Gone With the Windsors

16th August 1932

Penelope winked at me over the kedgeree, signaling she made a conquest last night.

She said, “Maybell, why don’t I stay and keep you company when Violet and Melhuish go to Birkhall? Fergus won’t mind going on to Glendochrie without me.”

I thanked her but pointed out that everyone else is moving on today. Including George Lightfoot. More winks. Then a lot of giggling in the morning room while she had me guess who she’s seduced. Not Lightfoot, because he played billiards all evening and didn’t tango with her once. Not Anstruther-Brodie, because that would be like reading yesterday’s newspaper. And not Ralph Habberley, because he’s a drip and the last man on earth. So who? Angus.

I said, “Who is Angus?”

“Shh,” she said. “One of the housemaids is his sister. He’s the underghillie. Isn’t it a lark?”

An underghillie! That’s nothing more than a junior fishing assistant. It would be like having an assignation with a boot boy.

She says she found him in the rod room.

Ena Spain, George Lightfoot, the Anstruther-Brodies, and Doopie, whom the Majesties appear to dote on, just left for Balmoral. The Blythes and the Habberleys are meant to be going south to Perthshire to another shooting party, but a major row blew up between Penelope and Fergus as to whether she should remain here instead. I’m afraid she got no support from me.

She said, “Oh but Maybell, what about Minskip? What if he makes a play for you? Shouldn’t you like a chaperone?”

But Minskip is on his way home and anyway, I believe I’d have been safe in his company. The only way to get Tommy Minskip’s attention is to disarrange his cavalry. And as for Penelope, I want nothing of her complications. I think a little of Penelope Blythe goes a long way.

17th August 1932

Violet, Melhuish, and Ulick have gone to stay with Bertie and Elizabeth York for three days at Birkhall, on the Balmoral estate. Which leaves me in charge at Drumcanna.

I’ve explained to the help how to make French toast, and it will now be served instead of oatmeal in the morning. Rory requested sausages for dinner, and Flora has asked for “gake with lots of jam” and varnish on her stubby little fingernails. It’s so easy to make them happy. They’re now skipping up and down the gravel sweep, crying “Hurrah! Hurrah!”

A wire from Fishbone and Strong. They have people from Kentucky keen to take Sweet Air but they’d want it by October. Can I have it ready so soon? I most certainly can. As soon as ever I’m released from duties as Favorite Aunt, I shall go to London and book my passage.

18th August 1932

A little girl called Ellen MacNab, daughter of the head-keeper, overcame her shyness and ventured up the drive to play with Flora. They are much of an age. We’ve had great fun, dancing tangos and reels and strathspeys, all without the benefit of phonograph music.

Rory asked to speak to me privately when it was time for Ellen to leave.

He said, “Should I walk her home?”

I said, “Would you like to?”

“Oh yes,” he said, “but it’s rather tricky. Daddy says one should always take care of ladies, but MacNab works for us, and Daddy also says one should be mindful of familiarity with servants.”

I said, “We could get one of the maids to take her.”

But he did it himself, with Flora tagging along.

He said, “I think it was the right thing, Aunt Maybell. I was very mindful.”

20th August 1932

Violet returned from Birkhall, bringing with her Duchess Bertie York and her elder daughter. They stayed to tea. Princess Lilibet is two years younger than Flora, but very pink-and-white and refined. She sat neatly beside her mother for the entire visit and ate her scone without dropping a crumb. Flora, wearing Rory’s kilt and an ecru lace runner from the dining-room sideboard, and for whose benefit I’m sure the call was made, glowered at her little playmate and then hid behind a curtain. The Duchess and Violet are great friends and I can see why. They’re both so homely.

21st August 1932

Tomorrow to London and a midge-free suite at Claridge’s. Violet is raising objections right and left. Why the haste? Why spend money on accommodations when I could wait only two more weeks and travel back with her to Carlton Gardens? Isn’t it a rash move, giving up my home and plunging into the unknown?

