Caroline Mildred Carter(1889-1965) – m. 1910 – Archibald Acheson(1877-1954)

Auntie Mimi

Grandpère Carter had one sister, Mildred Carter, known as Mimi.     When Bunny and Mildred (called that or Millie by her family, Auntie Mimi to us) were young they lived with their parents, Alice and John Ridgely (Jack) Carter, in Washington.  Then they moved to England as Jack was working with Morgan’s in London (I think it was called Morgan Grenville at that time).  By then she had grown into a beautiful, spirited late teenager and was a great success in the high social circles of London.  At the time John Singer Sargent did a wonderful portrait of her.   She opened a ball with King Edward VII and in 1910 married Archibald Charles Montagu Brabazon Acheson, 5th Earl of Earl of Gosford (Lord Gosford).  Thus she was thereafter known as Mildred, Countess of Gosford (she never sat in the House of Lords – he did).  I don’t know what first name he used, but later he was known to his children and family as Pater (Latin name for father).

Auntie Mimi had strong views and many interests.  She was an early suffragette, a Christian Scientist, loved murder mysteries, and had a great sense of style.  Granny Carter told me she was the first woman she knew to wear black shiny boots, and Granny and Grandpère relied on her a lot when they were re-doing both the Senlis and Whiskey Island houses (the wide, low window benches at Whiskey were her idea).  She and Lord Gosford were divorced – in the ’30’s I think, and she came to live in NYC.   Anne’s description – regal but with a twinkle in her eye – is just right. She had large, elegant handwriting and always wrote on blue engraved stationery.

The Gosfords had a big house in London, Falmouth House,  which my mother (named for her grandmother Alice and her aunt Mildred) said was one of the most beautiful houses she had ever seen; it took a direct hit during the Blitz in World War II and was destroyed).  There were four Gosford children (they used the family name, Acheson) all of whom were nice/interesting and had families.  They were about the same age as our parents and because when growing up they lived in France and England, saw a lot of each other; they stayed life-long friends.  It was on a vacation in Biarritz, France that little John Carter, brother of Mimi and Shirley, contracted diptheria and died.  Although the story was always veiled, it was said that being a Christian Scientist, Auntie Mimi hadn’t allowed the children to be inoculated with the diptheria vaccine, which had been recently developed.

The Achesons lived all over the place.  John was in England with his wife (Cynthia?) and children and became the 6th Earl.  It was with him that we all went to the House of Lords.   Patrick married a charming American, Judy.  David Boyer and I were in their wedding, which was held at the Church of the Heavenly Rest in New York in about 1946.  They lived in Leesburg Virginia, and a few years ago Arch, Tooey Cameron (Andrew’s mother-in-law), and I went to see Judy there.  A couple of years later she asked me come to see the Sargent portrait being sold at a Christie’s sale – very exciting, it went for over $1 million.  Camilla first married a German, Deult von Stauffenberg, a cousin of the von Stauffenberg who tried to assassinate Hitler.  After that failed attempt, he and Camilla were briefly imprisoned, along with other von S. family members.  After the war he and Camilla were divorced, and she married Axel von dem Bussche, who also was involved in plots to do in Hitler.  Tall, very handsome, during the war he lost a leg at the Russian front.  He and Camilla came to the River a couple of times – I remember him sunbathing on the rocks in front of the house and turning quite pink.  Arch and I met a couple of their children in New York – I remember Nicola as being very attractive.  Mary married Fernando Corcuera, from what I gather quite a racy international type from an old Mexican family.  They lived in Mexico City and had three or four children whom we met in Bondo.  In the 80’s, Arch, Isabel, Andrew, two friends of theirs, and I visited Mary in Mexico City.   We had dinner in her huge garden, which had houses for various family members built around the edges.  During dinner children and grandchildren came and went.

After the war Auntie Mimi lived in an apartment on 72nd Street in NYC and in Bondo, Switzerland, where during the summers she rented a sort of castle called Palazzo Salis,  complete with stone floors, suits of armor in the corners, and a spectacular view south to Italy.  She was very generous about having family to stay, and we went there.  I remember long walks up into the mountains and a drive into St. Moritz on a rainy afternoon for tea and cakes.  We would visit her occasionally in New York – once my mother took me just to see her jewels, which of course were dazzling.  She lived a fairly quiet life and died in the 60’s, I think.  Her wonderful, out-of-central-casting Irish maid, Alice Keating, then when to work for Auntie Do Armour, Granny’s sister.  Alice was with Auntie Do when she died in the ’80’s.

Here are some pix I got off the web: