Confidential correspondence: The Duchess of York takes the reins of a carriage pair. Photo: Supplied
Elizabeth Bowes Lyon's experiences of learning to drive a car and of bizarre shooting parties with her brothers are among the details of her life divulged to Second Lieutenant Rupert Dent in recently uncovered correspondence.
The letters from the young woman, who later became Queen Elizabeth and then the Queen Mother, were revealed in The Sun-Herald on Sunday. They were written after the pair met while he was recuperating at her Scottish home, Glamis Castle, which was turned into a convalescent home during World War I. They will be auctioned in Sydney next month.
In one letter to Dent in 1919, when she was 19, she wrote: ''I haven't been driving the horses this year, but I now drive the Wolseley. It is great fun and usually quite exciting …
''A gentleman doesn't tell": Rupert Dent was friendly with Elizabeth. Photo: Supplied
''The first time I drove I ran into a wall which was very silly, the other day I got dazzled by a car's powerful electric headlights and did my best to run into it but the chauffeur seized the wheel and saved us! And yesterday a drunk farmer going very fast made for me, but I escaped him by going into the ditch! Even then he missed me by only a hair's breadth.
''It's really very amusing, but I'm sure you'd be much more frightened in the motor than when I conducted the 'osses.''
Dent, who was from Stanmore in Sydney and educated at Shore School, met Elizabeth and her parents, Lord and Lady Strathmore, at Glamis Castle, north of Dundee, after he was injured as a soldier on the Somme in the closing months of the war. Elizabeth's role at the makeshift convalescent home was to help minister to the needs of wounded soldiers.
Dent's grandson, David Dent, said that in later years his grandfather talked of long walks with Elizabeth. When pressed on how close the relationship became, he replied: ''A gentleman doesn't tell.''
His daughter, Judy Fydler, 90, said Elizabeth escorted Dent to the theatre in London on several occasions. Elizabeth later married Prince Albert, who would become King George VI on the abdication of his brother Edward.
In 1920 in a letter on notepaper from a stately home called St Paul's Walden Bury, north of London, Elizabeth writes about bizarre expeditions to shoot wild cats.
''I go out shooting very often with my brothers here. The other day they shot a cat, which infuriated me.''
The Duke and Duchess of York, as they were known before her husband took the throne, visited Australia in 1927.
They invited Dent, who had by then married, and his wife, to meet them at Government House.
A year later, Elizabeth apologised for not writing more promptly. ''I should have sent it sooner only our plans and everything have been rather upset by the king's illness. I expect it will be a slow business now, but thank goodness he seems a little better.''
She closes, saying: ''We often think of Australia and hope to come back for a quieter and more leisurely visit some day. It's a great country and we loved it. Ever yours sincerely, Elizabeth.''
Dent died in 1983.
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