‘Grim news in The Times this morning, Father.’
‘There’s always bad news in the papers; that’s what sells the damn things.’
Despite his father’s indifference, John George Stewart-Murray, Marquess of Tullibardine, known to the family as ‘Bardie’, the eldest son of the 7th Duke of Atholl, begins to recite the headlines.
‘ “Suffragettes burn Wargrave Church, Henley”.’
‘I’d horsewhip the buggers!’
‘Quite so, Father, if a little harsh.’
Despite his father’s initial disinterest, which is now turning to irritation, Bardie continues his musings.
‘ “The Balkans in turmoil. Durazzo” – which I think you told me you visited once – “under siege”.’
‘Durazzo, bloody awful shitty place, full of Albanian cut-throats.’
‘Well, everyone seems to be fighting over it.’
‘Bardie, please; you are ruining my bloody breakfast. Where are your brothers? You can keep them amused with the headlines.’ The old duke’s bile has been well and truly stirred. ‘Bloody Balkans. We need to stay well clear of all that. The world is in bloody chaos. That little bastard Welshman, Lloyd George, has put up supertax to a shilling and fourpence in the pound. The man’s a damned communist. Everyone’s on strike; even the buggers who make cricket balls walked out the other day. Bloody nerve! Some communist union will be at the back of that.’
As his father’s tirade against the world gains momentum, Bardie finally realizes his mistake and pushes his head deeper into the protection of his newspaper. Fortunately, just as the old man launches into the vexing question of the Irish and their ‘appalling’ demands for independence, Bardie’s two brothers arrive.
‘Morning, Father.’
The two speak almost in unison to their father, John James Hugh Henry Stewart-Murray, Chief of the Clan Murray and Commander-in-Chief of the Atholl Highlanders, Europe’s only surviving private army. As he does every morning, he inspects the attire of his two sons for its propriety and scrutinizes their shoes for the obligatory lustrous shine. Not that the boys have to polish their shoes, or prepare their clothes; that is all done for them by the valets belonging to Blair Atholl’s regiment of servants.
‘Why the hell are you two always bloody late?’
‘We’re not, Father; you and Bardie are early.’
The duke glances at the clock. It is two minutes to seven. The boys are right, but the old boy growls all the same.
‘Oh, very well, sit down. Bardie wants to tell you about how the world is going mad!’
Perhaps wisely, Bardie chooses not to reveal any more news and, with Blair Atholl’s exemplary staff hovering around them, the four men consume their more than ample breakfasts. A few minutes later, the duke breaks the silence.
‘I’m off to see Inglis about the gardeners. They’ve cut that bloody hedge by the greenhouses too low again, trying to save themselves work – lazy buggers!’
The three boys smile at one another as their father leaves. Forsyth, the butler, bows as the duke passes and the first footman, Dougie, rushes to open the dining-room door for him.
The old duke’s gruff manner disguises a much kinder disposition than appears on the surface. He loves his family, is loyal to his friends and is generous to those who work for his house and estate. Even so, his views about the health of the nation and the affairs of the world are somewhat blunt and his solutions to the ills he perceives in both are rather draconian, even by the highly conservative standards of the day.
As they are required to by their father – every morning, without exception – the three Stewart-Murray boys look immaculate in their Prince Charlie jackets and ties and the blue and green tartan kilts of the Murray Clan. Each learned Gaelic before English; they went to Eton in turn and then followed one another into the army. They are all decorated soldiers and veterans of the Boer War.
Bardie, the tallest and fairest of the three, is forty-three years old and Member of Parliament for West Perthshire. He served in the Royal Horse Guards and commands the Scottish Horse, which General Kitchener asked him to raise for the Boer War. Lord George, known as ‘Geordie’, is shorter, darker and more solid than Bardie, and his younger brother by two years. He is in the Black Watch, was a defender at Ladysmith and served in India as aide-de-camp to its Viceroy, Lord Elgin. The youngest brother, Lord James, who goes by the name ‘Hamish’ (the Gaelic form), is more in the mould of Geordie than Bardie and is the youngest of the family, at the age of thirty-four. He is a major in the Cameron Highlanders and was mentioned in dispatches in South Africa.
All three Stewart-Murray boys have perfected that air of aloof charm so typical of the social graces of the well-mannered aristocracy, who can make an art form out of affable superiority. Their neatly trimmed ‘eleven a side’ moustaches suggest order and discipline, but with a hint of rakishness.
Bardie, having finished with his newspaper, passes it to Hamish, who is keen to read the news – not so much to discern the details of the world’s woes as to enjoy its latest scandals.
‘I see that Frenchwoman, Henriette Caillaux, is going to stand trial.’
Neither Bardie nor Geordie appears particularly interested, but the brothers politely inquire about the identity of the lady in question.
‘You two really need to take more interest in the world at large.’
Bardie sneers.
‘You mean its tittle-tattle!’
‘Call it tittle-tattle if you like, but listen to this; it is so French. Madame Caillaux is quite a girl. She is married to Joseph Caillaux, the French Finance Minister. Three months ago, Le Figaro printed a private letter, written by her husband, which was politically very damaging; something about a dodgy tax deal, with him in it up to his neck.’
