1
The Lords Act
In a dream I saw territories,
So broad, so rich and handsome,
Lapped by the blue sea,
Rimmed by mountainsâ crest.
And at the centre of the territories
Stood a tall oak tree,
Of venerable appearance,
Almost as old as its country.
Storms and weather
Had already taken their toll;
Almost bare of leaves it was,
Its bark rough and shaggy.
Only its crown on high
Had not been blown away,
Woven of parched twigs,
Skeleton of former splendour âŠ
Elisabeth of Bavaria (1837â98), Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary, âNeujahrsnacht 1887â
FLOWING IN FROM NORTH AND WEST, WEAVING PAST Roman and Celtic monuments of obscure purpose, two streams joined with the River Leven to ring the âmagnificently wooded gardensâ of Leslie House, the thirty-seven-bedroom country seat of Norman Leslie, 19th Earl of Rothes. Nestling in 10,000 acres of âexcellent arable landâ, in 1911 Leslie House dominated the encircling parish, as it had for centuries. The minister of the local Church of Scotland drew his salary from the Earlâs coffers. So complete was the Leslie familyâs influence in this part of eastern Scotland that the parishâs ancient recorded name of Fetkill had faded to become the parish of Leslie.
It had been predominantly a benign local absolutism. When an amateur historian arrived in Leslie in the 1830s, in the hope of unearthing grisly anecdotes from the village archives, he was, in his own words, distressed to find ânothing generally interesting in themâ, with no perceptible drama having occurred in Leslie over the course of the last 300 years. The 800-seat chapel was built, the flax mills spun, whisky houses and inns were opened, closed and renamed, and local legend had it that King James V had written his poem âChristâs Kirk on the Greenâ, in celebration of a Caledonian pastoral idyll, after his hunting trip near the village in the 1530s.[1]
As the Edwardian era drew to its close, the then Countess of Rothes, Lucy NoĂlle Martha Leslie, had busied herself with the renovation and preservation of Leslie House. Given the spiralling cost of maintaining a stately home, expansion, in the hope of restoring the house to what it had been in the previous centuries, would have been financially lunatic, although even at that the young Countess had sunk nearly ÂŁ11,000 of her natal familyâs money into the preservation and beautification of her husbandâs ancestral home.[2] She had married into the Leslie family on a âdelightfully bright and genialâ day in 1900, with a service at St Mary Abbots Church in Kensington, near the London townhouse of her parents where the future countess had been born on Christmas Day twenty-two years earlier.[3] Christâs Nativity gave Lucy Dyer-Edwardes the first of her two middle names, NoĂ«l (the spelling on her birth certificate, but commonly spelled in Society columns and by various relatives as NoĂ«lle); the other was Martha. These names and spellings were used variably throughout her life, although by adulthood she increasingly seemed to prefer her middle name of NoĂ«lle. Her education had been entrusted to governesses and tutors who moved with the family as they oscillated between the Kensington house, their chĂąteau in Normandy and their favourite home, Prinknash Park, the Dyer-Edwardesesâ country seat in Gloucestershire. Prinknash, pronounced âPrinnageâ as one of the thousands of anti-phonetic nomenclatures that form the pleasurable minefield of English place names, was originally a Benedictine monastery founded, with spectacularly poor luck on the Orderâs part, only thirteen years before Englandâs break with Rome. Secularised and sold by the Tudors, Prinknash Park had become a beautiful stately pile in idyllic countryside, where NoĂ«lleâs father, Thomas, was free to pursue his fascination with his homeâs long-dead original owners and, bit by bit, their Catholic faith, to the distress of his wife, who regarded the Church of Rome as a foreignerâs creed.[4]
An only child and thus sole heiress to a substantial fortune, NoĂ«lle also had the added benefit of blossoming into what one family member called âa true English rose beautyâ by the time she turned eighteen and could be launched into the ballrooms and on to the marriage market of the upper classes as part of the debutante Season. After a formal presentation at Buckingham Palace, which marked their âcoming outâ into Society, the debutantes were, in the words of an Irish peerâs daughter, paraded âto shooting and tennis parties, polo matches, tea with the Viceroy in Dublinâ or, in NoĂ«lleâs case, with the whoâs who of the London beau monde.[5] The ultimate goal of this whirlwind of merrymaking was a wedding announcement in The Times, but although NoĂ«lle was a popular âdebâ, she resisted many of the offers of marriage that came her way until she met Norman Leslie, 19th Earl of Rothes, an infantry officer with a âpleasant face and mannersâ, who proposed to her in 1899.[6]
âOne of the most beautiful young women seen at the Court this seasonâ: the Countess of Rothes, shortly after her marriage.
