Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey (6 page)

Almina arrived at Highclere as an outsider, but with an enormous sense of excitement and self-confidence. How could she not, when recent events suggested that she had finally managed to combine the social prestige brought by her marriage with the fabulous wealth of her father? Now she was sure of her place and her role, for the first time in her life. She had a title that told her who she was: as of now, Almina Wombwell was the 5th Countess of Carnarvon.

But she was only nineteen and this role, this title, was so much bigger than she was. She was the Countess, but she was also a teenager, a high-spirited girl sure of herself one moment, nervy the next. Moving into Highclere was, if not humbling (Almina was never in her life humbled), definitely
overwhelming. Relics of Almina’s desire to impress herself upon the place – literally – are still visible all over the Castle. She engraved and stamped her new initials and the Carnarvon coronet on innumerable household accessories, from visitor books and notebooks, to stationery, travelling trunks, linens, menu cards and calling cards.

She brought trunks full of clothes and set about installing her belongings in the bureaus and cupboards of Highclere. She also brought with her one trusted personal servant, Miss Mary Adams, her lady’s maid, who helped her to unpack and to settle in. She, alone of all the servants, was allowed to sleep on the same storey as her mistress. Mary was an ally and a friend, the other stranger at Highclere who was her eyes and ears in the servants’ hall, a bridge between the staff and their new mistress. In those first few weeks after her marriage, whilst touring the estate, meeting the local gentry and the tenants, finding her feet, Almina grew to rely completely on Mary.

Almina had always been the special child, doted upon; lavished with love by her mother and with money by her father. Her wedding had enshrined her own sense of her importance. But actually, now she had signed up for life as the Countess of Carnarvon, she had to adjust to living in a world in which she was not the centre of the universe. The furniture and the superb paintings didn’t really belong to her, or even to her husband, but to the house, to Highclere as a presence in its own right. The Castle, layered with decorations reflecting the taste of its inhabitants over the years, had to be sustained across the generations. When Almina arrived, the Drawing Room was in need of refurbishment. Alfred de Rothschild had given
her bolts of green silk as part of his wedding present and she used them to cover the walls. Following his taste, she redecorated in the style of the
ancien régime
, with gilded ceilings and doors. The green silk damask had been inspired by Marie Antoinette’s sitting room at Versailles. Meissen porcelain was displayed on the eighteenth-century furniture that Almina loved.

Six weeks after their wedding, Lord Carnarvon left Highclere to go to Scotland to shoot, as was his custom once the grouse season opened on 12 August. Given his newly improved bank balance, he decided to take a month’s shooting at a grouse moor near the Balmoral estate. Almina could go with him or not, as she pleased, but there was no possibility that he would alter his routines for her.

She was very keen to go to Scotland with Carnarvon on his shooting trip. It wasn’t the custom for ladies to go out with the gentlemen, and nor in fact was Almina particularly interested in riding, but she enjoyed her time with her husband and began to get to know his friends. Lord Carnarvon, who was an excellent shot, took a party of close friends with him: their royal highnesses Prince Victor and Prince Freddie Duleep Singh and James Rutherford, his agent at Highclere, amongst others. It was a very male occasion, and Almina must have felt like an adornment rather than a participant, but it was a magnificent landscape, and a very popular and fashionable place, given the proximity to Balmoral, which was adored by Queen Victoria.

Alfred de Rothschild was elegantly networking behind the scenes in London. He hoped to engineer a visit by the Prince of Wales to Highclere Castle; it would testify to the success of Almina’s arrival and give a royal seal of
approval. Highclere was renowned as one of the most exciting shoots in England and the Prince knew the food would be exquisite and copious in quantity, the wines the best that Alfred de Rothschild could procure. His private secretary confirmed the dates for the visit.

