More on Sholto Johnstone Douglas 1871 - 1958

Sholto Johnstone-Douglas and his wife and family moved into the Villa Marie in 1926. Their children were Elizabeth Gwendolen Teresa and Robert Arthur Sholto born 1916 and 1914 respectively. Sadly Robert (Robbie) was never able to look after himself and Eliza took over his care after the death of her parents. Sholto had married Miss Bettina Grisewood in 1913.
Sholto was well established as a portrait painter by this time, often being compared with Whistler. He painted the sisters of the painter Millais (see previous post about him) and his own sisters (of which he had eight!).
He  became an official war artist during the First World War, painting British battleships. As a member of The Royal Naval Reserve he was stationed on the Isle of Skye as part of the Coastguard Service. He was also commissioned to paint pictures of the camouflaged ships for the Imperial War Museum.
Living in Provence inspired Sholto to paint landscapes in oil and watercolour. He also did pastel and charcoal sketches of people that he observed, working in the olive groves and fields.
This idyll was brought to an abrupt halt at the start of the Second World War. The family had to return to London and endure the Blitz. After several moves, Sholto ended up living in Suffolk, where he had a stroke which unfortunately affected his eyesight. He carried on painting, however, until his death in 1958, leaving the wonderful bequest of his art to the rest of us. 

F.Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda, his wife

F.Scott Fitzgerald was staying in the Villa Marie at Valescure in 1924 when he finished writing his most famous work 'The Great Gatsby'. They rented the villa for five months in the summer and while he was busy writing, his wife, Zelda, amused herself with a young man called Edouard Jozan. Her husband was not happy when they embarked on an affair but she had become bored as he didn't pay her enough attention. Zelda and Scott both died relatively young. She was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1936 and died in 1948 aged 47. F.Scott Fitzgerald had died in 1940 aged 44. Rather a sad ending for such a glamorous couple.

Sholto Johnstone-Douglas and the Villa Marie in Saint Raphael

Eliza, Countess of Craven was the daughter of the painter Sholto Johnstone-Douglas (1871- 1958). Some years after his death she put on an exhibition of his paintings in Abingdon, Oxfordshire. Nancie received an invitation but was unable to go.
It was a sort of 'tradition' that she was invited to such events, including the weddings of her 'grandchildren' but she was never able to attend in person. It meant she remained close to all the children she looked after and felt involved in their lives for many years later.
Sholto's wife, Bettina, Eliza's Mother, was the greatgranddaughter of the Count of Messina in Sicily. The Johnstone-Douglases spent the years  1926- 1938 in France, staying in the Villa Marie at Saint-Raphael, where incidentally, a couple of years earlier, F.Scott Fitzgerald finished his famous novel, 'The Great Gatsby'. He clearly observed the local English aristocracy in Saint Raphael quite closely.

The Curse of the Earls of Craven

Eliza kept in touch with Nancie all her life and with myself, when Nancie was no longer able to write letters. Nancie shared in all the ups and downs of Eliza's life and gave her moral support from afar.
In 1939 Eliza had fallen in love with 'Bobbie', otherwise known as William Robert Bradley, the Earl of Craven. In 1939 some of his friends thought it was a big joke to get him drunk and take him to the Register Office where he married Irene Meyrick. Her full name was Gwendolyn Irene Meyrick . Irene (pronounced Ireenee) was the daughter of the notorious London nightclub owner, Kate Meyrick.
Several of her daughters married aristocrats, often accompanied by controversy.
Unfortunately the situation was not easily resolved as Bobbie Craven was a practicing Roman Catholic and as such could not get a divorce. It took fifteen years for him to get free of Irene and to be able to marry Eliza who had waited patiently for him.
The well-documented 'Curse of the Earls of Craven' stated that every Earl was destined to die before his Mother. Certainly none of the previous Earls lived beyond the age of 56 and poor Bobbie was to die from leukaemia at the early age of 47. He and Eliza had three children: two sons and a daughter.
Tom, the eldest, became the Earl of Craven in 1965 on the death of his Father. Very sadly, Tom suffered from schizophrenia and he committed suicide in 1983, leaving a young son, also Thomas, the child of his scottish girlfriend, Anne Nicholson.
His younger brother, Simon, became the eighth Earl of Craven but tragedy struck once more when Simon, a student nurse, crashed his car in Eastbourne and was fatally injured in 1990. His son, Benjamin Robert Joseph Craven born 13th June 1989 became the ninth Earl.
Eliza and Bobbie's daughter married Lionel Tarassenko and had three children but their marriage eventually failed, much to Eliza's distress.
Eliza corresponded with Nancie throughout all these tragic events and the close bond that they formed back in France in the 1930s never faltered. I kept her up to date with Nancie's life until she died in 2004 and Eliza herself not long after.

