Eleanor Valesco Thornton: The Secret Spirt of Rolls-Royce

Eleanor Valesco Thortnton

Alluring and captivating, the sylph-like Spirit of Ecstasy mascot has adorned the bonnet of Rolls-Royce cars since 1911. This graceful winged Goddess, sometimes called The Flying Lady, is synonymous with silent speed, supreme comfort and superior automotive design... and she is based upon a one very special woman….Eleanor Velasco Thornton. 

That was the name later adopted by Nelly Thornton, who was born at 18 Cottage Grove, Stockwell, London on 15 April 1880. Her father was Frederick Thornton, an Australian telegraph engineer with Clark, Muirhead and Company and her mother was Sarah Ann Thornton (née Rooke). Despite stories that her mother was Spanish, which circulated due to her dark complexion, her mother's family were from humble origins in London, and the name Velasco appears to be one she adopted when she started working in the offices of the R.A.C after leaving school aged sixteen.

JOHN MONTAGU & ELEANOR THORNTON

John Montagu had just launched his own motoring magazine, The Car Illustrated – A Journal of Travel by Land, Sea and Air, when he invited Eleanor to join him as his Personal Assistant. Montagu was a charismatic aristocratic figure, educated at Eton and Oxford, with a great interest in travel and transport. An MP for the New Forest Division of Hampshire, he came third in the Paris-Ostend road race in 1899 and is credited with introducing King Edward VII to motoring. 

 By the age of 22, Eleanor was working as his private secretary carrying out an increasing number of duties especially when, in 1905 on the death of his father, Henry Montagu Douglas-Scott, Baron Montagu of Beaulieu, John inherited the title. Subsequently he moved from the House of Commons to the House of Lords, and according to his personal diaries, Eleanor proved indispensable in assisting with his wide-ranging activities as politician, landowner, editor, publisher and political writer.

Eleanor was a charming, graceful, immensely loyal and talented young lady, possessed of striking good looks and the attraction they felt for one another from the very beginning was to herald the onset of a love affair that lasted thirteen years. 

They had a daughter together, Joan Eleanor Thornton, but knowing that as a single mother she would be unable to continue to work for Montagu, Eleanor gave her child up for adoption after birth. It was a high-society relationship with a “love child” that was kept secret from all but a tiny circle of family and friends to avoid scandal.

Montagu's wife, Lady Cecil, not only knew about the affair, but also condoned it. According to Montagu's biographer, the family felt that Lady Cecil "became resigned, with no feelings of bitterness to her husband's affair and took the view that if he had to take a mistress then it was just as well he had chosen someone as sweet-natured and discreet as Eleanor Thornton - rather than someone who might cause trouble."

When John met Eleanor, the effect was instantaneous:

"I fell in love with her at first sight," he later said. "But as I couldn't marry her I felt I must keep away from her as much as I could. But she began to like me and realise my feelings as well." He explained: "Before long, we discovered we loved each other intensely and our scruples vanished before our great love."

Rather poignantly, John often referred to Eleanor as Thorn, which was his special name for her.

Edward Montagu said:  "My father and Eleanor shared a great passion. It was a grand love affair - perhaps even the love of his life. All this happened before my father met my mother. But I understand my father's first wife knew about the mistress. She was very tolerant of her and they got on very well.”

Among John’s many connections was sculptor Charles Robinson Sykes. The son of a marine painter, Sykes was educated at the Royal College of Art in London and by the 1920s had become a renowned designer and sculptor. Eleanor would become one of his favourite models to work with.

THE SPIRIT OF ECSTASY

When John introduced Charles Sykes to Claude Johnson, Managing Director of Rolls-Royce Limited, motoring history was made. An invitation was extended to Sykes to design an appropriate mascot, namely the Spirit of Ecstasy – a woman leaning forwards, arms outstretched behind and above her. Thornton posed for sculptor Sykes and there is no doubt that the love affair she had with John was truly the inspiration behind the mascot which has since been used as the bonnet/hood ornament on all cars manufactured by Rolls-Royce.

During this time the dark foreboding storm clouds of World War One had engulfed Europe and in 1915, having already spent some time in India, it was arranged for John, 2nd Baron Montagu to return to there, taking up his post of Inspector of Mechanical Transport. Eleanor would accompany him as far as Port Said, Egypt and then make the return journey.