Countess of Rothes. Unknown photographer (The Picture Art Collection/Alamy Stock Photo)
Married the following spring in âa pretty gown of white satin covered with exquisite Brussels laceâ and carrying a bouquet of carnations and white heather, NoĂ«lle honeymooned on the Isle of Wight, before returning to London for her first audience at Court as the new Countess of Rothes.[7] A young, wealthy and good-looking couple, who were clearly very much in love, the Rotheses became a fixture in Society columns. The aristocracy were obsessive points of interest for the British, and certain sections of the American, press â the âbeautiful peopleâ of the era, according to a critical study of their long decline.[8] It made the pressâs job easier when, like NoĂ«lle, the subject actually was physically beautiful, with even the Washington Post informing its readers, 3,000 miles away, that on her second trip to Buckingham Palace when she curtseyed to the Princess of Wales for the first time as a countess NoĂ«lle was, by general agreement, âone of the most beautiful young women seen at the Court this seasonâ.[9]
After their honeymoon, the newlyweds had spent most of their time at the Rothesesâ country house in Devonshire and their mansion in Chelsea, where their first son, Malcolm, was born on 8 February 1902 and the couple attended King Edward VIIâs coronation in the capital on 9 August of that year. By the time their second son, John, was born in December 1909, the death of Normanâs great-uncle had freed up Leslie House for their use and NoĂ«lle was enraptured with her husbandâs fiefdom. With the piqued pride of a jilted friend who cannot quite believe the world exists beyond the sparkle of London, the Bystander reported that the Countess of Rothes, who had been the toast of the capital at the time of Edward VIIâs succession, was now âso devoted to her Scottish home, Leslie House, that neither she nor Lord Rothes are often to be seen in London or anywhere else [where] the world of amusement foregathersâ.[10] A journalist from the Scotsman observed that within a few years of her residency at Leslie House ânot a Christmastide passed but the Countess celebrated her birthday, Dec. 25, by treating all the children in the parish to an entertainment in Leslie Town Hall, and presenting each with a Christmas giftâ.[11] Convinced of the benefits created by clean air, NoĂ«lle organised trips for young women employed in local factories to visit the beach or the countryside. She funded the creation of Fifeâs first ambulance corps, the Countess of Rothes Voluntary Aid Detachment, she paid for the neighbouring parish of Kinglassieâs first clinic, organised parties to raise money for veterans from her husbandâs regiment, and two years after Johnâs birth she began training with the Red Cross as a nurse.