It says everything about the differences between us. She clings to her lists and timetables and routines, whereas I’m not afraid to seize the moment. Why the haste? Because prospective tenants with good references and no children don’t grow on trees, and the Lancastria sails on August 30th. And a rash move? Well, a two-year lease hardly amounts to burning my boats, and Belgravia isn’t exactly darkest Africa.

I’ve reminded her it was her idea I should come to London in the first place. Gay diversions and eligible beaux were the inducements, as I remember it, neither of which Violet is in any position to provide, I now realize. She thought I’d be one of those wallflower widows, eager to meet a titled simpleton, grateful to be squeezed into Lady Desborough’s guest attic. Now she knows better. I shall have my own coterie before Violet can say “agenda.”

“Well, if you’re absolutely sure it’s what you want, Maybell,” she keeps saying.

I am.

25th August 1932, Claridge’s Hotel, London

Violet was right about one thing. London is dead. I woke a realtor from his August slumbers and have appointments to view three houses tomorrow, one of them catty-corner from Penelope and Fergus Blythe. What a surprise Pips and Wally are going to get when they come back and find me with my own establishment.

26th August 1932

I am taking a house on Wilton Place. It’s light and very prettily done out in the palest greens and blues. More important, the owners are Americans, so it has a good, efficient furnace and a Kelvinator icebox. I didn’t like the aspect of the Cadogan Square property. It was convenient for Harrold’s department store, but the drawing room was full west, which can be very bothersome on summer evenings, and the house in Eaton Mews was too close for comfort to Melhuish’s sister Elspeth and her husband. The last thing I need is her training the Rear-Admiral’s telescope on my front door.

Wilton Place is exactly right for me. Pips and I will be neighbors almost, and when Doopie and Flora tire of feeding the ducks in St. James’s Park, they can come and visit Hyde Park instead.

2nd September 1932, RMS Lancastria

The ocean is as calm as a soup dish, and I have unexpected company. Judson and Hattie Erlanger came on board at the very last moment. I bumped into Hattie as I was taking a turn on deck this morning. She had a friend with her, Daisy Fellowes, and they were on their way to the gymnasium. They begged me to join them, but I preferred to sit with a cup of bouillon and my own thoughts. They said they were going to bicycle all the way to New York, and went off shrieking with laughter. It seemed too early in the day for them to be tight.

3rd September 1932

Judson tells me Hattie’s friend Daisy Fellowes is immensely rich. From what I saw of her at dinner last evening, she’s certainly made inroads into the world’s supply of pink diamonds. He’s in a nice, gossipy mood. He thinks Wally must have stampeded Ernest into marriage, because he has the look of a man who’s not quite sure where he is or what he’s doing there.

I said, “I think the appeal of Ernest was he was effectively a free ticket to London and a fresh start.”

He said, “Yes, that makes sense. She’d fouled the nest too much to stay in Baltimore.”

Judson does rather go on about what a great girl Hattie is. I wonder if he feels under some kind of obligation to try making love to me again? I pray not. Our paths diverged in 1917, and if he has made a happy match with Hattie, I can only be pleased for him. Personally, I find her gratingly tall.

8th September 1932, Sweet Air, Baltimore

Sweet Air was bathed in sunlight as I arrived, and it feels so roomy and bright after those London houses with their rooms stacked higgledy-piggledy four and five floors high. I almost picked up the telephone and told Fishbone to call everything off. But it is too big for me in my present circumstances. Too big, too quiet, too remote from invigorating company. I’ve grown accustomed to nightlife and the rattle of London trams. Also, Missie says Junior’s wife stops her car outside every day and peers through the gates up to my pleasure porch. If I stayed, she and Junior would surely rob me of my peace of mind and destroy my health.

19th September 1932

The last of my boxes has gone, and the ticker-tape machine has been removed, my final reminder of Brumby. Whatever Junior may say, we were contented. I didn’t bother him and he didn’t bother me, at least not in recent times.

