{"id":607,"date":"2017-07-20T14:40:00","date_gmt":"2017-07-20T13:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/borthwick-institute\/?p=607"},"modified":"2026-05-26T15:15:53","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T14:15:53","slug":"an-english-socialite-in-paris-the-letters-of-lady-victoria-stanley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/borthwick-institute\/2017\/07\/20\/an-english-socialite-in-paris-the-letters-of-lady-victoria-stanley\/","title":{"rendered":"An English Socialite in Paris: The Letters of Lady Victoria Stanley"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Written by Sally-Anne Shearn<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Fun like sunshine, mixed with sense like salt\u2019 was how an anonymous correspondent in The Times described Lady Victoria Bullock following her untimely death in November 1927, at the age of only 35.   This description is borne out in the lively bundle of letters by Lady Victoria which were deposited at the Borthwick as part of the Hickleton Papers, the extensive archive of the Earls of Halifax, which include the papers of Lady Victoria\u2019s eldest daughter, Ruth, wife of the 2nd Earl.

The 19 letters span 28 years of Lady Victoria\u2019s life in all, with the majority dated between 1918 and the mid 1920s.  They provide a fascinating glimpse into the world of an aristocratic socialite in the years after the First World War, when continental Europe was once again accessible to those who could afford it and the Roaring Twenties brought new fashions, music and attitudes.  <\/p>\n\n\n

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Lady Victoria Stanley. Copyright: Daily Sketch, 1915.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The only daughter of Edward Stanley, son and heir of the 16th Earl of Derby, and Lady Alice Montagu, daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Manchester, Lady Victoria was born into the privileged world of British high society in the closing years of the reign of Victoria. \u00a0

One of the earliest letters in the bundle, written to her \u2018darling sweet Mamma\u2019 in March 1902, describes a quiet country childhood at the family\u2019s Coworth Park and Knowsley estates with her brothers Edward and Oliver, riding her pony Kruger, playing in the gardens and practicing the piano.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Lady Victoria to her mother, the Countess of Derby, in 1902
Borthwick Institute, Hickleton Papers
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Wedding of Lady Victoria Stanley and Neil Primrose.
Copyright: Daily Mail Historical Archive, 1915<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

In 1915, at the age of 22, she married Liberal MP Neil Primrose, son of the 5th Earl of Rosebery, in a ceremony attended by Queen Alexandra and three of the royal Princesses, as well as David Lloyd George and a young Winston Churchill.  Their daughter Ruth was born in April 1916, but the marriage was cut tragically short by Primrose\u2019s death in active service during the Sinai and Palestine Campaign in November 1917.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus at the age of only 25 Lady Victoria found herself a wealthy widow and when her father, to whom she was extremely close, was appointed Ambassador to France the following year, she went with him, arriving in Paris in the closing months of the war and at the very thick of the political and diplomatic action. \u00a0She found the city to be \u2018the most wonderful place in the world\u2019 and her 1918 letters are full of famous names and crowded social engagements as the great and the good began arriving in Paris for the post-war negotiations. \u00a0Sir Henry Wilson, Lloyd George and Admiral Hope attended her \u2018England luncheon-party\u2019 in late 1918. Sir Henry, she wrote, was so \u2018terribly bored\u2019 with his fellow politicians, or \u2018frocks\u2019 as he called them, that he \u2018lunches, dines and comes to tea\u2019 whenever he can. She played lawn tennis with Sir Eric Drummond, later the first Secretary-General of the League of Nations, and the Duc d\u2019Albe invited her to go to Spain after the war. \u2018As I have already made plans to go to Monte Carlo,\u2019 she wrote, \u2018I don\u2019t believe I shall ever get back to England!\u2019

