InnerVIEWS with Ernie Manouse: Lady Carnarvon

you growing up were you familiar with highclere castle I was not familiar with height because I had never been there and really hardly even heard of it when you first walked through those doors their first visit there what was your impression I loved the landscape and the trees in the parkland and the farm and I suppose I'm an outdoors type of person so I thoroughly enjoyed it and I thoroughly enjoyed my my first visit bare eyes with a group of friends as well as Geordi so just had a nice time when you mentioned the parks that's one thing people aren't familiar with from watching the show the massive Park property that goes along with the house well around the house there's a thousand acres of parkland and part of it was designed by capability Brown but the origins of it go back into medieval deer parks and the original oranges into Neolithic Iron Age and then anglo-saxon times so I have those records around the thousand acres of parkland we then farm five or six thousand acres of farmland and we have woodland so we have some fantastic old oak trees and beech trees all the Elms have sadly gone which were very much part of the English landscape until post the Second World War and that's a wonderful part you see parts of it in Downton actually but some of the thoughts you see in Downton for example the gardens you think you're in Maggie Smith's cards at the dower house right actually you were tightly sometimes you're sitting on a farm when Daisy is talking to her who was the putative father-in-law and she's in a field at a farm and it's not his farm it's kind of a muddle they mix and match they do and many of the drives and everything else and we're and Matthew famously drove his car and died that's at Highclere so later on it's great I can do a kind of tour of where everybody dies enough enough I heard that when people take tours of the home the one room they all want to see is where mr. Pamuk died that was such a great scene but it's it's where he died but actually it's an amazing room we call it stand up and it was decorated for the Prince of Wales Edward the seventh when he came to state title in 1895 so he's got extraordinary red silk and wool coverings some beautiful French clocks and mirrors and some rather special furniture so I think of it in two ways is there any times you feel things of yours are being stolen by television when you talk about that room here it has a grand history yet we television viewers thinking that is the room mr. Pamuk died I think you have to be positive about the fact that fiction can draw people into real history so that's a nice thought to do with books as well so whether that would likely or not have happened and it was a fun story so here you are talking about it but when people go around I don't mind at all they're drawn there the guides tell them both stories of Elizabeth McGovern pretending to drag a body wrap my blog about all the corridor creeping but actually people were alive when they in the past so I kind of like the muddle yeah take me back though when did you start realizing that there was a rich history you could tap into you've written some wonderful books about the conovan family and it's interesting how these characters almost mirror in some ways things that have happened on Downton Abbey but with even a richer story behind that I would say when joyed and I took over after his father died his father died on September the 11th 2001 but not in New York obviously but in England but it was a tragedy for us as well as your tragedy here in the States and a couple of years later we had begun to work out what direction how we were going to make hightly work how we were going to sustain it what its future might be to make people love it as we loved it locally internationally and how we were going to take it forwards at that time too I had quite a bad and riding accident and completely wrecked my knee so I couldn't move so I was sat in my study in the castle so I could I asked the archivist just to dump books on me because all I could do is read so she actually brought me down lots of letters and diaries from our mina v contest so that was my starting point then jordi and i thought about what was our unique selling point for blenheim they've got the church you're the extraordinary palace the World Heritage Site Burley have horse droughts different houses and castles in England find different ways of promoting themselves at different times and we thought Tutankhamun extraordinary story which was the first world media global news story in 1922 so we thought that's our story because literally because the fifth Earl discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun with Howard Carter so we therefore began to transform our cellars all the old staff rooms and the wine cellars into an egyptian exhibition so that's what we did gaali 2005 2006 it was a big project we discovered lots of hidden treasures as we went through it and then we blanked in all the windows downstairs around the staff thing so you had the idea of going through the tombs and you followed their discovery and children today loved it and you go in and hold candles and see what you can find so that was it I thought our Golden Nugget our pot of gold was our history was our stories was the anecdotes and you had to make it fun and then who would have imagined so much more was coming your way we were certainly but then when when I took over with Jordy the castle had not been lived in it was fine and my parents-in-law had restored the downstairs rooms and I didn't want to preserve a stately Museum I'm not I'm not quite that good a person I wanted to preserve a