Before the trip, Miss Thornton corresponded with John’s wife Lady Cecil. 

Eleanor wrote:  "I think it will be best for me to make arrangements without telling Lord Montagu - so he cannot raise objections. I do not think for one moment that there will be any trouble in the Med, but supposing? The lord will have an extra chance, for there will be my place in the boat for him, even if he has to be stunned to take it."

Later in the letter she writes, tellingly: "It is kind of you to give your sanction to my going as far as Port Said. You will have the satisfaction of knowing that as far as human help can avail he will be looked after."

In a letter to her husband dated 1915, Lady Cecil, who had continued to tolerate the relationship, wrote: "I hope and pray that you may come back safely? I am proud to know that you are so much wanted and that your services are appreciated. I am glad that Miss Thornton is going to Aden."

The couple set sail on the P&O Steam Navigation Company's SS Persia from Marseille on Christmas Day 1914. Five days into the voyage off Cape Martello, Crete on 30 December 1915,  a German U-boat U-38, commanded by Max Valentiner fired a torpedo at the ship's hull, while Eleanor and John were sitting at a table having lunch. To make matters even more devastating, the massive blast was repeated due to one of the ship's boilers exploding. 

As the ship began to list, icy seawater rushed in through the open port holes, and in the mayhem, Montagu and Eleanor made for the decks, which were already beginning to split. They considered trying to find a lifeboat but there was no time. One moment, Montagu had Eleanor in his arms, the next they were hit by a wall of water and she was gone. The port side of the ship was submerged and Montagu was dragged down with it. The ship sank in minutes, and Eleanor drowned, along with over three hundred other passengers - John Montagu survived.

After a total of three days drifting in a badly damaged lifeboat with only a handful of other passengers, devoid of food and water and suffering from severe exposure, they were picked up by a steamship called Ningchow. John spent several months convalescing in Malta. It is certain that his life was saved by him wearing the latest safety device – a Gieve inflatable waistcoat that his cousin, Admiral Mark Kerr had recommended. 

"I saw a dreadful scene of struggling human beings. Nearly all the boats were smashed. After a desperate struggle, I climbed on to a broken boat with 28 Lascars and three other Europeans. Our number was reduced to 19 the following day and only 11 remained by the next, the rest having died from exposure and injuries."

 'I should have got a stronger grip on her,' wrote Lord Montagu in a letter home from his sickbed in Malta in 1916, But to his enduring pain, Eleanor Thornton, his travelling companion, personal assistant and beloved mistress, had not been saved. When he finally  returned home he was flattered to read his own obituary, written by Lord Northcliffe, in the Times.

"My father was physically and mentally shattered by Thorn drowning," said his son "Theirs was a great love affair. Although when he came back home he was badly injured, he spent days looking for Thorn, who had been thrown overboard, searching everywhere, hoping that somehow she would turn up."

Though the affair between the aristocrat and Eleanor Thornton ended with her death, their love was immortalized in the most unlikely of places – on every Rolls Royce.

A plaque in Beaulieu Parish Church reads thus:

'This tablet was erected by John, 2nd Lord Montagu of Beaulieu in thankfulness for his miraculous escape from drowning after the sinking of the P and O SS Persia, torpedoed by a German submarine near Crete. And in memory of Eleanor Velasco Thornton, who served him devotedly for fifteen years. Drowned December 30th, 1915.'

The Probate Registry for June 1916 shows that Eleanor’s sister Rose - by that time the last surviving member of her immediate family - administered her will. Among her effects was a similar silver model of the Spirit Of Ecstasy, which Rose kept. Rose married Gordon Willis Hayter in 1923, and many years later, the silver model was stolen from the home of Dorothy Hayter, Gordon's second wife.

John’s wife, Lady Montagu died in 1919 and he remarried the following year, to Pearl Crake whom he met in the South of France. Pearl was Edward Lord Montagu's mother. 

However, the repercussions of the love affair between Eleanor and John did not end with their deaths. Montagu’s son takes up the story: 

 "My father died in 1929, when I was two and that was when the family discovered, by reading his will, that Eleanor had had a child. The will made provision for her, but it was worded to obscure who she was. We always used to wonder and were keen to find her. Then my half-sister Elizabeth went to live in Devon. She was standing in a fishmonger’s queue one day when someone said to her: 'See that woman over there? She's your sister'."

