Before Wallis

by Rachel Trethewey

  Rosemary was never just a cipher; she was a hands-on philanthropist who threw herself into her charity work with enthusiasm. To publicise the hospital’s needs she invited prominent North Staffordshire residents to lunch and then she put forward her proposals for an extension of the building. In Dudley, she became particularly involved in the infant and maternity welfare movement. She laid the foundation stone of Rosemary Ednam House, an up-to-date maternity hospital. In October 1929 she opened a baby week and health week which ran concurrently at Wolverhampton. At the opening she told the audience that simple principles of hygiene ought to be taught to mothers, most of whom were only too eager to learn. She was very aware of the evils of overcrowding and she believed that something should be done to alleviate the problem.12

  In all her charity work she was valued for her dedication and her wisdom. Both the hospital staff and the management committee learnt to love her for her ‘beautiful disposition’ and because her advice was so sound.13 Her lifelong friend the writer J.M. Barrie wrote that she grew to be ‘a very wise woman, so understanding that other wise ones took counsel of her, and there were few with a better sense of their duties which only lay lightly on her because of the gay courage with which she shouldered them’.14 Like her mother, Rosemary was able to cut through class boundaries and establish a rapport with people from all walks of life and all ages. Her friend Lord Castlerosse wrote: ‘She had something of the quality of St Francis of Assisi, who made everything he touched virtuous and attractive […] She would break through the gloom of unhappiness like the sun dissipating the mist, and she was a stand-by to many.’15

  When Rosemary was not doing her charity work she enjoyed country pursuits and travelling. Throughout the 1920s Rosemary frequently appeared in the society pages of newspapers and magazines at point-to-points, the races and out hunting. One newspaper feature focusing on the fashion for tweed raved about how well the country look suited her. The journalist wrote: ‘Lady Ednam looks quite perfect in tweeds – it’s sort of inborn, the tweed look – and her kind of fairness never goes blue with cold in a mist but takes on a sort of moonlight fairness and transparency which is accentuated by jerseyish clothes.’16 A keen horsewoman, Rosemary often went hunting with the Quorn, Beaufort and Belvoir hunts. It was a passion she shared with both her husband and the Prince of Wales. The hunting world was at the centre of their social life and inevitably reflected its incestuous nature. By the end of the decade, when the prince attended hunt balls at Melton Mowbray, his past, present and future girlfriends, Rosemary, Freda and Thelma Furness, would all be there. There was safety in numbers and the presence of all three women threw gossip columnists off the scent; none of them could be openly with the prince, but each might get at least one dance with him.

  The Ednams also spent part of the year abroad. They owned a house called the Villa Rosemary on the French Riviera where they entertained guests including Clementine Churchill.17 At the end of January each year it had become fashionable for British aristocrats to leave behind the English winter and escape to the south of France. Cannes had become particularly fashionable; it was known as ‘Deauville Deux’. One observer recorded how chic Cannes was, using some precise criteria, apparently ‘hair is shingled much closer to the nape of the neck than anywhere else […] In Cannes the pearls are worn much larger and much tighter around the neck than any other town in the Riviera.’18 During their visits the Ednams and their friends would play tennis at the Carlton Club with the Duke and Duchess of Westminster and then dance or gamble at the casino.

  They also often holidayed further afield with friends. In the summer of 1924 Lord and Lady Beatty invited Rosemary for a cruise on their yacht Sheila. After relaxing on the Lido at Venice, the party travelled all over Romania and parts of Transylvania. They visited the Dardanelles and Constantinople, where they were lavishly entertained in Turkish palaces. However, Rosemary and American-born Lady Beatty had grown bored with socialising and wanted an adventure. One afternoon while relaxing in a deckchair Lady Beatty read a translation of the legend of Hero and Leander. She was excited to discover that their yacht was anchored close to where the tragic love story took place. According to the legend, Leander swam through those same waters every night to visit Hero until one day the tide was too powerful for him and he was drowned. His body was washed up at the foot of his lover’s tower. Hero, in despair, threw herself from the tower and died beside her love.

