Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey (17 page)

The Highclere guestbook has ‘August 1–4 WAR!’ written in a shaky hand across the top of the page that records the names of a few guests who stayed on at the house that weekend. Leonard Woolley was staying as was Lady Maxwell and Dr Johnnie. The scale of the imminent carnage was literally unimaginable to those men and women carefully studying the newspapers and sipping on a brandy to steady the nerves, or downstairs in the kitchens, discussing the latest news as they scrubbed potatoes or washed dishes.

Already it was obvious that recruits would be needed. Porchy, sixteen years old, declared he would join the cavalry. Kitchen maids joshed footmen about whether they were planning to sign up. Teenagers with nothing but bravado to sustain them boasted of their bravery. Everyone thought the war would be over by Christmas.
There was nervousness, of course, but also confidence and a sincere passion to serve King, Country and Empire.

Upstairs and downstairs, the people of Highclere were staring life-changing tragedy in the face. They just didn’t know it yet.

After the tense summer of waiting for something definite to happen, once war was declared there was an explosion of activity.

Almina immediately pressed her sister-in-law, Winifred, for an introduction to a woman called Agnes Keyser, the founder of the Edward VII Hospital. Agnes had been a very rich, very pretty young socialite of the 1870s and 1880s. Somewhat inevitably she came to the attention of the Prince of Wales. They became friends and, later, lovers. Agnes allowed him to use her house in Belgravia for entertaining his various other friends, including Mrs Alice Keppel. The two formed a strong bond and their relationship, which was accepted within court circles
and even by Queen Alexandra, lasted until the King’s death.

The Prince of Wales’s extravagant generosity meant that when he came to visit Agnes in Wilton Place he brought presents for everyone in the household, from the housekeeper to the newest scullery maid. But when the Boer War broke out and Agnes discovered a vocation for nursing, his assistance became more consequential.

Agnes was horrified by the plight of officers returning from the Boer war, whom she discovered were mostly highly self-sacrificing, unable to pay for surgeons’ fees and consequently medically neglected. She used her own money to finance a hospital but relied on her connection to the King to secure the co-operation of the most distinguished doctors and surgeons. She had a genius for organisation and by 1914 was a very well-respected humanitarian.

Here was the perfect role model for Almina. She was absolutely determined to meet Agnes and ask her advice. But Sister Agnes, as she liked to be known, was already extremely busy with her own hospital. As soon as war was declared, she was offered five private houses to expand the work she was already doing, and had just taken on an extra surgeon and another house doctor when Almina sent a note requesting a meeting.

Almina, very practised in getting her own way, was insistent, and eventually Agnes granted her half an hour, although she stayed standing throughout, saying she was too busy to sit. Almina took her cue from her more experienced colleague and refused a seat. She put her case simply and clearly, and Agnes was so won over by the woman standing in front of her that she embraced her warmly as the two
parted. Almina left Sister Agnes’s hospital armed with practical advice from a rigorously organised and experienced nurse, and full of inspiration.

Across the country, dozens of well-off women in similar circumstances to Almina were also rushing to establish nursing homes and hospitals. The need was desperate. Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service had just 463 trained nurses when war was declared, although it was rapidly being augmented by Territorial Nursing Services and other voluntary organisations.

Meanwhile, the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was preparing its departure for France, commanded by Sir John French and under the direction of Lord Kitchener. The latter had previously been planning to return to Egypt to resume his duties, and was in fact waiting at Dover to board a steamer bound for France when he received a telephone call from the Prime Minister requesting his immediate return to London. On 5 August, Lord Kitchener, now the Secretary of State for War, confirmed to the government’s Council of War that the Army’s forces would cross the channel immediately. Fourteen thousand extra horses had been secured for the purpose by General Sir John Cowans, the General Quartermaster (and Highclere house guest back in July, in what was rapidly feeling like a vanished age).

Kitchener was doubtful about the French capacity to defend against the Germans, but in truth, the British were scarcely better placed. The entire Army’s strength was 250,000 men, of whom nearly half were stationed overseas. There was of course the Territorial Army, founded in 1908 and made up of a further 250,000 volunteers, some of whom
had even attended short training camps. The German professional Army, by contrast, was 700,000 strong, and by 10 August a further three million men had been called up.

Still, the nation was buoyed by the fact that its great military hero was leading the charge and the British Expeditionary Force began to deploy just three days after war was declared. It was led by officers in scarlet or blue coats, carefully pulling on their white gloves as they returned the salute of the staff officers who were issuing orders to the men. The commanding officers rode beautifully groomed and burnished horses. The whole scene was like a pageant, unchanged in the last two hundred years.

Aubrey Herbert, with amazing bloody-mindedness, disregarded the fact that he had been rejected from both the professional Army and the Territorials on the grounds that he was more than half-blind. It was true he was somewhat disadvantaged in that area, but he was also highly educated, with a First in history from Oxford; he was also a seasoned diplomat, fluent in six languages and passionate about the national cause, and he was damned if he was going to stay at home. So he got a uniform made, a complete copy of the one worn by the Irish Guards, in which regiment his brother-in-law was a colonel. When the Guards marched out of Wellington Barracks opposite Buckingham Palace early on the morning of 12 August 1914, he simply fell into step. His mother Elsie and wife Mary waved him off at Victoria Station and Aubrey sat with his friends in a train carriage bound for Southampton, to board the boat to the Continent. He wasn’t discovered until they all disembarked in France, and by that time it was too late for the Army to send the stowaway back, so they took him on as an interpreter.

