Aubrey Herbert: Remembering The Man Who Was Greenmantle

 

Remembering Aubrey Herbert At The Centenary

Of His Death

                                  Aubrey Nigel Henry Molyneux Herbert 

                                                    1880–1923

Aubrey Herbert died 100 years ago today, 26 September 1923, five months after his revered half-brother Porchy - George Herbert,  5th Earl of Carnarvon- the discoverer with Howard Carter of the Tomb of Tutankhamun.

 

Despite being born near blind Aubrey overcame his medical condition to lead a full life, but ironically died after a botched operation to restore his sight resulted in blood poisoning.

 

A very fine and courageous man, one of the last adventurers, an accomplished traveller, expert on the Middle East ( especially of Turkey and the Balkans) and a notable politician before and after the Great War.

 

John Buchan modelled the character Ludovick Gustavus Arbuthnot better known as ‘Sandy’ Arbuthnot the side kick of the famous Richard Hannay (of ‘ The 39 Steps’ fame) around Aubrey Herbert in the superb spy novel “ Greenmantle”.

 

A friend of Albania, as was his dear mother, Elizabeth, 4th Countess of Carnarvon, he argued for that small nation’s independence – and was offered the country’s crown - twice.

 

His sister in law Almina, 5th Countess of Carnarvon treasured and adored him and was secretly in love with him. In 1911 she vigorously campaigned for him to win as the Member of Parliament for South Somerset & she nursed him at Highclere Military Hospital in WW1 and saved him from the near death wounds he’d received in battle.

 

A master of disguise ( just like Sandy Arbuthnot) best illustrated at the outbreak of the First World War, when Aubrey joined the Irish Guards- despite his near blindness - by simply buying himself a second lieutenant's uniform and falling in as the Regiment boarded their ship for France.

 

Aubrey’s legacy remains – with surviving descendants ( produced with a formidable wife, Mary Vesey, who lived until 1970) and there’s a good biography of him by his granddaughter Margaret Fitzherbert under the title “The Man Who Was Greenmantle.”

Aubrey's Herbert line is almost certainly  the TRUE succession blood line to the title "Earldom of Carnarvon" since the 6th Earl of Carnarvon was the son of Prince Victor Duleep Singh. 

Aubrey Herbert was a friend of TE Lawrence ( of Arabia fame) and when Aubrey was re-elected to his Somerset Parliamentary seat in 1922 Lawrence quipped

 “ I note your re-election by your usual absurd majority which of course you would get if you declared yourself a Bolshevik or a Wee Free or a Prohibitionist or a Mormon.”

 

We shall not ever see his like again.

 

William Cross, FSA Scot

William Cross is the biographer of Almina, Countess of Carnarvon and several books on the Carnarvons of Highclere Castle.

 Contact him by email

williecross@aol.com

THE MAN WHO WAS GREENMANTLE

Aubrey's Effigy & Tomb At Brushford Church, Somerset

Lady Burghclere, Sister of Lord George Carnarvon of Tutankhamun Fame

 William Cross, FSA Scot considers  Winifred, Lady Burghclere, Sister of Lord George Carnarvon of Tutankhamun Fame 

Winifred Anne Henrietta Christiana Herbert (1864-1933), best known as Lady Burghclere was the bookish older sister of Lord George Carnarvon of Tutankhamun fame. To make certain her brother’s less noble life was relegated to the long grass Winifred quickly and smartly appointed herself his chief protector on earth when she stepped into the shoes of making herself his earliest biographer and champion. All comers thereafter writing anything of his Lordship’s unhealthy, chequered life and times have been muted and left in the shadow of Winifred’s elegantly drafted gloss- over.

In 1923, some months after Lord Carnarvon died  in Egypt in a famous death scene at the Continental Hotel Cairo, Lady Winifred ( by then a widow, with two husbands down) left her London home at Green Street, Park Lane to spend the autumn at the beautiful Lake House at Burghclere, this close proximity to the old family’s seat at Highclere Castle ensured exactly the right setting for literary inspiration and mendacity.

