LADY OF KNOLE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 April 1941, Page 6

LADY OF KNOLE

POSSESSOR OF PROFITABLE IDEAS. The daughter of a Spanish dancer and an English peer who enjoyed for a tim> Queen Victoria’s favour, Victoria had many suitors, and could quite easily have married an ardent French marquis.. She chose, however, to settle down with her first cousin, Lionel Sackville-West, the young heir to Knole, who was 21 when she was 26.

Lacking the sense of respect for old traditions, the Lady of Knole conceived a charity which she called the Knole Guild. Finding how generously her friends would pay double for articles sold in aid of the Guild, she decided to open a shop under that name in London, using the profits for her personal pocket. Her husband was forced to intervene, but the lady was genuinely hurt to find her scheme dismissed simply because it was not honest.

It was not long before she had another profitable idea. Gathering together pieces of paper and string she made note-books covered with chintz.

Nothing seemed to deter this lady from saving. She even went to the length of cutting up used stamps and piecing them together so that no watermark appeared, but she was quite capable of tipping a waiter five pounds if she discovered that he had a sick wife or an ailing child. Most of her correspondence was written on the backs of catalogues; and she even wrote to Lord Kitchener during the war complaining that he had taken all her footmen.

Regular meals in the dining-room boring her, she hit on the idea of dining in the open, even when snow was on the ground and the diners had to wear furs and mittens and sit on hotwater bottles.

She thought nothing of organising a charity called the Roof of Friendship for repairing one of her houses, and was much annoyed when William Nicholson, the painter, sent her an actual tile done up in a parcel, rather than some 'cash.