Remembering Tattie Flanje

There was some sorrow when it was reported that Tattie Flanje had passed away, but mostly surprise that she had left it so long. Even in her heyday she seemed to be older than she really was, her mannerisms and opinions suited to another era, her clothes and appearance a striking contrast to those of the public she was surrounded by on her broadcasts. The slow fade of her media appearances seemed to recede beyond the horizon of even the most determined of memories. Her presence in television’s pantheon is now an anachronism, contrasting as it does with the bright neon oversharing of transient celebrity worship. Her death finally caught up with her when she was all but forgotten.

She was never the doyenne of A Cavalcade of English Heirlooms, the weekly overload of nostalgia and dusty antiques that was broadcast between 1968 and 1992. But she was a quiet and respected expert with a quiet and dry sense of humour. Her field was Victorian dolls and nineteenth century ephemera, sometimes doilies. It was always apparent that she was ill at ease in dealing with the general public, and her humour was often an attempt to cover her awkward manner. Towards the end of her career, if that is the right word for occasional and forgettable appearances on the long-running Sunday night television programme, her distaste for plebeians would too often get the better of her, and she would snap at a supplicant who had asked her opinion of family treasure. As the eighties broke down social distinctions with the rise of the nouveau riche and its ostentatious vulgarity, so Tattie’s revulsion of the masses make it difficult for producers to keep her on the show.

Tatiana “Tattie” Isadora de Pfleglme Bouchier de Bouchoir Tollemain Flanje, 16th Countess of Torrington, was born into an embarrassment of riches in 1933. Her parents missed out on being alive during Queen Victoria’s reign, but cultivated and endorsed Victorian values in every aspect of their lives. Their vast estate at Warlden Hall in Hampshire was dedicated to keeping alive the nineteenth century, and they did everything in their powers to stem the creeping tide of progress, especially any attempts at social advance, sanitation, education or gender equality.

“Those early years were just a mass of lace and mourning,” recalls Lady Nipsie Gough, a childhood friend and confidant. “Yes, the poor darling was wheeled about in one of those rather old prams under a lavish mountain of lace. Around and around the grounds of that stagnant stately home. All they did was weep. Weep and take plaster casts of her hands and feet. She wasn’t allowed to do anything other than be photographed in lace for the first ten years of her life. They were stern, her parents. The last of the old century. The blood and guts that built the British Empire, disciplined the natives and prevailed in the Great War. They were made of something we have lost with all this modern socialist flimflam.”

Tattie’s father was known as Ol’ Fisticuffs in the House of Lords, so prone was he thumping those he disagreed with, or aggressively punching in the back of the head anyone in front of him on the red benches, should he became animated during a debate. He was equally liberal with violence in his own household. Footmen and boot boys often felt the plump-handed expression of his frustrations. It is rumoured that he fatally injured three of the staff at the great house, but the butler was adept at convincing everyone that they were unfortunate accidents. And nothing induced feverish anger in the Earl more than the site of a woman or child. Great measures, including extensive use of lace, were used to ensure he rarely set eyes on the women of his household. Tattie herself was fourteen when she was first introduced to her father.

“The meeting didn’t go well,” reflects Felicity Bunns, who was employed at the house after World War II. “She was done up in so much lace, and then presented to him as if for the first time. Young women of Tattie’s class had to accept that they would probably not see their father until their mid teens, if at all. On this occasion, his Lordship was already angry about something, probably the Bill that would become the Parliament Act, so when he saw Tattie he dropped his port and thundered ‘What sort of ugly ape is this?’ He fingered at the lace quite unpleasantly until he could see her full face. Then he staggered backwards into a chair. His cigar was still burning when he died. Poor Tattie. She never really had much luck with men, did she?”

Indeed, when Tattie was presented to society, things did not go as smoothly as they ought. She had unfortunately been rather badly injured by one of her brothers during horseplay in the formal gardens. Her two brothers Wilbur and Cecil delighted in teasing and chasing her around the estate. Quite often she’d collapse of exhaustion and have to be revived by a groundskeeper when the games got quite out of hand. They stole her clothes and thrashed her with nettles and then pushed her into the grand fountains by the orangery. Sometimes they would set her as the prey for their father’s hounds and hunt her across to the lawns down by the lake. Once she was trapped in a copse for some hours and lost an eye to brambles.

