Julia Maria Cristina Mildred Camoys Stonor
(born 19 April 1939) is the eldest daughter of Sherman Stonor, 6th Baron Camoys
by his wife Jeanne Stourton. She is best known for her books about her family,
exposing long-suppressed family scandals and her claims to be the rightful heir
to the Camoys barony.
Julia Camoys Stonor was born Julia Maria
Christina Mildred Stonor, the eldest daughter and first child of Ralph Robert
WattsSherman Stonor, 6th Baron Camoys of Stonor Park and Newport, Rhode Island,
USA (1913–1976), by his wife (Mary) Jeanne Stourton (1913–1987). Her mother's
maternal grandfather was Thomas Southwell, 4th Viscount Southwell. According to
Julia Stonor, the Spanish aristocrat Pedro de Zulueta was her mother's father.
Legally, Jeanne Stourton's maternal
grandfather, was the paternal grandson of Charles Stourton, 19th Baron
Stourton. Jeanne Stourton's great-uncle the 20th Lord Stourton succeeded as
20th Baron Stourton in 1872, and as 23rd Baron Mowbray & 24th Baron Segrave
in 1878 when those baronies (last held by Edward Howard, 9th Duke of Norfolk)
were called out of abeyance 101 years after his death in 1777.
Stonor is the author of Sherman's Wife: A Wartime Childhood Among the
English Aristocracy, a rather scandalous memoir of her controversial mother
Jeanne, Lady Camoys. She is currently at work on the second part of her
memoirs, Sherman's
Daughter. In the first book, she described her half-Spanish half-English
mother, who was fathered by a Spanish aristocrat, and whose lover died in the
Spanish Civil War on Franco's side. Stonor alleged in the book that her mother
was an ardent Nazi sympathizer, and had been the lover of several men including
Joachim von Ribbentrop and her own father-in-law. More controversially, she
argued that her mother Jeanne had murdered her husband Lord Camoys (who died in
1976) and that Lady Camoys had been murdered by her younger son Honourable
Robert Camoys (died 1994).
In later years, Stonor has claimed that she
is the only legitimate child of her parents; her mother's other four children,
including the present Lord Camoys, being illegitimate and biologically
unrelated to Sherman Stonor. Thus, she has argued that she is the rightful heir
to the Camoys barony.
She is an active supporter of several
charities, including Exiled Writers Ink!, and has worked as a freelance writer,
author, human rights activist, volunteer, and charity-supporter.
https://juliastonor.wordpress.com/
Julia Maria
Cristina Mildred Camoys Stonor
19 April 1939 (age 75)
Occupation Writer
Known for "I
Know Myself To Be Without Fred"
Notable work Sherman's
Wife: A Wartime Childhood Among the English Aristocracy
Religion Catholic
Relatives Sherman Stonor, 6th Baron
Camoys
Thomas Southwell, 4th Viscount Southwell
Charles Stourton, 19th Baron Stourton
Website
Heil Hitler and pants orf! How the
bisexual, Nazi-loving aristocrat called up countless lovers into action,
reveals her DAUGHTER
By JULIA CAMOYS STONOR
PUBLISHED: 22:00 GMT, 7 December 2012 |
UPDATED: 10:05 GMT, 8 December 2012
Heil Hitler!’ shouted Mummy as she pushed
Daddy down the stairs at Stonor
Park, our ancestral home
in Oxfordshire.
Standing terrified in the hallway below, I
watched as my father, the Honourable Sherman Stonor, heir to the 5th Baron
Camoys and a descendant of Sir Thomas de Camoys, Henry V’s standard-bearer at
the Battle of Agincourt, picked himself up off the floor and dusted down his
khaki army uniform.
My mother stared at him, her scarlet finger
nails glittering and a lit cigarette clinging perilously to her clenched lips.
‘You’re
totally useless and the sooner I’m rid of you the better,’ she yelled. ‘Get the
hell out of here.’
At that, my father made his way out of the
tradesmen’s entrance and back to the dangers of World War II, leaving behind
the perpetual battlefield that was life with my mother Jeanne.
Surely one of the most eccentric characters
ever to have graced, or rather disgraced, the pages of Debrett’s Peerage, my
mother was an ardent Nazi sympathiser who seduced Woolworth heiress Barbara
Hutton, drove Cecil Beaton’s brother Reggie to suicide, and slept with Hitler’s
henchman Joachim von Ribbentrop.