Bardie and Geordie are listening now; there is nothing like a political scandal over breakfast.
‘So Madame Caillaux is incensed and thinks her husband should challenge the editor of Le Figaro, a Monsieur Gaston Calmette, to a duel. Hubby thinks not; perhaps he’s not a very good shot, or just a bloody coward. So Madame marches into the newspaper offices and asks to see Calmette, but he’s out. So she calmly sits down in reception and waits for him for over an hour. There she is, sitting decorously, smiling sweetly at all who pass, but with a Browning pistol hidden in her fur muff! When poor old Calmette returns, she is shown to his office, where she tells him he’s a scoundrel and bloody well empties the Browning’s magazine into him. She puts six bullets in the bugger!’
Both Bardie and Geordie are open-mouthed.
‘Dead?’
‘Of course he is, dead as a proverbial door nail.’
‘Bloody hell!’
‘Hang on, chaps, wait for the best bit. With pandemonium breaking out all around her, she doesn’t try to make an escape, but puts the pistol back in her muff, walks back to reception and sits back down again. When the police arrive, she confesses all, stressing that she used all six bullets to be sure that le bâtard was dead! She then refuses to be taken to the police station in a Black Maria but, with the police acting as escort, has her chauffeur drive her in her Daimler, which is still parked outside.’
Bardie is impressed.
‘Hell’s bells, she makes our suffragettes seem like pussy cats!’
Geordie is not so sure.
‘Perhaps, but it’s enough to put you off the fairer sex for life. Imagine going home to her and having to confess to a little dalliance on the side and she opens her knicker drawer and pops you with a bally pistol!’
Bardie changes the subject.
‘I’m going up to Glen Tilt this morning. Would you two slouches care to join me?’
Hamish declines, but young Geordie’s eyes light up.
Bardie has been involved in a scheme for over six years that both his father and Hamish think is hare-brained, but which Geordie thinks is fascinating. It involves a somewhat eccentric character called John William Dunne, the son of wild Irish aristocrat General Sir John Dunne.
As a boy, Dunne became obsessed with the novels of Jules Verne, especially the imaginary machines he described. He started making paper aeroplanes by the score and flying them from the roof of his family home in County Kildare. By the time he was a teenager, Dunne, as bright as he was odd, was designing elaborate flying machines in the manner of Leonardo da Vinci. He was encouraged to continue by the author H. G. Wells, a family friend, whose vivid imagination was also a lifelong inspiration.
Bardie met Dunne during the Boer War, when Dunne was a lieutenant in the Imperial Yeomanry, but afterwards lost touch with him for a while. In the interim, Dunne had got himself attached to a peculiar new military establishment, the British Army’s School of Ballooning, on Farnborough Common. An American, William Samuel Cody, a man even more outlandish than Dunne, had a rather unique role at Farnborough: he was the army’s Chief Instructor in Kiting.
Cody was extraordinary. Born William Cowdery in Iowa, he changed his name to ‘Cody’ after his hero, ‘Buffalo Bill’ Cody, and came to Europe in the 1890s with the ‘Klondike Nugget’ a Wild West act in which he displayed his horse-riding, shooting and lassoing skills. His long goatee beard, cowboy hat and leather chaps were laughably ostentatious, but huge crowds flocked to see him all the same.
Cody became fascinated by balloon flight while performing in Paris. He duly discarded the cowboy outfit and transformed himself into a leading expert in and exponent of balloon and kite flying. However, he retained his flamboyant whiskers, showman’s persona and, significantly, a personal collection of rare photographs he had bought at an auction in New York.
The photographs illustrated the use of surveillance balloons by the Union Army during the American Civil War, images so striking that they convinced a few of the more enlightened souls in Britain’s War Office that there might be something worth pursuing in this peculiar phenomenon called flying.
Cody proceeded to design several two-man ‘war kites’, one of which towed a small lifeboat across the English Channel. He also flew a manned observation kite from the deck of HMS Revenge, a feat witnessed by several gawping senior figures at the Admiralty.
When William Dunne heard that the grandiose American’s latest fad was gliders and powered aeroplanes, he rushed to Farnborough to meet him. Dunne begged to be involved, then demanded to be. Fortunately, after each weighed the other up, one madcap inventor recognized a fellow eccentric and Dunne was accepted.
Cody later left Farnborough to pursue flying as a private enterprise. After setting many records and twice winning the Michelin Cup and several Daily Mail Round Britain Races, he was killed in an accident in 1913. His funeral at Aldershot Military Cemetery was attended by 100,000 people who witnessed an interment that took place with full military honours and generated national headlines.
Dunne had remained at Farnborough, but when it was realized that his experiments were readily visible in the local vicinity and were thus easily observable by Britain’s enemies – especially the spies of Germany’s new Imperial Air Service, the Fliegertruppe – he approached Bardie.