“When it came to her debutante ball, I’m afraid Tattie was in rather a bad way,” recalls Baroness Cissy Owston. Unfortunately she had fractured her pelvis when Cecil had imitated an amorous suitor and rather crudely seduced her in a bower. Things were difficult enough as it was. Her mother insisted that she wear her black mourning dress, which she had not changed out of since her father’s funeral. The poor thing had to wear an eyepatch after the rape in the thicket. Add to that she was pushed around the ballroom in a bath chair. Yes, it was a rather ignominious affair.”

Tattie did not meet any eligible bachelors at her deb ball. Her mother fussed around trying to convince all the men present to at least speak to Tattie, even though she was not able to dance with them. There were no takers. The two of them were both in heavy Victorian mourning dresses, her mother pushing Tattie around in a wickerwork bath chair and her not really being able to see properly on account of the eye patch.

“Yes, she was rather lonely after coming out into society. She rather stayed at home while she convalesced. Once she had a glass eye fitted and began to become mobile again, I suppose you might say she was on the mend. But I think she was rather lost in that grand old house, and had rather expected to be doing rather more exciting things than staring out of the windows at the folly. And of course that brother of hers would just not leave her alone.”

Before Tattie’s brother Wilbur went up to Eton, there were rumours that he was involved in a violent sexual relationship with his sister. Wilbur’s behaviour had become quite unpredictable since he had been revived from a coma that was the result of one of his father’s attempts to discipline the boy. Wilbur rarely saw his father except for when discipline became necessary. The Earl’s taste for violence meant discipline of one form or another was meted out almost daily. The boy suffered frequent broken bones and was eventually so badly beaten that he spent three months in a coma, during which his father died. When he recovered, his behaviour was worse than a dog’s, and he often had to be restrained when he caught sight of his sister. Unfortunately, he did rather maul her.

“Yes, his departure for Eton was rather a relief for the poor girl. A woman of Tattie’s social position must expect rather a drubbing from her elder brother. She had to fend for her modesty quite frequently while he was around. He would mount her like a rabid cur at the slightest provocation. It took two hall boys and a valet to pull him off. Of course, after the brain injury, he didn’t understand. There was no life in the eyes, just fire and a temper. A primitive lust. There was no use speaking to him, and the sounds he made in reply were just grunts and mournful grumbles. Once he left for Eton, we were all very much relieved. He had great success on the rugby field and the debating society, and of course became Foreign Secretary. Meanwhile Tattie was quite the worse for wear.”

Rumours persisted throughout society that Tattie hadn’t quite defended her honour as much as she should have done during the sibling horseplay. She was sent away for a while after a visit to a private clinic. When she returned, her mother visited her more often than she had done previously. They were on rather unfamiliar terms, since the nanny had done much of the childrearing, and the mother had no particular interest in her family at all. It was perhaps out of boredom that she visited young Tattie and sat with her sometimes while she gazed through the window. She would talk, but you could not call it conversation, just whimsical recollections of her own childhood.

Unfortunately the calm did not last. During the holidays from Eton, her brothers would quite often invite friends to stay, and quite often this was the entire rugby team. They were a boisterous bunch and soon took to teasing poor Tattie. Once again she battled to retain her modesty, and was frequently to be found without her clothes in the parterre. Twice she was discovered unconscious in the Blue Room. They rather used her as a rag doll during those weeks of leisure. After a particularly unpleasant evening during which the entire team took it upon themselves to imitate ardent suitors at a deb ball, her pelvis was fractured again, and she was forced to return to her rooms to convalesce. Another visit from the private doctor and some time away, and then Tattie sat with her mother again once the boys had returned to school.

