The Countess' daughter
Christchurch beauty Monica Ducarel was tall, glamorous, strong-willed, and, according to social gossip, promiscuous. In a fashionable Brighton wedding in 1889 attended by nobility and titled gentry, and members of her step-mother’s New Zealand family, Monica married Charles Charrington, heir to an English brewery fortune.
Monica’s parents, the Count and Countess de la Pasture, spent their married life in Christchurch. After the Countess’ death during childbirth in 1869 and the Count’s second marriage, the new family moved to England.
Not long into her marriage, Monica began an affair with Scotsman George Bullough, the handsome, wealthy, and equally promiscuous son of an industrialist. Apparently, George had been found in bed with his father’s young bride and was promptly exiled to the family yacht, “a luxurious, 221 ft long steam yacht, big enough for a cricket pitch and whose 40-strong crew included an orchestra and personal photographer”. Bullough was named co-respondent in the Charrington’s 1903 divorce. Just a month later, in another fashionable and lavish wedding, the couple married.
There is a Royal twist to this tale. A story suggests that Edward VII had a penchant for Monica and Charrington wanted the King named in his divorce proceedings. To cover for the King, long-time bachelor Bullough was named instead and rewarded with a knighthood.
During the hunting season, Sir George and Lady Monica resided at Kinloch Castle, a magnificent late Victorian mansion on the Isle of Rùm. They would entertain male and female companions lavishly and separately.
Monica lived an unashamedly decadent and privileged life. Born into tragedy in the emerging colonial city of Christchurch, she died in London in 1967, aged 98.
“According to an otherwise unauthenticated tale…, Lady Bullough was told in her nineties to take more exercise.” “In reply, she would climb a stack of empty champagne cases and swing from a metal bar in her bathroom, whilst the butler would kick the cases from under her feet.”
“There is probably not a shred of truth in the story, but it does indicate willingness to believe such things of her.”