The woman's name was Joan Thornton. She had been born in 1903, soon after Montagu and Eleanor had begun their affair, and had been given up for adoption. The curious thing was that while Eleanor had made no attempt to make contact Joan, Lord Montagu had, on occasion, met up with his daughter.

He also wrote her a letter explaining the circumstances of her birth - "Your mother was the most wonderful and lovable woman I have ever met... if she loved me as few women love, I equally loved her as few men love..." - but she did not receive it until after his death.

Joan's behaviour was just as discreet as her mother's. She attended her father's funeral, but so quietly no one even noticed she was there.

 

"Eventually, I got in touch and took her for lunch at the Ritz. We had oysters and she said: 'Your father always used to bring me here and we would have oysters, too."

Joan married a surgeon commander in the Royal Navy and had two sons, one of whom, by sheer chance, worked for Rolls-Royce. Lord Montagu did as he knew his father would have wished. "I recognised them as full family," he says.

And so, over a century after Eleanor Thornton and John Montagu met, their story has now passed into history. As the poet Philip Larkin once wrote: "What will survive of us is love" - and rarely has there been a more vivid illustration of that sentiment. Every time you now see a Rolls Royce you will think of Eleanor Thornton & remember the great love she inspired.

Madeleine Truel: The Peruvian Heroine of World War Two

Madeleine seated front, 3rd from right 

Madeleine Truel was a Peruvian woman of French parentage who fought in the French Resistance as a document forger.

She was captured in 1944 and was tortured to extract information without success, following which she was sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin 1945. She died in Stolpe, Germany on 3 May 1945, after being made to walk on a "death march" just a few hours before the Russian troops arrived.

Alexandre Léon Truel and Marguerite Larrabure, were French immigrants who had arrived in Peru in the second half of the 19th century. They had eight children of which Madeleine was the youngest daughter, born on 28 August 1904. Madeleine grew up in the family home located on the old 54 Arequipa street in Lima. Her father managed a hardware store located at 150 Jirón de la Unión. She came from an observant Catholic family and studied at the school San José de Cluny, located on the corner of the Boliva Street and Jiron Washington in downtown Lima. French was spoken in her home and this allowed her to perfect her command of French along with Spanish.

Both of Madeleine Truel's parents died before she was 20 years old. Her mother was the first to pass away from ill health. Then her father died on 6 May 1918, in the clinic Maison de Santé in Lima, due to an infected leg wound which he acquired whilst he was working for the fire brigade putting out a fire at the "El Pergamino" shop. Alexandre Truel was recognized as a hero of Fire Brigade Nº3 and was decorated with a gold medal.

The orphaned Truel children decided to return to France at the request of some family members in Paris in 1924. Madeleine decided to study philosophy at the Sorbonne University. She later found work as an administrative assistant in the first branch of the Spanish Bilbao bank, located on the Rue de Richelieu. She told her workmates anecdotes of her life in Peru, and explained the traditions as well as the current affairs. She also liked to cook traditional Peruvian dishes for her french friends.

In January 1942, Madeleine was knocked over by a Nazi army truck. She was diagnosed with multiple fractures to the cranium and legs and spent about a year in hospital recovering from her terrible injuries. Due to this accident she had a limp that stayed with her for the rest of her days.

The Book Madeleine Wrote

In 1943, she co-wrote the book L'Enfant du Metro  (The Boy of the Subway) along with her sister Lucha. The book narrates a story of a boy who travels through the stations of the Paris subway. The book was dedicated to Pascal, the son of a family of Jewish-Romanian origins who were friends of hers. Her sister Lucha drew the illustrations for the book and Madeleine wrote the text. The publishers were Editions du Chêne. The seemingly innocent story book was Madeleine's covert literary protest at the German occupation of Paris and the persecution of the Jews.

In June 1940 when the German forces had invaded Paris, a married couple - Pierre and Annie Hervé - who were friends of Madeleine introduced her to some members of The French Resistance and very soon she began working in order to help them. Madeleine´s job was to forge documents, especially passports, and travel papers which were delivered to many Jewish fugitives and allied soldiers that had parachuted over the French capital. She used the pseudonym "Marie" when carrying out her resistance work. All the papers, passports and travel documents were forged by hand and she was so good at it, her work was rarely spotted as fake by German soldiers, and subsequently she saved many hundreds of people's lives in this way. 