“I think her mother just got bored of her and wanted her married off sooner rather than later,” reflects Lady Hepsie Bush. She was rather a disconsolate girl. One used to glimpse her in the Grand Corridor or the Library, in the mourning dress that had begun to fall to pieces and rather stank. Rumour had it that she sat alone in her rooms for days at a time, conversing with her Victorian dolls. One could hear her gossiping away or tittering as she invented their conversations. They hoped it was just a phase. They didn’t seek psychiatric help. With women of Tattie’s upbringing, these things are quite common and usually sort themselves out. Or at least are more easily hidden or repressed. I think her mother just didn’t know what to do with her. Not that I think she cared too much. She wanted a wedding more than she wanted her daughter to be happy, one presumes.”

“We were cheered by the Festival of Britain and the new Queen Elizabeth. It was a wonderful time, and there was a steady increase in confidence and optimism after the war years. Tattie’s mother would take her out travelling, up and down some of the great English families, sometimes abroad. She was of course trying to find an eligible bachelor somehow or somewhere. She worked the events of the season hard, trying to find some way of appearing in society pages or even the tabloids. Just a couple of sentences to appear to be trying. But society was changing. There was rock and roll and angry young men. Tattie’s mother decided that the period of mourning could perhaps be drawn to a close. Tattie was given new clothes and appeared renewed at the beginning of the season in 1957. It was at a ball given by the Duke of Holden that Tattie’s troubled first marriage really began. It was there she met her first husband, Atwater Gildon, heir to the Earldom of Dittmanshire.”

“She was being paraded around the ballroom by her mother,” recalls Lady Nanette Toft. “The Grecian gown with an empire waistband was raising eyebrows, but at least it wasn’t that ghastly tattered mourning dress she had spent most of her formative years in. No, she looked wonderful. People say she couldn’t take her eye off Atwater, but of course that glass eye did seem to follow one around and bore into one’s soul. So it seemed to Atwater. He believed she hadn’t stopped looking at him for the whole evening, so it was only polite to ask her to dance. Both of them were rather awkward and one wasn’t really sure if they were actually dancing or wrestling. But they were just wonderful together. We wished them well. They had a short, sweet courtship during the rest of the season, and then a wonderful marriage and three wonderful children. We were so pleased that Tattie was happy at last.”

“We were all devastated, of course,” remembers Countess Wilhelmina Caulfield. But we all knew already. It was no surprise. Atwater made no secret of it. It was just rather unfortunate that it was a policeman he tried to trade with in the public toilets at Paddington Station. Poor Tattie. Nobody knows why she had no idea. Her husband was known throughout society as the Our Lady of the Shires, Dame Dittmanshire, and the tabloids referred to him as Lord Shirtlifter. It wasn’t even an open secret. His lifestyle left absolutely nothing to the imagination. Even before the lurid celebrity stories in today’s media, he was not afraid of promoting his deviant ways. Cruising around in his Ford Anglia, always on the lookout for a bit of rough and tumble with a barrow boy. He would have made Oscar Wilde look like a shy introvert. Tattie had no idea that such lifestyles were possible. For a woman of her upbringing, men were always gallant and robust heroes who knew how to handle a woman. She really didn’t know that gay was a thing.”

After the trial, Tattie’s life could have fallen to pieces again. Perhaps she was angry with herself for not appreciating the truth about her husband. More so that she had been humiliated in society again. She could have hidden away, one supposes. Gone back to that awful window seat and gazed through out to the lawns. Instead she chose to embrace the notoriety. The sixties were just starting, that great cultural change as inhibitions seemed to be lost and austerity forgotten. Not for Tattie, of course. It seemed she was quite shrewd in creating a public image of extreme disapproval of all things modern. Modern music, the increasingly liberal attitudes towards nudity and sex, women’s lib, the terrifying deluge of popular culture. She disapproved of everything, and soon the tabloids could not report on anything new and morally questionable without a quote from Tattie. She became the voice of the nation’s increasing sense of moral panic.

“Of course, Atwater helped her out and schooled her in the media skills we take for granted these days,” reflects Lady Beatrice Sharmaine Atterberry. “He hadn’t gone to prison, obviously. It wasn’t that he was saved by the Wolfenden Report, it’s just that the judge was unlikely to imprison a fellow member of the House of Lords. But Atwater kept a low profile, and became a kind of manager for Tattie. He had many, many contacts in the world of entertainment and media, a cottager’s union of sorts.”