In the wake of Howard Carter and Arthur Mace publishing the first volume of their narrative on the discovery of Tutankhamun, Winifred had agreed to write an Introduction to the book about her beloved brother Lord Carnarvon. 

This long tirade secured a pre-emptive strike, a glamorous, orchestrated sketch before any one else could or  ever would effectively sum up his life. It's content has woven a damaged, flawed chronology as it had been used as gospel by a successive line of history vandals at Highclere Castle to suit their own ends.

It had been a difficult year since Winifred's accomplished half-brother the Hon. Aubrey Herbert, dubbed ‘ The Man Who Was Greenmantle’ died in a London nursing home on 16 September, 1923 aged 43. Aubrey had been an adventurer, soldier and politician, he was one of his sister- in-law, Almina's early crushes. Almina ( Carnarvon's wife) always preferred the gallant but caddish Aubrey to the creepy Lord Carnarvon, he [ Aubrey] had been her patient to nurse first hand at Highclere Castle ( when a military hospital) during the Great War. After a series of botched operations to improve his sight, Aubrey’s doctors missed a serious underlying health condition, he suffered a ruptured gall bladder and bled to death. Almina always said Aubrey was her lost love, she campaigned for him in Somerset to help him win a seat in Parliament.

Grieving for two siblings Winifred sought seclusion and quiet solitude, writing proved the restorative she needed.

As there was a good deal to hide from the public’s knowledge about Lord Carnarvon’s life, death, proclivities and foibles. Winifred ‘s tribute to him had to be manipulated. She records with great laffection, respect and dignity things she uniquely felt ought to be said but as the whole of the language used is floral and full of terminological inexactitudes its effect was to scorch the truth as seen by others. There were those who knew the real Carnarvon, a sad man tormented by demons who snarled, bullied and never smiled. One witness for the prosecution was a woman whom Winifred detested but who was eminently qualified to contradict her slick treatment on the subject of the Earl, when or if provoked. This onlooker was Almina Wombwell, Carnarvon’s lusty widow, who, although no angel, endured almost 30 years humiliation in a loveless, sham marriage to the 5th Earl of Carnarvon in a commercial deal brokered by the banker Baron Alfred de Rothschild.

Speaking of Lord Carnarvon Almina told her godson Tony Leadbetter that

 “ all his sisters knew him for being irksome ....he was always shouting at them. My dear husband was moody, he was hell to live with and put his own pleasures first” Almina added “ I was always afraid of him, and so was Howard Carter ”. Carter was less forthcoming in public about the man who as his patron with whom he was often badly treated and ridiculed. As a character who regularly recoiled and bit out at friends and foes he took his Lordship's ear bashings with few back comments.

Winifred Burghclere knew of this too and what family face was saved in her homage, she would not admit to having a wayward brother nor come clean on Almina’s marriage charade or Carter's snipes. 

Lady Burghclere was an experienced scribe, the author of a number of well received yet obscure biographies featuring the exploits of past English noblemen ( as above in her book on George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham) she set their histories in a overly romantic as well as the historic mould. As with in her tribute to Lord Carnarvon, Winifred’s aim was to make her writing convincing; one obituary writer observed that she had style, and “ had edge, but with no acerbity or malice”. 

“Biographical Sketch of the late Lord Carnarvon by Lady Burghclere"

first page of pages 31-72 of the book below:

"The tomb of Tut-ankh-Amen, discovered by the late Earl of Carnarvon and Howard Carter; by Howard Carter and A.C. Mace...." ( 1923)

This article is an update on a previous Blogger posting in 2016.

ANY QUERIES CONTACT THE AUTHOR OF THIS PIECE BY EMAIL

williecross@aol.com

The book " Lady Winifred Burghclere and her Troublesome Daughters", withheld from wider circulation is now available from the Author William Cross, FSA Scot

FURTHER READING

"Lies, Damned Lies and the Carnarvons" 

By William Cross, FSA Scot

A NEW BOOK

Published 1 September 2022

AVAILABLE DIRECT FROM THE AUTHOR

BY EMAIL CONTACT, BELOW

williecross@aol.com