The Atholl Estate has many remote valleys and Dunne asked Bardie if one could be used for a secret development programme. Bardie discussed it with his father, who was very sceptical, especially when his son described Dunne’s latest scheme. He hoped to develop a prototype aeroplane based on the aerodynamic characteristics of the winged seeds of the zamonia plant. At first, the old duke, a cavalry man first and last, was speechless, but he finally conceded when he was reminded that he had also thought electric lighting, motor cars and telephones were ludicrous ideas.
Glen Tilt, a few miles to the north of Blair Castle, was chosen for the clandestine work. Hangars and workshops were built and good progress made, with better and better versions of Dunne’s designs being produced. However, in 1909 the sceptics prevailed at the War Office and Dunne’s funding was withdrawn. So Bardie, undaunted, enlisted the support of his friends, Hugh ‘Bendor’ Grosvenor, the 2nd Duke of Westminster, one of the country’s richest men, Baron Nathan ‘Natty’ Rothschild, the renowned Jewish philanthropist, and William ‘Billy’ Wentworth-Fitzwilliam, 7th Earl Fitzwilliam, the owner of Wentworth Woodhouse, the largest private house in Europe. After a little arm-twisting, each agreed to join with Bardie and take over the financing of the project.
Dunne’s prototype development in Scotland began with ‘Dunne (D) 4’, which was dismantled at Farnborough, transported in secret to Scotland and reassembled at Glen Tilt. The project is now up to ‘D8’, which has already been flown successfully, persuading the War Office to place an order for two of them to be built for use in military manoeuvres.
While Bardie asks Forsyth the butler to prepare some lunch and organize wet-weather clothing, Geordie asks Bardie about future plans.
‘It’s costing us a fortune, but Churchill has written to me privately, encouraging me to press on, so we’re very heartened by that.’
Hamish, about to go off shooting, is eavesdropping. He is not a Churchill fan.
‘If the First Lord is so keen, why doesn’t he write in an official capacity?’
‘He’s a politician, Hamish, so he has to be circumspect with his opinions, especially about a secret scheme, financed privately.’
‘Isn’t that so typical of Churchill? He wants it both ways.’
‘Of course he does; he’s a politician. And, if I may remind you, so am I.’
‘I rest my case, m’lud!’
‘Off with you, Hamish. Go and shoot something; preferably something edible. My partners are coming up for the weekend, they’ll be on the four o’clock from London. You need to be at dinner tonight; it’s a three-line whip from Father.’
‘I know, I’ll be there. Is it black tie?’
‘Yes, the girls are coming up too; best behaviour all round.’
That evening, there are so many at Blair for dinner, that the duke has instructed it be served in the Castle Ballroom, a cavernous hall with a magnificent hammer-beam roof and a minstrels’ gallery large enough to accommodate a small orchestra.
The 7th Duke, ‘Iain’ to his friends, is at the head of the table. But the old boy is a widower, so Bardie’s wife, Kitty, Lady Katharine Stewart-Murray, four years younger than him, is the hostess. She is intelligent, feisty and is constantly at odds with her father-in-law.
Kitty is from the ‘lesser gentry’, a social stratum she regards as embodying Britain’s strong moral backbone; a view firmly reinforced in her mind since her marriage to Bardie. She is contemptuous of the loose behaviour of those whose titles once defined them as her social superiors. Now, she will be a duchess herself one day. She loves Bardie, despite his own ‘weaknesses’, and is determined that she will redeem him from the sins of his peers. Nor will she allow herself to succumb to the temptations of the weekend ‘bed-hopping’ so relished by the Stewart-Murrays and those of their ilk.
As she looks at the dinner guests, a thin smile crosses her face. She notices the knowing glances being exchanged; she sees the false charm and the overt sycophancy. She catches Bardie’s eye, who smiles at her warmly in his turn. Then she admonishes herself a little: she played her own little games with Bardie when they first met, so perhaps she should not be so judgemental.
Hamish and Geordie are there, as are two of the three daughters of the family. All three Stewart-Murray girls are older than the boys: Dorothea is almost fifty, Helen is a couple of years younger and Evelyn, something of a family ‘black sheep’ who lives abroad, is yet another year younger.
Bardie’s partners in the aeroplane scheme are there, but without their wives, who have been left behind in England. William Dunne is also there, with two of his designers, as are several of Bardie and his brothers’ local friends. However, there is no dearth of ladies. Bardie has been careful to invite several presentable young women from the well-to-do families of Perthshire and even a couple of socialites from Edinburgh, who have been driven up in Bardie’s brand-new motor car, a midnight-blue Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost. Several of the ladies will, no doubt, be very keen to make the acquaintance of the immensely rich and titled guests.
It promises to be an entertaining evening and weekend when, concealed behind the imposing walls and turrets of Blair’s white-stucco, Scottish-baronial splendour, the Anglo-Scottish nobility will indulge themselves in their notorious ‘rakishness’.
As the dinner comes to an end, Kitty notices some of the more obvious pairings as they make their clandestine plans for the night. She allows herself a few lingering thoughts about the couplings to come and enjoys, briefly, the erotic thoughts she conjures in her mind’s eye. Then she extinguishes them, reminding herself that they are not ‘proper’ and are to be resisted if one’s moral fibre is to be kept intact.