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