By all accounts Cecilia, Lady Strathmore was a talented pianist, a brilliant hostess and a wonderful mother to a large family of ten children. Her eldest daughter, who died aged only 11 of diphtheria at her grandmother’s home, Forbes House, had been given Hyacinth as a middle name. Even in those staid late-Victorian years, the family continued to evoke the ghost of the exotic eighteenth-century French opera dancer who had so captivated the young Lord Mornington all those years ago.1
Lady Strathmore was known as a sensible and down-to-earth woman,
a large, stocky presence, with a square jaw and bright eyes, a great flywheel maintaining the momentum and balance of the household. Nothing could fluster her. Guests at Glamis remembered the tipsy footman, who seemed always to be falling about and pouring wine down people’s backs but with whom Lady Strathmore coped quite unruffled.
She was also, as might be expected of the daughter of a clergyman, extremely religious:
The Strathmores were a pious family. Prayers were said every day in the little chapel at Glamis. The women would wear white caps made of thick crochet lace, fastened on to the head with hatpins. The cap was provided in the bedroom of each woman guest for her to wear every day, and on Sunday Lady Strathmore, with one such cap on her head, used to sit at the harmonium and accompany the little congregation of friends as they sang hymns. Upright, open and straightforward, the Bowes-Lyons lived by a simple, upper-class code, which made them at once fun-loving, considerate, unaffected – and totally self-confident.2
However, it is Cecilia’s youngest daughter who is best remembered today: the Lady Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon born in 1900 while Queen Victoria was still on the throne and shortly before her father inherited the title of the 14th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne and her mother became his countess. Little Elizabeth often spent time in Italy holidaying at the villa owned by Caroline Louisa Scott, and no doubt listened to reminiscences about her long-dead grandfather at her grandmother’s knee. The Villa Capponi had been sold and Mrs Scott had moved first to San Remo and then to Bordighera where she rented the Villa Bella Vista for a time before buying it and renaming it the Villa Poggio Ponente. It was this villa that Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon visited and when she did her Aunt Vava took the young girl to see the many art galleries and museums in the area. Elizabeth was later to recall:
When we were children both my grandmothers lived in Italy in the winter, and I just loved Italian things. I had a very clever Cavendish-Bentinck aunt, who took us to the Uffizi in Florence. She only allowed us to look at one picture . . . it was wonderful. Instead of poor little legs getting flabby with exhaustion, I remember looking at the Primavera. I can see it now. I suppose I was ten. I thought it was very clever of her really.3
The Scott household was a happy one and the two women, Mrs Scott and her daughter Vava, doted on their young relations who came to stay, both at Forbes House on Ham Common and at the Italian villa. Elizabeth later recalled the exciting train journeys to Florence with her younger brother and inseparable friend David; journeys that felt dangerously glamorous as the two young children were allowed to dine late at night amid the lights and bustle of foreign cities.
The advent of the Great War in 1914 necessitated a protracted residence in England and Caroline Louisa Scott together with her daughter Vava returned to Forbes House on Ham Common. Unable to travel abroad, they also took a house in the pretty seaside town of Dawlish in Devon where Mrs Scott died on 6 July 1918 in the closing months of the war.4
Vava Cavendish-Bentinck was left the Villa Poggio Ponente in Bordighera by her mother when she died but when in England she remained primarily based in Dawlish for the rest of her life, living in a house known as The Cottage, located at the end of Weech Road in the Empsons Hill area of the town. The family’s trusty old servant Henry Negus moved to be near her and was employed as a chauffeur. Vava bought a nearby property known as Myrtle Cottage for Negus and his wife to live in. Later she had a cottage built on Badlake Hill (named Garden Cottage) for her housekeeper and companion, Miss Moseley. It would have been at the Dawlish house that Vava received news of her niece Elizabeth’s engagement and forthcoming marriage.5
Strangely, with the gypsy connections already present in her ancestry, Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon was reputed to have had her future told to her by a member of the Romany tribes and her glittering future revealed to her.
Around 1920, or a little earlier, Lady Elizabeth attended the races at Ascot with a friend, Rosita Forbes, the divorced wife of Colonel Ronald Foster Forbes and a decade Lady Elizabeth’s senior. The pair had just lunched in the Bachelors’ Club and were struggling through the mêlée outside towards the Royal Enclosure when a gypsy woman pushed in front of them and begged to be allowed to tell their fortunes. Mrs Forbes encouraged her friend and, entering into the holiday spirit of the crowds around her, she crossed the gypsy’s palm with silver. The gypsy studied Lady Elizabeth’s palm and her countenance changed and became serious. To the astonishment of Lady Elizabeth and to the amusement of Mrs Forbes, the gypsy foretold an outlandish prophecy: that one day Lady Elizabeth would take her place beside her future husband upon the throne of England.6
Bizarre as the gypsy prophecy must have sounded, on 8 July 1920 Prince Albert, the Duke of York and great-grandson to Queen Victoria (known informally as Bertie) met Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon at a Royal Air Force Memorial Fund ball at the Ritz and was instantly smitten.7 Elizabeth was undecided; she was full of fun, beautiful, confident and not short of admirers. Lady Mabell, Countess of Airlie, a close friend of Prince Albert’s mother Queen Mary (she was the queen’s lady-in-waiting) said that ‘Lady Elizabeth was very unlike the cocktail-drinking chain-smoking girls who came to be regarded as typical of the 1920s.’8
The prince and Elizabeth were not exactly strangers to one another before the ball. They had known each other as children (at a children’s party the 5-year-old Elizabeth gave Bertie, a shy 10-year-old, the cherries from atop her cake) and Elizabeth was friends with his sister, Princess Mary (she was one of the princess’s bridesmaids at her marriage to Viscount Lascelles, later the 6th Earl of Harewood). However, it was not until the ball in 1920 that Bertie fell head-over-heels in love, although initially to no avail. Elizabeth refused the prince’s first proposal but her mother knew that she was torn ‘between her longing to make Bertie happy and her reluctance to take on the responsibilities which this marriage must bring.’9
The gossips of the day hinted that she was encouraged by her mother to hold out for a proposal from Bertie’s older brother, the notorious but handsome playboy Edward, Prince of Wales and a false report saying that Elizabeth was about to be engaged to the Prince of Wales appeared in the press in the first days of 1923.10 A few days later Bertie proposed while the couple were walking in the wintry woodland near her father’s home at St Paul’s Walden Bury and Elizabeth accepted him. Her parents were invited to Sandringham to meet the king and queen and to spend the weekend there; both King George V and Queen Mary were delighted with the match. The ensuing marriage, which took place later that year in the magnificent surroundings of Westminster Abbey, left Charley’s granddaughter but two steps away from the throne.