Despite the Bystanderâs gripes, London was not quite abandoned by the Rotheses and NoĂ«lle often returned for the Season. She joined the committee that organised the Royal Caledonian Ball, an annual highlight for the capitalâs socialites with its insistence on proper Highland attire and music. The funds raised were channelled to the Royal Caledonian Educational Trustâs care for Scottish orphanages.[12] She worked for the YMCA Bazaar and the Childrenâs Guild; she sat on the foundation boards for the Randolph Wemyss Memorial Hospital and the Queen Victoria School in Dunblane, which taught the sons of Scottish military personnel, and her passion for preserving a rural way of life in Britain brought her to serve the Village Clubs Association. The young Countessâs charitable activities were a mixture of the more glittering variety of philanthropy and intense hands-on work, and the former solidified many of her relationships with fellow like-minded aristocrats â Evelyn Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire, Consuelo Spencer-Churchill (nĂ©e Vanderbilt), Duchess of Marlborough, Kathleen Wellesley, Duchess of Wellington, and Constance Sackville, the Dowager Countess De La Warr, became close friends. With Millicent Leveson-Gower, Duchess of Sutherland, NoĂ«lle helped raise a substantial amount of money for the National Milk Hostelsâ quest to provide âwholesome milk for poor familiesâ, through a series of Society masquerade balls and garden parties, at which tickets were costly and donations firmly encouraged.[13]
One of NoĂ«lleâs philanthropic connections was Louise, Duchess of Fife, who alone of King Edward VIIâs daughters had married into the native aristocracy.[14] Through her, NoĂ«lle met, and was sincerely liked by, King Edwardâs daughter-in-law Mary, Princess of Wales. Her friendships within the Royal Family added a personal affection to the feudal obligations that brought Norman and NoĂ«lle to most major state occasions, including the funeral of Edward VII, after his death at Buckingham Palace was announced on 6 May 1910. Over the course of the next three days, a quarter of a million people filed past the royal coffin to pay their respects. Despite a reign of only nine years, Edward VII had, in his Foreign Secretaryâs observation, grown âintensely and increasingly popularâ and grief at his passing was judged stronger than the mourning surrounding Queen Victoriaâs death nine years earlier.[15] The first people in the queue to pass King Edwardâs bier, âguarded by household cavalry, soldiers of the line and men from Indian and Colonial contingents, all in the characteristic pose of mourning, that is with bowed heads with their hands crossed over rifle butts and the hilts of their swordsâ, had been âthree women of the seamstress class: very poorly dressed and very reverentâ.[16] When the Liberal Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, was caught leaning against a pillar during the lying in state, courtiers judged âhis attitude and general demeanour rather offensiveâ and concluded that he must have been tipsy to behave so atrociously or, as one of them put it with leaden subtext, âI fear he had dined well.â[17]
There were no comparable faux pas at the funeral procession three days later. Many of the mourners had camped out overnight to vouchsafe their place in the crowds, which in places stood 100 yards deep, to watch Edward VIIâs body being conducted from Westminster Hall to Windsor. As the catafalque passed Hyde Park, where nearly 300,000 had congregated, cigarettes were stubbed out and a forest of caps rose into the air. After the body, the first being to receive these gestures of deference was Caesar, Edward VIIâs white terrier, who with the Queen Motherâs permission trotted by his dead masterâs side.[18] Caesar was followed by nine monarchs on horseback, leading perhaps the largest gathering of royalty in history, with one of the emperors joking that this was the first time in his life he had yielded precedence to a canine.[19] Monarchy, the cause in which Edward VII had been such a devout believer, had come to inter âthe uncle of Europeâ. His son and heir, now George V, rode with two of the late Kingâs brothers-in-law, Denmarkâs Frederick VIII and Greeceâs George I, with one of his sons-in-law, King Haakon VII of Norway, and with two of his nephews â one by birth, the other by marriage, both heroically moustached â the German Kaiser Wilhelm II and King Alfonso XIII of Spain. They and their glinting medals were joined by the young Portuguese and Belgian sovereigns, Manuel II and Albert I, both on their respective thrones for less than two years. If Prime Minister Asquithâs slouching had been noted at the lying in state, so too were other things that mattered deeply to the Edwardian upper classes â it was observed by one civil servant that the rotund Tsar Ferdinand of Bulgaria had the worst seat on a horse of any royal present; the phrase âlike a sackâ was tossed around with uncharitable accuracy.[20]
Affection rippled through the crowd as the fantastic spectacle of the Golden State Coach trundled into view, carrying four women transformed into black pillars by clouds of mourning lace and veil. Edward VIIâs sixty-five-year-old widow, Alexandra of Denmark, one of the most consistently popular members of the British Royal Family since her arrival in 1863, had borne five children and buried two, but she retained the slender beauty of a person twenty or thirty years her junior. The Prime Ministerâs daughter-in-law, who watched as Alexandra went by and saw her later at the interment, wrote in her diary that evening, âShe has the finest carriage and walks better than anyone of our time and not only has she grace, charm and real beauty but all the a...
