Two beautiful adventurers, 50 years apart. Both sexy, both worldly, they left the brutalizing climate of Australia to sail to London in search of a husband, a title and, who knows, maybe even a future king!
Undeterred by the decorum and precedence that reigned in the London of their time, the two Australian women ruthlessly fought their way through the ranks of the “gels” of well-bred society to capture and marry their lord.
And then… the only way was up!
Some may remember luscious blonde Dale ‘Kanga’ Harper, who married royal courtier Lord Tryon but ended her days in tragic disgrace.
Dale ‘Kanga’ Harper, who married Lord Tryon, who was linked to Prince Charles
Sheila Chisholm, who married Lord Loughborough and was linked to Albert, Duke of York, the future King George VI.
Shelia with Lord Loughborough and their son. Her second husband, Sir John Milbanke, is on the right.
Freda Dudley Ward was a friend of Sheila and introduced her to the future George VI, left, when she was having an affair with the Prince of Wales, right.
Sheila Chisholm divorced her first husband and married Sir John Milbanke.
But who remembers the name of Sheila Chisholm, daughter of a rich sheep farmer, who shook a powerful king and gave away a dukedom?
They came to England, saw and conquered through the bedroom.
Crazy adorable Sheila worked fast.
Born in New South Wales in 1895, she bagged her man, Lord Loughborough, son and heir of the 5th Earl of Rosslyn, shortly after her 17th birthday. They met in Cairo, where Sheila was visiting her brother, a serving officer in the Australian Army.
When she was 23, she met the future King George VI, then known as Prince Albert or Bertie, through her best friend Freda Dudley Ward, married to a Liberal MP and lover of the Prince of Wales.
The princes, who were not in the least ashamed to accompany these married women with small children around the city, began to go out together, forming a quartet: “The four things to do,” David, the Prince of Wales, nicknamed them.
They called themselves a club and gave each other a teddy bear as a mascot. David and Freda described themselves as “bear leaders.”
By then, David was a veteran in the bedroom, but his shy, stuttering younger brother was not. At the time she met Sheila Bertie, the experience was limited to one or two women only, and he fell in love with her sexual prowess, a prowess that in later years would lead her to become the mistress of the sex god. Rudolph Valentino.
King George V was outraged. He knew all about his eldest son’s obsession with Freda, but when he heard about Bertie and Sheila, he exploded. The heir to the throne, and now the next in line, both cavorting with married women: it had to end!
The king knew that he was unable to prevent David from falling in love with Freda, but he perceived in his second son the will to follow the line.
Bertie, now 27 years old but still forced to live in royal palaces without a home of his own, sensed a chink in his father’s armor and between them they came to an agreement.
Bertie would give up his married mistress and, in return, would be created Duke of York, have his own royal establishment, and be free to find a roof of his own.
For some women, being turned away at the palace gates would be a crushing blow, but not Sheila, she had suffered worse. Her husband (Loughie, as he was known) was an alcoholic and compulsive gambler who would not live to inherit her father’s earldom. She took heart in being dumped and she and Bertie remained friends.
But Sheila didn’t stop there: she divorced Loughie and married a baronet, Sir John ‘Buffles’ Milbanke, with a little more money and who was devoted to her. After Buffles died at age 45, she finally became a princess by marrying the Russian prince Dmitri Romanov, a descendant of Tsar Nicholas I with whom she happily spent her final days.
The ending was not so happy for Lady Dale ‘Kanga’ Tryon. But, for a time, she happily followed in Sheila’s footsteps as she sailed to Britain and fell in love with Anthony, Lord Tryon, who at the time was working as a merchant banker in the City of London.
Born to be a courtier, Tryon was an honorary page to the queen whose father had been keeper of the privy purse, a crucial appointment in the royal establishment. He was a welcome guest at Balmoral and, although older, a friend of Prince Charles.
Without a doubt, his wife was beautiful. Big hair, luscious lips and perfect pout captivated Prince Charles, then still single, and before long, the two became lovers.
Dale Harper married Lord Tryon in 1973 and became Lady Dale ‘Kanga’ Tryon.
Charles, Prince of Wales, holds his nine-week-old godson, Charles George Barrington Tryon, after the boy’s baptism at St Andrews Church in Durnford, Wiltshire.
Camilla Shand married Andrew Parker Bowles at the Guards Chapel in 1973.
Princess Diana wore a Kanga-designed dress to the Live Aid concert; It is believed that it was an act of revenge.
Prince Charles with Lady Dale ‘Kanga’ Tryon Prince Charles and Princess Diana at the Pink Diamond Ball Charity Gala
The only non-negotiable person (as they always like to say) in Charles’s life was Camilla. They met in 1972, but in July the following year Camilla married Andrew Parker Bowles, a career soldier, and until at least the birth of the couple’s first-born, almost 18 months later, Camilla was off-limits.
During that time, Kanga took on the role of maitresse en titre, the main royal mistress, while Camilla could only watch from the sidelines.
She must not have liked it when Charles described Kanga as “the only woman who really understood me.”
But once Camilla remounted, Kanga was pushed aside.
Kanga, a shrewd businesswoman (and it must be said, a very nice person), took the blow on the chin and monetized it.
It was Carlos who, in the first burst of passion, nicknamed her ‘Kanga’, and now she used this legendary title, with its royal association, to create a fashion brand.
Starting with offices in London’s West End, he quickly expanded his business and opened a luxury boutique on Beauchamp Place, just a stone’s throw from Princess Diana’s favorite lunch spot, St. Lawrence.
The two women shared an opinion about Camilla’s place in Charles’s life and, as revenge, Diana wore a Kanga dress for her high-profile arrival at Live Aid in 1985. The global television audience watching that dress and the person wearing it he was wearing, it was estimated at 1.5 billion: a clear act of revenge, if that’s what it was, against the man who had spurned them both.
During the following years, Kanga continued to imply, without ever saying it, a special closeness to Charles.
Lady Dale Tryon at her home at Great Durnford Manor in 1997
It was good for business, but it also pointed out a huge gap in the life of the once bubbly socialite.
In truth, the relationship ended a long time ago and was relatively short-lived. The illness that had followed her all her life took hold and she turned to painkillers as a means to keep the stars in her sky.
She made accusations against her long-suffering husband, Lord Tryon, and paid the price: he divorced her.
But he still went ahead and settled in the Ritz Hotel, until death came at the tragic age of 49. In those final days, she told me of her abiding admiration for Charles.
But that love for Charles had broken her heart and, in the end, broken her head.