There was extraordinary excitement at the Braemar Gathering of 1981 when crowds of cheering wellwishers welcomed the newly married Prince and Princess of Wales to Royal Deeside.
Just weeks after her wedding, Diana was the picture of Scottish chic in a maroon tartan wool dress — but then so too was the lady who welcomed her to Scotland’s most famous Highland games.
In footage of the event, Frances Farquharson can be seen in a tartan suit, curtseying and shaking hands with the princess.
This week the first biography of Farquharson is published, revealing the remarkable life of the royal family’s flamboyant Highland neighbour, a groundbreaking American journalist turned lady of the manor, whose life was defined by the eye-catching outfits she wore.
At the annual Ghillies Ball at Balmoral in the late 1950s, Farquharson cut a dash in her Turkish harem trouser suit and turban in vivid green blue checks, cut with stripes of red and yellow.
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She “wowed the room” as the guests took the floor for an eightsome reel, and, as Caroline Young’s book puts it, “we can only imagine the comment Prince Philip made about such a striking outfit”.
Born Frances Lovell Oldham in Seattle in 1902, a descendent of George Washington’s sister Betty, this clever, compelling and resourceful woman cut a swathe through society on both sides of the Atlantic.
Three times married, in 1949 she settled down as Lady of Invercauld, and wife of Alwyne Farquharson MC, the 16th Laird of Invercauld and chieftain of Clan Farquharson, spending the last four decades of her life as a loving wife, a confidante of her royal neighbours and a hostess of fashionable sporting parties. She died in 1991.
As mistress of a 300,000-acre estate adjoining Balmoral, Farquharson revelled in telling stories. One was about an American guest, a woman who was casting her fishing rod on the River Dee, close to Invercauld Castle.
The Queen Mother, who had a passion for fishing, appeared on the opposite bank, setting up her rods. The American, looking up between casts, spotted her and, flustered at the sight of royalty, attempted a curtsy. As she dipped down, her boots filled with water and she lost her balance, tumbling into the river.
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She was only saved from floating away by a ghillie who stepped in to catch her.
The Queen Mother even moved for a period into Invercauld Castle, so close were relations with the Farquharsons. It was after the death of George VI, and his widow had the builders in at Birkhall, her favourite place to stay on Deeside. “[The Queen Mother] knew we were going to stay at Braemar Castle that year so she asked if she could rent Invercauld,” Farquharson told a journalist in 1985.
“My husband said, ‘You cannot rent it, ma’am, but we’d love to lend it to you.’ She was very thrilled at this and came to me and said, ‘Now I want to give you a present. What will we give you?’ I said, ‘Nothing at all.’
“She offered all sorts of lovely things and finally I said, ‘I know what you can do, ma’am, you can give us a boiler for hot water because the one we’ve got we’ve inherited and it’s in a very dicey state, I’m told.’
“She was amazed by this but pleased to do it. Ever after that whenever [people] tell us what staggering hot water they have, I say, ‘Well, you must write a note to Queen Elizabeth [the Queen Mother]. She is the one who provided it.’”
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All through her life, Farquharson “possessed a completely intuitive sense of style and a contagious joie de vivre,” according to her biographer. “She came of age at the dawn of a new era for women’s liberation, yet it was still unusual for an American woman to live her life so independently,” Young said. “Frances chose to travel the world, rather than settle down to raise a family.”
In the 1920 and 1930s, she earned her living from journalism, at first writing witty pieces based on her travels, then was appointed fashion editor of Vogue and editor of Harper’s Bazaar.
In 1928 she married the Honourable James Rodney, a former Royal Flying Corps pilot. He died after a fire five years later.
In 1938 Captain Charles Gordon became her second husband. Ten years later after the birth of her only child, Marybelle, the marriage was dissolved.
When her divorce came through, she married Alwyne after the couple met during his convalescence from wounds he received during the battle for Caen, in the wake of the D-Day landings.
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Within weeks of her arrival at Invercauld, she had the exterior of the pagoda-style larder outside Invercauld Castle painted sugar pink. “Against the snow, it looked marvellous,” her husband remarked.
She would go on to devise the Galleries, a market promoting local crafts, determinedly selling anything of quality that was Scottish. Her devotion to tartan was unstinting.
Marybelle Drummond, her daughter, reveals how Farquharson threw herself into Scotland’s traditions. “She was dressed in tartan from head to foot for most of the time,” Drummond said. “The boys on the bus when I went to the village school would say, ‘Do you think she’s wearing tartan knickers too?’ And I would be cringing.
“She didn’t alway wear tartan, she wore Mandarin silk jackets, which she looked amazing in. She invented things and put together her own style. There was no one else like her.”
The Fabulous Frances Farquharson by Caroline Young (The History Press, £20)