He worked hard to raise Tattie’s profile. Her deeply old-fashioned, reactionary, prudish attitude was at odds with the cultural changes gaining speed in the 1960’s, but she was popular with the older generation, who were bewildered by the enormous changes during the decade. They looked on her as a young woman with the sense to know that the relentless pursuit of individual liberty and loose morals was the road to hell. They followed her disapproval of everything modern. The music of The Beatles, the end of conscription, the mini skirt, television, and feminism. Her disapproval was a rite of passage for all the changes that were loosening the country from the tethers of its past. Which was strange, because she was only a young woman herself, and yet it seemed the traumas she had already been through had aged her well before her years. As youth culture modernised, so it seemed she was pulled back in time, personifying the threats to the British establishment that the counterculture posed.

That’s when she received the call from the producers of a new TV concept, A Cavalcade of English Heirlooms. The original idea was the educate the British people on the wealth and power of the British upper classes. Tattie would tour the great houses of the country, investigate their furnishings and the sheer scale of their wealth and land. She would recite their owners’ involvement in great military victories or titanic industrial endeavours. It was meant as a bulwark against the rise of lowbrow culture. The British were going to be reminded of their nation’s history, the history of aristocrats and manor houses.

The show would not be able to be broadcast today, not even by the most nostalgic and self-indulgent niche channels. Much of it would break the law. Clips that have survived see Tattie engage in conversations of extreme racism, sexism and snobbery. She laughs with fellow aristocrats about the bounty of the slave trade, corporal punishment and the idleness of the working classes. She wobbles down stately corridors in clothing that would have been out of date decades beforehand and performs cringingly awkward monologues that eulogise the landed gentry. She lingers by their portraits in these echoing hallways and tries to promote the importance of respecting them, despite the rising antipathy towards the establishment as the sixties progressed.

The producers knew the format wasn’t working. It became a laughing stock, memorably parodied in a Not Only … But Also sketch. It was so thoroughly out of fashion that no one expected it to be recommissioned, but to everyone’s surprise Tattie was back the following autumn. The format was tweaked to address the incursion of popular culture on mainstream media outlets, much to Tattie’s dismay. Instead of sycophantic encomiums to the gentry, members of the public were invited to bring their own heirlooms and prized relics onto the show for Tattie to admire. The situation was perfectly horrid from Tattie’s point of view. The physical sensation of contact with ordinary people made her violently ill. She remarked that she had never smelled such an unpleasant odour since she’d visited a farmstead on her uncle’s estate just at the moment a knacker’s boy was trying to incinerate the putrid carcass of a sow that had been dead for days after rupturing its digestive tract.

“For Tattie this was a nightmare. Unfortunately, she had staked her mental wellbeing on being in the public eye. Her television career gave her a level of self esteem that she had never really known, especially not since her disastrous first marriage. But then they made her actually confront the public face to face. Their sweaty hands holding battered junk for Tattie to comment on. This was the period when many of her problems were really established. She was so ill while they recorded the show. She had a real allergy to these people, to their oily stench. The poor thing was vomiting so much that she noticeably lost weight. She was tormented by her nerves, anyway, which meant she was always a little underweight. But being confronted by the clamouring awfulness of the Great British public really upset her ability to digest anything. And goodness she started to look ill.”

The illness took a turn for the worse when the producers of the show thought it would be a good idea for Tattie to host the show from her own family estate. Even though she should not have countenanced the idea, she worried that she would lose access to the limelight if she did not accept. Atwater talked her round. Well, he got her hooked on cocaine, and it skewed her judgement enough for her to invite the cameras and the public to Warlden Hall with zeal. It was almost as if nothing was off limits. This series of the television programme is even more distressing to watch from a modern perspective. Certainly, Tattie is much more relaxed and talkative. Her interaction with the public is assured, friendly, caring. She laughs, even if it gives the impression of being a little manic. As the series progressed, she even told a couple of rather risqué jokes, and on one occasion broke out into song, before a Chinese Imari bowl slipped out of her shaky hands and smashed to pieces.

