Angela Forbes

Lady Angela Selina Bianca Forbes (née St Clair-Erskine; 11 June 1876 – 22 October 1950) was a British socialite and novelist who was known as a forces sweetheart for organising soldiers' canteens in France during the First World War. She reverted to her maiden name in 1929. Early life Forbes was born at 8 Grafton Street, Mayfair, the youngest daughter of Robert St Clair-Erskine, 4th Earl of Rosslyn and Blanche Adeliza FitzRoy. Her sisters were Millicent Leveson-Gower, Duchess of Sutherland and Sybil Fane, Countess of Westmorland, and her brothers were the 5th Earl of Rosslyn and Alexander FitzRoy St Clair-Erskine. She was also a half-sister of Frances Maynard, who became Daisy Greville, Countess of Warwick, and of Blanche Maynard, who married Lord Algernon Charles Gordon-Lennox and was the mother of Ivy Gordon-Lennox, later Duchess of Portland. The 5th Duke of Sutherland, the 14th Earl of Westmorland, and the 6th Earl of Warwick were her nephews. Forbes grew up at Dysart, Fife, near Kirkcaldy, and at Lady Anne's House near Stamford, Lincolnshire, now Lady Anne's Hotel. She was educated by German governesses. She grew to a height of almost six feet and was considered vivacious rather than pretty, unlike her sisters. She resisted finishing her education in Germany, explaining that she had no wish to see Germany, having only just "escaped from German governesses", so she was sent back to the schoolroom in Scotland. Forbes spent much of her life fox-hunting and shooting, and she was depicted riding side-saddle at a meeting of the Quorn in a Vanity Fair magazine chromolithograph by Cuthbert Bradley. In her memoirs, she reveals that she was considered an enfant terrible and that Elinor Glyn used her as the prototype of Elizabeth in her book Visits of Elizabeth (1900).