And all that was before she openly
cuckolded my father with a string of lovers, insisting throughout my childhood
that I should include this ever-growing list of ‘Uncles’ in my nightly prayers.
That drama on the stairs was just one of many
colourful episodes during my upbringing at Stonor
Park, the stately home near Henley-on-Thames which has been in my family for more
than 850 years and where my mother once entertained British and European
royalty and leading lights of the day including Benjamin Britten, John Betjeman
and Graham Greene.
They accepted her hospitality at a price.
She was once described by her friend John Mortimer as ‘a great beauty’ but
‘endlessly quarrelsome and singularly unforgiving’ and this was certainly true
when it came to her treatment of my father.
Bit on the side: SS general Joachim von
Ribbentrop was the lover of Lady Camoys, with her very obviously having an
affair more than likely with her husband knowing
Bit on the side: SS general Joachim von
Ribbentrop was the lover of Lady Camoys, with her very obviously having an
affair more than likely with her husband knowing
She tolerated his presence only so far as
was necessary to satisfy the craving for money and social standing which
stemmed from her impoverished childhood.
Her mother Frances Stourton was an army
major’s wife, deserted by her callous husband when he discovered that she was
sleeping with a dashing Spanish diplomat named Don Pedro de Zulueta — but not
before he had embezzled her substantial inheritance. My mother was the result
of that liaison. Born in London
in 1913, she was brought up by Feckless Fanny, as she called her mother, in a
flat above a butcher’s shop.
Although she never forgave my grandmother
for the reduced circumstances into which she was born, she was immensely proud
of her aristocratic blood, her father coming from a family of Castilian grandees.
She often proclaimed that she was ‘an
aristo Spanish bastard’ and soon exploited her exotic beauty, seducing wealthy
beaux including department store tycoon Gordon Selfridge, 47 years her senior.
This secured her an entree into fashionable
London society
where she found what promised to be a lucrative source of income in the form of
sexual blackmail.
One of her targets was society photographer
Cecil Beaton’s younger brother Reggie, an RAF officer whom she knew to be gay.
They were supposedly friends but when they met for dinner one evening in
October 1933 she threatened to reveal his homosexuality unless he agreed to
meet her for tea the next day and hand over a large sum in cash.
Later that night Reggie jumped to his death
in front of a London Underground train. Far from showing remorse, my mother let
it be known that she would tell the Beatons’ mother the reason for his suicide
unless Cecil let her sit for him.
The result, a beautifully composed portrait
by the most celebrated photographer of the day, confirmed her status as ‘one of
society’s loveliest girls’ as one newspaper described her, and in 1935 she
caught the eye of Barbara Hutton who employed her as her social secretary.
Vulnerable and gullible, ‘my own darlin’ Barbara’, as my mother called her, was
then on the second of her seven husbands.
Her third would be Cary Grant, one of the
biggest heart-throbs of the era, but she is also said to have taken various
female lovers, including Greta Garbo. This made her an easy target for my
mother, who flirted her way into her bed and remained there as long as it took
to secure various magnificent gifts, including a diamond and ruby brooch, and a
watch studded with sapphires and emeralds, both from Cartier.
“My grandmother refused to attend my parents' marriage,
weeping with what proved justified concern for her son”
Alongside her penchant for money and
expensive jewellery, my mother had a life-long obsession with uniforms and
medals and she was inevitably drawn to Hitler’s henchman Count Joachim von
Ribbentrop when he was appointed the German ambassador to Britain in
1936. They soon embarked on an affair.
Among certain elements of the English
Catholic hierarchy there was a growing conviction that Nazism offered a bulwark
against the evils of communism. This view was shared by my mother who took to
ending her sentences with the words ‘Heil Hitler and olé!’. The blood-lust and
violent glamour of a man like von Ribbentrop, cruelly resplendent in his black
and silver SS uniform and jackboots, only added to his appeal.
‘Such divine blue eyes and much, much else
in the vital parts,’ she would reminisce, but Von Ribbentrop was already
married and could never offer her the wealth and place in society to which she
aspired.
For that, she turned to my father, a fellow
Catholic. Two months younger than her, he was a naive and gentle man, an ardent
ecologist who loved to make and fly his own kites. His family was
understandably worried when my mother set her cap at him.