Cous-cous party at the Maquis, Valescure. March 2nd 1935. More pictures

Elizabeth Johnstone-Douglas, later Countess of Craven

One of Nancie's great friends in those carefree days of  1934/35 was Elizabeth Johnstone-Douglas, known as Eliza. She was at the famous Cous-cous party, dressed as a Hawaiian girl. You can see her above with Nancie on the left and Coulou and Hugh de Chabannes at Trouville.

Eliza, Nancie and Eleonore with Grizel de Winton and the d' Agays at a nightclub. There were sixteen in their party. How glamorous Nancie looks amongst all the aristocrats.She was treated as one of them and the friendships she made then lasted a lifetime.

Lady Grizel Wolfe- Murray and Kelburn Castle

Lady Grizel Wolfe-Murray (nee Boyle), daughter of the Earl of Glasgow, Patrick Boyle.

Kelburn Castle, Fairlie, near Largs, seat of the Earls of Glasgow, as it is today!

The tragic story of Lady Grizel Wolfe-Murray

Amongst the many visitors at the Maquis in Valescure were Malcolm Victor Alexander Wolfe-Murray and his new bride, Lady Grizel, daughter of Patrick Boyle, the Earl of Glasgow. Eleonore de Chabannes was related to the Earl and spent time as a child, at Kelburn Castle, at Fairlie, near Largs in the west of Scotland. She recalled playing in the dungeons.
Nancie remembers the happy couple laughing when Grizel sat on her new husband's knee and the deckchair he was sitting in collapsed. This was probably in 1935.
Sadly this marriage was not to be a happy one. Nancie told us that Grizel had been killed as she flew back from Cairo, pregnant with her third child, when her plane was shot down over the Mediterranean. I decided to check out the story. True enough, Grizel had been to visit her husband who was in the Black Watch, serving in Egypt.  She was travelling home to Britain, however, on board a ship called  the " Laconia" . This name was familiar to me.
It was 1942 and the ship was torpedoed by a German submarine, off the coast of Africa. Grizel survived the sinking and got into a lifeboat with others but sadly died before they could be rescued. The German submarine Captain had tried to rescue some of them but apparently it was bombed by some 'trigger-happy Americans in planes'. The story was told in a play called 'Now is the Hour' written in 2008 and performed at the Edinburgh Festival. It was based on the memoirs of a survivor, a nurse called Doris Hawkins. The author had uncovered a family secret when, after the death of his Mother he found some letters.
He knew that he had an uncle who died during the war but this uncle was, we gather, the lover of Lady Grizel Wolfe-Murray and threw himself into the sea after she had had died. Such a sad story.
Last night on Who Do You Think You Are we had the story of the sinking of the  "Lancastria" and we were told that Churchill kept the news from the public. I suspect the same thing may have happened at the time, with the "Laconia".
Lady Grizel Wolfe-Murray V.A.D  is commemorated on the Fairlie War Memorial along with her brother, Captain the Hon. Patrick James Boyle, S.G. who died in 1946.