Documentary on Madeleine

On 19 June 1944, Truel was captured by three German agents when she was picking up ink in one of the resistance's hide-away houses. Days before, a resistance comrade called Annie had been captured and with the information they had gathered from her, the agents set a trap which led directly to Madeleine's capture.

After being arrested she was driven to the SS offices located on the Foch Avenue and then she was temporary transferred to the Fresnes prison.

She was tortured by force for many days by the SS in order  they could uncover more details about the plans and the people of the resistance she was working with - but she refused to co-operate and didn't give away any details. She kept telling them that she assumed all the responsibility for her acts. Her family visited her and the only thing they could leave her was a Bible.

She was transferred to Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1945. In the concentration camp she lived in a very heroic and charitable manner. She re-distributed the small amount of food that she received, in order to help those who needed it most. 

Gates at Sachsenhausen

She maintained good spirits in spite of all the terrible hardships she suffered at Sachsenhausen  and liked to entertain her fellow prisoners with stories that she remembered about Peru. For this reason she received the affectionate name "Bird of the Isles" from her cell-mates.

As the end of the war drew near, the Soviet army was approaching from the east and the U.S. military from the west. German troops began to become very disorganized and started to flee.

Survivors of the concentration camps were moved in what was to become known as the "Death Marches" in late 1944 and early 1945.

Prisoners at Sachsenhausen

The Death March of prisoners from Sachsenhausen concentration camp to Lübeck, located just over 100 miles away, began on 22 April.

Many prisoners were exhausted by severe malnutrition and the bad living conditions and weather they had been forced to endure - most were not physically fit to march and many were dying along the way.

The purpose of these marches was to hide some of the evidence of the evil brutality suffered in the concentration camps. A German soldier who became impatient with the slowness of the marching prisoners began to beat some of them furiously with a steel rod. One of these victims was Madeleine.

A few hours later the Germans abandoned the marching prisoners and stripped off their uniforms in order to hide from the Russian troops that were now pursuing them. Madeleine lost consciousness and was carried on a stretcher by her fellow prisoners. In spite of her small stature it took six people to do the task because they were all so weak and malnourished themselves. Eventually the group of survivors arrived in a small German town called Stolpe. When she became consciousness again Madeleine complained of suffered a strong headache and a high fever, and then shortly afterwards, she died.

Women Prisoners at Sachsenhausen

The friends who accompanied her to her grave, dressed her in a red dress and sought a Catholic priest to pronounce the funeral prayers, in the confidence that Madeleine would have appreciated that gesture. Before being buried, one of the companions knotted her bracelet with the Star of David on Madeleine’s arm, so that she could later be identified as a victim of the Nazi concentration camp. Another, placed on her chest red and white geraniums in homage to her Peruvian flag and nationality and as a sign of gratitude for how much she had taught them about her country of birth.

In front of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, there is a memorial of homage to all the people who were deported from France during World War II, the great majority of names on it are Jewish - but in that long list also appears the name of Madeleine Blanche Pauline Truel Larrabure - one of the few Peruvian heroines of World War Two.

At the end of 1946, a survivor from the concentration camp of who knew Madeleine well, wrote a testimonial article in Le Figaro Newspaper . It is from this article that the story of Madeleine Truel's life and death was uncovered. Over the last 70 years Madeleine's name has almost been forgotten - even by her fellow Peruvians who have never honoured her in any way. 

In Peru, journalist Hugo Coya published the book “Final Station” in 2010, where he tells the story of the Peruvians who died in the Nazi concentration camps. The chapter on Madeleine is the first Peruvian text that claims the merits of this authentic heroine of the twentieth century. It shows us how it is possible to transcend adversity, overcome courageously, find fortitude in misfortune, and fully assume the defense of universal values ​​through solidarity and a faithful respect for human rights.

There has also been a short  Peruvian documentary film made about Madeliene. You can watch both a short English Language clip and a 30 minute documentary on her life below - the second one is narrated in Spanish but you can click on the YouTube subtitles on bottom right of the video player to get English subtitles.

