Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey (34 page)

Lord Carnarvon arrived back in Luxor on 6 March; tempers had cooled and he and Carter were friends again. A few days later they were discussing their plans for the next phase of the work in Lord Carnarvon’s hotel room. He was still feeling tired and slightly unwell, and he complained to Carter that he felt rather poorly.

Doctors advised more rest, so he took to his bed as Eve hurried off to Cairo to see her maid Marcelle, a casualty of the Egyptian heat who was returning to England, onto the ship to Marseilles. Carter visited Carnarvon every day and he seemed to be stronger, so he followed Lady Evelyn to Cairo on 14 March and settled in to the Continental Hotel. He still wasn’t right, though, and had to leave one social engagement because he was feeling ‘very seedy’.

Eve nursed him constantly and tried to suppress her rising anxiety. Her father was never in the greatest of health, but Egypt usually made him better, not worse. She wrote to Carter a few days later to tell him that Pierre Lacau was laid up with flu but added, ‘what is much more important is that the old man is very, very seedy himself … all the
glands in his neck started swelling … and he had a high temperature.’ Given the hounding that they had already received at the hands of the press, Eve was anxious to keep her father’s worsening illness a secret. She ended her letter, ‘I wish, Dear, you were here.’

Dr Alan Gardiner was also staying and wrote to his wife, ‘our great sorrow during the last few days has been Carnarvon’s serious illness … Evelyn has been splendid, really, a magnificent little girl full of pluck and common sense and devoted to her father. I really am extremely fond of her.’

News reached Carter from Mr Lythgoe that Carnarvon had gone down with blood poisoning and was gravely ill. By the time Richard Bethell, Lord Carnarvon’s secretary, wrote to him to say that he was moving into the hotel to be of assistance, Carter had already received a telegram from Eve asking him to come to Cairo and was about to set off. Panic was rising. Eve telegraphed Almina, and General Sir John Maxwell cabled Porchy’s commanding officer in India. He was to grant him three months’ compassionate leave and expedite his immediate passage to Egypt. Porchester left that afternoon, leaving his wife Catherine to pack up their house and return to England.

Almina was at Seamore Place when she received Eve’s telegram. She had been ill for weeks now, and seeing virtually nobody apart from Dr Johnnie. She loved to talk on the telephone, though, and had been in regular touch with Eve and her husband, so she knew that tensions had been getting the better of him and the work was on hold until everyone had had a rest. She was still totally unprepared for this escalation in the seriousness of Eve’s communication.
Carnarvon was grievously ill, two thousand miles away, and their daughter was clearly terrified.

It was the sort of situation Almina possessed all the right qualities to handle. Immediately she phoned De Havilland and enquired about chartering a plane and a pilot. Then she threw some clothes in a bag, informed Dr Johnnie that they were leaving for Egypt immediately, and set off for Croydon aerodrome. They flew in a three-seater plane to Paris, took the train to Lyons and picked up a second plane to take them all the way to Cairo. A journey that could still take up to three weeks by boat and train took them three days. Almina rushed to her husband’s bedside and, pausing long enough only to embrace Eve and resume her nurse’s air of patient calm, set about nursing him back to health. She had done it many times before and would not countenance anything less than a complete recovery. Her beloved husband was in the hour of his triumph; he simply must get better.

On 27 March
The Times
reported that Lord Carnarvon had rallied. The King sent a message of encouragement. On the 28th it informed its readers that the Earl of Carnarvon had relapsed. There was a press bulletin from Seamore Place on the 30th: ‘patient slightly better; temperature 102; condition still very serious.’ By 3 April the press were reporting every few hours on Lord Carnarvon’s progress. His illness was now the story: on the state of his health depended the next chapter in the Tutankhamun saga that had gripped the entire world.

On 1 April Alan Gardiner went in to see Carnarvon. ‘He had a terrible crisis just before 6 o’clock … I was quite miserable about it … why am I so fond of him … and
that poor little girl, it nearly breaks my heart with her devotion, there she sits day and night tired out and waits. Yesterday he was given up for hopeless but Evelyn and Lady Carnarvon insisted he would pull through. This morning he insisted on being shaved and has been much better.’