I’ve put Nora Sedley Cordle out of her misery. She’s been making hay in my absence, hosting musical soirees and raising funds for the veterans’ hospital, and must have been anxious about my returning home, worried I’d confiscate her new little empire. By a great stroke of luck, she arrived at Klein’s just as my furs were being loaded into the car. A face like an anaemic chipmunk.

I said, “Hello Nora and good-bye. You know, I find Baltimore so narrow now I live in London. I wonder if we shall ever meet again.”

I’ve always made good exits, though I do say so myself.

24th September 1932, RMS Rex

Junior and that grasping creature he calls a wife had the nerve to send a basket of fruit to my stateroom. All poisoned, I’m sure. I’ve donated it to the stewards’ mess.

A squall is forecast for tonight.

25th September 1932

More than a squall. The girl from the infirmary ministered to me like an angel, but there are no hair appointments until tomorrow afternoon.

26th September 1932

Thelma Furness’s sister Connie is on board. She claimed me in the Palm Court as I was trying to regain my sea legs. We shared a pot of tea, and when she heard of my difficulties, she made a call and immediately, miraculously, a hair appointment opened up. She told me Thelma and her Prince have been summering secretly at Biarritz. No wonder he didn’t put in an appearance at Balmoral.

A wire from Violet. Melhuish is sending his car to meet me when we dock, and she insists on my going to Carlton Gardens until my own house is aired. How kind everyone is.

30th September 1932, Carlton Gardens, London

Ulick and Rory have returned to their schools, and the pace of London life is quickening again. Violet already has a number of invitations on her mantel. I predict that by this time next year, mine will make hers look sadly bare.

She said, “Well, now you’re here, what do you plan to do?”

My feet have hardly touched dry land. I said, “I’m going to make telephone calls, to see who’s back in town, and tomorrow night I’m going to Ciro’s with Pips and Freddie and the Whitlow Trillings.”

“No,” she said, “I mean what are you going to do? There are more important things in life than going to niteries.”

She underestimates me. I’m perfectly aware I have to hire a cook and a driver. I also have to pick out new drapes for my dining room, something more confident than pastel stripes, something that says “Maybell Brumby lives here now.” But one can’t be slaving every hour of the day. Lunch with Ida.

1st October 1932

Ida has a new beau, acquired in a lecture hall in Tewkesbury. He’s an Acolyte of the Seventh Ray, drinks only chamomile tea and is showing her the path to inner vitality. The people one meets in Gloucestershire!

Wally’s back. Shopping on Monday. Her friend with the castle, Lily Drax-Pfaffenhof, is coming to stay, so she’s splashing out on a new rug for the guest bedroom.

3rd October 1932

Heal’s had a selection of perfectly adequate rugs, but Wally insisted on going to a little Persian in Sackville Street, and once those people have you in their clutches, they won’t let go until you’ve seen their entire stock. Wally, of course, went to his most expensive item like a homing pigeon. “Oh,” he said, “a most discerning choice. A most unique rug made in a mountain village to a pattern known only to one old man.” They always say that, but Wally’s impossible to turn once she’s decided on a thing. She’s promised to get a check sent round to me first thing tomorrow. Another jolt to Ernest’s careful budget.

She said, “Ernest will be fine about it. He’d rather stretch himself to buy something good than settle for mediocrity. We’re of one mind on that. And I won’t have Lily stepping out of bed onto the kind of thing a grocer’s wife might buy. Lily’s a landgravine, you know?”

A landgravine! Further complications. No doubt there will be the expense of special dietary requirements in addition to outlay on hand-knotted rugs.

4th October 1932

I’ve engaged a butler, a cook, and two housemaids, but still no driver and no satisfactory lady’s maid. Penelope Blythe says there may be servants becoming available at the Orr-Tweedies’ since Mrs. O-T passed away. She’s going to inquire.

Ructions in the nursery. It’s Melhuish’s birthday on Thursday, and Flora had the idea of giving him a party. She said, “We can make a gake and Daddy can blow out the gandles.”

