The Final Curtsey (3 page)
Authors: Margaret Rhodes
I cannot remember much about her, but indelibly printed in my memory is the image of her severe Lady-in-Waiting, a Russian Orthodox nun called Mother Martha, who wore black robes and black
boots. When Princess Elizabeth, Princess Margaret and I were in the vicinity of Craigowan we would break into the Volga boat song, a traditional Russian folk number associated with the peasant
barge-haulers on the mighty Volga river. I only hope the Grand Duchess never heard us, because we would surely have been on the receiving end of a rocket if we had been reported to higher
authority. We thought that the serenade would remind her of her homeland, but looking back I suppose our behaviour was less than sensitive, bearing in mind her tragic experiences during the
revolution. Her son-in-law was Prince Felix Yusupov, one of the murderers of that degenerate mystic Rasputin, who had exerted such an unhealthy influence over the Tsarina.
Somehow, I never really knew why, a career in the diplomatic corridors of power eluded my father. Instead he travelled all over the world, big game hunting and exploring. I suppose his
philosophy seemed to be ‘have gun, will travel’. He potted grizzly bears in Alaska and Canada and I grew up with a stuffed eight foot high grizzly standing on its hind legs in the hall
at Carberry, ten miles south of Edinburgh, one of our two homes in Scotland. I loved every inch of Carberry, but after 1961, when my mother died, my brother John handed it over to the Church of
Scotland as a conference centre. They found it too expensive to keep up, and it passed to an organisation called the Friends of Carberry who run it in a more ecumenical fashion. After the family
left I never returned because I want to remember it as it was — every stick and stone of it. It had been in the ownership of my family since coming to the Elphinstones through marriage. We
also had a smaller house in Surrey, Maryland, my father’s wedding gift to my mother, and at one time a London house, which my father had to give up in the Depression of the early 1930s,
because, he said, ‘something happened to Swedish matches,’ which, I suppose was an oblique reference to a failed investment.
He had, however, a fascinating life exploring the most remote and wild regions; the Tian Shan mountains on the Chinese-Russian border, for instance, and he also spent a lot of time in India
chasing tigers. When he wasn’t doing that, he was shooting duck in Egypt, pheasant, partridge and grouse in Scotland and England. How the Animal Liberation Front would have loved him.
Carberry Tower
He first went to India when he was twenty-five in 1894, and stayed with the Maharajah of Cooch Behar, who had succeeded to his throne at the tender age of ten months. I don’t know how he
got to know His Royal Highness, but in those days the Indian princes regularly flitted between their states, European capitals and places like the French Riviera. He was a frequent visitor to
London and moved around in society and so I suppose they might have met in that way. There were three other big game hunting trips in 1895 and 1896 in the foothills of the Himalayas, Bengal and
Assam. I have his game book, in which he precisely recorded for the three visits a bag of thirteen tigers, three leopards, twenty-one rhino, thirty-nine buffalo, ten bison, three python, and many
deer, pig, quail and peacock. In 1898 he crossed the Atlantic to shoot duck in the south of Mexico, followed by fishing off the west coast of Florida. His greatest adventure was in 1901. He took
the Trans-Siberian railway, alighting on the banks of the river Ob near the present modern town of Novosbirsk. The road petered out at Birsk so he took to horseback for the next three hundred
miles into the mountains. This ride took twenty days and ended at Kosh Agach, close to the Sino-Russian-Kazakhstan border. My father’s companions for this trek were two experienced big game
hunters, Philip Vanderbyl and Charles Radcliffe, both army captains.
They hunted in the Kosh Agach area for three weeks, and then headed south for the Tian Shan mountains. Their explorations took them to Zaysan in Kazakhstan and to Yining in China in the Xinjiang
province, southwest and deeper into the mountains. They returned to Yining in the autumn and started for home. Their expedition lasted for over six months to regions almost unknown to Europeans. In
1907 my father and the other two men joined the legendary F C Selous, whose real-life adventures inspired Rider Haggard, author of
King Solomon’s Mines,
to create the fictional Alan
Quatermain, in founding the Shikar Club, the big game hunters association. My father then more or less eschewed adventure, but it was another three years before he entered into marriage and family
life.