  Talking about the story with their friends, Rosemary and Lady Beatty discovered that Lord Byron had swum the Hellespont a century before. As the two women had both been swimming a great deal that summer and were proud of their prowess they decided to try to emulate the poet. They chose a quiet, windless, moonlit night and persuaded a Turkish guide and boatman to take them out to the place where Leander swam from. The two women made it halfway across with little effort, but as they got close to the other shore the strength of the tide became too much for them. They were beginning to struggle and were swimming in circles to try to keep afloat when luckily the first mate, who had been watching them from the yacht, saw them. He called four other crew members and they set off in a launch to rescue Rosemary and the countess. Except for temporary exhaustion, they were fine and before they got back to the yacht they were laughing over their escapade.19

  Wherever Rosemary went there was laughter. In January 1928 Rosemary and Eric went with Diana and Duff Cooper to Biskra. The foursome laughed a great deal, particularly after smoking a hubble-bubble pipe in Algiers. However, there was less laughter, except from Rosemary who could see the funny side in any situation, when a miscalculating doctor injected Eric with ten times the approved dose of streptococci needed for a vaccination. Luckily, Eric had no reaction at all. They laughed a lot too when they rode in the desert and ate on eiderdowns under the palms with some sheikhs.20

  However, although Rosemary always tried to remain positive it was not always easy. During the decade after her marriage her family were to be struck by more than their fair share of misfortune. In June 1920 Eric’s mother, the Countess of Dudley, drowned while swimming at Rosmuck, Connemara. She was an excellent swimmer, but she collapsed and drowned in sight of her maid, who was unable to save her. In 1921, while on a shooting trip in Rhodesia, Rosemary’s younger brother Alastair was suddenly struck down with malarial fever and died aged only 30. The young man had everything to live for. He had fought bravely in the war and then married an American heiress; just a month before his death his wife had given birth to a baby daughter. Rosemary was very close to her brother and she was inconsolable after his death. At Alastair’s funeral at Dunrobin his mother, Millicent, his wife and Rosemary dropped sprigs of lily-of-the-valley into his grave.21 In 1929 another untimely loss hit the family. Rosemary’s cousin, Lord Loughborough, the Earl of Rosslyn’s son who had been married to Sheila, the friend of Freda and the prince, ended his life by committing suicide.

  The tragedies continued at such a pace that Lord Ednam believed his family had been cursed. When Rosemary and Eric were in Egypt in the spring of 1929, Eric had a row at Luxor with the Rosicrucian Society, who were holding a celebration. They were angry with him and apparently cursed him. At first Rosemary joked about it, making a great after-dinner story out of it but as one disaster in the family followed another Eric began to take it seriously.22 In December 1929 Rosemary and Eric’s 7-year-old son, John Jeremy (known as Jeremy), was killed in a freak accident. Jeremy had been out with his younger brother Peter and their French governess, Mlle Paule Marie Sejuret. He had been riding his miniature bicycle along Chelsea Embankment to the park. When they left the park, Mlle Sejuret had forbidden Jeremy to get on his bicycle. They were returning home along the Albert Suspension Bridge when suddenly Jeremy disobeyed his governess and shot ahead on his bicycle. She did not see what was happening because she was pushing his brother in his pram with the hood up. When she realised, she ran after Jeremy but before she could catch up with him his bicycle collided with a lorry and trailer. The spot where the boy we
nt off the pavement was hidden from the view of the driver by a lamp post, so he could do nothing to avoid the little boy. Jeremy was caught between the trailer’s wheels. A man working on a cab rank close by said: ‘I saw the boy and the bicycle wedged under the wheels of the trailer. We all rushed over and found that the boy was still conscious and was bleeding in many places, later he lost consciousness.’23 A doctor, who was passing, had Jeremy rushed to the Victoria Hospital for Children but his injuries were fatal.