 SHORT CLIP ABOUT MADELEINE

 30 MINUTE PERUVIAN DOCUMENTARY ON MADELEINE

Ada Delroy – Australian Serpentine Dancer and Vaudeville Actress

MISS ADA DELROY

Ada Delroy, the adopted sister of Music Hall comedian James Bell, was born in Halifax, Yorkshire England. Taught dancing by Bell, and taken in by the theatrical family at the age of 12, she made her first ever stage appearance as Fatima in a professional production of Bluebeard - a big feature being her "Cobra di Capello" dance.

Often described in his day as a "Senegambian" comedian or a “blackface” comic, James Bell was raised in Lancashire, England, and went on to become a specialist on the Ethiopian castanets ("bones") while being equally adept at singing, dancing, banjo  playing  and  comedy sketch work.

James Bell and Ada Delroy toured Australia for two years with Harry Rickards Company in 1888 to 1890, before undertaking a two year world tour with Baldwin's Butterfly Company travelling through the USA, Middle-East, Far East, China, Japan, South Africa and Europe.  

ADA'S SISTER-IN-LAW

They returned to Australia in February 1895 under Rickards management, this time with Bells wife, Alice who went under the stage name of the "White Mahatma".  Madame Bell had been performing professionally for over 16 years. Her act was believed to have been advertised as "Somnomistic Dream Visions" and involved audience participation, whereby selected  individuals would write  down questions on folded  paper earlier in the evening  (which  they  retained).  She would then answer them later in the evening.  

By then a specialist Serpentine dancer, Ada Delroy was routinely billed as the world's greatest Terpsichorean artist when she established the Ada Delroy Company which made its debut in Singleton, New South Wales, in June in 1885. The initial line-up comprised of 12 artists including James Opie, Gertie McLeod, Tom Bergin and mesmerist Dr Richard Rowe. 

The troupe toured Australia and New Zealand in late 1897, then did a two and a half year world tour, returning to Australia in mid-1900. The company then remained in the Antipodes until around 1909, with its principals also appearing with Harry Rickards, James Brennan and the Conrad Power Company.

James Bell's last known engagement was at Brennan's National Amphitheatre, Sydney in December 1908. The following year he was appointed manager of the Melbourne Opera House by Harry Rickards. Ada Delroy's last known performance is believed to have been with Carroll's Vaudeville Entertainment in Melbourne in 1915. 

 A keen cyclist, Ada Delroy was often featured in cycling news during her Australian tours, and claimed to be the first lady cyclist in both Australia and Ireland. James Bell was a member of both  the NSW and Victorian cycling leagues and the theatre the company reportedly toured with 9 bikes during the 1890s.

Delroy and Bell married in 1908 following the death of Alice Bell the previous year.

Ada Delroy was also a land speculator in real estate in Perth in the mid to late-1890s, selling a parcel of land at Cottesloe known as the Ada Delroy Estate.

AUTHOR KAZ COOKE

Ada’s forgotten life story has now been brilliantly re-imagined and fictionalized by Australian author, Kaz Cooke. Read her new boook Ada and you’ll enter an all-but forgotten world of clairvoyants, greasepaint and curtain calls, where the glamour of the stage and the pull of touring on the road will instantly enthrall you. 

It all started when she came across a photo of a woman in a theatre scrapbook while researching a project at the State Library of Victoria on objects people wear to say who they are.

Kaz says:  In it, she’s wearing ‘everything but the kitchen sink’ – a giant hat, ostrich feathers, bows, braid, butterfly brooches, a giant diamond pendant and her name spelled out in diamonds. It was captioned ‘Ada Delroy’.

I found out she had been a dancer, singer and comedian with her own troupe, the Ada Delroy Company, and I began making a timeline of Ada’s travels and reviews of her shows, using the Australian newspaper archives the National Library of Australia’s digital collection, and the sister archive for New Zealand . Often it took scores of ‘reviews’ to piece together a whole act, sentence-by-sentence; here a name of the song, there a tiny description of part of a comedy sketch costume.

The plan evolved that I would write a novel about Ada’s life – and that everyone in the book, including Ada, would be a real person. I visited the family archivist of a branch of the Bell family troupe’s descendants. Joy Bell from NSW generously shared information on the Bell family, whom had adopted Ada after she was orphaned at 12 in a Lancashire mill town and put her in the family troupe. Joy had wonderful photos of the Ada Delroy Company on tour in India. Other photos were found at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, the State Library picture collections, and on one miraculous occasion, on Pinterest.