Violet said it was a sweet idea but out of the question, because he’s speaking on the Pheasant Bill that afternoon and then going on to a January Club dinner.

Doopie said, “Bedvus dime?”

Violet said, “No, Doopie. Mornings are far too hectic, especially when he’s working on a speech. Don’t pout, Flora. You can have a little party without him. I’ll ask Smith to find you something special. Now off you skip. Mummy has to look for some papers for Lady Strathnaver.”

Doopie looked at me, but there was really nothing I could do. The poor child was clearly disappointed, and I’d have taken her out to Harrold’s and bought her a new dolly, but I was already committed to lunch with Pips and then a manicure. By the time I got back, it was too late to save Flora from herself. She’d gone into the writing room and created a snowstorm of papers, from Violet’s desk and from Melhuish’s, scrambling them up with her grubby little hands and tossing them in the air. The floor was still covered when I looked in, Fishermen’s Orphans mixed up with Unmarried Mothers and the Hedgerows Bill. Trotman had hauled her upstairs, and she’d been sent to bed without any tea.

This must surely strengthen the case for sending her to school.

5th October 1932

Penelope Blythe has come up trumps. I’ve taken on Padmore, formerly lady’s maid to Mrs. Orr-Tweedie, and also Kettle, who was her driver for nineteen years.

He drove me along Piccadilly and the Haymarket and then back by Pall Mall to Carlton Gardens, and he has a pleasingly smooth technique. He also carries a kind of Boy Scout emergency box, which he showed me before he stowed it in the trunk: flashlight, bandages, medicinal brandy, magnesia tablets, and a miniature sewing kit. He said, “In case of a loose button, madam, or laddered hosiery.”

There’ll be no need for that. If I ladder my stocking, I shall just have him drive me home so I can change it. Still, it does show he has the right attitude.

6th October 1932

Wilton Place is ready for me. On Saturday, I shall sleep my first night there. A fresh start, and how fitting. It will be a year to the day since I lost Brumby.

George Lightfoot was in the nursery when I returned from Monsieur Jules, helping Doopie and Flora fete the absent Melhuish with a rather dry marble cake.

“Ah,” he said, “the very girl I was hoping to see. Come with me Monday next to Philip Sassoon’s. He’s asked me to Park Lane to see his new majolica urns.”

Over drinks, I heard Melhuish say he didn’t think Sir Philip was “quite the thing.”

Lightfoot said, “What can you mean?”

Melhuish said, “I don’t know. He strikes me as a bit of a Johnny-come-lately. Belchester told me he has a footman serve tea. Can you imagine!”

Violet said, “But dearest, he does raise a great deal of money for hospitals. And we’re very fond of Sybil.”

Melhuish said, “Oh, quite so. Sybil’s one hundred percent. I used to play polo with her husband. Never see him nowadays, of course. Seems to spend most of his time in the south of France.”

All I said was, “Like Thelma Furness’s husband.”

Violet said, “No, Maybell. Not at all like that. Rock plays in tennis tournaments.”

That, of course, would be Rock Chumley, spelled Cholmondeley, nota bene.

Well, tennis, tootsies, whatever the excuse, it sounds to me as though the south of France is teeming with restless English husbands.

7th October 1932

To the Café de Paris with Pips and Freddie, the Erlangers, and the Simpsons for steak Diane and a Dixieland band. Wally and Ernest brought along Lily Drax-Pfaffenhof, who turns out to be much more fun than she sounds. Her first husband was in Manchester cotton and left her stony broke but fortunately, she made a good second marriage to a landgrave called Willi, which makes her a landgravine. Somewhere between a countess and a duchess, according to Ernest. Anyhow, she wears it very lightly. I think we shall become friends.

Wally believes she may know the Sassoons. When she was in Hong Kong, there was a family of that name, and she’s almost certain she went to a party at their house, but Hattie Erlanger says it must be a different lot, because Philip and Sybil are Jews from Baghdad.

Freddie said, “Yes, Hattie, but not recently. Sassoon’s been in the Commons twenty years at least.”