  Rosemary and Eric were informed of the accident by telephone. By the time they reached the hospital their son was dead.24 On hearing the news, Rosemary was prostrate with grief and would see no one, while Eric left for Oxford to bring their eldest son home from school.25 In the following days and weeks their friends tried to comfort them. The Prince of Wales was one of the first people to call them and express his grief at the tragedy.26 Messages of sympathy and flowers flooded in. Jeremy had been a very lively, charming little boy and was a great favourite with his mother’s many friends.27 In very shaky handwriting, Rosemary replied in pencil to Duff Cooper: ‘Darling Duff, Your love and sympathy does help. Diana tells me you cried for us. Thank you dearest Duff.’28 To another confidante, Elizabeth, Marchioness of Salisbury, she wrote: ‘Darling Betty, I loved your sweet letter – I know you understand how we are suffering. Thank you for your love and sympathy darling – it helps. Rosie.’29 At the inquest a verdict of accidental death was recorded; the jury concluded that no one was to blame.

  After Jeremy’s death the Ednams put their Cheyne Walk house up for sale. They could not bear to continue living in a house which constantly reminded them of his accident. In her grief, Rosemary dedicated her time to creating a garden of remembrance for her son at their country home. Jeremy was buried under the branches of an old apple tree beside a babbling brook in the grounds of Himley Hall. Using her artistry, she planned a garden with flag paths, a rockery, herbaceous bed and a small bridge across the brook. As she struggled to cope with her loss, day after day, she could be found planting forget-me-nots and rock plants or supervising the estate gardeners in laying the flagstones.30

  Rosemary was not to outlive her son by long. In the early summer of 1930 she and Eric had decided to take a complete break and spend a few weeks in France at the Chalet du Bois, his stepmother’s villa. Unfortunately, Eric developed typhoid fever while there, but Rosemary wanted to fly back to England for a meeting with the architect who was helping her to plan Jeremy’s memorial garden. When Eric had recovered sufficiently to be left for a few days, Rosemary wrote to her mother that she was intending to pay a fleeting visit to Himley. She explained that if she did not see the flowers she would not know what to alter for next year. In a prophetic postscript, she added: ‘It is just conceivable that I won’t come back.’31

  She already had a flight booked but one seat had become vacant on an earlier flight from Le Touquet to Croydon, which would give her more time to keep her appointment.32 On 21 July 1930 Rosemary boarded the Junker plane with the society hostess Mrs Henrick Loeffler and her guests, the Marquis of Dufferin and Ava, and Sir Edward Ward. Mrs Loeffler’s husband owned The Albion, the largest steam yacht in the world. She often entertained the Prince of Wales and his friends at her house parties at Le Touquet. During that last weekend, the American author and songwriter Elsa Maxwell and the prince’s equerry Joey Legh and his wife Sarah had been staying with Mrs Loeffler. At the end of the weekend, Elsa had been planning to fly back to England but the writer Somerset Maugham, who was also in Le Touquet, said, ‘Why go? Why not stay on here in my villa and play bridge?’ Fortunately for Elsa, she accepted his offer.33 Joey Legh had intended to take the one remaining seat on the plane, but on the morning of the flight Sarah woke up and heard a strong wind blowing. As she was particularly nervous about flying, she persuaded her husband to pull out and take her back to England by sea. Joey warned her it would be a rough sea crossing, but he agreed to go with her, leaving a seat on the plane which was taken by Rosemary at the last minute.34

  It should have been a quick and easy journey. Colonel George Henderson, who flew the plane, was very experienced. After learning to fly in 1915 he became a lieutenant colonel in the Royal Flying Corps. After the war, he became the principal of the Henderson Flying School at Brooklands. A famous flying ace, he was the first pilot to fly under Tower Bridge.35 Before making the flight he had thought that there was ‘something wrong’. It was found that an exhaust-pipe washer had worked loose but an adjustment was made, and Colonel Henderson was happy to fly.36

  The plane took off in perfect weather, but as it reached England it flew into a gale. It then fell to pieces in the air over the village of Meopham in Kent. An eyewitness recalled:

  As the plane approached from the direction of the Channel, I saw at once that it was wobbling badly. It was pouring with rain at the time. The plane had passed over when there was an explosion, not a very loud one, immediately pieces of wreckage and what looked like little aeroplanes came floating down. We did not realise then that they were bodies.37

