he had known all his life. The last thing he did was fetch his semi-automatic Winchester .22 rifle from the gun room. His father embraced him for a second and then Henry set off, back to barracks to pick up his kit and be on the road to Glasgow and the troopship SS Leopoldville, bound for Alexandria.

  Porchey stood at the main entrance to the castle and watched his son and heir walk away. Then he turned to go inside and Pell closed and locked the door behind him.

  18

  To Play One’s Part

  The SS Leopoldville arrived at Alexandria with no incident, just a few submarine alerts that didn’t amount to anything. On Christmas Eve 1944, her luck would run out when transporting American soldiers to the Battle of the Bulge. Attacked by U-boats, she would sink with the loss of approximately 763 men. Fortunately, the only trouble Henry encountered on this voyage was a nearly disastrous boxing match, in which he lasted one and a half rounds against a sergeant in the Royal Irish Fusiliers, whom he later discovered was the army welterweight champion. Henry had been an excellent boxer at Eton but was relieved when the fight was stopped. He had much more success playing bridge against his school friend John Ewart, whom he continued to relieve of money throughout the forthcoming campaign.