‘A creature of incredible taste’: Winnafreda, Countess of Portarlington
Our current library display features original plates from Robert Thornton’s renowned publication The temple of Flora, published between 1799 and 1807. The plates were originally part of the collection of Winnafreda, Countess of Portarlington. Australian by birth, Winnie Portarlington, as she was known to her friends, was one of the most glamorous and well-connected women in British society in the first half of the 20th century. Find out more about this fascinating woman, her social connections, and her collections.
An Australian aristocrat
On 2 February 1907, 21-year-old Australian Winnafreda Yuill married 23-year-old Lionel Arthur Henry Seymour Dawson-Damer at Trinity Church, Chelsea, London. The wedding was witnessed by Winnafreda’s father and Lionel’s mother. Lionel’s rank is listed as Earl of Portarlington and his address as ‘Emo Park’, Portarlington, Ireland. Lionel had inherited the title of Earl of Portarlington at the age of 17 after the death of his father, the fifth earl, in 1900. On her marriage, Winnafreda became the new Countess of Portarlington – one of several Australian women who married into the British aristocracy around the turn of the 20th century. The marriage began a new life for Winnafreda, elevating her to the upper echelons of society.
Winnafreda was already accustomed to living well. Her father, George Skelton Yuill, had established himself as an extremely prosperous and influential shipping merchant in Australia after immigrating from Scotland in 1880. Initially taking up the role of manager for the Orient Steam Navigation Company in Sydney, George then formed the Australian Agency Company in 1890. As company director, he travelled extensively, spending time in London, accompanied by his family. It must have been on one of these trips that Winnafreda and Lionel became acquainted.
It was expected that the newlyweds would settle at Lionel’s family seat of Emo Court (also known as Emo Park), in County Laois, Ireland. This impressive neoclassical estate was designed and built in 1790 by James Gandon for John Dawson, the first earl of Portarlington. But London was far more appealing to the young and glamorous Winnafreda, and the couple settled there, in the fashionable suburb of Belgravia.
37 Chesham Place
These were wonderful parties with many flowers, a lovely setting, and personalities from the arts and theatre.1
The grand Georgian townhouse at number 37 Chesham Place, Belgravia, once the home of former British prime minister Lord John Russell, became the couple’s new address. An expert hostess, excellent cook and lively raconteur, Winnafreda transformed the house into a hub of entertaining for her growing network of friends drawn from the elite circles of society. Guests to her soirees included the Prince of Wales (the future Edward VIII) and Wallis Simpson; personalities from the arts and theatre; and neighbours, including renowned interior decorator Syrie Maugham, who lived at number 36. Winnafreda’s gatherings would always impress – and often made the social pages:
Nowadays, the high point of any cocktail party is not so much the cocktails as the food that goes with them. Imagination about cocktail party food has become an absolute necessity – and to copy your clever friends the sincerest form of flattery. At this time of year some hot food is essential – but nothing so unimaginative as hot sausages ... You must think up something different. The Prince of Wales has hot buttered American soda biscuits, with cod’s roe, served in hot silver breakfast dishes, and creamed shrimps in little pasty containers. Mrs Maugham has hot bacon sandwiches, which disappear as fast as the cook can make them. Lady Portarlington has a cocktail size edition of a hot meat pie, which nobody else has yet thought of (have you ever noticed that it is always the same people who think of new things first?). 2
Winnafreda’s creative flair was even present in her hors d’oeuvres. It’s gratifying to know that the party pie is an Australian invention.
The countess and the princess
From 1934, Winnafreda began hosting fortnightly parties for Princess Marina of Greece, the new bride of Prince George, the Duke of Kent. The couple had settled at 3 Belgrave Square, just a short stroll across the park from the Portarlingtons’ house. These parties were a way for the countess to introduce the princess to people outside royal circles and help her settle into her new homeland.
As the friendship grew, the two women found they were kindred spirits. The princess, like Winnafreda, was sophisticated and stylish – Marina’s fashion choices, including trousers and pillbox hats, were seen as incredibly progressive for the time. Both women featured in lists of the well-turned-out of the 1930s and 40s, and frequently appeared in the pages of Vogue, Country Life and Tatler magazines. In 1939 an article in the Australian Women’s Weekly named Winnafreda and the duchess as two of the British Empire’s best-dressed women. Winnafreda was described as being ‘outstanding for her feminine poise and assurance’ and having ‘youthful beauty and charm’ – despite being 53 at the time.3 This youthful glow may have been thanks to her health regime – she apparently lived almost exclusively on fruit and vegetables, and excelled at golf and dancing.
Winnafreda’s enduring friendship with Princess Marina was reinforced through shared experiences of loss. Marina was widowed in 1942 when Prince George was killed in a plane crash. In 1944, Winnafreda’s son, George, was also killed in a plane crash, while he was on active duty with the Royal Air Force. In 1959, Winnafreda was widowed when Lionel died.