That she had little genuine affection for
my father was clear when, dining at Stonor for the first time, she appeared
transfixed by the Georgian cutlery, turning the silver over and examining the
hallmarks as if making an impromptu valuation.
The scarlet lipstick marks she left on the
linen napkins were regarded equally unfavourably and when my parents married in
the summer of 1938, my grandmother Mildred — or Mildew as my mother called her
— refused to attend, remaining at home in bed and weeping with what proved to
be justified concern for her son.
The newly-weds spent two nights at
Claridge’s, where my father lost his virginity to his highly-experienced new
wife before she announced a surprise honeymoon visit to Joachim von
Ribbentrop’s castle Schloss Sonnenburg, which was set in a dark and dank forest
north-east of Berlin.
While von Ribbentrop was flirting with my
mother, presenting her with wedding gifts including jackboots, spurs and the
low-cut dirndl dresses more traditionally seen on Bavarian barmaids, my father
was bewildered to find himself surrounded by armoured cars, heavily uniformed
SS guards, and endless goose-stepping.
Realising the extent of his new wife’s
adoration of Hitler and the Nazi cause, he tried to make a run for it but was
headed off at the local station by motorcycling storm-troopers led by my
mother, and was coerced into returning.
The trauma of this disastrous honeymoon
appeared to have rendered him impotent. But, while my mother would forever
afterwards make fun of his ‘God-awful lack of performance’, it was apparent on their
return to London
that she was pregnant with me.
She regarded my arrival in the world in
April 1939 with clear disdain, and instead of attending my christening the
following month she spent the day at Claridge’s, in bed with a Brazilian
diplomat.
Referring to me as ‘Sherman’s brat’, she would often tell me as a
young child: ‘Never go out without making your bed, because you might be
brought back dead.’ She obliged me to curtsy to her on a daily basis — a habit
which remained largely unbroken into my 30s — and bought me only second-hand
clothes, including my underwear, even as she luxuriated in her furs, silks,
satin and cashmere.
‘Nothing common or ’orf the peg for me,’
she would declare and her favourite colour was black, a hark back to the
fascist uniforms of the Thirties which she emulated with military outfits made
specially for her — featuring whistles, silver buttons, cockaded hats and rows
of medals.
Guests at Stonor were often startled to
find her seated at the dining table in full regalia and she was as likely to
appear fully uniformed at the crack of dawn — her morning seldom starting later
than 6am, such was her eagerness to star in the dramatic spectacle which was
her daily life.
Insisting that the local station-master
roll out a red carpet on the platform and doff his cap to her whenever she
travelled by train, she played the part of lady of the manor to the full, with
me in the occasional walk-on role.
With my father away at war, I learnt from
an early age to mix her favourite ‘Horse’s Neck’ cocktails — the concoction of
brandy and ginger ale which she insisted on having for elevenses. I also
accompanied her to mass in Stonor’s private chapel, which adjoined the house.
There she scandalised the congregation of
villagers and estate workers by lighting her cigarette from the sanctuary lamp
and talking loudly in the gallery above the pews, jangling her bracelets and
stomping in and out during the service to take calls on the telephone which
shrilled loudly in the adjacent bedroom.
Frequently declaring that she had the
‘divine right of Kings’, she decided that this entitled her to bring her
retinue of King Charles spaniels to these services. If they needed a piddle,
she simply let them out in to the adjoining library to relieve themselves on
the rare silk rugs.
Constantly snarling and barking, these dogs
were also honoured guests at every meal — sitting on Chippendale chairs as my
mother entertained the ‘Guns’, the men who attended the regular Saturday
shooting parties she hosted throughout the war. Many returned for private
encounters which were more intimate, if sometimes rather brief.
‘Pants ’orf,’ she would command them upon
their arrival. ‘Don’t let’s waste any time. Heil Hitler and olé!’
In her eyes, my father could never match up
to a man like von Ribbentrop
Asking too many question about these
‘Uncles’, as I was encouraged to call them, would have earned me a cuff to the
ear, with the heavy gold swastika which dangled from her charm bracelet adding
to the pain. But my mother made no attempt to keep her liaisons secret and one
in particular caused much scandal locally.