She bought Parisian clothes and persuaded her friend Bee to do the same, admitting to her mother that she had \u2018led her into temptation in the way of clothes,\u2019 and that she herself had entirely lost her head in this direction and \u2018bought masses\u2019 of the new fashionable shorter skirts and thin silk stockings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her father\u2019s post as Ambassador came to an end in 1920 but the surviving letters show that Lady Victoria was all too happy to remain, at least for long periods of time, in France. \u00a0In June 1919 she had married again, this time to Malcolm Bullock, a Captain of the Scots Guard and later Conservative MP for Waterloo. \u00a0The letters Lady Victoria wrote to him over the next 4-5 years, addressed always to \u2018My own darling\u2019 and signed from \u2018ever your very loving wife, Victoria,\u2019 reveal plenty of the fun and the salt described by The Times. \u00a0Her observations to him are often acerbic and rather funny. Writing from Paris in 1921 she describes the Duke of Marlborough and his bride as being \u2018very much the young engaged couple, who have decided not to dance with each other but make googly eyes across the room instead.\u2019 \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

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Lady Victoria to her husband Malcolm Bullock, 1921
Borthwick Institute, Hickleton Papers<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

At another dinner she was made (as the only foreigner) to sit next to the King of Romania, who to her horror only wanted to talk about Bolshevism, meanwhile the Duchess de Guiche \u2018evidently thought she should be next to him & sniffed round my place like a dog round a lamp post.\u2019  On that occasion she seemed to rather admire her fellow guest Daisy Fellowes who managed to avoid having to stand all evening in the presence of royalty by immediately feigning a bad foot so she could retire to a chair in the corner and be left alone.  In a later letter, dated 1924, she wrote she was having \u2018such a marvellous time that it is almost turning my head. I feel well dressed, I feel I am almost amusing, in fact all the things the Cadogans think they are & are not!\u2019

Lady Victoria was evidently extremely popular, her letters chronicling a whirl of social engagements with numerous people, from lunches and dinners, to balls, plays, drives, dancing, golfing, horseriding and long evenings at the casino, sometimes until 4am.  \u2018I am having a glorious time here & I feel quite mad,\u2019 she told her husband in one letter of summer 1921, \u2018I tremble to think what I shall be like with a mask on at the Bal de l\u2019Opera on Saturday!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n

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Lady Victoria to her husband Malcolm Bullock, 1921
Borthwick Institute, Hickleton Papers<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

In a letter sent in April 1924 she sets out the numerous entertainments she has arranged for her husband\u2019s imminent visit, including dinners out and trips to the theatre and the music hall.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Lady Victoria to her husband Malcolm Bullock, 1924
Borthwick Institute, Hickleton Papers<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

<\/a>Her letters show that she continued to be a keen, though canny, shopper, writing to her husband that she had been \u2018quite good about clothes,\u2019 only buying an evening dress and skirt from Paton, an afternoon dress, two knitted skirts and some jerseys from the Russian ladies, which were \u2018just like Chanel\u2019s & quarter the price.\u2019 \u00a0In an unexpectedly modern anecdote, she also writes that she had her \u2018nose done\u2019 in January 1921, though it is not clear from the letter what exactly this entailed. \u00a0Rather startlingly, it involved her being given \u2018a liberal application of cocaine\u2019 to prevent her feeling anything during the procedure. \u2018The doctor kept on warning me that I might feel faint or hysterical from the effects but I have a very odd constitution as I felt absolutely nothing!\u2019 She concluded that the only remarkable thing it made her do was write some letters she had been avoiding.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n

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Lady Victoria to her husband Malcolm Bullock, undated<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Perhaps her most enduring interest however was horseracing.  This was perhaps hardly surprising given her ancestry.  The Epsom Derby was named for the 12th Earl of Derby and her father, the 17th Earl was a prominent owner-breeder, his horses winning the Epsom Derby, the Epsom Oaks, and the St Leger Stakes.  Lady Victoria\u2019s 1902 letter to her mother references their horse Pellisson failing to win his race and the racing at Knowsley and even amidst the whirl of her new Paris life in 1918 she found time to ask her mother who she should back \u2018for the Cambridgeshire\u2019 and to wonder whether Cecily remembered to do her bets for her that week.  

