Daisy Greville and her Love of Animals

Frances Evelyn “Daisy” Greville, Countess of Warwick (1861-1938), was perhaps most famous for her socialist views, her political dabblings, and her affair with the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII), but she was also known as a great lover of animals.

Deer, geese and raccoons

In 1890, Daisy turned the river island at Warwick Castle into a menagerie, which was home to a variety of animals including Japanese deer, Chinese geese, and raccoons. Perhaps the most notable of these animals was her pet elephant, Kim, who she wrote about in Life’s Ebb and Flow:

I had then a pet elephant which spent its time partly at Warwick and partly at Easton. When I bought the elephant it was a mere baby and very attractive and manageable. It would trot after me anywhere, even following me into the dining-room and helping itself to a roll from my plate.¹

Unfortunately, Kim grew to be 17 hands high and soon became unmanageable. After he rolled over and killed his donkey playmate, Daisy decided to sell Kim to Samuel Lockhart, the renowned elephant trainer who lived in Leamington Spa. Until recently, it was thought that no evidence of Kim’s time at Warwick Castle survived within the archives held at Warwickshire County Record Office, but a receipt listing ‘brown bread for elephant’ was recently discovered within a bundle of vouchers from 1902.²

It was around this time that Daisy had employed a local clergyman, Rev. J. Harvey Bloom, to catalogue the older documents in the Greville archives that were stored in Guy’s Tower. When writing his biography, Bloom’s daughter Ursula recalled his time at Warwick Castle:

On one occasion Harvey [Bloom] watched the two emus she had bought in a crazy mood, chasing a visiting bishop who was rushed into the shrubberies, on the verge of a heart attack.³

A mischievous aardvark

Daisy also had a mischievous pet aardvark, affectionately known as ‘Antie Bear’, who would bite the legs of unsuspecting footmen, unable to resist the lure of their silk-stockinged calves.⁴ Daisy’s bond with her ant bear was so close that she allowed him to sleep on her bed at night.

Daisy’s relationship with animals extended beyond her own pets. Despite having grown up in a country where it was expected for people of her status to engage in blood sports for entertainment, she overturned social expectations in 1911 when she decided to give up shooting and hunting because of its cruelty.⁵ She caused a sensation when she was spotted in public carrying her pet fox, having taken it out on a lead while shopping.⁶

When the Zoological Society of London were looking for a site for their new zoo in the mid-1920s, Daisy offered them her family home, Easton Lodge in Essex.⁷ The ZSL declined the offer, having already bought Whipsnade. Easton Lodge was believed to be home to over 500 animals and birds during Daisy’s tenure, including monkeys, parrots, dogs, goats, and even a herd of retired circus ponies. The house had suffered from a great fire in 1918, thought to have been started after one of Daisy’s pet monkeys was taken ill. The monkey had been wrapped in a blanket, sitting on the stove for extra warmth, when the blanket caught fire. The monkey, in its panic, spread the fire to the curtains and upholstery.⁸ Although the Dunmow Fire Brigade was called, the Jacobean wing of the house was gutted by the blaze.

A prize winning herd

In 1932, Daisy took over the management of the pedigree Jersey herd housed at Brook End Farm. Under her supervision, the herd flourished; it tripled in size and won prizes at the Essex Show and the London Dairy Show. Daisy had spent years campaigning for farms and abattoirs to use more humane methods to slaughter cattle, and a by-product of her management of the Jersey herd was that Easton was the site of the first demonstration of the bolt gun.⁹ This compassion for animals led Daisy to become Chairman of the Essex branch of the RSPCA toward the end of her life. Her legacy as a friend to the animals lives on through the Countess of Warwick Country Show, an annual event at Little Easton, Essex.

References

¹ Countess of Warwick, Life’s Ebb and Flow, p98.

² Warwickshire County Record Office reference CR1886/839.

³ Bloom, U. Parson Extraordinary, p107.

⁴ Countess of Warwick, Life’s Ebb and Flow, p99.

⁵ Gloucester Journal, 11 December 1926.

⁶ The Tatler, 29 November 1911.

⁷ Warwickshire County Record Office reference CR1886/890/7.

⁸ Anand, S. Daisy: The Life and Loves of the Countess of Warwick, p277.