Lady Margaret: The Story Behind the Story
I’ll let you into a little secret. The journey of Lady Margaret, which you have just read (and hopefully enjoyed!), was originally intended to follow a very different path indeed. Long before I sat down to write Her Heart for a Compass, I carried a vivid image of Lady Margaret in my head. I pictured her—dressed in breeches and a waistcoat with a man’s white shirt and tall black riding boots, her red hair flowing out behind her—astride a white cob called Pasha, galloping over a bleak Scottish moor. She had stayed out too long, and was trying to sneak back unnoticed into a Palladian mansion, when she heard a pistol shot through the open French window. Rushing to investigate, she found her father lying dead. She picked up the gun and was holding it when her brother came on the scene and assumed that it was she who fired it. “Duke’s Daughter Accused of Murder” would be the banner headline in the Illustrated London News. I imagined sending my fledgling heroine off on a journey that would take her to the slums of London, to Bedlam hospital, and journeying half-way across the world in order to clear her name.
Of course, as any writer knows, your characters have minds of their own—capricious Lady Margaret was never going to do what she was told—but in essence her character has changed very little from the person I first imagined: a woman with great personal charm and strength, with the courage and conviction to break with convention to live her life on her own terms.
As the daughter of one of the most influential aristocratic families in the court of Queen Victoria, it’s difficult to overstate just how strictly controlled Lady Margaret’s life was. Her sole purpose was to make a prestigious marriage and to start popping out the offspring required to continue the line and extend the dynasty’s web of influence. Queen Victoria herself set the benchmark with her nine children. Her eldest daughter, Princess Victoria (Vicky), had eight. Margaret herself was one of seven; and her elder sister, another Victoria, matched the queen by having nine of her own. But Lady Margaret bucked the trend: she didn’t marry until she was twenty-nine. She was a rebel, I realized after encountering her on my family tree.
To get an idea of just how extraordinary the woman I have portrayed must have been, let me give you an insight into what her life might have been like. For a start, the dynasty she was born into was one notch off royalty. Both her parents, the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch, had held senior positions at court and were intimate with both Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. The royal couple paid them a great honour by visiting Dalkeith Palace in 1842 at the beginning and the end of a royal tour primarily organised by the duke. If you visit the towns of Dalkeith or Dumfries, where two of their stately homes are located, you can see the Buccleuch name everywhere you look—on street signs, over pubs, on plaques, and on civic buildings. The Buccleuchs were a serious power couple of the day.
Margaret was educated at home by governesses, but with minimal emphasis on subjects like math and literature. She would have been taught embroidery and deportment. She could probably speak French, play the piano or the harp, and paint with watercolours. But the most important aspect of her education would have been preparing her for her future role as the wife of an eminent nobleman, with several great households to run. Though I have chosen to feature Dalkeith Palace as Margaret’s main childhood residence, in reality she would probably have shuttled between all of the magnificent family estates in Scotland and England. She wouldn’t have a clue how to make a bed or boil an egg, but she’d be able to plan a twelve-course dinner for fifty guests or a light supper for a ball with two hundred attendees. She’d be expected to understand the niceties of court protocol and precedence, as well as politics, in order to ensure that dinner guests were appropriately seated, that the best bedrooms were appropriately allocated, and that the right mix of guests was invited—avoiding political and romantic clashes! Flitting between those various country establishments and Montagu House, the family’s London residence, would have been an almost military exercise carriedout several times a year. The family would have moved from town to country and back again, depending on whether Parliament was sitting or whether the grouse season had opened. The family would have moved again at Christmas and Easter, and most importantly to London in the spring when girls made their debuts during the Season.
Margaret would have been raised to command her own grand domestic sphere, with hundreds of servants to carry out her wishes and to tend to her needs. From her birth, she would have been waited on by servants. The complexity of a Victorian lady’s dress and toilette would require at least one maid to help her get in and out of her clothes. Servants would be witness to all her tears and her laughter. There was no concept of a private life and very few opportunities for secrets or intimacy in such a privileged milieu. Parenting was very much done by proxy. Servants were an integral part of her life, yet Margaret would have been expected to ignore all but her closest attendants—one did not converse with a maid or footman, or even acknowledge their presence—though of course, Lady Margaret often does, and indeed treats her maids more as friends, which in her world would have been considered eccentric at best.
Ironically, though she would have been given a thorough grounding the science of running her households, the subject of wedding nights, pregnancy, and giving birth were completely taboo. Many Victorian young women would have had no idea what to expect on their wedding night, and it’s possible a number of their husbands had no clue either!
As a young unmarried woman, Lady Margaret would almost never be alone. If she went out riding, she would have had a groom with her, at the very least, even in the country. If she went walking, she’d have been expected to take her maid. When she reached marriageable age, her key asset was a spotless reputation, so her virginity must be protected at all costs. Heaven forbid a young woman was discovered alone with a man—in a park, in a carriage, on a terrace during a ball, or in a drawing-room. The immediate assumption would be that her virtue was compromised. And once the rumour mill began, it was very difficult to stop. The result would have been an agony of public humiliation, for even the most loyal of friends would be forced to shun such a girl for fear their own reputations would be sullied. And if the rumour took hold, the stain also spread to the girl’s family. The Victorian court was an extremely exclusive club. The Buccleuchs were established members, but that didn’t mean their position was always secure—when you were in, you were in, but when you were out, you were well and truly out. The queen did not forgive or forget whose family had caused a scandal.
