Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey (29 page)

On 26 February, they discovered a cache of thirteen alabaster vessels at the entrance to the tomb of King Merenptah, the son of Ramesses II. Lady Carnarvon knelt in the sand to help dig them out with her own hands. This was exciting, but it wasn’t the breakthrough discovery the men were longing for. They would have to wait another two years for that.

The unsettled political situation in Egypt was getting worse, and Lord Carnarvon began to worry about his wife and daughter’s safety. On 9 March 1919 there was an uprising, led by Egyptian nationalist Saad Zaghloul. He had served as a government minister for years, steering a careful course between extreme nationalists and the British ruling powers. But everything changed with President Wilson’s famous ‘Fourteen Points’ speech in January 1918. During the war Britain had declared Egypt a British Protectorate, with scant regard for nascent Egyptian nationalism. The Egyptians, however, were inspired by President Woodrow Wilson’s declaration that ‘every peace-loving nation which, like our own, wishes to live its own life and determine its own institutions, [should] be assured of justice.’ The end of
hostilities and the peace conference in France gave them their best shot.

Zaghloul began a campaign to send a delegation to negotiate for Egyptian autonomy at Versailles, but his activities did not endear him to the British ruling forces, who promptly arrested him and sent him into exile. This served only to exacerbate the situation. There were student demonstrations, general strikes and rioting. A few Europeans were killed and several hundred Egyptians died over the course of the next few months.

In the midst of the chaos that followed Zaghloul’s arrest, Lord Carnarvon resolved to send Almina and Eve home. He managed to get them passage on a ship from Port Said and was very relieved when he received a telegram from Almina to say they were on board and bound for England.

He stayed on in Cairo. He was deeply involved in local politics and knew many of the key players from both the Egyptian and British sides. He had, after all, been entertaining them at Highclere, often at the same house parties, for years. When General Lord Allenby was dispatched from London on 25 March and told to restore order in Cairo, Lord Carnarvon lent his services as a mediator. He dined with ministers and Sultan Fuad of Egypt, who upset Carnarvon’s constitution terribly by serving a lunch of twelve courses within half an hour.

The diplomacy seemed to ease the situation. Zaghloul was freed by the British on 7 April and on 11 April 1919 he achieved his goal when he led a delegation to the Versailles Peace Conference, demanding autonomy for Egypt. The day they arrived was, ironically, the day the US issued a statement recognising Britain’s Protectorate over Egypt. Nobody
in Paris cared about Zaghloul’s cause: extracting reparations from Germany was the main event and everything else was sidelined. That would prove fatal for long-term stability in Germany and the Middle East alike.

On a beautiful sunny day in June 1919, Porchy rang the bell at Seamore Place. He had finally made it home from Mesopotamia. An astonished Roberts, who had progressed from being the groom of the bedchamber at Highclere to the position of butler at Seamore Place, opened the door to him. Roberts had been an ally since Porchy was a little boy being sent to bed without his dinner, and was delighted to see him. Porchy asked whether his mother was in and, collecting himself sufficiently to shake His Lordship heartily by the hand, Roberts told him she was. Porchy might have been forgiven for expecting a hero’s welcome, but when Almina saw him she cried out, ‘Oh darling, what a surprise!’

Almina was plainly still in nurse mode because she
proceeded to ask him whether his uniform had been fumigated and he had been deloused. Delousing, which was supposed to take place on board the ships bringing the men back from war, was not a trivial matter, since conditions such as sand-fly infestation could be very unpleasant. Nevertheless, Porchy was somewhat taken aback. They hadn’t seen each other for more than two and a half years and a great deal had happened in between. Porchy had grown up and Almina had grown into her role as a respected nurse; it was no wonder that it took a moment to adjust before there was a proper welcome. Her son had come home in one piece when, as Almina knew only too well, so many young men had not.