stately home where we could have fun so I ended up doing up bathrooms and bedrooms and you just start I'm afraid with boring things like losing hot water which are very essential and we've ended up staying there asking friends asking Julian and Emma Fellowes the creator and writer of Downton Abbey and and other film producers and chairmen of companies and ambassadors and friends from London so I still have weekend's like that scattered throughout the year and it brings the house alive and gives it a heart and a warmth well it's interesting because I read somewhere where you said you didn't just marry the Lord you married a house yeah and that it is a major part of your life becomes care and taking care of and preserving to pass on the stately home is that daunting I guess that's the best word for it it was daunting and it was a challenge but I've never not tried to tackle a challenge and you just do it every journey starts with a small step so that's where we started bit by bit the first bedroom the first bathroom and luckily you didn't really know the extent so my husband always says what is the budget for this bedroom darling and I said well what it starts here it ends just because when you uncover and when you take back the walls I want to do everything properly so I want to make sure the electricity is good the walls are good the ceilings good so I'm not quite sure what I'll find and and I'm careful and try to be prudent I'm a prudent accountant and I'm buying things which I think are within our budget and if I have gone spent as I think a little bit too much for where we are I'll stop and not to do the next room so you just carry on yeah when you are doing a room when you are renovating repairing decorating how much do you pay tribute to the past and how much are you incorporating the new in the modern into it how do you make that decision with each choice I approach everything quite slowly and I hope with thought and I'm thinking what where was this room where did it come from what did Sir Charles Barry who was the last architect of Highclere Castle the latest one in 1842 what were his thoughts what was his idea space and what was in vogue at the time then I think what do visitors today expect and what do I like and I have to pay some sort of nod to English heritage to make sure that they would be happy if they considered what I was doing and it is my husband's family home I was painting the galleries you see a lot of in Downton Abbey and you want to get the right paint color because once you've started it's a huge space and I should have bought shares and most paint companies and I had had about 20 different samples and was struggling because the light changes around it anyway I chosen wine and bought the paints and I thought what better disaster my husband Julie darling what did you think and he said well I like them more and don't like that one of course that was the question about the house and I've read that the house that we currently see about mid 1800s and but it was built around over in place of a previous house I never understand exactly the story there was there a home there that this is built around or was it raised and they put a whole new building it was not raised the earliest records of a house at Highclere 749 AD as an Anglo Saxon charter working catheter of Wessex granted the space of Highclere and the estate much as it is today to the bishops of Winchester and they built a house there a school church there were tile mills and a village in dovecot ox house and a horse barn and things like that so that change that stayed more or less where it is then it in about 30 and 60 William of Wycombe built a palace more or less for hikers today so the library used to today underneath that we found the remains of the Palace of William of Wickham and there was a long building above it very rich in ornate perhaps more like what you see in the city of Winchester today and in 1399 he created Roger Walden Archbishop of Canterbury at Highclere so it must have been a palace of some size it then had a it continued on to the following century and then eventually it was sold off by Henry the eighth of his son who were nationalizing church property and it was then bought by a secular family the Kings Mills and they built a Tudor house sir and a hundred years later my husband's family bought it and changed it on top but the heart of the saloon which we see today behind the fireplace is a medieval fireplace under the floors are old water wells from the medieval times when the Knights used to kick whose glogs on the fire in 1360 and it went from there all the way through and I've got old maps which I've been looking at so I've been working on my medieval landscape upstairs here today in the hotel and where the courtyard is at the back you sometimes see I could I know there's the remains of an ox house and dovecot and stables I can see where the kitchen was the remains of the medieval church you can see the bricks there's a crypt underneath which I haven't yet been into I have to pluck up my courage in case I'm not sure who I find in that I know they're not far from my and there may be some it may be some you know bodies from the plague time still buried in there so it is an old old place there was then a Georgian house created in 1780 and at the moment I'm searching for the architect I only have the sketches of that house and it may have been capability Brown which is my excitement and my current pursuit of of one source of who built that house and then in 1842 the third Earl of Carnarvon wanted a much greater house than the very nice restrained gentleman's 18th century residence and he created Highclere Castle on