The royal party had accepted an invitation for the middle of December and Almina threw herself into preparations. Carnarvon continued to travel from one estate to the next with the same band of friends. He went to Bretby, his house in Nottinghamshire, and to Shelford for more shooting. In fact, by 1 December, Lord Carnarvon had shot on more than sixty days since the season opened.

Back at Highclere, Almina set about spending an extraordinary amount of money on redecorating, hiring extra staff and laying in provisions. It is unlikely that she had met the Prince before since, despite the fact he was a great friend of Alfred’s, he didn’t visit Halton House at the same time as her. Alfred’s advice on the delicate details that would ensure a successful visit was most welcome. The two men had been socialising together for years, either at Marlborough House, the Prince’s London home, at Halton House or at Seamore Place, Alfred’s London house, where the Prince enjoyed the intimate dinners that Alfred delighted in giving. The Prince of Wales was a gourmand and, as the next King and Emperor, tremendously grand. Almina wanted to make sure that every little comfort had been thought about, that all was opulent and perfectly delightful, just as it should be and just as he was used to. She threw money at the situation, spending
£
360,000 in today’s terms on the three-day visit.

The first task was to redecorate a bedroom for the Prince
of Wales. A large bed was commissioned (the Prince was notoriously unable to curb the amount he ate and had a girth of some four foot), and new French furniture, vases and clocks filled the room, which was hung with red silk damask. The adjoining dressing room received the same treatment.

Almina spent
£
856 13s 9d with W. Turner Lord & Co., who were specialist decorative contractors based in Mount Street, Mayfair. Carpets were bought from Turbeville Smith & Co. for
£
312 13s 2d. China, lamps and curtains were bought and hired. The billiard table was re-covered; hundreds of the finest beeswax candles were bought.

Extra carriages and horses were hired and special railway carriages were commissioned to bring everything, and everyone, down to Highclere. Records of various gifts give an idea of the extent of the preparations. There were gifts in November to four inspectors at Paddington Station, and all the stationmasters from Reading to Whitchurch, Newbury, Highclere and Burghclere benefited from Almina’s determination that no detail was too small and that nothing should go wrong. There were also gifts to postmasters, police superintendents and all the tenant farmers on the estate.

As for the food, which was to be a central part of the whole proceedings, no expense was spared either on the supplies or the kitchen staff. All the meals were rigorously planned in advance, and then Almina dispatched Streatfield to London to hire Savoy chefs and waiters, to order flowers by the armful from Veitch of Chelsea, and to purchase an incredible amount of provisions, wines and champagnes. Streatfield spent
£
215 4s 4d (approximately
£
22,000
today) on meat, chickens, eggs, fruit, and chocolates from Charbonnel.

The stoical Streatfield was a loyal retainer and well used to carrying out orders without so much as a raised eyebrow. In private, he might nonetheless have looked somewhat askance at all this expense. He had been the house steward at Highclere for eight years and had seen a fair few entertainments for the great and the good in his time, but the 4th Earl’s taste in party-giving had not been on the scale of Almina’s. And, of course, Streatfield’s shopping bill for the weekend was more than four times his annual salary, a fact he surely cannot have failed to notice.

When the day of the visit finally arrived, Almina herself wrote the menus for that night, in French, as always. The placement of guests at dinner had taken some time to arrange and her clothes had been planned in advance with Adams. Five or six different outfits might be needed each day. The bare minimum at such an occasion was a dress for the morning, one for walking in the afternoon, a tea dress and then evening clothes.

Almina stood next to her husband, near the iron-studded walnut door of Highclere Castle, to greet the Prince of Wales as he alighted from the carriage. As she dropped into a deep curtsey, Almina hoped that she had done everything in her powers to provide amusement and entertainment for him. The Castle loomed up behind them in the low winter light. Inside, it was lit by over 150 oil lamps, and candles provided a warm glow around the galleries and in the new Drawing Room.