The whole family was overjoyed to have him back. There was a moment of brief anxiety when he developed appendicitis shortly after his return, but Almina leapt into action, just as she had with her husband’s case the previous year. She ensured that Sir Berkeley Moynihan operated on her darling son and then supervised his convalescence herself at home at Seamore Place.

The summer of 1919 saw an uneasy mixture of the return to what used to be normality and a sense that nothing could ever be the same again. Almina was looking for new outlets for her energy but for the moment was happy nursing Porchy; Lord Carnarvon was overjoyed to be able to excavate. Elsie had her new speech therapy project and Eve was an excited eighteen-year-old in the middle of her debutante season, but for some in the family, as in the country at large, there was a deep sense of despair.

Aubrey was a bitter man. He was utterly disillusioned by everything he saw at the peace conference at Versailles.
He felt that England was being ‘tied to the tail of all this continental hate’. Aubrey dined most evenings during the Versailles meetings with T. E. Lawrence, who was trying to make the British government honour the various promises they had made during the war. Their colleague, the writer and expert on Middle Eastern politics, Gertrude Bell, wrote that it was all a nightmarish muddle. ‘You foresee all the horrible things that are going to happen and can’t stretch out your hand to prevent them.’

The peace treaty was concluded on 28 June 1919 in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. It had taken months of wrangling, during which the hopes of many nations and aspiring nations dwindled. The Middle East was divided into spheres of influence among the Allies, with disastrous fallout that lingers to this day. The Germans lost various territories, which provoked huge resentment, and above all they were fined billions and billions of gold marks. France was determined to totally dominate its neighbour and Britain wanted to repay its massive war debt. The scale of the reparations demanded by the Allies was considered by many to be excessive, not just in Germany but by such figures as John Maynard Keynes, the Treasury’s main representative at the negotiations. It was reduced in 1924 and again in 1929, but by that time Germany was feeling persecuted, and Hitler’s election was only four years away.

As Versailles drew to a close, many of the Carnarvons’ friends from Egypt came down to Highclere for a weekend of racing. The summer season of parties was cranking up again and, for the first time in years, Highclere readied itself to receive dozens of guests. Streatfield, who was still the house steward, was in charge of seeing that standards hadn’t
slipped. He had only three more years of service left in him. He was sixty-three years old and was starting to tire. But he was as meticulous as ever and the team of footmen didn’t disappoint him.

It was not exactly the same as it used to be, though. How could it be when the pre-war world, a political and social landscape that the 4th Earl would have recognised, had gone for ever? Millions of men had died in the service of the old regimes and the public resentment and grief were enflamed by an austerity drive combined with a recession. Carnarvon noted in the guestbook entry for the party, ‘Races’ and ‘Strike’. There were lots of those in 1919. Nearly half a million workers in the cotton mills walked out in June, the police were out in August, and in September it was the turn of the railway workers. Pay was low and jobs were scarce: disillusioned veterans went begging in the streets.

Even the Earl of Carnarvon was concerned about money, albeit on a vastly different scale. His income from agriculture had been falling since before the war and his tax bill in 1919, after Lloyd George’s legislation, was a sizeable
£
7,500. He had sold some of the furniture from his house at Bretby in May 1918, and now he sold the cream of the Bretby library at Sotheby’s. He was well aware that there was no more income for Almina and that budgeting was not exactly her strong suit.

Almina, however, felt totally insulated by the enormous legacy she had been left by Alfred de Rothschild and saw no reason not to carry on spending. While the Earl fretted about his tenants’ ability to pay their rent, Almina planned a ball for Eve, who was making her debut in Society that summer. No expense was to be spared. Hundreds of guests
were invited for dancing until dawn and
The Times
reported that it was crammed with people. Entertaining at Seamore Place was constant. The chef was required to make sure the food matched the opulent surroundings, which, given that the house was a monument to Alfred’s love of treasures, meant he had his work cut out. His must have been one of the most coveted cook’s jobs in London. He had a free hand to indulge his imagination and the budget to back it up.

