Mary Alice Berners

The Astonishing Story of Mary Alice Berners

At 4.00 pm on 9^th April 1944, Brother Michel de Elias Warwick breathed his last. Since January he had been much troubled with a wrenching cough and bodily weakness. His heart failed following an attack of acute bronchitis.

Brother Michael lived on an estate known as St Michael’s Mount, a collection of buildings above a sheltered valley, near Jeolikote, in the foothills of the Himalayas. To all around him, he was an Englishman who had spent the previous 24 years overseeing the construction of this earthly paradise.

Just the one monk, a handful of servants and a native pharmacist lived at St Michael’s Mount. There was a library and two chapels. The library was lined with thousands of books and the rooms made comfortable with thick carpets and handsomely furnished with heavy dark mahogany furniture.

Brother Michel told guests who stayed with him, and enjoyed his lavish hospitality, that he had illustrious ancestors, had travelled the world, and had built the monastery through his winnings from international crossword competitions.

His body was laid to rest in the Christian cemetery in nearby Jeolikote.

And there we should leave our story. However, there was disquiet within the District and higher levels of Government. Rumours circulated softly but loud enough to raise suspicions; his death might not be all that it seemed. And so it was that Brother Michel’s body was exhumed and examined four months later.

Everyone was astonished. Brother Michel was no brother at all; no sahib. He was, in fact, a memsahib. And here starts the astonishing story of Mary Alice Berners.

Mary Alice had been born into a life of wealth and privilege 75 years earlier in May 1868. She was the eldest daughter of Charles and Mary Berners, whose uncle, John Berners, was the squire at Woolverstone Park on the beautiful Shotley Peninsula in Suffolk. John Berners had no children, so in time Charles would inherit Woolverstone Park through his father, John’s brother, Capt. Hugh Berners, and the valuable estates in London, off Oxford Street. The family spent their time between “The Rookery”, Yoxford and latterly, “The Chestnuts”, Long Cross, Surrey; and, surely, frequently visited Woolverstone Park.

The Berners family grew quickly. The following year Mary Alice was joined by a brother, John Anstruther, two years later by Ralph Abercrombie. In 1874, a sister Julia Katherine arrived, and the family was completed in 1881 by Hamilton Hugh. All the boys were destined for Eton and military careers. Julia married a Captain in the King’s Dragoon Guards. John would inherit the estate. Long Cross was convenient for London, Eton, Sandhurst and Aldershot.

Mary Alice grew up within a wealthy family, taught by governesses. She was a spirited, captivating and determined child and the governesses were wax in her hands and they let her run wild! Always unpredictable, she had a remarkable brain and a gift for acting. Besides her many talents, she was also deeply religious. In her late teenage years, she took exams in drawing and painting at the Albert Institute, Windsor. In 1885, a contemporary in her art class was Edwin Lutyens. Her family would have expected her to marry into a wealthy family and were no doubt looking for a suitable alliance.

Mary Alice was an impulsive and impassioned soul. In February 1889, while her father was in Australia, Mary Alice secretly married a young army officer, Charles Spencer Warwick, recently raised from the ranks in the Norfolk Regiment to Second Lieutenant in the Devonshire Regiment. Her mother was heartbroken and was advised that nothing could be done. Their union was officially recognised by a church marriage two months later.

As an officer’s wife, Mary Alice followed her husband and his regiment. Within the year she was travelling to India and thence to Burma where she gave birth to her first child, John Charles, in Rangoon. Eighteen months later, a daughter, Mary Constance was born. Tragically, on their return to England in 1892, Mary Constance died and was buried in the Red Sea. A small stone memorial to her memory can be found in St Michael’s churchyard, Woolverstone.

Mary Constance Spencer Warwick’s memorial.

Mary Alice gave birth to a third child, Gillian, in February 1893. Mary Alice was presented to Queen Victoria in May of the same year; her husband mentioned in Debrett’s Peerage. After an unconventional start to married life, social acceptance had been granted. She waited until the cooler weather of autumn before returning to her husband, a month’s sea voyage and two-day rail journey, 9,000 miles away on the North-West Frontier of India, without her children.

While in India, Mary Alice joined the accepted social milieu and travelled extensively, visiting Srinagar and Patiala among other places. She performed with amateur theatre groups in Simla, Almora and Rawalpindi.

But, sadly, all was not as it seemed. Her husband treated her cruelly; he assaulted her on several occasions and had a string of affairs. Eventually, in 1898, while in India, Mary Alice sought the dissolution of her marriage. She also appears to have converted to Catholicism. A Judicial Separation was granted in 1900 and she return to England.

The social opprobrium of being separated must have been challenging and Mary Alice lived for several years in Paris with her two surviving children. She returned to England in 1905 when her husband started divorce proceedings alleging adultery on her part which she vehemently denied. The case took two years to conclude. In the end, Mary Alice was granted a divorce and custody of her children after publicly revealing her husband’s cruelty and adultery. Lurid headlines and details appeared in the papers. During much of this time Mary Alice lived at Woolverstone Park and, as the family “historiographer”, researched and wrote about her family’s pedigree. After her divorce she moved to London and then back to Surrey. In 1911 her mother died in Marseilles. Mary Alice was travelling in America and was unable to return for the funeral. Two years later on St Valentine’s Day, she left England, her children and her family. As far as we know, she never returned again.

S.S. City of Poona – 1913

For a few years her story disappears behind a veil. She wrote in a letter of her “wanderings” in India but there is, at present, no clue to where these were. Tragedy was never far away. Her brother, Hamilton, was killed in France, September 1914. Her son, John Charles was killed at Gallipoli, the following year. Through her hypersensitivity and religious devotion, she claimed she had “visitations” from her mother, her brother and son who had “passed over”. In 1916 she was to be found in an unknown Indian location, “St Michael’s Anchorage”, dressed in full black dress and hat working on a steep terraced garden.

And then the transformation. In 1923, a package containing “wool for rug” was sent from Whiteaway, Laidlaw and Co in Nainital from a Mr Michael Warwick to his daughter, Gillian, in England. The address is The Priory, Jeolikote. Around this time, Mary Alice re-invented herself as Major Michael Warwick, leased a plot of land from the Forestry Department and started building her own estate at a rate of 3 -4 hand carved stones a day. The estate, St Michael’s Mount, has echoes of St Michael’s church in Woolverstone as well as being the Berners’ family patron Saint.

The first phase of the project took eight or nine years to complete. Warwick Sahib oversaw the construction in meticulous detail. There was no electricity or road access. A small pharmacy was built to help local people. In addition, Major Warwick took part in the social life of nearby Nainital attending parties and functions as well as hosting his own. At one point, he became a magistrate for the District. All the while he maintained this performance with a ritual shave at 11.00 each morning which on no account could be interrupted.

Warwick became increasingly devout in later years and spent hours in ritual and prayer, often dressing in the brown cloak and white scapular of a monk. He built a close friendship with a Danish mystic, Alfred Sorenson or Sunyata. As he aged, he travelled less by horse and more in a dandy carried by servants. Eventually, he left St Michael’s Mount infrequently, only visiting the nearby mission and church of St Anthony’s in Jeolikote.

And so it was that Mary Alice Berners came to be living as a man in the foothills of the Himalayas and that her true identity was only revealed on her passing. Mary Alice’s truly astonishing story is just being revealed for the first time in all its depth and complexity.

You can find out more at: www.theastonishingstoryofmaryaliceberners.com