ROBERT WAINWRIGHT Sheila: The Australian beauty who bewitched British society. Reviewed by Kylie Mason
More social history than biography, this fascinating book brings to life the glamorous years between the world wars.
Born in 1895 on a property near Goulburn, New South Wales, Sheila Chisholm spent her childhood like most other Australians: cavorting outdoors, getting into scrapes and terrifying her parents. The youngest of Harry and Margaret Chisholm’s three children, she was doted on by her parents, teased by her older brothers and given the best education available to girls at the time. In 1914, Margaret felt Sheila’s education would be best completed by attending the Season in London:
The Season was an event to embrace rather than to attend, created to give society women a reason to accompany their husbands to the city during the sitting of parliament; an endurance test of presentation and deportment. It lasted not for a few days or even weeks, but for months – from the middle of April … [to] the Cowes yachting regatta [in August] …the rounds of garden parties and balls had only just begun as [Margaret and Sheila] rented a flat at St James’s Court, in the heart of the city abuzz with society and those who wanted to be part of it.
Soon after their arrival, Margaret and Sheila were presented to the King and Queen at Buckingham Palace as members of ‘a select group of Australian women’. But the rumours of approaching war brought an end to the Season and once Britain declared war on Germany, rather than risk sailing home to Australia, Sheila and her mother stayed in London. When Sheila’s brother enlisted and was sent to Egypt for training, Sheila and Margaret set out for Cairo to be near him.
It was while volunteering at the various hospitals set up to treat the wounded that Sheila met the first of her three husbands, Francis Edward Scudamore St Claire-Erskine, Lord Loughborough, her true introduction to British society. ‘Loughie’ was also an inveterate gambler, an addiction the new Lady Loughborough discovered the day after their wedding. Upon returning to London, Sheila threw herself into society events, making friends and gaining admirers. Among these were the heir to the British throne, Prince Edward, and his brother Prince Albert, to whom Sheila grew particularly close.
Edward and Bertie even stole time at Freda’s and Sheila’s homes, sometimes under the noses of their husbands who were either unaware of or ignored their wives’ indiscretions … Sheila’s relationship with the gentle Bertie had clearly developed beyond mere friendship. There was a mutual attraction and, from Sheila’s perspective, a welcome distraction as her marriage continued to disintegrate.
Over the next twenty years, Sheila became famous around the world for the charity balls she held and the company she kept. She was a contemporary of, among others, Cecil Beaton, the Mitford sisters, Evelyn Waugh and Rudolph Valentino, spending time with the latter at his home in Los Angeles. She left a trail of lovers – both actual and unrequited. When Sheila eventually divorced Loughie, she gained custody of their two sons, Tony and Peter. Her wedding to her second husband, Sir John Milbanke, stopped traffic on the Strand. After the declaration of World War Two, she left London and again volunteered as a nurse in an attempt to soothe her grief over her son Peter’s death early in the war.
Robert Wainwright has painstakingly researched Sheila Chisholm’s life, gaining access to her incomplete, unpublished memoir as well as the unpublished memoir of her third husband, Prince Dimitri Alexandrovich of Russia, and such records as the royal family’s archives and the Rosslyn Collection at the Scottish National Archives. The author puts his research to excellent use and the book is a fascinating document of an opulent, uninhibited world that ended with the beginning of World War II.
But as a biography of an obviously accomplished, self-reliant and charming woman, Sheila falls short. Her extensive charity work and her time as a volunteer nurse during two world wars are mainly discussed in relation to her love life, which seems like a lost opportunity; how much more compelling a portrait of a remarkable woman this biography would be if her work in the community had been expanded upon. And apart from the brief extracts from her memoir, Sheila herself often feels strangely absent from the narrative, relying as it does on the words of the men who loved her and the women who socialised with her. Perhaps the inclusion of so many first-hand accounts, newspaper extracts and personal letters is intended to seduce readers the way Sheila must have beguiled those who came to know her, but the biography sadly lacks the glamour and vivacity of its subject.
Robert Wainwright Sheila: The Australian beauty who bewitched British society Allen and Unwin 424pp $32.99
Kylie Mason is a freelance book editor based in Sydney. www.kyliemmason.com
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