Le Brevedent in Normandy is now a Castel Camping site

Back in 1934 le Brevedent, in Normandy, was the home of Ebles de Chabannes' Mother, La Marquise Aline de Chabannes. Nancie remembered her and said she was quite a character. The autocratic old lady, who still had her red hair, had a very alarming habit when walking around the garden of the Brevedent. She would pause, leaning on her walking stick and from below her long skirt would come a stream of urine. Then she would resume her walk. Nothing was said.
This story always shocked us when we were little. Nancie's stories left a lasting impression on us. She certainly met some interesting characters. Aline de Chabannes had run away from home with the chauffeur when young (shades of Downton Abbey!) and they had had a child. She later found her lover in bed with one of the maids. The family never mentioned the son she had given birth to and I don't know what happened to him. She had been ostracised by Parisian society at the time and had taken refuge at Le Brevedent.
Today the chateau is the lively centre of a modern camp-site, and has lots of English visitors. When Nancie first visited it in 1934 it was quite dilapidated and she was disappointed that it was a modest size. It was, however full of interesting pictures and objects.
This was the time when Ebles de Chabannes bought La Mare au Diable at Trouville so they didn't stay long at Le Brevedent. The 'new' house had thirteen bathrooms and Nancie said it cost a fortune to heat it. They had lots of interesting visitors there, too.
Lord Ashcombe remarked on Nancie's accent and even detected a slight Canadian twang. She was born in Vancouver and spent her first four years there so he was quite right.

                                                             Le Brevedent, Normandy

Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

I used to hate this story as we were made to memorise it at school, in our French lessons. 'Le Petit Prince' was Antoine de Saint-Exupery's most successful piece of writing. I guess it is up there with Beatrix Potter's 'Peter Rabbit' and A.A.Milne's 'Winnie the Pooh'. It certainly made his fortune and made his name known to children all over the world.
He was always a bit of a troubled soul, as was Consuelo, his wife and their marriage seemed doomed to be a disaster even before his tragic ending when the plane he was flying disappeared over the Mediterranean in 1944.
Antoine or Tonio as his wife affectionately called him, spent his childhood at the Chateau de Saint-Maurice de Remens, near Lyons, which, happily, is still standing. He grew up there with his four siblings and had a wonderful time. After his marriage to Consuelo they never seemed to be able to create a home together. They lived first at the Villa Mirador, outside Nice. After that they lived in Paris, Casablanca and New York but he never seemed able to settle anywhere. Consuelo would come home to find that he had emptied the house and they would move on to somewhere else. Even his old home, the Chateau at Saint-Maurice de Remens was sold and the entire contents disposed of.
Saint-Ex had three loves - his flying, his writing and his wife but he was never attached to any of his houses.
His marriage with Consuelo was tumultuous but lasted for thirteen years before his untimely death. He had several dices with death before the final fatal one but Consuelo, the Spanish lady with the flaming red hair, at the Couscous party that Nancie attended in 1934, lived on until 1979.
There is an extraordinary film on youtube of an interview that Consuelo de Saint-Exupery gave in the 1970s. She is speaking French with an Ecuadorian accent and I found it easier to read the Spanish subtitles on the screen than to follow her French! The red hair has faded but even in her old age she is a very handsome woman.

Consuelo de Saint-Exupery in 1934

I remember when I was a girl my Mother (Nancie) always said that Consuelo had the most amazing red hair. From what I have read about her she had quite a fiery relationship with her husband, Antoine de Saint-Exupery. She was born Consuelo Suncin de Sandoval in El Salvador, the daughter of a wealthy coffee- grower. She went abroad to study, in the USA (San Francisco), Mexico City and then France. She was married twice before she married Antoine de Saint-Exupery: first to a Mexican Army Captain, whom she met in the USA. They were divorced but apparently she told people that he had died in the Mexican Revolution. She later met and married a Guatamalan writer and diplomat called Enrique Gomez Carillo, in France. He was also a Journalist and died in 1927. Consuelo then went to live in Buenos Aires,where she lived until she met Saint-Exupery in 1931. When she eventually died, in 1979 she was buried in Paris, in Pere Lachaise Cemetery with Carillo, her second husband. Saint-Exupery had no know grave then, of course, as his body was never recovered from the wreckage of his plane after it crashed in the Mediterranean in July 1944, during the Second World War.
Consuelo's story of their love affair and ensuing turbulent marriage was published in the year 2000 as 'The Tale of the Rose'. It caused quite a sensation when it appeared. The manuscript was apparently discovered, in a trunk, in the attic, where it had lain for the twenty years since her death, by her heir, Jose Martinez-Fructuoso and his wife, Martine. Jose had worked for her for many years.
In 1998, a fisherman found a bracelet  entwined with seaweed and engraved with Consuelo's name, along with a fragment of a flying-suit, just off the French coast near Marseilles and not far from the supposed crash-site.
Two years later, the remains of a Lockheed Lightning P38, the type of plane that Saint-Exupery had been flying, were found in the same area.
In 2004 it was confirmed that the wreckage was indeed his plane, when the serial number was found, sixty years after his mysterious disappearance.
At one point Consuelo and Tonio, as she called him, lived in Morocco. They had been married at the Chateau d'Agay, home of her sister Gabrielle, on April 23rd 1931. Consuelo describes the chateau as being built 'in the shape of a prow' and 'like a ship jutting out into the sea'. The huge terrace was covered in beautiful rhododendrons and geraniums and overlooked the pure blue of the Mediterranean. What a fabulous setting for their wedding. It brings to mind the Citadel in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. I wonder if Tolkien ever visited this part of the South of France? Sadly the chateau was destroyed in 1944, by the occupying German army during the Second World War but a new residence has been built on the same site by the descendants of the Agay Family.

