The Story That Inspired Rolls-Royce ‘Spirit Of Ecstasy’
Posted by: Auto Buff / Category: MotoringEleanor Velasco Thornton left school at 16 and went to work at the Automobile Club (now the RAC). Through her work, she met all the motoring pioneers of the day; among them was John Scott Montagu. In 1902, when Eleanor was 22 and Montagu 36, she went to work as his assistant on Britain’s first motoring magazine, The Car Illustrated, in London.
Montagu, a keen aviator and driver who came third in the Paris-Ostend road race in 1899 and who introduced the future Edward VII to motoring, was one of the most high-profile figures of his day. John Scott Montagu inherited his father’s title in 1905, becoming the second Baron Montagu of Beaulieu, and moved from the House of Commons to the Lords.
Thornton and the older, married, higher-caste Montagu were lovers. Indeed, she worked closely with him for more than a decade, traveling extensively with him. The disclosure of an affair that crossed class-barriers and involved a love child would have caused a national scandal.
The original version of the ‘Spirit of Ecstasy’ concept was a bronze statue that Sykes created for Montagu, commissioned to immortalize their star-crossed love. It was used as the mascot for the baron’s personal car, a Rolls-Royce Phantom.
It is believed that he asked the magazine’s staff illustrator, artist sculptor, Charles Sykes, specifically or implicitly to use Thornton as his muse. Thornton was also the inspiration for many of Sykes’s earlier drawings, paintings and bronzes (they were co-workers at Montagu’s magazine, after all) appearing on several covers and as Alice in a serialized spoof called “Alice in Motorland.”
Modelled on Thorn, this first bronze piece, entitled ‘The Whisperer’ was the inspiration for the Rolls-Royce flying lady, or ‘Spirit of Ecstasy’, whose soaring curves are recognized by motorists around the world as a symbol of quality and distinction.
For her part, Eleanor had a child by Montagu but, knowing that as a single mother she would be unable to continue to work for Montagu, gave her daughter up for adoption. The current Lord Montagu takes up the story.
Though the affair between the aristocrat and Eleanor Thornton ended with her tragic, untimely death their love was ultimately immortalised in the most unlikely of places. And so, a century after Eleanor Thornton and John Montagu met, their story has now passed into history. The spirit of their feelings lives on, in the form of the figurine that still graces every Rolls-Royce.
On Febrary 6, 2011, the ultimate emblem of British automotive pride – Rolls-Royce’s Spirit of Ecstasy – will celebrate 100 years of existence.To mark what Rolls calls its “year of celebration,” every Ghost and Phantom produced in Goodwood will bear a Spirit of Ecstasy inscribed with the
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