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.