San Antonio Sunday Light (San Antonio, Tex.), Vol. 46, No. 69, Ed. 1 Sunday, March 28, 1926 Page: 75 of 92
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vatwOv/nS’ion '
r the First Time the Real
Ince With the Earl of
dship’s Love Letters
r Stormy Career
e pirate. I have been ac>
graven'
ignified and wealthy and
ter British Lord of infi*
. Foolish woman that I
f adoration and affection
ered to his impetuous in*
~
income of half a million
erupt. I left a man who
o to a man who could not
is debts. I had given up
I solemn promise to marry
y neck and expressed the
as soon as she had given
yera to put my property
: better than his penniless
e plans and sacrifices in
o meet him and to try to
d left me without a word
in and again long before
led and whom he had re-
ight a reunion with him
is wife had already sepa- and urged me to
started divorce proceed- run away with
. D l him and burn
nturess. But please have ...
of Lord Craven’s letters bndges be-
hind. He told me
““ that we could be
ried in South Africa as soon as his wife and my
>and had obtained their divorces. He said that
vould obtain an income from his mother large
igh to keep me and my children in comfort.
x>rd Craven had always just exhausted the
ey allowance made him by his mother and was
ays worrying her for more. In one letter to me
vrote:
‘After all mamma is a good-natured old bank
but you are my mate.”
‘Darlingest Vera” he wrote in one letter “I want
for my wife every hour of the day. I cannot
without you.”
I little way later he wrote after he had returned
his mother’s house Hamstead Marshall in
land:
'I want you for my wife fifty thousand times
e than ever.”
longed to go away from my misery and the
e from which I had been shut out. Society
ten with notorious clandestine affairs of their
began to cut me. They had toadied to me when
s the head of Lord Cathcart’s home.
wanted to run away from all this sham and
>cnsy. From certain sources I received assur-
•s that Lord Cathcart would not be unnecessarily
h and that I would have reasonable access to
ittle son and that my older children would be
d for.
decided not to defend Lord Cathcart’s suit and
in away to South Africa with Lord Craven. The
rce was ultimately granted as everybody knows.
ord Craven and I planned to make our flight
et. We hastily boarded a Union Castle liner at
!hampton hid ourselves in our separate cabins
it was only when we were far down the English
nnel about to pass into the Bay of Biscay that
jreat world of London knew that Lady Cathcart
of a peer of England had fled with Lord Craven
her peer. Amazement filled ordinary English
)le who up to that time knew nothing of our
ious relations.
knd now I was going back to the land of my
i South Africa. I had left it a poor unknown
uncertain of my future. My return was an
ir that disturbed the social life of two hemi-
res.
Jy father John Fraser of Aberdeen who had
• out to Cape Colony to settle married a Hatch
very well-known Irish family. I heard from my
ler when I grew up that she was ostracized after
marriage. By the time I was born nearly thirty-
years ago at Sea Point Cape Town my father
already become a very wealthy man having en-
>d in successful speculations in diamonds and
-mining companies in which the Barnatos the
i and Cecil Rhodes were also interested.
Ie died when I was three years old and when
ffairs were wound up it was found that he had
almost every penny in pursuing rash specula-
i. My mother was left with me very badly off.
Vithin a couple of years she had remarried a
list of Dutch descent Sir Michael Raubenheimer
of those famous south African millionaires who
the California pioneers. The marriage was not
>y.'
t was when I had reached eleven years of age
One of Craven’s Repeated Declarations of Affection.
”1 want you for my wife fifty thousand times
more than ever.
"Atl my love “UFFY”
that 1 remembered one day having
heard my mother speak of a very
rich man in Cape Town who had
more than once proved a true friend
to her. I was rather a precocious
child-; and I lay for several nights
thinking over the chance remark I
had heard. Then one day .with-
out saying a word to my mother
I went to this man and asked him
with that directness which only a
child can well indulge in if he
would undertake to send me home
to England for my education.
He did not profess amusement
as he might well have done. In-
stead he went to my mother and
so it was arranged that I should go
to England for schooling which I
did at the age of twelve when 1
went vu Deuiuru. inav voyage to
England from the Cape was the
first I ever made.
It was somewhat remarkable
that since I made that journey at
the age of twelve which is roughly
twenty years ago I have done the
voyage from England to the Cape
or vice versa forty-two times.
I enjoyed my days at Bedford
Apart from the school the home
country presented to my childish
eyes such a different aspect from
that of the wide stretches of South
Africa that every acre of it held s
new interest. The fields the
roads the hedges and the gardens
those around some doll’s house so trim and small
were they compared with the vast areas and plans of
Cape Colony. The daughter of the man who had
befriended my mother and myself had come with
me and she and I were naturally the closest of com-
panions. And when I went to Dresden Germany to
finish off my education she went with me.
There is one curious thing I must mention about
my childhood. 1 did not know my own real name of
Vera Fraser until the day I was married to my first
husband Captain de Grey Warter. For I had been
brought up to think myself the daughter of my moth-
ers second husband and 1 had taken the name of the
Dutchman.