Broadcasters and movie producers must have been fans of the show, because Tattie received quite a few offers of other shows, and even a few feature film roles. She turned down Hammer and Ken Russell, but did have a small role in Joseph Losey’s film of The Go-Between as a guest at Brandham Hall. ITV tempted her with offers of her own show, but only one episode of Tattie’s Twinkle was made, and it has acquired somewhat of a cult status due its terrible writing and production, overt racism, and the fact that Tattie is clearly heavily under the influence of narcotics. The show was intended to go head to head with the BBC’s Black and White Minstrel Show, but was cancelled after Tattie was hospitalised after a backstage breakdown.

Tattie was off our screen for a couple of years while she sorted out her demons and addictions. For some time she had to be confined to a psychiatric ward. Her conversations with Victorian dolls became quite manic and threatening. The dolls were only imaginary by this time. Her recovery was impeded by the news that Atwater had been killed in a road accident. He had been a pivotal fixture in her life, despite their traumatic marriage. He was a fixer of sorts, someone who knew her vulnerabilities enough to be able to steer her away from trouble and encourage her in the ways that would suit her nervous frame of mind. Without him, it did seem as though she may become lost again. After being discharged from hospital, she took some time out from her media commitments to spend time with her children. They toured Italy and Switzerland and her nerves were calmed.

“Tattie was back on A Cavalcade of English Heirlooms by the early 1980s, but by this time the format had changed quite considerably. Rather than humbly seeking the approval of an aristocrat, members of the public with trinkets to proffer now sought the opinions of experts, and more specifically, a financial valuation. A telltale sign of the society that Margaret Thatcher was transforming. Tattie found this new aspect of the show distasteful. She would far rather indulge her love of whimsical anecdotes and nostalgic non sequiturs. To fit into this new format, she needed an area of expertise. She only thing she really knew about was the history of Victorian dolls. Like many women of Tattie’s class, this was the only education she had received.”

She relished being back on the television. She needed fans, she needed adoration. She learned to love speaking with ordinary people, and no matter what nonsense she said to them in the context of the appraisal of their keepsake, she was sure she was treasured. Unfortunately, things had changed in the media world, and she was surprised that the set of the show and the entire production team was awash with cocaine. It seemed that the entire catering budget was blown on the stuff. She was delighted, and was soon back to her chatty and zany old self. This time she burned out very quickly, and had to be removed from our screens after a mere three shows.

Her convalesce this time took a little longer. Once she had cleaned up her lifestyle, she took the children to live in South Africa for a number of years. She had been invited to stay by a branch of the Flanje family who lived out there, and also by the prospect of her own Saturday night show. Tattie’s Whimsy was a modest success. It had an anecdotal style, with Tattie telling quaint stories of life thousands of miles away, and seemingly hundreds of years in the past. Footage that has survived gives the impression of someone being regressed to a former life in the age of chivalry and misty castles, lost in a dead-eyed stare or some kind of fugue, speaking in riddles about the fidelity of a princess or the gallantry of a knight. There were elements of horror, although the show was intended as a nostalgic promotion of the enduring stability and moral honour of European aristocracy, and white history in general.

It was a beautiful evening in February 1987 and Tattie was at a roof party in Cape Town, laughing in her awkward way, when she first met Loots Klopper. He was a tall, very well built Afrikaner with a shocking head of bright ginger hair and lavish facial hair. Immediately he began to woo Tattie, literally sweeping her off her feet as if he were folding a napkin over his forearm and later dancing with her in a startlingly cumbersome manner. Soon the two were inseparable. In TV interviews, Tattie did not stop declaring how in love she was. As the romance of the year increased in overwrought affection, so did anticipation of the wedding of the season.

“Of course, we were all shocked by the romance with Loots,” recalls Lady Helena Natalie Van Arendonk. He rather reminded us all of the ogre from the Ladybird book of Jack and the Beanstalk. I mean, for a woman of Tattie’s breeding, she would have rarely come into contact with such an earthy sort. For her whole life she had been surrounded by genteel, cultured and refined gentlemen. Loots was not just rough around the edges but all the way through. Every other word was a profanity. He looked at women as if he were appraising livestock at a market. His hands were as rough as the bark of a Scots pine. Several times he’d been celebrated as the most racist man in South Africa. So we were shocked that Tattie took seriously his proposal of marriage. She was rebelling, it’s obvious now. This man so different to everyone else in her life that had sought to control her. Now, she threw off the expectations that others of her class had for her. She fell into the arms of this uncouth playboy as if to defeat every inhibition and fear that had held her back all her life.”

