The History of Thursley Society's exhibition, Wedding Belles, celebrated the history of weddings in Thursley church from 1613 - 2007 when the exhibition was held
Sir Roger Stevens came to Thursley with his wife Constance after eight years living abroad. They were looking for a house to rent and wanted to live in the country. They travelled through the Home Counties and were sent to Thursley by a Godalming agent to view Tudor Cottage (now “Boxalls”).
Mrs. Olive Winter let them in and as they waited by the fireplace they were aware that a rather elegant woman was viewing them closely. She was in fact the departing tenant. She then addressed Sir Roger, “I see you don’t remember me. You took me to a dance in Sussex fifteen years ago: my name was then Carton de Wiart”.
She was now Anita Thompson. On November 4th 1933 Walter Hugh Thompson, a quiet bachelor living at “Boxalls” married Anita Carton de Wiart, who was living as a guest of Miss Marshall Hall at Millhanger.
According to Mary Bennett, “It seemed a most incongruous match for Hugh, as he was known, was a shy, gentle naturalist (so reluctant to meet anyone, it was said, that rather than risk it by walking through the village he would go to Thursley Common by the diagonal path from Rack Close to the Red Lion) while Anita had been brought up in what remained of Vienna noble society, moved on the edges of what would now be called the jet set and built her life largely round her splendid old Italian cavalry horse, “Fenicio”. Her features were too strong for beauty (though she had melting brown eyes) and I expect that her plaintive society drawl irritated a good many people but she carried herself like a princess (which on her mother’s side [her mother was a Fugger, of the banking family ennobled in the sixteenth century], she more or less was) even when she was scrubbing the “Boxalls’” doorstep and had the sort of vitality that can raise the temperature of a room. Some of Hugh’s more intellectual friends, such as my cousin Daisy Woods who had been quick to appropriate him when he became her neighbour, lamented the marriage, and some found Anita hard going: she told me that whenever she sat next to my father (H.A.L. Fisher), he always asked her whether she preferred riding on sand or on turf and that though she sometimes said one and sometimes the other she never discovered which was right, But I liked her very much. We amused each other, and I enjoyed her absolute transparency, for she was forthright to a degree. She had no use whatever for village organisations but was on the best and easiest terms with such individuals as she liked whatever their origins, among them our rather sad neighbour Jack Keen whom she must have done a good deal to cheer in his last illness. Her father was a First War V.C. who between the wars vanished into the Pripet Marshes (situated in sothern Belarus and Norther Ukraine) to shoot duck but reappeared in 1939 when we briefly met him in Oxford. He and Anita were not on speaking terms – some obscure quarrel connected with her moving from Roman Catholicism to Anglicanism – but were I suspect very like each other and very proud of each other. I remember how much pleased she was when she heard that he had said to her sister “at least she has married a very nice man”, as indeed she had. Hugh was both nice and in his field not undistinguished: occasional observations of his can be found here and there in the Witherby Dictionary of British Birds and he was a member of the ornithological team to be sent to the Galapagos Islands in the 1930’s.
When the Thursley house became too small for Hugh, Anita and their two daughters they moved to Churt, where we went on seeing them (for my husband liked Hugh as much as my father had): the buyers of the house were Roger and Constance Stevens and it was they who christened it “Boxalls”.
Which is where our story began.
In the wedding register Anita lists her father, Adrian Carton de Wiart, as “soldier” which is quite an understatement. Lieutenant-General Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart, V.C., K.B.E., C.B., C.M.G., D.S.O. was from a high ranking Belgian family, born in 1880 and came to England when his father became a naturalized British citizen. He was educated in England and went up to Balliol to read law, living the life of a wealthy indulgent undergraduate. However, the Boer war awakened a primeval desire in him to fight and was the start of a dazzling military career. During the campaign in South Africa he was twice wounded. He returned to a privileged life of hunting, racing, polo and travelling around Europe for shooting parties. He married, in 1908, Countess Frederike Maria Karoline Henriette Rosa Sabina Franziska Fugger von Babenhausen. They had two daughters, the eldest being Anita born in 1909.
“The Times” November 6th , 1933
In 1914 he sailed for Somaliland to fight “The Mad Mullah” and his Dervishes where he was severely wounded, losing his left eye. From that point on he gained the nickname, “Nelson” and went on to fight in France, being wounded eight times including losing his hand at Ypres. He was awarded the Victoria Cross in 1916. In 1923 he retired from the military and left England with a Polish A.D.C., Prince Charles Radziwill who had inherited an estate of 500, 000 acres in the Prypet Marshes on the borders of Russia. Prince Charles provided a house for his friend on its own private island where General Carton de Wiart enjoyed shooting, riding and Polish hospitality for the next fifteen years.
Hitler had other plans for Europe and the world and so the peace of Poland was shattered and General Carton de Wiart was lucky to get out. Naturally, he was keen to offer his services again, despite being sixty years old. In April 1940 he commanded the Central Norwegian Expeditionary Force which he found dull and unsuccessful. In 1941 he was ordered to go to Yugoslavia to form the British Military Mission, however as they flew in they crashed in North Africa and were captured by the Italians.
The Italians held Carton de Wiart at Castello di Vincigliata along with other high profile British officers including the Earl of Ranfurly whose wife wrote, “To War With Whitaker”. Like all Allied P.O.W.s, General Carton de Wiart, planned his escape and he managed an escape in Italy although he was only at liberty for eight days. He need not have troubled himself escaping, as the Italian Government later released him before anyone else to prove its desire for an armistice with the Allies. Once back in England, he became Winston Churchill’s personal representative to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek.
After the war General Carton de Wiart stayed with his friend, Brigadier C.L. Duke, in Rangoon. Unbelievably, he fell down the stairs breaking his back, survived by being encased in plaster of Paris, and was flown home to be nursed in the Royal Masonic Hospital. He recovered after much surgery to repair his back and to remove shrapnel still embedded after all those years. His long suffering wife died in 1949 and in 1951, aged 71, he married again, and they lived in Killnardish, County Cork. Adrian Carton de Wiart died in 1963, at the age of 83, having defied death since the age of nineteen.
The fearless gene, so amply exhibited by Adrian Carton de Wiart, continues down the line: Anita’s grandson, Anthony Loyd, is a highly respected war correspondent for “The Times”.