top of the old house so a long answer quite a rich history does your husband's family ever marvel at the fact how much you know about their family now because you married into this family well I think marrying in and then research it is slightly easy because you're one removed I think when I think about my own grandparents or what they did you have an immediate emotional pull to put them in the rose-colored light for your parents your grandparents so just being just one step removed I adore my husband and respect and obviously his family but I am perhaps able to have a little bit more perspective in terms of writing about it and researching it what fascinated you most about elmina I think she was an extraordinary woman I mean it was an extraordinary woman who made such a contribution to men's lives and a contribution which is essentially she saved their lives so she gave these men back to their mothers and sisters and their wives and it was such a gift there is no greater gift so she spent all her money on doing good in that way so there's a very actually I hope it's resonated clearly very strongly in America today with your tremendous tradition of philanthropy because that's what she was she was one of the earliest 100% philanthropists which in the end even her tremendous roster fortune could not withstand so she was a Rothschild legitimate child though how come she and had money from Rothschild how come the illegitimate C didn't block the fund isn't that fascinating yeah it is so interesting when you see their wedding in 1895 one side of the more bruised and the great English aristocratic families the other side are all the great Jewish families that you frizzies this assumes that the Rothschilds so there was this tacit acknowledgment of who she was and I have a marriage contract in high Clare in the archives which sets out the settlement between Alfred Rothschild the 5th Earl of Carnarvon and our Mina to become the fifth Countess of Carnarvon and it's executed one month after their wedding in case obviously she found she and in it there's a dowry of five hundred thousand pounds about 30 min pounds fifty million dollars in today's money and isn't something called cash so it was acknowledged and then after Edward the seventh came to stay Prince of Wales's she was in 1895 in the first year of their marriage Almina and her husband went to spend Christmas with Alfred Rothschild it was relaxed it wasn't snide it wasn't pointy it's very heartwarming actually that he wasn't you know I think some of the society in America when you read it waters book was much more judgmental than perhaps it was in England you talk about in the book though that she was looking for acceptance to some degree and she marries in this family was that then a problem I know you're saying there was acceptance but she had been illegitimate how did society see her then once she married the Lord once she married Lukyanova which was in June 1895 one of the first events that was specifically arranged by her father was for the Prince of Wales something that pajamas day in December so I'm actually writing a book about entertaining and food and I'm using these events to show you the menu how they cooked and what happened during that weekend because that was the beginning of her life as part of another family eventually her husband passes in a fascinating story not just passes it's the curse of King Tom it's great I have a present tragedy and curses it wore him down he got pneumonia and passes away correct her story right and at the same moment he is dying his dog howls and dies - I thought - yes what do you attribute that to are you believing in the curse I'm very respectful of it but there's a very interesting point when we've got a replica mask of Tutankhamun's mascot Highclere in a barrage it's an exhibition and it has been carefully and researched by academics and archaeologists and there's only one point this extraordinary mask is thinner than anywhere else and just on the left cheek and that's exactly where the mosquito bit lookin oven and again in some ways Tutankhamun's death remains a slight mystery he clearly wasn't murdered he died of some accident it seems like he had malaria so again he may have had septicemia he may have fallen off his chariot the one thing he did have was malaria so those two men thousands of years apart are still linked by this is a mosquito fascinating so without the knowledge now that the Lord is gone lady Almina has to leave the house she chooses to could she have stayed Amina could have stayed and moved to a dower house nearby or something she she didn't come number two in her world she came number one and she decided to move on and she had the money she had her father's fortune and she thoroughly enjoyed buying houses doing the muck moving on getting bored and then she started a hospital in memory of her father in London and that was her vocation and her life and everyone who was anyone went to Lady connivance Hospital in Portland Street then Catherine comes along and you've got another wonderful story I think I mean a son marries I mean his son Paul she marries Catherine an American in American newspapers it's reported in America IRS she wasn't an heiress she was a very beautiful gentle American girl and when I looked at her story I thought where's the story here went into the archives brutal drowned open some miscellaneous envelopes and found what an extraordinary story it was she's part of the Lee family of Virginia Robert Ely and I found a little bit of paper signed by Robert Ely I found other little bits of paper signed by Theodore Roosevelt one of my favorite American presidents so I suddenly had this bit of