LADY MARY CLIVE

On the subject of the Clive family of Whitfield (different from but related to the Clive family of Perrystone Court, although all seem to have served, at one time or another, in the Grenadier Guards), a mention of Lady Mary Clive (nee Pakenham), who married Captain (later Major) Meysey George Dallas Clive, elder brother of the late Lewis Clive, on 30th December 1939.

Lady Mary Clive on the front cover of "The Bystander" magazine, October 1936.

Lady Mary was the daughter of Brigadier General Thomas Pakenham, 5th Earl Longford, who was killed in action at Gallipoli - leading an advance - on 21st August 1915. Reputedly, his last words - clearly to a brother officer - were "Don't bother ducking, the men don't like it and it doesn't do any good...."

Lady Mary was one of six children, and a sister to Frank Pakenham (later and notoriously, Lord Longford, or the eccentric 7th Earl - see HERE), whom we last met (in 1936) fighting Mosley's BUF in Oxford.

Lady Mary was presented as a debutante in 1926, an experience which she later described in her 1938 memoir, "Brought Up and Brought Out". She described the men (the 'debs delights') to whom she was introduced during her debutante year, perhaps focusing on a degree of inbreeding amongst the English aristocracy, as "practically deformed...Some were without chins. Some had no foreheads. Hardly any of them had backs to their heads." An early marriage was not for Lady Mary......

Instead:

Lady Mary travelled around the world, studied art in London, Rome and Munich, and shared, with her younger sister, Violet, an art studio on the top floor of a house in Jubilee Place, just off the King's Road, Chelsea. Violet was accustomed to model for Lady Mary's female nudes, until "news reached them that the mechanics at the motor-works across the road were making ribald remarks about 'the young lady they could see undressing in Lady Mary's studio.'"

Lady Mary - with the commercialisation of the aristocracy that was an interwar novelty - also became a gossip columnist for the "Londoner's Diary" section of the Beaverbrook London "Evening Standard", earning ten guineas a week for two columns, and a novelist (publishing four books under the pen name "Hans Duffy" between 1932 and 1937). Appropriately nicknaming Beaverbrook "the Goblin King", she shared journalistic duties on the "Evening Standard" with Peter Fleming, brother of Ian Fleming, and John Betjeman. 

The marriage to Meysey Clive in December 1939 produced two children in quick succession, George and Alice, and a move from Chelsea to Whitfield. Upon Meysey's death in action in 1943, Lady Mary let Whitfield to the Canadian High Commission (goodness knows why they needed it) and brought the children up in "Rabbit Cottage", the former head gardener's home on the Whitfield estate.

Lady Mary photographed by Cecil Beaton, date unknown.

After the war, and the introduction of the crippling death duties and other taxes which resulted in the destruction of many of the old English country houses, Lady Mary had an inventive solution to save Whitfield. Instead of completely demolishing the house, Lady Mary had the large Victorian wings removed, returning Whitfield to its original Georgian core and remodelling the surrounds:

Whitfield, early 20th century

Whitfield "downsized", early 21st century. The extent of the demolitions is now only
partially hidden by the mature trees, and the old front lawn appears to have
been turned into an ornamental lake. For another view of the original house
from a different angle, see HERE

Post-war, Lady Mary published two historical biographies, one on John Donne (1966) and one on Edward IV (1973), and was close to her sister-in law (the wife of Frank Pakenham), the historian Elizabeth Longford. The two went on research trips together to Spain and Portugal as Elizabeth Longford produced her magnificent two volume biography of Arthur Wellesley, it being recorded that Lady Mary "had an uncanny eye for working out the logistics of historic battlegrounds....as Elizabeth followed in the footsteps of her subject, the Duke of Wellington."

Lady Mary died in Herefordshire in March 2010. She never remarried.

Add:

A young Frank Pakenham in the 1930s, brother of Lady Mary and later the 7th Earl of Longford

(1). Frank Pakenham's encounter with the BUF in 1936 was clearly a savage affair. HERE IS AN ARTICLE based on the memoirs of Lady Antonia Fraser, his daughter and future historian.

(2). Through Peter Fleming, Lady Mary became friends with his younger brother, Ian. For lovers of James Bond, HERE IS AN ARTICLE written by Lady Mary herself on the real personality of the author.

(3). Lady Violet Pakenham married the novelist Anthony Powell, author of the 12 volume "Dance to the Music of Time", in 1934. See her WIKI HERE. 

(4). Lady Mary painted by Henry Lamb in 1929:

(Southampton Art Gallery)

At the date of this portrait, Lamb had just married Lady Mary's sister, Pansy. There is a lengthy and interesting article on all three sisters and their respective lives HERE