Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey (15 page)

This routine of winter in Egypt and spring and summer at Highclere was disrupted in 1913 when Almina’s mother grew very ill. Marie had been a key presence throughout Almina’s married life, coming to Highclere for weekend parties and for Christmas with Porchy and Eve, looking after the children in London when Lord and Lady Carnarvon were away. Almina adored her all her life and the bond they had formed when times were much harder was sustained when Almina’s circumstances changed. It was a terrible blow when Marie’s health began to fail in spring 1913. Almina’s instinct was to bring her to Highclere and care for her there, with the aid of Dr Johnnie, but Marie was adamant that she wanted to visit her native France one last time.

Marie Wombwell’s death was announced in the
Daily Mail
on 1 October 1913. She had passed away the previous week at her house in Bruton Street. Marie had got her wish and travelled to France, taking the waters in Vernetles-Bains with her daughter by her side, but Almina had been concerned that the medical care there was not as good as that in London and the women returned to Mayfair. For six weeks Almina put into practice everything she had learned nursing her husband over the years to make her mother’s last days as comfortable as possible. She owed her an enormous amount, from her French charm to her determination and self-belief, and when Marie was gone, Almina was lost without her. Alfred was terribly saddened. He and Marie had been companions for almost forty years.

A few days later, Almina’s uncle, Sir George Wombwell, also died. He had stood by her all those years when rumours about her paternity circulated and had stepped up to give her away on her wedding day. Sir George and Lady Julia had often been at the Castle when Marie had been visiting and now, with his loss, it must have felt as if one more link to her past and to her mother had been broken.

She went home to Highclere and resolved to resume all her duties, but never had the everyday tasks of hosting her husband’s friends and business contacts seemed such a struggle. Earlier in the year, Almina had been delighted to write to Rutherford from Egypt to accept a request to become the Patroness of Cold Ash Hospital, which lay five miles north of Highclere. She had always said she would do anything to help them, and now, more determined than ever that nursing was her vocation, she applied herself to finding out how she could be most useful at the hospital.

The guests at the Highclere house parties had always been eclectic, and now they were becoming more than a little odd. The Earl had been interested in the Occult for years, an interest that deepened the more time he spent in Egypt. By 1912 he occasionally employed a palmist to read his palm and quite frequently engaged a clairvoyant to hold séances at Highclere. There was nothing unusual in that. Spiritualism, which had begun as an import from the United States in the 1850s, rapidly became a craze. The first national Spiritualist meeting in the UK was held in 1890, by which time it was a genuine mass movement. All over the country, people were sitting in circles, hands joined, hoping to make contact with the spirit world and receive messages from the dead. There were celebrity fans such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the author
of the Sherlock Holmes books, who wrote extensively on the phenomenon.

Sometimes the séances were private affairs, but sometimes they were offered as entertainment at a house party. Porchy remembered observing several, sometimes with his sister, Eve. They were held in one of the upstairs guest bedrooms, with the shutters closed against any glimmer of light, and could be very tense occasions. Once, Porchy and Eve witnessed a bowl of flowers levitating off the table. Eve got so nervous she reportedly had to go into a nursing home for a fortnight’s rest. At one, Howard Carter and a female guest were present, and the lady was placed in a trance in order to channel a spirit message. She began to speak in a strange voice and a language that at first no one could identify. Carter proclaimed, in a tone of amazement, ‘It’s Coptic!’

Out in the real world, there were things far more frightening than inexplicably floating flowers or even the reappearance of long-dead languages. You didn’t need to be psychic to sense that something nasty was coming for the people of Highclere.

The staff of Highclere Castle in Almina’s day.

A part of the staff staircase in the Castle which begins in the basement and runs right up to the roof through several bedroom floors. The staircase was used in the filming of ITV1’s
Downton Abbey
.

Some of the staff of the Castle on an outing to Beacon Hill Lodge Gate in Edwardian times. Sometimes called Winchester Lodge, it was once the main gateway to the Estate from the south.

The bellboard in the lower ground corridor of the Castle, photographed in 2011 but exactly as it was 100 years ago.

The original staffroom of the Castle 100 years ago.

A group shot, taken by the 5th Earl of Carnavon in December 1895, of Albert, HRH The Prince of Wales, on his visit to Highclere Castle. Albert, later King Edward VII, is in the middle, standing behind Almina, seated with fur stole, on whose left (right in the picture) is Lady Winifred Herbert, the 5th Earl’s sister.

Almina pictured with her newborn son, later the 6th Earl of Carnarvon, in January 1899. He was always referred to as ‘Porchy’, never Henry, his real name.

Almina as front cover star of
Country Life
magazine in November 1902.
(photo credit i2.8)