Consuelo de Saint-Exupery and the Cous-cous party

Nancie accompanied Eleonore to afternoon tea at the farm belonging to the Prince and Princess of Bourbon-Parme and found them charming people. They had three children. She had to address them as 'Votre Altesse Royale' but nothing fazed this 22 year old scots girl from Kilmacolm. She took it all in her stride.
During her time at le Maquis at Valescure she also met Didi and Pierre d'Agay from the chateau d'Agay , Princess Mimi Galitzine, Princess Anne de Ligne, Consuelo de Saint-Exupery (wife of Antoine de Saint-Exupery who wrote ' Le Petit Prince') , Charles-Henri de Mirepoix, and Ebles' cousin, Bruno Sanderval. Admiral Godefroy, whom she met on her arrival was Eleonore's step-father.
In 1935 the Chabannes threw a Fancy-Dress Cous-cous party for their friends. at the Maquis. Consuelo de Saint-Exupery was a Spanish lady, Eliza Johnstone-Douglas was a Hawaiian lady, Eleonore an Arabian Princess, Ebles a Chinese Emperor, Grisel de Winton a Chinaman and Nancie was Cleopatra. Consuelo and her husband Antoine had lived in Morocco for a time so I wondered if the cous-cous idea came from her.
Didi, the wife of Pierre d'Agay was, in fact Antoine de Saint-Exupery's sister and so was Consuelo's sister in law. Charles-Henri de Mirepoix was related to the Chabannes family as his grandmother was Henriette Chabannes .I'm not sure if Nancie knew all the connections of family and friends.
Many of them are buried in the graveyard at Saint Raphael. Admiral Rene Godefroy is buried there with his wife Sybille, Eleonore's mother. She divorced Jean Goulden to marry Rene, his best friend.
Admiral Godefroy was Admiral of the French fleet during the Second World War. He was in charge of Force X at Alexandria, in Egypt. Born in 1885 he died in 1981, aged 96.
This graveyard is also the resting place of Coulou's parents in law, Donald and Jeanne Gurrey. As active members of the Anglican Church special permission was granted for them to be buried there.

Le Maquis, Valescure, near Saint Raphael in the South of France

 

 Nancie was now, in 1934, Nursery-Governess to two children. Coulou was five and Hugh was a new baby. 'Fisty' as he was nicknamed, gradually grew stronger. Nancie grew very attached to them both and her friendship with their mother Eleonore was to last sixty years or more.

Many visitors came to Le Maquis. A lot of them were English aristocrats, such as Lord and Lady Ashcombe, the de Wintons, the Johnstone Douglases and the Rawlinsons. There was quite an enclave of English folk, with writers and artists in particular. It was near here that F.Scott Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby in 1925.

Nancie made several friends of her own age such as Elizabeth Johnstone-Douglas (later Lady Craven) and sisters Winifred and Grisel de Winton.

Eleonore's cousin Anne Frauger and her husband  (known as Froggie) lived in a farm just up the road. He worked in the local bank and they had three children.Their scottish Governess was called Sylvia Mackintosh but Nancie hadn't got much time for her. Ebles de Chabannes, however, had taken rather a fancy to Sylvia. Scottish Governesses were preferred to English ones because of their accents.

Nancie's new friend Grisel de Winton never married but her sister Winifred later married Charles Chichester, adopting two children.

Eleonore treated Nancie more like a companion and friend than just a Governess.She met all her friends and was invited to all the social events, very much as she had previously, with the Warden Family at Cannes and Le Havre.