Two daughters were born to the Duke and Duchess of York – the Princess Elizabeth in 1926 and Margaret four years later – and the marriage was a happy one. The duchess did not forget the relations who had been so kind to her in her childhood and youth and she took her two young daughters to visit her now elderly Aunt Vava at The Cottage in Dawlish. Vava died during the spring of 1932.11
The ailing and elderly King George V privately hoped that Bertie, although a younger son, would ascend to the throne as he held no high regard for his eldest son, the Prince of Wales. However, when the king died on 20 January 1936, it was the playboy Prince of Wales who took the throne. As the new Edward VIII was not married and had no heirs, Bertie and Elizabeth stood next in line. Throughout the year of 1936, as the storm clouds that would eventually lead to the outbreak of the Second World War began to gather over mainland Europe, the private life of the new king caused consternation and his insistence on marrying his mistress, an American divorcée named Wallis Simpson, eventually led to his abdication on 11 December. He had reigned for less than eleven months. Bertie was now the new king and Elizabeth his queen.12
Edward had never been officially crowned; preparations for a coronation were time-consuming and the ceremony had been set for 12 May 1937. Rather than waste the preparations already made, Bertie instead set his own coronation for the same day, choosing to be known as King George VI (his full name was Albert Frederick Arthur George). Charley Cavendish Bentinck’s granddaughter was crowned alongside her husband, becoming Queen Consort of Great Britain, Ireland and the British Dominions, and also Empress of India. Back in 1821 Lord Charles Bentinck had played a prominent role at the coronation of his friend and employer, King George IV. Now, just over a century later, his great-granddaughter attended her own coronation. The Cavendish-Bentinck family had been closely linked to the British royal family for generations; now they were indelibly entwined.
Lady Strathmore lived to see her daughter become queen. Having survived her younger twin sisters (and four of her ten children), she died on 23 June 1938 after an illness of several weeks following a heart attack. The new Queen Elizabeth was devastated by her mother’s death, as were the two young princesses who adored both of their Strathmore grandparents. The queen wrote to Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain after receiving the terrible news:
I have been dreading this moment ever since I was a little child and now that it has come, one can hardly believe it. She was a true ‘Rock of Defence’ for us, her children, & Thank God, her influence and wonderful example will remain with us all our lives.
She had a good perspective of life – everything was given its true importance. She had a young spirit, great courage and unending sympathy whenever or wherever it was needed, & such a heavenly sense of humour. We all used to laugh together and have such fun. You must forgive me for writing to you like this, but you have been such a kind friend and counsellor to us during the last year . . .13
Although Charley never had the chance to see his eldest daughter grow up, he undoubtedly would have been immensely proud of her. We suspect Cecilia’s character and personality mirrored those of the father she never really knew. In due course Charley Cavendish Bentinck’s great-granddaughter became Queen Elizabeth II, a much-loved and respected monarch who has enjoyed a longer reign than any other British king or queen, and his granddaughter, the former Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, acquired the moniker by which she is still best known and fondly remembered, the Queen Mother. However, how different our modern history would have been, relating to the British royal family, if the gypsy girl who had married into a ducal family had not suffered such an early death.
In many ways Prince William, Duke of Cambridge reminds us of his direct ancestor, the Reverend William Charles Cavendish Bentinck. Both men quietly but resolutely insisted on ordering their private and personal lives to suit themselves. In marrying Catherine (Kate) Middleton, Prince William unconsciously mimicked Charley Cavendish Bentinck who also married the girl he fell head-over-heels in love with while a university student. Although the Middletons cannot be compared to the Lambournes, both families represented a more ‘normal’ life for the men who married into them, allowing them the chance to live more freely within the constrictions and conventions imposed upon them by their birth.
We would dearly have loved to give Charley Cavendish Bentinck and Sinnetta a happy ending but their story, sadly, cannot be changed. Perhaps their happy ending is that Charley’s great-great-grandson, who resembles him in so many ways, is able to lead the happy and fulfilled life that fate denied to his gentle and free-spirited forebear?