After touring the Continent from Dresden 1 found
myself back in London and staying with a French
lady the Duchess de Valana. I was still a schoolgirl
seventeen years of age and of course the question
of marriage had never entered mj' head. When it
did it came with an overwhelming rush. I met Harry
de Grey Warter at Ranelagh Polo Ground where I
had gone with a chaperone as the guest of the Duke
of Westminster the richest gayest bravest and most
srenerous sportsman in England.
From the moment I saw Captain de Grey Warter
I fell in love with him. Whenever I have fallen in
love it has always been at first sight. God made me
that way and I have Shakespeare’s authority to
justify me.
1 think it little wonder that 1 loved Harry de
Grey Warter. He was a remarkably good-looking
youth of twenty-two at the time 6 feet 2 inches in
height with clear blue eyes and very fair hair. From
the moment he was introduced to me till the time
when I left to go home he hardly was away from my
side for an instant and that night 1 felt all the emo-
• The Duke of
Westminster Who
Introduced Vera to Her
First Husband
Capt. de Grey Warter.
With Just $25 in Her Pocket the Countess Cathcart Sat Down at a Roulette Table in the Deauville
Casino. Remarking to Lord Craven That as Soon as She Had Lost This She Would Go Out and
Take a Little Walk With Him. But the Wheel of Fortune Turned in Her Direction. She Doubled
Her Money With Each Bet. and. Like One of the Dreams Where One Picks Up All the Gold One
Wants She Soon Had $35000 in Front of Her. Gathering Up Her Winnings. She Left the Gam-
bling Table and Went Oft for a Jolly Little Supper With Craven.
tions of a warm-hearted girl in her first love.
Two days later Captain de Grey Warter
arranged with the Duchess de Valana to come
down to the regimental sports at Preston
Park Brighton and to bring me with her.
We stayed at the Metropole for several days
and it was exactly one week after our first
meeting that Harry proposed to me. I hardly
niicw what to say. I was supposed to go back to
school in Dresden. And I certainly had little idea
of the responsibility that marriage involved^
But I accepted him. One week after that we
were secretly married at a civil registry office in
London and I cabled my mother to say that I was
no longer a schoolgirl but a married woman. After
the consternation on both sides—my mother’s and
my husband's relatives—had died down we took a
house in Sloane street London and I started to
entertain the people of that circle in which for so
long 1 moved but which I have now quitted. 1 had
nearly said quitted forever but one is always rash
in making such a statement.
My first child was born less than a year after we
were married and with that added interest in my
new life I was ideally happy. We were not wealthy.
I did not enjoy the same riches .as those with which
I was surrounded when I became the Countess
Cathcart when Lord Cathcart on our marriage took
me to his banker’s had all the family jewels brought
forth for me to inspect them and have them all
reset entirely to my taste—jewels which are worth
a fortune. Nor was our modest little home in
Sloane street the repository of such treasures as that
Romney for which my second husband in his seat
at Thornton-le-street refused an offer of $925000.
But we had happiness. It was after my first
child now my eldest son was born that we arranged
to go out to South Africa for a trip.
We came home after being out in South Africa
nearly six months and our second trip out there to-
gether had just commenced at the end of July 1914.
My husband got a wire in Cape Town ordering him
to join his regiment the Fourth Dragoon Guards as
quickly as possible and we took leave of each other
at Cape Town. I and the two children—my daugh-
ter was born then—were to follow as soon aa possi-
ble and in a few weeks later I arrived back at our
house in Sloane street—to sit down and wait like the
thousands of other waiting women of those days.
I did not wait long before the news of my hus-
band being wounded came through. It was not seri-
ous however and he remained in hospital in France.
A lapse of a short time and once more the War
Office notification of my husband being wounded
reached me. This time it was serious enough to
mean England for him and so I was able to nurse
him back to health during his convalescence. f
1 was not then a titled woman and therefore had
not the calls upon me for presiding over charity
bazaars and the endless social and civic events which
as Countess Cathcart I have had like any other
woman in the forefront of society. But I divided my
time between looking after my children and doing
war work such as night duties at canteens bandage
making and in fact anything which was put before
me and for which after attending to my domestic
obligations 1 had the time.
Thus it went on until that fateful day when the
news of my husband’s death reached me and I found
myself facing the world with a tremendous heart-
ache a widow at twenty-four with two children and
practically no money.
It was in March 1917 that I received that dread-
ed officially-worded message from the War Office
that my husband was among the thousands of others
who swelled the lists of the killed in action and it
was two or three days later that his solicitors handed
me the letter which he had written in the event - of
such a happening.
58 Sloane Street
1-2-16
MY OWN VERY DARLING WIFE.
I am writing this before I go out and sending it
to Mr. F to give you in case I am outed-
Dearest heart you must not grieve too
much; it is the death I should have liked best
and you become one of that glorious band of
women who have given up those they love best
Continued on Pogo 17
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San Antonio Sunday Light (San Antonio, Tex.), Vol. 46, No. 69, Ed. 1 Sunday, March 28, 1926, newspaper, March 28, 1926; San Antonio, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1631548/m1/75/: accessed May 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .