Elisabeth Starr in the courtyard of the Castello	Elisabeth Starr in a doorway at the Castello
Inside the Castello	Inside the Castello
Elisabeth Starr arriving at the Castello	Elisabeth Starr at the Castello on a card sent at Christmas

Winifred (Peggy) Fortescue’s close friend, Elisabeth Parrish Starr, ('Mademoiselle' in the books), grew up in the elegant Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia in the 1890s.  Her relationship with her parents was difficult, and her life became closely entwined with that of the family of President Theodore Roosevelt particularly with that of the President’s sister Corinnne, who called herself Elisabeth’s ‘Heart Mother’.  A personal tragedy caused Elisabeth to leave her home and eventually join those other Americans who sailed to France during the First World War to take part in the United States voluntary aid programme to Europe.  Her brother, Dillwyn, had already joined the British Army in 1914, becoming an officer in the Coldstream Guards.  He died leading his platoon in a charge at Ginchy, during the battle of the Somme in 1916. ‘Nurses posing for the camera at the headquarters of the French War Emergency Fund in Paris during the Great War. The womens’ uniform consisted of smart blue jackets and flared skirts of heavy wool with a soft hat for the head. Their badge was a little silver cockerel complete with red comb. Here Elisabeth Starr was appointed Head of Reconstruction in the devastated areas of the north of France. The Fund’s remit was to support military hospitals, fighting men and stricken local families as well as equipping emergency medical stations on the front lines. Only women whose aid agencies were linked with the French Red Cross organisation were permitted to drive to the battle lines. This suited the intrepid Elisabeth very well indeed.’ Elisabeth and Peggy spent several bucolic years in Provence, before the general mobilisation in France and the threat of invasion by Nazi troops prompted Elisabeth, with Peggy’s help, to found her Foyers des Soldats de France.  This entailed setting up numerous equipped respite shelters through the High Alps and up to the border with Italy.  When the threat of occupation grew, Peggy fled to England, where she spent the war years giving lectures to raise funds for the Fighting French.  Meanwhile Elisabeth, refusing to leave France, stayed behind in her ‘dim old house’, hiding displaced children and falling under the yoke of Vichy France. Maureen Emerson - Author 'Escape to Provence'.

 

Elisabeth Starr painting in the Castello studio

Elisabeth, with headband, aged 32 in 1922 - others unknown

 

In 1926 Elisabeth and a friend, Dolly Watts, embarked on a project close to their hearts. They had both seen the effects of malnutrition brought on by the war and the many sick and malformed children left in its wake, particularly tuberculosis of the bone. Their plan was to open a modern convalescent home for children who had undergone treatment for this disease. Although they disliked the idea they canvassed the wealthy residents of the Riviera to raise funding, often using all their charm. Gradually the funding came together and perfect location about 10 minutes from the Castello became available. The site had previously been an olive mill. Plans were drawn up by Elizabeth and in due course two nurses, friends of both women, were recruited from England. The building of the clinic block took over 2 years but eventually on the 12th September 1928 the contract for the association of the clinic was signed. It was named St. Christophe.

St Christophe in the 1920's before work commenced

 

Driven by her desire to help the French and in particular, the running of her Foyers des Soldats de France, Elisabeth stayed on in her Castello during WWII providing whatever help she could and at times hiding displaced children from the Germans.  She was mostly alone except for her loyal dog. Before the occupation of the south of France communication was still possible and Winifred was able to keep in touch by cable. As time went on conditions deteriorated and communications ceased. The community were obliged to adapt to the Vichy New Order. The only way for Elisabeth to learn what was happening was by means of a radio, a highly dangerous but precious piece of equipment. She kept hers hidden in the chimney of the fireplace in the salon. Although news was mostly bad, (and frequently jammed by the Germans), the success of the Battle of Britain must have raised her spirits. Food became harder and harder to obtain, swedes became a staple food and bread was scarce, black and badly made. Use of the fruit of the carob tree in it brought many people, including Elisabeth, out in boils. Coffee made from acorns was barely drinkable. Any vegetables grown in the area, (and the Castello had always grown its own), were rounded up and sent off to other areas by local inspectors. Towards the end of 1942 Elisabeth grew very weak and was fading away. She died at the beginning of 1943 after the harshest winter of the war to date. Although officially recorded as heart failure she had really, like many others, died of malnutrition. She was 54 years old. Elisabeth was buried in the little cemetery at Opio, to be joined some 8 years later by her loyal friend Winifred. Winifred and others had hoped that Elisabeth would leave France with the Red Cross and join her in England but sadly this never happened. She heard the news of her death while she living in her caravan in woods at Hartland Abbey, in Devon. The news brought wild distress. She had been powerless to help her. She dealt with it in her own way, rushing about the woods behind her caravan and she described the following ....'I suddenly saw on a sunlit bank of early daffodils the lovely little head of Elisabeth - an she was laughing for joy....' Elisabeth as a young woman   Elisabeth when aged 31 yrs in 1921 (Photo courtesy Michael Brett and the Brett family)

ENVOI

Some later editions of Winifred's book, 'Trampled Lilies', contain an extra chapter. This was written as a tribute to Elisabeth following news of her death and shows the depth of feeling that had existed and the agony suffered by Winifred. Although Elisabeth was sometimes attracted to other women this was never the case with Winifred, they were purely the closest of friends. The piece she wrote is reproduced below.

 

ENVOI TO ELISABETH STARR (the wonderful Mademoiselle of my books) ELISABETH, you have gone away and left us desolate. We needed you so badly, your quaint humour, the energy and originality of your ideas and their execution, your superb capability, and, above all, your understanding heart with its ever-open door ready to welcome in the tired, the discouraged, and the oppressed. No burden seemed too heavy for those slender shoulders, and I know we all piled ours upon them—or rather you dragged them from us and added them joyously to your load. There was no sorrow of those around you that you did not share, no worry that you did not dissipate with that tender mocking laugh, and a philosophy that astonished because of its maturity and wisdom. Astonished, because you seemed so young to have learned it. That little sleek dark head, that sweet, unlined, oval face which sometimes seemed all eyes, so large they were, belonged to a girl, though the soul to be seen in those eyes was that of a woman who had struggled and suffered much, and, in the almost monastic seclusion in which she chose to live, struggled still to gain that peace which the world never gave. You were always so insistent upon the right of every person to privacy of thought and life ; shy as a fawn yourself, except with those who knew and loved you; refusing fiercely to exploit your beauty, your talents, and your charm ; the perfect child of Nature, happiest in hours of wild freedom in the mountains or by the sea, when you became part of your surroundings. You were so modest and so diffident, never believing yourself to be worthy of love, you, who once were described as une femme fatale because all who had the rare privilege of meeting you succumbed at once to your natural effortless charm. You never considered that anything you did was good, although without lessons you painted pictures judged worthy to be hung in the Paris Salon; you seized a lump of clay and modelled a head acclaimed by a Master Sculptor to be anatomically perfect and the work of genius; you cooked like a chef, and in ten minutes, in a tent or a ruined shepherd's hut, could prepare a meal worthy of a gourmet. Those delicate fingers could handle any tool, cure maladies of cars, achieve masterpieces of carpentry, tend a sick animal or bird, induce a fading plant to live, and bandage beautifully any wound. But they could not—or would not—sew, nor could they often be induced to write letters, although, when you did write, in a few vivid phrases you could portray with your pen a living picture or wring the heart with one poignant sentence, worded as no other in the world could have written it. Your flight to serve will remain for ever in the minds and hearts of many with a tender amazed wonder, and I think that more than a few of us who stumbled after those winged feet, but never could keep pace, will always find a patch of flowers where once your footprints were and so take heart of grace to follow on. For me— " What I aspir'd to be And was not, comforts me." I could never keep abreast of you, little lovely one, but I did try ; and you were ever merciful and compassionate to those who tried and failed, seeing something beautiful in all frustrated effort. You were such a wonderful companion—the perfect woman-friend my John so longed to find for me, and, as I shall always believe, found for me at last. For you came into my life just after he left it. You taught me to live again when I was spiritually dead; found me fresh interests and showed me the lovely simple  things in our much-loved Provence ; designed me a little home near your Castello and shared with me and others its happy life, sowing seeds, transplanting seedlings in our frames, making wine from our grapes, rearing baby chickens, ducks, and rabbits ; finding new holiday-homes in rare secluded places ; always ready to start forth on some new adventure, joyous and gallant. We worked and played together for many happy years ; you painted while I wrote, and then, when light or inspiration failed, we laid aside pencil and brush and worked in our beloved gardens, or sat before a fire of crackling olive logs and talked of serious things or funny things or just were silent, as only true companions know how to be. We were so happy. Then came the war. You had already lived and worked through one, as those faded ribbons and a hidden medal testified. You knew—who better ?—what the toil, the anguish, and the horror of this one would be. From the moment when we heard the call of Mobilisation Generale throughout France, those great eyes of yours, sometimes alight with laughter, more often their light quenched by a secret ineffable sadness, became haunted with horror, but blazing with a fierce courage and resolve. You, whose every movement had been full of a lazy grace, became a whirlwind of energy ; a woman of untiring enterprise and swift initiative. Once again your poilus needed you, and you swept us all as willing slaves into their service, giving yourself, all that you had and were— ven your precious life itself—to France. Living so long in France—those unloved ties of your own land, America, abruptly severed and you alone — you wished to share more fully the life of the French, and so had taken their nationality. When the collapse came and others fled, you stayed to comfort the shamed, the heart-broken, the hungry, and the hopeless. We begged you to save yourself while yet there was time, but neither our love nor fear of what might come could move your dauntless spirit. You suffered anguish of mind, frustrated hopes, a terrible loneliness of spirit, a deadening enforced inactivity; hungry and spied upon, disillusioned often, until your health, weakened by the last war, now strained beyond bearing, was entirely broken. Your spirit NEVER. Darling, I know it. But I can hardly bear to think of your sufferings so nobly and patiently borne. In your last letter, which took you six weeks to write because each of those lovely fingers was septic and bandaged, you said: " I am covered with carbuncles in all vital places and have one in each ear, but I'm trying to keep the flag flying." I know you kept it flying to the last. Then came a postscript: " Mine is a very fashionable complaint here. We have only animal turnips to eat." And your last cable : " We are all getting much too slim. Very difficult to console Squibs," your little shadowdog we loved so much. Then the Italian occupation of the South of France and the vigilance of the all-pervading German Gestapo increased. A dreadful silence. No means of sending even a word of love or comfort to you, and the wonderful English food choked me knowing you starving. But surely, surely, our love and constant thoughts must have reached you. If we believe anything we must believe that. And then one morning a telegram was brought to me. It came from the British Embassy in Lisbon and told me that your martyrdom was ended. A letter followed it telling me things that hurt so intolerably that I rushed blindly out into the woods feeling that I could bear no more. You felt it and you came at once. I might have known you would, for you could never bear to see anyone suffer. Suddenly I saw your little face laughing amid a great patch of daffodils blazing in sunshine, your head tilted back so that I saw the sunlight glinting in your eyes and gleaming on white teeth. That unruly lock of dark hair had fallen over your brow as it always did. Never before, in all your joyous moments of wild freedom in the past, had I seen you look so utterly happy and content, freed at last from the burden of the flesh, pain conquered, frustration become fulfilment, loneliness ended. It was as though you came to me to say— " Forget all those horrors you've been reading, Pegs. They didn't matter really and they're over now and I'M so HAPPY." That is all that matters really, little one, your happiness. And of course you must be happy to be at last with those you loved so much who had to leave you alone so early. . . . I had to address a meeting next day ; to talk on a platform to hundreds of people about France, her tragic betrayal by her politicians, her present terrible sufferings, and her unbroken spirit. Knowing what I did, feeling what I then felt, I thought that I could never face that audience. But I did. And I didn't break down. I did it because I knew that you wished me to do it, though it tore my heart out to speak of such things, particularly then. When I came home something—or someone ?—made me take up my own book ' Sunset House,' dedicated to you. Immediately I read : " Mademoiselle had little sympathy for those who let personal grid interfere with their duties." So you are with me still, and spurring me on to work with you for the redemption of our beloved France. I will go on. I will go back because I know you wish it, and because our peasants in the Midi need the aid of those who lived among them for so long to whom they always looked for help or comfort. I know how sorely they must miss their Mademoiselle, and, being a coward at heart, already I dread those tender grieving references to you that I shall surely hear. The thought of living again in my little ' Sunset House' with your lovely Castello shuttered and empty below it is almost unbearable, but there will be so much to do for those around me, the hungry to feed, the naked to clothe, and those sick children dying now in thousands from tuberculosis and malnutrition, they, above all, need care so desperately. You would have given it, and you are urging me to give it. Elisabeth, I have a plan to turn this caravan in which I am now living and which I described to you, into a mobile clinic and take it out to France equipped with a steriliser, simple instruments, bandages, medicaments, tinned milk, and nourishing things to tend and feed the children of our neighbourhood in Provence. I must have a team of doctor, nurse, and driver. My plan is to collect a fleet of caravan-clinics to pervade Provence, and I had dreamed of doing this work with you. You would have organised it all as wonderfully as you did your Foyers des Soldats de France, whose badge I still so proudly wear. When I came home before the collapse of  France, you begged me to raise money over here to buy a fleet of mobile douche and disinfecting vans to drive to the Front for the cleanliness and comfort of your poilus, who lacked these things so sorely in the last war. I had a great scheme for raising that money when tragedy overcame us all. Now I believe that the idea of caravan-clinics for the children of your poilus is really yours, and that, with God's help and your inspiration, I shall succeed in my Crusade for the children of France. But you must stay with me ; you must never leave me, for I shall need your courage and your help so terribly. PEGS. THE CARAVAN, ' L'ETOILE FILANTE, 'HARTLAND ABBEY WOODS, N. DEVON September 1943.

 

Winifred carried on with her plan to help the children of France and formed an organisation to raise funds which was registered as the Elisabeth Starr Memorial Fund. Two items of publicity that appeared in the national press are shown below. Between November 1944 and June 1945 the amount raised was nearly £4000 which was a considerable amount considering the war time conditions that were being endured. The fund continued for a number of years.
November 22nd 1944	June 5th 1945