At the Library I could ‘order in’ from the collection and look at objects from Ada’s era: a 19th century wedding gown (mauve) in two pieces, jewellery, an actress’s back-stage travel iron  (heated by a reservoir of methylated spirits that you would light with a ‘vesta’ match or a flaming twist of paper transferred from a dressing-room fireplace). No wonder so many theatres burned down in those days!

I was amazed to see online all the digitized pages of a scrapbook kept by Ada’s rather bonkers boss during the early 1890s, Professor Baldwin. This was a record of the Baldwin tour with the Bells when Ada debuted her signature Serpentine dance in England. Ada stole all her dances from Loïe Fuller, who became a famous star at the Folies Bergères. The scrapbook is part of the Houdini collection at the Harry Ransom Centre, at the University of Texas in Austin. More ferreting in the State Library of Victoria turned up the gas bill for the backstage and stage lights from the same year Ada performed at the Bourke St Opera House Tivoli theatre in 1895.

Official archivists in Auckland helped me decipher a relevant, scandalous 1912 divorce case’s exhibit letters, written in a dreadful hand, in purple, soluble pencil and smudged with tears (or whiskey). I consulted modern experts on genealogy, tuberculosis, larrikins, tin-silk frocks and sea slugs. That was all part of the fun for me, flexing my old journalism muscles and just satisfying my own curiosity. 

I read novels of the time, and histories of clairvoyants, spiritualists and ‘black-face’ minstrel entertainers, and consulted slang dictionaries for Lancashire and 19th century theatre, Australianisms of the day, and the theatre history books by Aussie experts Frank van Straten and Mimi Colligan.  

I looked at photos and read accounts of steam ship and carriage travel, and Melbourne places, faces and vaudevillians from 1888 to 1910. My nephew George was dispatched to the State Library of WA to find the original brochure advertising the auction of land called the Ada Delroy estate; that’s how we found out Jimbell St in Perth, which still survives, is named after Ada’s husband, Jim Bell.

I was lucky enough to jump a discount flight to New York with 12 hours to spare so I could watch a performance by choreographer and dancer Jody Sperling, who interprets the dances of Loïe Fuller, wearing re-created and constructed Serpentine costumes. I was able to speak with her about how Ada might have felt performing those original dances in the costume made from 100 yards of silk. Later, I visited the dressing room under the Theatre Royal in Hobart where Ada once changed into that costume.

I convinced a shopkeeper at the Block Arcade in Melbourne to let me down into the catacombs underneath to explore, so I could set a scene there. I didn’t want to stop researching, but with a head full of images and facts and ideas, after two years of research, it was time to write.

I didn’t use every photo or reference everything I’d read or investigated, but it all combined to help me imagine my way into Ada’s life and give her a voice. I hope I’ve done her proud.

 

Ada is a show girl and a storyteller with a sense of humour and a lot of things to say. Ada is a funny, yet poignant novel about an extraordinary woman who made the very best of everything life threw at her. 

You soon fall in love with her for speaking the way she does:

‘It’s not every day a handsome young man appears on your doorstep to ask if you’re a respectable woman…’

Kaz Cooke brings Ada Delroy and her famous vaudeville troupe back to life while telling us the backstage tales of how she entertained royalty, and the general public alike with her witty jokes, illusions, and breath-taking dances.

‘I had a diamond pendant near as big as an emu egg off the Maharajah of What's-His-Name. They named a racehorse after me, and a pigeon and a potato soup on an Orient steamship.'

‘I’ll tell you what I loved about being a theatrical. You’re a custodian of magic, a purveyor of glamour, a repository of mystery. You’re someone.’

'I was enchanting, and indefatigable, and dainty, and all the other words they find to avoid saying 'beautiful'. The word they used the most was 'piquant'. Makes you feel like chutney.' - Ada Delroy

A former reporter and cartoonist, Kaz Cooke is also the author of the bestselling books Up The Duff, Kidwrangling, Girl Stuff, Girl Stuff 8–12, Women’s Stuff, and the children's picture books Wanda Linda Goes Berserk and The Terrible Underpants

Find out more  www.kazcooke.com.au

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