According to Freddie, he’s something important at the Air Ministry, entertains lavishly, and has a reputation as a firecracker, always sparkling and fizzing and dashing between his various wonderful homes. Sir Philip Firecracker Sassoon! I can’t wait.

8th October 1932, Wilton Place

My first year without Brumby. It seems longer, so much has happened. Well, I think I’ve conducted my period of mourning in a decorous manner. Violet may make her disparaging remarks about niteries, but even widows have to while away their evenings somehow, and I’m sure Danforth Brumby would prefer me looking radiant in claret rather than haggard in black.

9th October 1932

I’ve suggested to Padmore that we dispense with the customary black dress for her, too. We can get her something more modern. Dark blue, perhaps, or dove gray, with a little white apron. “Whatever you think, madam,” she said. That’s the kind of attitude I like!

10th October 1932

I am in love! Philip Sassoon is delicious. He’s the same age as Melhuish, but you’d never think it, he’s so svelte and so vibrant. Also, he has exquisite taste. Blood-red roses arranged against a panel of black glass. Twinned pewter buckets filled with white oxeye daisies.

He dashed around, showing us everything. The drawing room—one of the drawing rooms—all pink and gilt and tapestries. The dining room azure and silver. Everything done with a very sure touch. Only the ballroom was too hectic for my taste, no surface left unpainted. Camel trains, palm trees, sheikhs of Araby.

“The problem with owning a ballroom,” he said, “is that one feels an obligation to use it.”

Lightfoot sang my praises as a dancer, but, sadly, Sir Philip doesn’t dance.

He said, “One always feels obliged to buzzz around like a bumble bee, pollinating one’s guests with gaiety, and then, when the evening’s over, the room looks horrrribly like the Battle of Culloden Moor.”

A location from his Baghdad period, I suppose.

I said, “What you need is a woman to hold your balls for you.”

“Maybell!” he said, “I think I may thrrrreaten you with an invitation to Trrrrent Park.”

I said, “Invite away! You don’t frrrrighten me.” How we laughed.

A small point of accuracy for Melhuish. Sir Philip does not have a footman serve tea. He has footmen. And why not!

11th October 1932

Wally was infuriatingly vague about her plans for the day, and then, when I walked into the Ivy to meet Pips, there she was, tête-à-tête with Thelma Furness. They waved but made no move to invite us over to join them.

Pips says she finds it horribly entertaining to watch Wally at work. “Spinning her web,” she called it.

She said, “Look at her. I mean, Thelma’s nice in her own sappy way, but Wally can’t possibly find her that interesting. She’s just cultivating her so she can get her foot in Wales’s door.”

I said, “There are worse projects. I wouldn’t mind meeting him myself. They say he’s a nifty dancer.”

Pips said, “Well, I think it’s all rather desperate and sad. It reminds me of the trouble she went to snag a dance with Chevy Auburn. Remember? Cozying up to his sister. Memorizing all his sprint times. And men are so dumb. They fall for it every time. I’ll bet she worked the same old business with Ernest. I’ll bet she pumped Mary Kirk for useful tidbits, filed them under ‘Ernest,’ and then fed them right back to him.”

I think Wally just uses what little God gave her. She has a very plain face, no figure, and no fortune. It stands to reason she’s had to develop her wits.

Pips could have shown more interest in my tea with Philip Sassoon.

All she said was, “But isn’t he a fruit?”

12th October 1932

Penelope Blythe says a fruit is a very useful, unmarried type of man friend, and she’s often thought of getting one herself.

To Carlton Gardens for drinks. The Billy Belchesters were there, and Leo von Hoesch popped along from the German Embassy. So charming, and never married. I wonder if he’s a fruit, too. Violet says he’s the civilized face of Germany and quite abhors Mr. Hitler and his new ideas.

A note had arrived for me from young Rory, to remind me he’ll soon be coming home on his midterm vacation. He writes, I should very much like to take you to a Tea Room but I’m rather out of funds.