Rolls-Royce Motor Cars PressClub · Article.
ROLLS-ROYCE ‘MAKERS OF THE MARQUE’: ELEANOR VELASCO THORNTON
10.04.2024 Press Release
The third in a series profiling the principal characters in the Rolls-Royce Motor Cars foundation story as the marque celebrates its 120th anniversary year features Eleanor Velasco Thornton. A strong, intelligent, self-assured and highly influential woman, in an automotive world that was then almost entirely male-dominated. She has a unique place in Rolls-Royce history, best known as the purported model for the Spirit of Ecstasy mascot.
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Rolls-Royce Motor Cars
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Author.
Andrew Ball
Rolls-Royce Motor Cars
ELEANOR VELASCO THORNTON: 15 APRIL 1880 - 30 DECEMBER 1915
- A brief overview of the life and career of Eleanor Velasco Thornton, born 15 April 1880
- Secretary to both Claude Johnson and Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, muse of illustrator and sculptor Charles Sykes and the model for the marque’s iconic Spirit of Ecstasy mascot
- Third in a series profiling the principal characters in the Rolls-Royce Motor Cars foundation story as the marque celebrates its 120th anniversary in 2024
- Insights into the people, personalities and intertwined relationships that indelibly shaped the marque’s creation, development and lasting legacy
- Each account underlines and celebrates the essential human
dimension of ‘the best car in the world’
“Eleanor Thornton has a unique place in Rolls-Royce history. She
is best known as the purported model for our Spirit of Ecstasy
mascot, but how this came about is part of a far more complex and
fascinating story. Secrets, sacrifices and the ever-present risk of
scandal dominated her tragically short but intense and colourful
life. She was a strong, intelligent, self‑assured and highly
influential woman in an automotive world that was then almost
entirely male-dominated. She also played a pivotal part in a
timeless, tangled, deeply human drama that would eventually make
her, and the artwork she inspired, immortal."
Andrew Ball, Head of Corporate Relations and Heritage,
Rolls-Royce Motor Cars
Eleanor Velasco Thornton was born on 15 April in 1880
in Stockwell, south-west London. Little is known of her early life:
what's certain is that as the 20th Century opened, she was working as
assistant to the ebullient and charismatic Claude Johnson, General
Secretary of the Automobile Club of Great Britain & Ireland (later
the RAC) and soon-to-be business partner of The Hon. Charles Stewart Rolls.
Eleanor rented rooms at The Pheasantry on the Kings Road,
Chelsea; now a Grade II Listed building, its eclectic and flamboyant
architectural flourishes were the work of its then owner, the artist
and interior decorator Amédée Joubert. At that time, it was home to a
thriving colony of artists (in the 1930s, the basement became a
restaurant and drinking club, the regulars of which included the
painters Augustus John and Francis Bacon, the poet Dylan Thomas and
legendary actor Humphrey Bogart; it remains a nightclub to this day).
Amid these bohemian surroundings, Eleanor lived a remarkable double
life: by day, a professional executive assistant; by night, a
life-model for the Pheasantry's resident artists. One of those for
whom she regularly posed was a talented illustrator, Charles Sykes.
Eleanor's life changed completely and irrevocably in 1902. That
year, almost 100 miles from London, on the edge of the New Forest in
Hampshire, John Walter Edward Douglas-Scott-Montagu, was grappling
with a longstanding problem. He was yet to ascend to his future title
of 2nd Baron Montagu of Beaulieu; in the interim, for all his
impeccable lineage and shining prospects, he was perennially short of
cash. By a double misfortune, his life's great passion was the motor
car, which in those pioneering days was still very much the preserve
of those with deep pockets.
Happily, Montagu had a flair for journalism, so his inspired
solution was to set up one of Britain's earliest dedicated motoring
magazines, The Car Illustrated. Montagu could handle the
writing, editing and publishing himself; but for images, he needed a
professional illustrator. In one of those odd coincidences that so
often shape history, the man he hired was Charles Sykes.
Among Montagu's circle of motoring friends was Claude Johnson.
When, through him, Montagu met Eleanor, he was instantly captivated by
her intelligence and promptly poached her, offering her the position
of Office Manager at his magazine. Eleanor accepted, and the
aristocratic publisher and his new colleague – 14 years his junior –
soon embarked on a lengthy clandestine affair.
Thereafter, Sykes and Eleanor found themselves suddenly thrown
together as colleagues at The Car Illustrated, while already
well acquainted with one another under very different circumstances.
Whether this caused any awkwardness between them is impossible to say;
but it seems unlikely, since Eleanor was soon posing for him again.
During this period (the precise date is unknown) Sykes produced
a mascot for Montagu's Rolls‑Royce Silver Ghost. Called ‘The Whisper’,
it was a small aluminium statuette of a young woman in fluttering
robes with a forefinger to her lips. It has been confirmed that
Eleanor was the model: whether the mascot was a token of appreciation
from Sykes to his friend and employer, or made at Eleanor’s
instigation as a gift for her lover, remains a mystery. Whatever the
truth, Montagu displayed it on every Rolls-Royce car he owned until
his death in 1929; perhaps as a discreet acknowledgment of his love
for Eleanor, which he kept secret for so long.
Tragically, Eleanor was among hundreds who drowned when the
P&O passenger ship SS Persia sank in the
Mediterranean in 1915. Montagu was among the handful of survivors: he
spent three days adrift on an upturned lifeboat, having suffered a
fractured shoulder. He was also nursing a broken heart. Devasted, he
never fully got over the emotion of the loss of Eleanor – of which,
naturally, he could never speak publicly. But for the rest of his
life, she was with him in spirit wherever he travelled in his
Rolls-Royce motor car.