lady Angela Forbes

[Tom Morgan]

I'm trying to find out a bit of background information about Lady Angela. I know that lots of soldiers were grateful for her refreshment hut at Etaples and that she spoke out about some of the bad aspects of the camp regime, but am having a few problems finding out about Lady Angela herself. Can anyone point me to any sources?

Tom

[Guest Pete Wood]

Here's a link to the website of the current Lord Forbes. I don't know if they have the family records

[Tom Morgan]

Excellent - thanks very much! I've just rattled off an email to Castle Forbes™ and hope for a reply which could give me more details on Lady Angela.

Tom

[steve shepherd]

Pals

I remember a few weeks ago seeing some information on Lady angela forbes and her work at the training camp at Etaples can someone point me towards the link as i have been unable to find it again

cheers

Badger400

[Sue Light]

And her entry from the Oxford Dictionary of Biography:

Forbes [née St Clair-Erskine], Lady Angela Selina Bianca (1876–1950), wartime catering organizer, was born at 8 Grafton Street, Mayfair, London, on 11 June 1876, the fifth of the five children of Robert Francis St Clair-Erskine, fourth earl of Rosslyn (1833–1890), and seventh child of his wife, Blanche Adeliza Fitzroy (d. 1933), daughter of Henry Fitzroy and widow of the Hon. Charles Maynard. Angela St Clair-Erskine was the youngest of five beautiful sisters, the most outstanding of whom was her half-sister Daisy, countess of Warwick, mistress of Edward VII. Angela's childhood was spent between Dysart, near Kirkcaldy, Fife, and Lady Anne's House, near Stamford, Lincolnshire. She was educated by governesses, but her father was the strongest influence in her early life and shared with her his love of horses, hunting, and good food.

Angela was nearly 6 feet tall with a turned-up nose, not beautiful like her sisters but full of vitality, with a gift for repartee and the vocabulary, it was said, of a stable boy. Hunting was her passion and she recounts in her autobiography Memories and Base Details (1921) how, when James Stewart (Jim) Forbes (1872–1957), a soldier, asked her to marry him, she replied ‘yes, if I may have your chestnut horse’ (p. 84). They married on 27 April 1896 and had two daughters. In 1907 they divorced.

After the divorce, and short of money, Angela Forbes wrote four novels which she later described as pot-boilers, though the first and most autobiographical, The Broken Commandment (1910), still reads well. By 1912 she was the acknowledged mistress of Lord Elcho, later ninth earl of Wemyss (1857–1937), sharing his passion for gambling and dividing her time between her house at Le Touquet, France, and Gosford, the Wemyss house in East Lothian, while Mary Elcho lived at Stanway, Gloucestershire.

At the outbreak of the First World War, Angela dumped her children at Stanway and went out to Dr Haden Guest's Hospital in Paris. There, although quite unqualified, she took notes for the surgeons in the operating theatre. She was in Boulogne when she saw trains of wounded coming in, the soldiers being left on the quay for hours with no food or drink. She went straight back to London, spent £8 on provisions at Fortnum and Masons, and in November 1914 started a canteen for the soldiers in the station waiting-room. It was an immediate success. Unlike the official canteens, the British Soldiers' Buffets, commonly known as Angelinas, met every train of wounded as it arrived and were often open twenty-four hours a day. Although Angela and her volunteers, who were mainly her friends and relatives, never knew if there would be 1000 or 4000 to feed, food never ran out.

At first Angela and then Lord Wemyss, who became treasurer, raised money successfully through appeals in the press; then in 1915 the Red Cross canteens started charging the soldiers for food. The British Soldiers' Buffets also began to charge and—unlike the Red Cross—made a profit, which Angela used after the war to help pay for her training scheme for disabled soldiers. In 1916 she opened another canteen, in the biggest house in Étaples, for the workmen who were building the British army training camp there, and another in 1917 for the 10,000 soldiers who were drilled there. From her canteen profits she built fourteen recreation huts. The buffets also operated in the station at Étaples, serving men on their way to the front line. On 9 September 1917 rioting occurred in the camp; the description of the near-mutiny in Memories and Base Details throws an interesting sidelight on an incident that was hushed up at the time.

A few days after the riot Angela was ordered to leave France. The excuse given was that her conduct was unseemly: she had been heard to say ‘damn’ and she had washed her hair in the canteen. She was astonished and furious, and made an appeal, but the army was adamant. With her abrasive manner and her disregard for red tape she had made enemies, and her dislike of the commander-in-chief, Sir Douglas Haig, was well known. It has been suggested that there was a connection between her witnessing the ‘mutiny’ and her departure. She was denied an inquiry, but her case came before the House of Lords, and both Lord Ribblesdale and Lord Wemyss spoke eloquently in her defence. As the whole house knew they were, or had been, her lovers, the scene must have caused some quiet mirth, but her name was cleared.

After the war Angela Forbes started a training scheme for disabled soldiers, but it soon faded out, as did a dress shop, an attempt at journalism, and a scheme to run Gosford as a hotel. She reverted to her maiden name by deed poll in 1929. She travelled widely, describing her adventures in Fore and Aft (1932). Angela St Clair-Erskine died on 22 October 1950 in Jersey, and her funeral took place at Roslin Chapel, Midlothian, on 2 November.

Clayre Percy

Sources

A. Forbes, Memories and base details (1921) · Burke, Peerage (1959) · Lady Cynthia Asquith: diaries, 1915–1918 (1968) · The letters of Arthur Balfour and Lady Elcho, 1885–1917, ed. J. Ridley and C. Percy (1992) · W. Allison and J. Fairley, The monocled mutineer (1978) · Hansard 5L (1918), vol. 28 · A. Forbes, Fore and aft (1932) · private information (2004) · b. cert. · A. Lambert, Unquiet Souls: the Indian summer of the British aristocracy, 1880

[Greyhound]

Thoroughly enjoyed hearing about this remarkable personality! Thanks, Sue and Badger.

[Tom Morgan]

I agree - great information! I started the earlier topic that Sue linked to and managed to find out absolutely nothing. Thanks, Sue.

Tom

[Sue Light]

My own feeling is that the Great War content of the biography above was very much wishful thinking. Many aristocratic and titled ladies figure large in the documents I'm working on, but there are only a few brief references to Mrs. Forbes, always as 'causing trouble.' She had no official standing with the British Army, and as a civilian not allied to the Joint War Committee, I believe she was asked either to toe the line, and apply to come under the auspices of the British Red Cross, or to leave France - nothing to do with the mutiny. She was regarded as a loose cannon of the type that caused so much angst in South Africa, and could not be tolerated by a modern, professional Army. I think the biography is extremely biased, but one that she would have approved of.

Sue

[Tom Morgan]

Thanks Sue - due caution will be applied when considering Lady A's exploits, but I was most grateful for having learned who she actually was! I couldn't even find that out before.

Tom

[steve shepherd]

Sue Tom and Greyhound

Thanks very much for the input on this topic i have found it very interesting, Has anyone seen a photograph of lady Angela? she must have been a thorn in the side of the high command! a bit like Miss Nightingale who has been in the news following the release of new documents.

another famouse woman Mrs Cunliffe-Owen and her work with the Sportsmans Battalions. This subject can also be found on the forum.

thanks again to everyone

Badger400

[Michelle Young]

Theres a photo of her about 1/2 way down this page

http://charleyswar.tripod.com/id7.html

Cheers, Michelle

[steve shepherd]

Michelle

thanks for that she must have been young in that picture

cheers

badger400