Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey (16 page)

The 5th Earl and Countess of Carnarvon and Lady Evelyn, with the people of Newbury, celebrating the Coronation of George V in 1911.

Edwardian estate workers on the Castle grounds.

Panhard-Levassor motor carriages arriving at the Castle, c. 1910.

Living the Edwardian High Life at Highclere Castle.
(photo credit i2.12)

The summer of 1914 was delightfully warm. Almina arrived back from Egypt in late April and was only at Highclere for a few weeks before she made a week-long trip to Paris. On 11 June, the Earl and Countess were entertaining a large house party for the Newbury Races; amongst their guests were Mr and Mrs James Rothschild. If you were a casual observer, you might say it was business as usual, but a glance at the newspapers, or at Alfred de Rothschild’s distraught face as he sat puffing cigars nervously in the Smoking Room, would have told you otherwise.

Europe was on the brink of war, despite the best efforts of numerous people, including Alfred, to avert it. Alfred had placed his considerable powers of influence, his network of
contacts and his money at the disposal of the British government, acting as an unofficial intermediary between the unravelling Austro-Hungarian Empire and Germany. Half of Alfred’s family and friends were based in Europe and it was agony to him that hostilities were about to open up between countries that had until relatively recently been bound together so closely. The growing certainty that conflict was inevitable left him worried sick about loved ones on both sides and suffering from a sense of helplessness.

The challenge of holding back war was too big for any single individual, family or politician, despite all the desperate, behind-the-scenes negotiations. For months the newspapers had carried stories of Germany, Russia and Austria all conscripting men into their armies and hurriedly constructing more railways to transport them. Germany, although virtually landlocked, had been building up a Navy big enough to rival Britain’s.

Almina sensed what was coming and made a decision. She had, after all, been thinking about it for at least two years. She consulted Lord Carnarvon, who was lukewarm, but when pressed, agreed that it might be a possibility. Lady Almina wanted to convert Highclere into a hospital for injured officers, to bring in the most expert medical staff and provide the best of everything a soldier could possibly need to recover, from state-of-the-art equipment and pioneering operations to abundant fresh food and soft clean sheets. Almina’s instinct was to create a hospital that soothed and cheered the senses of men who had been half destroyed by horror.

With her husband’s assent secured, Almina’s next step was to speak to the military authorities. She would need their
assistance at least on the administrative side, if not the financing. Almina already had a third conversation planned that would resolve the problem of who was going to pay for everything: the money question could wait. It was entirely typical of Almina’s life that when she decided to establish a military hospital, the person she elected to call to discuss her plans should be the highest-ranking official in the Army. Straight to the top – that might as well have been Almina’s motto.

Field Marshal Earl Kitchener, Sirdar of Egypt, accepted her invitation to lunch in late June and arrived dressed in an immaculate tweed suit, accompanied by his military secretary Colonel Evelyn Fitzgerald. The famous hero was now sixty-four years old but he was an upright, imposing man, with the piercing eyes and perfectly groomed moustache that would shortly be put to such iconic use in the famous recruiting poster ‘Your Country Needs You’.

He was also a longstanding friend of the Carnarvons and Alfred de Rothschild. Almina had prepared a delicious summer lunch and showed Lord Kitchener around, explaining what she wished to do. He was impressed by her enthusiasm and sincerity. She needed his approval and blessing, and a promise that he would encourage the Services, particularly Southern Command, to take her up on her offer. She got it.

Porchy had been allowed to join them for lunch. He was an overexcited Eton schoolboy in awe of meeting one of his heroes, and years later he still vividly recalled the moment his father turned to K, as he called the great man, and said, ‘In future, dear K, our telegraphic address will have to be Carnarvon, Amputate, Highclere.’

Almina was euphoric. She had never doubted for a moment that she would bring the necessary people round to her way of thinking. She immediately set about laying plans. The first step, naturally, was to secure the finances. And equally naturally, that was as easy as getting on the train to London and making her way to the Rothschild offices in New Court, St Swithin’s Lane, to speak to Alfred.

Alfred had never ceased to be astoundingly generous with his time, money and affection over the years. It was hardly unprecedented for Almina to apply to him for support – the electric lights in Highclere were testament to that. Porchy remembered being taken up to visit his relatives from time to time and relishing the fact that he was likely to find all three Rothschild brothers at work, all of them only too willing to press as much as ten gold sovereigns into his hand. Alfred occasionally used to remonstrate gently with Almina, saying, ‘Oh, puss-cat, I gave you ten thousand pounds only last week. Whatever have you done with it, my darling child?’ But he never refused her; he simply took out his chequebook and unscrewed the lid of his pen.