Aubrey had written to Winifred as he prepared to go off to war. His letter is charming in its expression of love for his sister and poignant in its naïve optimism.

Aubrey’s gallant mission to serve as a frontline soldier didn’t last long. The Irish Guards travelled northeast on foot and by train, welcomed everywhere by the French Army and civilians. Finally reaching the Front, Aubrey dismounted from his horse to march with the troops through a village and make some sort of reply to the German guns they could hear. He noted that he went into the first fight prepared only for peace as he had left his revolver and sword on his horse tethered in the woods behind. Scarcely had they reached the battle lines at Mons before they came under fire, and less than a day later were swept up in the retreat.

The British force’s role was to protect the Fifth French Army’s flank and prevent the Germans from executing their long-planned pincer movement to cut off the Allies. The BEF was outnumbered three to one but initially held the enemy with such good marksmanship that German soldiers
later reported they thought they were being fired at with machine guns rather than rifles. But once the French Army took the unexpected decision to retreat, there was nothing for it but to fall back, fighting rearguard actions and blowing up bridges all the way to the outskirts of Paris.

Aubrey found a role as a galloper, passing messages between commanders, riding a fast if troublesome horse called Moonshine. He out-galloped several bullets before, on 1 September, one found him, punching a hole in his side and passing clean through. A Royal Army medic dressed it and left him on a stretcher heavily dosed with morphine, slipping in and out of consciousness. Hours passed and suddenly Aubrey found he was being jabbed with the butt of a rifle. It was a German soldier doing the jabbing. The man must have got the shock of his life when the heavily wounded British soldier suddenly started mumbling in groggy but fluent German.

It was probably the fact that he was an object of interest that saved Aubrey’s life. That and the heavy dose of morphine that had kept him sedated and immobile. He was taken to a German-run field hospital and eventually moved on to the town of Viviers and deposited with other wounded officers in a makeshift triage station. Stories and information about friends were swapped and Aubrey’s spirits recovered, but conditions were tough. The only food was unleavened biscuits, the bandages had run out and the morphine was reserved for Germans. There was no way to get a message to anyone on the British side.

Back at Highclere, reports were filtering through of the Irish Guards’ involvement in the battle and the retreat. Everyone was terrified for Aubrey, who cut an unlikely
figure as a frontline soldier; after some days of anxious waiting, the Earl decided to take matters into his own hands. He set off in his largest motor car to go to rescue Aubrey from France. This was of course hugely dangerous, but at that point it was still just about possible. Carnarvon was on the brink of boarding a boat from Southampton when he heard the news that the French had retaken Viviers from the Germans. The seriously wounded had been left behind in the temporary hospital to wonder what was going on and listen in frustration to the machine-gun fire rattling around outside. Amongst them was his brother. Lord Carnarvon wired back to his sister, ‘Aubrey wounded in the stomach; left behind when Army retired; will wire.’

Winifred then received a rather more detailed account from Almina. It transpired that the information about Aubrey’s whereabouts had been given to her by Sir Mark Sykes, a great friend of Aubrey’s who shared his passion for the Middle East and was working in the War Office with Lord Kitchener. The moment Sir Mark received news, he called on Almina in London, who cabled Winifred with an update:

Almina’s telegrams caused some acerbic amusement amongst her Carnarvon relatives as they were never conspicuous for their brevity. She retorted that parsimony in communicating important information was a false economy, and she was right in this instance. Due to all the pressure in the form of telegrams flying around, Sir John French allowed Aubrey to be transported to Le Havre by road under the care of a nurse rather than in the somewhat rough troop hospital trains. Almina wasn’t going to let a little thing like a war get in the way of her policy of asking for what she wanted and, as usual, she was vindicated.

Winifred had just finished her breakfast when another telegram arrived, this one only as long as it needed to be to convey the good news. ‘Aubrey found; disembarks at Southampton today.’

He was met by Elsie, Mary, Lord Carnarvon and Dr Johnnie. Carnarvon wanted to take him straight to Highclere but Aubrey’s wife and mother preferred to have him in town, close to them, at a small nursing home run by Almina’s sister-in-law, Vera. The family set off slowly in convoy for London. Aubrey was incredibly lucky to have survived his injuries, and what was most extraordinary was that when he recovered, he went back to the front line. His war was far from over.

Fired up by her conversation with Agnes Keyser, and fuelled by nervous energy from fretting about Aubrey, Almina had set about the process of converting Highclere into a hospital. The first step was to find the people to staff it. She had appointed Dr Marcus Johnson, the family’s much-loved personal physician, as medical director. Dr Johnnie was a GP. He knew the Carnarvons well, had
travelled with them for years and was more like a member of the family than an employee. He had long ago grown used to being teased by the Earl who, indulging his love of practical jokes, once planted a piece of Gorgonzola cheese in one of poor Dr Johnnie’s travelling trunks and teased him relentlessly about the smell wafting from his cabin. Dr Johnson moved in to the Castle on 12 August 1914 and proved himself to be a capable administrator and the perfect right-hand man for Almina, whom he adored.