Farewell to the only American lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth II
My fond memories of Virginia, Countess of Airlie, who died last week at age 91
I was saddened to learn this week that Ginnie Airlie, my favorite member of the late Queen’s royal household, had died at Cortachy Castle, north of Dundee in Scotland on August 17th. Since our first meeting in March 2009 at the flat in London she shared with her husband, the 13th Earl of Airlie, we had more than a dozen conversations. She gave me numerous insights about the royal family, along with incisive opinions on everything from the movie The Queen to prime ministers and presidents. Our last encounter on Easter Sunday this past March was especially poignant.
Lady Airlie was 40 and the mother of six when she accepted the Queen’s invitation in 1973 to become her Lady of the Bedchamber (her formal lady-in-waiting title). Despite her aristocratic marriage and a wealthy background, Ginnie Airlie had a down-to-earth touch and an easy manner that endeared her to people both inside and outside the Royal circle. She picked up tips from a yoga instructor at a diplomatic reception at Buckingham Palace. She taught her husband to walk backwards at state dinners. She pointedly declined to use Botox or have face lifts. At age 80, she flew in economy class with a friend to the United States. She was, as Cecil Beaton observed, “a paragon of gaiety and dignity.”
“The human aspect of the Queen”
I was fortunate to be introduced to Ginnie and David Airlie by several of their friends as well as David’s brother Jamie Ogilvy, whom I had known for more than a decade. Another longtime friend of mine, Lady Elizabeth Anson, a cousin of Queen Elizabeth II, said Ginnie would be an invaluable source of knowledge as I was researching my biography, Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch. “Ginnie has a great sense of humor,” Liza Anson told me, “and she would give the human aspect of the Queen.”
Sitting with 76-year-old Ginnie (she insisted we be on a first-name basis) on an early spring day in 2009, I felt instantly at home in her elegant flat on Sloane Court West. Her sitting room was painted apple green, there were plenty of books on the shelves and lovely paintings on the walls, and her desk was endearingly cluttered with papers. When I commented how pretty the room was, she said, “It’s more messy than David’s,” which was true.
“You have to calm them down”
I was fascinated by her description of lady-in-waiting duties while with Elizabeth II in public. “You are there to cope with the Lord Mayor’s wife or the Lord Lieutenant’s wife, and also anybody from the ‘Awkward Squad.’ You have to calm them down,” she said, referring to people who were anxious about meeting the Queen.
The future Lady Airlie was born Virginia Fortune Ryan on February 9, 1933, the daughter of John Barry Ryan, Jr. and the former Margaret (Nin) Kahn. Both her parents were from wealthy families, and her maternal grandfather was the legendary Jewish-America financier, Otto Kahn. Ginnie grew up in the luxurious precincts of Manhattan and Newport, Rhode Island, and for three months each year starting in the late 1940s, her mother—an ardent Anglophile—took her to London, where they stayed in a flat overlooking St. James’s Park.
While visiting London at age 16, Ginnie met her future husband, then known as David Ogilvy, at a dance at the Savoy Hotel. Three years later he proposed. Their marriage at St. Margaret’s Westminster was a grand occasion that attracted thousands of onlookers. David’s family had been close to British monarchs for several generations, and he and Ginnie were instantly part of the exclusive circle around Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip.
When he became the 13th Earl of Airlie in 1968, he was already a successful merchant banker at Henry Schroder & Co. The Airlies split their time between a house in the Chelsea neighborhood of London and their two family estates in Scotland, the pink-hued Cortachy Castle and the smaller but equally enchanting Airlie Castle. From 1953 to 1971, they had six children: three sons and three daughters, all of whom survive their parents. (I paid tribute to Lord Airlie in Royals Extra after his death last year at age 97.) https://sallybedellsmith.substack.com/p/farewell-to-the-13th-earl-of-airlie
The Airlies socialized with the Queen and Philip at shooting weekends on the royal estates at Sandringham in Norfolk and Balmoral in Scotland. Starting in 1984, David joined his wife in the royal household as the Queen’s Lord Chamberlain, a position he held until 1997. More often than not, he was running the monarch’s household in Buckingham Palace while Ginnie was traveling with the Queen and Prince Philip. She carried out her lady-in-waiting duties on the Queen’s official trips to the United States in 1976, 1991, and 2007, and she was on hand for visits to Britain by Ronald Reagan in 1982, George W. Bush in 2003, Barack Obama in 2011, and Donald Trump in 2018.
The Queen and Lady Airlie were not only unpretentious and witty, but they were also both petite, which created an added affinity. Ginnie was struck from the outset by Elizabeth II’s ability to keep her queenly aura and her humanity in equipoise.
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