Before Rolls-Royce had an emblem, Lord Montagu had one of his own. He commissioned it from the sculptor Charles Sykes, and Eleanor sat for it: a small silver woman leaning into the wind with one finger laid across her lips. Hush. Say nothing. He bolted it to the front of every car he owned and drove his secret through London in plain sight for twenty years, and not one person who ever saw it understood what they were looking at.
The world later called the public figure the Spirit of Ecstasy. The hush figure came first. Lord Montagu of Beaulieu put Eleanor Thornton’s secret on the front of his car.
Source: documented commission of The Whisper by Charles Sykes for Lord Montagu, as used in the novel’s publisher A+ record. Image is an original render in the pose of The Whisper, not a scan of a trademarked mascot.