Lady Winifred Burghclere and her Troublesome Daughters By William Cross, FSA Scot

 

Lady    Winifred    Burghclere  
And   her   Troublesome   Daughters
Four   Immoral   Tales   From   The   Roaring  Twenties

NEW BOOK  : NOW AVAILABLE 

FROM THE AUTHOR WILLIAM CROSS, FSA SCOT 

SYNOPIS

 

Winifred Burghclere  was  the  clever   sister of the Lord Carnarvon who discovered Tutankhamun, a biographer of Restoration toffs  and lady of letters. Her early years  were  spent at Highclere Castle, the back drop to TV’s ‘Downton Abbey’.    

Her widower father, the 4^th  Earl, a Cabinet Minister   made her his private secretary, Winifred learned early on how to keep secrets. Twice married she produced four lively, racy daughters from her second  marriage to the quixotic Herbert Gardner,  an actor playwright who turned to politics, a former  Liberal Government Minister  he was raised to the peerage.

 

A stickler for rules, duty and  old world  values  Winifred completely hemmed her daughters in,  they  were kept under their mother’s grip, bullied, isolated  and schooled by governesses. The girls   were named  Juliet,  Alathea, Mary and Evelyn Gardner,  each had a long string of  other forenames. They  began as  a peculiar  mix of  the prudish and  moral,  “as  naive as nuns “,   then  became  the complete  flip  side of this,  amoral, and unconventional, hence troublesome.

 

The  Gardner  girls’ rebellious period  overlapped with  the Great War and its aftermath into the Bright Young Things era and the roaring twenties. Each of the  girls had disastrous  marriages  albeit with  interesting men  like Geoffrey Fry  a member of the Fry’s chocolate family,  he  was  Private Secretary to several Prime Ministers and married the  very disturbed slim, boyish,  Alathea. The youngest Gardner daughter Evelyn  was the first wife of  Evelyn Waugh,  the  writer  of  Scoop and Brideshead Revisited  who  pop up in the infamous ‘ He-Evelyn-She- Evelyn’ partnership.

 

In this tale of  aristocratic snobbery,  scandal  and love  William Cross  ( author of several books on the Carnarvons of Highclere Castle ( Downton Abbey) ) offers a quaint  blend of  exciting, amusing,  shocking tales, unearthing  the inevitable  excesses, casualties and  horrors  of   the era’s pleasure domes  of night club frolics,  themed  dances,  crazy parties and drink, drugs and sex fuelled  romps   on the  London scene : all of which  forced four ‘poor little rich girls’ to  quickly grow up and face the consequences of their actions.  

FOR MORE BACKGROUND DETAILS  GO TO THIS LINK BELOW

https://lady-winifred-burghclere.yolasite.com/details-of-lady-burghclere-and-daughters.php

ISBN 10 1-905914-41-5   ISBN 13 978-1-905914-41-8     

Published by  Book Midden Publishing c/o William . Cross,  58 Sutton Road  Newport  Gwent   NP19 7JF   United Kingdom 

MORE INFORMATION  AVAILABLE DIRECT FROM THE AUTHOR    

email WILL CROSS

williecross@aol.com

 

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.

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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