In the meantime, Noëlle had come of age. Her first season was a bright one, making many a male conquest, but “she failed to succumb to love and refused all proposals,” as a later profile in the London Daily Mail noted.

It was in her second season, in the fall of 1899, that 20-year-old Noëlle Dyer-Edwardes met her match. After dancing with a lanky, dapper soldier at a London ball, Noëlle accepted his calling card, and in the ensuing weeks of their courtship, fell in love with him. Despite this family story, Craig Stringer believes it’s possible the pair had met before, through mutual connections in southwest England.

Norman, Earl of Rothes

The man who won Noëlle’s heart was 21-year-old Norman-Evelyn Leslie, 19th Earl of Rothes (pronounced “Roth-ez”).

“A nice young fellow, well set up, with pleasant face and manners,” the nom-de-plumed society columnist Marquise de Fontenoy wrote of Norman Rothes. A lieutenant in the 4th Battalion Devonshire Regiment, which was about to be deployed in the Boer War, Norman soon attained the rank of Captain in the Fife Royal Garrison Artillery Militia. In time, Norman would join the Royal Highland Regiment, the famous Black Watch fighting force. His distinction as a soldier was equaled by his social position. Head of one of the oldest peerages in Scotland (dating to pre-1457), Norman succeeded to the earldom at the death of his grandmother in 1893, the Rothes line being one of the ancient order that permits the right of descent through females. Norman also held two subsidiary titles –– Baron Leslie and Baron Ballenbreich.

His family, the celebrated Leslie clan, had been in possession of their 10,000-acre Fifeshire estate, Leslie House, since the mid-17th century, and they also owned numerous other properties across Scotland.

Scotch by ancestry, the earl’s upbringing was British. “Norman grew up in the southwest of England,” according to Craig Stringer, “and was familiar with Devonshire, Somerset and Gloucestershire. It is not inconceivable that he came to know Noëlle through the local gentry, especially as Thomas Dyer-Edwardes was High Sheriff of Gloucestershire in 1895.”

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Noëlle may have been drawn to Norman as much for his colorful heritage as to his personal charm, and she soon embraced his family’s history as her own. She had every reason to be proud of the house she would marry into. The Leslies had played a large part in the history of Scotland, even before the investiture of the 1st Earl of Rothes. It was as far back as 1070 that a royal decree gave the Leslie name to a Hungarian nobleman called Bartoff (later known as Bartholomew) upon his marriage to Princess Beatrix. Bartholomew presided first as Chamberlain to Queen Margaret and was later appointed governor of Edinburgh Castle by Malcolm III. According to an oft-repeated anecdote, the Leslies obtained their motto “Grip Fast!” when Bartholomew, in carrying the queen on horseback through a raging river, shouted for her to “grip fast” to his belt buckle, saving her life. Interlocking buckles and the famous axiom today form the family crest.

Over the centuries, successive earls of Rothes made their mark in society and politics, and no less than five countesses presided as peeresses in their own right. The most famous of Norman’s ancestors was the 7th earl who, as Lord High Commissioner of Scotland, was made a duke in 1680 by Charles II. But he died without an immediate heir, and so only the earldom survived him. The Duke of Rothes left his family a considerable debt, which the King promised to pay, but he, too, soon died, and his successor, James II, refused to fulfill the Crown’s obligation. The Leslie family, left in comparatively dire straits, was forced to mortgage most of their lands.

The Leslies’ enormous wealth had never been fully recovered; perhaps they hoped that would change with Norman’s marriage to the rich Noëlle. The wedding took place on Primrose Day, April 19, 1900 at St. Mary Abbot in Kensington, the same church where Noëlle’s parents were married. As the London society magazine, The Sketch, reported in its April 25 issue:

Delightfully bright and genial weather favored the wedding of the Earl of Rothes and Miss Noëlle Dyer Edwardes on Thursday afternoon last. The ceremony took place at St. Mary Abbott’s Church, Kensington; and the officiating clergy were the Dean of Gloucester, Cannon Pennefather, the Rev. Shapley Smith, and the Rev. R.R. Hanson. What did the bride wear? Well, she looked charming in a pretty gown of white satin covered with exquisite Brussels lace, a Brussels lace veil, and a dainty crown of orange blossoms.

Noëlle’s seven bridesmaids, made up of cousins, friends and Norman’s sisters, wore gowns in alternating white and cream crepe de chine and carried bouquets of carnations and white heather. There was an impressive choral programme followed by a reception at the Dyer-Edwardes’ town house at 2 Kensington Court. From there the earl and his countess “left to pass the first portion of their honeymoon on the Isle of Wight.

Despite the capital Norman’s bride brought to his family’s sagging fortunes, all the money she had couldn’t obtain for the newlyweds the property of Leslie House. Owing to the last will and testament of his great-aunt, Henrietta, 17th Countess of Rothes, Norman and his wife had to live elsewhere until the death of Henrietta’s widower, to whom she’d granted life-long use of the Rothes chief estate. The couple therefore chose to remain temporarily in England, settling in Paignton, Devonshire.

While the Rothes could not yet live in the grandeur of the Leslie ancestral home, this temporary dent in Norman’s privileges didn’t affect his or Noëlle’s popularity, and the two were very active socially in London, where they were favorites at the Royal Caledonian Ball. The annual event, under the patronage of Queen Victoria, was a charity in aid of the Royal Caledonian Schools and the Royal Scottish Corporation; Noëlle was to become a patroness of both institutions and eventually helped to organize the yearly balls.

Unavoidably, the new countess made many grand friends, her youth and exceptional beauty turning heads wherever she went. Less than a month after her marriage, in fact, Noëlle stood out as the most striking of all the pretty brides presented at Court. Her looks and dress attracted the attention of everyone at Buckingham Palace, from the Princess of Wales, representing the queen that day, to members of the press who recorded the event in keen detail.

Noëlle Rothes’ presentation took place on May 14, 1900 at the fourth Drawing Room of the season. Accompanied by the Prince of Wales (the future King Edward VII), and other members of the royal family, the Princess (later Queen Alexandra) received Noëlle, who glimmered in a gown of “satin and priceless old lace,” according to The Scotsman. Presented by her mother, Noëlle was  “one of the most beautiful young women seen at the Courts this season,” as a column in the Washington Post reported. The rare 16th century Brussels lace Noëlle wore that day, inherited through her mother’s family, was among her treasured possessions, and she afterwards incorporated bits of it into her attire for special occasions.

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