American history in our archives and I had a very different story for what a fascinating story my question is eventually she's going to divorce and she leaves Highclere and I think it's a system we don't quite fully understand here in the u.s. is that the inheritance then goes to the eldest son the firstborn son if there's a firstborn son but what happens to the current lady they're always leaving the house eventually you may find yourself in a similar circumstance is it hard or is it just understood with each of you that eventually the house goes on but you move on how does that well the first thing is that when catherine divorced catherine port she divorced in 1936 it finally came through she left another 34 that possibly wasn't her choice she was hoping her husband would I mean in a woman's would say him grow up but but it wasn't to be and it was a very poignant moment when she left and that is something to share with with us because that was a she left high clear and she had there's one full scrap piece of paper and there's perhaps 10 items and for her marriage and her life there that's all she took the painting of herself a chest of drawers a few other things that's all she took it was you know I just immediately burst into tears for all she done for that good woman that's all she had so it was for her a very low point in her life and it was fascinating trying to trying to cope with writing about that and the dignity and grace with which she coped with it and it was something which happened frequently in the 30s so there's that and then her life moves on and for the girl who stood in 1922 at one of the set weddings of the year it's perhaps not the life she would have envisaged for herself as you dream and hope as a young girl port she lived at Highclere until he died but never married again so he had one son and one daughter and his son then took over in the past most of the contest has ended up dying often in childbirth and in today's world you know by the time Jordi and I have done our part I have a very happy to live in another house and carry on writing and writing and with my dogs and you know 70 75 years old I'm not sure I want to be working quite as hard as I am now and it's very interesting to see what another generation brings to bear on it so I don't really see that there is a problem and I'm quite happy about how does it disrupt your lives having the biggest drama in the world shooting in your living room basically it's quite old well they arrive in February and early February the Downton crew turn up for their first days of filming and there withers on and off until mid-july so it's a bit like the start of the school term there I know that there at the moment they then leave because we open to the public for Easter think the public it is that we finish on the 12th or 13th of April I forget the Downton Lori's are stacked up at the local petrol station they come in as the visitors DS the idea is not to cross you know to dry on the verge is basically and kind of keep to the main tracks they then are with us for a bit I think we have a charity event they go away they come back we do some tours we do May opening we have a game fair and so on it's it's in and out in and out it's a very busy diary yeah and they want to go here we'll go there and since I appreciate that they make our home look incredibly beautiful which is fantastic and I want our home standing at the end of the day otherwise I have to report to my husband we'd be happy do you watch when you watch the show you know you have trouble getting television reception and Highclere we do what you think is very funny we have one television in the castle I'm that television do you watch Downton Abbey we do actually but I have a panic every so often because I can't find the things that sorry is it strange to see your home very odd in this way and then you settle into it I really quite like watching Downton honor on a plane because I'm not in the house I'm and I enjoy Julian's lines better because I'm not thinking you're not having that strange disassociation yeah how much do you know of what's going to happen how much of you say well I know what's happening each day but I tried not to concentrate on it because I don't want to say the wrong thing to anybody so bizarrely whereas I'm sure everybody would love to hang around watching it I don't I think that's their area of expertise that's that's there that that's their drama we agree what rooms they're shooting in we agree with a leaving all their equipment and where the tea urns are out the front is fantastic because I can sniff and have t's without so I sort of think of it really I thought because Germany I think I've seen two or three series you're usually half three or four months behind I've completely forget where China are so I can be saying the wrong thing about different territories there are different places it is well it's a fascinating story thank you so much for opening your house to this show your family's life for our interest in enjoyment the contributions of the family thank you so much for talking with us no I'm delighted it's on PBS I think it's been fantastic and has I hope draw never more people to support PBS is agree that's good very much thank you lady cannot thank you very much if you'd like to learn more about our guests or watch other episodes of interviews visit our website at Houston public media.org slash interviews you

Channel: Houston Public Media

Views: 30,068

Rating: 4.9288259 out of 5

Keywords: InnerVIEWS with Ernie Manose, Lady Carnarvon, Houston Public Media

Id: 8C0NBOL9fuI

Length: 26min 30sec (1590 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 08 2016