Even so, this request was for a lot of money. Almina asked Alfred to give her
£
25,000 for the set-up costs. He agreed unhesitatingly. Alfred was delighted to help. He had been actively trying to avert conflict, but now that it was coming, he switched his attention to supporting the British war effort. He lent Halton House, his beloved country pleasure ground, to the armed forces for the duration of the hostilities. (It would be used as a training centre, complete with dug-out trenches, for some of Kitchener’s ‘first hundred thousand volunteers’ later in the year.) He also supported other grand ladies in their relief work. (Almina was by no
means the only Society hostess engaged in war work – Lady Sutherland was to set up a field hospital in France, and the indomitable Dowager Countess of Carnarvon, Elsie, would play a crucial part in alleviating the suffering of soldiers caught up in the savage fighting in Gallipoli.)

The Rothschilds had always had a strong commitment to philanthropic work and were particularly interested in supporting hospitals. The family interest might have been one of the spurs for Almina’s own fascination with nursing, and probably fuelled her belief that it was a perfectly reasonable thing to aspire to do. After all, the Evelina Children’s Hospital that was eventually merged with Guy’s and St Thomas’s had begun as a Rothschild-financed memorial hospital for Lady Evelina de Rothschild, who had died in childbirth in 1866.

Almina left New Court with a sense of purpose and an iron determination. She was going to make things happen.

The eighteenth of July was the start of the last big house party at Highclere for years. There were twenty-six guests, plus all their servants. Among the visitors were General Sir John Cowans, General Sir John Maxwell, Aubrey Herbert and Howard Carter. Lord Carnarvon was very much alive to the threatening state of affairs, and advised Sir John to recall his wife and daughter from Aix-en-Provence in France and Homburg in Germany, immediately.

The Earl, like the rest of the country, was worried that the Germans had been building up their Navy in order to blockade Britain. If that did happen, food shortages were likely. The farm at Highclere would be a crucial resource in the war effort and, in fact, Carnarvon had already received a large offer for his grain stock. Considering that he was morally responsible for the welfare of the entire household,
as well as the tenants, he refused the offer and set about adding to his flocks and herds. He also bought one and a half tons of cheese and an immense amount of tea.

Having sorted out the provisions, Carnarvon went to the Bank of England and asked to withdraw
£
3,000 in gold. The clerk suggested that perhaps His Lordship might consider upping that amount to
£
5,000, which he duly did. Once he had deposited the gold in his bank in Newbury, he was in a position to provide 243 men, women and children with all essentials for at least three months.

The clerk’s tip proved to be very well judged when from 31 July there was a run on the banks as the nation realised with horror that war was now imminent.

Meanwhile, the rest of the family was also caught up in preparations. Aubrey and Porchy were both desperate to fight, despite being either too blind or too young. Carnarvon knew he would never see active service, given his health problems, but he volunteered to advise on aerial photography, should the need arise, which in due course it did.

Lord Carnarvon’s sister Winifred and her husband Herbert, Lord Burghclere, had been in Europe since June, but so tense was the atmosphere that they turned around and made their way back from the Vichy spa at which they’d been intending to stay some weeks. They arrived back in London on 25 July, with a copy of the newspaper announcing news of the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia following the assassination of the Archduke. Winifred wrote to Lord Carnarvon that it was ‘the last Sunday morning of the old world’. Arriving unexpectedly at her London house on Charles Street, she added that she had just enough servants to contrive ‘a picnic existence’.

After all the build-up, the excuse to take the final dramatic step towards war had been the assassination of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand on 28 June 1914 by a Serb nationalist. Once the ultimatum came and went, Austria declared war on 28 July. That triggered a domino effect as various treaties were invoked and all the great powers waded in. Russia mobilised on 31 July and Germany could therefore claim that it was acting in its own defence when it declared war against Russia on 1 August and against France on 3 August. Britain had signed the Entente Cordiale with France in 1904 and the Anglo-Russian Entente in 1907, both of which dictated that it should fight against Germany, but its hand was in any case forced by Germany’s invasion of neutral Belgium. Great Britain declared war on Germany on 4 August 1914.