The two women also shared moments of drama. In 1939 they escaped unscathed from an attempted shooting outside the princess’s home. While they were leaving 3 Belgrave Square around 9pm on 5 June, on their way to the cinema to watch the newly released film of Wuthering Heights, a man fired a sawn-off shotgun towards the princess. (The attack was possibly meant for the Duke of Kent, who had left the house earlier that evening and had recently been announced as the next governor-general of Australia. The perpetrator, Ledwidge Vincent Lawlor, was Australian, and perhaps disagreed with the appointment; however, no motive was determined.) Neither Winnafreda nor Marina realised what had happened until they returned home; they had thought the noise was the backfire from a car. They both took the incident in their stride, unfazed by this near catastrophe.
Countess-collector
The large entrance hall was an immediate tip-off that something marvellous was going on. The walls were glazed the colour of corn, and the floor was covered with coarse rush matting. The pictures were eighteenth-century portraits in good gilt frames. There was a big William Kent console table with flowers and a drinks tray flanked by a pair of Coromandel screens. Huge Régence chairs were covered in beige linen. On the floor stood baskets, some filled with wood and some filled with magazines. Gigantic Korean pots contained blooming trees from the greenhouse. And the fire was blazing away … The house had everything – a feeling of informal comfort as well as chic, an atmosphere of luxury that was not indecent. It had a personality that reflected its owner’s taste. 4
By the 1960s, Winnafreda, now the Dowager Countess of Portarlington, had established a country estate to host her social gatherings, and her growing collections. Earlywood, in Berkshire, England, was a Victorian red-brick manor house designed by E M Barry and constructed sometime in the 1870s. Winnafreda felt that the dark and serious interiors of the house needed refreshing, and engaged her friend and former neighbour Syrie Maugham to undertake the redecoration, in which the ‘Victorian incrustations’5 were stripped away and replaced with refined and elegant Georgian details.
By the 1970s, the house was a testament to the countess’s immaculate taste and impeccable decorating style, honed throughout her life. Earlywood had become Winnafreda’s sanctuary, a place where she could continue to entertain her friends while enjoying the peace of the countryside. Here she accumulated and displayed a collection worthy of a museum: antique furniture, objets d’art, lacquerware, metalwork, historical textiles, glassware, ceramics, books, and fine art, including botanical illustrations. Even her bathroom was a place for display – an ‘immensely feminine and comfortable’ space where the walls were ‘massed with personal photographs and eighteenth-century bird, flower and butterfly drawings’.6 Every corner of the house exuded taste and personality.
The final chapter
Winnafreda died at Earlywood on 14 April 1975. She had lived a life of luxury, aided by her inheritance of roughly US$1.5 million (nearly US$37 million today) on her father’s death in 1917. Once described as being ‘so rich she could live off the income from her income’,7 Winnafreda indulged her passion for collecting throughout her life. After her death, the contents of her estate were sold at auction through Christie’s in London. The sale, which lasted several days and consisted of over 1,800 lots, took place in September 1976. The auction catalogues for the sale reveal the breadth and scale of Winnafreda’s collecting. Among the items not included in the sale were the illustration plates from The temple of Flora that had once graced the walls of the staircase of Earlywood. These were passed down and remain with the Dawson-Damer family to this day.
See the original plates from The temple of Flora that were once on display in Winnafreda’s home Earlywood in our latest library display.
Related display
Featured display
Scientific Splendour: The art of botanical illustration
Our current display explores the development of botanical illustration from the end of the 18th century to the turn of the 20th century. Initially employed to support scientific discourse, botanical illustration evolved as an art form that increasingly prioritised aesthetic style over scientific exactitude
Tuesday 1 July
Notes
- Dorothy Cooke and Pamela McNicol (eds), A history of flower arranging, Heinemann Professional Publication, Oxford, 1989, p186.
- Vogue, December 1935, p57
- ‘Two Australians among Empire’s best-dressed’, The Australian Women’s Weekly, 28 January 1939, p3.
- Mark Hampton, Mark Hampton on decorating, Random House, New York, 1989, p137.
- Ibid.
- David Hicks, David Hicks on bathrooms, Bitwell Books, London, 1970, p54.
- Richard Collier, The rainbow people, Wiedenfeld and Nicholson, London, 1984, p88.
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Mel Flyte
Collections Discovery Assistant, Caroline Simpson Library
Growing up in rural NSW on Wiradjuri country, Mel’s childhood was spent undertaking her own archaeological excavations in the creek bed on her family’s property. Old bottles, cow bones, and pieces of rusty farm equipment were all exciting discoveries capable of revealing stories of the past. School holidays were punctuated with long car trips with her mum to see blockbuster exhibitions in Canberra and Sydney, so galleries and museums have always felt familiar. Studies in archaeology and art history have inspired Mel’s passion for objects and their ability to elicit emotions and tell stories.