By the time Lord Porchester arrived, Carnarvon had developed pneumonia and was delirious. Almina was losing hope. Henry stared down at the feverish man; the father he hardly knew, who he had only lately begun to realise loved him dearly. The war had separated them at the time when they might have become friends, and now it seemed it was too late to catch up.

In the early hours of Thursday 5 April, Carnarvon appeared to rally briefly. ‘I have heard the call, I am preparing.’ He died shortly after.

Almina was kneeling at his side, weeping softly. Gently, she closed his eyes. One of the nurses rushed to fetch Porchester and Lady Evelyn. As they made their way to their father’s rooms, the hotel corridor was plunged into darkness. The lights went out all over Cairo. Back at Highclere, Lord Carnarvon’s beloved terrier Susie howled once, waking the housekeeper in whose room she was sleeping, and died.

Eve was inconsolable and, having kissed her father’s hands, her brother helped her out of the room. Howard Carter, Alan Gardiner, Dr Johnnie, the Bethells and the Maxwells were all gathered in the sitting room and, as Porchy comforted his sister, Dr Johnnie went in to help Almina.

Nobody slept much that night. The following morning, the new Earl of Carnarvon found Carter, eyes dull from exhaustion, reading the obituaries of his dear friend and patron. All the Egyptian newspapers were edged in black
as a mark of respect. There was a second wave of cables from all around the world, except this time they were of condolence, not congratulation.

Almina was distraught. Her children worried about her but she reassured them: they should get on and leave Egypt, she would make arrangements to bring Lord Carnarvon’s body home. So Evelyn and Porchester set off for Port Said, where they met Catherine en route from India and made their way back to England. Porchy, who had always disliked Egypt, couldn’t wait to get away. Eve had adored the place; she never went back.

As Almina arranged for her husband’s body to be embalmed, the press unleashed lavish speculation about the Curse of the Pharaohs. The biggest story in the world just kept growing.
The Times
reported more soberly, ‘Millions who do not ordinarily take much thought … of antiquities have watched the progress of [Lord Carnarvon’s] great adventure with deep and growing interest.’ The question was, what would happen next?

Howard Carter remained in Cairo with Almina until she departed with Lord Carnarvon’s body for England on the P&O steamship
Malova
, on Saturday 14 April. Carter returned to Luxor the following day, very low in spirit. There are no entries in his diary for the next week. He was an intensely private person with few close friends and was lost without the one he had worked alongside for fifteen years, with whom he had made the greatest archaeological discovery of all time. They should have been planning the opening of Tutankhamun’s sarcophagus together. But Carnarvon would not, after all, ever lay eyes on the innermost secrets of the tomb. It was for Howard Carter to come
face to face with Tutankhamun’s extraordinary funeral mask, without the man who had made that possible by his side.

Almina and Dr Johnnie made the long, slow voyage back. Lord Carnarvon had stipulated in his will that he wished to be buried in a simple grave at the top of Beacon Hill, alongside the remains of the Iron Age fort and looking out over the Highclere estate. They would land at Plymouth, to be met by Lady Evelyn, and take Lord Carnarvon’s body on a special train to Highclere. All the fight had gone out of Almina; this homecoming was an agonising crawl compared to their hope-fuelled dash just weeks ago.

It was a lovely fresh morning on 30 April two days after their return when the mourners gathered in the family chapel. The tall doors to the vaulted flint and brick building stood wide open. The green and cream tiled floor and beautifully carved pews could be glimpsed through the entrance as black-coated undertakers carefully carried the coffin out and loaded it into an Army field ambulance. A young soldier watched them and then climbed up to accompany the casket. Two undertakers climbed up after him and secured the coffin for the final leg of its journey.

The family had asked to be left in peace at this event, but it didn’t seem likely, given the enormous amount of coverage they had received ever since the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb.

The ambulance pulled away up the hill, past the dairy yard, the greenhouses and tenants’ cottages. Passing in front of the Castle, it was joined by three long black cars bearing Evelyn, Catherine, Lord Carnarvon’s three beloved sisters: Winifred, Margaret and Vera, and his brother Mervyn. Lord Burghclere was there but Aubrey had been staying at his
villa in Portofino and was too ill to make the journey, plagued by more problems with his failing sight. Dr Johnnie was there, as was Major Rutherford, the agent. Almina had set off alone in a car fifteen minutes earlier. The procession wound its way down Lime Avenue, a magnificent parade of pale-leaved trees, with rolling parkland stretching away on both sides, passed under the arch at Winchester Lodge and stopped by the golf course that Lord Carnarvon had laid out twenty years earlier along the lower stretches of Beacon Hill.