For Margaret, though she grew up in such a closeted and constrained world, there must have been any number of occasions when such a free-spirited, irreverent young woman would want to kick over the traces, to make mischief, to say or do something outrageous. Her close friend Princess Louise shared her desire for independence and her exuberant sense of humour. I found it very easy to imagine the two of them at Windsor Castle, their laughter echoing in the corridors as they plotted and schemed to find ways around the strict protocol enforced by an army of courtiers. At a formal dinner, for example, where Margaret, late to the table, was seated by a notoriously tedious courtier, I pictured Princess Louise, more happily ensconced, finding a way to tease her, to make her laugh, while keeping her own expression suitably po-faced.
Princess Louise of course was much more savvy than Lady Margaret, and had a strong sense of self-preservation which my heroine lacked. Louise was ambitious, and adroit at playing the aristocratic game, knowing just how to keep on the right side of court rules and to use them to her advantage if necessary. Margaret was too honest and too straightforward. She did what no lady of breeding should do: she wore her heart on her sleeve. She refused to keep her opinions and her thoughts to herself, and by doing so, she broke some of the implicit rules of court life that still prevail today. At the opening of the book, when she very publicly made her feelings known by refusing to marry the man her parents carefully selected for her, she committed a heinous crime. A woman was the property of her father, until she became the property of her husband. Margaret’s father, the duke, had almost no choice but to exile her in order to preserve his own good name. When she dragged that good name through the mud in the press, albeit through no fault of her own, their relationship never recovered. When Margaret was intent on publicly refuting the smears to her reputation, her parents were appalled by her naivete. No comment was the only permitted response in this case, even though a comment or two might have helped enormously. Undaunted, my Lady Margaret bounced back and tried to redeem herself by embracing the business of marriage.
Victorians didn’t like to talk about bodily functions, or even admit that they existed. Convention dictated that women were fragile creatures with the appetite of a mouse, who would resort to a deep fainting fit for entertainment—as would you, if you were laced into a steel-boned corset and dress that could weigh between twenty and thirty pounds. Bear in mind that women of the day generally weighed only one hundred pounds themselves! Lady Margaret’s full court dress—the corset plus many yards of cloth in her gown and petticoats—would have been so heavy as to almost paralyze her. One poor young woman making her debut in the same year as my heroine actually toppled over backwards when making her curtsy, felled by the sheer weight of her gown. The tradition of court presentations was ended by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, but some of the protocol that Lady Margaret followed still endures. A person doesn’t sit down in the presence of the queen, no matter what. In a deleted scene from this book, I had Charlotte, the Duchess of Buccleuch, seven months pregnant (and still corseted and crinolined), forced to stand for hours as one of the privileged guests at the opening ceremony of the Great Exhibition.
Court life was a privilege, but it was often, frankly, incredibly tedious. It became even more so after Prince Albert’s death in 1861. Queen Victoria’s daughters led a pretty miserable life, permanently dressed in black, forced to keep their mother company, deprived of any fun. They followed the queen in everything. If she didn’t wish to talk, no-one conversed. If she wished to converse, she chose the subject. Public shows of affection of any kind were frowned upon—something else that has changed very little in court life. No wonder the Victorians developed a whole language of communicating with their fans. Lady Margaret would have had to endure the endless ceremonies and mindlessly boring rituals of court life when required—as she must have been regularly, in her mother’s company. Her role as one of Princess Helena’s bridesmaids was testament to her elevated status.
In high society, women may not have had a voice, but they must have had a great deal of stamina. During the London Season, Lady Margaret’s day might begin around nine with a ride in the park. The day’s invitations would be sorted through after this, and any domestic business taken care of, orders given to servants, menus planned, and the dreaded seating arrangements finalized if a dinner party was in the offing. Another change of clothes and a shopping trip might follow, then another change of clothes for tea, then another change of clothes before the ritual evening promenade at Hyde Park. Life was about seeing and being seen. Another toilette and then dinner, followed perhaps by a ball or three, the amount of time spent at each determined by the prestige of the hosts, and then bed at around three in the morning. Lady Margaret’s dance card would have been supervised by her mother, who would also have been instrumental in shepherding suitable men towards her and keeping the unsuitable ones at bay. From Lady Margaret’s debut to the announcement of her betrothal, she would have had almost no say in the process. No wonder she rebelled.
Lady Margaret was irrepressible in an age when women from all walks of life had very few legal rights, and almost no say in their destiny. Unfortunately, the stark contrast in Victorian society between the lives of the rich and the poor as depicted in my book was not exaggerated and was all too real. Whether Lady Margaret was in Lambeth, Dublin, or Five Points in New York, the poverty and deprivation she encountered first hand was both shocking and widespread.
She was acutely aware of how privileged she was, but also of the price she was expected to pay to remain in polite society circles. Ultimately, she chose not to pay it. To sticklers like her father, the duke, she was something of a horror. I love the Christmas scene at Dalkeith Palace at the very end of the book, where she catches him looking at her, wondering what on earth he’s done to deserve such a daughter who keeps coming back for more, still smiling, still very much her own person.
After an adventurous life, she did indeed find happiness and settled down with Donald Cameron at Achnacarry, where they raised four sons. A conventional outcome? Yes, but one chosen by a very unconventional woman for her own reasons, on her own terms.
I hope you have enjoyed this little peek behind the curtain into the life and times of my heroine and that I’ve given you an insight into the world she inhabited. Her journey is complete. Mine as an author, I hope, is only just beginning. 
Lady Margaret Montagu Douglas Scott in her bridesmaid’s dress for the wedding of HRH Princess Helena, March 10, 1863.
(Used by kind permission of Donald Cameron, 27th Lochiel)