Her 1920s letters are filled with further references to her own and her family\u2019s horses chances at different races. Of the 1921 Prix de Diane she writes \u2018It was rather a slap in the face to the French jockeys that the first three…yesterday were ridden respectively by Bullock, Donoghue & Childs. Maurice de Rothschild\u2019s victory was received in stony silence.\u2019 \u2018I really think I must have seen thousands of horses,\u2019 she writes in another undated letter from France, \u2018I have been going around neighbouring stud farms in the mornings, then racing in the afternoon & yearling sales in the evening,\u2019 adding that her expeditions had served to remind her just \u2018how little I really know about horses.\u2019  Only a year before she died she started a racing stable of her own in France with Major Dudley Gilroy.  <\/p>\n\n\n

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Lady Victoria to her husband Malcolm Bullock, undated [1920s]
Borthwick Institute, Hickleton Papers<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Both of her daughters, Ruth Primrose and her child with Captain Bullock, Priscilla Victoria, shared their mother\u2019s love of racing and would later become two of the first three women admitted by the Jockey Club in 1977. Priscilla\u2019s grandchildren, Andrew and Clare Balding, are in turn well known today for their involvement with racing, as a trainer and an amateur jockey, journalist and television presenter respectively.  

Lady Victoria Bullock\u2019s death in 1927 came as a devastating shock to her family.  Whilst hunting with the Quorn near Lowesby Hall, she struck her head on a low bridge and was thrown from her horse and found unconscious.  Her husband quickly arrived from London and her mother from Knowsley Park. An urgent message was sent to her father, who was on his way to Cannes, and he returned by aeroplane early the following morning, but to no avail.  Lady Victoria never regained consciousness and died at 3pm on the afternoon of the 26th November.  

The last two letters in the bundle were sent to Captain Bullock after her death. The first is a letter of condolence from fellow MP Winston Churchill, who sent his deepest sympathy to Bullock on the 10th December, \u2018though well I know how useless words are, & how nothing but the passage of time mitigates gradually the pain & awful sense of deprivation.  You & Victoria were so suited to one another, so devoted to each other…that this separation & destruction of yr happiness seems doubly cruel.\u2019  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Winston Churchill to Malcolm Bullock, December 1927
Borthwick Institute, Hickleton Papers<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

The second is from her father, written at the close of the year from France and accompanying \u2018a photograph of our darling.\u2019 \u2018I can\u2019t talk or write to you about her,\u2019 the letter reads, \u2018I am too great a coward, but I loved her – as no man has ever loved his daughter & with her has gone all joy from my life.\u2019 \u00a0Touchingly he adds that he wants Bullock to know that he will be to him \u2018all that I tried to be to her\u2019 and that he has in the earl \u2018a friend to whom you can always turn & who would always try the best of his ability to help you.\u2019 He ends by sending his son in law every good wish for 1928, knowing that \u2018for you, as for me, no year in future can be a happy one – except the one in which I rejoin her.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For her family and those who knew her, the words of the anonymous Times correspondent were all too true, \u2018without her, the world was a duller and greyer place.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The letters of Lady Victoria Bullock, nee Stanley, are part of the Hickleton Papers<\/a> at the Borthwick Institute for Archives.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Written by Sally-Anne Shearn \u2018Fun like sunshine, mixed with sense like salt\u2019 was how an anonymous correspondent in The Times described Lady Victoria Bullock following her untimely death in November 1927, at the age of only 35.   This description is borne out in the lively bundle of letters by Lady Victoria which were deposited at … Continue reading An English Socialite in Paris: The Letters of Lady Victoria Stanley<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":281,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[26,69,125],"class_list":["post-607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised","tag-20th-century","tag-author-sally-anne-shearn","tag-world-war-1"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","custom_fields":{"_edit_lock":["1779804953:281"],"_wp_old_date":["2026-05-26"],"_edit_last":["281"]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/borthwick-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/borthwick-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/borthwick-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/borthwick-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/281"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/borthwick-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/borthwick-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/borthwick-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/borthwick-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/borthwick-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}