My father at the funeral of King George V in 1936. My father’s braces snapped and he had to walk four and a half miles holding up his trousers with his elbows
After he settled down, he became Governor of the Bank of Scotland and Captain General of the Royal Company of Archers, the Sovereign’s bodyguard north of the border. As Captain General
he marched behind the coffin at the funeral of King George V in 1936. There was a strong wind and my father thought the long eagles’ feathers in his cap were going to blow away. He lifted
his arms to secure them and his braces snapped. He had to walk four and a half miles desperately holding his trousers up with his elbows. That’s the kind of story my aunt, Queen Elizabeth,
loved. If something could go wrong on a formal occasion, it made her day.
My father gave me little or no advice, but I can remember him telling me that the only things in life to be regretted are the things you don’t do. That was a wonderfully powerful incentive
to have a go at almost anything, and a piece of wisdom I took to heart. I suppose I inherited his passion for exploration and adventure, and I have certainly had some sticky moments, like being
arrested in a coup in Bhutan, of which more later.
My sister Elizabeth, my brother John and my sister Jean, with my Granny Lady Strathmore and Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, circa 1914/15
My father was regarded by society as a confirmed but exciting and adventurous bachelor. He confounded his family by marrying just before his fortieth birthday. His bride was the
twenty-six-year-old Lady Mary Bowes-Lyon, known always as May, who was the eldest daughter of the 14th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne, and the eldest sister of Queen Elizabeth. When she was ten
years old, Elizabeth Elphinstone, my eldest sister, was one of the bridesmaids at Queen Elizabeth’s wedding in 1923, solemnized at Westminster Abbey.
My parents had five children, and I was the youngest, born in 1925. Elizabeth, the eldest, was born in 1911; John, the Master of Elphinstone, a Scottish honorific given to the eldest sons of
peers whose titles were granted before the 1707 Act of Union, in 1914; Jean in 1915 and Andrew on 11 November 1918, Armistice Day. As a result he had Victor added to his other Christian names. My
parents adored each other, and as a teenager I resolved to try and make as happy and loving a marriage as theirs. It is difficult, in old age, to look back dispassionately at one’s parents.
They were just mother and father and totally distinct from the rest of humanity; far more remote from their children than modern parents. Of course, having nannies and nursery maids on call made a
lot of difference, but I cannot remember either parent actually playing any sort of game with me.
My mother seemed far more interested in the garden than in the activities of any of her children. Years later, when I was grown up, I rushed to tell her the earth shattering news that my then
boyfriend had proposed marriage to me. She said: ‘Oh, Darling, really, and what did you say? So sorry, Darling, I must go out now and do some work on the rockery.’ She had taken little
notice and it was not the response that my news deserved.
Unlike her two younger sisters, Rose, who married Commander William Leveson-Gower, who became Earl Granville, and Elizabeth, who both had a highly developed sense of humour and a strong streak
of mischief, my mother was in contrast more serious, probably because she was the eldest girl of the Strathmore clan. I have two of her diaries, written when she was in her early twenties before
she married in which she regularly recorded going out before breakfast to dig in her garden. Often the rest of the day was spent writing letters, practising her singing, and doing a little drawing
and sketching. It was a gentle and rather dull life. The only time I can remember my parents having even the smallest row was when my father asked me, when I was about twelve, to find out what was
wrong, because my mother had thrown a copy of
The Times
at him. That was what domestic violence amounted to at Carberry.
I must have been a great surprise to them, born nearly seven years after their last child, when my mother was forty-two and my father fifty-six. Perhaps they wanted another son, as I remember
being given presents of toy swords, bows and arrows and even a suit of armour. Dolls were definitely out. I made very efficient missile launchers by slitting the ends of bamboo canes and inserting
stones in the slit ends. I was a lone child, but not lonely; there is a difference. Andrew was the nearest to me in age, and I hero-worshipped him for a long time. He would do exciting things like
making bonfires in winter on the ice of the Carberry pond, to see how long it took to melt through and he put up with me tagging along behind him when he was shooting rabbits and pigeons.
Myself as an infant
