Jottings From The Life and Times of Almina Carnarvon
Highclere Castle in the days before that smart edifice became (like Big Ben on an old bottle of HP sauce) and the ubiquitous logo for TV's popular Society drama, Downton Abbey.
Almina Carnarvon
The Abortionist
The writer, Evelyn Waugh was the nephew of Almina, the 5th Countess of Carnarvon (1876-1969), the barely five-foot-high Pocket Venus of Highclere Castle in the days before that smart edifice became (like Big Ben on an old bottle of HP sauce) and the ubiquitous logo for TV's popular Society drama, Downton Abbey.
As well as being a petite, half-French, beauty and famed hostess, Almina Carnarvon was the proprietor, cum-Commandant of a series of up market nursing homes that thrived in war and peacetime.
The Waugh link with the Carnarvons (well, the Herbert family really) is a double one through Evelyn Waugh's two marriages, firstly to Evelyn Gardener the great "She Evelyn", daughter of the 5th Earl of Carnarvon's sister Lady Winifred Burghclere, whom he divorced in 1931 and then later to Laura, a daughter of Hon. Aubrey Herbert, the 5th Earl's poorly sighted, half- brother.
In April 1932 ( according to the Diaries ) Waugh wrote to Lady Dorothy Lygon commenting on hearing that her brother Hugh was in a sanatorium and her older sister Lady Sybell was a patient at Almina Carnarvon's nursing home at Alfred House, 7-9 Portland Place, London (it was to have her wisdom teeth removed, it seems.)
Waugh exposes the real purpose of such nursing establishments to Society figures especially the bright young things of stage or screen was much more than just having their appendix removed.
He jibes :
" Golly what a family. Hugh in a mad house and now Sibell at my ex-aunt Almina's abortionist parlour."
"ex-aunt" is right as Waugh had already divorced Evelyn and he was still five years away from marrying Laura.
A further hint of the nature of the extra services at Alfred House comes from the cartoonist Osbert Lancaster in his memoirs " With an eye to the future". He describes it as " the immensely chic but slightly wayward nursing home run by Almina, Lady Carnarvon.."
As Almina Carnarvon's biographer ( albeit on the threshold of issuing the third edition of her secret life) I'd welcome any tales known from those active on this site of any other references by Waugh ( or his contemporaries ) to his Aunt Almina or any of her family.
Sadly, Waugh is dwarfed by A J Cronin in immortalising Almina in fiction as Ida Sherrington in the medical satire "The Citadel".
Unless I've not spotted Almina elsewhere!
Enquiries, please e-mail
The Life and Secrets of Almina Carnarvon: A Candid biography of Almina, 5th Countess of Carnarvon of Tutankahamun fame is now in its THIRD EDITION
Author of the book, William Cross, would be pleased to hear from you.