The Earl and Countess of Carnarvon had given a great
deal of thought to the question of their other guests. It was usual to invite both local friends of the Prince of Wales and some of his familiar Marlborough set, whose company he clearly enjoyed. In the end it was a large party that included family: Lord and Lady Burghclere and friends: among them the Earl and Countess of Westmoreland, Lord Ashburton, Lord and Lady Chelsea, the Nevilles and the Colebrookes. They also asked the Russian Ambassador, who was a friend of the Prince’s. The crowd were there partly to enjoy themselves, of course, but they had also been asked in order to entertain the Prince and had been selected with his interests in mind.

Dinner that night was an Epicurean feast and the Prince was extremely appreciative. Almina had received numerous compliments already on her exquisite taste, on the beauty of the Drawing Room she had decorated and the charming and comfortable bedroom she had put at his disposal. The Prince was in a humour to be pleased with everything, and dinner was never going to disappoint. It began with a soup, a consommé, followed by the fish course: turbot
grillé
Dugléré (after Adolphe Dugléré, who was one of the most famous chefs in nineteenth-century Paris and had cooked for the Rothschild family for years). Then came the entrées: pâtés and a chicken dish. Next up were the roasts, a vast amount of game birds, stuffed with foie gras, all served with numerous vegetable side dishes. It was followed by
soufflé d’orange
and ices.

After the entertainments (on this occasion, accounts show that a band played for the assembled guests in the Music Room), there was a little light supper of cold meats such as pheasant and cold beef. Unsurprisingly, the Prince retired
to bed satiated and in an excellent mood. Almina must have breathed a deep sigh of relief.

The shoot took place the following day, and this was Carnarvon’s territory. It covered two drives on the Highclere estate: Biggs and Warren. The higher chalk downland was essentially a rabbit warren and wasn’t farmed, so as to provide excellent shooting. There were eight guns – HRH the Prince of Wales, Lord Westmoreland, Lord Burghclere, Lord Chelsea, the Hon. Seymour Fortescue, Sir Edward Colebrooke, M. Boulatsell and Lord Carnarvon. Between them they shot a tremendous quantity of birds and rabbits – it was the era of quantity rather than quality in shooting circles.

The Castle’s game book records the disposal of all the game shot at Highclere – nothing was ever wasted. It was compiled using figures given to the housekeeper by the head gamekeeper who, at the time of the Prince of Wales’s visit, was a man called Cross, soon to be replaced by the long-serving Henry Maber. Flicking through the pages it is possible to track the social life of the Castle from year to year, and mostly there are relatively modest lists of game given to guests at house party weekends. But on the pages that record the Prince’s shoot, the columns are full; the list goes on and on. Like everything else about that three-day stay, the extravagance is startling.

Ordinarily, guns were given six pheasants each, but the Prince was given twelve. The long list of recipients demonstrates the Prince’s wide social network: birds were sent to the Russian Ambassador and Nellie Melba, as well as to Mr Horace Voules, editor of
Truth
magazine, a well-known investigative periodical. (It is tempting here to imagine a
delicate bribe to a forerunner of the paparazzi – the Prince was frequently the subject of gossip in the media, unsurprisingly given that he was an enthusiastic playboy throughout his life.) Marie Wombwell, Almina’s mother, was sent a brace of birds, some were sent to Newbury Hospital, and even the waiters, the band and the visiting valets were given pheasant. The lamp-men, however, were given rabbits.

The visit was a tremendous success. It could not have gone off more perfectly, and Carnarvon must have felt delighted that his new wife had orchestrated the event so well. She had dazzled her guests and overseen a series of exquisite dinners and entertainments. Clearly, Almina’s ‘education for the drawing room’ had ensured she was an excellent administrator and talented hostess – she was already excelling in the role of the Countess of Carnarvon.

The little nineteen-year-old was no longer the naïve damsel that Lord Burghclere had observed six months ago, desperate for a decent family and giddy with excitement about her future. She was a wife, a Society hostess. She was a triumph.