  Parts of the plane were found as far as 2 miles away from where the accident occurred. As well as the wreckage, poignant personal items were found. It was estimated that £65,000 worth of jewellery was lost from the aeroplane. Rosemary had been wearing a valuable pearl necklace and a diamond clip brooch. When the bodies hurtled to the ground the necklaces worn by the two women broke and Rosemary’s priceless pearls were scattered all over the orchard in which her remains were found.38 One local man found what he thought was a piece of cut glass; in fact it was a diamond.39 The bodies hit the ground with such great impact that they made deep impressions in the soft earth. As the shocked villagers became aware of what had happened, they recovered the remains of the victims and put them in a cart to be taken to a makeshift mortuary in a nearby barn. As the cart moved away from the orchard the heavy rain stopped for the first time during the day, the sun burst through and on the far horizon villagers saw a rainbow.40

  When news reached London that evening about what happened, Chips Channon wrote that ‘a gloom fell’ on the city.41 All parties were cancelled as a mark of respect.42 As Eric was too ill to travel, Rosemary was identified by her brother, the Duke of Sutherland. On the Wednesday after the crash, an inquest on the victims was opened in a little timber tea room on the green at Meopham adjoining the barn where the bodies had lain since Monday. The inquest was adjourned until 13 August to give the Air Ministry time to make a full investigation. Eventually, a verdict of accidental death was returned.

  Despite an intensive investigation into what had caused the crash, no single factor could be found to blame. The petrol tanks were intact, and all the vital parts of the engine were in order.43 The cause of the disaster remains a mystery to this day. There were rumours of sabotage as important people used the air taxi; the Prince of Wales often flew back and forth from Le Touquet and one of the victims, the Marquis of Dufferin and Ava, was the speaker of the senate of Northern Ireland.

  Rosemary was only 36 when she died. A few days after her death, her funeral was held at Himley. After the service, she was buried next to her son in the garden of memory she had created for him. The grief expressed that day was a testament to the lasting hold Rosemary exerted over the men who had loved her. Her husband, Lord Ednam, was too ill to attend the funeral but he sent a wreath of huge lilies to ‘My beloved darling’.44 Her ex-fiancé, John Manners, now the Duke of Rutland, was so devastated to hear of her death that according to his sister, Lady Diana Cooper, ‘he took Belvoir’s [his family estate] whole garden to her grave’.45 Lilies, rosemary and ivy from him were used to line her grave.46 Her old admirer and friend Duff Cooper wrote a poem to the woman he had been so attracted to. The last verse ran:

  We shall remember you, Rosemary, always;

  Life will be lonelier, sadder than before,

  But not less lovely, because we shall remember,

  Sadder and holier for evermore.

  If years be given us which were
denied you,

  Age may dim eyes that today are blind with tears,

  Yet we shall see that smile and hear that laughter

  Echoing for ever through the empty years.47

  Among the many floral tributes at her funeral there was a wreath of pink and red roses from the Prince of Wales and a card that read simply: ‘With love, from EP [Edward, Prince].’48

  Reflecting the many lives Rosemary had touched, memorial services were held for her at St Margaret’s Westminster, Dornock Cathedral and Golspie Church. The Duke of Sutherland and Viscount Ednam received messages of sympathy from the king and queen and other members of the royal family. Edward’s own reaction was genuine and profound. He wrote to Millicent shortly after Rosemary’s death about how deeply shocked he was by it. He explained: ‘It’s just one of the biggest tragedies I’ve ever known and so big that it’s hard to realise it has happened. It’s just one of those rare occasions when one wishes it had happened to oneself instead.’ He admitted to her mother the feelings that he still had for the woman he had once wanted to marry, adding: ‘I was so devoted to her and like so many will miss her more than I can say.’49

  After the Meopham disaster there was anxiety about the risks taken by the Prince of Wales and Prince George when they flew. Edward had bought a De Havilland Gipsy Moth and took lessons from a pilot at Northolt aerodrome. The year after the Meopham tragedy the prince flew, through dangerous conditions, to open the Rosemary Ednam Memorial Extension at Hartshill. The idea for the new wing had been launched by Rosemary on the very day that her son Jeremy was killed. The extension had cost £20,000. About £6,000 had been raised by the time of her death, but afterwards her friends and family turned it into a fitting memorial for her and raised the rest of the money quickly.