Until the trial, little was known about Loots Klopper. He had created an array of identities and backstories to cover his weaving ways through South African society. It’s believed he was descended from settlers in the Western Cape, although no one has ever traced his parents. By age nine he was employed in Cape Town slaughterhouses, where it’s rumoured he was able to stun cattle by a single punch to the head. Later he made money working various mines throughout the country, before moving into construction projects. He claimed to have built the Bloukrans Bridge single-handedly. He also claimed to have amassed a fortune through playing poker, fishing, real estate, owning oil wells and financing professional sport. The police investigation revealed little more than opportunist petty crime and a series of polygamous marriages mostly to wealthy widows. Tattie, of course, was one of his victims.

“She refused to believe it at first, of course. It was her way of dealing with things by then. I think she confused his rather down to earth manner with honesty. A woman of her class is used to the rather subtle wiles of the gentry. They creep like poison ivy, and one must watch out for them. Tattie had become utterly exhausted by the sophisticated way that the upper classes deceive one. So she gave herself up to the rough talking South African swindler. The most successful confidence trickster in apartheid-era South African history. He took everything she had. She was left with nothing. She was forced to come back to England and take up that ghastly presenting job on that antiques programme where the lower orders would come and shove their belongings in her face. There she was with nothing, having to pretend joy at someone else’s good fortune. Poor darling.”

Tattie returned to A Cavalcade of English Heirlooms for the run of new shows in 1989. By this time it was apparent she had no interest in the whole evaluation procedure. Sometimes she would hold a doll in her hands for several minutes before speaking, while some horrific memory played again behind her empty eyes. She would laugh and then perhaps realise she was not alone. On occasions, members of the audience might witness her talking to the dolls, chastising them for lying or assuring them she would keep their secrets. The producers had to find a graceful way to remove her from the show. Luckily, people stopped bringing dolls for appraisal.

Tattie was reluctant to leave the show. Her last appearance was a harrowing forty minutes where various tributes were paid to her and talking heads lined up to deliver elliptical hagiographies. She wept so much and became so erratic that in editing the show together, the producers had only one shot of her appearing composed, which they used repeatedly throughout the footage, as if constantly cutting back to a single uncanny moment in time where one of her Victorian dolls had become animated and mouthed a simple phrase.

The wilderness years crept up slowly but relentlessly. She lived alone at Warlden Hall much of the time. Staff admitted they rarely saw her, or even knew if she was still around. It is said she wandered the gardens, lamenting that the weeds overtook the finer, more beautiful flowers and that eventually there were only weeds. The children visited occasionally. The place had been emptied to pay some of the debts. The staff left their jobs one by one, unsure whether they were still required or even if they would be paid if they remained. The grand house fell into disrepair. The National Trust took an interest in buying it, but soon backed out when the ongoing scandal with Tattie’s brother Wilbur took ever more unpleasant turns. While Foreign Secretary, he had been handing over state secrets to his Russian counterparts for years, and even endured the indignity of having a murder charge levelled against him after the body of a policeman was found in his car. When evidence of satanic rituals was discovered in his official residence, he was forced to resign, and when multiple allegations of rape were made against him, he finally retreated to Warlden Hall in shame.

Tattie hated obscurity, but could not escape its clutches. The Daily Telegraph seemed to take pity on her, and let her have a column entitled A History of the British Peerage in 100 Antiques, but Tattie was replaced by Arthur Bly after 4 objects. Tattie could not keep up with the copy deadlines, and readers began to point out glaring errors in her historical accounts. In 2003, she turned down the producers of British TV show Flog It! point blank, stating that she wanted no part in the intolerable vulgarity of Blair’s Britain. Obscurity prevailed, and Tattie never returned to our screens, nor, it seems, left the company of her dolls again.