The new Earl of Carnarvon climbed down from the ambulance; Major Rutherford and Dr Johnnie got down from the cars. They were joined by a group of loyal servants already waiting at the foot of the hill including Mr Streatfield, Mr Fearnside, Mr Blake, Mr Storie and Mr Maber. Accompanied by the rectors of Highclere and Burghclere, the men began the climb to the grave, which had been dug and consecrated the previous day. It was a steep scramble between ancient juniper and thorn bushes.

The ambulance and cars continued to the edge of the golf course where the slope was gentlest and they could just about struggle up the shoulder of the hill. The cars stood out against the skyline as they arrived at the windswept summit, 900 feet above sea level, a grey lookout over the lush wooded landscape below. The ambulance followed behind, attached to a tractor for the last few feet of its journey.

Almina stood, all in black, at the graveside, and greeted the mourners as they arrived. They paused to survey the spectacular view. The whole of the late Earl’s adored Highclere was laid out before them, from the stud to the
farm, the lakes to the drives and woods. Nestled at the heart of it all was the Victorian Castle, the parkland around it dotted with follies built by his forebears. It provided such a contrast to the dust and deserts of Egypt. The 5th Earl had chosen a majestic, isolated burial site, awe-inspiring in a very different way to that of the barren sand mountains and jagged cliffs of the Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun.

Eight men from the estate bore the coffin from the ambulance and laid it on the wooden bearers over the grave. The casket had been made from an oak tree in the park and was draped in the late Earl’s purple, ermine-trimmed coronation robe; his coronet lay on top. At 11.00 a.m., Rev. Mr Jephson and Rev. Mr Best led the simple burial service that Lord Carnarvon had requested. Once it was concluded, the robe and coronet were handed to George Fearnside, the late Earl’s faithful valet. The plaque on the coffin was inscribed ‘George Edward Stanhope Molyneux Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon, born 26 June 1866, died 5 April 1923’.

As the mourners peeled away, clutching handkerchiefs to their eyes, they left Almina kneeling by her husband’s grave. A bi-plane hired by the
Daily Express
buzzed overhead; from within a photographer snapped shots of the widow that appeared the following day. Then, as now, the press could not resist pursuing every story to its limit.

The rumours continued to swirl around the Earl’s death. It was said that the ground on Beacon Hill was so difficult to dig that the coffin had to be laid vertically, and then that his faithful terrier was buried alongside him. Over the years the rumours and the fascination with the ‘Curse of the Pharaohs’ grew to support wild theories. Much was made of some coincidences that linked the Earl to Tutankhamun:
Lord Carnarvon had suffered from a troublesome knee and CT scans suggest one of Tutankhamun’s was fractured. A mosquito bite probably contributed to the death of each man: when Lord Carnarvon nicked the bite on his face it became infected, eventually killing him as the consequent blood poisoning overcame him. Experts later discovered that Tutankhamun had probably contracted malaria, which is transmitted by mosquitoes. Even the shape of Lord Carnarvon’s head proved of interest to the theorists. He often joked that he never lost his hats to anyone because they would only fit him: his head was slightly domed. Later on, experts would spend much time assessing the shape of Tutankhamun’s head, because there seemed to be a congenital domed shape to his skull. The idea that he had been struck on the head has now been dismissed – the indentation marks were probably due to carelessness in carrying out the mummification procedure rather than any skulduggery.

But for the 5th Earl’s family, the significance of his death was much more visceral, though it was not exactly simple. Aubrey wrote of his brother’s death, ‘One never knows how much one cares for a person until it is too late.’ The two men had always been close, but nonetheless this truism haunted Aubrey. Evelyn was bereft without her adored father; Almina likewise was devastated. And then there was Porchy, who had perhaps the heaviest burden. He had never been close to his father and now he had to succeed him. As he walked down the hill and surveyed the estate that was now his to uphold, he contemplated the great change that was coming to his life.