While my father’s mother had moved to the
safety of America
soon after the outbreak of war, his father Ralph had remained behind. He was
nearly 30 years older than my mother but soon he was openly sharing her bed.
This relationship did not stop her seeing
many other men — including the conductor Sir Malcolm Sargent and the drinks
tycoon Enrico Cinzano — and neither did the return of my father from the war.
Evacuated from Dunkirk, he was invalided out of the Army in
1944 with a burst appendix. This ordeal, combined with the shame of discovering
that his wife had been sleeping with his own father, gave him a nervous
breakdown, but my mother’s coterie of men friends continued their regular
visits to Stonor Park.
They accepted my father’s lavish if
unwilling hospitality with scarcely a thought for their all but silent host
seated at the far end of the vast mahogany dining table. As always he was
relentlessly mocked by my mother.
‘For God’s sake, f*** off Sherman,’ she would shout if he dared annoy
her. ‘That is, if you can.’
Snatching up the telephone whenever it rang
and barking ‘Turville Heath 424 — and who the hell are you?’ into the receiver,
she remained firmly in charge at Stonor.
When Joachim von Ribbentrop was executed
for war crimes in 1946, she ordered me into the courtyard to ring the Angelus
bell, more normally used to summon the faithful to prayer but now tolled in
mourning for her dead lover.
In her eyes, my father could never match up
to a man like von Ribbentrop, but she could never have divorced him. The
ultimate prize came in 1968 when my grandfather Ralph died, making my father
the 6th Baron Camoys and my mother Lady Camoys.
She rejoiced in a title which seemed to put
her days above that butcher’s shop irrevocably behind her, but the costs of
running Stonor had fast diminished my father’s wealth. My mother was eager to
sell the valuable mansion, so forced him to move into the four-bedroomed Dower
House nearby.
My father, mysteriously in increasingly
deteriorating health and confined to a claustrophobic single bedroom, died in
March 1976 and, at the age of 63, my mother began fortune-hunting all over
again.
It wasn’t long before she had found a
target in her neighbour, Agatha Christie’s widower Sir Max Mallowan, an
archaeologist who had inherited some of his wife’s estate following her death
just two months before that of my father.
Like so many men over the years, Sir Max
became mesmerised by my mother and soon proposed, but there was a hitch. Her
reputation had gone before her and his friends warned him off.
Terrified by the rumours, Sir Max swiftly
withdrew his proposal of marriage, and my mother was forced to spend the years
before her death in 1987 living in a rundown workman’s cottage near Stonor Park.
There she maintained the disdain for me
which she had made so apparent when I was a little girl — clearly I had always
bored her to tears.
‘I’m doing my best Mama,’ I would tell her.
‘Your best is simply not good enough,’
she’d reply. ‘Nor will it ever be.’
Curiously, I had never stopped loving her,
and I was ever eager to be at her side. I believed in her absolutely, and, in
my eyes, she would always be a towering figure, a beautiful, scent-drenched
heroine.
Adapted from Sherman’s Wife by Julia Camoys Stonor,
published by Stonor Lodge Press and available as an ebook from
www.Amazon.co.uk at £5.99. © 2012 Julia
Camoys Stonor
Julia Maria Cristina Mildred Camoys Stonor
(born 19 April 1939) is the eldest daughter of Sherman Stonor, 6th Baron Camoys
by his wife Jeanne Stourton. She is best known for her books about her family,
exposing long-suppressed family scandals and her claims to be the rightful heir
to the Camoys barony.
Rampant fascism near Henley
Nevertheless it is quite a story. Julia
Stonor’s mother, Jeanne, née Stourton, was a society beauty from a
well-connected tribe of Catholic grandees. Jeanne’s flighty mother had an
affair with a Spanish aristocrat, Pedro de Zulueta, who was acknowledged to be
Jeanne’s father; one of her great-uncles was the Spanish ambassador in
in the 1930s, and
another was a cardinal and adviser to two Popes. By her daughter’s account, the
dark-haired, volatile Jeanne, with her rapacious appetite for money and sex,
her complete disregard for convention, her alarming mendacity and her streak of
cruelty, exhibited all the faults the English like to associate with the
Spanish; oddly, even the photographs in this book give her the alarming look of
a Goya cartoon. She boasted of being an ‘aristo Spanish bastard’ and was much
given to shouts of ‘Olé’.
