Iris Portal was a United Kingdom historian, journalist, author, who also worked as a nurse during World War II in India. Later, she worked at St. John Ambulance, the Royal British Legion, and wrote three biographies.
Background
Iris Portal, maiden name Butler, was born on June 5, 1905, in Simla, India. She was a daughter of Montagu Sherard Dawes and Anne Gertrude Smith. She spent much of her early life in India while that country was still part of the British Empire. Her father was a British governor of the Central Provinces, and his work allowed her to be exposed to the people and culture of India, which she grew to love. Two and a half years younger than her brother Richard (Rab), Iris later complained that while she was regularly smacked by their austere Aberdonian nanny "Rab never was." When they were small, their father was Settlement Officer at Kotah, which entailed camping throughout the cold weather, moving from village to village to assess the land. His family went too, with a train of camels carrying tents, furniture, and crockery, and Iris and Rab in a cart pulled by two ponies, Peter and Polly. Their parents rode everywhere on horseback, sometimes switching to elephants to cross rivers.
Each day at sunrise, Iris and Rab bundled into quilted Rajput dressing gowns, and taken to the next stopping place. "An advance party would have struck a few tents for us," Iris recalled, "and we would get there in time for a late breakfast. Then my father would set up his table for petitions and we would be turned out with our toys to play among the tents, with nanny keeping an eye on us."
In the evening, their father and mother would go out to shoot something extra for meals. Iris remembered her father once shooting a bear and she being made to stand by it, holding a rifle. "I was very frightened because I didn't feel quite sure that the bear was dead. The smell of the bear and the cordite of the rifle made a great impression on me. One had toy bears and it seemed so sad that the bear should be shot." The camping stopped in 1909 when their father was posted to Lahore. Then it was partying with other English children, and picnics in formal Mogul gardens.
Iris Portal also had a younger sister Dorothy and a younger brother Jock.
Education
In 1911, Iris Portal, her siblings, and their mother went to the United Kingdom to live at Bourton Manse, on the Butler family estate near Shrivenham in Berkshire. She went to a boarding school on the south coast, but although both she and her sister Dorothy showed marked ability, there was no suggestion that they should go to university, as all the money there was needed to send her brother Rab, and later Jock, to Cambridge. Instead, after being presented at Court, Iris Butler returned to very social life in India.
Career
With the onset of World War II, Iris Portal worked as a nurse in Delhi, then followed her husband to Ranchi to work in a military hospital on the border with Burma. Working in the grimmest of conditions, only once did she leave the operating theatre - when the surgeon said: "Drop that leg in the bucket, nurse."
She finally left India in 1943. When her husband came back in 1946, they settled in the wilds of North Norfolk, where she was active in the St. John Ambulance, the Royal British Legion, as County Commissioner of the Guides, and on the county council's education committee. She also wrote and reviewed for the Eastern Daily Press.
She was the author of three biographies: The Rule of Three: Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, and Her Companions in Power (1967), The Viceroy’s Wife: Letters of Alice, Countess of Reading, from India, 1921-25 (1969), and The Eldest Brother: The Marquess Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington's Eldest Brother (1973), the last two of which drew considerably on her impressive knowledge of India.
Achievements
Iris Portal's book The Eldest Brother: The Marquess Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington's Eldest Brother was the first full biography of Wellesley since the Victorian era, and it was given much praise by the critics. Iris Portal had the good fortune to view a cache of unpublished letters written by Wellesley to his mistress Hyacinthe, who was the mother of his children.
Religion interested Iris Portal deeply, particularly eastern theology - the discipline of the Church of England and Roman Catholicism was not her scene.
Personality
Despite her limited formal education, Iris Portal had an encyclopedic knowledge of English literature, and it was a brave person who sought to out-quote her on Shakespeare, Kipling, Thackeray, or Shelley. Her most noticeable quality was her concern for others. She never forgot a birthday or a name and always wanted to rush to the support of anyone in trouble.
Connections
Iris Butler married Gervas Edward Portal in 1927. Iris Portal's grandson is Justin Portal Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who has served since 2013.
Father:
Montagu Sherard Dawes Butler
Montagu Sherard Dawes Butler was born on May 19, 1873. He was a Governor of the Central Provinces of British-occupied India, a Lieutenant Governor of the Isle of Man, and a Master of Pembroke College, Cambridge.
Mother:
Anne Gertrude Smith
husband:
Gervas Edward Portal
In 1926, Gervas Portal, of Gardner's Horse, became aide-de-camp to Iris Butler's father, hoping to shoot tiger in the Seeone jungle immortalized by Kipling. He shot two and also fell in love with the Governor's daughter Iris Butler. They married in 1927. Their first four years of married life were spent at Meerut where the Sepoy Mutiny had first begun. Iris Portal recalled: "On the gates of the bungalows were plaques which said, "Here Mrs. So and So and her three children were killed and thrown down a well." There was one bungalow nearby where they had taken their beds out into the garden, not because of the heat, but because things happened, like doors blowing open when there was no wind." Gervas Portal died in 1961.
Daughter:
Jane Gillian Portal
Jane Gillian Portal was born on December 11, 1929.
Daughter:
Susan Mary Geraldine Portal
Susan Mary Geraldine Portal was born on October 28, 1931.
Brother:
Jock Butler
Jock Butler was killed during the Second World War in the Royal Air Force.
Dorothy Middleton, maiden name Butler, was born in 1909. She was a writer and geographer who held several roles at the Royal Geographical Society.
Grandson:
Justin Portal Welby
Justin Portal Welby was born on January 6, 1956. He is the 105th Archbishop of Canterbury and the most senior bishop in the Church of England since 2013.