There could not have been a more resolute statement of Almina’s intention to escalate, not to scale back, the Carnarvons’ pre-eminent position in post-war society than her passion for throwing the biggest and best parties. It was typified by an occasion the following year in the Season of 1920. Almina and Eve had been to a ball given by Sir Ernest Cassel, one of the wealthiest financiers of the era, for his daughter Edwina. Almina so enjoyed it that she said to her daughter, ‘Let’s give a ball of our own tomorrow night.’ Eve was horrified and wondered how on earth they could manage it. (Eve was always considerably more grounded than Almina; perhaps she could imagine the chef’s reaction in the kitchen at being asked to prepare Seamore House-worthy party food with less than 24 hours’ notice.) Almina informed Eve that she had ‘already invited everyone here so I’m sure we will have a wonderful time.’

It seems Almina hadn’t informed her husband, though. Not that he liked big parties, anyway. The next day was a Friday and Carnarvon left on the 6.00 p.m. train every Friday for Highclere. Eve could tell he knew something was in the air from the way he hovered around. Almina was desperate to get on with preparations and asked Roberts
repeatedly whether His Lordship had yet left. Eventually he did, but Roberts had to report to Almina that Carnarvon had walked past the back stairs just as ten dozen lobsters were being brought in by the footmen. The ball was a total success and, when Almina arrived at Highclere the following day, Carnarvon’s only reaction was to ask her with a smile whether she was not very tired. A wise man knows how to pick his battles.

Lord Carnarvon was expert at dealing with the whims of his more capricious family members. Aubrey was diverting himself from his anguish by spending more and more time in his beloved Albania. In the late summer of 1920 he was on his way to Constantinople when he discovered that the Prime Minister of Bulgaria was on the train. Stamboliski introduced himself to Aubrey, who later wrote to his brother that ‘the fellow looked like a brigand moving through a blackberry bush.’ This was clearly not as damning as it sounds, because he also requested that Carnarvon ask Stamboliski to Highclere, which Carnarvon duly did. The Bulgarian premier signed the guestbook on 17 October. Bulgaria had sided with the Central Powers in the Great War and Carnarvon had got nervous about his guest, despite Aubrey’s assurances that he was totally pro-British. He decided to invite some of his Orientalist acquaintances along to keep the conversation ticking over; Sir William Garstin and T. E. Lawrence were also staying. In the end, a good time was had by all. Carnarvon showed Stamboliski the stud and the farm and discovered that, unsurprisingly given his guest had been born to peasant farmers, they could talk at length about livestock.

All the family were in London for the Armistice Day
memorial on 11 November 1920. It was a day of national mourning and thanksgiving. Hundreds of thousands of people lined the streets to pay their respects as the gun carriage, drawn by six black horses and bearing the coffin of the Unknown British Warrior, began its journey through London. King George V unveiled the Cenotaph and, after two minutes’ silence, the body of the Unknown Warrior, which had been transported from an unmarked grave in France, was carried towards its final resting place. It was accompanied by 100 recipients of the Victoria Cross and buried with great solemnity in the central nave of Westminster Abbey. George V threw a handful of the soil from a Flanders battlefield into the grave. Families of those men whose place of burial was unknown, such as Frederick Fifield and Tommy Hill, could derive comfort from the respect paid to this one unknown comrade. The moment marked a line in the nation’s grieving. People up and down the land remained traumatised, but at least now the country had honoured its dead.

The following April Aubrey and Mary had a son, Auberon Mark Henry Yvo Molyneux, who was named for the cousin and friend whom Aubrey still mourned. Aubrey had always been typically eccentric in his attitude to children. He wrote to his brother Mervyn on the subject of Mary’s pregnancy, ‘It’s very provoking. I have never looked on children as anything but a misfortune – like public speaking a duty and a bore – but there it is’. But he and the family needed some positive news. It was good to have a new baby when for years life had felt like one long succession of funerals.